Mark Greaney - Full Force and Effect

Ri would not sit back and hope for the best from Duke Sharps. He would send his own operators to monitor the situation and, if necessary, employ stronger measures. He’d sanction his men to kill on the streets of America, if necessary, because the stakes were high enough to warrant it.

That wasn’t Sharps’s game—this Ri had been informed by his U.S.-based RGB staff. The American ex–FBI agent skirted the laws in his home country, but he wouldn’t run crews of armed direct-action forces, so Ri had to look into other avenues for this.

The North Korean permanent mission to the United Nations is on the thirteenth floor of an office building on the corner of 2nd Avenue and 44th Street, a block away from the entrance to the United Nations building. The comings and goings of the personnel associated with the mission are carefully watched by FBI Counterintelligence Division special agents, as well as many other U.S. government entities. General Ri knew he could not easily call his New York office and simply order up agents to fan into the area to protect Duke Sharps and his employees as they worked on Ri’s behalf.

But Ri had other resources at his disposal in the city. There are more than two hundred thousand Koreans or Korean Americans living in New York, and Ri had influence over hundreds of North Korean agents or expatriates residing in the area, and some of these were covert employees of the Reconnaissance General Bureau. There were even direct-action agents in the city, there for the purpose of targeting North Korean dissidents or South Korean troublemakers. After a meeting and a phone call in his Pyongyang office, Ri had secured the use of a unit of twelve highly trained North Korean sleepers in Manhattan and notified their control of his desire that they watch over Sharps and report back.

Within twenty-four hours of his order, the North Koreans in Manhattan had begun shadowing Sharps Global Intelligence Partners employees while they worked their operations within the city. They were tasked with making sure the Americans succeeded in their efforts to affect the procedural vote, and they had been given the green light to use any measures and resources necessary to see that the mission was a success.

32

President of the United States Jack Ryan was officially off duty, or as off duty as a President ever gets. All his official responsibilities were done for the day, and this was one of those too-few evenings where the agenda didn’t have him meeting anyone after hours, or going anywhere but back to the residence.

After leaving the Oval around six, he had dinner with Cathy, Kyle, and Katie in the Family Dining Room, and there they made plans to watch a Discovery Channel show about snow leopards. Katie had announced to her family recently that she was destined to be a veterinarian, and although Kyle had mocked her because he walked the family dog around the Rose Garden more than she did, her parents were thrilled with her young ambition and they ramped up their intake of nature documentaries.

Katie loved learning about animals, and Kyle enjoyed it as well, although his sights were set firmly on a career as a professional stuntman, and he thought it unfair that his mom and dad didn’t support him by allowing him to build the scaffold on the back lawn with the mattresses below it, because without this how was he going to ever learn how to fall off buildings like the real stuntmen in the movies do?

Jack and Cathy put their foot down with Kyle, did their best to steer him toward something else— anything else—but as for Katie, the nine-year-old who didn’t like to operate the pooper scooper in the backyard was, in her parents’ eyes at least, well on her way to becoming a world-renowned zoologist or an exotic-animal vet.

Jack started heading back to his room to change to watch TV, but a steward let him know Mary Pat Foley was on the phone wishing to speak with him.

He took the call in his study. “Hey, Mary Pat. Anything wrong?”

“No, Mr. President, everything is fine. Sorry to disturb you like this.”

“Not at all. What’s up?”

Mary Pat said, “Mr. President, I think there is an opportunity here to get a human source inside North Korea, into the Chongju mine and refinery operations, to give us much better elucidation on the situation there. It won’t be easy, the officer will obviously be in great danger.”

“Wait. You said ‘officer,’ not ‘agent.’ You are talking about an employee of one of our intel agencies?”

“Yes, Mr. President. CIA. He’s a Chinese American, first-generation.” She offered the President no more information.

Ryan loosened his tie and leaned back. “You want a ‘go, no-go,’ from me. Is that it?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“The operation . . . how long in duration?”

“Open-ended. We don’t think it will be more than a couple months once our man is in country.”

“You are satisfied the backstopping of the officer’s legend is good? The infiltration plan is solid? You are convinced he has the best resources you can give him, and a clear understanding of the objectives?”

“Yes to all.”

“What about fail-safes if he gets in trouble?”

Mary Pat paused. “I could tell you about the training he has and the exfiltration options available to him if he is compromised, but I will be honest with you. If he is compromised while on the ground in North Korea, he will likely be captured and then killed, or else killed outright.”

“Is there a plan to coordinate with U.S. military in case of emergency? We have special operations troops near the South Korean border, of course. And the USS Freedom is in the Yellow Sea. SEALs on board the Freedom were the ones who found the launch tubes on that cargo ship.”

“We are going to play our cards very close to the vest on this operation, for purposes of OPSEC. If our man is compromised from over here it will be ruinous to him and to any future efforts we might have. But I will notify JSOC that a personnel recovery mission is a possibility.” Mary Pat knew JSOC would just ask for more information, and although she couldn’t blame them for that, she wouldn’t give any more information unless Yao was on the run in North Korea.

The very thought of this made her blood run cold.

Ryan was thinking, too. He pictured this unknown officer as a man standing at a precipice and facing a tightrope that led to the other side. There was no net below. And Jack Ryan was the one who had to tell him either to turn around and go home . . . or to start walking.

But he also pictured the future. A future where the West Coast of the United States was in range of North Korean ICBMs.

His deliberation was brief.

“Send him,” Ryan said. He wasn’t as sure as he made himself sound. It was his job to appear resolute, even to Mary Pat. If he vacillated it would add unnecessary uncertainty into her oversight of the operation. She needed to know she had his full support and backing, and even though the prospect of having a man on the ground in North Korea would probably lead him to redevelop his stomach ulcers in the next few weeks, his belief in the importance of this mission was without question.

Mary Pat said, “Thank you, Mr. President. Know we have our best people working on this, and I’ll meet with them daily.”

“I know you will, Mary Pat. You and I both know what’s at stake. For him, and for the U.S. Get the intelligence product we need, and then get his ass out of there.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

Jack hung up the phone and went into the bedroom to change. Cathy was already there; she’d thrown on a jogging suit she liked to wear when lounging in the media room. She looked up at her husband and instantly asked, “What is it? What’s wrong?”