Rogue Warrior: Dictator's Ransom Part 33

Trace pulled on the stick or the collective or whatever the h.e.l.l it is you pull on to get a helicopter into the air. We jerked into the air, sc.r.a.ping the fence but still going.

Pyongyang stretched out below us-though not far enough below us. Antiaircraft batteries were coming to life all over the city, throwing streaks of red in our direction. More of a problem was the row of buildings directly in front of us as we flew. They weren't very high, but neither were we.

"Up, up, up," I yelled. "Trace!"

The helicopter jerked hard to the left-toward a hail of tracers.

"We have to broadcast to them and say that we're on their side," yelled Junior, picking an excellent moment to regain consciousness. We'd thrown him in the back when we'd climbed aboard. "They think we're the enemy."

Junior got into the copilot's seat and began hitting switches to turn on the radio. The kid certainly had the right idea, but since none of us spoke Korean, there was no way to follow through on it. Saying "Don't fire at us" in English wasn't going to do it.

A stream of bullets ripped through the right side of the helo as Trace jerked out of the way of the latest spray of flak. Shrapnel exploded through the c.o.c.kpit; I felt a familiar hot pain in the shoulder and neck as slivers of metal bounced past the seat and hit me.

"Get us going south," I said, probably only to myself. "Get us over the border."

Trace was already working on that, ramming the Hind's throttles into overdrive. Junior was yelling on the radio, using the odd bits of Korean he'd managed to pick up. For all I know, he was asking where the restrooms were, but either his messages worked or we finally outran the outer ring of defenses, because the gunfire gradually stopped. Our low alt.i.tude-we were still barely at treetop level-may have helped; we were too low for most radars to pick us up, and by the time the antiair gunner realized we were there it was too late to fire.

The shrapnel had torn some nice holes in my flesh as well as my s.h.i.+rt, but the fact that I was still conscious told me that nothing important had been cut. Even so, I was still losing a decent amount of blood; the entire left side of my chest was covered with it. I tore off the right sleeve of my Korean ninja s.h.i.+rt, wadding it up to use as a bandage. I pushed it against my neck and then wedged my head back against the seat, compressing the wound. As I leaned in, I felt a sharp tweak of pain-the metal or whatever the h.e.l.l it was still inside. I grit my teeth and stuck my fingers in the wound, trying to fish it out.

Don't try that at home, kids. My fingers were dirty as h.e.l.l; despite the flowing blood I probably infected the wound. I got the metal, a little frag no bigger than a paperclip. For some reason I thought it was important and slipped it into my pocket. Then I put the wadded s.h.i.+rt back and pressed on my neck. My head was swimming, starting to zoom around in circles above my body.

A stream of fresh tracers off the port bow told us we had a new problem-the other Hind helicopter had scrambled into the air and was trying to shoot us down.

Now it was Trace's turn to shout at me.

"d.i.c.k! He's coming around to the right! Nail the son of a b.i.t.c.h. On three."

Trace counted three, then pushed the helicopter to the side, trying to give me a clear shot. I was so dazed I couldn't aim the machine gun for s.h.i.+t. I grabbed at the gun control and fired the trigger, watching in vain as the bullets flew to the right when I wanted them to go to the left. I pushed the gun but it was too late. The Hind ducked away, circling to try to get behind us. Trace wasn't about to let that happen. She jinked hard left and pushed our nose toward the ground, sending what was left of my blood slos.h.i.+ng to the roof of my skull.

If you've ever sat in the front car of a roller coaster and tried firing a machine gun at a pa.s.sing seagull, you know how I felt. I gripped the trigger of the Hind's forward machine gun, firing wildly as the other Hind danced in front of us, then disappeared. We whipped back and forth as tracers flashed through the sky. Then the other Hind appeared so close on my right I could have opened up the window and shaken the pilot's hand.

I pushed the machine gun to the right, but couldn't get a shot. My eyes lost focus; there were suddenly six Hinds in front of me.

"Dad! Shoot the rockets when Trace kills the throttle. The rockets!"

Dad?

Junior?

My head felt as if someone had sliced it into three parts, then put them back out of order. The rockets had to be armed before they could be fired, a simple two-step process, if you knew the sequence . . . if you knew where the panel was . . . if you knew how to turn the d.a.m.n thing on.

