Northern Province
South Africa
The sky turned dark as a storm rolled in off the Indian Ocean.
Out to sea, looking like a flock of malevolent, prehistoric birds, six large, dark shapes dropped from the leaden clouds, diving straight toward the churning gray seas below. Straightening out barely fifty meters above the waves, the helicopters switched off their running lights one by one; darkness quickly enveloped them.
Sohn Gun-Woo briefly looked down and studied his instrument panel for the thousandth time since taking off. He had spent countless hours over the past ten years flying at night wearing night vision goggles. For Gun-Woo, the act now seemed as natural to him as breathing.
A former North Korean Army Major, Sohn was a natural at flying the ungainly-looking MI-8 Hip helicopter. Outside, it had started to rain, dropping visibility to a few hundred meters, but that was not Sohn’s biggest concern. He looked left and right over his shoulders and was relieved to see that his wingmen, two additional MI-8s, were flying close by in a tight V-formation, with his own craft in the lead. Sohn knew flying this fast and close was dangerous to try during the day. However, at night, even wearing NVGs, it could be a sure-fire recipe for disaster. One small error by any one of the pilots, and they would all crash into one another and end up as a flaming ball of wreckage, plummeting toward the Indian Ocean. Flying in such a tight formation required nerves of steel, and had taken weeks of practice to perfect. His co-pilot, a former Ethiopian Air Force pilot, interrupted his thoughts, speaking over the intercom to say that they were now ten minutes out from their objective. Sohn acknowledged the information, and casually dipped the nose of his helicopter. As one, the formation dove closer to the waves to avoid detection as they crossed over into South African territory.
Flying barely one hundred meters behind the three troop-carrying helicopters were two additional empty MI-8s and one massive Hind-D attack helicopter, a monstrous Soviet-era helicopter that looked more like a medieval dragon than the sleeker attack helicopters used throughout the West. The Hind-D was armed with a 12.7mm machine gun under the nose cone; mounted on its small wings were four 57mm rocket pods, two on either side. Finally, on each wingtip were several AT-6 Spiral anti-tank missiles, just in case the assault force ran into anything larger than a truck on their objective. It truly was a machine made for killing.
Sohn reached down and flipped a switch on his instrument panel. In the back of the helicopter’s spacious cabin, a red light came on, warning his passengers to prepare for landing. So far, it had gone as planned, but now Sohn felt his stomach tighten as he grew nervous. He searched the deteriorating night sky for their planned landing zone.
Nestled between two hills was an insignificant farming community of barely one hundred souls. Many of the local farmers had lived there for generations, making a good living by raising and selling cattle. A few kilometers south of the village was a small, isolated ranch that had been abandoned by its original owner. About five years ago, a quiet stranger from Johannesburg bought the farm and had it completely refurbished.
The front door to the home opened. Jan Dornberg, a balding man with a large belly that hung over his belt, stepped onto the front porch of the old-fashioned-looking wooden farmhouse. He felt the cool night air on his face. The smell of rain was in the air; he knew that it would not be long before it stormed. Calmly looking down at his watch, he saw that he had barely five minutes before the planned arrival of the helicopters. A former member of the South African Special Forces, Dornberg was not what he appeared to be. To the local farmers of the tiny village of Georgetown, he was a simple, but reclusive, farmer who never bothered his neighbors, and in turn, they never paid much attention to him.
Inside, he felt nothing, nothing at all at the horrific act he was about to commit. His beloved wife of twenty years had been murdered during a home invasion in Durban nearly eight years ago. Ever since then, Dornberg had been shuffled around from one unimportant desk job to another. That was until five years ago, when he ended up on the farm as a glorified night watchman. Approaching mandatory retirement, Dornberg had become an alcoholic and had slowly grown more and more disenchanted with his lot in the world. From out of the blue, a mysterious and beautiful brown-eyed stranger approached him one day. The stranger asked him about making five million dollars to betray the country that no longer gave a damn about him. He never once hesitated.
