Chapter Twenty-Five
Incheon, South Korea
June 12 -- 00:14 UTC/9:14 am local time
The drive from Seoul to Incheon would have taken about half an hour, but they got there considerably quicker by flying in on a KUH-1 Surion transport helicopter; originally a military helicopter, as Violet Rhee explained to David Diehl on the flight, but the NIS had acquired two of the choppers for themselves, repainting them white with blue trim.
It had been a tip received by the NIS the previous day that was responsible for their flight to Incheon. An anonymous source had said they would find the Violet Dawn member known as Cobra at an isolated house in the northwest section of the city.
They had landed at Incheon International Airport shortly after seven in the morning. David Diehl and Violet Rhee had brought three NIS agents along with them. They were met at the airport by a Captain and four officers from the National Police. From there they had driven to the SWAT assembly point. Incheon’s one SWAT squadron had been supplemented by a second squadron from Seoul, which had arrived earlier, in the dark hours before dawn. There were more than two dozen uniformed National Police officers on standby, ready to swoop in and secure the scene when the operation was over.
Now the time was at hand; the signal came in the form of the code word--which translated to “brush fire”--transmitted over police band radio. The two SWAT squads moved in with three armored personnel carriers in the lead. David hung back at safe distance with Captain Rhee and the NIS agents. As soon as the APCs were in view of the target house someone inside the house opened fire from a second floor window. The police returned fire, and several windows of the house were shattered by gunfire. The day quickly turned into a cacophonous symphony of noise. Gunfire was met with gunfire. One of the APCs drove right into the house, punching a large hole into the structure, and backed out while firing its mounted 7.62 mm machine gun.
David frowned when he saw this. He wondered if the SWAT squads had been thoroughly advised of the importance of catching as many suspects alive as possible, especially the operative known as Cobra. Dead men told no tales, and therefore provided no intel.
After the APC pulled out of the new opening it had made in the house, and after its machine gun had fallen silent, the SWAT officers charged into the house. For ten tense minutes David and the others who had stayed back from the battle could only listen as at least a dozen separate firefights took place within the house. The only reports of what the situation inside the house was like came by way of shouted reports over the police radio, but David didn’t understand any of what was being said and no one bothered to translate.
When the battle was over David and the crew from the NIS were called in. When he entered the house through the convenient entrance created by the APC the first thing that struck David were the moans and groans of wounded men. He quickly assessed that the firefight’s bark had been worse than its bite, and that there had only been three deaths, one of which was a SWAT member. There were, however, many who were injured. A medical team was rushed in to treat the wounded. The three NIS agents who had accompanied David and Violet from Seoul began a search of the house.
Violet Rhee moved to a group uninjured of men who had been lined up against one wall in a sitting position with their hands cuffed behind their backs. She addressed them on Korean. David knew that she was asking them where Cobra was; the problem was that nobody at the NIS knew what the man looked like, and they needed cooperation from these men to know if Cobra was among them, and if so which one of them was him. None of the men responded to Violet’s barrage of questions. She turned to David.
“Maybe our best chance will be to question some of the wounded men once they are stable,” she said. “They will probably be given something for their pain, which will hopefully lower their defenses.”
“Let me have a try,” David said.
He walked over to the handcuffed men, picking out one of the tougher looking men among them.
“Do you speak English?” he asked the man.
The guy looked at him, smirked, and looked away.
“Ask him where Cobra is,” David said to Violet.
“I already did.”
“Ask again.”
She asked the man in Korean. His only response was to spit near David’s feet, the glob just missing his shoes. David immediately grabbed the man’s head and slammed it against the wall. The cuffed man’s comrades raised their voices in protest. One of the SWAT team members made a move toward David, but Violet waved him off.
“Ask him again,” David said.
Violet repeated the question. The man hissed something in Korean.
“What did he say?” David asked.
“Nothing good,” she answered.
David looked at the cuffed man, who stared back at him defiantly.
