This latest withdrawal made even less sense than all the others. Once past this range of rugged hills, the North Korean spearheads would again enter flat, open ground — ground perfect for tanks and other armored vehicles. And the next really defensible position lay along the Paekma River, thirty kilometers south and just a few kilometers north of the city of Taejon. Christ, how far did the generals plan to let the NKs go before they did something?
Kevin rubbed a weary hand over his face, glad that the weather had warmed up enough to let him dispense with the makeshift scarf he’d had to wear over his mouth and nose when the last Siberian cold front had roared through — plunging temperatures well below zero. One of his men had frozen to death on guard duty that last hellish night. What was his name? Costello. Try as he might, he couldn’t remember the man’s face. But he’d never forget that pathetic corpse, huddled stiff and blue at the bottom of a one-man foxhole. Not in a million years.
He followed his men down the hill.
The long convoys of green-painted trucks filled every southbound lane, moving at high speed past groups of refugees forced to the side of the road. Each had its canvas covers tightly closed, for protection against both the weather and prying eyes, but several still bore markings that identified them as belonging to the U.S. 3rd Marine Division.
One of the refugees, a wizened, old farmer, shrugged his pack onto the pavement and stood straight as the trucks roared by. As a young man he had served beside the Marines in the battle for the Pusan perimeter. Mustering the English he’d picked up then, he called out, “Hey, Mac! Where’re you heading?”
A youthful Marine corporal stuck his head out the window of one of the passing trucks and yelled back, “To kick some communist ass!”
Cheers followed the trucks on their way down the road toward Pusan.
Shin Dal-Kon was a realistic man. And as a realistic man, he understood that the odds were greatly against his living to see another day. But Shin was also a dedicated man, and he had a duty to perform. A duty that would surely kill him.
He moistened his lips and stared out again through the window, counting ships and vehicles. Shin’s small gift shop was perfectly placed, within easy walking distance of the Pusan railway station and less than five hundred meters from the harbor’s main docks. During the summer months the store was usually clogged with foreign visitors buying trinkets or postcards — a condition that made other, less ordinary exchanges ludicrously easy.
In fact, his masters in Pyongyang now considered Shin Dal-Kon their top agent in Pusan. Or so they’d always told him, he thought wryly. Certainly he was one of the longest-lived. The short, bald, ordinary-looking man had served the North continuously since 1963.
But now that service was about to come to a sudden end. And all because of Pyongyang’s desperate need for information about what the Americans were up to. His control’s last signal had ordered him to report any significant findings by radio — and without delay.
He wondered, did the desk-sitters up North know they’d ordered his death in the same signal? Shin had survived for more than twenty-five years for a single, good reason — he was always careful. No dispatch ever followed the same route or ever went through fewer than three cut-outs before it started north. And Shin had never, never used any of the radios which he’d been issued. South Korea’s radio-direction-finding units were too skilled to toy with. They could pinpoint an illicit radio transmitter in minutes. That was a lesson Shin had learned secondhand and never forgotten. But now he had to ignore it.
Despite tight security, the American effort was too obvious to be missed. Seemingly endless convoys of trucks crowding the dockyard’s roads; warships moored offshore while transports anchored alongside massive cargo cranes; stern-faced security detachments on every street corner, and perhaps most significantly, the complete disappearance of the rowdy American sailors who’d once thronged Pusan’s bars and brothels. They all spelled one thing to the North Korean agent: amphibious invasion. Soon the American armada would depart, and Pyongyang had to be ready for its reappearance at some point along the coast.
And so Shin had to sound the warning. And so Shin would die, as soon as South Korea’s security forces broke down his shop’s door.
He put down the notepad containing his coded signal and went down the stairs and out into his small garden. Carefully he levered frozen soil away at one corner of the garden, knelt, and gingerly lifted a heavy earthenware pot of the kind used to ferment kimchee. Shin hefted the pot and brought it back inside before lifting its top to reveal the ultramodern shortwave radio concealed inside.
Working quickly, partly from fear and partly from an impatient desire to see the thing done, he raised the whip-thin aerial, made sure the frequency setting was correct, and began transmitting.
The traffic-battered minivan looked like any of the thousands of similar vehicles scattered across South Korea’s city streets. But instead of dried fish, cooking oil, or sacks of rice, it contained an array of highly sophisticated radio listening devices.
The senior duty agent for the National Security Planning Agency’s Pusan Station leaned over the operator’s shoulder. “Anything yet?”
The man nodded abruptly as faint beeps emerged from his equipment. “Yes, he’s just started transmitting.”
The agent smiled and keyed his own transmitter. “All units report in and stand by for my signal.”
Acknowledgments flooded through his headphones. Satisfied, the NSP agent moved back to the other man. “Well?”
“He’s still transmitting, sir. This one is either very slow or very unpracticed.”
“The latter, I believe,” the NSP man said. “This man is no ordinary spy. He’s a big fish, and like all big fish he’s swum in the depths for years. I suspect he’s not happy at being this close to the surface.” He stopped, conscious of having been too talkative.
But the equipment operator hadn’t even really been listening. “He’s stopped!”
“You’re certain?”
An emphatic nod.
The NSP agent keyed his transmitter again. “Take him.”
The Special Forces captain finished attaching the short-fused plastic explosive, triggered it, and ducked back as the gift shop’s front door blew in. Two men in gas masks and carrying submachine guns rolled in through the opening, right behind the explosion. Others waited outside, covering every other possible exit.
Seconds passed. Then the captain heard a stun grenade go off and followed his men in. A stretcher team came close behind.
Rapid impressions filtered through his mind as he took the stairs to the second floor two at a time. Swirling smoke. Scorched wall hangings. And then a small room crowded with his troopers, a radio, and a body.
The captain lifted his gas mask and caught the faint whiff of almond still lingering in the air. “Report.”
“He’s dead, sir. Took a cyanide capsule before we tossed the stunner in.”
Undoubtedly true. These men were very competent. And completely trustworthy. “Never mind. We’ve got what we wanted.”
The heaters in the underground command bunker worked far too well, unlike most products of the North Korean workers’ state. And so Kim Jong-Il and the other Military Commission members sweltered in summerlike heat while above them Pyongyang’s streets lay buried under several feet of snow and ice. The sweat streaming down his face did not improve Kim’s temper.