The short man approached with the needle.
AS Captain Lim approached, Major Pak looked up from the plans he and his XO were studying. Pak was impressed that Lim had waited almost eight hours before coming out of the cockpit to talk to him. The interior of the IL-18 was stripped bare except for Pak’s team, their equipment, and the fuel bladders. The team was spread out on the vibrating steel floor, either sleeping or preparing their equipment for the infiltration.
“Sir, may I speak to you?” Lim inquired.
Pak nodded.
“Sir, as captain of this airplane it is my duty to inform you that we do not have enough fuel, even with all this, to make landfall in this direction.” Lim waved a hand at the bladders. “In two hours we will be too low on fuel to turn around and make it back to Angola.”
“There’s land ahead,” Pak quietly remarked.
Lim blinked. “We are heading for the South Pole, sir. There are no all-weather airstrips suitable for this aircraft down there.”
“I know that,” Pak responded. “My team will parachute out, and then you will attempt to land on the ice and snow farther away to ensure operational security. I will leave one of the members of my team on board to help you travel to our exfiltration point.”
Lim blanched. “But, sir—” He halted, at a loss for words.
Pak stood. “But what, captain?”
Lim shook his head. “Nothing, sir.” He turned and retreated to his cockpit.
Senior Lieutenant Kim looked at his team leader. “Our captain is a weak man.”
Pak turned his attention back to the papers. “Are you satisfied that your men know the parts of the plan that they need to?”
Kim nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Have you picked who will stay with the plane?”
“Yes, sir. Sergeant Chong has volunteered.”
“Good.”
Kim scratched his chin. “The only thing I don’t understand, sir, is why we are doing this.”
No one else would have dared say that to Pak, but the two of them had spent four years working together. They’d infiltrated the South Korean coastline three times and conducted extremely successful reconnaissance missions there. They owed their lives to each other.
“There are two U.S. nuclear weapons at our objective.”
Kim didn’t show any surprise. “But you briefed us that there is only a news team there. No military.”
“Correct.”
Now Kim was surprised. “You mean these two bombs are unguarded?”
Pak nodded. “Yes. Our objective is to seize those weapons along with their arming codes and instructions. And to leave no trace of our presence there.”
“How will we do that, and what will we do with the weapons? I thought our government already had nuclear weapons.”
“We are not going back home with the weapons.” Pak shook his head. “The rest is not for you to know yet, my friend. You will be told when it is time. Suffice it to say that if we are successful, Orange III will be implemented and it will succeed.”
Pak leaned back in his seat as his executive officer moved away. Although this whole plan had been jury-rigged on short notice, there was much precedent for the entire operation. The primary wartime mission of the North Korean Special Forces was to seize or destroy U.S. nuclear weapons. Pak had participated in the drawing up of plans for direct action missions against overseas targets, including the U.S. Seventh Fleet bases in Japan and the Philippines, and even Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
North Korea had never been shy about striking at enemies outside its own borders, and the Special Forces (SF) had been involved in every action. In 1968 thirty-one Special Forces soldiers had infiltrated across the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and made their way down to Seoul to raid the Blue House, home of the South Korean president. The mission failed, with twenty-eight men killed, two missing, and one captured.
Shortly after that attack, on 23 January 1968, People’s Korean Army (PKA) Special Forces men in high-speed attack craft seized the USS Pueblo. Later that year, a large SF force of almost a hundred men conducted landings on the coast of South Korea in an attempt to raise the populace against the government. It failed, but such failures didn’t daunt the North Korean government. In 1969, a U.S. electronic warfare aircraft was shot down by the North Koreans, killing all thirty-one American service members on board.
As security stiffened in South Korea during the 1970s, North Korea moved its attention overseas, not caring about the international effect. In 1983, three PKA Special Forces officers planted a bomb in Rangoon in an attempt to kill the visiting South Korean president. That mission also failed. Later in 1983, four North Korean merchant ships infiltrated the Gulf of California to conduct monitoring operations against the United States mainland. One of the ships was seized by the Mexican authorities, but that didn’t prevent the North Koreans from continuing such operations.
Pak knew that history, and he also knew more than the average North Korean about the changes that had been sweeping the world in the nineties. Living in Angola, he had been exposed to more information than the tightly controlled society back in his homeland ever received. The breakup of the Soviet Union had never been acknowledged by Pyongyang, except in cryptically worded exhortations to the people, telling them they were the last true bastion of communism in the world. Pak truly believed he was part of the last line in the war against western imperialism — especially with the Cubans running home. If this mission succeeded, he would strike a blow greater than any of his Special Forces predecessors. That was enough for him.
Chapter 19
They’d managed to clear not only the west tunnel of ice, but also the entryway into the west ice storage area. That room was as large as the east one, but there was no ramp at the end. It was also stocked full of supplies and food. Conner’s team had taken footage of the entire event.
Right now, Sammy was lying behind Devlin and Riley in the power access tunnel, which was made of corrugated steel tubing approximately three feet in diameter. They’d been digging here by hand for two hours. Removing the ice was slow work, because it had to be put on a blanket and dragged the length of the tunnel, then Sammy would dispose of it along the south ice wall.
It probably would have been easier to go up to the surface and use the sonar to find the reactor, then try to dig out its access shaft. The only problem with that plan was the weather. Sammy had gone up the main surface shaft several hours ago with Riley and Devlin to take a look outside. Visibility was close to zero as the wind lashed the countryside with a wall of white. Ten feet from the doorway, a person would be lost and would find his way back only with a lot of luck. It was hard to believe Vickers’s latest radio message that the storm was actually lessening in intensity.
Remembering the blowing snow and the icy talons of cold ripping at her clothes through the open door, and thinking about the frozen body lying at the foot of the stairs, brought to mind something Sammy had read in Conner’s binder during her two-hour guard shift: the fate of Capt. Lawrence Oates, a member of Scott’s ill-fated 1911-12 South Pole expedition. Scott’s party had arrived at the South Pole after man-hauling their sleds most of the way, only to discover a tent and note that Norwegian Roald Amundsen had left behind, proving that he had beaten Scott there by a month. On their return trip, the party was running out of food and was in the middle of a blizzard. Oates, who was suffering from severe frostbite, walked out of the campsite into the blowing snow, sacrificing himself so the party could continue on more quickly. His noble gesture was all for naught, though, because the rest of Scott’s party died only eleven miles from a supply depot. Eight months later their bodies were discovered along with Scott’s journal relating the sad tale.