James Rollins - The Eye of God - A Sigma Force Novel

Clearing his throat, Delgado said, “I’ve just heard word from my man Tomaz at the Ryugyong. Half of the Duàn zhī Triad have been captured or killed at the hotel. But another half escaped in a second bus. All Pyongyang is out searching for them.”

Confused, Seichan focused through the residual pain. The Duàn zhī was her mother’s gang. But what were they doing here in North Korea? She struggled to understand. Was her mother simply seeking revenge from the attack on her stronghold in Hong Kong? Or was it something more personal?

She swallowed back hope but failed to completely stanch it.

Pak glowered at Delgado. “And Guan-yin?”

Her mother . . .

Seichan held her breath.

Delgado did not look any happier than the North Korean. “She was not among those captured. Neither was Zhuang, her lieutenant.”

Pak stamped back and forth, balling a fist. “But she remains on our soil. She will not escape for long.”

Delgado made a noncommittal noise, plainly less convinced. Guan-yin had survived his fiery assault on her stronghold. He was not going to underestimate his opponent.

“I have more news,” Delgado said. “It appears the Americans came with Guan-yin.”

“They are here!” Pak’s face flushed darkly.

Seichan also felt a surge of emotion—hope rising inside her despite her efforts to rein it back.

“What about the prisoner?” Delgado asked, returning his attention to Seichan. “It would not be prudent to leave her here.”

Pak nodded. “There’s a prison camp near my lab. It’s in the remote northern mountains, known to only a handful of those in power, and well guarded. I had planned on transferring her tomorrow anyway. We will do that now.”

So he meant to keep her close to him, clearly intending to enjoy her every scream. Not good. Seichan knew that if she reached that camp, all was lost.

“It would be better to kill her now,” Delgado suggested and nodded to Pak’s holstered pistol. “A bullet to the head.”

Seichan sensed this proposition was expressed more as a concern for her than for Pak. A quick death would be better than months of torture that ended in the same grave.

Pak wasn’t having any of it, puffing out his chest with nationalistic pride. “That would be a cowardly response to a minor threat.”

Delgado shrugged.

Pak glanced at her, blood still dripping from his nose. She read his expression. His decision against killing her was less about honor and more about his fondness for torture. He had a small taste of it a moment ago. He wanted more.

Pak called to the guard outside the door, while slipping his own pistol free. Once the soldier stepped inside, he pointed to Seichan. “Free her, and take her to my jeep. Make sure she is securely bound.”

“It is very cold, seon-saeng-nim, ” the guard said formally. “Should I find her clothes for travel?”

Pak eyed her up and down.

“ Aniyo, ” he finally declined. “If she wants warmth, she must beg for it.”

With the matter settled, the guard pointed his rifle at her. Kwon undid the padded cuffs that held her to the steel chair.

First her ankles, then her wrists.

As soon as her last arm was freed, she lashed out, stabbing the ends of the needles still poking from her fingertips into Kwon’s eyes. He stumbled back, partially blocking the guard’s angle of fire as she had planned.

She sprang up, grabbed Kwon, and rolled him fully between her and the soldier as the man opened fire. Rounds skewered through the interrogator but did not find her. She shoved his bulk at the guard, tangling them up long enough for Seichan to spin around and snatch the pistol from Pak’s stunned fingers.

She whipped back and planted a single shot into the soldier’s skull.

Running for the door, she snatched up his rifle with her free hand and fled the room—leaving Delgado and Pak unharmed. Not knowing what she might face, she dared not waste a bullet on them.

Once outside, she dead-bolted the door to the interrogation room. She then painfully pulled out each of the steel needles. Through the small window, she watched Pak rage impotently inside. Insulated against the screams of the tortured, not a sound escaped the room.

Behind Pak, Delgado caught her eyes, his arms folded over his chest. He smiled at her, offering her a small nod of respect.

Turning heel, she ran for the exit to the interrogation building. Luckily it was deserted at this late hour. She slowed only long enough to search a bank of lockers near the front door, hoping to find a North Korean uniform.

Failing that, she at least found a crumpled set of inmate clothing at the bottom of one locker. She slipped into the dark Communist tunic and pulled on a set of loose pants. The only decoration to its drabness was a red badge featuring Kim Il-Sung’s face on the left breast.

With regret, she placed the stolen assault rifle in the locker. It was too large to hide, and wearing the clothes of a prisoner, she would have a hard time explaining the presence of a rifle.

With the pistol hidden against her leg, she slipped out into the night. Off in the distance, she heard a faint echo of alarm sirens coming from the direction of Pyongyang.

Even with a pistol in hand, she would never make it through the heavily guarded front gates on her own. And even if she did, where could she go? She had to trust that Gray and her mother knew where to find her, that they’d come for her.

She ran for the rows of barracks, intending to hide herself among the prisoners, to keep out of sight until help could arrive.

For the first time in her life, Seichan put her trust in hope.

10

November 18, 5:05 P.M. QYZT

The Aral Sea, Kazakhstan

The Eurocopter sped over an endless landscape of blowing sand and crusted salt. Jada stared listlessly below, finding it hard to believe this blighted region was once a beautiful blue sea, teeming with fish, the shores dotted with canneries and villages, all full of vigorous life.

It seemed unimaginable.

She had read the mission dossier concerning the Aral Sea, how the Soviets had diverted its two major rivers to irrigate cotton fields back in the sixties. As the decades passed, the sea quickly dried up, dwindling to only 10 percent of its original size, draining a volume equal to Lake Erie and Lake Ontario combined. Now all that remained of the sea were a few salty pools to the north and south.

Between them, this wasteland was born.

“They call this the Aralkum Desert,” the monsignor whispered as the others slept, noting her attention. “Its toxic salt fields are so large they can be seen from space.”

“Toxic?” she asked.

“As the sea vanished, it left behind pollutants and pesticides. Strong winds regularly stir up that sand and dust into dark storms called black blizzards. ”

As Jada stared, she watched a swirling zephyr spin across the salt flats as if chasing them.

“People began to get sick. Respiratory infections, strange anemias, spikes in cancer rates. The average life expectancy dropped from sixty-five to fifty-one.”

She glanced at him, surprised by those numbers.

“And its effect was not just local. These fierce winds continue to blow the desert’s poison around the globe. Aral dust can be found in the glaciers of Greenland, in the forests of Norway, even in the blood of penguins in Antarctica.”

Jada shook her head, wondering for the thousandth time why they had detoured to this desolate place. If given a choice, she would have preferred to visit another location in Kazakhstan: the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Russia’s premier space center. It lay only two hundred miles east of their coordinates.