Devil's Fork (30 page)

“
I am not sure yet. We will
have to wait for them to finish,” Mr. Park replied. “As Tom is
almost at the base, I will stay here for now. My analysts will
monitor that raid.” He moved close to Anderson in the middle of the
room and stared into the screen.

“
Whatever that place is,
Tom’s going to see signs and documents. Do you think you’ll be able
to translate if he holds his helmet camera close enough?” Anderson
asked Mr. Park. “It will be nice to find out right away what
exactly he’s looking at. Do you think the screen is clear
enough?”

“
Yes, I should be able to
do that.”

“
John,” Sara said as she
looked at her monitor. Anderson looked over. She paused to make
sure what she was about to say was correct. “Tom is a few feet from
the edge of the woods. He’ll be able to see the entrance in a few
seconds.”

CHAPTER 46

EARLY THURSDAY

Northeast Coast, North Korea

Tom saw an opening past the trees ten feet
in front of him. He slowed down to a slow walk. He had been jogging
for some time, hopping and weaving around the many small obstacles
on the ground. He now set one foot after another carefully. He
started to hear the distinct sound of voices in the distance. As he
walked to within five feet of the tree line, he saw a white light
seep through the trees.

He lay down on his stomach, flipped up his
night vision goggles, and lying prone, crawled the rest of the way
towards the edge. He gave a moment for his now-naked eyes to adjust
as he stopped crawling. His left shoulder hugged a tree trunk.

The first wide open space Tom had seen all
night stretched out in front of him. It was a square field about
100 feet long. Grass made up the first twenty feet or so, and the
rest looked like a dirt plot. Right in the middle of the dirt, a
small structure stuck out. It looked like an industrial garage or
the conning tower of a submarine. It was a square-like concrete
structure that stuck straight up out of the ground in the middle of
nowhere. Tom saw a door in the center of a concrete wall. It was
shut and had a large metallic handle hanging across it. To Tom’s
right, the forest made a square border around the open plot. To the
left, the dirt path Tom had met at Waypoint 3 quietly ran past and
onward. A bright white light sat on the structure.

A crowd of KPA soldiers stood by the
building. Each soldier seemed to be facing a different direction.
They were talking, smoking, laughing, and looking around. Some
soldiers were walking back and forth by the path on the left. The
group was large. Tom guessed there were several dozen soldiers.
They each had a loaded rifle either in hand or slung over a
shoulder.

Tom started whispering into his radio.

“
Yankee Main. Do you have a
clear visual? Over.”

“
Affirmative. We see it.
We count about 40 soldiers. Does that sound right?
Over.”

“
That’s about how many I
see too. Over.”

“
Standby. We are trying to
think of solutions. Over.”

Tom knew he needed a solution. The problem
he faced was clear. A large crowd of soldiers stood between him and
the entrance. If he shot a few of the soldiers, the rest would turn
around and quickly start laying a sustained stream of fire right at
him. Tom spotted one man with a radio. As soon as any shooting
started, he would also likely call other patrols for help. He
thought that if he shot the light by the door, and flipped on his
night vision, he could have a distinct advantage. But that was also
unlikely to work. A couple of shots could quickly start a small
battle right here, even if it was dark, he thought.

Tom’s mind shifted to the idea of setting up
a distraction. Maybe he could set one of his charges a small
distance away in the other direction, past this field. The small
explosion could start a fire and the soldiers around this structure
would get distracted, and some would likely leave their spot to go
investigate. Tom would be left facing a smaller, more manageable
force. As Tom thought about it though, he knew this had little
chance of working. In reality, these soldiers would call in
reinforcements and send a patrol to investigate the fire. They
would then call in other units to comb through the entire area.