Trying to act casually, he walked over to where two men were idly standing in front of his farmhouse, smoking cigars and laughing about something. Dornberg suspected they were talking about him; his blood started to boil. Damned ingrates. He knew from experience that both men, who were security personnel, carried semi-automatic pistols hidden carefully under their scruffy blue work clothes. Dornberg silently cursed his luck. Once a month, like clockwork, an inspection team disguised as farmhands came up from Johannesburg to check on the security of the farm and its hidden cache. He thought he had it all worked out to the minute, but these troublesome men had come one week after the last team had visited, thoroughly screwing up his plan. As he walked toward the unsuspecting men, using the shadows to cloak his approach, Dornberg drew his silenced, South African-made Vektor 9mm pistol from inside his bulky, dark-green jacket. Keeping the gun discreetly hidden behind his back, Dornberg, with a pleasant smile on his face, waved at the two unwary guards. They simply nodded in recognition and turned their backs on him to continue their conversation, as the first flash of jagged, silver lightning ripped across the darkened sky, sending eerily shaped shadows dancing across the vast, open plain.
His mouth was dry with fear; he could feel his heart jackhammering away inside his chest. Dornberg closed the distance, quickly looking around to make sure no one else was watching. He brought his pistol up and, in rapid succession, fired off two bullets into the skulls of the guards, killing them both instantly. Dornberg had never killed a man before. Looking down at the dead bodies, a cold sweat wrapped itself around his body. He struggled to keep himself from throwing up. He took a deep breath to calm his fraying nerves, strode over, kicked the bodies to make sure they were dead and then dragged the lifeless bodies behind some nearby bushes. Satisfied that no one would see the corpses until it was all over, Dornberg strolled back calmly to the farmhouse. When he did not hear any alarms coming from the small command post hidden deep below the building, Dornberg knew that he had pulled it off. Now all he had to do was wait for his accomplices to arrive.
Another bright flash of jagged, silver lightning lit up the dark night sky, followed by a deep boom of thunder in the distance, startling Dornberg. This can’t end soon enough, he thought. Reaching deep inside his jacket, he retrieved three small, handheld infrared strobe lights. When he looked down, Dornberg saw that his hands were shaking, and his stomach felt like he was going to lose the battle and be sick any second. He fought the guilt and growing doubt nagging at his conscience, and took one last, long look around to make sure it was safe, before activating the markers. With an underhand pitch, learned from playing cricket in his youth, Dornberg threw the markers out onto the open, grassy field directly in front of the farm. The markers were invisible to the naked eye; only someone wearing night-vision gear could even hope to detect them blinking on and off. The approaching storm clouds thundered ominously. Dornberg carefully removed the silencer from his pistol and put them both away in his jacket. Taking out a cigarette, Dornberg lit it. He had done his part; now, it was up to the others. He took a seat on the deck and waited for the approaching helicopters to arrive.
Inside the lead helicopter, Colonel Chang Ji-Hun saw the warning light come on, bathing the cabin in a deep-red hue. Calmly, he removed his headset and stood inside the spacious interior of the MI-8 Hip. With his thick mop of salt-and-pepper hair and a black eye patch over his left eye, Chang looked more like a seventeenth-century pirate than a highly skilled mercenary. Raising his hand, Chang indicated to his men that they were two minutes out from their objective. Silently, his team all gave him a quick th
umbs-up in unison and started to unbuckle themselves from their mesh canvas seats along the walls of the chopper. Chang, a former North Korean Special Operative, who saw the folly of working for despots when he could be deciding his own fate, looked into the faces of his men. Most were in their early-to-late thirties. All were veterans of many years with the North Korean, East European, or African Special Forces. Many of his men had taken part in clandestine raids to conduct sabotage or gather intelligence throughout the world. Their cool and confident demeanor showed on their expressionless faces.
Chang was wearing full battledress, with a chest rig that held ten AK magazines, along with numerous fragmentation grenades. He walked to the back of the helicopter so he would be the first man off once they hit the ground. Chang had never failed in a mission, and he knew that this was the most lucrative mission he had ever planned in his entire life. He had studied the objective for weeks and was confident that he knew everything there was to know about it. He did not expect much in the way of resistance, but he never knew for certain, until he arrived at the position. Chang knew that no plan, no matter how carefully thought out, ever survived contact with the enemy. He, like his men, had to be able to adapt and overcome their opponent quickly, if they were to pull off this lightning-fast raid.
