He hoped like hell no one would look for him for the length of time it took them to discover no bodies inside the burning SUV.
Even though he was injured now, he was starting to feel very lucky, considering how close he had come to death.
But then he realized he’d left the sat phone in the SUV.
He dropped down into the grass, pounding the ground in frustration. It was more than twenty miles to the Yalu River. China was on the other side, and it was hardly welcoming, but it was all he had to shoot for. He pulled himself back to his feet and hobbled up the hill, blood running down his leg.
74
The two Freebirds flew out over Korea Bay, then south to Inchon. There the UAVs were shadowed by a pair of U.S. Navy Seahawk helos in case of mechanical problems over water. The UAVs had no problems, however, and landed at Osan Air Base without incident ninety-five minutes later, marking the first and second operational use of a Predator Freebird.
When the baskets were opened by CIA personnel at the airfield, everyone was alive, awake, and aware, although Hwang and his daughter had both vomited repeatedly in transit.
Hwang dropped to the tarmac, then helped his son out of the basket. Once Du-ho was on firm ground, Hwang ran over to his wife and daughter and hugged them both.
It was only then that he realized he was surrounded by Americans.
—
Twenty minutes later he sat in a conference room in an administrative building at the airfield. He’d been given a change of clothes and a bottle of water, but no one had spoken directly to him until an American woman in her sixties entered the room with a Korean woman wearing the uniform of the United States Air Force. The Korean woman informed Hwang that she would be his translator. He nodded, but his eyes were on the other woman in front of him. “I want to speak to someone in charge.” The translator relayed this in English.
Mary Pat Foley replied, “I am the director of all the combined intelligence agencies for the United States of America. Will I do?”
Hwang looked to the translator, then back to Mary Pat. “Yes. You will do.”
She spent twenty minutes establishing who Hwang was, what he knew, and what access he had. Afterward, she left the room for an hour.
When she came back, she said, “Here are our terms. We want every piece of information you have. Everything about your operation. If we are satisfied with what you give us, in return you will receive political asylum in the United States. If you would like to relocate to South Korea, I feel confident we can see that this happens, but that is ultimately up to the South Koreans.”
Hwang nodded slowly. He considered asking if he could go to China, but he did not. “I agree to your terms.”
“Good. Let’s begin with your debrief immediately.”
He was surprised by this. “I am very tired. Could we begin later, after I rest?”
Foley shook her head. “Absolutely not. Lives are at stake, Mr. Hwang. Your wife and your children can rest. You and I have a lot of work to do.”
Hwang sighed.
—
National Geospatial-Intelligence analyst Annette Brawley had spent the first part of her day looking over train cars in Pyongyang, searching for evidence that the North Koreans were moving any of their mining equipment north, salvaging parts from copper or coal mines with the intention of transporting them up to the strip mine at Chongju.
She hadn’t found anything interesting on the North Korean rail network, but she was holding out hope that some new sat images due in the next few minutes might give her a clearer picture of the mine itself.
She glanced at the time, and looked up from her computer monitor to see Colonel Mike Peters storming her way.
“Hi, Mike.”
“Come with me.”
“Sorry, boss, I can’t go right now, we’re about to get the latest Chongju images from NRO.”
“This isn’t a request. You and me have been ordered to go to the bubble on five.”
“Holy crap,” Brawley said, standing up from her desk as she did so. “Are we in trouble?”
“Dunno. I know we will be if we aren’t there in about two minutes.”
—
Brawley and Peters were led into the secure communications room, known as the bubble. They sat down in front of a monitor that displayed the image of an empty desk. Behind it was a sign that said OSAN AB.
After a minute they saw some moving shadows off to the side of the desk on the monitor. The two NGA employees looked at each other in confusion.
After a minute more Peters uttered a tentative “Hello?”
Almost instantly, Mary Pat Foley, the director of national intelligence, sat down at the desk. Her eyes were to a point off screen, and it quickly became apparent someone was talking to her. She nodded, then looked at the monitor in front of her. She seemed rushed and concerned, and this made Annette Brawley absolutely terrified.
Foley said, “Okay. Sorry, I don’t know your names.”
Peters spoke for both himself and his employee. “Madame Director. I’m Colonel Michael Peters of NGA and this is Annette Brawley, an analyst in my office. How can we be of service?”
“Your desk has developed the information on the rare earth mineral mine and processing facility in Chongju, DPRK?”
“Yes, Madame Director,” Peters said.
Brawley detected nervousness in her boss’s voice.
Someone off camera spoke to Director Foley, and she nodded.
“I am told you, Ms. Brawley, know more about this area than anyone else in the U.S. intelligence community.”
Brawley had no idea if that was true, because she had no idea what other operations were going on in that area. She only knew about the mines. She replied, “I have focused on the northwestern mountains and foothills of DPRK for over two years.”
Foley nodded. “What I am about to tell you both is code-word-classified.”
Brawley nodded slowly; she felt sweat dripping down the back of her neck.
