Hunter kept his tone neutral. “You’re not going to do anything stupid are you?”
“What? Me die in a blaze of glory? Sacrifice for myself for Queen and country? That’s not on. Got my heart set on a long and glorious retirement, someplace remote and uncluttered.”
Hunter grunted. “Good. Last thing we need is a Jonah in the group.” He pointed to a cinder block warehouse close to the dock. “That sucker looks pretty deserted. Nobody has been in or out of it the whole time we’ve been here jawing. No lights either. I’ll get Smoke’s team to join up with us there. We can get ourselves set up to wait. We’ll be out of sight right up until this sub turns up. We’ll be in a perfect position to coordinate the attack.”
Sean looked at the gray slab-sided building. Rust from the tin roof had stained the cinder blocks in long brown streaks. “What about a back door?”
“What about it? When the shit dies down, we get out on our birds.”
CHANJON, DPRK
Sung tolerated the Colonel because he had to. The combat engineer platoon had surveyed the launch site for the TEL. They were also providing the security. So far, there had been little go wrong, though the landline communications to the SA-6 site out by the peninsula were down again. Sung stared out into the morning gloom. It was just getting light enough to discern skeletal substance under the gray shadows of the harbor cranes and buildings. Sung had become a nervous wreck over the last few weeks. The sub was due to arrive an hour before dawn. More than enough time to offload the devices and get them to the mobile launchers out on the peninsula. Down on the dock, a squad of engineers moved their crane-equipped trucks into position.
“Your men are doing a fine job, Colonel.”
The Colonel grunted. “They should be. They’ve had enough practice.”
“The delays were unavoidable. The Americans seem to have gotten wind of our little exercise.”
“You tell me this now?”
Sung turned to face the Colonel. The dark made it hard for him to make out the man’s face. “Don’t worry. We know they were able to slip through the naval cordon. If the Americans knew what we were up to here, they would be kicking down our door to stop us.”
The engineer Colonel produced a cigar. His weathered faced flared ruddy orange in the glare of the match. “You should not underestimate the Americans. They have resources at their disposal that we can only dream of. I must make sure my men are prepared for any eventuality. If you will excuse me, Comrade Sung.”
Sung watched the man’s back disappear into the enveloping gloom. Underestimate the Americans? Hardly. He had sent the best man and crew for the job to retrieve the warheads. In less than one hour, the cargo would be dropped on the dock. A day later, it would be detonated over Japan and the Korean War could resume again, but this time to its rightful and glorious conclusion.
Smoke and his squad joined the SEAL’s main force by the abandoned warehouse’s loading bay. Hunter did a quick head count. “Good.” He turned to the SEAL on his right. “Jones, get that door open and keep it quiet.”
Jones climbed onto the loading dock and began to work on the door. It took him less than a minute to pick the bulky lock with a lock-pick gun. He sprayed lubricant onto every rusted surface and the heavy rolling door moved back with little noise.
Smoke tugged at the sleeve of Hunter’s arm. “Why the recall?”
“It’s more than a SA-6 site.” Hunter hooked his thumb at Addison. “Our British friend here says a damn TEL is sitting behind that SAM site. It looks like these assholes are going to slap the warheads one at a time onto the rockets and fire them off to God knows where. The thing is probably crawling with NKs. You would have been killed and this whole mission would have been blown.”
Smoke looked over at Addison. “Thanks.”
Sean just shrugged. “You’d have done the same.”
Rusting, dust-covered machinery and junk littered the warehouse floor. More trappings of the successful communist dream.
“Well at least we know we’re not going to be tripping over the cleaning staff,” Hunter joked.
A mezzanine in similar condition to the building’s contents hung around the entire warehouse, like a giant suspended track in some weird communist YMCA. Grime-covered windows lined the walk-around. Light pillared down onto the rough concrete floor through rust-edged holes in the weather-ravaged roof. Eight separate staircases, evenly spaced around the outside walls, provided access to the upper track. Hunter climbed the closest. The upper deck windows that remained intact were caked with filth. The rest were little more than jagged glass maws. Hunter took a look through one of the holes. The sub tender was close enough now to make out, without binoculars, individual sailors on her decks. There was still no sign of the sub.
“Dice, grab Sparks and get the secure satellite communications rig up and running. Eisenhower needs to know about that TEL out there.” Dice and Sparks, the communications tech, moved to the far south corner of the mezzanine. “Sanchez, I want you and your spotter to set up a firing position to cover the dock with the TAC fifty. When the shit goes down, drill the guy with the most gold braids. Then proceed to fuck them up as you see fit but I want whatever brass they have out there down or scrambling.” Hunter turned to his other sniper. “Longman, you and Thumper cover the tender. Use the M-107 to take out the bridge with SLAP rounds the make it uncomfortable on the upper decks. Thumper, hit everything else with 40mm HE.”
The fire teams moved to stations along the mezzanine.
Sean grabbed Harris by the arm. “Bill, stick with Gayle and the Russians. I’m going for a look down the other end of the building and keep an eye on Chun. The bugger is up to something.”
Bill’s eye’s flicked over to Chun. The Korean was sitting on his heels with his back to the wall, staying out of the way. “He is a quiet one, isn’t he?” The comment came out under Bill’s breath.
“Too quiet, if you ask me.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him. Don’t be long. I’m starting to get a twitch.”
“Great, you and your bloody twitch.”
Harris was defensive. “It’s not been wrong yet.”
“Yeah, I know.” Sean shot back.
From the remnants of the windows in the north end of the warehouse, Chanjon looked gray and beaten. Sean needed to get a better look at the TEL launcher. He wasn’t sure why. It didn’t make much sense to him for the North Koreans to park a launcher so far from Seoul. Seoul was the obvious target. Pusan was far down the coast. The Air Force base was another good target. He put his rifle up to the window. He had meant it when he had told Hunter, SEALs got all of the nice toys. This rifle was proof of it. It was an M-4A3 and M203-equipped, but not like any Sean had ever used. Some weapons engineer had decided to bring the grenade launcher into the computer age. The scope was a new lightweight thermal sensing unit. It used a hybrid lithium polymer battery and had a sensing range up to five hundred and fifty meters. Thermal imaging without the bulky battery pack was amazing to Sean, but the gun’s real power lay in the scope’s computer. Point the aiming dot at your target, the gun scope would calculate distance and elevation. A near perfect hit every time, depending on the range. Selecting between grenade launcher and rifle was a flick of a switch. Even the 40mm rounds for the launcher were different. Hunter had called them “smart darts.” Lighter, longer and more aerodynamic, they had a greater range and accuracy than the old bull-nosed rounds.