Stephen Mertz: The Korean Intercept

Tuttle knew that Galt and his wife were estranged. He was in the habit of keeping tabs on those he cared about.

North Korea

The snow squall subsided. The night cleared. Starlight revealed a light dusting of snow across the ground, partially blanketing some of the damage left by the shuttle's crash landing.

Ron Scott provided what illumination he could from a flashlight. He had holstered his pistol and was conversing with the elderly civilian who had appeared during the snow squall. The civilian exuded an air of dignity despite his shabby clothes. He had not hesitated to fashion a splint from a tree branch for Scott's broken leg. Nearby, Terri Schmidt was nestled in blankets spread across the ground.

Thanks to the endless practice drills back at Houston, Kate Daniels and Bob Paxton were able to methodically carry out the task of spreading scattered leaf camouflage netting across the shuttle. The tricky part was that although the snow melted instantly upon touching the shuttle, it did make the surface slippery in places. But Kate managed to go about her task more or less by rote.

I will get through this, she told herself. She secured her final strip of netting. It was almost impossible to believe that little more than ninety minutes ago they had been lifting merrily off into the Florida sunshine. It was as if they'd landed on another planet or in another dimension.

She thought about Trev. They fought the last time they'd spoken. They were always either fighting or making love, it seemed. They'd met while serving together in the army during the Panama invasion, and were married a month after her discharge from the service the next year. Things were fine at first. Weren't they always? Then she had two miscarriages in two years, and that's when the wheels started falling off their marriage, she came to understand in retrospect. The Galts had been just a "normal" couple in suburban Maryland. Except that while she was exactly the good little homemaker she appeared to be, Trev was anything but a traveling auditor for the government, as their neighbors believed. People outside their marriage attributed Galt's increased dependence on alcohol to his being assigned a desk job. But she traced it to just after her second miscarriage. They'd discussed adoption but nothing ever came of it, because by that time Trev's slide into emotional withdrawal was well underway. She knew how he felt. He sought escape inside a bottle. Her escape-from her feelings and from a troubled marriage-followed her acceptance into the space program. Trev was the most disciplined man she had ever known and so she was at first surprised, then concerned and ultimately frustrated in Washington with her inability to deal with his lapses into drinking and brooding that alternated with the more common periods of sobriety and an obvious restlessness eating away at him. Trev was a man committed to his work. He was the best there was, which is why he had been promoted in the first place, and so he would never think of walking away from his mission. And so a seemingly unbridgeable gulf had widened between them. They'd been unable to break through to each other, to help each other, no matter how they tried. When the time came for her move to Houston, they'd agreed to call it a separation. That was her idea. The rules were that they could each see other people if they wanted to.

In the forty-five days prior to the launch, training had grown intense as the crew concentrated on training as a unit, going through repeated simulations and familiarizations. Four of this crew had their families housed nearby and, for them, time with their loved ones became more precious as the pace of training increased. Which left Kate and Bob Paxton: a lonesome, separated wife and a blond-haired, handsome MIT physicist. Bob's mission assignment was to operate the shuttle's fifty-foot-long robotic "arm," the machine used to release the payload, and to work on repairing satellites. Initially he was well-mannered, pleasant company. She hadn't slept with him, though not for his lack of trying. Before long, he became persistent, obnoxious, until she'd told Bob flatly that she wasn't interested. Finally he backed off. During their final week of training, the crew was quarantined. Only spouses were given "personal contact" badges that allowed them to visit. That's what her last fight with Trev had been about. He had wanted to fly to Houston to see her off. She told him no, that she didn't want him at the launch. It had seemed so important to her that their separation remain total for the six months they'd agreed upon. She had wanted her problems on the sidelines until after Liberty's flight. Their final conversation. Their last argument. Their last goodbye? Rather than attempt to regain intimacy with her husband, she'd been a fool. Trev, I'm sorry. She mouthed the words soundlessly to the icy night sky.

Bob Paxton completed securing his last piece of netting and dropped from the shuttle's wing down to the ground to stand next to her. They wore jackets over their flight suits. Kate had strapped a.38 revolver at her waist. Lines of uncertainty and apprehension marred Bob's movie star features. The immense, vague shape of the shuttle beneath the camouflage netting loomed above them in the darkness like some giant, indefinable beast from a lingering nightmare.

Bob wore a pistol in a shoulder holster. He followed Kate's gaze to where Ron Scott and the elderly civilian were engaged in discussion. "I wonder, with the commander's leg busted," said Paxton, "if maybe I shouldn't be the one to assume command."

"Forget it, Bob. Ron's doing fine, even with a broken leg. We'll give him all the help he needs or wants. As far as assuming command goes, as copilot I'm second in command."

"Sure, but we're not in flight. Who knows where we are. We're in the middle of nowhere and you're a-" He let the sentence drop, reconsidering.

"A woman?" she finished for him. "Go to hell, Bob. I'm still second in command."

She strode across to join Ron and the civilian. Bob followed.

Ron interrupted his conversation with the man as they approached. "This is Ahn Chong. We're in North Korea, near the Chinese border. We're near his village." Kate knew that Ron had been stationed in Seoul after the Gulf. He spoke Korean.

"Should we go to his village?" she asked. "Will they help us?"

Scott shook his head, negative. "There's too much to explain right now. We've got to move fast. I've had a chance to converse with this man and to size him up. My gut tells me that we should trust him."

Bob nervously chewed his lower lip. "That'll have to do then. Like you said, we don't have much time."

"He tells me that we should avoid the village. Most of the people there are loyal Party members. Ahn Chong has no love for the Communists. He blames them for the death of his wife. All that matters right now is that he wants us to go with him, says he knows a place where we can hide out. That's where we're going. That landing field we flew over… they'll already be looking for us."

"Bob and I can transport Terri," Kate offered. "What about your leg, Commander?"

"I'll lean on Chong if I have to."

Bob studied Ahn Chong with open skepticism. "He could lead us right to their front gate. Can we really trust the old coot?"

"There's one way to find out," Scott said. "Let's go."

His words had barely been spoken when a faint, strange sound became discernible in the near distance, somewhat distorted by the surrounding mountains. The sound became discernible very quickly, however: the tell-tale whup! whup! whup! of a helicopter, approaching at a high rate of speed from the direction of the airfield.

Beijing, China

Beyond the large bay window on the top floor of the Great Hall of the People, a dull gray dawn crept over the one hundred square acres of Tiananmen Square. Water from last night's rain, in scattered pools across the flagstone, reflected the gloomy light and the ornate incandescent street lamps like mirrors of steel beneath a low, foreboding sky. Orderly throngs of bicyclists and pedestrians hurried about their morning business, overseen by the towering portrait of Mao Tse-tung mounted above the Forbidden City's Gate of Heavenly Harmony.