Fires of War (8 page)

Ferguson slapped off the phone and got up, leaving the newspaper spread out on the table.

“Gotta go,” he told the approaching waiter. He unfolded a five-thousand-won note from his pocket and let it flutter to the table. “
Tto bzvayo.”

Ferguson had just hailed a taxi when his sat phone rang again. It was Rankin.

“Something’s up. Thera didn’t get in the trucks with the rest of the team at the hotel,” said Rankin.

“Yeah, something’s goin’ on,” said Ferguson, stepping onto the curb as a cab veered across traffic to pick him up.

“You want me to go in?”

“No, hang back. She’s OK. Where’s Guns?”

“Sleepin’. He watched her hotel all night.”

“All right. I’m pickin’ you up. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

The typically thick city traffic made it more like fifty. Rankin, who’d been watching Thera’s hotel from a parking garage across the street, had been standing outside the whole time and felt like a penguin with frostbite. When he grabbed the taxi’s door his finger nearly froze to the metal.

“Cold, huh?” said Ferguson as he slid in.

“No, it’s fuckin’ July.”

“Get warm soon,” said the driver helpfully from the front. “This unusual weather.”

Rankin frowned at him. He hated nosey taxi drivers.

Ferguson leaned across him and bent over the front seat. “Driver, take us to Hard Rock Cafe. Yes?”

“Hard Rock, yes,” said the man. “Good place for party.”

“That’s what I like.”

Ferguson tucked a thick wad of won notes in the driver’s hand when they got to the restaurant. Both men walked silently to the right of the entrance, ducked down a set of stairs they had scoped out the day before, and crossed to the back of the building. Five minutes later they were standing at the counter of a rental car agency three blocks away, reserving a Hyundai.

“You gonna tell me what’s going on?” Rankin said as they walked to the car.

“I didn’t think you were interested.”

“Don’t be a prick, Ferg. I didn’t want to ask questions while people were around.”

“Thera can’t pick up the tags. Her work assignment must’ve changed. You and I are going to go take a closer look at the site and figure out what we’re going to do.”

“We’re going in? How?”

“See, that’s the problem with explaining things to you, Skip. Every time I do, you ask more questions. Sooner or later I’m going to run out of answers.”

~ * ~

enerally the best and easiest way to get into a highly secure facility was through the front gate. But Ferguson decided that wasn’t going to work in this case. The South Koreans had upped their security to impress the IAEA inspection team, and any work crew, especially one with an out-of-place Caucasian or two, would draw close scrutiny. Presenting themselves as members of the inspection team wouldn’t work, either; that was too easily checked, and, besides, they didn’t want to do anything to draw any suspicion to the inspectors.

The next best option was to come in from the extreme northern perimeter, which bordered a nature preserve and was guarded only by razor wire and infrared cameras. It was a long way around: Rankin estimated that simply getting to the perimeter fence from the entrance to the nature reserve would take two hours, and it would take another hour and a half to hike from the perimeter fence into the compound.

“There’s another problem,” said Ferguson as they scouted the fence line from the park. “The security cameras overlap pretty well. I don’t think we can get over without blinding them.”

Rankin took Ferguson’s binoculars, peering over the crest of the hill toward the fence. The cameras were well hidden; he only knew where to look because they had prepared a map of the security layout for the mission. An infrared image taken just after sunset had been used to pinpoint the cameras; their housings dissipated heat more quickly than the surrounding rocks and brush.

“Hit ‘em with a fog machine,” said Rankin finally.

“Too suspicious unless the weather warms up,” said Ferguson. “Besides, that’s a hell of a lot of fog.”

“Take them a long time to respond to a blackout,” suggested Rankin. “We just cut the power. We’re inside by the time they get up here. We throw a fader on another unit, so we don’t have to go out the same way.”

A “fader” was a device that interfered with the camera’s ability to scan by disrupting its power circuitry, in effect “fading” the image so that it appeared to be a random malfunction. While difficult to detect, the device had to be placed inside the camera to work.

Ferguson abruptly slid down the hill and started back in the direction of the car. Rankin scrambled to follow.

“You figured it out?” said Rankin.

“You did,” said Ferguson. “You just don’t know it yet.”

~ * ~

1
3

SOUTH CHUNGCHONG PROVINCE, KOREA

Since tomorrow was a travel day, Norkelus ordered the entire inspection team to have dinner at the hotel and refrain from “partying.” While his decree drew snickers from the senior scientists, junior technical members and staff were shuffled upstairs immediately after dinner to pack “and get a head start on sleep.”

Evora winked at Thera, signaling that she should sneak out and join him and the others, but she decided it was better to avoid temptation and went upstairs. After packing, she and her roommate flipped through the channels for a while without finding anything interesting in English. Thera started to read; within a half hour, her eyes were drooping. She put down the book and turned off the light, falling asleep within a few minutes.

