Sara felt stronger now. “That area has pretty good cover. With his SERE training he should be able to keep avoiding them. Maybe once he gets closer we’ll be able to think of a way for him to get in.”
Sara remembered how much fun it was to hear Tom’s SERE stories. SERE stood for “Survive Evade Resist Escape”. It was a military course all Navy SEALs were required to take. It taught techniques for staying hidden when escaping from an enemy’s prison. It could be used to escape from a search party. Sara found it fascinating because after learning about some of the techniques from Tom, she could spot mistakes in every film that showed people trying to stay hidden. Looking at the screen she could even see what Tom was trying to do. She noticed earlier that he was kneeling next to a bush. One of the lessons from SERE was to avoid disturbing vegetation that was above knee-height. Typically when people tried to stay hidden, at least in films, they dove right into a bush. That provided a good hiding spot, but when one left, that bush would look visibly different from the vegetation surrounding it. A search party could use that as a clue.
While watching the screen, she saw Tom use another SERE technique. He was moving straight ahead, directly away from the KPA fireteam behind him. But he suddenly cut right and started moving towards what was his 2 o’clock. One of the other SERE lessons Tom had told her was that one is supposed to run in a zig zag pattern. If a search party was looking for someone and found a clue, they were likely to continue walking forward in a straight line looking for the next clue he left. If one zig zags, the search party will be thrown off.
Suddenly the door to the Command Room opened. One of the analysts walked in and walked up to Anderson.
“John, the Director just called. He said The President has rejected a military exfiltration. He does not want to start a war. The George Washington had its Marine platoons and helos stand down.”
Anderson at first did not say anything. He was nodding. Finally he spoke.
“Tom is on his own.”
For some reason, Sara felt less tense now that the screen was showing what Tom was looking at. Hearing his voice over the speakers was calming too. It felt like being there with him, she thought.
We can help him do this.
“He thinks he can get there. He knows how to deal with situations like this,” she said.
Anderson looked into space for some time. He looked back at Mr. Park, who nodded to him confidently.
Anderson then spoke slowly, looking at the entire room. “I will give him the green light to keep going. He’s made it this far. Might as well see what’s in that underground base.”
He pushed a button on the computer in front of him, activating his headset.
“Yankee Actual. Green light on Devil’s Fork. You may proceed. Over.”
After a pause, Tom’s voice came in on the Command Room speakers, slightly above a whisper.
“Wilco. Continuing to Waypoint 1. Over.”
Sara sometimes had to stop and think what the radiospeak meant. She scrolled through the terms in her head. “Wilco” meant “will comply”. She looked on her desk map for Waypoint 1. The NIS analysts had briefed Tom on the best route to take. Waypoint 1 was the side of a dirt path or road that went towards a ridge. Tom was not going to walk on it. But he was going to get to it and follow it from the side.
“OK” she thought, “we had the operation turn on us, but we will still try to get it done.” Something about that felt good.
“John,” she said, “tell Tom that Waypoint 1 is about one klick ahead and from what I can tell if he keeps moving due west he should be able to see the lights from the vehicles patrolling the road within ten or fifteen minutes.”
Anderson nodded and relayed the message. Sara took a deep breath. She felt the tension escape as she began to do her job.
CHAPTER 31
NATPAC sat in his dark office, looking at the wall in front of him. His computer’s screensaver was flying around next to him. On his desk was an open bottle of Kaoliang. Its rotten taste swirled around NATPAC’s mouth. He was in deep thought.
Did they catch him yet? Does the CIA know about the base? Is that really where he is going? Or did he have some other mission and they just inserted him near that base by coincidence.
NATPAC remembered from his statistics and econometrics studies that coincidences happened more often than most people thought. His statistics professor in university liked to ask the students on the first day of class to write down a list of numbers from 1-20 in what they deemed to be a random order. On another piece of paper he asked his assistant to write down an actual set of random numbers generated from a computer program they had. The professor would look at both lists and would always be able to tell which one was the students’. It was a neat trick that always awed the crowd. NATPAC remembered seeing the lists. He could still remember some of the numbers with his eidetic memory:
List A: 2, 5, 13, 19, 4, 7, 11, 15, 16, 18
List B: 3, 3, 5, 11, 3, 14, 13, 19, 20, 20
The professor could tell rather quickly that the students had created list A. The random number generating software had created List B. This was obvious because list A looked more random. The students tried to make a list where no number repeated and especially where the same number never appeared twice in a row. To the human mind that seemed more random. But an actual random list would repeat the same numbers once in a while and would even repeat two numbers in a row. NATPAC remembered learning that statistically it is actually less probable for the same number never to come up twice in a list. Over a long list, however, the number of times each number appears had to be roughly equal. If the list was a million numbers long, it would be strange if half of those numbers were a “3”. The main lesson, however, was that what seemed like a coincidence — a number repeating itself — could actually happen randomly. A coincidence did not necessarily mean that one issue was related to another. NATPAC sometimes smiled at the paradox. The human mind tried to create a random list. In the process of creating something that looked random he or she made a list that was less likely to be random. Our minds do not understand the complexity of the world around us, he often thought.
So NATPAC knew that just the fact that the Americans were inserting a spy not far from that base did not necessarily mean that they knew about that base. They could have just stupidly dropped him right near it. Just like Americans do everything — without thinking, he mused.
Well it should not really matter, he thought. The KPA had followed his plan and so far as he could tell, it was working. He knew all about American imagery satellites, passing overhead every few hours. He had used his decision trees to figure out a superior plan. If the Americans had seen a heavy KPA presence in the area, they would not have sent in their spy. If they had seen a very light KPA presence, they would have tried to insert him. NATPAC then had jumped to the next branch of the decision tree. If they had inserted this spy, he thought, they would have probably done it at night. If the KPA were to stay inside all day, the latest satellite imagery the Americans would have been looking at would show a light presence. But once the sun hit the horizon, the KPA units could come out en masse and swarm that coastal area. Now to the next branch of the tree he thought. If the spy did try to go to that base, we would catch him, if he went somewhere else we would catch him, if he went back, we would catch him. If he avoided the KPA for a few days, we could still catch him, NATPAC thought.