Kurt glanced back at the dead men, blood already oozing out from under the bodies. “That tarp won’t hide them for long,” he said, “which means our friends can’t play impostor for any extended length of time. Whatever they’re going to do, it’s going to happen quick.”
“Okay, let’s go,” Joe said. “But if we end up on the docks at Incheon or getting loaded onto a 747, I’m definitely calling in the cavalry.”
“Deal,” Kurt said.
As Joe covered the bodies once more, Kurt eased the door open and moved out of the stairwell. They stole into the garage as quietly as alley cats, making sure to stay out of the mirrors’ lines of sight. When they reached the back of the first trailer, Kurt unlatched the door and waved Joe inside. As soon as Joe was up, Kurt climbed in and closed the door gently.
By the time Kurt turned around, Joe had his phone out, using the light from the screen as Kurt had done in the crawl space. He was examining the cargo.
“Computers,” Joe said. “High-tech servers, by the look of things. I’ve seen racks of equipment like this in Hiram’s data center.”
“We’re in the right place,” Kurt said. “This cargo must be destined for the North Korean Cyber-Force.”
They settled in, sitting down and leaning against the wall of the truck, hidden by a large stack of equipment in case anyone opened the door for a quick look.
A short time later, the sounds of activity picked up outside the vehicle. Loud voices speaking Korean were interspersed with directions in broken English. Shortly thereafter, the big rig shuddered as the engine came to life and the truck began to move. They seemed to inch their way through the garage slowly before climbing a ramp and then accelerating.
After several turns that felt like they were negotiating city blocks, the truck began to pick up speed. Kurt pulled out his phone, found he had a strong signal, and switched it to map mode. It took a moment to locate his whereabouts and calculate his direction and speed, but soon there was a little blue dot on the moving map.
“Where are we headed?” Joe asked.
“You don’t want to know,” he replied. To Kurt’s chagrin, they were on the main highway, moving due north, heading directly toward the DMZ.
Sebastian Brèvard sat on the veranda of his sprawling baroque palace, overlooking the Olympic-sized swimming pool where he swam most mornings, as a servant delivered his breakfast of crepes and fresh fruit.
After deeming the meal acceptable, Sebastian waved the servant away, only to have Laurent appear seconds later.
“I assume you have news,” Sebastian said.
“Calista reports the infiltration plan is under way,” Laurent said. “Egan is with her.”
As planned, Sebastian thought. “Make sure the extraction team is ready to pull her out as soon as she signals us.”
“Already done.”
“What about the others?”
“Preparing to eliminate Acosta.”
“Excellent,” Sebastian said, grinning. “I only regret that I won’t be there to see his fat face when they dump him into the sea.”
“Yes, it would have been nice to take him ourselves,” Laurent said.
“Make sure there is no evidence,” he said. “It will serve us well if the rest of the world thinks he’s still alive.”
“I’ve already given that order,” Laurent said.
Sebastian took a sip of fresh papaya juice and gazed out over the shimmering pool to the sprawling hedge maze that covered ten acres on a lower level of the property. His grandfather had built the house and the surrounding walls. Sebastian’s father had brought in the flowering plants and built the maze. A reminder, he often had said, that those who don’t know the path are liable to get lost.
Brèvard knew the path he must take.
Much as his great-grandfather had done, Sebastian intended to complete the job of a lifetime and disappear. In some ways, he hated to leave the family home, but it was the only path that led to a future.
To keep the treasure he planned to take, the world would have to be fooled into thinking nothing had been stolen in the first place. To survive, if they ever figured it out, required a second trick: misdirection. He would convince the world that they’d killed him and ended the threat. And, for good measure, he’d point the finger at someone else if they needed a scapegoat to hang.
In that role, he would cast his unstable little sister and her ex-lover Acosta. They would play it perfectly.
He considered her fate for a moment, wondered if he should feel some sense of guilt, and then dismissed the idea as if it were absurd. Much like the family home, she would soon outlive her usefulness.
Dismissing Laurent, Sebastian opened a laptop beside him and tapped a few keys. Calista had set it up to monitor activity of the NUMA crew to their south, the ones investigating the wreck of the Ethernet. According to the latest report, they were in the same vicinity, now getting assistance from a South African tug and setting up a salvage effort on a derelict they’d discovered.
Curious, he tapped a few keys and was able to retrieve from the NUMA database several photos of the ship. To his surprise, it was covered in foliage and tawny-colored soil. He scrolled down until he found a designation. The discovery all but sent him into shock. The salvage claim listed the derelict’s name as the SS Waratah.
He put down the slice of orange he was chewing on and wiped his mouth with a napkin, scanning the NUMA file for more information on the ship. Her dimensions matched. The photos taken in several parts of the ship depicted old equipment and fittings. A picture of serving trays with the Blue Anchor logo in the middle were unmistakable. And an off-colored image of the ship’s bell with the name and the ship’s launch date engraved on it left no doubt.
“Damn,” he said, tossing the napkin down.
Brèvard felt his throat constricting. It was as if unseen hands were reaching out from beyond the grave to choke him and to pay him back for his family’s treachery a hundred years before.
