Ian Slater: Payback

Aussie, however, saw the general’s concern. “I don’t like coincidences.”

“ ’Cept,” joshed Sal, “when you win a few bucks on the nags.”

“Nags?” said Choir disingenuously, adopting a confused air to lighten the sudden dark mood that the general had brought upon them. “ Nags? Are we talking about women or horses here?”

“I’ll tell Alexsandra you called her a nag,” said Aussie.

“Ah — in that case,” said Choir, “I withdraw my question. My apologies. Nevertheless, I think you’ll find that the HAN and our unflagged junk were nothing more than patrol vessels who happened upon us. Just think of how many patrol craft we have back in the States along our coasts.”

“Point taken,” said the general. “We probably would have seen more if it hadn’t been for the storm.”

“Oh, c’mon, guys,” Aussie challenged them. “Gimme a break! Storm, shorm…those two buckets were looking for an echo — not a surface ship but a submersible. What I mean is that someone must have seen us en route, via Hawaii. You can’t miss a friggin’ Galaxy landing in Honolulu. It’s the biggest bird we’ve got — can carry three Apaches fully armed and ready to go. So whoever saw us down their intel chain figured that that pallet drop — you know, the big fucking parachutes you can see for about a hundred fucking miles? — meant that something special was going aboard McCain . No one knew exactly what we had strapped to that pallet, not even the guys on McCain , because of the general’s neat mock-up job on the RS. But anyone who saw those big drogue chutes would have suspected that something out of the ordinary was going on aboard McCain . And if they don’t have a spy on that fucking Ullŭng Island, I’ll dance with Choir.”

“Then there has to be a spy on that island,” said Choir, “ ’cause I’m not dancing with Aussie.”

The others laughed, and even Aussie allowed his Welsh-American buddy a grin, but he was holding fast to his no-coincidence theory like a Jack Russell terrier.

“So a spy on Ullŭng,” continued Aussie, “sees the big drogue chutes but no choppers coming off the carrier.”

“ ’Cept,” interjected Sal, “for that one that had to save you from drowning. You know, when you saw that big shark ?”

“Oh, ho ho ho — very droll, Sal. I’m still not even with you, you prick!”

Aussie looked across at the general and tried, amidst the post-traumatic relief of the mission, to reinvigorate the discussion about whether or not the presence of the HAN and the junk had been coincidental. “So, if someone was watching the battle group and didn’t see any SpecOp chopper leaving McCain , only the regular combat-patrol quad, they would’ve twigged to the idea that whatever came down on the big pallet was a boat to be put over after dark. So they alert the NKA, who dispatches the HAN, courtesy of the PLA, and then the junk, who are already at sea because the rest of the coast patrol boats have had to run into port or get the shit knocked out of them by the Force 9.” Aussie paused. “Make sense?”

“Possible,” conceded Freeman. “You’re right about someone seeing the Galaxy. That was my main fear too. That’s why I went to so much damn trouble to get those fake engine mounts put on the RS under the all-weather wrap to make it look like a helo.”

“But,” contested Johnny Lee, “they wouldn’t have known exactly what to look for.”

“You’re right, Johnny,” interjected the general, “but Aussie’s point still holds. The HAN and junk would have been traversing the sea lanes not looking, but rather listening for us with their sonar. That’s how they got on to us, even if they didn’t know exactly what kind of craft we were in.”

Now a few of the other team members were starting to pay more attention to the general’s and Aussie’s doubts about the odds for or against coincidence.

“I think Aussie’s right,” said the general, “about someone probably having spied on us. In that case the crucial link in the spy chain would probably have been in Hawaii, where some NKA or affiliated agent who saw the Galaxy saw the RS being loaded, made me as the mission leader, and put out an all-points advisory, including any agents on Ullŭng Island, to look for the Galaxy.”

The general, unconsciously and uncharacteristically, was biting his lip before he added, “That island’s so damn strategic. There has to be a spy or spies on there.”

Sal was nodding his head in agreement now. “You got a point, General, and you too, Aussie, I have to admit. But hey — we got the job done, didn’t we?”

“Yeah,” said Aussie. “We aced the bastards because they didn’t expect there’d be a payback so soon after their bloody triple play. And,” Aussie continued, “they had no idea about our beautiful machine’s speed.”

“So then, what’s the problem?” pressed Sal.

“Excuse me,” put in Aussie, “but did you fall on your fucking head comin’ down that trail? The problem, boyo , as my Welsh warbler here would say, is what about next time we, or some other SpecFor team, has to go into the Dear Leader’s Hermit Kingdom? We need to root out that spy ring — all down the line.”

They all agreed, and Freeman said he’d start the wheels moving on it immediately, though the actual spy-busting job would be one for the FBI and Homeland Security.

“All right,” said Freeman. “I’ll make sure it goes out as an ‘Urgent’ to our intel guys in Honolulu. Ask them to do a frame-by-frame examination of the airport’s perimeter IR cameras the night we passed through. They might pick up something.”

“Yeah,” said Eddie Mervyn. “But Honolulu Airport’s so open, General. I mean, it’s so close to the civilian runways, anyone on a plane-haul tractor or in a mechanic’s uniform could wander around and take an infrared zoom shot. They sure as hell wouldn’t use a flash either.”

“So,” enjoined Freeman, “we’ll get the FBI and Homeland to do a check of all IR zoom lenses imported and sold in Honolulu. That kind of stuff, especially infrared and other night-vision equipment, has been carefully recorded since 9/11. And being an island, it’s a hell of a lot easier to keep track of what’s coming in and going out. If they can catch someone in Honolulu, it’ll break the chain.” The general paused. “The only other thing, gentlemen — and it’s concomitant with the question of coincidence — is that the NKA could have guesstimated from our first reported sonar position that we were heading for the area of Kosong, the warehouse, even though I had us on an indirect dogleg course for Beach 5. The question, then, is whether the North Koreans at the warehouse had time to fake us out.”

“Well, hell,” said Eddie Mervyn. “There was nothing fake about that firefight, nothing fake about that round Bone took.”

“I know that,” said the general testily. “I’m talking about them maybe, just maybe , having had time to switch the—”

“You mean,” cut in Johnny Lee, “you don’t think there’s a MANPAD in the box?”

Freeman’s jaw was tight. “I just don’t know, Johnny.”

“Well, shit,” said Aussie. “Let’s go open the friggin’ box.”

“Right,” said the general. “But in one of the Yorktown ’s armories. We’ll need a big pair of cutters. No rough-and-ready job, though. Remember, we don’t want to contaminate anything for the CIA’s forensics.”

“We’re outta here,” said Aussie. “Give me a hand with this damn—” He paused, his voice taking on a markedly ironic tone. “—this MANPAD- marked box. And Eddie, ask Yorktown ’s master chief if they have a good pair of flat-headed bolt cutters.”