She seemed to have chosen him. Why, he wasn’t sure. But he accepted her kindness with gratitude, and her interest in him gave him confidence. They’d been together ever since.
Crocker held on to the back of the seat in front of him as the SDV ground to a stop. Pilot Naylor cut the engine so that all he could hear was the sound of the regulator, his own breath, and the sloshing of the water.
Anticipation grew. “Tiger One, Deadwood here. How far are we from the shoreline? Over.”
“Deadwood, you’re looking at a little more than eight meters, or twenty-four feet. We’re resting at a depth of three-point-two meters, roughly ten feet. Over.”
“Okay, guys,” Crocker said. “Put on our Draegers and prepare to deploy. Akil and I will recce first.”
“Roger.”
“Quiet, fast, and small.”
“Copy.”
Akil led the way, swimming underwater with Crocker directly behind him. Nearing shore, they came up slowly, holding their heads just above the water. Through his mask Crocker saw the dark island looming before him like a sleeping elephant. A handful of stars peeked through the overcast sky. Aside from the low whistle of an occasional gust of wind, the area was completely quiet. No lights appeared in the distance, only the faint glow of the fishing port of Munchon through the mist to his left. The stories he’d heard about the millions of starving North Korean peasants and the gulags filled with political prisoners stirred in his head.
He said into his mike, “Romeo, I’ll stand watch. You go and help the guys bring out the gear.”
“Copy.”
Akil turned and dove in one smooth motion as Crocker moved forward until he was standing in three feet of water.
North fucking Korea…
Crouching, he removed the AK from the waterproof bag slung over his shoulder, inserted a mag, chambered a round, and scanned left and right. He was looking along the shore for signs of a guard post, an electric fence, video cameras, or patrol boats. But he saw nothing except little waves slapping the rocky shoreline and the dark silhouettes of clouds.
“Gents, you read me? All clear above. Over.”
“Copy, Deadwood, over.”
Sam came out first, carrying Crocker’s seventy-pound pack and his combat vest and belt in a separate watertight bag. Crocker pointed to the sand beside him. Sam dropped them. His eye never left his AK’s SR-25 scope. He held up his hand and waved Sam back.
The young man hardly made a sound as Crocker took cover behind a clump of shrubs, peeled off the dive suit to the smart suit underneath, and went into the pack for his NVGs. From the watertight he removed his Merrell boots and combat vest. Quickly he taped inside the various pockets extra mags, smoke and frag grenades, Israeli bandages, a backup radio, flares, flashlights, and tape. On his combat belt hung a holster containing his SIG Sauer P226, M4 knife, a coil of nylon rope, more flares, and a pair of gloves.
The temp seemed mild-low fifties. The air carried the pungent smell of sage and rotting shellfish. The wind rattled through the shrubs and kicked up wisps of sand.
The operators assembled around him and quickly readied themselves. According to his Suunto it was 0148. His goal was to return to the SDV by 0230, which he communicated now to Naylor, who had come up to guard their Draegers.
“The CO and I will take twenty-minute shifts,” Naylor explained. “If we see or hear anything, we’ll alert you.”
“Good.” Crocker put a hand on Akil’s shoulder. “Okay, Romeo, show us the way.” As primary navigator/point man, Akil had studied the maps, drawings, and charts provided by Choi and Min with greater urgency and focus than anyone on the team. In terms of the facility itself, the drawings that Min had said were approximately a year old were all they had to go on.
Akil looked back at Crocker and said, “Remember that in the intel briefing we were warned about the presence of poisonous snakes. So keep an eye out for snakes.”
“Fuck the snakes. Look for sensors, wires, cameras, booby traps.”
“Roger.”
The pain was so intense that Dawkins wanted to die. He’d already been sick and soiled his pants. His body disgusted him. Now he heard the door to the refrigerator-like room open and the honored general’s voice like a dog growling. It pulled Dawkins out of the movie of his wedding that had been unreeling in his head.
Someone was untying the ropes around his wrists. His head became woozy from the shooting pain up his back and the burning sensation of blood returning to his arms. He tried but couldn’t straighten his legs, so the guard led him in a monkey crouch to a metal chair. There was someone sitting across from him, but he couldn’t focus his eyes. Then the guard slipped his glasses onto his head and he saw the general holding an olive- green file folder.
The general slapped it on the table, pointed, and growled something.
“He wants you to look!” his aide said.
It hurt to move his fingers but he slowly opened the folder and started to shuffle through the two dozen pictures of Karen and Nan getting out of Nan’s Toyota RAV4, shopping at the local supermarket, getting into the car again, and driving to an apartment near Tysons Corner, Virginia. The pictures seemed to be recent. Karen appeared taller. Nan looked thinner and older. He wondered why they were living in an apartment and not in their home.
The general pounded the metal table with his fist and spit at his head, causing Dawkins to look up. Hunger and fear gnawed at the lining of his stomach.
The general held up two fat fingers and thrust them under Dawkins’s nose.
“Two days,” the aide shouted. “You have two days to finish project.”
Dawkins was panicking before he even knew what that meant. “Two days? I don’t understand…Two days to do what?”
“Two days to complete project!” the aide growled.
It all rushed back on him-the reason he was here, the gyro compass and guidance system, the engineering tasks and adjustments that were still required.
His mouth and hands trembling, he said, “It will probably take longer than that, but I’ll-”
“Two days! We know where your wife and daughter are. After two days they will both be dead!”
Snakes were the least of Crocker’s worries as they humped over sandy land and skirted to the right around a clump of trees-Suarez, Akil, Sam, and Crocker in staggered formation, fingers on trigger guards, barrels pointed to the ground, scanning up, down, left, right. An owl hooted, the wind hissed. Otherwise the island remained eerily quiet.
Through the NVGs everything appeared in shades of green. Crocker didn’t see any evidence of civilization until they reached a narrow bend of asphalt road, which was cool to the touch. They crossed quickly and entered a thicket of tall trees rustling and clattering in the wind. Pines and oaks. The wildness of the island heightened his sense of anticipation.
They were about a hundred meters into the grove when Akil stopped, crouched, and pointed ahead and to his right. It took Crocker several seconds to make out the ventilation stack rising about twenty feet from a short concrete structure.
“That the stack on the map?” he whispered.
Akil nodded vigorously.
“Getting close.”
The stack wasn’t nearly as big or elaborate as the one in the diagram provided in the packet Choi had smuggled out. It looked barely wide enough to accommodate a man Crocker’s size and was topped by a little aluminum hat. Nor was the entrance to the complex as visible from where they were now as it had seemed on the hand-drawn map.
Akil pointed forward and slightly left as Suarez scanned the trees in front of them. As stupid as Akil acted sometimes, he was dead serious and accurate when it came to directions and maps.