I lost track of where we were within seconds of driving away from Patterson’s building. The air had thickened to a soup that was impenetrable by even the Humvee’s fog lights. Weeks, however, plowed through it as if we were on an open road at noon.
He turned to look at me as he drove with one hand.
“Nervous, huh? Don’t worry… there’s no one driving on the base right now except us. We need to hurry, too. The helo was supposed to be wheels up a few minutes ago.” He opened his mouth but shut it and turned back to the road without saying anything.
“Well, tell General Patterson I got here as fast as I could,” I said.
I gave up trying to follow the road and watched Weeks drive instead. Although the vehicle’s interior was spacious by military standards, Weeks’s lanky frame seemed crammed into the driver’s seat. He craned his neck toward the windshield as he drove, too, adding to the awkward impression.
“Oh, I don’t think he’s angry at you or anything, ma’am. He’s just a pretty intense guy.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ve met him before.”
“Yeah, he said you had worked together in the past.”
Our conversation dissipated into the grinding growl of the Hummer’s diesel engine. I could see his brow tighten as he searched for something else to say. One of his incisors was capped with silver, and his tongue fiddled with it as he thought. His All-American features were distinguished only by a somewhat prominent superorbital ridge. Genetic.
“So, you’re a doctor?”
Weeks had the tiniest bit of a Boston accent, and for some reason I pictured him sitting in a pub someplace trying to make small talk with a woman who just wanted to enjoy a drink by herself.
“Mmm-hmm. I’m a physician. I also have a PhD in psychology.”
“Wow! From Georgetown?” he said, gesturing at my shirt with his chin. “That’s where I got my medical degree.” I pre-empted his follow-up question. “How long have you been General Patterson’s aide?”
“Oh. Just a few months, now. I actually was a staff driver for some brass in D.C., but they transferred me down here.”
“Ah,” I said, returning my gaze to the invisible road. I could see him chewing on his thumbnail out of the corner of my eye as we rode in silence for a few moments.
“Um, ma’am? I don’t want to presume or anything, but have you worked with SEALs before?”
I sighed. “I’m not really allowed to discuss my work with you, Lieutenant.”
“Right, right, right,” he said. “I know. What I meant was, these guys are tough. Bad news, you know? They’re used to slitting throats and blowing sh — stuff up. Rough-and-tumble types.”
I saw him sneak a glance at me. Maybe he was waiting for me to tremble in fear, I don’t know. I managed to avoid rolling my eyes.
“I’m sure they’re very professional, also.”
“Yeah. Yeah, they are. You just have to be careful around those types of guys sometimes, you know? I mean, you’re—”
I cut him off before he could tell me how small and defenseless I was. “I appreciate your concern, Lieutenant. However, I have no doubt that I will be able to work with them, and they with me, to get our respective jobs done.”
He began to reply, but a pulsing red glow in front of us interrupted him. He downshifted, then hit the brakes as motion became apparent in the mist. He turned off the engine, and I could hear rotors thumping nearby.
I got out of the Hummer, and he ran around the back of the vehicle clutching my bag.
“Come on!” he shouted over the noise.
I could feel the edges of the rotor blast tugging at my clothes as we jogged toward the sound and light.
A helicopter squatted like a fearsome insect in the center of a typhoon of activity, its landing lights painting the scene in flashes of crimson. Black-clad soldiers were pulling themselves in the helo’s side doors and helping others hoist crates into its gut. A fireplug of a man stood by the door, staring into the mist. He saw us.
“That’s Lieutenant—”
“Larsen. I know,” I shouted over the stutter and whine of the helicopter. “Patterson told me. Larsen’s the SEAL platoon’s commanding officer.”
Weeks nodded, and we set a course for the lieutenant. He also was dressed in black and had a stubby assault rifle slung across his back. He wielded a clipboard like a hand-axe.
“Are you Dr. Myers?” he said as we approached. It was impossible to discern his words, but the context helped me read his lips.
“Yes. Lieutenant Larsen?” I extended my hand and saw Weeks flinch in my peripheral vision.
“You’re late,” the SEAL said, ignoring the gesture. “We need to move. Get in the helo.” He turned and tossed the clipboard inside, then pulled himself in after it. I faced Weeks.
“Thanks for the ride. And for helping with my gear,” I said as he handed the bag to me.
“You need a hand?”
“Nah.” I threw my duffel at the feet of a stone-faced SEAL sitting in the helicopter, turned, hopped to a sitting position on the helicopter’s deck, then swung my legs in and stood.
I was confronted with a silent wall of shadowy masculinity in the helicopter’s red-lit interior. There was one seat left by the door on the other side, and I sat in it, dragging my bag to a position between my feet.
A crewman — the co-pilot, maybe — extricated himself from the front cabin. He pulled both doors shut, then grabbed a headset off the wall and handed it to me.
“We can hear each other talk this way!” he yelled. As I put it on, he gestured at my luggage. “And you need to stow that!”
I nodded and he grabbed it.
“Wait!” I said. He paused and turned to me. “Can I get something out?”
I reached in and removed the pages Patterson had faxed me. After I zipped up the bag, the crewman secured it to some webbing on the wall.
“You know how to strap in?” he asked.
I thought I did, but he didn’t give me a chance to answer. A few seconds of deft manipulation left me in the grip of a six-point harness. He leaned down in front of me, flashed a thumbs-up and headed back to the cockpit.
The men around me were wearing no such restraints. As I heard the pilot and co-pilot check off switches and instrument readings, the soldiers made a show of ignoring me and each other.
Then we were in the air.
“It’ll be about a half-hour ride,” I heard in my headset.
“Roger,” came a reply.
I looked down the line of SEALs and saw Larsen sitting at the end of the row across from me. He had the clipboard again, and his head was bowed as he examined its contents.
The man directly across from me seemed intent on using his eyes to drill a hole in the wall above my head. The cabin lights turned his face, framed by a black watch cap and matching turtleneck, a demonic crimson.
I felt like I should try to talk to him, or any of them. But the shadows in the helicopter seemed more solid and defined than the SEALs, who all looked the same. And acted the same: cold, silent.
There were no faces to scrutinize, no conversations to overhear. So I unfurled the faxes, massaging the rubber band on my wrist with two unthinking fingers as I read.
First, the submarine’s crew, an understrength complement of thirty men. The captain, Yoon Chong-Gug, had a distinguished record in the North Korean navy. He also had family in South Korea and had been working for the United States for several years. He was smiling in the picture at the top of his dossier, a mouthful of gapped teeth gleaming in contrast with his bushy black eyebrows.
When he found out he would be ferrying research from an offshore lab to a base on the mainland, he suggested the mass defection to his CIA contacts. They had arranged for the escort by a U.S. attack sub, but the details of the scheme were his.