“Let’s try someone else,” David said.
He moved away from the row of handcuffed men and looked over the wounded men who were being seen to by paramedics. Some of the wounded had already been evacuated, but there were still at least a half dozen laid out on the floor. David knelt next to one of them. The paramedic who was attending the man started to say something, but a sharp word from Captain Rhee cut him off. The paramedic looked first at Violet, and then at another member of the medical team, evidently his superior. This man simply nodded his head, and the paramedic stepped away. David looked down at the wounded man.
“Ask him,” David said.
Violet was standing over David’s shoulder. She addressed the injured man, demanding that he tell them where Cobra was. The man groaned a little, but said nothing. David looked the man over. His leg was injured; his left pant leg had been cut away, and David could see a bloody hole torn through the man’s left thigh.
“I need a latex glove,” David said.
Violet passed on the request. The paramedic who had stepped aside a moment before handed David a glove. David slipped it on; it was a bit of a tight fit, but that didn’t matter. He put his gloved hand to the wound and pressed down. The man screamed in pain.
“Tell us,” David said. “Where is he?”
The man cursed in Korean; David didn’t need to speak the language to get the gist of what the man was saying. David pressed against the man’s wound again, and blood seeped out from it. The paramedic protested, but David ignored his exhortations.
“Where is Cobra?” David asked.
Violet repeated the question, imploring the man to answer. The man blurted something out.
“What did he say?” David asked.
“He said that Cobra is gone,” Violet said.
She asked another question, and the man answered her immediately.
“He says that Cobra escaped during the firefight using a secret passage.”
“Where is the passage?” David asked.
Violet repeated the question, and the man pointed with one outstretched hand as his compatriots yelled curses at him for talking. David turned to see what the man was pointing at, and saw that he was pointing toward a small, broken down sofa that was pressed up against one wall. David was confused. It was Violet Rhee who understood; she ran to the sofa and pulled it aside, so that she could see the floor beneath.
“It’s a trap door,” she said.
David stood and walked over to her, leaving the wounded man in the care of the paramedic once again. David bent down and grabbed onto the small metal ring that served as a handle, pulling the door up and open. There was a short stairway leading down into darkness.
“Let’s go down the rabbit hole,” David said.
Both he and Violet pulled out there service weapons. Violet called for a group of SWAT team members to follow as she and David climbed down into a low passageway. David, who was in the lead, called for a light, and in moments a flashlight was handed forward to him. He flicked it on and pointed it down the passageway, but the light wasn’t strong enough to reach the far end of it. They started forward, David and Violet Rhee followed by six suited-up SWAT officers. T
he passage was narrow, so they had to move in single file.
The passage was long and straight. Soon the flashlight illuminated a wall that had a ladder bolted into it, with a round metal hatch door overhead. David handed the flashlight to Captain Rhee. The ceiling was low enough so that he didn’t have to climb up even one rung to reach the door. He pushed up against it, and it gave way, letting in a thin slash of light. He thrust hard and the door swung completely open, letting daylight flood into the passageway. David climbed the rungs, and Violet climbed after him. They were standing in a vacant, weedy lot what was fenced in on all sides.
David saw a gate in the fence and ran to it. There had been a lock on it, but the lock had been busted, and now lay broken on the ground. He pushed the swinging fence gate open and stepped out, his weapon held ready. He came out onto a back street that led away both to the left and right. He turned to find Violet Rhee standing behind him, and beyond here a couple of the SWAT team members were standing near the hole in the ground from which they had just emerged.
“The bastard got away,” David said.
One of the SWAT team members unclipped his radio and held it up to his ear. The man called for Captain Rhee and she went to him. He handed her the radio, and she listened for a moment. David joined her.
“What now?” David asked.
“It’s Agent Kim,” she said. “They finished their search of the house. All they found were a cache of guns, and a few knives.”
“So we got nothing,” David said. “Damn it!”