Major Sohn’s hands were starting to get sweaty inside his skintight leather gloves. Looking into the night, he was becoming concerned. Although equipped with a state-of-the-art GPS system, the only way he knew that their contact was waiting and that it was safe to land was via the IR strobes. He was positive that he should have seen the IR markers by now. Sohn, fearing that something had gone wrong on the objective, was about to break radio silence, when suddenly he caught a glimpse of something flashing out of the corner of his eye.
With a relieved smile on his face, he saw that the IR indicators were flashing on and off, as bright as a bonfire in the night, indicating that it was safe to approach the farm. He let out a deep sigh, and banked the helicopter over, aiming for the beacons. Now that they were mere seconds away from landing, he broke radio silence for the first time since leaving base. Sohn sent the code word Eagle three times over the radio to ensure that his message was heard. He knew that no reply was coming back. Sohn once more switched the radio off and started to slow the helicopter down so he could land smoothly in the field directly in front of the farmhouse. As they had practiced numerous times on an isolated farm in Mozambique, Sohn’s Hip helicopter would land first, rapidly disembark his men, keep rolling forward, and quickly take off, to be followed by the next chopper waiting in line. If things went well, all of Chang’s team would be on the ground and in action in less than sixty seconds.
A sound caught Dornberg’s ear: a rhythmic beating, somewhere out in the dark, growing closer by the second. His pulse raced as he saw the helicopters emerge out of the rain, like monstrous bats sent from hell itself. Though the glass windshield was blackened out, Dornberg could see a faint silhouette of the lead pilot, bathed in a red light, as he brought his helicopter into land. The rotor wash from the powerful blades stirred up dirt and grit on the field, showering Dornberg with small, annoying pieces of debris. He barely heard the yelling coming from behind him over the noise of the helicopter. He turned and saw two guards armed with assault rifles emerge from the front door of the house, waving at the approaching swarm of helicopters. Without even bothering to aim, Dornberg brought his pistol out of his jacket and emptied an entire magazine into the two men, sending their lifeless bodies tumbling down the front steps onto the dirt. All pretense of duplicity was gone now. Dornberg tossed the empty gun onto the ground and picked up an assault rifle belonging to one of the dead guards. Checking that it was loaded, Dornberg stood, staring into the rain, watching the lead helicopter, closing in fast.
Inside the Hip’s cabin, a green light flashed on. Instantly, Colonel Chang pulled up on the latch holding closed the large, bulbous rear doors of the Hip. No sooner had the helicopter touched down when Chang kicked open the doors, jumped out, and led his men out of the back of the chopper and onto the open field and into the cool rain. Quickly fanning out, Chang’s men took up positions and waited a brief moment until their helicopter lifted off into the night, its rotors momentarily blinding them with a storm kicked up by the powerful downdraft. Aware that another Hip was mere seconds behind them, Chang stood and, with a wave of his hand, his men rose like wraiths coming out of the ground, and rushed the brightly lit farmhouse.
A large man moved to meet Chang; he suspected that this man was their contact, and not an enemy target. He was about to call out to the man, when a shot rang out from a window in the farmhouse. The large man seemed to stagger forward. A moment later, blood burst forth from his mouth; he fell to his knees and tumbled sideways onto the wet ground. Chang ran past the body; the man did not matter to him, but his mission tonight meant everything. He had no time for the dead and dying; that would come later. He’d barely made it ten meters, when all hell broke loose. Fire erupted from the front windows of the farmhouse. Men screamed and fell. Chang’s well-trained mercenaries reacted and promptly returned fire. Breaking down into two-man fire teams, they continued to push forward; one man fired while the other dashed forward a few meters and started to fire at their enemy. The noise was overwhelming. The sound of Chang’s men returning fire, combined with the rotor blades from the incoming Hips, made it impossible for Chang to communicate with his men. Unlike American Special Forces, not all of Chang’s men had night-vision gear, and only the squad leaders had personal radios. None of this bothered him. It was his decision to keep things simple. All the men on the mission tonight were highly trained, and had been handpicked by Chang. He was confident that they could easily deal with any opposition that they might find here tonight.