As he scanned the remaining details on the file, he recalled his father telling him the story, a story passed down from one patriarch to the next through four generations. It was a lesson about pain and danger. A tale of escaping death and passing it on to others so the Brèvard family might be preserved.
He knew of his family’s escape from South Africa with the wolves of the Durban police on their heels. He remembered hearing over and over again how it was only ruthlessness that had saved the family, how shortly after the hijacking the crew tried valiantly to take the ship back. How they’d been thwarted because his great-grandfather had expected it and had taken hostages whom he was willing to kill.
In the aftermath of the uprising, the passengers and most of the crew were put off the ship in the lifeboats, leaving only two double-enders for launches and twenty crewmen behind to run the ship itself—a far more manageable number.
As fate would have it, a storm had come up the next day, a storm so powerful the Waratah was almost capsized, just as the newspapers thought she had been. It seemed impossible that any of the lifeboats survived that gale, and, as it turned out, not one ever made it to shore.
The Waratah, on the other hand, was driven north, where, aided by the storm surge, she traveled up the narrow river farther than anyone could have expected. She ran aground in a meander that couldn’t be seen from the coast in an unpopulated section of the country. It was there that the last members of the crew were killed.
Over the years, the ship seemed to burrow itself into the silt, sinking lower and lower, and soon being enveloped and completely covered.
Sebastian’s father had shown him the hill beneath which the ship sat, and, years later, he’d seen part of the ship itself after a woman the Brèvard family was holding had inadvertently discovered the ship and tried to escape, along with two of her children, using one of the ship’s remaining dilapidated boats.
To everyone’s surprise, the wooden launch actually stayed afloat long enough to reach the African coast, but the
woman and her children had died from exposure long before they reached safety.
Sebastian had always considered it poetic. They were, in some ways, the last victims of a doomed ship. But the superstitious part of him now wondered if this ancient ship could somehow be in the process of evening the score.
“How is this possible?” Sebastian whispered to no one.
He could only conclude that the torrential rains of the month prior had somehow unearthed the ship and pushed her out into the channel, and from there the current had taken her south, right into the path of the NUMA team. But how had she remained afloat? How had she not broken apart and sunk to the watery grave long rumored to be her home after a hundred years of rotting away?
Whatever the reason, it seemed karma, the random nature of the universe, had dealt him a terrible card at the very moment he was getting ready to play his hand. He didn’t know what evidence of his great-grandfather’s actions might remain on the Waratah, but it was possible that clues left on that ship would reveal the family’s treachery or even lead the world to his door before he was ready to entertain them.
He called for Laurent and waited. He had to speak carefully. No one else knew the secret of the lost ship. Not even the other family members.
“What do you need, brother?” Laurent asked upon returning to the veranda.
“Gather up your pilots and get the helicopters ready,” he said. “It’s time to attack our friends at NUMA once again before they become too complacent.”
“You want us to attack them from the air?” Laurent asked. “I thought you and Calista had already sabotaged them with the computers.”
“We did,” Brèvard said. “But instead of being towed into port, they’ve remained on station and even found themselves a derelict to salvage. They’re proving more resourceful and persistent than I care to allow. I need them distracted further. At this moment, with their salvage operation under way, they seem to have made themselves vulnerable.”
“We have a few torpedoes in the armory,” Laurent said. “Acosta was going to sell them to the Somalis before he betrayed us.”
“Perfect,” Brèvard said. “Arm the helicopters with those torpedoes. I want that derelict sent to the bottom. And while you’re at it, make a few strafing runs over the other ships in their little fleet.”
“You want us to attack the derelict?” Laurent said, sounding confused.
Sebastian stared. He could understand why the order sounded odd. “Don’t question me,” he growled, “just do as I order. Trust me, I have my reasons.”
Laurent held up his hands in an act of contrition. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure I understood.”
“How soon can you launch?” Sebastian asked.
“Within a few hours.”
“Excellent,” Sebastian said.
As Laurent disappeared, Brèvard turned back to his breakfast but found he’d lost his appetite. The last thing he needed was to be exposed before he was ready to move.
Kurt and Joe rode in the back of Than Rang’s tractor trailer as it cruised along South Korean highway Route 3. Through the wonders of modern technology, Kurt could track their progress on his phone.
“Still heading for the DMZ?” Joe asked.
“Like a homing pigeon,” Kurt said.
Forty-five miles from Seoul, and no more than a mile from the edge of the DMZ, they felt the truck gear down. A series of twists and turns made it feel as if they’d gone off the highway. At the same time, Kurt’s reception went out and didn’t come back. Wherever they were, it was beyond the range of the cell phone towers.
He put the phone away and glanced over at Joe. “You can forget about calling the cavalry, we’ve lost our signal.”
“Great,” Joe muttered.
Kurt eased from his spot and crawled to the far wall where a pinprick of light was coming through a hole in the truck’s metal skin. He cozied up to it and stared through.
“Any signs saying ‘Welcome to North Korea’?” Joe asked.
