Mark Greaney: Full Force and Effect

Adam saw the lights of the helicopters in the distance as the SUV drove on. The helos would follow the road, looking for the SUV, and as long as Adam and the others stayed at the bottom of the little valley, moving in the dry streambed, and as long as there was cover from the flora above them, they would be safe.

“Are you okay?” Adam asked Hwang.

The North Korean was still crying, but he nodded distractedly. Though Hwang’s family was in the car with him, Adam saw that the man felt totally alone after his parents turned on him.

Adam said, “You had to do this. Choi was going to kill everyone in your family.”

Hwang turned and pointed at Adam angrily. “You are an inferior jung gug-ui ! You do not say the family name of the Dae Wonsu!”

Christ, Yao thought. This one is brainwashed like allthe others.

73

President of the United States Jack Ryan wasn’t fit to travel, especially halfway around the world, but he was doing it anyway. The trip was against the advice of his doctors, his wife, and anyone with a shred of knowledge of broken bones and soft-tissue damage and the dangers of exhaustion, but Ryan was the President, and he overruled them all.

He’d been making his calls to world leaders two days earlier when President Ling of China had offered to meet with him at any time to discuss the disintegrating relations with North Korea. Ryan sensed that the offer was more than just the typical platitudes that came along with telling someone he was glad he’d not been murdered, so Ryan told Ling he would very much like to get together in China for a private talk.

Ling had said “anytime,” so Ryan proposed three days hence.

The translators had to triple-check that the American President was talking about arriving in Beijing on Saturday. This Saturday.

Within hours of the phone conversation Mary Pat Foley all but burst into Ryan’s hospital room to tell him an Iranian bomb maker had been captured alive near Mexico City, and he had details of an interesting trip to Pyongyang he’d made just prior to his attack on the presidential motorcade. With incontrovertible proof North Korea was involved, the Ryan administration leaked a rumor to take the heat off the Mexican government. Ryan ordered Justice and DNI to hold most of the details they had, because he wanted to exploit the information at a time and place of his own choosing. It was statecraft, and Ryan figured if he had to get blown up, he might as well get something out of it for America in the process.

Ryan and Foley decided Ryan would use this trip to Beijing to pass the intelligence about North Korea’s involvement directly to Chinese President Ling. Ling would be terrified—he would know any action taken by the United States against Pyongyang would destabilize the Korean Peninsula, and he would worry about a war, a refugee crisis, and his own country’s exposure to “guilt by association,” since even though China and North Korea were in the middle of their worst relationship of the past seventy years, North Korea still had no closer friend than its large communist neighbor to the north.

Ryan wanted Ling to be scared about what actions the U.S. might take for retribution. The more concerned China was about threats to its own national interests, the more inclined they would be to partner with the United States against the criminal regime in Pyongyang.

Then Mary Pat read President Ryan in on Acrid Herald. What had started out as an opportunity to learn about a North Korean mineral processing facility had turned into a major intelligence coup. Right now Hwang Min-ho was on the run in North Korea, attempting to defect, he thought, to the Chinese. If this worked, Ryan knew, he would have someone who could reveal to the world how North Korea’s mineral wealth was being used not for the good of its own people but instead to build up their nuclear missile arsenal. If it all worked as planned, if Hwang made it out and revealed what he knew, then Ryan knew his meeting with President Ling tomorrow would be an opportunity for the two superpowers to work together on a mutual problem.

In the meantime, Ryan just wished he wasn’t such an invalid at the moment. Although he could walk and talk, his left hand was in a cast and his right arm was in a sling. With all the attendants at his disposal, there was no one around here in this office on Air Force One, and he needed to scratch his damn nose, and this put him in an exceptionally foul humor.

—

Adam Yao drove the North Korean–made SUV slowly down the long, straight dirt road at midnight. He went all the way to the end, some mile and a half from the main highway, until he reached the poultry farm. Here he turned off the engine and listened carefully.

Nothing. A few chickens clucking in a coop, the sound of wind through the pine trees thick on the adjacent hillside, but no sound of helicopters racing in.

Adam was scared now, but the kids behind him were asleep. Hwang and his wife spoke softly back and forth. She was frightened still, but Hwang seemed to be doing a better job of calming her than himself, because he appeared to be scared shitless.

Min-hee, the nine-year-old girl, sat up suddenly and looked around, and soon Du-ho did the same. Within seconds Adam heard it as well—it was a high-pitched buzzing, very faint but growing in volume.

It didn’t sound to Adam like an airplane, not even a small one, and it was definitely not a helicopter. Still, he told everyone to get out.

Once they were on the dirt road they heard it better. It was definitely a propeller, and it hummed almost like a lawn mower.

Adam saw it first, but he didn’t know what he was looking at. A winged apparition moved low over the trees, darker than the night sky behind it.

Then Hwang saw it. “What is that?”

It passed directly overhead, then banked tightly, and lined up on the road upon which they stood.

Adam said, “It’s a UAV. A drone.” It was a Predator, which was unquestionably American, but it was doubtful Hwang or his wife would know this. As it neared, Adam was glad to see there was no U.S. flag on the side.

“What is it doing here?” Hwang asked.

“I have absolutely no idea.”

Du-ho pointed into the sky. “There is another one.”

Both Predators landed on the road, one after the other, and then taxied to within fifty feet of Adam Yao.

To himself he said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

It occurred to him there might be a message or a piece of equipment on the aircraft, so he walked over to the closer one. He saw a large basket hanging from the bottom. It was the size of a loveseat, and it had a pneumatic hatch with a marking that read PULL.

Adam did so, and the device separated like a clamshell, the bottom lowering down about a foot and a half. Adam looked inside. There was LED lighting glowing to help him.

He saw two sleeping bags and a satellite phone.

He snatched the phone and saw that it was blinking; there was already a call coming through.

Adam moved away from Hwang and his family and whispered. “Avalanche.”

“Hello, Avalanche. You are speaking with the tactical operations center on board the USS Freedom . This line is being broadcast to op center TIDALWAVE, and we are watching you from a KH-12.”

“Understood.”

“What is the status of your cargo? We see three adults and two children in addition to yourself.”

“I have six pax total. Three adults including precious cargo and two children.”

“Who is the other adult?”

“I had to bring out an Australian woman. Dr. Powers. She was compromised and in danger.”

There was a pause. “Copy.”

“Is this basket what I think it is?”