The controls were to my right.

"Fire!"

Fire?

I jammed my hands on the panel, then felt something helping me, something from above.

Not the hand of G.o.d, but the hand of Junior, pus.h.i.+ng the b.u.t.tons.

"Fire, d.a.m.n it!" I yelled, and the rockets shot out from the winglets in a surge of red, turning the sky in front of us into a huge red ball of flame.

Then the small part of the world that wasn't twisting into darkness gave up and joined the rest, swarming me in a black hole of unconsciousness.

35 The S-70 is the civilian version of the Blackhawk.

14.

[ I ].

I WOKE UP IN Tokyo General Hospital, feeling as if I were at the tail end of a three-day hangover. As a matter of fact, it had been three days since I'd been conscious. I'd lost a lot of blood in the helicopter. Rather than just going straight to Sapphire, the doctors refilled me with blood, which probably explained why I was out so long.

Karen was sitting in the chair next to me, a sight for sore eyes and battered bones. She looked over at me, smiled, and told me to relax and go back to sleep.

"What's going on? Where's Trace? What about Junior?" I asked, pus.h.i.+ng myself up in the bed. "And Doc-where's Doc?"

"d.i.c.k, you have to relax."

"I am relaxed. What happened?"

"Trace is fine, and so is Doc, Shotgun, Mongoose, Sean-everyone is fine." Karen sighed. "I'll tell you the whole story if you just lay down in bed and relax."

"Come into bed with me and help me relax."

"Now I know you're going to be okay."

Bit by bit, Karen told me what happened. A pair of South Korean F-16s had arrived soon after Junior and I shot down the other Hind. After some expletive-laden exchanges over the radio, Trace managed to convince them we were on their side. They escorted us over the DMZ and into South Korea. Junior and Trace had a few cuts and bruises, but otherwise had come through the battle OK.

The Russian cargo s.h.i.+p had sunk from the battering administered by the North Koreans-that and some strategically placed explosives that were ignited by the SEALs when their inspection was complete. Their search didn't turn up a nuke, nor did they find any members of Polorski's Russian mob aboard. But it did turn up two computer laptops, as well as some leads on the gang's financial connections. Other members of the gang are still at large. The last I heard, the hard drives on those computers had been studied by six different U.S. agencies, and shared with at least three foreign governments. With that many people in the mix, you can judge for yourself what the results are likely to be.

As you've probably guessed by now, the air farce-our air farce-dropped a pair of bunker buster bombs on Kim's secret stash of nukes soon after I activated the homing signal. The warheads on the American bombs were specifically designed to be exploded underground against bunkers.36 The resulting explosion was powerful enough that it was recorded as an earthquake centering around a previously unknown fault just north of Pyongyang. Some scientists believed it was actually a nuclear test by Kim Jong Il's government, a final experiment to make sure his technology was sound before surrendering his bombs.

Kim Jong Il has been notably silent on the matter. Nor would he comment on rumors that elements of the government and army had tried to overthrow him. The official North Korean news agency announced that he was looking forward to continued cooperation with the world community regarding nuclear weapons and the related treaties, and if you've been following the news lately, you'll see that he has. More or less. Sometimes a lot less, but given that he no longer has any nukes hidden away, American authorities are no longer quite as concerned about how long the process takes.

I didn't know that the bombs were going to be dropped. I said what I said to the others as a bluff. True, I'd expected something would happen. I knew Jones wouldn't have gotten me involved if he wasn't serious, and I realized the old-warhorse-dying-with-his-boots-on comments he'd dropped at our meeting weren't idle musings. Personally, I would have wanted a bit more of an interlude between the time the locator was activated and the bombs were dropped. You might draw the conclusion that whoever ordered the attack was not very concerned about me making it out alive. You might even conclude that they didn't want me to get out alive.

You might.

Of course, the timing might simply have been a result of standard bureaucratic screw ups . . . or the air farcers flying the planes may have wanted to knock off work early.

Both Yong s.h.i.+n Jong and Sun have disappeared from public view. You can read into that what you want. One thing you can't do is find any mention of them anymore in any official or unofficial North Korean doc.u.ment. In fact, all memory of them seems to have been erased; they're not even mentioned in Wikipedia anymore.