Another option Tom thought through was
waiting. As a former DEVGRU SEAL and now SAD operator, he had high
endurance. He could lie in the hidden spot he had at the edge of
the woods and wait until tomorrow evening. By then the North
Koreans would likely think that they had missed the threat and
might lower the number of soldiers outside of the entrance to a
number he could deal with. He quickly discarded that idea though.
When the sun rose he would be much easier to spot. In addition, if
even one of the 40 men in front of him decided to even relieve
himself in the woods near Tom, he could get compromised. And then
they could send out patrols to look around the immediate woods at
any moment. He realized waiting it out was not a good option
either.

He considered the possibility of trapping
the unit. He could run around to the other side of the structure,
through the woods. On that side, there were almost no soldiers. He
could run up to the back of the structure, place one of his
explosive charges there, run back to the woods and fire a shot. The
entire crowd would likely run around to the other side of the door
to see what happened. He could then set of the charge, killing or
wounding most of the soldiers. Tom did not like this idea as he
thought about it either. He risked too much by running through the
other side of the open field. If one of the men walking around by
the path saw him as he was running to set the charge, it would be
the last thing he ever did.

Tom let the idea cauldron boil in his head
as he observed the unit. The two soldiers who had been walking
along the path now turned and walked towards the main crowd. They
talked for several minutes with a few of the other soldiers. Then
they walked back to the path they had originally stood by.

Anderson’s voice came back soon on the
radio.

“
Yankee Actual. What do
you think about using your ADS on those people? Over.”

Tom had been avoiding exactly that thought.
He wanted to think of a way to get past the unit using a method
proven to have worked in the field. He had tested out the ADS at
the base back in South Korea. But he did not seriously plan to use
it. Maybe, he had thought, he would pull it out if something went
wrong and he was fighting a KPA platoon. Even then he would only
use it if he ran out of ammunition. But to use it here made little
sense to Tom. Once he turned off the ADS and started approaching
the group, they would grab their weapons and start shooting at
him.

“
I thought about that. But
the ADS is only a stopping weapon. Once I run up to the door with
the ADS off, they will attack. Over.” Tom just decided to throw it
out bluntly.

Anderson decided to chuck
out most of the radiospeak for the moment as well.
“
Tom, I’m turning the microphone on in the
room. Sara has an idea. Over.”
Soon Tom
heard Sara’s voice come through. It sounded as if it were coming in
from a distance.

“
Tom, Eric told me that
when the ADS was being tested, the subjects who stood in the beam
for longer than a few seconds experienced burns. Could you just hit
them with the beam and hold it for, say ten seconds, which would be
far beyond what most people’s bodies could stand. After that, they
will be burned and probably won’t be able to fight
back.”

Tom thought for a moment, but then
Anderson’s voice came on. A conversation had started in the Command
Room, which Tom could hear.

“
But someone with burns
can still pick up a gun and pull a trigger. If Tom shoots them with
the beam even for ten seconds, and then starts running for the
door, one of them could still take his rifle and start
firing.”

Then Sara calmly replied, as if still
figuring out a riddle. The main microphone in their room picked it
all up.

“
But if he runs quickly
and sets his charges on the door, he can blow the door without them
doing anything. That blast will probably render most of that unit
unfit to fight.”

Tom continued listening quietly to the
discussion in the Command Room. He pulled the ADS off his back and
opened the protective waterproof coating. He unfolded it and
powered it up.

The discussion in the room continued,
another analyst chimed in.

“
Did he bring any
grenades? Can he throw one at them?”

Tom took the M4 and slung it around his
shoulder, so that it hung on his back.

Now Anderson was
talking.
“He doesn’t have any grenades. He
has to get past them with his M4, the ADS, or the explosive charges
somehow.”

Tom got up on his knee and grabbed the ADS.
He held it in his left hand and with his right hand he pulled out
his pistol from the holster on his thigh. He watched as the two men
by the path now walked back towards the unit. The Command Room saw
him get on his knee. It evidently got Anderson’s attention.

“
Uh Tom – Yankee Actual?
Do you read us? Do you have another idea or are you just trying to
get a better view? Over.”

