With the captain in the lead, they moved out from the boulder field, angling their way cautiously down toward that low gray hillock — straining against the weight they carried.
One of the monitors was now switched to show the television feed from the Audience Chamber. Kim Jong-un still stood braced behind the podium, while aides were guiding the generals and marshals who would serve as his backdrop into position.
“We have control over all circuits to Pyongyang, Hamhung, Wonsan, Kaesong, Nampo, and the other major cities,” a voice reported. “Broadcast begins in one minute.”
“This is a great day, comrades,” Sik said quietly.
The four officers grouped around the equipment and computer consoles nodded vigorously.
A phone buzzed.
One of the watch officers picked it up. “Yes? What is it?” He listened for a moment and then turned to Sik. “Observation Post Nine reports possible movement near the Paegun Hermitage.”
“I will speak with them,” Sik said, stepping forward. He took the phone. “This is Colonel Sik. Report your situation.”
“Sergeant Maeng here, Comrade Colonel,” a gravelly voice answered. “Captain Ro and his team are in position.”
“Very well. Carry on.”
Sik put the phone down and shrugged at the others. “A peasant jumping at shadows. But better to be unnecessarily vigilant than caught napping, eh?”
The other officers chuckled.
“Broadcast begins… now!” the voice from the monitor said.
The image changed, showing a vast rippling North Korean flag. Stirring music swelled in the speakers with the crash of cymbals as the national anthem began playing.
“Attention!” Sik snapped.
The four watch officers obeyed, jumping to their feet. Behind them, the guard stiffened to attention, with his chin up and his eyes fixed on the monitor.
And Sik was in motion.
Whirling around, he punched the guard in the throat, crushing his larynx. Gasping, straining vainly for air, the soldier dropped to his knees.
Without hesitating, Sik tugged the pistol out of the dying man’s holster. He flipped the safety down and continued turning — already squeezing the trigger as he came on target.
The pistol cracked four times, deafeningly loud in this confined space.
Hit in the head, each of the four watch officers went down. Blood and brains spattered across several of the screens and consoles.
Through his ringing ears, Sik heard the music fade out and looked up in time to see a stern-faced Kim Jong-un begin speaking.
The colonel smiled. The timing was perfect.
He moved to the ventilation systems control panel, found the switch marked 1-C, and flipped it. On a dial above the switch, the needle showing air pressure in the Audience Chamber began falling.
Sik picked up the phone and punched the button that would connect him to Observation Post Nine.
“OP Nine,” Maeng growled.
“It is done, Sergeant,” Sik told him. “Tell Captain Ro to proceed.”
Without waiting for an acknowledgment, the colonel hung up and stood watching Kim Jong-un rant, promising death to every traitor and the immediate restoration of order under his unchallenged rule.
This would indeed be a great day, Sik decided.
From the time he was a small boy, the colonel had grown up believing that his father, a man he had never really known, had lived and died as a Hero of the Fatherland. Major Sik Sang-chol had been the brave commando leader who spearheaded a surprise attack on the American headquarters in Seoul. And though the raid failed to eliminate the American commander in chief, General McLaren, it had successfully sowed confusion and chaos in the enemy’s high command.
As a young soldier, Sik had been determined to honor his father’s memory by serving the regime with unswerving faithfulness and courage, even to the point of death if necessary. His loyalty and demonstrated skills had driven him ever higher in rank and responsibility, until at last he earned a post as one of the Supreme Leader’s personal bodyguards.
And then his world collapsed around him.
One of his superiors in the Guard Command had shown him the secret files on his father’s operation. It had been a suicide mission, though none of the commandos had known that. The extraction routes his father had been promised were never put into operation. Worse still was reading the evaluation attached to his father’s personnel file, an evaluation in Kim Jong-il’s handwriting.
MOST SECRET
Major Sik Sang-chol
Second Reconnaissance Brigade, Special Forces
Loyalty: High
Command ability: Acceptable
Suitability for further advancement: Nil
Recommendation: Expend him
From that moment, Sik Chol-jun had lived for one thing only — the chance to take revenge by killing Kim Jong-il’s own son, the so-called Supreme Leader. When the bomb in the banquet hall failed to kill the tyrant, the colonel had been tempted to finish him off right there in the smoldering rubble. But too many of the other bodyguards were there with him, frantically digging through ruins. Better, Sik had thought, to stay alive and act the hero — ready to play his part in the backup plan.
This plan.
Ro watched from the clump of artificial brush that concealed the ventilator shaft, one of the dozens that fed the redoubt hundreds of meters below their feet. He saw Sergeant Maeng clamber out of the observation post trench. The noncom pumped his arm twice. That was the signal.
He turned to the soldiers squatting beside the metal cylinder. A length of flexible hose ran from the nozzle of the cylinder into a small, dark opening, shaft 1-C. Ro nodded to the commando crouched right by the opening. “Test it!”
The corporal shook out three matches and lit them together. For an instant, they flared up brightly and then went out. The smoke vanished, sucked into the shaft.
Without waiting any longer, Ro dropped to his knees and started feverishly turning the valve below the cylinder’s nozzle. It began hissing, spewing its highly pressurized contents through the hose and down the ventilator shaft.
The papers on Kim Jong-un’s podium rustled, whipped by a sudden breeze. He tightened his grip on his speech, determined not to lose his place.
“I make this pledge to you, the people of our beloved fatherland. This gang of criminals and traitors, these murderers and paid mercenaries of the evil Americans and their puppets, will be destroyed! Even the memory of them will be erased from history! They will vanish like—”
A gob of spit flew from his mouth and spattered across the page.
Kim’s left cheek twitched suddenly, contracting so sharply that some of his teeth were visible for an instant.
He fought to regain control, aware that his hands were trembling. The words of his printed text swam in and out of focus. “I make this pledge to you—” he repeated thickly, desperately trying to swallow the saliva and mucus clogging his mouth and throat without choking.
The air carried a trace of the faintly cloying smell of rotting fruit.
Behind him, Kim could hear the sounds of choking and retching from the assembled audience of military officers. He scowled, furious that the uniformed puppets he had made were ruining this moment. Would he have to order another round of executions so soon?
Then he groaned, thrown against the podium by a convulsion so powerful that it tore him from the brace propping him up. The wig concealing his head injuries slipped off and fell to the floor. Another spasm ripped through him, tearing open some of his wounds. Once-white bandages began to redden.