Foley said, “Okay. Sorry, I don’t know your names.”
Peters spoke for both himself and his employee. “Madame Director. I’m Colonel Michael Peters of NGA and this is Annette Brawley, an analyst in my office. How can we be of service?”
“Your desk has developed the information on the rare earth mineral mine and processing facility in Chongju, DPRK?”
“Yes, Madame Director,” Peters said.
Brawley detected nervousness in her boss’s voice.
Someone off camera spoke to Director Foley, and she nodded.
“I am told you, Ms. Brawley, know more about this area than anyone else in the U.S. intelligence community.”
Brawley had no idea if that was true, because she had no idea what other operations were going on in that area. She only knew about the mines. She replied, “I have focused on the northwestern mountains and foothills of DPRK for over two years.”
Foley nodded. “What I am about to tell you both is code-word-classified.”
Brawley nodded slowly; she felt sweat dripping down the back of her neck.
Foley said, “We had a CIA officer on the ground in Chongju. Last night he was compromised during extraction. Right now he is in the wind, and we think it is possible he is injured.”
Brawley’s lips moved, forming the words Oh my God, although she made no sound.
Peters asked, “Do we know anything about what type of vehicle he is driving?”
“He was in an SUV of local manufacture. That vehicle has been destroyed by helicopter gunfire.”
“Was he inside?”
“SIGINT says the North Koreans are tearing up the countryside looking for someone. We hope it’s him. We were tracking him with a satellite, but we lost him after DPRK helicopters destroyed the vehicle he was traveling in. We caught a heat register of a lone individual nearby after the attack, but we lost the signature.”
“No comms, I take it,” Peters said.
“Unfortunately, we have no communication with him at this point. We do not know his location. All of his extraction options, it appears from NRO’s and CIA’s reading of the satellite images available to us, are closed off. We don’t know what he can do, and we don’t know what he will do.”
Brawley nodded. “We should have the newest daylight images in less than five minutes. If there has been anomalous police, government, or military activity in the area, maybe I can find evidence of it. Use that as a starting point to know where to look for…” She searched for the term. “The officer.”
Foley said, “The officer’s code name is Avalanche. He is an American citizen of Chinese descent.”
Brawley raised a hand. “If we find him, or evidence of where he is… is there something that can be done for him?”
Foley’s lips tightened, a pained expression. “Frankly, Ms. Brawley, I have no idea. Our options are extremely limited. But if we can’t even find Avalanche, I can guarantee he has no chance whatsoever.”
Brawley nodded. “I’ll find him.” She didn’t know why she said it, but once it came out of her mouth she knew she had to come through.
Adam Yao pedaled the bike with his right leg while his left stuck out in front of him. The swelling in his knee made it impossible to bend his leg, so slow, painful, one-legged biking was all that was available to him.
He’d stolen the bike in a tiny suburb of Sonchon City by picking the lock on a bike rack, and then he’d ridden as fast as he could with one leg, mostly on dirt roads, and even on fields and hillsides. It was slow going, he might have been averaging three miles an hour tops, but he had no choice but to push on.
He knew his only chance was to get to and then over the Yalu River. Getting to it would be tough. There were patrols on the highways and in the little towns, and he had spent the early-morning hours ducking helos that crisscrossed the sky. Once daylight came in a few hours, it would be even tougher for him. If he wasn’t in a good hide site by sunup he wouldn’t have a chance in hell.
And getting over the Yalu would be even harder. There were bridges, but they would be well guarded. The current was known to be impossible to swim, and any ferryboats, even the kinds used by smugglers, would most likely be known to the North Korean government, and therefore monitored now that the DPRK knew there was an enemy agent in their area.
His leg was bleeding from a gash next to the knee. He needed stitches for sure, and he needed to elevate it and apply pressure, but he’d done nothing more than tear off a piece of his shirt and tie it over the wound. It continued to pump blood, and Adam wondered how long it would take for him to weaken from the blood loss.
Adam was a smart guy, which meant he knew he was fucked. But what choice did he have? He just kept pumping the pedal on the right side of the bike, up and down, trying to get as far north as possible before daylight.
Annette Brawley sat in the bubble, in front of the monitor that connected her via videoconference to Osan Air Base in South Korea, and looked at her laptop. Mary Pat Foley sat on the other end of the connection, a laptop in front of her as well, and together they looked at a series of satellite pictures resident on their computers. Annette could make notes on her computer with a stylus, and Mary Pat would immediately see the notations on her images.
Annette said, “Look here. A police car and several people standing around.”
“What is that?”
“That’s a bicycle rack outside an apartment building. This is on the outskirts of Sonchon, not far from where Avalanche disappeared. I think someone stole a bike. Theft in North Korea like that is highly rare, because stealing a bike over there will get you executed. My assumption is Avalanche took it as a means of transportation. And from here he went north.”
“How do you know that?”
“West is the ocean. East is the entire nation of North Korea. South is the majority of the military in pursuit of him. North is the Yalu River, but on the other side of that is China. He has bad options in each direction, but nothing will look more promising than north.”
Mary Pat said, “Okay. Go on.”
“We estimate his rate on a bicycle on the back roads to be seven miles an hour. I base this on the movements of other men around his age and their progress when moving north. Actually, the average is closer to ten, depending on the bicycle, but we know Avalanche would be avoiding checkpoints and population centers, so we shave off thirty percent.”
Annette Brawley moved the image far to the north, then enhanced the image even more. It was some sort of an open field, a dirt road running to the south of it, that much was plain.
Foley saw nothing in the field. “What am I looking at?”
“The fact that this is empty. This is at seven a.m. Well after the time we would expect him to arrive if he was coming here.”
“Why do you think he would be coming here, specifically?”
Brawley switched the image. “Because of this.” It was the same location as the last image, with one exception.
Foley looked at the picture. “Is that a bicycle? Lying in the field?”
“It’s a bicycle in a rice paddy, on its side. And it’s not just any bicycle. This is a Kalmaegi — they are made at Life Detention Settlement Number 25, up in North Hamgyong Province. It’s the highest-quality local brand used in North Korea. There is a waiting list for these bikes, three or four years, and that’s if you are lucky and you have the money. I can’t say no one in North Korea would ever leave a Kalmaegi lying around like this, but I will say no one in this poor mountainous area would.