Tom stood up so that he was standing, but in
a very low position. He replied, knowing that the whole Command
Room could hear him.

“
I know what to do.
Standby, I’ll be through that door shortly.”

CHAPTER 47

EARLY THURSDAY

Northeast Coast, Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea

Captain Kim and his men stopped. They had
been walking for some time through the ridge. Kim looked around. He
did not know what he was looking for. He observed the trees around
him. He searched the ground for any strange patterns of leaves or
twigs. He looked for broken branches. He had come this far, he
knew, mainly on hunches and weak clues. What he had seen might have
signified something or it could have meant nothing. Besides he
thought, the men at the beach still had not seen any bubbles coming
out of the water. He saw that his men were looking at him.

“
Didn’t that Lieutenant say
that another patrol was supposed to be passing through here?” Kim
asked them.

“
Yes,
tongmu
Captain,” they replied in
unison.

“
Have any of you seen
anyone else?”

“
No,
tongmu
Captain.”

Kim looked behind them. He searched left and
right. He observed that the ridge was wide, but was also narrow
enough so that one of his men would have seen a flashlight or
movement somewhere. He felt the same strange feeling he had felt as
a boy unable to sleep at night. It resembled a beacon constantly
flashing a signal somewhere in his gut.

“
Let’s move slowly. Keep
your eyes and ears open,” he ordered his men.

“
Yes,
tongmu
.”

The team started walking
forward again. Kim wondered what the American spy they thought they
were chasing looked like. He had never seen one growing up. He saw
many illustrations that made him feel nauseous. But he never
actually laid eyes upon one until he was a student in Beijing. He
saw several American students at the university as well. He had
gathered that they were there to study Chinese too. Looking at them
made his stomach churn. He never dared to speak to them. He was not
just afraid that he would have been in trouble with the State
officers who were watching him. He was afraid the Americans might
try to do something to him. He did not know what he had thought
they would do, but he did not want to experiment. Besides, if being
around them made him queasy, he would probably have felt his blood
boil while speaking to them. But he observed them from a distance.
He found it strange that they behaved –
normally
. He kept waiting for them to
do something bad – he was not sure what he sought, but he at least
expected them to live up to their reputation. He was told that they
had tied up and killed women and children during the Fatherland
Liberation War. But these students’ behavior was not different from
the Chinese students. He noticed that the American boys were a bit
more forward with girls at the university. But that was it. He
wondered what was wrong. Was he not seeing the right Americans? Or
were his leaders –. He did not let himself go down that line of
thought.

As they walked he heard a hawk scream
overhead somewhere in the treetops. He wondered if the American spy
they were searching for was not unlike a rabbit that a hawk might
chase. The rabbit was not trying to irritate the hawk. It was doing
what it was destined to do - to find food, eat, and find a mate.
The rabbit had no issues to resolve with the hawk. But the hawk was
looking to kill it. He wondered why. Was this spy like that rabbit,
just trying to do what he was supposed to do after being dropped in
a foreign land? He did not blame America for wanting to know more
about his country. He had heard when he was a student in China that
little was known about his country. He realized his mind was
drifting and tried to focus back on the mission.

He looked around. He thought it was
extremely dark. He could barely make out anything around him. A bit
of moon curved in the sky above them, but it did not help too much.
He tried to spot some kind of tracks on the ground. He had heard
American Indians could track American cowboys somehow by looking at
disturbances on the ground. He would have loved to learn how to do
that now, he thought. They started to walk down a small hill. Ahead
of him on the left was a large rock. They kept walking. He heard
another hawk scream. He looked up and wondered why so many hawks
were shouting so loudly in this part of the forest. He could see
something against the black sky. A few dark birds were flying in
circles. Strange, he thought. He had never seen something like that
before. Then one of his men to his left turned on a flashlight. The
man to Kim’s right then said something that sent a shockwave up his
spine.