Tom Clancy's Op-center_ Op-center Part 30

CHAPTER SEVENTY.

Wednesday, 7:35 A.M., the DMZ

"Major Lee," Donald said quietly. "Somehow, I'm not surprised."

"I am." Lee pushed the knife harder into the flesh under Donald's chin. "I thought I would be about my business by now. Instead, I'm here with you."

"And your business is to kill innocent people and start a war."

"There's no such thing as an innocent person--"

"You're wrong. My wife was innocent."

Donald raised his hand slowly. Lee pressed the knife deeper but Donald continued to lift his arm.

"Your wife and you, Mr. Amba.s.sador, made life easier for those who abandoned their country. You are as corrupt as the rest, and it's time for you to join--"

Donald moved so swiftly that Lee hadn't time to react. The bowl of the pipe in his left hand, Donald swung the stem around, hooked the knife from above, and pushed it to the left. The bowl was facing Lee and, thrusting it forward, Donald pressed the hot tobacco against his right eye. Lee screamed and dropped the knife, which Donald hurried to recover.

"No!" Lee yelled as he turned and ran into the deep blue of the morning.

Donald ran after him, still holding the knife.

Lee was headed into the area where the North Koreans had been known to have tunnels. He wondered if the Major were leading him away from the South-side base intentionally. Was that where he was planning to use the gas?

Not likely, he thought. Lee was dressed in his own ROK uniform. He was going to the North, almost certainly to release the gas in some way: if he was spotted, the South would be blamed. Donald briefly considered stopping to alert Schneider, but what would the General do? He wouldn't follow him into the North.

No. Donald knew that he was the only one who could go. His breath came in painful wheezes as he half ran, half stumbled after the shrinking figure of the Major. Lee was putting more and more distance between them, at least two hundred yards, but he was running east. As night gave way to the blue morning, Donald might lose ground on Lee but at least he could still see where his quarry was headed.

And then Lee disappeared.

Donald slowed to catch his breath. It was as though the earth had swallowed Lee up, and Donald realized that he must have dropped into one of the tunnels. He noted the area, a thicket some twenty yards across, and walked swiftly toward it, counting the steps to take his mind off of how much his lungs and legs hurt.

Just a few minutes after Lee vanished, Donald was at the entrance to the tunnel. He didn't wait, figuring that if Lee had had a weapon he'd have used it back in the field. Folding the knife into a pocket and dropping to his knees, Donald grabbed the hemp line and lowered himself along the pa.s.sage, b.u.mping his back repeatedly as he tried to walk himself down. He reached bottom, nearly exhausted, and listened. There were shuffling and clawing sounds somewhere up ahead. He struck a match, saw the tunnel, and knew where Lee had gone.

If something happened to him, he wanted Schneider to know where he'd gone. Turning and setting the hemp line on fire, he dropped to his belly as thick smoke filled the pa.s.sageway. He crawled into the tunnel, hoping that the General would see the smoke and flames. He also hoped that he himself could reach the other side before he choked to death and getting there, that he could find Lee before he was able to realize his insane vision.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE.

Wednesday, 7:48 A.M., the Diamond Mountains

A parachute jump is nothing like what most first-timers expect. The air is remarkably full and solid: free-falling through it is like riding a wave at the beach. During the daytime, there's very little sense of depth since objects are so flat and far away; at night, there's no sense of depth at all.

Though the other men had all gone first, Mike Rodgers was surprised at how alone he felt: he saw nothing, felt only the resistance of the wind, could barely hear his own voice as he counted out twenty seconds before pulling the ripcord. Then the pounding of the wind was reduced to a gentle gust, and everything else was silent.

They had jumped from only five thousand feet up, and the ground came up quickly, as the copilot had warned them it would. Rodgers had picked out a landmark as soon as he pulled his ripcord, a high treetop aglow in the early morning light. He watched it as he descended. That was the only yardstick he had as to how high he was, and when he was level with it he prepared himself for landing. His legs were bent slightly, and when his feet hit ground he cus.h.i.+oned his landing by bending farther, then dropping and rolling. When he was on his side, he released his parachute, stood quickly, and bundled the fabric into his arms. He was only a bit sore where his Achilles tendons had stretched on landing; the spirit was willing, but the flesh wasn't as elastic as it had once been.