With a loud whoosh, the night sky lit up, as rockets from their supporting Hind helicopter tore into the front windows of the farmhouse. Blinding explosions ripped open the front of the building, as if it were built of paper. Chang instinctively ducked, as glass and wood flew everywhere. A large chunk of the front door sailed over his head and smashed into splinters on the ground behind him. Looking back, Chang was relieved to see the last Hip leaving the landing zone. A smile broke out on his blackened face. He now had all fifty-five men of his mercenary team on the ground. The gunfire slackened from the burning farmhouse. Chang stood, and without any care for his own well-being, called for his men to stand and follow him. A loud cheer rang out as Chang and his men dashed forward, firing small bursts from their assault rifles into the wrecked house at any target of opportunity.
Chang was the first man to reach the steps leading into the building. He pulled his AK-74 tight into his shoulder as he advanced over the destroyed remains of the front of the burning farmhouse. He paused for a moment to see if anyone could have survived the initial rocket attack. He decided not to take any chances, and hurled a Russian-made, anti-personnel grenade through a blown-out window. Chang heard it bounce along the floor; three seconds later, it went off. The noise and concussion of the blast rocked the shattered wooden walls of the wrecked house.
Two mercenaries rushed over and joined Chang. Just as they had rehearsed at their mock-up in Mozambique, he waved at his men to kick in what was left of the shattered door and then, as a group, they dashed inside the smoldering house. The interior of the old farmhouse was a complete wreck. Several mangled bodies and destroyed pieces of furniture were scattered across the hardwood floor. Chang took a step forward, but had to brace himself from slipping in a puddle of blood as he stepped past a severed limb. Looking for any further sign of opposition, Chang saw none.
A moan rang out from the far side of the room.
Chang turned and walked over, to see who had survived the volley of missiles from the Hind attack helicopter. He saw a young black woman in South African military fatigues, her round face covered in blood, struggling to get up on her hands and knees. She was in shock and did not realize that Chang was standing over her. Seeing that she was
the only survivor, Chang lowered his weapon until the barrel rested on the back of her head. Without flinching, he fired two rounds into the woman’s skull, splattering her blood and brains all over the floor. He did not care about the cold-blooded murder of the girl; it was no more troubling to him than stepping on a bug with his boot. Cradling his AK in his arms, Chang headed to the kitchen. All around him, his men broke into their pre-determined search teams, and started their deadly and methodical clearance of the house. A shot rang out somewhere in the building, but was quickly and abruptly silenced by the overwhelming firepower from Chang’s highly trained killers.
With a smile on his hard face, Chang let himself relax for a moment. So far, so good; it was all going to plan. Chang, accompanied by his radio operator, strode into the kitchen and stopped by the fuse box on the wall. Reaching over, he found that it was locked.
Chang’s radio operator stepped forward, reached into a pocket, pulled out a skeleton key, and quickly popped open the locked box. Chang grabbed a Maglite from his chest-rig and shone it inside the fuse box. He counted the fuses until he found the sixth one. He pressed it in with his thumb and was rewarded by the sound of a hidden door sliding open beside the stove.
“Ingenious,” said Chang in perfect English, as he stared at the open elevator. “Call in the exterminators,” said Chang to his radioman.
A minute later, two men dressed from head to toe in chemical warfare suits and wearing military gas masks walked into the kitchen. Chang nodded to them and pointed at the open elevator. Both men returned the nod and stepped into the elevator. They both held canisters of deadly Sarin nerve gas. Chang closed the door behind them and looked down at his watch. So far, they had been on the ground for no more than five minutes. They had twenty-five more before any police, alerted by local farmers, would arrive. While he and some of his men cleared the house, Chang knew that his deputy was busy establishing a defensive perimeter around the building to keep the authorities at bay for as long as it took.
A huge, broad man with short black hair and a long scar across his left cheek entered the kitchen. Chang nodded at Ivan Kolikov, an ex-Russian Spetsnaz sergeant, and his deputy for the raid. “Are the bug specialists in the hole?” asked Kolikov, looking at the closed elevator door.
