Grace could not eat. She was totally exhausted after the forced march. She looked all done in. Ryder could almost feel her pain, but knew there was no turning back now.
He moved to her side. “I know this is tough, but a lot of people are depending on us. Without you, this whole thing will fail.”
She nodded, running her hand through matted hair.
He encouraged her to eat a little rice and meat, which she reluctantly did.
“Get some sleep, you’ll feel better later,” he said when she’d finished.
Without another word she curled up by the wall closest to the fire and fell into a fitful sleep.
“What’s our position, boss?” Chol asked, finishing a strip of dried goat meat.
“About five klicks southeast of a place called Hagaru-ri. A small town by a lake,” Ryder replied. A town of low-rise, mainly concrete buildings, bitterly remembered by the Americans for the fierce fighting that took place around it during the Korean War.
“How far is that from where we’re heading?”
Ryder reached for the map and spread it. “Sixty klicks. A little luck and we should make it in three days or less.”
“Do we go through this Hagaru-ri?” asked Chol.
“I’d prefer to avoid it, but it’d be a big detour if we don’t.”
“Can we?” shot Song.
“Maybe, if we take the lake instead,” replied Frank, thinking again about Grace. A boat ride would at least give her some respite from the relentless pace he had set. “It’s about twelve klicks long. I suggest we hijack a boat and go as far north as we can. Doing this will reduce travel time by at least a day.”
“And if we can’t find a boat?” Chol questioned.
“Then we’ve no choice but to go through.”
“The Koreans must use the lake for trade; there has to be boats,” said Chol.
Ryder glanced at each of the others. “Okay, it looks like a boat, but we’ll assess the situation when we get there. Change out of those uniforms; they might raise suspicion if we encounter anyone in this wilderness. Our peasant gear is better anyway. Keep them, though; they’ll be useful if we find a base.”
They agreed to the watch. Ryder then reminded the men to shave as best they could; he did not want the team drawing attention unnecessarily. Most males encountered so far were clean-shaven.
The men changed back into peasant gear and packed the uniforms into the sacks before finally turning in.
10
The captain of the Maru Blue lowered his binoculars and handed them to Ali bin Rashid, pointing to the white mountain rising out of the ocean on the horizon.
“Heard Island… And that my friend is ‘Big Ben’ directly ahead,” he said in soft tones.
“Very impressive,” the al-Qaeda operative replied, scanning the island’s highest mountain, Mawson Peak – an active volcano. “How soon will we arrive?”
“Three hours, then we will drop anchor in Atlas Cove.”
Rashid smiled and handed the binoculars back to Captain Moradi.
“Heard Island,” offered the captain, “was named after Captain John Heard, an American who sighted the pinpoint of land in 1853.”
“The infidels are everywhere,” snarled Rashid. “Where did you learn this?”
“It is my job to know everything about the oceans.”
“Tell me more about this little island.”
“It is one of the remotest islands in the southern Indian Ocean. That’s why it was chosen. Atlas Cove is a sheltered inlet at the northwestern side. It was here that most of the scientific stations were set-up. The island is officially Australian territory.”
“Are we likely to encounter anyone?”
The captain laughed. “No, all scientific research was abandoned late last century. It is now only inhabited by sea mammals and birds. The remote location precludes it from regular shipping lanes and from being overflown by commercial airlines; also, and most important of all, away from the all-seeing eyes of satellites.” He hated the Americans with a passion since the time they murdered his grandfather during the attempted rescue of the embassy hostages in Tehran back in 1979. He did not hesitate to join al-Qaeda when they came to Iran to seek recruits. He left the Iranian Navy, obtained a commercial captain’s licence and gave his services to the organization without question whenever and wherever required. He was able to master most seagoing vessels and find the appropriate, trustworthy crews equally fervent for the cause.
Rashid seemed assured and wanted to know the statistics of this island.
The captain obliged. “It is roughly circular, around twenty-five miles in diameter, and has over seventy percent of its surface permanently iced, some say up to 500 feet. Big Ben feeds a dozen glaciers descending from the summit, forming large ice cliffs along the coastline. Atlas Cove, fortunately for us, is fairly sheltered from the winds. It’s a godforsaken wasteland, gale-swept for most of the year and represents the tip of an underwater mountain range rising three to four miles above the ocean floor.”
Rashid nodded. “Inhospitable, to say the least. But it will serve our needs,” he said quietly before slipping back into a silent, reflective mood. As a boy from an impoverished family living in the Saudi Arabian city of Riyadh, Rashid had been encouraged by his father to follow the teachings of the puritanical Islamic preacher, Abdul Wahhab. His head was filled with the austere and deeply conservative brand of religious zealotry that had not progressed since the Middle Ages. However, as a young man, he had no ambitions to become a cleric so he joined the Saudi Arabian Army and rose against all odds to become a major in the Intelligence Corps whilst still secretly following the Wahhabi doctrine. On the surface, all seemed well. He managed the two diverse lives without too much effort, but beneath the surface he was gradually drawn into the hatred that bubbled amongst a minority officer class against the Saudi Royal Family. At first he supplied them with periphery general intelligence, increasing to specific classified information of the Saudi Army’s military movements and also those of its Western allies. Eventually it became too risky to carry on, so Rashid’s beliefs led him to leave the army and join the terrorist group al-Qaeda.
After many months of negotiation, the North Koreans had agreed to supply a warhead carrying the specific weapon required by al-Qaeda and would also act as an intermediary in obtaining a missile and a nuclear submarine for the right price. The Maru Blue had spent three days at Nampo, during which time Rashid attended several secret meetings with Korean officials to finalize details and take possession of the warhead. On the last day, in a secure underground laboratory full of technicians and military personnel, he had inspected the gleaming white warhead and watched as the contents were assembled with great care and placed securely within the cone. The outer edge was prepared for easy attachment to a missile and was then carefully stored away inside a foam and metal-lined wooden crate. It had been a much harder task to obtain the nuclear submarine and cost a great deal of money. The North Koreans had lied to the Russians, telling them they wanted to start a blue water presence in the Pacific. Rashid recalled their scepticism at the time, but the deal eventually had gone through. This had called for a total handover of the vessel to a predominantly Korean crew away from prying eyes and the return of the Russian trial crew to Vladivostok. The deal also included a full complement of live torpedoes and SLBMs. The Russian Eastern Command, in need of funds, reluctantly accepted most of the conditions, but would only provide four missiles for testing purposes. They stopped short at supplying the missiles with live warheads. This of course did not bother Rashid, as he only needed one missile anyway; the Koreans were providing the warhead. Rashid had also guessed rightly that from the Russian point of view, the quicker they fulfilled their part of the deal and banked the money, the better. Thus, for a considerable sum of money, al-Qaeda eventually purchased the perfect delivery vehicles: four Russian R-29 ([SS-N-18) Stingray submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM), a deadly warhead and a partly manned Delta III Russian nuclear submarine from which to launch it deep beneath the waves on the doorstep of the infidel’s lair.