Ba.s.s Moore was already running toward him, followed by Johnny Puckett and his TAG SAT radio.

"How'd we do?" Rodgers asked Moore softly.

"Everyone's down and okay."

Puckett was unfolding the parabolic antenna and had fixed the uplink before the rest of the team arrived. While Moore took Rodgers's parachute and jogged to a nearby lake to sink it, Squires reached Rodgers's side.

"You all right, sir?"

"The old bones held out." Rodgers pointed to the radio. "Make the call. I told you, this is your mission."

"Thank you, sir," Squires said.

Crouching, the Lieutenant Colonel accepted the headset from Puckett and adjusted the mouthpiece while the Private punched in the frequency.

Bugs Benet answered, and Hood came on quickly.

"Mike, you're down?"

"It's Squires, sir, and yes, we all made it."

"Good. New development. Over the last ten minutes, all three of the Nodongs have been recalibrated. Instead of being aimed at Seoul, they're pointing toward j.a.pan."

"All three missiles are aimed at j.a.pan," Squires said, looking up at Rodgers. "I copy."

"Christ," said Rodgers.

"You're to get over there and, at my instruction, take them out."

"Yes, sir."

"Out," said Hood.

Squires removed the headset. As he briefed Rodgers, the members of the Striker team loaded their Beretta automatics. Sgt. Chick Grey, responsible for the maps, was checking the printouts Lt. Col. Squires had given him.

Upon hearing that they were almost certainly going to have to destroy the Nodongs, Rodgers wished they had brought explosives. But while North Korea was known to negotiate for the release of men with guns, men with explosives, bent on heavy-duty sabotage, were shot on the spot. Still, it was one of those rare calls he wished he could take back. The control circuits for those missiles were locked in safe-strong boxes and would be extremely difficult to get to, especially if time was tight. If they couldn't pick up explosives at the site, he didn't know what they were going to do.

Sgt. Grey walked over to Squires. Using a pen-sized laser light, he pointed at the map in the fast-dissipating darkness.

"Sir, the pilot did a great job. We're less than four miles from the site-- here." He pointed to a forest southeast of the depression where the missiles were located. "The march is mostly uphill, but the grade isn't a bad one."

Squires. .h.i.tched up his own small backpack and loaded his pistol. "Let's move them out, Sergeant," he said barely above a whisper, "single file. Moore, you take point. First sign of life, you stop us."

"Sir!" Moore saluted, and went ahead of the line.

Squires went next, with Rodgers behind him.

As they walked through the field, the deep blue of the horizon shaded to azure and yellow. They marched up the sloping hill into increasingly thick woods.

This was the time Rodgers liked best. His senses, the air of antic.i.p.ation, were at their peak; pure reflex, the survival instinct, had not yet kicked in and there was time to savor the challenge ahead. For Rodgers, as for most of the others they'd picked for the team, challenge was more important than security, than their lives and their families. The only thing more important than challenge was Country, and the synergy of daring and patriotism was what made these men unique. As much as each man wanted to go home, none would do so at the expense of a job unfinished or poorly done.

Rodgers was proud and thrilled to be with them, though he felt remarkably old as he looked around at the twenty-odd-year-old faces and walked on his aching forty-five-year-old heels. He hoped the flesh was up to the challenge and reminded himself that even Beowulf was able to defeat a fire breathing dragon fifty years after his encounter with the monster Grendel. Of course, the aged Jute king perished as a result of that battle, though Rodgers told himself that when it came his time to die he wouldn't mind being consumed on a huge pyre with his thanes riding around him, singing his praises.

Twelve thanes, Rodgers remembered, trying not to dwell on the irony of that as Moore neared the top of the rise. He scurried forward on his belly, then raised his hand, extending five fingers twice.

There were ten men somewhere ahead.

As the men moved forward at a crouch, Rodgers knew that the savoring time was over

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO.

Wednesday, 7:50 A.M., the DMZ

Donald knew there was a point at which the body no longer supported the will of even the strongest spirit, and he was rapidly approaching that point.

Still breathing heavily from the run, Donald was perspiring madly and coughing dryly as he wormed his way through the tunnel, his elbows at his sides, chafed and bleeding inside his jacket-- which he'd kept on in an effort to prevent just that from happening. The heat was oppressive, sweat and sand stung his eyes, and there was no light; each turn in the seemingly endless tunnel was discovered by his shoulder colliding hard with a dirt wall.