Foley said, “We had a CIA officer on the ground in Chongju. Last night he was compromised during extraction. Right now he is in the wind, and we think it is possible he is injured.”
Brawley’s lips moved, forming the words Oh my God, although she made no sound.
Peters asked, “Do we know anything about what type of vehicle he is driving?”
“He was in an SUV of local manufacture. That vehicle has been destroyed by helicopter gunfire.”
“Was he inside?”
“SIGINT says the North Koreans are tearing up the countryside looking for someone. We hope it’s him. We were tracking him with a satellite, but we lost him after DPRK helicopters destroyed the vehicle he was traveling in. We caught a heat register of a lone individual nearby after the attack, but we lost the signature.”
“No comms, I take it,” Peters said.
“Unfortunately, we have no communication with him at this point. We do not know his location. All of his extraction options, it appears from NRO’s and CIA’s reading of the satellite images available to us, are closed off. We don’t know what he can do, and we don’t know what he will do.”
Brawley nodded. “We should have the newest daylight images in less than five minutes. If there has been anomalous police, government, or military activity in the area, maybe I can find evidence of it. Use that as a starting point to know where to look for . . .” She searched for the term. “The officer.”
Foley said, “The officer’s code name is Avalanche. He is an American citizen of Chinese descent.”
Brawley raised a hand. “If we find him, or evidence of where he is . . . is there something that can be done for him?”
Foley’s lips tightened, a pained expression. “Frankly, Ms. Brawley, I have no idea. Our options are extremely limited. But if we can’t even find Avalanche, I can guarantee he has no chance
whatsoever.”
Brawley nodded. “I’ll find him.” She didn’t know why she said it, but once it came out of her mouth she knew she had to come through.
—
Adam Yao pedaled the bike with his right leg while his left stuck out in front of him. The swelling in his knee made it impossible to bend his leg, so slow, painful, one-legged biking was all that was available to him.
He’d stolen the bike in a tiny suburb of Sonchon City by picking the lock on a bike rack, and then he’d ridden as fast as he could with one leg, mostly on dirt roads, and even on fields and hillsides. It was slow going, he might have been averaging three miles an hour tops, but he had no choice but to push on.
He knew his only chance was to get to and then over the Yalu River. Getting to it would be tough. There were patrols on the highways and in the little towns, and he had spent the early-morning hours ducking helos that crisscrossed the sky. Once daylight came in a few hours, it would be even tougher for him. If he wasn’t in a good hide site by sunup he wouldn’t have a chance in hell.
And getting over the Yalu would be even harder. There were bridges, but they would be well guarded. The current was known to be impossible to swim, and any ferryboats, even the kinds used by smugglers, would most likely be known to the North Korean government, and therefore monitored now that the DPRK knew there was an enemy agent in their area.
His leg was bleeding from a gash next to the knee. He needed stitches for sure, and he needed to elevate it and apply pressure, but he’d done nothing more than tear off a piece of his shirt and tie it over the wound. It continued to pump blood, and Adam wondered how long it would take for him to weaken from the blood loss.
Adam was a smart guy, which meant he knew he was fucked. But what choice did he have? He just kept pumping the pedal on the right side of the bike, up and down, trying to get as far north as possible before daylight.
—
Annette Brawley sat in the bubble, in front of the monitor that connected her via videoconference to Osan Air Base in South Korea, and looked at her laptop. Mary Pat Foley sat on the other end of the connection, a laptop in front of her as well, and together they looked at a series of satellite pictures resident on their computers. Annette could make notes on her computer with a stylus, and Mary Pat would immediately see the notations on her images.
Annette said, “Look here. A police car and several people standing around.”
“What is that?”
“That’s a bicycle rack outside an apartment building. This is on the outskirts of Sonchon, not far from where Avalanche disappeared. I think someone stole a bike. Theft in North Korea like that is highly rare, because stealing a bike over there will get you executed. My assumption is Avalanche took it as a means of transportation. And from here he went north.”
“How do you know that?”
“West is the ocean. East is the entire nation of North Korea. South is the majority of the military in pursuit of him. North is the Yalu River, but on the other side of that is China. He has bad options in each direction, but nothing will look more promising than north.”
Mary Pat said, “Okay. Go on.”
“We estimate his rate on a bicycle on the back roads to be seven miles an hour. I base this on the movements of other men around his age and their progress when moving north. Actually, the average is closer to ten, depending on the bicycle, but we know Avalanche would be avoiding checkpoints and population centers, so we shave off thirty percent.”
Annette Brawley moved the image far to the north, then enhanced the image even more. It was some sort of an open field, a dirt road running to the south of it, that much was plain.
Foley saw nothing in the field. “What am I looking at?”
“The fact that this is empty. This is at seven a.m. Well after the time we would expect him to arrive if he was coming here.”
“Why do you think he would be coming here, specifically?”
Brawley switched the image. “Because of this.” It was the same location as the last image, with one exception.
