Sometimes it was many little items, bundled and wrapped together, creating a few large and heavy items. Sometimes it was a massive box or a crate or even large pieces of metal of varying shapes and sizes. Sometimes the crates and boxes had scary markings on them. Markings that even uneducated fishermen like Dingbang understood meant danger.
After the cargo had been loaded, then Dingbang would be sent a message on his new complicated encrypted radio instructing him where to drop off the cargo. Most of the time, the Huan Yue was sent to a port in North Korea. The younger men who worked on his ship all hated the North Koreans. They complained that the North Koreans were scum and evil and many other bad things. Dingbang actually felt more like a North Korean than he did Chinese. Most of the North Koreans were dirt poor, hungry, and if they knew any better they would escape their disparaging country to seek a better life. That was essentially a summary of Dingbang’s early life.
And Dingbang thought that the Chinese people were just a bunch of hypocrites anyway. North Korea depended on China for everything; energy, food, military equipment and China delivered it all dutifully for one primary reason. If the North Korean government broke down, then there would be a mass exodus from North Korea. And all those poor and ugly North Korean refugees would head across the border and into China. That would wreak havoc on the precarious Chinese economy. And if the Chinese economy failed, then there was a good chance that the entire Chinese communist government would fall as well.
Those North Koreans that Dingbang had met, during the times when he dropped off cargo or picked up cargo, were nice enough. Most of them, those with money, asked if Dingbang could give them a ride to anywhere but North Korea. The owner of the Huan Yue had made it very clear to Dingbang that he was not allowed to ever transport people or make his own deals.
Dingbang was being paid very handsomely not to fish and he couldn’t be happier. He was paid to take non smelling things to other countries and he really didn’t care what they were. It’s not as if anyone was ever going to stop him. Most of the time, his trawler was traversing the Sea of Japan, the East China Sea or the South China Sea. The Chinese were not going to stop him. The Japanese were not going to stop a Chinese fishing ship. The Americans, even though Dingbang was told they were always watching him from the air, they certainly were not going to try to board a Chinese boat.
So Dingbang, happy Dingbang, would never do anything to jeopardize his new and wonderful existence. If his boss told him to go pick up a huge metal cylinder in an obscure port in Russia and then drop it off at the port of Wonsan in North Korea, then Dingbang would be more than happy to oblige.
He never wanted to go back to fishing nets and hauling smelly fish and loading and unloading the wretched mass of sea food in and out of his boat.
Now he could sit back and relax and listen to the water and the clanking of the rigging and the occasional cry of an angry seagull that was very unhappy that his fishing ship had no fish to steal.
Dingbang reached over and turned off all the running lights on his boat. If eyes were watching him from above, then he would have just disappeared into the blackness of the ocean surrounding him. Of course this was dangerous, so Dingbang flipped on the autopilot and activated the ship’s collision warning system. If a ship got too close to him, then the collision system would sound a warning and wake him up. He could then steer around it.
Dingbang leaned back in his captain’s chair and closed his eyes. An hour of sleep would feel good since in a few hours he would be docked in Wonsan. There was no telling how long it would take to get the hunk of metal off of his ship. Sometimes the North Koreans moved quickly. On other nights they moved like they were scared of the dark.
As Dingbang drifted off to sleep, he heard the sound of the rigging slapping against the poles. But he never heard the tiny drone that gently touched down and attached itself with rare-earth neodymium magnets to the roof of his wheelhouse.
Pongchun-Dong, North Korea ― Boat Dock
A little north of the heart of the city of Wonsan, Victor Kornev and the Minister of State Security for North Korea, Kim Won Dong watched the fishing trawler emerge from the darkness of the East Sea. Both men noted that the Huan Yue was running with no navigation lights, per their instructions. The large boat maneuvered slowly into a ring of light thrown down from a sodium vapor lamp mounted on a pole at the end of the concrete dock. Sitting on the dock behind Kornev and Dong was a lowboy trailer. The substantial truck that was pulling the trailer had a large crane attached to its bed.
“How much does it weigh?” Kim Won Dong asked Kornev in poor English.
“About thirteen tons,” Kornev replied.
Dong looked surprised. He turned and looked at the truck’s crane behind them.
“Are you sure that can lift it?” He asked.
Kornev didn’t say anything, he just nodded his head.
The evening was hot and humid and Kornev was wearing a black polo shirt, black shorts and black tennis shoes.
Kornev turned to look at the man next to him.
The Minister of State Security for North Korea was wearing the traditional grey North Korean uniform. Both the right and left lapels of the older man’s uniform were studded with a mish-mash of meaningless emblems and medals. Kornev was sure that Dong had done nothing to earn them other than surviving long enough to put on the uniform. On top of the Minister’s head was a ridiculously large military hat. It was similar to an American military hat, but for some reason the area between the visor and the top was comically enlarged. Kornev thought that the hat resembled a giant mushroom. The hat made the small man looked like a real life bobble-head that could be placed on a car’s dashboard. Kim Won Dong perspired profusely under the thick material and Kornev wondered why he didn’t remove a few layers; even just the military jacket. But the little man didn’t seem to mind or even notice the heat.
Kornev looked away from the smiling politician and back toward the boat that had just come to rest at the side of the dock. A few Chinese men from the Huan Yue tossed thick ropes to the North Korean soldiers that Dong had brought with him. The military men tied off the boat and Kornev heard the ship’s engines power down. The Captain of the Huan Yue gave a wave to the North Koreans from inside his wheelhouse. Kornev did not return the wave. Dong did with a single crisp military flip of his hand.
Kornev and Dong walked over to the Huan Yue. Kornev looked up at Dingbang and made a twirling signal with his index finger. Dingbang flipped a switch inside the wheelhouse and with a piercing screech of metal and a loud ka-thunk, the deck cover on the Huan Yue began to slowly retract.
Kornev saw the second stage of the Russian made R-29RMU Sineva ICBM come into view. The only thing it meant to him was money. Lots of money. This was one of the last shipments to arrive and would therefore fulfill the multimillion dollar deal he had made with the North Korean leaders.
But to Kim Won Dong, this missile section that was nestled in the hold of this ship, as well as all the others that had been successfully unloaded and taken to the warehouse, meant power. More power for him, since he had taken over the deal after the demise of Kim Yong Chang. More power for his country, which meant more power for his esteemed leader.
As the ship’s deck cover reached the end of its rails, the hum of the electric motor pulling it open clicked off. The night became very silent again.
Both Dong and Kornev looked down into the hold of the ship. And then almost by habit, Kornev looked up. Not up at the stars in the clear night sky, but up at the invisible planes or drones or satellites that just might be looking down at them at that exact moment. Kornev knew that the chance of planes or drones or satellites seeing them at night and at that distance was remote, but for some reason he still felt eyes staring at them.