“Exactly.”
The children were actually the easiest part of the equation. They let Adam pick them up with no complaints. He placed Du-ho into one Predator, and then Hwang climbed in behind him. Adam put Min-hee into the other Predator, and then Dr. Powers climbed in along with Mrs. Hwang.
There was room for one more child in Hwang’s aircraft. But there was not enough room for a CIA officer.
Adam pushed the buttons to close the two baskets. He wanted to say, “Good luck,” but decided against it. Instead, still in Mandarin, he said, “See you in a little while.”
The first UAV taxied around, facing away from the direction of the approaching helicopters, and began accelerating up the straight road. The second turned and followed, not one hundred yards behind.
They climbed into the air one after the other. Adam felt the squeeze of tension in his stomach as they rose toward the green hill.
They disappeared into the night in under a minute.
He heard a voice on the sat phone, which he had lowered while watching the extraction. “Repeat last, Freedom?”
“Be aware, third UAV approaching from south. Get off the road so it can land.”
“Copy that.”
Adam ran over to stand next to the SUV, and he listened for the arriving Predator. When he heard it he could tell it was flying a lot faster than the others, because the pitch was much higher.
The aircraft banked over the hill next to the road, lined up on final approach, and increased its descent.
And then it exploded in a fireball.
Adam shielded his eyes from the light and shouted into the sat phone. “Freedom, you just lost the UAV!”
After a quick pause the reply came. “Roger, Avalanche. Inbound helos took it out with an air-to-air missile. You need to get out of there now!”
Adam dove into the SUV and turned the engine over. He stomped on the gas and raced up the road. Two attack helicopters came over the hill on his right, swooping down at nap-of-the-earth height. They flew over Adam, then banked around hard, and came back in his direction.
He floored it. As he accelerated up the road, the two helos passed on a gun run. Shells rained down on the road right in front of him, but they landed long.
Adam knew he wouldn’t survive another pass. He had a half-mile before getting to the highway, and they could pick him off there just as easily. He had to get out of the SUV and into the trees.
He pushed the engine as fast as the Pronto would go on the straight dirt road, then he popped the transmission into neutral. He opened his door and dove out into the low grass by the road. The SUV continued on.
Adam tumbled end over end, slamming his knee into a rock as he bounced on the earth. As soon as he stopped rolling, he climbed to his feet and limped into the hillside forest.
He heard the helos fire again at the vehicle, and then he heard a huge explosion. The SUV had taken a hit to the gas tank, and now it burned in the road behind him.
He hoped like hell no one would look for him for the length of time it took them to discover no bodies inside the burning SUV.
Even though he was injured now, he was starting to feel very lucky, considering how close he had come to death.
But then he realized he’d left the sat phone in the SUV.
He dropped down into the grass, pounding the ground in frustration. It was more than twenty miles to the Yalu River. China was on the other side, and it was hardly welcoming, but it was all he had to shoot for. He pulled himself back to his feet and hobbled up the hill, blood running down his leg.
74
The two Freebirds flew out over Korea Bay, then south to Inchon. There the UAVs were shadowed by a pair of U.S. Navy Seahawk helos in case of mechanical problems over water. The UAVs had no problems, however, and landed at Osan Air Base without incident ninety-five minutes later, marking the first and second operational use of a Predator Freebird.
When the baskets were opened by CIA personnel at the airfield, everyone was alive, awake, and aware, although Hwang and his daughter had both vomited repeatedly in transit.
Hwang dropped to the tarmac, then helped his son out of the basket. Once Du-ho was on firm ground, Hwang ran over to his wife and daughter and hugged them both.
It was only then that he realized he was surrounded by Americans.
Twenty minutes later he sat in a conference room in an administrative building at the airfield. He’d been given a change of clothes and a bottle of water, but no one had spoken directly to him until an American woman in her sixties entered the room with a Korean woman wearing the uniform of the United States Air Force. The Korean woman informed Hwang that she would be his translator. He nodded, but his eyes were on the other woman in front of him. “I want to speak to someone in charge.” The translator relayed this in English.
Mary Pat Foley replied, “I am the director of all the combined intelligence agencies for the United States of America. Will I do?”
Hwang looked to the translator, then back to Mary Pat. “Yes. You will do.”
She spent twenty minutes establishing who Hwang was, what he knew, and what access he had. Afterward, she left the room for an hour.
When she came back, she said, “Here are our terms. We want every piece of information you have. Everything about your operation. If we are satisfied with what you give us, in return you will receive political asylum in the United States. If you would like to relocate to South Korea, I feel confident we can see that this happens, but that is ultimately up to the South Koreans.”
Hwang nodded slowly. He considered asking if he could go to China, but he did not. “I agree to your terms.”
“Good. Let’s begin with your debrief immediately.”
He was surprised by this. “I am very tired. Could we begin later, after I rest?”
Foley shook her head. “Absolutely not. Lives are at stake, Mr. Hwang. Your wife and your children can rest. You and I have a lot of work to do.”
Hwang sighed.
National Geospatial-Intelligence analyst Annette Brawley had spent the first part of her day looking over train cars in Pyongyang, searching for evidence that the North Koreans were moving any of their mining equipment north, salvaging parts from copper or coal mines with the intention of transporting them up to the strip mine at Chongju.
She hadn’t found anything interesting on the North Korean rail network, but she was holding out hope that some new sat images due in the next few minutes might give her a clearer picture of the mine itself.
She glanced at the time, and looked up from her computer monitor to see Colonel Mike Peters storming her way.
“Hi, Mike.”
“Come with me.”
“Sorry, boss, I can’t go right now, we’re about to get the latest Chongju images from NRO.”
“This isn’t a request. You and me have been ordered to go to the bubble on five.”
“Holy crap,” Brawley said, standing up from her desk as she did so. “Are we in trouble?”
“Dunno. I know we will be if we aren’t there in about two minutes.”
Brawley and Peters were led into the secure communications room, known as the bubble. They sat down in front of a monitor that displayed the image of an empty desk. Behind it was a sign that said OSAN AB.
After a minute they saw some moving shadows off to the side of the desk on the monitor. The two NGA employees looked at each other in confusion.
After a minute more Peters uttered a tentative “Hello?”
Almost instantly, Mary Pat Foley, the director of national intelligence, sat down at the desk. Her eyes were to a point off screen, and it quickly became apparent someone was talking to her. She nodded, then looked at the monitor in front of her. She seemed rushed and concerned, and this made Annette Brawley absolutely terrified.