They passed several more guardhouses on either side of the stony, pitted causeway to Kwanmo-bong and stopped again by another set of high metal gates after about seven miles. The inspection procedures were much the same as before, and again they were waved through, grinding their way up the mountain.
The last five miles were easily the most arduous. The track became steeper, and the rain, if anything, worsened, slashing down out of the northwest, head-on into the windshield of the lurching army truck. You didn’t hear many compliments about the cars made in the Qingming Automobile Company in the old Chinese capital of Chongqing. But on the way up Kwanmo-bong, Ravi found a new respect for the Chinese car factory.
“Ahmed,” he said in English, “I guess those guys know how to make a mean automobile in Chongqing. This thing has taken some kind of a pounding, and somehow we’re still going.”
“I didn’t even know the Chinese made automobiles,” replied Ahmed. “I thought they bought shiploads of them, secondhand, piled on all decks from the U.S.A.
“No, that’s the Russians. The Chinese have a huge manufacturing plant in Chongqing.”
“Where the hell’s that, Ravi?” asked Ahmed.
“It’s very deep in the interior. Sichuan. They somehow built this damn great city halfway up a mountain overlooking the valley where the Yangtze and Jialing Rivers meet. It’s nowhere near anywhere, 700 miles from Shanghai, 800 from Beijing. Over 15 million people live there, and they make a lot of cars and trucks.”
“How do you know all that?”
“I’ve been there.”
“I didn’t know you’d been to central China.”
“Neither did the Chinese.”
Ahmed laughed and shook his head. “You have many surprises no one knows, General Ravi,” he said.
“I’m hanging on to ’em as well,” replied the Hamas C in C. “Since I plan to go on breathing.”
In Ahmed’s humble but youthful opinion, the General was without doubt the cleverest, toughest, and most ruthless man he had ever met. He had seen him kill without blinking, destroy without a moment’s pity for the dead and suffering. And he had seen him lavish on his own very beautiful Palestinian sister Shakira a devotion and admiration almost unknown in the Arab world.
Ahmed was best man at their wedding. He had acted as Ravi’s personal bodyguard throughout several missions against the Israelis and the West. And Ahmed had stood almost dumb-founded when a reckless young Palestinian terrorist had attacked the General before a mission, viciously trying to land the butt of an AK-47 on Ravi’s jaw.
The speed with which Ravi had dealt with him was blinding. He had broken the young man’s arm into two pieces, and his collarbone, and then rammed his boot into the boy’s throat as he lay on the floor, saying quietly, “I’ve killed men for a great deal less. Take him to a hospital, Ahmed.”
On the way, young Sabah had explained that the Iranian-born Hamas C in C had been one of the most feared team leaders in the British Army’s SAS, and probably the best exponent of unarmed combat in the Regiment. By some miracle, the former Maj. Ray Kerman had found himself on the wrong side in a bloody battle in the holy city of Hebron, where he had been saved by Shakira.
Shakira had brought him to Hamas. He changed his name back to that of his birth. He converted back to his childhood religion of Islam. And in the process provided the organization with possibly the most important Muslim battle commander since Saladin eight hundred years earlier. At least that’s how the High Command of Hamas used his name to inspire new recruits.
And now he fought alongside his Arabian brothers, with whom he shared forefathers. As the most wanted terrorist in the world, he returned to the Muslim religion and married his adored Shakira.
“Allah himself sent him to us,” Ahmed had said en route to the hospital. The kid with the broken arm and collarbone was inclined to think Satan himself had also had a hand in it.
The Chongqing-built truck faced the most hazardous part of its journey over the last mile. The gradient looked like Mount Everest, and the engine howled in low gear, the four-wheel-drive tires somehow managing to grip the granite and mud surface, which was slick from a small river gushing out of the mountain.
There were many lights and the final 600 yards were downhill, into a hollow with a tall, steel-topped barbed-wire fence crossing it. “Impregnable” was the only word General Ravi could find to describe it.
To the left and the right of the main gates were high guard posts, each one built on six stilts the size of telegraph poles. They were set 10 feet above the razor-sharp steel spikes ranged along the top of the structure. Inside the post were two searchlights and two armed guards, each one manning a mounted heavy machine gun. General Ravi could not quite work out whether they were trying to stop people getting in or out. Either way, his money was on the guards.
Patrolling the outside was a detail of eight men, split into two groups of four and stationed in the open on either side of the gate, rain or no rain. Through the gate Ravi could see no further light, save for that coming through a regular seven-foot-high doorway. There were no other lights between the huge outside gates and whatever lay beyond. Ravi and Ahmed just sat still and waited.
The guard chief ordered the main gates open and their driver drove forward, headlights on full beam straight at what seemed like a massive wall of rock. It was not until they were quite close up that Ravi saw that the wall was actually solid steel. A small open doorway was set into the steel, and the whole wall suddenly disappeared completely, sliding to the right into the rock face.
Before him was a yawning dark cavern without a semblance of light. It was like driving into a gigantic tomb. The truck moved forward, and silently the great steel doors behind them slid back into place. Ravi sensed them shutting firmly and felt the chill of enclosure by forces way beyond his control.
He and his men had sat for just a few seconds when the entire place was lit up by a near-explosion of electric power. This was no tomb, no cavern. This was Main Street Kwanmo-bong — street-lights, central white lines, and lights from shops, or offices, or laboratories. The street was dead straight, and it stretched through the heart of the mountain as far as he could see.
The General guessed the source of the electricity: nuclear energy gone berserk. North Korea’s biggest underground nuclear facility, blasted out of solid rock.
A titanic achievement, to be sure, but at what cost had it been built? Ravi wondered. He stared up at the ceiling, which was still, in places, just barren rock face. But the walls were made of concrete, and even now, through the truck windows, he could feel the soft hum of the generators pervading the entire subterranean structure. Somewhere, behind or beneath this vast reinforced cement cave, there must be a huge nuclear reactor providing the power.
And if anyone wanted to close it down, sealed as it was from the outside world, beneath the 8,000-foot-high peak of Kwanmo-bong, they’d need, well, an atomic bomb. It was, he thought, entirely possible that the only people who could destroy the nuclear facility inside this mountain were the people who built it.
“Jesus Christ,” whispered Ravi.
They drove forwards for about 500 yards, and the truck began an elaborate reverse turn into what appeared to be a loading dock. The driver cut the engine and opened his door, at which point four North Korean officials appeared. Two of them wore white laboratory coats, the others were in that curious military garb of the Far Eastern officer — the olive-drab green trousers, and the open-necked shirt, the same color, with a central zipper instead of buttons, epaulettes, rolled cuffs.