Yet all the while there were the sounds of Major Lee ahead, and that kept him going. And when there were no more sounds, he continued because he knew that Lee was free of the tunnel and the end was near.

Finally, with his body crying to rest, his arms and legs cramped from exertion, he saw the light and reached the pa.s.sage that would take him from this hateful pit.

Standing with pain and difficulty, his lower back stabbing him as he tried to straighten up, Donald took a moment to suck down the cooler air-- and then saw that there was no way out. If there had been a ladder, Lee had withdrawn it.

He looked around him. The pa.s.sage was narrow, and putting his back against one side, his arms and legs stiff against the opposite wall, he began ascending crablike. Twice during the nine-foot climb he had to stop to keep from falling back down. He was carrying Lee's knife in his teeth and would dig it into the wall to use as a handhold, resting and collecting his strength before continuing. When he finally made it to the top, the sun was rising and he knew where he was; he'd seen the terrain from the other side of the fence. He was in North Korea.

Donald was in the middle of a crater that had obviously been caused by artillery practice. The exit was in a wall of the southwest side of the crater, where it was invisible from the base, approximately a quarter of a mile to the west, or the fence, some two hundred yards south. This had to be a new tunnel dug by Lee and his men; the North would have placed their entrance closer to the facilities, where people could come and go unseen from the South.

Lying flat against the wall of the crater, Donald looked over the lip. Lee was nowhere to be seen. There were low-lying hills to the north, with trees and plenty of rises and depressions for someone to hide. The hard, dry ground held no footprints, and Donald had no idea whether Lee had gone into the hills or to the base.

Not that it mattered, he told himself. It was more important to find the poison gas. Whether it went to the base or to the north-- to Pyongyang, as a counterpoint to the blast in Seoul?-- he had to go to General Hong-koo and tell him what was happening.

Donald started out, walking briskly, feeling better now that he was out of the tunnel and his muscles had had a chance to relax. He peered ahead, hoping to catch sight of Lee, but there was only stillness on this side of the base. To the south of the facility, patrols were coming in and fresh ones had begun to take their place.

Of course, Donald thought. That was why Lee had selected this time. Guards were always the most lax when a s.h.i.+ft neared its end.

He looked toward the back of the barracks again, thought he saw something glint in the rising sun, behind a low hill. He stopped, squinted ahead. He saw it again, something metallic, and he ran a few yards to the south to get a better look at it.

There was a man crouching behind one of the barracks, deep in the shadows. There was something in the wall beside him-- it might have been a small generator. His eyes on the man, Donald began running toward him, realized that it wasn't a generator but an air conditioner, and that what he'd seen glinting was the back of the unit. He also saw what looked like a box beneath it.

A box or a drum. Donald started running slowly. Gas in the air-conditioning system would be fast and horribly effective. The patrols returning to the barracks would be tired, they'd fall asleep immediately, and they'd never know anything was wrong. He started running faster. As he approached, Donald saw that the back of the air conditioner was off. The object was a drum, and it was being lifted to the top of the unit.

Donald was running as fast as he could.

"Stop him!" he shouted. "Someone stop that man-- behind the barracks!"

The man looked in his direction, then sank deeper into the shadows.

"Saram sallyo!" he shouted in Korean. "Somebody help! Don't let him get away!"

A searchlight flared on a tower in the South, and another came on in the North. The Southern light picked Donald out immediately; it was a moment longer before the Northern light had him.

Soldiers just heading out on patrol came from around the barracks. Donald waved his arms over his head.

"Get everyone out of the barracks! There's gas-- poison gas"

The dozen men were animated, appeared confused. Several of them unshouldered their AKM a.s.sault rifles, and a few were aimed in Donald's direction.

"Dammit, no! Not me! I'm trying to help--"

The men were shouting among each other; Donald couldn't quite make out what they were saying. And then he heard one man yell that the General was coming and this man had naifu.

The knife. He was still holding the knife.

"No!" Donald shouted. "This isn't mine!" He raised it above his head where they could see and c.o.c.ked his wrist to throw it down.

Two rifle shots tore through the early morning, the reports echoing through the hills long after Donald's pounding footsteps had stopped.