“Yes, and I suspect that we shall hear from them shortly,” responded Chang, watching the time burn away on his watch.
“Good. I’ll get the bomb experts up here, and then call in the two empty choppers,” said Kolikov with a mock salute before heading back out into the pouring rain.
Seconds later, the door to the elevator slid open; a dark-skinned man stepped out without his gas mask on. “It’s clear down there,” said the man in a thick Somali accent.
“How many?” asked Chang.
The Somali mercenary held up two fingers, indicating how many South African security personnel were now dead.
Chang thanked the man. He had expected more, but most must have died under the rocket barrage from the Hind. Chang stepped into the elevator and pressed the only button on the wall. A moment later, he felt the elevator start to descend. From studying the secret files provided to him by Alexandra Romanov, Chang knew the basement level built thirty meters below the surface held South Africa’s last line of defense. Something that had been hidden away for years and was not supposed to exist: two nuclear bombs.
Built during the Cold War, South Africa once had had an arsenal of six known and two undisclosed nuclear bombs. With the approaching end of Apartheid, South Africa openly and willingly dismantled its six bombs and declared itself a nuclear-free state. However, even the new leadership of the country saw the wisdom of keeping a secret nuclear deterrent, and continued with the clandestine maintenance of two nuclear bombs. It was a decision they would now live to regret.
Chang moved out of the elevator and was met by the other member of the exterminator team. With a quick handshake, he stepped over the dead bodies of two South African bomb technicians, their vacant, accusing eyes staring up at him. With a grin from ear to ear, he walked straight over to the two nuclear bombs. Chang saw that the white-painted bombs were three meters long and strapped down onto sturdy metal tables. He knew that these bombs were designed to be delivered from the air.
The sound of men chatting away excitedly as they exited the elevator caught Chang’s attention. They nodded their heads in greeting and moved past him, carefully unlocking the bombs from their cradles so they could be quickly placed onto the waiting heavy-duty carts for transfer to the surface.
Chang watched his men work as fast as they could. They knew just as well as he did that time was not on their side, but they could not afford to be sloppy around such lethal devices. Ten minutes passed; the first of the bombs was on its way to the surface. Chang looked at his watch and cursed. They had, at most, five minutes before the first police car arrived. He left his technicians to their work, jumped into the elevator and headed up to the surface to prepare a reception.
Outside, the rain had stopped. The air smelled fresh and appealing to Chang after being cooped up for the past ten minutes in the smoldering farmhouse’s basement.
Out of the night came one of Chang’s helicopters. It smoothly pivoted around in the air and landed with its rear doors already open. Two men waited inside the Hip, ready to receive its deadly cargo. A minute later, the first bomb was dragged out of the house by a dozen of Chang’s men, who quickly loaded it onto the waiting MI-8. Chang watched with satisfaction as the helicopter lifted off into the darkness and headed to their rendezvous, a ship docked in an isolated cove on the coast of Southern Mozambique. Chang watched as a man ran over to him, excitedly pointing into the distance. Two police cars were racing down the dirt road toward the farm, their red roof lights flashing.
“Damn, I was hoping we would have avoided the authorities,” muttered Chang as he reached for the radio. Swiftly passing on orders, he turned to see his second empty Hip helicopter start to descend into the open field.
When the police cars were within two hundred meters of the farm, a pair of wire-guided, anti-tank rockets raced out of the pitch-black night sky and slammed into both vehicles, tearing them apart. Brilliant red fireballs shot into the sky, marking where the hapless cruisers had been demolished. Chang’s support Hind helicopter flew out of the night, straight over the top of the wreckage, and opened up with its cannons to ensure that no one survived the massacre.
Kolikov walked over to stand beside Chang. “Sir, the last bomb is on its way up.”
“Good news,” Chang replied, patting his subordinate’s arm. “Hurry, let’s get it loaded and get out of this godforsaken country.”
Five minutes later, with the second bomb secure, Chang stepped into the last helicopter. He took one final look around at the death and devastation that he and his men had wrought, and smiled to himself. After all, it wasn’t every day that you earned fifty million dollars for thirty minutes’ work.
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