As for yours truly, the doctors had a long list of arteries and veins that the shrapnel had supposedly nicked, cut, and contorted. Some nerves, muscles, and bones had been abused as well. The list reminded me that every square millimeter of the body has a fancy Latin name, which is how doctors justify their high prices when they patch you up.

"You know, d.i.c.k," said Karen, who'd snuggled up to me as the tale progressed, "you're getting too old for this. You can't keep abusing your body and expecting to walk away with a smile."

"So I limp away," I said. "Where's the harm in that?"

"You know what I mean."

"Not really."

I stifled her complaint with a kiss, but before we could get into a more thorough discussion, there was a knock on the door.

"Go away," I said.

"Always joking," said Jimmy Zim, coming in. "Commander Marcinko, Admiral Jones sends his regards."

"Tell him to f.u.c.k himself."

Jimmy Zim wasn't sure how to take that, and I didn't explain. He told me roughly the same story that Karen had, filling in a few of the blanks and apologizing for the C2 officers above him who had made things so difficult.

"You lived up to your reputation," he said when he was done. "I hope we work together again."

"f.u.c.k you very much."

Zim smiled-the first time I'd seen him smile since we met. "f.u.c.k you, too."

He left. I pulled Karen closer and asked her to explain a few things.

"Like?"

"Why are your lips so sweet?"

"I put honey on them."

She pressed them against mine. There was a knock on the door.

"Go away," I said.

"Um, okay." It was Matthew Loring. "When should I, um, come back."

"Never."

"Uh, all right."

"He's only joking, Matthew," said Karen. "You should know that by now."

"Should I really go away?"

"Give us five minutes," said Karen.

Five minutes? Let's get to work, I thought, but she got up from the bed and went over to the chair where she'd put her pocketbook.

"It's going to be hard to inspect your lips from this distance," I told her.

"I have to show you something before Matthew comes in."

"No kidding."

"I'm not making a joke, d.i.c.k."

Karen dug into her pocketbook and retrieved a small packet of papers. She had an odd look on her face as she handed it to me.

I unfolded the papers. It was the security report on Matthew Loring.

Bright kid-he'd won a scholars.h.i.+p to MIT. Graduated in three years. Been a counselor in some sort of Outward Bound program. Won a rock-climbing compet.i.tion in the Smoky Mountains. Star high school soccer player.

"Nice stuff," I told Karen. "I'm going to offer him a permanent position. Not as a computer guy-Shunt's got that handled. If we can get some more meat on his bones, I think he might make it as a shooter. He's a little eccentric, but I think he's got great potential."

"He ought to," said Karen. "Read the last page."

I flipped over to it. It contained information about his early childhood. He'd been to a parochial school in northern New Jersey, just outside of New York. I'd gone to parochial school myself, though several miles away.

"Does he have a phobia about flying nuns attacking him in the dark?" I asked.

"Read the entire thing."

Junior's mother's name was Marian Mahon. She was a single mother; father recorded as unknown on the birth certificate. His date of birth was 1986.

That was not a great year for me. My marriage had already gone to h.e.l.l. My navy career died. And the government was in the process of inviting me to spend a little time in one of their no-charge hotels thanks to the hurt feelings of a few admirals I'd embarra.s.sed during Red Cell exercises.

I couldn't place a Maria Mahon, and couldn't even remember being in a situation that would have led to Junior. But I couldn't rule it out, either. She lived in the town where I had holed up for several months. She was dead now, having pa.s.sed away two years before after an unsuccessful fight with breast cancer. But one of her surviving friends, interviewed during the security check, claimed that Matthew was the product of a one-night stand with a famous naval officer-yours truly.

The only "proof," if you could call it that, was a collection of newspaper and magazine articles about me that dated to 1986. Maria had also bought every book I ever wrote.

"You think he's my son?" I asked her.

"I think it's a possibility. Don't you?"

Physically, he didn't look like me at all, not even when I was a kid. Personality-wise, he was quiet where I was loud, he was thoughtful where I charged ahead, certainly at that age. And yet-he did have definite Rogue Warrior tendencies.

"Does he know about this?" I asked.

"I haven't asked."