Mark Greaney - Full Force and Effect

Calhoun agreed. “He thinks he’s going to get the firing squad. I can’t think of any other reason he’d want to bolt like this.”

“Any idea why he’s reaching out to China specifically?”

“He knows them, nothing more. What he doesn’t know is this banker acquaintance of his in Singapore doesn’t want to get involved. He hasn’t communicated with the Chinese yet. We found out when he, I’m speaking of the banker, called a colleague in Beijing and asked for advice. The colleague told him he needed to take it directly to the MSS, to not use the phone or the Chinese embassy in Singapore, so the man will be flying home on Saturday.”

“Hwang thinks the Chinese will just come get him?”

Calhoun said, “Not sure what he thinks, but as soon as the Chinese know about Hwang and his desire to defect, the ball will be in their court. I’m wondering if we can somehow take advantage of this three-day window before they find out.”

Mary Pat had an idea, and although she knew it was thin, she also knew the greatest intelligence coups often began with an opportunity that, at first blush, seemed impossible to capitalize on. She said, “I want you over here at the Acrid Herald command center as soon as possible. We’re going to put a plan together to get Avalanche involved in this.”

“I’m on my way.”

70

Adam Yao had genuine concerns he would be sent home from North Korea, and the fact that this concerned him almost— almost —made him laugh. For the past three days he had been ordered to produce no powder in his cone crusher. The ore he had prepared for the froth flotation tanks sat in rail cars alongside the refinery, protected from the rain with plastic sheeting. There was no room to store more powder, so Director Hwang had ordered Adam’s portion of the refinery shuttered to save electricity. Some other departments were still up and running—geology, maintenance, metallurgy—but no one needed any more crushed rock, so Adam had no job to do.

Adam had seen Hwang twice during his time here, once walking through the facility and once walking with his family from his SUV to the hotel. He thought it strange the man had brought his family with him here, but not overly so. He was the director, after all, he could do whatever he wanted. Both times he saw the little man, he appeared positively distressed. It had pleased Adam because it probably meant he was having difficulties getting his operation up and running, but it also created problems for Adam, because since he’d not been at his computer terminal he had not been able to communicate with Acrid Herald control for the past three days.

He had tried to use this downtime to get some more intel from Dr. Powers; he saw her each and every morning during his jog, sometimes just for a minute, sometimes for much longer. She was as stressed as Director Hwang, but for the opposite reason. She informed Adam, still in stilted Chinese, that there would be a new shipment of flotation tanks, though she did not know when. Each day she had revealed more about her desire to get the hell out of here and never look back, and the fact the tanks had not yet arrived had brought her to the edge of despair. She wanted to get production started on the plant so she could go home.

Adam decided to take a chance today. He told his shift supervisor he needed to run some diagnostics on his machine’s computer and, no, it could not wait another day, because if the machine needed physical repair he had to do it now in the downtime. His shift supervisor talked with the floor manager, and it was agreed that Adam’s entire section would get twenty minutes of generator power so he could use his computer.

The truth was, Adam just wanted the opportunity to check for any messages from the Acrid Herald ops center.

When the lights came up on his floor he was already waiting at his terminal. He fired up his computer, made certain he was alone, and then opened his communications device in his system’s BIOS. He followed his memorized sequence of actions, and soon enough he saw there was, in fact, a message waiting for him. He was certain it would be a worried request for an update because he had not reported in, but instead, when he clicked to open it, he found it to be something altogether different. He read it once all the way through, and then again, more slowly the second time because he just couldn’t believe it.

As he read he felt his heart pounding inside his coveralls.

Under his breath and all but inaudible, but nevertheless in English, he spoke. “Oh . . . my . . . God.”

SECRET

TO: FLASH FOR AVALANCHE

FROM: TIDALWAVE

SUBJECT: POSSIBLE DEFECTION OF HWANG MIN-HO/PERSONNEL

RECOVERY/EXTRACTION

SOURCE: SIGINT SINGAPORE STATION

1: ACCORDING TO SIGINT INTERCEPTS THROUGH STATION SINGAPORE, MINING DIRECTOR HWANG MIN-HO HAS EXPRESSED WISHES TO INTERMEDIARY TO DEFECT TO CHINA. INTERMEDIARY NAME IS CHANG LAN—A CHINESE BANKER AND ACQUAINTANCE OF HWANG. UNKOWN MOTIVATION, BUT ANALYTICAL SOURCES SUSPECT HE IS CONCERNED RE PERSONAL SAFETY AFTER PROBLEMS WITH REFINERY PRODUCTION TIMETABLES. CHINESE GOVT HAS NOT YET RECEIVED REQUEST FROM INTERMEDIARY, BUT WILL WITHIN 48 HRS.

2: REQUEST AVALANCHE MAKE CONTACT WITH DIR. HWANG IN NEXT 24 HOURS UNDER COVER OF CHINESE INTELLIGENCE OFFICER. CONFIRM HIS WISH TO DEFECT. BOLSTER BY INFORMING HIM OF DANGERS OF REMAINING IN PLACE. BRING HIM TO GRID 39 45'58.04"—124 50'50.21" NOTE—HE INFORMS INTERMEDIARY THAT HE HAS HIS FAMILY WITH HIM IN CHONGJU. YOU ARE AUTHORIZED TO BRING OUT HIS FAMILY IF ABLE.

3: YOUR ARRIVAL WILL BE MONITORED BY SATELLITE, AND YOUR RECOVERY WILL BE EFFECTED BY AIR.

TIDALWAVE

Yao looked at the date of the message. It was sent yesterday. The forty-eight-hour timetable was just cut in half.

A file had been sent along as well, and he opened it. It was a satellite map of northwestern North Korea to the Chinese border, with his extraction location marked. It was at the end of a long straight dirt road west of the city of Sonchon, just west of where he now sat and near the coast.

Expanding the satellite map as large as possible, he saw at the end of the road something that looked like a poultry farm.

So, Adam said to himself, I’m supposed to go knock on Hwang’s door and say, “I hear you want to defect. Let’s go. Can we take your car?”

Sure, that’s going to happen.

And then what? Extraction via air? Really? What, a helo is just going to come flying straight up the middle of North Fucking Korea and land at a chicken farm?

—

Yao closed the message and it automatically erased. He was just about to type out a new message when he heard footsteps on the other side of the cone crusher.

A Korean spoke in Mandarin: “Your time is up, Shan. Generator power goes out in one minute.”

Shit. He shut down his machine and walked away as the lights went out. Acrid Herald would see that he received the message, but they wouldn’t hear what he wanted to tell them, that there was no fucking way he was getting Hwang out of North Korea.

—

Adam slept little, but the morning came anyway. He rose from his cot at five-thirty and went outside, and after a short stretch he started his daily jog.

Dr. Powers was there, and they stopped to chat. She seemed sadder and more sullen than ever, but nothing new had happened. She was just becoming more and more depressed that she had no idea when she would be allowed to go home.

Adam had spent the evening thinking over his next move, and he knew now was his one chance to get it right. “I need a small favor from you.”