He didn’t explain who that important piece of information had come from-specifically, an FBI agent who had received a call from the engineer’s wife, who had been contacted by a DPRK dissident, who got the information from a woman working in the Ung-do complex.
“We’re prioritizing option three,” Sutter announced. “It’s yours, Crocker. We need you to lead the planning and assemble a team.”
“What size team are we talking about?” he asked, getting fired up.
“Small,” Sutter answered. “Probably no more than four men, but totally contingent on how you infil.”
He left the infil part dangling for the time being. “Why only four?”
“Because we want to keep the footprint as small as possible,” replied Anders. “Optimally, we’d like the mission to have no U.S. footprint at all. But that’s probably outside the realm of possibility, because the South Koreans want no part of this.”
Crocker deduced from his answer that they’d already been asked and had declined.
“Why’s that?” he asked.
“One, they say they’re committed to a political program of normalizing relations with North Korea. And, two, they’re obviously worried about military repercussions, though they won’t admit that. Suffice it to say, the DPRK has an army of over a million, a lot of them are deployed within a hundred miles of Seoul, and they’re fucking crazy.”
“Got it.”
Anders rubbed his square chin. “There’s several other aspects of this to consider,” he stated. “One is that Min has offered to be part of the mission.”
“Min, the defector?” Sutter asked. “Are we sure that’s wise? Can we trust him?”
Anders turned to Brooke, who answered, “Based on everything we know, yes. The South Koreans are extremely thorough in the way they vet DPRK defectors.”
“But loyalties in that part of the world are tricky, so there’s always a chance, correct?” Sutter asked.
“I would characterize it as slight probability,” hedged Anders.
Crocker spoke up. “Whatever the odds, it means we could be screwed the moment we launch.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Anders replied. “Nevertheless, Min has given us a detailed picture of the layout, entrance and egress points, and resources on the island. All of which has been matched against drawings that Choi smuggled out.”
“Sat and electronic surveillance?” Crocker asked.
“The full three-sixty package of surveillance assets have been deployed, as well as a complete target profile amalgamated from other DPRK defectors.”
“When was the last time Min was physically on the island?” Crocker asked.
“Roughly a year ago,” Anders answered.
“How sure are we that the presses, missile research program, and U.S. engineer are still there?”
“In terms of the first two, ninety-nine percent. Obviously, we can’t see them from the air, but the heat signatures around the entrance continue to be strong. Obviously, the engineer is easier to move, so his location is very difficult to confirm.”
“He have a name?” asked Crocker.
“James Dawkins,” Dina Brooke answered, reaching into a folder and producing a photo of the engineer, which she handed to Crocker.
Crocker had been in this business long enough to know he had to discount all CIA odds by at least twenty percent. Which meant that there was a better than even chance that the presses and missile program were still on Ung-do and operational. In terms of the engineer, it was anybody’s guess.
“How well fortified is the facility and how far underground?” Crocker asked.
“You’ll find all that detail in the document in front of you. Page three.”
“Thanks.” He jotted down some facts in his notebook: reinforced concrete walls, bomb-resistant roof, target approximately thirty meters underground.
“What are we looking at in terms of possible exposure to radiation?”
Brooke jumped in. “It’s a missile research facility that according to what we know is devoted to two important tasks, reducing the size of the warheads and increasing the accuracy of their missile guidance systems. We can’t confirm the presence of active nuclear material.”
“Nothing has been picked up by airborne monitoring,” added Anders.
“But we don’t know for sure?”
“No.”
“I’m assuming that we’ll be taking out the complex with explosives,” Crocker said.
“Correct. And you’ll probably have to carry the material in yourself. Because of the high level of local security, we don’t think it’s possible to drop anything on the island or immediate vicinity.”
Sutter spoke up. “DARPA has developed something that you’ll want to get your hands on. It’s currently the most powerful nonnuclear explosive in existence. Insensitive to shock like TNT, and has twenty-five percent more explosive power than HMX.”
“What’s it called?”
“CL-20. Like HMX, it has an extremely fast explosive velocity.”
“Suarez know about it?” Crocker asked, referring to Black Cell’s explosives expert.
“I believe so. Yes.”
“Then I want him included,” Crocker concluded. “We have anyone on the teams who speaks Korean?”
“There’s a sniper on Team Three named Sam Lee,” Sutter reported. “Strong, smart kid. Good reputation. He’s a native speaker.”
“I want to meet him this afternoon.”
“Done.
Dawkins awoke seated in a chair in his room. He couldn’t tell if he was dreaming or what he saw was real. Kwon was holding his mouth open with one hand and a flashlight in the other, as a man with a very thin face and bad breath used a dental instrument to examine his teeth.
The man muttered something and nodded, and Dawkins drifted off.
Next thing he remembered was Kwon helping him into bed. The box of videos, VCR, and TV were gone. So were his pens and notebooks. With his tongue he felt the empty space where his tooth had been.
Sung emerged from the bathroom carrying a wet washcloth. When he sat up and blinked, the older woman was in her place instead.
“Where’s Sung?” he asked in a weak voice.
Kwon barked something in Korean and left.
Dawkins’s body felt like it was burning. Someone placed a cool washcloth on his forehead. He looked up and thought he saw Sung.
“Sung, I’m so sorry.”
He heard someone humming the lullaby she had sung to him about the mother going out to look for food for her infant son. But when he focused on the woman’s face, it didn’t belong to Sung, and her lips weren’t moving.
Crocker was sitting in his rental car in the Doheny State Beach parking lot, just south of Dana Point, reviewing the mental checklist in his head, when a guy who met Sam’s description pulled up in a late-model pickup and got out. He strode like an athlete and stood about six two, with a sidewall haircut and a SEAL Trident tattooed on his shoulder. His size and large nose were the only clues that he wasn’t a hundred percent Korean.
“Sam?”
He smiled. “Warrant Officer Crocker.”
“Thanks for coming. You ready to run?”
Crocker led the way across the sand, down past San Clemente to San Onofre, sweet ocean air in his face, the sun shining over his shoulder, enjoying the pulse of movement, freedom, and space. Surfers to their right, sunbathers on their left. Nature at full astonishment. He didn’t even think of stopping to buy a bottle of water until they reached Camp Pendleton South, by which time they had covered more than twenty miles.
Sam had kept stride the whole way. When he finally stopped, Crocker slapped him on the back.
“You okay?”
“Yes, sir. I was warned about you. We running back?”
“Let’s talk first.”
They stretched their legs on a dune looking out over the ocean and Sam started telling him about his family. Both mother and stepfather were immigrants from poor farming communities in South Korea. At nineteen his stepdad got a job as a cook and mechanic with the U.S. Navy. A friendly commander sponsored his immigration to the States. He arrived in North Carolina and worked in the retired commander’s nursery business. Just when he started to think of moving on, he met his former wife, Sam’s mother, rifling through a trash bin outside a Winston-Salem supermarket. He was twenty-six and gainfully employed. She had just turned twenty-eight, was a single mother, homeless, and completely broke.