“Mr. Park, tell these two soldiers to help everyone else stand up. Say that once they are on their feet, if they try to run, I will make it feel like fire again.”
Tom’s radio broadcasted the new message to the group. Tom paused for a moment. Then the two soldiers who tied the knots started helping the soldiers on the ground to their feet. In less than a minute, the entire group was standing in a line.
“Now Mr. Park. Tell them to march forward to the woods.”
Again, Mr. Park’s voice called out a command on the radio. The group of soldiers started marching forward, towards the tree line to the side of the entrance. Once the last man crossed into the woods, Tom caught their attention and held out his hand, signaling them to stop.
Tom got back on his radio to Mr. Park. “Now tell them to lie down.”
Soon the group was lying down among the trees and plants.
“Mr. Park, tell those two soldiers to tie everyone’s ankles and to put a blindfold on everyone.” After the translation, the two men started working again. Once everyone was fully tied up, Tom motioned for his two accomplices to lie down. He walked up to them and tied their hands and ankles, and he wrapped a strand of cloth around their eyes. Then Tom went through the rest of the group and checked the new knots on the ankles. They were all tight. Those soldiers must be afraid, Tom thought.
He got back on his radio.
“Last thing, Mr. Park. Tell them my teammates are watching them. If they stay quiet, nothing will happen to them. If they make any noise or start moving, they will be shot.”
Mr. Park gave the final message through Tom’s radio. The men nodded as though they understood. Tom looked at his watch. It had only taken him about ten minutes to clear the area. Anderson got back on the radio.
“That seems like it was effective.”
“Tell Eric I’m not sure if that’s how the ADS was supposed to be used, but it seemed to work well,” Tom replied.
“Will do. OK. Proceed. Over.”
Tom walked out of the forest. He looked back quickly to make sure everyone was still on the ground. They were. Tom now thought he had to be quick in the base. If a patrol came across the men tied up in the woods and an open door into the underground facility, it could quickly become a disaster.
Tom walked up to the concrete structure sticking up out of the field. It was about eight feet tall and it looked like an industrial box that just fell out of the sky and landed in the middle of nowhere. The metal door looked thick and heavy, even though it was shut. Tom tried to push down on the large handle. It did not budge. He pulled out an explosive charge out of one of the straps on his chest and set it on top of the handle, where the locking mechanism to the door would sit. When it was set, Tom started the fuse and then ran around the back of the structure. He kneeled against the wall and looked down. In fifteen seconds the charge made a loud pop and the door swung open. The sound irritated one’s ears in the silence of the night.
Tom shifted around the structure so that he was now on the side. He held up his M4. He waited for a moment. He knew that if a unit was stationed inside, they might have been surprised by the blast and would try to run outside to see what it was. As they ran out the door, he would be behind them and could shoot them without them seeing him. He also watched the surrounding woods for any patrols.
After quietly waiting, he saw on his watch that one-minute had passed. The silence continued as the two-minute mark approached. Not only did nobody run out of the door, but Tom did not hear any voices or sounds coming from inside the structure.
“Yankee Main. Target door is open. No sign of kilos inside. I’m going in. Over.”
“Copy that. Go ahead. Don’t forget to put the signal booster on the door. Over.”
Tom had brought along a small square device that had a suction cup on one side. It would maintain the signal between Tom and the satellite while he was underground. He got up off his knee and walked towards the entrance, his M4 raised. He stepped in front of the open entrance quickly, with his rifle pointed, his finger ready to pull the trigger. He saw was a staircase leading straight down into darkness. Next to the stairs was a large elevator door. Tom imagined that this elevator brought countless workers or soldiers into the base below each day. Tom put on his night vision goggles and pulled out the signal booster. He stuck it right on the inside of the door so that if someone came in after him, he would not be able to see the signal booster. It could only be seen coming out of the entrance.
Tom looked down the stairway again. It went down fifteen or twenty steps and then reached a landing where he would need to turn 180 degrees and continue down. He pointed his rifle and started walking down, careful to stay on the balls of his feet in order to make as little noise as possible. As he stepped down towards the landing he listened for any sounds, but heard nothing. The stairwell was quiet. It was a dark silence that could send chills up the spine, a pitch-black silence to match the pitch-black sight. Tom was glad for his night vision, which allowed him to see the steps he was trying to use. Soon he was on the landing. As he looked around him he noticed he had to descend several more flights of stairs. He continued down. Within a few minutes he could see the bottom of the last set of steps and paused. He still did not hear any movement or voices, so after a moment he continued down. As he approached the bottom, the inside of the facility came into view. Tom saw that he was descending into the center of a small corridor. It extended out for about thirty feet after which it opened up into a large warehouse-type space. Tom stopped when he reached the bottom of the stairs. He paused for a moment. It felt like he had climbed down into the center of Earth.
I’m inside the base.
On either side of the corridor stretching out in front of him, Tom saw doors and windows. They looked like a series of offices. The Command Room saw it too.
“Can you go up to one of those windows and just peek inside the office for a second?” Tom smiled as he imagined Anderson was probably standing one foot away from the large screen, trying to see everything and saying whatever was on his mind.
“Roger,” Tom replied. He walked up to the first window on the right and stared through it. It looked like a normal office. There was a desk, some papers, binders, notebooks, pens, and even an old computer, one with a thick monitor.
“It just looks like an office,” Tom said.
“Can you step inside and just see if there’s anything interesting in there?”
Tom was surprised. “Wouldn’t it just be better to go straight in the warehouse and start looking around? What are we going to see in an office?”
“Well let’s just see if anything is in this office. Just look for twenty seconds and then walk over to that warehouse space.”
“Roger.”
Tom reached for the handle on the door that led to the office he was looking into. This handle was not locked. He pushed the door open and then went inside. From the inside it appeared to be a normal office as well. The one thing that bothered Tom was a stuffy smell he could sense immediately. He walked up to the desk. He grabbed one of the pieces of paper and looked at it. It was written in Korean as he expected so he did not know if he was staring at a poem or instructions to build a nuclear bomb. He saw that there was a “39” at the top in larger font. It looked like a heading.
“I obviously can’t read any of this.” Tom said into his radio.
“I’m putting the main microphone in the room back on.” After a quick pause Anderson was back, but sounded farther away. “Tom, hold that piece of paper closer up to the helmet camera. Mr. Park is going to try to read it.”