The three knew it would take Knight at least two hours to creep the thirty feet he needed to cover to get to the window on the east side of the building undetected. He was, after all, a shrub, to the eyes of the occasionally passing North Korean soldiers. He had to move in such tiny increments, that they would not even notice the movement, allowing the men time to adjust to the bush’s location in their subconscious, so they wouldn’t suddenly realize there shouldn’t be a shrub under the window, when suddenly there was.
Knight was always amused at how the human mind worked. He loved the small subtle visual tricks you could play on the mind. He recalled a TV show he had seen where a person would be stopped on the street for directions, and while the person was answering, two men would carry a large piece of furniture between the asker and the askee, obscuring the asker from view. During the brief moment, where the workers moved the furniture, the asker would step away and another person would step in to receive the directions once the sofa or whatever was past the scene. It was amazing that most people never noticed they were replying to a completely new person. As a sniper, Knight found many of these small lapses in human attention to his advantage. But even still, he knew it would take him some time to get to the window.
On the hill, Queen, Rook and Bishop sat silently, eating small vacuum-packed energy foods and drinking small sips of water from Camelbak water reservoirs hidden under their ghillie suits, the camouflage-painted drinking tubes secured to their shoulders, so a simple tilt of the head would allow them to grip the bite valves with their mouths. Despite the brief lapse in protocol, the three stayed silent for most of the hour, lost in their own thoughts. When the first hour had nearly elapsed, a shrill voice shattered the silence.
“Ma! Eolleun il-eona!” The voice was high-pitched and screechy. Queen, Rook and Bishop turned to look behind them on the hill and saw a small squad of five North Korean soldiers, each armed with a fully automatic North Korean produced Type-58 version of an AK-47 rifle. Most of those weapons were pointed at the team, although some shook, the hands holding them unsteady. The men looked no more than eighteen years old, but it was difficult for Queen to tell their ages.
The man that had spoken, yelled again. “Eolleun il-eona!”
“Party’s over,” Rook said, slowly raising his hands above his head.
Knight’s voice came over their earpieces. “He said ‘Stop’ and ‘Get on your feet.’ He sounds upset. I’d do what he says.” Knight was of South Korean ancestry. He was fluent in the South Korean language, and it was similar in some respects to the language here, even though he had remarked that the North Koreans had challenging accents.
Queen slowly stood and looked at the five young terrified soldiers. “Wonderful,” she said.
The man who had ordered them to stand began to shake violently with fear, the barrel of his rifle wavering and swerving, sweat running down his forehead. Then his rifle went off, sending a small burst of bullets at Queen.
FOUR
Deep Blue stood up from his computer chair and stretched his lower back, twisting side to side, then he leaned forward and touched his toes. He took pride in the fact that he was probably the only former US President who could touch his toes. He was young for an ex-president, and he had stayed in good shape through those grueling years. Then he had been forced to play a more active role in the field with Chess Team, reminding him that while he was exceedingly fit, he was still getting on in years. Injuries that would have been mild during his days as an Army Ranger took far longer to heal now. After the last major catastrophe the previous year, where searing spheres of energy had devastated several global population centers, he decided to officially retire himself from the field.
Besides, people in DC were starting to ask him as Tom Duncan, former US President, if he would undertake some humanitarian missions. He was genuinely interested in some, but he had needed to turn them all down.. As far as the world knew, he was simply retired and reclusive. Following the lead started by Jimmy Carter, and later by Richard Nixon in 1985, he was hardly the first former President to refuse secret service protection post-presidency. His stock excuse was that he was enjoying his time fishing and resting after the stress of four years in the White House and several years before that in the capitol.
In truth, his work with Endgame took up all his time. He had formed the organization to combat extreme forms of terrorism, but it had ended up becoming a full-scale assault force for dealing with viral outbreaks, genocidal madmen, marauding cryptids, dimensional incursions and rampaging rock creatures.
Now, just finding time to exercise was a challenge. With the bulk of Chess Team in North Korea, King and Asya frequently coming and going while looking for their abducted parents, keeping his global eye on possible hotspots around the world and assisting and advising with some of the reconstruction after the energy-portal fiasco the previous year, Tom Duncan was exhausted.
It was nearly 10:30 at night, but with the time difference in Korea, Duncan knew he would be awake for several more hours. He looked around the empty computer room. Lewis Aleman, his right-hand man and computer guru, had turned in, and the other staff members had gone home or to their on-station quarters to get some sleep. With little happening for Chess Team in Asia, and with King and Asya at the base, the other support members really weren’t needed to keep tabs on things overnight. Plus, Duncan enjoyed working alone in the electronic womb of the command center.
The central computer room was kitted out with all the latest equipment he could get his hands on using the deep-black Pentagon budgets he had procured for the team before officially leaving office. Large flat-screen monitors lit up the walls, allowing him to keep an eye on the world from a multitude of satellites. He used surveillance cameras too numerous to count and too easily hacked. He even used video streams from field operatives equipped with hidden video cameras on their persons — both those they knew about and those they did not. In the intelligence game of the 21st century, it was all about the cameras.
Besides the large video screens, the room was filled with several workstations and ergonomic chairs. Air-conditioning systems even pumped in a slight scent of jasmine. In the corners of the room were several oxygenating peace lilies and philodendrons, whose vines stretched up to and across the ceiling. Both plants could exist off the artificial lighting in the room, with occasional bursts from solar simulator lamps. They helped to reduce the stress in the room visually, but they also pumped plenty of clean air into the space as well.
Duncan dropped down to the carpeted floor and performed twenty pushups. On the last repetition, he heard the door open.
“Seventy-eight…” he said.
When he looked up, Jack Sigler, callsign: King, was standing in the door with a goofy smile on his face.
“Yeah, right,” King said.
“Even we desk jockeys have to stay in shape, Jack.”
“You are the most in-shape desk jockey I’ve ever seen,” King said.
Duncan stood and walked over to the door. “What’s up?”
“Some good news for a change, Tom,” King rarely used Deep Blue’s first name, although Duncan had, on many occasions, encouraged him to do so, especially when they were alone. Duncan smiled expectantly. He had an idea what this might be.
“Sara and I are engaged,” King said, his grin growing to epic proportions.