“Will you stop moving around for God’s sake?” he whispered harshly. “Hell, they’ll hear us for sure.”
He returned to where he’d been hiding, and Kristen did her best not to move. Except now her left leg was positioned awkwardly under her hips and pressing into a jagged edge of a rock. She tried to ignore it, but the pain was growing worse with each minute. She waited, seemingly for hours as the pain grew worse to the point she had to move.
Kristen carefully placed her hands on the rocks and tried to lift herself up as silently as possible to relieve the pain in her ankle. But as she did, her rifle banged against a rock again. She froze. She could almost feel Grogan about to boil over. The noise of the rifle on the rock sounded like a thunder clap in her ears. She lowered herself down slowly and managed a more comfortable position, feeling the cold wind now passing over her.
Kristen had briefly forgotten the cold, having been too nervous to feel the biting wind. It was January, and Korean winters were notoriously bad. She pulled her arms about her to conserve heat and nestled down a little more as the cold began to sink in. Her wetsuit was good for keeping her body warm in the water but provided only marginal protection in the open air. She then reminded herself that she at least had a pair of utilities to help break the wind, whereas the three SEALs were wearing just their camouflage drysuits.
She looked at her watch, her teeth beginning to chatter, and saw they’d been ashore for nearly an hour. According to intelligence reports, the doctor worked late in his office and took his evening stroll whenever he finished for the night. But, he never finished before 8:00 PM and seldom worked past midnight. She was already shivering, and the thought of waiting another few hours seemed impossible.
The sound of a vehicle engine took her mind off the biting cold. She pressed herself into her slight depression trying to become a part of the rock as headlights illuminated the sky over their heads. The vehicle engine grew louder and the lights brighter as it approached. She could have sworn she felt the ground rumbling beneath her, and her first thought was that the vehicle might be a tank.
What do we do if it’s a tank? Do we have any anti-tank weapons?
Kristen was almost completely hidden in shadow, but tried to force herself down a little further. The vehicle passed by without slowing down, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Instead of a tank, it was a small pick-up truck with some soldiers in the back.
With the vehicle gone, her mind once more noticed the bone-numbing cold. She glanced toward where Grogan and Hoover were and could barely see them blending perfectly into the shadows. Unlike her though, they weren’t laying in depressions to help block the wind. The SEALs were up, laying in firing positions and exposed to the brutal effects of the wind. Seeing them enduring the worst of the cold and wind without so much as a murmur of complaint made her feel like a big wimp.
She could hear the distant sound of the breakers hitting the rocky shore and the sea spray washing over the rocks as the wind howled about them. Thick clouds had moved in concealing the moon, and there wasn’t a single star visible anywhere. Inland, she could see the soft glow of the Musudan-ri rocket facility. But, from her vantage point, she couldn’t see the base.
They continued to wait. The shivering was growing worse, and her teeth were chattering from the numbing cold. Plus, her legs were cramping underneath her from the awkward way she was sitting. She considered moving, but knew to do so would make noise, so she sat still.
“Tally-ho,” she heard a soft whisper.
She was wearing — as they all were — a set of bone phones. She’d never seen them before the SEALs had handed her a set back on the Seawolf, but understood the technology. Basically, the small devices were pressed against her skin, just behind each earlobe. When activated, the sound vibration was conducted directly from the device, through bones in her skull and to her ear canal, allowing her to hear radio communication even in a severe firefight. A throat microphone was positioned over her voice box to pick up even the slightest audible sounds from her vocal chords when she depressed the pressure pad under her left arm.
“Three Gomers, walking in the open.” She recognized Hamilton’s voice. “Fifty meters to our nine o’clock. Two DPRK soldiers and one civilian. Soldiers are armed with assault rifles, over.”
She froze, listening intently as she again forgot about the cold. Her heart had resumed its hammering in her breast as Grogan shifted his position slightly. Kristen resisted the urge to look up. Instead, she listened, but heard nothing except the wind and waves. She wasn’t supposed to do anything. The SEALs would do all of the shooting…
Shooting?
Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit!
Kristen then heard the sound of men on the rocky road. She could hear the soft crunching of their boots on the gravel. She heard their casual voices more interested in good conversation than in being on the alert. They weren’t expecting trouble. It struck her as ludicrous that the three men were walking right into the ambush without any sense of danger. But then it occurred to her that if their roles had been reversed and she’d been the one walking along some stretch of beach in America, she certainly wouldn’t expect to be ambushed by foreign commandos.
The voices came closer. The sounds of their boots on the rocks seemed to be nearly right on top of them, but the seconds continued to tick by. She tried to remember what she was supposed to do when the ambush was initiated. But her mind went blank, and she wasn’t certain she couldn’t even remember her own name at the moment.
Then she heard Grogan whisper over the radio, “Now.”
She heard no shots.
In fact, the lack of noise surprised her.
All she heard was the soft metallic sound of the HK-416 bolts going back and forth, then the sound of expended brass hitting the rocks. She clearly heard the two men collapse on the road and their weapons clattering loudly as they fell onto the roadbed.
“Move, move, move,” Grogan ordered at the same time she heard someone shouting in Korean. Kristen hesitated, the sense of being in a dream momentarily freezing her in place. But then she moved, coming up onto her cramped legs. She’d been seated in the uncomfortable position too long and her legs felt unusually heavy. She reached the edge of the road and saw the scene of the ambush.
The two North Korean “handlers” had died instantly, never feeling the bullets passing through their skulls. They were crumpled on the road exactly as they fell. She was struck by how odd the two dead men looked. Both hadn’t fallen back, their arms flailing like in a movie. Instead, they’d simply collapsed to the ground as if they’d been marionettes with their strings cut. Dr. Dar-Hyun was on his knees and nearly in hysterics. Hoover, a pistol in hand, forced Choi down flat on his belly and began frisking him for weapons. Grogan was in the middle of the road, down on one knee, his weapon at the ready and facing east. To the left, she saw Hamilton. He was also on the road but facing in the opposite direction, his own rifle at the ready.
“Let’s go, Ell-Tee,” Hoover called to her as she scrambled over the rocks, having forgotten whatever Mandarin Chinese she knew.
Kristen reached the road and ran over to where Hoover was searching the Korean scientist. She knelt down and saw that Choi was panicking and jabbering in a language she didn’t understand. “Shh,” she offered, then spoke the only other thought coming to her mind. “Please be quiet,” she said in crystal clear English.
“Fuck, Ell-Tee, I coulda done that!” Hoover said as he readied a tranquilizer for the Korean. “How about some of that Mandarin shit.”