Foley looked at the picture. “Is that a bicycle? Lying in the field?”
“It’s a bicycle in a rice paddy, on its side. And it’s not just any bicycle. This is a Kalmaegi—they are made at Life Detention Settlement Number 25, up in North Hamgyong Province. It’s the highest-quality local brand used in North Korea. There is a waiting list for these bikes, three or four years, and that’s if you are lucky and you have the money. I can’t say no one in North Korea would ever leave a Kalmaegi lying around like this, but I will say no one in this poor mountainous area would.
“And there’s more. This showed up between eight and nine a.m. Much later than we thought he would arrive, even considering his environment.”
“What does that mean to you?”
“Significant injury,” Brawley said gravely.
“So . . . where is he now?”
“If he had been captured we would expect to see vehicle tracks leading into this rice paddy. I checked, the paddies aren’t flooded, but the ground is very wet from the spring rains. Truck tires would remain for weeks this time of the year. Even if he was picked up by a group of men on foot, we would see some disturbance. But there’s nothing.”
“If he walked off, would we see that?”
“No. The resolution won’t pick up a single set of footprints.” Brawley smiled. “I wish. No, it won’t even pick up the disturbance of one body going through waist-high foliage or crops. Even if it was hundreds of yards of trail, it’s just too narrow and subtle to show up.”
“So, I’ll ask again. Where is he?”
Brawley used the laser pointer to touch a crescent-shaped grove of trees at the edge of the Yalu River. The roof of a tiny fishing shack was apparent at one side, but there was no sign of life anywhere else in the area.
“I think he is in these trees. I’ve checked the Chinese side of the river and it is crawling with border guards. I don’t see indication that anything exciting is happening as far as they are concerned, so he hasn’t crossed.
“That leaves these trees. If he is healthy enough to try it, he might be waiting for nightfall to cross. But there are whirlpools and relatively strong currents this time of year.”
“How do we know that?”
“There are links on Map of the World. Americans have traveled the Yalu and then reported it. Just adventure travelers in rafts and kayaks, not spooks. Crazy if you think about it, but there are some crazy folks out there, and we benefit from them. If he does try to swim or float across . . .” Brawley hesitated. “If he tries, I don’t think Avalanche will make it.”
Mary Pat Foley said, “This is really incredible work, Ms. Brawley.”
“Thank you,” Annette replied. “I just wish I could do more for Avalanche.”
“Someone else needs to do something for Avalanche now. If we get him out, it will be because of you.”
—
One hour later Annette Brawley was shutting down her computer for the night. She wanted to get home to make dinner for Stephanie. Her daughter would complain about it, but Annette knew the best thing she could do to help Stephanie through her tumultuous teenage years—years made more tumultuous by the death of her father—was to be there for her, even if she didn’t appreciate the effort.
Just as she stood and reached for her purse, the phone on her desk rang; maybe this would be Stephanie, letting her know she wouldn’t be home for dinner. She liked to wait until right before her mom left work to tell her.
Annette answered her phone. “Brawley.”
“Please hold for the President of the United States.”
“Excuse me?” There was no response. Her heart skipped a beat, but quickly she came to her senses. “Colonel Peters, that’s not funny. I’ve got work to do.”
Just then the unmistakable voice of President Jack Ryan c
ame over her line. She looked around the room, motioning frantically to two coworkers still in the office, but neither noticed her.
“Ms. Brawley. Jack Ryan here.”
She cleared her throat. “Mr. President.”
“Quick question. In about ten minutes I’m going to be sitting with the president of the People’s Republic of China. It is crucial that I give him good information regarding the CIA asset on the ground in the DPRK. Director Foley told me your conclusions, and they sound solid to me, but I’m going to put you on the spot here. How certain are you that he’s right where you say he is?”
Annette realized her hand was shaking the telephone receiver. She pushed it tighter against her ear. She looked at the picture of Ryan she kept on her desk. “Mr. President, I believe he went into those woods. One hundred percent. And I don’t believe anyone has gone in to get him. Again, I’m one hundred percent confident in that. The only unknown is whether or not he is in the Yalu River. I truly hope he is still in those trees, but the only way to know for sure is to go in there and look for him.”
The President’s reply came quickly, like he was rushed. “You’ve done some good work. I wish I had had some of the technology you possess back in my analyst days, but I know enough to know more noise doesn’t necessarily mean more music. You’ve got a ton of things you have to work through, and I’m impressed.”
“Thank you, sir. It is wonderful to be appreciated.”
“I know what you mean. Thankless work most of the time.” He paused. “So . . . thanks.”
“I’m sorry about Mexico. Are you feeling better?”
“Every day. Gotta run. Good-bye.”
The line went dead in Annette Brawley’s hand, and within seconds she began questioning whether or not the conversation had even taken place.
75
President Ryan had spent less than ninety minutes in direct talks with Chinese president Ling, but already he felt he had accomplished more substantive work than he had in his past two years of bilateral dealings with the often obstinate and sometimes belligerent superpower.