That was what was so frustrating. They were steps behind, playing catch-up in a game that was only getting faster.
“What do you need me to focus on next?”
Harvath looked at all of the materials that had been driven to the hangar and organized into sections. Then he looked at Nicholas sitting behind his computer. What made the most sense was to set him loose on what he did best.
“I want you to find me whoever took that CCTV system offline and erased those keypad entry logs.”
N
ORTH
K
OREA
L
ieutenant Fordyce accepted Billy Tang’s rifle and set it against the rock next to him. “For the record,” he whispered, “this is still a really bad idea.”
Tang nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
Fordyce looked over his shoulder at the ridgeline in the distance. Tucker and Johnson would almost be at the top with Jin-Sang by now.
Looking back at the prison camp, he adjusted his rifle and tried to make himself comfortable. Comfortable, though, was a highly relative term. He wasn’t going to feel truly comfortable until they had gotten the hell out of this godforsaken country.
“In and out,” he ordered Tang. “Five minutes tops and not a second longer.”
“Understood,” the CIA operative agreed.
He was dressed in his peasant clothing with his suppressed nine-millimeter pistol concealed underneath. From his shoulder hung Jin-Sang’s canvas bag. It would give him a way to carry what he needed, as well as a place to hide his night vision goggles once he got there. It would also, he hoped, be a sign to the sister, reaffirming that he had been sent by Jin-Sang.
Fordyce watched through his rifle scope as a guard walked slowly by the fence, stopped for a moment, and then moved on. Just beyond was the infirmary where Jin-Sang’s sister, Hana, had been relegated. According to the little boy, neither the official camp doctor nor the prisoner
charged with assisting him remained there overnight. If a patient died, so be it. The only things of value the doctor bothered locking up were the medicine and his office. Tang packed his lockpick set just in case.
“Guard’s gone. Time to move,” Fordyce whispered.
“Whatever happens,” Tang replied as he stood, “don’t do anything stupid just to save my ass.”
“Don’t worry. We don’t do stupid.”
With a smile, Tang took off for the fence. Inside, his heart was already pounding against his chest. He had done a lot of dangerous things over his years of sneaking into North Korea, but this was hands-down the most dangerous.
He had quizzed Jin-Sang about mines, trip wires, and other measures that could be around the perimeter, but the boy had told him none of that existed. “Then how do they keep the prisoners in?” he had asked. “Fear,” was Jin-Sang’s response.
All of the prisoners believed that the fence was electrified. It wasn’t. The small stream that ran through the valley barely generated enough electricity to power camp necessities. Running a lethal voltage of current through the fence was something the prison establishment decided it couldn’t afford.
Despite all of the boy’s assurances, when Tang got within one hundred meters of the fence, he chose his steps very carefully. Through his night vision goggles, he could make out the lightly trod path that ran parallel to the fence. It was at the spot where it cut in that Jin-Sang had told him he would find the hole.
As he moved, Tang made sure to lift his head up every once in a while to scan the interior of the camp for guards, as well as other prisoners. Everyone was a potential alarm ringer. As Jin-Sang had said, the camp operated completely on fear.
Where the path curved to the right, Tang saw the warped part of the fence. It was held together with two pieces of narrow wire—one above and one below. The hole wasn’t huge, but it looked just big enough for him to squeeze through. So far, everything the little boy had told him had been spot-on. The next question was whether he had been correct about the electric current.
When the team had asked Jin-Sang why there were no visible lights in the evening, he said that this was a phenomenon of the Chinese. Whatever hardships they were expected to face in America, lack of electricity was allegedly one of them.
Approaching the fence, Tang crouched down near the opening, reached into his canvas bag, and withdrew his “testing stick.” Fordyce had snapped a piece of metal off his Leatherman tool, which Tang had then lashed with surgical tape to a plastic syringe given him by Tucker, the corpsman. Tang had pulled the plunger, which allowed the syringe to ride on the end of a stick to give him a little distance. It was like having a screwdriver with a long, insulated handle. If the fence was live, the current would cause an arc when the fence was touched by another piece of metal.