~ * ~

ome on, Cinderella, your pumpkin’s waiting.”

Thera woke with a jerk, only to feel herself pushed back down into the bed. She tried to scream, but a hand was clamped firmly on her mouth.

“It’s me,” whispered Ferguson, standing over her. “Come on. Before Rankin climbs into bed with your roommate.”

Rankin was standing on the other side of the bed, holding a small mask over Thera’s roommate’s face. A squeeze bulb was connected to the mask; he’d just finished spraying a mild sedative to make sure she remained sleeping.

“What’s going on?” Thera whispered.

“Sshh,”
replied Ferguson.

Thera slipped out of bed, grabbing for her clothes on the nearby chair.

“You don’t have to get dressed,” Ferguson told her. “We’re not going very far.”

Suddenly self-conscious, Thera pulled on her jeans over her pajamas and grabbed for her sweater.

“No feet?” Ferguson pointed at the pajama bottoms, which were covered with miniature ducks.

“Very funny.”

“I always figured you for teddy bears.”

“They didn’t have my size.” Thera sat at the edge of the bed. “We can’t go out in the hall. They may see us.”

“We’re not going in the hall.” Ferguson pointed to a sliding door at the other side of the room. “We’re in the room above. Come on. This won’t take long.”

A rope dangled at the side of the balcony. Thera leaned over, making sure no one was on the nearby terraces, then hoisted herself up to the next floor. Guns—Jack Young, the other member of the team in Korea—was waiting on the balcony. He helped her over the railing.

Ferguson came up next, followed by Rankin.

“Have a seat,” he told her, gesturing at the bed. Ferguson stared for a brief, brief moment at her black curls and green eyes, thinking she really was Cinderella, or the next best thing. Even with a baggy sweater and jeans, she was hard to resist.

“I need a map of the spots where you put the sensors,” he told her. He reached over the waste basket, where he’d stashed a notebook and pencil earlier.

“I have twenty minutes. Then I turn back into a mouse,” he added, “Rankin turns into a cockroach. You don’t want to see that.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No way. If you’re caught, the whole mission collapses. Besides, you’re leaving for North Korea first thing in the morning. It may take us a while to get back.”

“I can do it, Ferg.”

“Come on, Cinderella, the map. I’m already getting a hankering for cheese.”

Thera took the pad and began sketching the general outline of the base.

“They’re taking attendance downstairs,” said Guns, who was watching a feed from the wireless video cam they’d placed in one of the lighting fixtures. It showed Norkelus walking down the hall, knocking on the doors. He was two rooms away from Thera’s.

“Get Cinderella back to the ball,” Ferguson told the others, pulling off his black cap and sweater. “Bring her back up once the coast is clear.”

“Never going to make it.”

“She’ll make it,” Ferguson told him running to the door.

~ * ~

he tenor’s song, drunken but perfectly on key, exploded from the elevator as the door opened.

“’And it’s no, nay, never, no nay never no more, will I play the wild rover, no never, no more.’”

Ferguson kicked the volume up a notch as he stepped out into the eighth-floor hallway. The rogue’s lament captured Norkelus’s attention just as he knocked on Thera’s door. Ferguson stopped walking but not singing, belting out the chorus as he put both hands on his fake glasses and pulled them from his nose, as if trying to get the hallway into focus. Then he started walking again, holding them in front of his face as he approached the bewildered scientist. When he got to within three feet, Ferguson stopped singing and concentrated on angling the glasses to get a proper perspective of the scientist.

“Who are you looking for?” demanded the scientist.

“ ‘Tain’t but lookin’ for a soul,” said Ferguson, slurring his words into a drunken Irish brogue. “But I am lookin’ for me room. And if you could point it out to me, laddie, I’d be much obliged.”

“You’re on the wrong floor.”

“ ‘Tis nine,” said Ferguson.

“Eight.”

“Nine.”

“Eight.”

Ferguson staggered back a step. “This is nine,” he insisted.

“Please go to your room, or I will call security,” said Norkelus.

“You’re a man who knows his numbers. I can see that.”

Thera’s door opened and her face appeared in the crack. She was back in her pajamas. “What’s going on out here?”

“Nothing,” said Norkelus. “Go back inside.”

“Is this eight or nine?” said Ferguson, bending so that he was eye level with her.

“The is the eighth floor,” she said. And then she added something in Greek, which he didn’t understand, though he guessed the drift: Go back to bed, you dumb lout.

“Eight, not nine. A thousand pardons, miss. And sir.”

Ferguson bowed, then turned and went back to the elevator. While he waited, he decided the night needed a triumphant air and began singing “Finnegan’s Wake.”