“Yeah, Mandarin….” she answered stupidly as she continued to try and quiet the man down.
“Doc, if he doesn’t shut the fuck up, drug his ass,” Grogan swore in a harsh whisper.
Kristen found her Mandarin and began begging Choi to be calm and listen in a language he could understand. “We’re here to get you out. We aren’t going to hurt you,” she hoped she said in Mandarin. “Please, Dr. Dar-Hyun, try to stay calm and please stop calling out,” Kristen added as the man rolled over on the rocks, gripping his chest tightly, terror still in his eyes. But, whatever she said must have been close enough, because he stopped crying out, even though he was still jabbering in Korean.
“Please, sir, be quiet before you alert other soldiers in the area.” she pleaded with him. “Just try to relax.” She helped him sit up. “Just breathe easily.”
He nodded to her and resumed jabbering, this time in Mandarin.
“Ask him what this is,” Hoover asked, referring to a small black box about the size of a deck of cards attached to his ankle with a thin black strap. There was a small blinking green light on the box. Hoover opened his waterproof rucksack and readied a syringe to knock the doctor out. Knocking Choi out was the last resort since, if he was unconscious while on the LAR-7, he could vomit in his mask and drown before anyone could help him.
Kristen thought of the proper phrasing and then asked the question. He immediately replied, gesturing wildly at his ankle and then at the area around him. She slowed him down, unable to understand most of what he was saying as he spoke too fast in his excitement. While she was interpreting, Hamilton and Grogan dragged the bodies off the road and hid them in some brush. Meanwhile, Hoover readied the syringe.
“He says it is some sort of tracking device,” she explained. “At least I think that’s what he’s telling me.”
Grogan and Hamilton closed in on them, facing outward. Grogan saw the old man was still gripping his chest tightly and sweating despite the cold. “Shit, Doc! The fucker looks to be checking out on us right here. Can you give him something?”
Choi had calmed down a bit and was no longer jabbering in fright, but he was still looking far too stressed at the moment to try and transport him in the SDV. “He’ll never make it like this,” Kristen offered, knowing firsthand how scared she’d been when she was dragged into the SDV a few hours earlier.
Hoover opened a medicine bottle and handed a pill to Kristen. “Explain to him that this is nitroglycerine for his heart.”
“Jack, we need to get off this road,” Hamilton whispered forcefully to Grogan.
“Hurry up, Doc, we gotta get the fuck out of here!” Grogan ordered.
Kristen explained what the medicine was, and Choi, after some discussion, took the pill and agreed to allow the injection. Hoover injected the medicine into him and almost immediately he seemed to relax.
“All right, let’s get him up and out of here, Doc,” Grogan ordered. “Trip and I’ll cover you.”
“What about this thing on his ankle?” Hoover asked. “Ell-Tee says it’s some sort of tracking device.”
“Cut the fucker off,” Grogan ordered.
Hoover drew his combat knife and without hesitation grabbed the nylon strap holding the monitoring device on Choi’s ankle. But Kristen grabbed his knife arm before he could cut it off. “Wait,” she whispered. “What if it sounds an alarm somewhere if it’s removed? You know, like those devices they make people wear when they’re under house arrest.”
Hoover paused and glanced at Grogan questioningly.
“We sure as hell can’t take a homing device with us,” Grogan replied. The SEAL leader paused, weighing the options. There didn’t seem to be too many. They clearly couldn’t take the tracking device with them. “Do it, Doc,” Grogan ordered.
Hoover responded with one quick motion, slicing through the ankle strap. Immediately, the green LED on the device began flashing red and it started emitting a low pitched whine.
“Fuck!” Hamilton swore. “Shut that fucking thing up, Doc!”
Grogan rammed his boot into the device, but it kept chirping. “Get moving!” he barked to Hoover. “Get the package back to the surf.” He rammed his boot into the device twice more, finally silencing it.
Meanwhile, Hoover and Kristen helped Choi up. He was now completely docile and cooperative, but was also unable to walk. They placed him between them, his arms across their shoulders and began leading him over the rocks back toward the sea.
“What did you give him?” she asked as they began half carrying, half dragging Choi.
“Just something to relax him,” Hoover answered anxiously.
“Maybe you could give me a shot of that?” Kristen asked, only half joking. She’d never been in combat before, so she had nothing to base her current analysis on, but she had the feeling the situation was rapidly spiraling out of control.
“Really, Ell-Tee?” he asked. “Humor? Right now?”
“Humor or tears,” she told him. “Take your pick.”
Kristen was moving as fast as she could, but the various size and shapes of the boulders made for treacherous footing. The doctor was not a big man, barely five-two and slender, but he seemed to weigh a ton now as she scrambled over the rocks. Off to her left, she saw a flash of light and glanced to see headlights approaching back down the road and moving quickly.
“They’re coming,” she offered, her fear clearly audible in her voice.
“No shit, Buckwheat,” Hoover answered as they struggled to move over the rocks with their new burden.
“Move, move!” Grogan barked from behind them.
Kristen and Hoover had moved maybe another ten meters when a terribly loud siren began to wail from the direction of the nearby rocket base. Hoover made no indication that he heard the siren, but Kristen glanced back behind her. The truck they’d seen earlier was racing back down the road to where the SEALs had snatched Choi.
Kristen and Hoover were moving as fast as their feet would carry them across the jagged ground, but whereas a few minutes ago she’d hardly noticed her forty-five pounds of gear, now she felt like she was running with a refrigerator on her back, and her heart rate had skyrocketed with the realization they were running for their lives. Every step became more arduous than the last, and the distant shoreline seemed to be moving away from them with each note from the wailing siren.
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” she gasped. Kristen was certain she sounded like a frightened child, but didn’t care what Hoover thought of her at the moment. Her entire world had been reduced to a couple hundred yards of rocky beach. Nothing else mattered.
“Just keep moving, Ell-Tee,” Hoover encouraged her. “We’re almost there.”
Kristen slipped on a rock, twisting her ankle, but recovered. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw the headlights of a truck that had stopped moving at the exact spot where they’d snatched Choi a few minutes earlier. Then she heard the clear sound of North Korean men shouting.
“Move, move, move!” Grogan, who was a few paces behind, urged her and Hoover.
Kristen took another few paces, scrambling crab-like over a couple of larger rocks, still holding onto Choi. Then she heard what sounded like a starter pistol firing somewhere behind her. Immediately, this was followed by a whistling sound that lasted for several seconds, then a loud “pop” as a flare burst overhead. Instantly, Kristen and the others were bathed in light as they struggled to reach the shore.
Oh, shit! Oh, Shit! Oh, shit!”
“Light’em up!” Grogan shouted to Hamilton.
Kristen couldn’t see either of them since they were behind her and covering the withdrawal to the water, but she heard the roar of the machine gun not far behind as Hamilton opened fire. She glanced back and saw Hamilton’s silhouette illuminated by a three-foot tongue of flame erupting from the barrel of the machine gun. The SEAL was firing from an elevated position on a rock and covering the team as Grogan took up his own firing position.