Tang made ready and then extended his testing stick toward the fence. His body tensed as the metal made contact, but it was only a psychological reaction. Nothing happened. Just as Jin-Sang had said, the fence wasn’t hot.
He pulled the syringe off the stick, took off his night vision goggles, and dropped everything into his bag. Unwinding the two pieces of wire holding the fence closed, he crawled through and then quickly put everything back as he had found it.
By design, there was absolutely no cover between the fence and the infirmary. It made it easier to identify and shoot prisoners who were trying to escape. That was just one of the many reasons Fordyce hadn’t liked the plan. But the die had already been cast. Billy Tang was inside the wire and now it was time to move.
His dark clothing, the moonless night, and the complete absence of searchlights and perimeter lighting helped to make Tang
almost
invisible. He covered the ground to the infirmary as fast and as quietly as he could, then pressed himself up against the outer wall. It was a cold, one-story building built of concrete.
He listened for several moments as he took deep breaths and waited for his heart rate to slow. There were no noises coming from inside. He couldn’t hear anything outside either. Not even the nighttime creatures seemed to want to be anywhere near this place.
Fordyce had wanted Tang to carry a radio, but he had refused. If he got caught, the North Koreans would immediately know that he wasn’t working alone. He was willing to risk his own life, but not theirs, not so needlessly. It was yet another thing about the plan Fordyce hadn’t liked. Nevertheless, he had agreed.
With his breathing and heart rate steadier, Tang ducked below the windows and crept toward the infirmary’s front door. Jin-Sang had described the layout to him as best he could. His sister, Hana, was isolated, but she wasn’t alone. There were other patients inside the building. If any of them became suspicious of him and raised the alarm, he was cooked. It was Les Johnson, the SEAL he had pointed his gun at, who had made a simple but brilliant suggestion: “Mask up.”
It made perfect sense. It was an infirmary. Hana’s condition sounded like TB. The doctor and assistant probably wore surgical masks around her, as well as around any other patients with similar conditions. The problem, though, was that the doctor would be dressed in military garb and the assistant in a prison uniform. Neither of them would be dressed in the clothes of a North Korean farmer.
Tang, though, had no choice and hoped that his mask and an authoritative bearing would be enough to bluff his way through and cow any prisoner into believing he had a right to be there.
He was also hoping that the presence of the Chinese, along with their North Korean advisors, had been disruptive and odd enough to condition prisoners to accept the out-of-the-ordinary. It was a long shot, and he knew it, but it was the only shot they had if he was going to make contact with Hana.
Placing the mask over his face, Billy Tang crept the final distance to the door, took one more deep breath, and prepared to slip inside.
T
he old wooden door was unlocked, just as Jin-Sang had said. As Tang opened it, the hinges groaned in protest. It was a terrible sound; like someone moaning in pain. He debated whether to close it, but knew that an open door would attract attention. Lifting up on the handle, he helped alleviate the pressure on the hinges and the door closed more quietly than it had opened.
Even through his surgical mask, the inside of the infirmary smelled terrible. The only thing sterile about the place appeared to be its décor. The bare, concrete walls were unadorned and the floors were stained. With what, Tang could only imagine, but he had a pretty good idea.
Based on the streaks that started at the door and led down the hall toward what must have been an examination room, there had probably been countless prisoners beaten, tortured, and then dragged bleeding into this building. The DPRK treated farm animals better than it did its prisoners. The smell, mixed with thoughts of the horrors this building had seen, turned his stomach.
The first door Tang passed was labeled
Doctor
and was locked up tight. The next was marked with the Korean characters for
Storage
and was also locked. The third room was an empty exam room. Considering that the guards, the prison officials, and their families used the infirmary, it was stunning how substandard and filthy the place was.
By smell alone, he knew that he was nearing the ward. Above the smell, he could hear coughing, lots of it. Tang was glad to be wearing a mask.