“Not yet,” Kurt said. “Mostly bright lights, and a rather funky smell.”
Joe smelled it too. “It smells like . . .”
“Garbage,” Kurt said. “We’re driving into a giant landfill. I see overhead lights and dump trucks and bulldozers mashing everything down. Looks like half of Seoul’s trash is out there.”
“One of Than Rang’s companies,” Joe said, remembering the briefing.
Kurt nodded. “You know what they say: Where there’s muck, there’s brass.”
“Brass?”
“Coins,” Kurt explained. “Dinero, big bucks.”
“Right,” Joe replied. “Let’s hope that where there’s muck, there’s computer experts.”
“Better here than across the border,” Kurt added, agreeing with his friend.
The truck rumbled along, moving slower with each passing moment, eventually lurching to a stop with a hiss of the brakes. From Joe’s perspective, the glare from the arc lights illuminating the landfill was suddenly cut off. “We’ve pulled inside a shed of some kind. Maybe a loading bay.”
Kurt stretched, and made sure he was ready for action, as the truck rumbled to a stop for a second time. He got in position behind a stack of computer parts and made sure he couldn’t be seen from the rear door of the trailer. Joe did the same.
They waited in the darkness, listening to voices speaking Korean, until the sound of a heavy mechanical gearing drowned them out. Almost immediately Kurt felt the truck moving. Not forward or backward but descending.
“Why am I getting a sinking feeling?” Joe whispered.
“Because we are,” Kurt said.
The rate of descent picked up and then seemed to ease, but Kurt knew that was an illusion, like the feeling of being motionless in an airplane when one is actually moving at six hundred miles per hour. They were still dropping, but at a constant rate. Their bodies had just grown used to it.
He glanced at his watch and noted the second hand moving past twelve. It made it all the way around once and had almost reached the six o’clock position when the descent finally slowed and stopped.
“Ninety seconds,” he whispered. “How fast do you think we were moving?”
“Not all that fast,” Joe said, “maybe two or three feet per second.”
Kurt made a quick calculation. “That puts us somewhere around two hundred feet below the surface.”
After the smooth ride down, the next move was a jolt as a large crane grabbed the shipping container and lifted it off the back of the truck.
Kurt looked out through the pinhole and gave Joe the playby-play. “A big overhead crane has us, by the look of things. Appears to be moving us to some kind of platform.”
They began to pivot as the crane operator manipulated them into a proper alignment.
“I can see the other truck,” Kurt said. “And Calista. She’s headed for what I’d guess is the control room.”
Kurt watched her rap on the door of the control room and wait for the door to be opened. “Don’t do it . . .” he whispered.
No one heard his psychic warning. The lock was released and the door pushed open. She handed the first guard some type of manifest and, as he looked at it, she calmly drew her gun and opened fire. The shots were accurate, fired in rapid succession, but unhurried and without a sense of panic. She was cold and efficient.
At almost the same instant, Calista’s friend grabbed the other driver and broke his neck with a quick twist and a sickening crack. Two men came running from beside the crane to intervene but were quickly gunned down. The room went still.
“What about the other driver?” Joe whispered.
“He’s probably dead,” Kurt suggested, figuring Calista would have killed him before she got out of the truck.
“This girl of yours is cold as ice,” Joe said.
“She’s not my girl,” he said.
“Are they coming this way?”
“No,” Kurt said. “They’re going into the
control room.”
Unaware that she was being watched, Calista strode into the control room and immediately began working one of the computers. It took only thirty seconds for her to break into the system.
Egan, her third brother, ducked in. “The loading platform is secured,” he said. “Does anyone know we’re here?”
“I got them before they could sound the alarm,” Calista said. She ran through the security protocols and checked for any sign of trouble. “We’re fine. Get the hackers out of the second van. We’ll escort them through.”
“How many men on the other side?” Egan asked.
“A full million in the North Korean Army,” she said with a smile.
“You know what I mean.”
“According to the duty roster I was able to pull up on the computer, the North Korean station is manned by a hundred twenty. Most of them are restricted to the surface level and the topside loading zone. Only forty are cleared to enter the lower levels and they comprise two shifts, so we’ll be dealing with no more than twenty at a time.”
“There are only two of us,” he pointed out.
“Makes it interesting, doesn’t it?”
He stared.
“Relax,” she said, opening a pack with three silver canisters that had odd numeric markings on them. “This will even the odds.”
“Nerve gas?”
“Nothing so dangerous,” she explained. “It’s an RPA, a rapid paralytic agent. Freezes the central nervous system for ten minutes or so. It won’t knock them out or kill them, but it will make them easy to hit. We take the main control room by surprise, then pump this through the station, and the rest will be easy.”
“Do we have gas masks?”
Calista produced two small filters that looked like bulkier versions of the masks surgeons wore. They fit over the nose and mouth. “Won’t need them for long,” she said. “The gas goes inert after sixty seconds.”
“We still have to get through the tunnel first.”
At that moment a message appeared on the screen. It was in Korean. Calista scanned it with a handheld device that translated it to English.