Pak’s own shock was nearly as intense. Shi-bal! How had the Americans gotten on the ship so quickly? Why hadn’t the sentries raised the alarm?
It took a half-second to reign in his runaway thoughts. No. Those questions didn’t matter anymore. What mattered was the mission: destroying the invaders and protecting the cargo.
He took a two-handed grip on the Makarov and prepared to climb the steps. The imperialist intruders might be able to kill a few unsuspecting sentries, but Pak was alert and ready for combat. He would show the Americans how a true Korean soldier fights. And when it was over, their blood would be staining the deck tiles. Their lifeless eyes would be staring into eternity.
His own death might be seconds away, but he didn’t care. His veins throbbed with the fire of coming battle. This was what he had trained for. What he had been born for.
He was stepping over Mok’s body — ready to sprint up the stairs and slaughter his enemies — when he heard something that turned the fire in his veins to ice. The ceaseless pulse of the engine was slowing. Even as he listened, the last rumbles of the monster diesel faded away to silence.
The ship was stopping!
The realization struck Pak like a fist in the sternum. The ship could not stop—must not stop! Throughout all of the briefings and the training for this mission, there had been two inviolate orders which took precedence over everything else. Two rules which were never to be broken, no matter the provocation or circumstance. The cargo must be protected. And the ship must not stop until it reached the ordered destination.
But now the ship was stopping.
Pak knew instantly what that meant. The Americans had seized the bridge, or possibly the engine room. Either way, they already had control of the ship. There would be more of them coming aboard now, from swift boats, or swimmer delivery vehicles, or that helicopter fast rope maneuver that their Navy SEALs were so famous for.
He stood with one foot on the bottom stair, torn between his orders and years of trained-in compulsion to engage with the enemy. Evading battle wasn’t just abhorrent to him; it was stomach turning. Worse than the wrenching nausea of the seasickness he had never managed to conquer.
But he had been given orders for this situation, and they were unmistakably clear. His only job now was to destroy the cargo. It could not be allowed to fall into the hands of the imperialist aggressors.
With supreme reluctance, he turned away from the stairs, away from the call of battle, and began to move downward into the depths of the ship.
It took him five minutes to reach the cargo holds. Twice he had to scramble for hiding places as enemy patrols swept past. He’d gotten a peek at the second group. American Navy SEALs, he was certain.
Some of them would be searching the ship for Pak’s men, and members of the crew. Some would be looking for the cargo holds, but the Aranella’s passageways were an unfamiliar labyrinth to the intruders, and Pak knew his way around.
At last he made it into the amidships cargo bay, sealing the watertight door behind himself. He shackled the dogging lever in the down position with a length of chain and padlock kept there for that very purpose.
Getting through the heavy steel door would take the Americans several minutes. They’d need a cutting torch, or a bundle of correctly placed breaching charges. Either method would give Pak the time he needed.
He surveyed the cargo hold. Illuminated by overhead sodium vapor lights, six transporter erector launchers were chained to cloverleaves on the deck; each one looking like a cross between a battle tank and a brutishly massive ten-wheeled truck. Cradled on the back of every mobile launcher was a Rodong-2 intermediate-range ballistic missile.
Pak knew that the missiles had all been modified. He hadn’t received any training or briefings on the weapons themselves, beyond the need to protect them, and the steps of the procedure he was about to carry out. But he’d seen enough unmodified Rodong-2 missiles to know that these were different.
The warhead section of a conventional Rodong-2 was relatively slender, perhaps a third the diameter of the main missile body. These missiles had broader warhead sections, almost bulbous when seen in profile.
He had silenced all speculation from his men about the reconfigured missiles. It was not their place to know what sorts of weapons the ship was carrying. Their job was to deliver the cargo or destroy it. Nothing else.
After the first boarding attempt, Pak had ordered his demolitions man to set the explosives in place: eight high-yield satchel charges at key points around the cargo hold. The electrical detonators were already rigged. The red and black twisted pair wires had been strung and routed to a common collection point, where they formed a pencil-width bundle held together by friction tape.
All that remained was for Pak to connect the wires to the electrical initiator unit, and set the timer. The resulting explosion would obliterate the cargo and crack the Aranella in half; probably sinking both halves — not that the fate of the ship would matter by then.
He reached into his hip pocket for the initiator. His fingers felt only fabric.
Moving faster now, he used both hands to pat down all of his pockets. They encountered nothing that felt like the familiar shape of the initiator. Then his fingers frantically plumbed the depths of every pouch and recess in his uniform. It wasn’t there… The initiator wasn’t there!
He wanted to scream. Where was it? Where could the byung-shin thing have gone?
It came to him then — an image of the device, lying on the bunk in his sleeping compartment, next to the discarded radio unit.
Jen-jang! Si-bal! Jen-jang! (Shit! Fuck! Shit!)
Could he make it up to his compartment without getting caught? Even if he somehow managed that, he’d never get down here again before the Americans found this place.
In confirmation of this thought, the dogging lever of the watertight door began to rattle. The intruders had arrived.
There was no choice. He would have to resort to the final emergency measure.
Even the idea cranked Pak’s already-high adrenaline level up another notch. The sound of his own pulse was loud in his ears.
He rushed to the second launcher truck on the port side. He had practiced the procedure at least fifty times, as part of his mission training. He’d never expected to actually use it.
Standing at the midsection of the launcher, he twisted four snap-latches a half turn to clockwise, and swung open a maintenance access panel. Inside, his fingers located a rectangular metal box and freed it from a pair of holding clamps. He flipped up the lid, exposing a key hole with bezel, a small LED readout window, and an open jack for a multi-pin cable connection. The box was a special feature of this one launcher vehicle, put here for this very purpose.
He plunged his arm shoulder-deep into the maintenance opening and groped until he found the main circuit bus. His fingers identified the third cable from the left, rechecked its position, and then unscrewed the outer locking collar that held the cable in place.
New sounds were coming from the direction of the entrance door. He could hear the low roar of equipment at work. The air began to smell of heating metal. Probably an exothermic cutting torch. It didn’t matter. This wouldn’t take long.
He pulled his arm out of the access hole, bringing the end of the cable with it. Careful not to crimp the array of pins, he aligned the index slot on the cable head with the corresponding tab on the metal box’s connector jack.