The North Korean idea of “isolating” Hana from the other patients had been to separate her bed with three sheets hung from the ceiling. The sheer incompetence of even the doctors in the DPRK never ceased to amaze him.
Stepping behind the sheets, he saw her. The sixteen-year-old looked more dead than alive. Her arms were covered with lesions, her breathing was labored, and her chest was covered with the bloody sputum that she had been coughing up. Despite all this, there was an angelic quality to her expression that broke his heart. The idea that a five-year-old could be locked up in a labor camp for what her father had done was beyond inhuman.
Coming closer, Tang looked for the scar beneath her right eye. It was there, Jin-Sang explained, that an angry foreman had once struck her with a pipe for not working fast enough.
Having confirmed it was Hana, Tang removed a small digital camera from his bag and turned it on. The circumstances weren’t even close to optimal for filming a video, but he would have to make do.
Hana’s eyes were half-open. Billy Tang knelt next to her bed so he could whisper in her ear. Taking her hand, he asked in Korean if she could hear him. Slowly, she turned her head to look at him.
There was neither shock nor curiosity in her eyes; just a shallow glassiness. Tang was worried that the TB might have already affected her brain.
“Jin-Sang sent me,” he whispered. “Look, he gave me his bag to show you.”
He held up the bag so Hana could see. Her face remained expressionless, but he felt her give his hand a subtle squeeze.
“Jin-Sang is safe.”
The girl squeezed his hand again.
“Hana, I am a friend. I can help you. But I need you to help me.”
Billy Tang knew he was making a ridiculous proposition. You didn’t have friends in a DPRK labor camp, not in the traditional sense. You didn’t even have family, not really. Everyone was a source of competition for food and a potential turncoat who would sell you out for an extra ladle of soup. No one trusted anyone in the camps. Jin-Sang, though, seemed different. Tang hoped Hana was, too.
He had programmed his camera to its low light setting and now
depressed its Record button. He took a quick establishing shot of Hana and her circumstances and then brought the camera in close, more concerned at this point with what she said than what she looked like saying it.
Before splitting up from the other half of the team, a thought had struck Tucker, the corpsman. If what the Chinese were planning was biological in nature, the North Koreans might have agreed to infect some of the prisoners with it in order to make the training even more realistic. Tucker had warned him that the surgical mask, especially if he got close to the girl and it wasn’t TB she was suffering from, might not be enough to protect him. He tried not to think of that as he hovered only inches from her face.
A fit of coughing overtook her and Tang moved to the side to avoid the bloody droplets that were being choked up out of her lungs.
When the fit had subsided, he gently repositioned her head so that she was staring up at the ceiling. She didn’t need to look at him. It was more important that he be able to whisper his questions in her ear.
“Hana, I can help get you out of here. I can help you escape. I can take you and Jin-Sang to China just like your father wanted. But first, I need you to tell me why the Chinese are here.”
As the words formed on her lips, Tang leaned in and brought the camera close to her mouth so its microphone could pick up every word.
It was difficult for her to take in enough air to breathe, much less to speak. Tang could barely make out what she said.
“Farming?”
he repeated.
Hana squeezed his hand and managed another word.
“Fighting,”
Tang repeated. “Farming and fighting.”
The sixteen-year-old acknowledged with another squeeze.
“Where will they go once they have trained to farm and fight?”
Her response sounded like the air being released from a half-deflated basketball. “America.”
“Do you know where in America?”
The girl had been only five years old when she had been condemned to the camp. Anything at all she knew about the United States would have come strictly from her parents, or what she had picked up being a role-player for the Chinese.
When she didn’t reply, Tang repeated the question.
“Farms,” she whispered. “Villages. No cities.”
The four words sent her into another spasm of coughing. Even though he was eager to ask his next question, he had no choice but to wait for it to pass.
This fit went on longer than the previous one. With each body-racking series of coughs, life seemed to ebb from her body. It was as if her soul was leaving one piece at a time.