“We have a mission here, approved by the Director of the CIA. Tom, you are going to South Korea today. You will spend one day there getting briefed by the NIS and conducting some training. Then we will insert you into North Korea, on the coast about five miles from this base.” He motioned to Sara, knowing she would have the rest of the details at her fingertips.
Sara looked at Tom, “one of the Navy’s submarines, the USS Virginia, is in the region and is equipped with a SEAL Delivery Vehicle. You should be able to use that to get close to shore. From there we think that with the terrain it should take you about two hours to get to target.”
Sara remembered learning that SEAL Delivery Vehicles or SDVs were small submersibles that Navy SEALs use to get from a submarine several miles offshore right to the coast. They could be attached to a submarine. Once released, an operator drives it towards shore and simply parks it like a car. This always amused Sara. The operator then swims in scuba gear the rest of the way. It seemed simple but SEALs spend months training to master it. Since Tom was a SEAL he knew how to operate an SDV.
Anderson continued with the mission details.
“You will get to the base in the middle of the night. Given the country has trouble generating electricity there should be no lights. Their communications might be down as well. Also since their soldiers are poorly fed — even the KPA counter-intelligence unit — it seems unlikely that there would be a large guard stationed that late. Our infrared satellites on their last pass only spotted a small night guard crew of a couple men.”
Sara always smiled thinking about the misconception many people had about satellites. Many films and books gave the impression that imagery satellites could be parked above a spot and stare down for a stream of real time imagery. This was not the case. Imagery satellites are constantly flying around Earth in orbit and are taking pictures of everything below them. They pass over the entire Earth every five to seven days depending on the satellite and the orbit. One can see what a spot on Earth looked like at the last satellite pass — which depended on the number of satellites available. For real time imagery, the CIA would need to send in a drone. Sara knew they were not going to send one over North Korea and risk starting a war. Still, the imagery Anderson was referring to was maybe a day old at worst.
“Once inside you will look at everything, “ Anderson went on, “We need to see every scientific object in there. You will also need to take documents and anything that can store data — whether they are using flash drives or CDs, we need it. Finally you will need to bring plastic explosives. We will have to decide on the fly whether you will set them based on what we see inside. You can exfiltrate the way you came. Get back to shore and into your SDV. Then get back aboard the USS Virginia.”
Anderson paused for Mr. Park to make a comment.
“I am redirecting some of my illegals in North Korea to get information on the area around that base. We are trying to get a better picture before you go in. I am hoping my analysts will have something from the illegals by the time they brief you in Seoul.”
Anderson looked at Tom. “Questions?” He asked.
Sara stared at Tom. She thought about being in that strange country alone in the middle of the night and her feet felt like that time she looked over the edge of the Grand Canyon. Tom sat back in his chair.
“Can you walk me through communications and mission control?” He asked.
“You will be connected to satellite radio. It will connect you to our command room. You will also have a helmet camera so we will be able to look at everything with you in real time. I will direct you from here and we will coordinate with the Navy from here.”
Sara jumped in “If we do set charges and destroy the base, won’t they assume it’s us. What if they retaliate?”
“The USS George Washington is in the region and its aircraft will be on standby. But we should have plausible deniability if Tom can slip in and out.”
Plausible deniability in the world of covert operations meant that a country could say that it did not conduct a covert mission against another and it could be believed. Sara sometimes thought of it as the adult version of the “wasn’t me” defense.
After a pause Anderson went on “I want to quickly turn to Sam to hear the legal opinion.”
“Thanks John. I know the legal side of these missions is usually a pain. We need to make sure the means justify the ends, always. I think on this one we feel comfortable. We have a suspected military facility potentially preparing nuclear weapons. The military is under orders of a regime threatening nuclear war on its neighbor and on us. If Tom does this right, there might be a few military deaths but no civilian deaths. With respect to blowing up the base, again if we can avoid civilian casualties, we are comfortable there. I think we are fine on this mission.”
“That’s better than usual.” Tom said with a slight smile.
Anderson continued, “OK — we have one last thing before we break. Eric go ahead.”
Eric stood up with what looked like a duffel bag. He put it on the table and started talking in an excited tone.
“For this mission we want to give you a new weapon we have been working on for several years. In North Korea where 20 % of the population is in the military and human life is meaningless, if the mission goes wrong you could be in a firefight and potentially grossly outnumbered. Stalinist armies also like to charge. With just your rifle it would be hard for you to manage that.”
Sara could not tell if Eric was just deadpanning or insensitive. She shifted in her chair. She saw Tom staring at Eric expressionless.
Eric opened the black bag and pulled out what looked like a handgun at first. He unfolded the object so that it looked like a submachine gun. At one end Eric unfolded a circular disk. It looked like a miniature satellite dish sitting on the end of a small rifle. It was deep charcoal gray. Eric held it up after preparing it.
“This is an Active Denial System, the first individualized version.”
Sara could not believe it. Is this real? She had heard that the military was working on it, but never would have thought she would be looking at one. Most people have never heard of an Active Denial System, but knew it by what popular science called it: a particle beam weapon. The US military had been developing it for over a decade and abbreviated it “ADS”. It worked by shooting high frequency waves at a target. The person’s skin would heat up instantly and he would feel as though his skin was on fire. As soon as the beam was removed, the person would feel normal again, aside from the mental trauma of what he just experienced. Sara remembered reading a Wired magazine article about it several years ago. It alleged that most test subjects could not stand the beam for more than 3 seconds. She also remembered hearing that it was deployed briefly in Iraq and Afghanistan as a vehicle-mounted weapon for crowd control. But those versions were big — they sat on the roof of a Humvee. This was a small version. That is what impressed Sara.
Eric continued “we have been working with the military on developing this personalized version for the last few years. Tom, when you’re in there, if something goes wrong and fifty bad guys are running at you, you just hit them with this for a couple seconds and they will all be running away. It also doesn’t make noise and is very light.”
Tom was leaning forward in his seat for the first time.
“This is a non-lethal weapon though, right?” he said methodically, as if he knew the answer.