Stephen Mertz - The Korean Intercept

Commander Scott's voice croaked thinly from the floor behind them. "I'll damn sure tell you what I want. We give these bastards nothing!" Scott remained stretched out on the earthen floor, too weak to rise. He propped himself up on one elbow.

Kate crossed over to kneel beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Commander, please. You have to trust me. I'm assuming command. I have to do what I think is best."

He stared up at her uncertainly. "And what do you think is best, Kate?"

Overhearing this, Chai stepped down from the dais. "Young lady, I have considered. And I agree. You are right. I will do as you suggest. But first, of course, I must know the location of the shuttle."

Kate remained at Scott's side, returning Chai's gaze. "I'll show you."

Paxton muttered under his breath, "Traitorous bitch!"

Chai threw his head back and enjoyed another hearty laugh. "Mr. Paxton, I recommend that you mind your manners. Has not the lady proven herself to be of considerable personal resource?" He glanced around at the sprawl of men she'd taken down. "Miss Daniels is prone to respond severely when displeased. If I were you, I'd mind what I said!"

Scott reached up with tremendous effort and placed a hand weakly on her arm. "Kate, please. Don't…" His touch was so feeble that she barely felt it. His voice was so faint, she could hardly hear it.

She leaned forward, lowering her voice for his ears alone. "Commander, please trust me. I don't see that we have a choice. I know what I'm doing."

This communication, beyond Chai's earshot, elicited a snort of displeasure from him. "Enough. There will be no delay. You have yourself a deal, as you Americans say."

He barked a command to Han, who responded by smashing the butt of his rifle into the back of Bob Paxton's head. Paxton grunted and collapsed to his knees, his head hanging. His body rocked back and forth.

Kate heard Scott's soft words to her. "Kate, don't trust these bastards. Whatever you do, don't show them where Liberty is!"

Chai lashed out with a boot, kicking Scott in the temple. Scott's eyes again rolled back in his head, and once again he passed out. Then Kate felt violated before the naked, direct gaze of Chai Bin.

"And now, dear lady, considering your, uh, proficiency in the martial arts, we will summon a unit of men who will accompany us. And remember, no martial artist can outfight a well-aimed bullet. In any event, I never leave here without my bodyguards. I have enemies in these mountains who would like very much to see my head on a pole. Do you understand?"

"Believe me," said Kate, "I understand." Chai nodded agreeably. "Very well. You will lead us to your precious space shuttle, and you will not try any tricks. If you do, I can assure you, Miss Daniels, that you will pray for death for a very long time before you die. Come, we prepare for departure."

Washington, DC

"So much for rehearsing tomorrow's press conference," grumbled the president. He eyed the street scene sailing past outside the limo's tinted windows. "There's no way we can contain what's happened. And with our nuclear forces at DefCon Three, it is time the people were told."

Galt frowned from where he rode in a seat facing the president. "Sir, have you considered that going public will endanger our rescue and retrieval of the shuttle?" He had been summoned to join this motorcade en route from a scheduled media event where the president had addressed a national convention of high school honor students.

The convention was only eight blocks from the White House, but moving POTUS (President of the United States, in White House-speak) always required a security package minimum of six black-windowed vans and SUV's to sandwich the limo as the motorcade traveled a cordoned-off route.

Wil Fleming, the president's chief of staff, rode be side the president. He pocketed a cell phone, having fielded a call, and reinserted himself into the conversation as if he hadn't missed hearing a thing. The chief of staff runs the West Wing of the White House, and parcels out the president's personal time. Fleming was short, trim and dapper, age thirty-something. "I understand that you have a very personal stake in this, Galt, in that your wife is among the missing crew personnel. Believe me, we are utilizing every means necessary to-"

"Save it for the sound bites," said Galt.

He had never cared for Fleming. The president's fair-haired boy had political savvy and vision aplenty, but Galt had never trusted people, like Fleming, who reached maturity without any lines creasing their faces.

The president made an irritated sound. "Knock it off, both of you. I know you don't like each other. No one said you had to. But we do have to work together on this. Trev, you've got to ratchet down. Wil is right on this one. We have every ball in play, and you know it."

Galt nodded. "My people are monitoring every Liberty-related report as it comes in, sir. My wife and the crew could be just as dead as the crew aboard Challenger. Liberty could have smashed into those mountains and ended up in a million pieces."

"Trev, don't do this to yourself."

"I'm just being realistic." Galt turned to the chief of staff. "And yeah, Wil, you're right. It's personal with me, big time. But considering who I am and what I do, is that a bad thing?"

Fleming bristled. "We've mobilized every resource available, as the president said. Why must we repeat ourselves?"

The motorcade wheeled onto Pennsylvania Avenue.

Galt returned his attention to the president. "Sir, there was a Defense System Satellite onboard Liberty. If there's any of it left intact, that satellite needs to be retrieved ASAP before the neighborhood bad boys over there get their hands on it. If North Korea or the Chinese gain possession of that technology, the world will become a different place. The potential is there to set back U.S. electronic warfare capabilities by a decade."

Fleming's cell phone beeped. He reached for it, glaring at Galt angrily. "Do you think that we haven't considered that? Do you think we're not keeping every option on the table? Jesus, Galt, you're impossible." He shifted his focus to a muted telephone conversation without waiting for a response.

The president reached over and placed a hand on Galt's arm. "Trev, I sent for you because I want you to get this not just as an order from your commander in chief." The president's eyes crinkled with the trace of a grin. "I know you well enough to know that you'd disobey even a direct order like that, if you felt strongly enough about something, as you do in this case."

"Sir-"

"Let me finish. So I'm not only issuing an order as your commander in chief. I'm telling you man-to-man. Fleming's right about us working all of the angles. We're leaving every option open. But I will not have you screwing things up with some cowboy play. You're right. Either Kate is dead or she's over there on the other side of the world, maybe in hostile hands. But you are not going to go off half-cocked. I will not have you disobey these orders the way you did that day when you saved my ass."

Galt looked outside. The security gatehouse, then the grounds of the White House, rolled past beyond the limo's windows. "Uh, sir, I thought we weren't ever going to mention that."

Fleming completed his telephone call. Again, he seemed not to have missed a word of their conversation. He eyed Galt with an openly bug-eyed surprise not generally associated with chiefs of staff. "You saved the president's life?!"

Galt sighed. "I had to. He wasn't the president then, and he owed me forty bucks from a poker game the night before we went out on that patrol."

The president chuckled. "I was his commanding officer that day, too. A long time ago, eh, Trev?" The limo gracefully coasted to a stop beneath a portico at a side entrance of the White House. "First day of a big offensive," continued the president. "Things stabilized pretty fast, but at first it was nothing but bullets and blood and confusion out there in that desert. Me and Trev, our unit, was ambushed." The president grimaced. "My own damn fault, and I was the only one wounded, which was fitting enough. Still got a piece of shrapnel that almost put me away. Anyway, they had the unit pinned down pretty good for awhile, and I'm lying in the middle of a clearing between two sand dunes with my guts hanging out of the hole in my belly." In his time as chief of staff, this was obviously the first Fleming had heard of his boss's combat experience. Wil sat there as if seeing the chief executive for the first time.