No Way Back (12 page)

COLD LIGHT, TOO BRIGHT, IN THE LOBBY BEFORE DAWN,
and a night manager handling our checkout too cheerfully for the hour. Everybody must have had the same idea I did. Everybody’s wearing the clothes they arrived in. The only difference for me is the weight of the shoulder-holstered Wilson, the Springfield at the small of my back. In a day or two, I know, I won’t be conscious of this at all. Which is important. A man who feels he’s carrying shows he’s carrying—in small ways, but always.

We board a white van, unmarked except for a small yin-yang circle bisected horizontally by a wave, red on the top, blue on the bottom. The Korean symbol, it’s even on their flag. What was it Eunkyong told me? The red’s for male, day, heat, action, the blue symbolizes female, night, cold, passivity.

A Taoist sign. Totally wrong, like most mystic shit. What do monks know about anything real? But I’m suddenly aware my own grasp on that is pretty weak at
the moment. Last night, for instance. Maybe I only dreamed it.

I must scowl or something at that notion.

“I think Terry here is deep in caffeine withdrawl, needs a fix bad,” Allison says as the van hums away from the hotel.

“He’s not alone,” Rob mutters. He’s yawning as the van bypasses the main road to the passenger terminal—still dark, empty, not open for business—and turns onto a broad expanse of tarmac. Up ahead, maybe half a klick from the sleeping airliners flocked around the commercial terminal, there’s a neat row of corporate Hawkers, Falcons, Challengers, a few little Lears. The private aviation sector, three or four hangars, only one of which is lit up. We stop there.

I step out of the van, look up at a Gulfstream, the G IV, I think. All pristine white, no markings beyond the standard FAA-required numbers. Except on the tail. There’s a discreet circle, no bigger than a basketball, divided by a horizontal wave, red on top, blue on bottom. I see men in the green glow of the cockpit. The engines are already whirring lowly, the gangway’s down. A couple of guys in white jumpsuits are transferring our luggage from the van to the plane’s belly.

“KimAir, flight one, nonstop from BWI to Monterey, California, is now boarding. Have your passes ready, please,” Allison calls out, mounting the gangway.

“You miss your true calling or what?” Rob says. “‘Hello, my name is Allison and I’ll be your cabin attendant.’”

“Just board, Rob,” Allison says, disappearing into the plane.

Rob climbs the few steps, Nadya follows, I bring up the rear. We pass a curtained cubicle that must be the
galley, enter the cabin. No rows of seats. It looks like a small cocktail lounge, half a dozen fat leather easy chairs around a low table, a couple more chairs against the rear bulkhead on either side of a brushed-aluminum door. Plush carpet, the same shade of blue as the yin-yang circle. A slim table flush against the side of the hull, three slim brushed aluminum laptops on it, one under each porthole. Three tiny silver cell phones, one next to each computer. A slight girl in a kimono appears from the galley, inquires in a whisper if I’d like coffee, then pads around to Allison, Rob, and Nadya, asking what they require. Then she retires behind the curtains.

“Pick your spot,” Allison says, flopping into one of the leather chairs that faces more or less forward. I guess I’m the only one who doesn’t mind flying backward—lots of chopper time—because Rob and Nadya flank her. The kimono girl returns with a tray, serves each of us with a bow. A couple of gulps of the coffee and I’m feeling sharper.

“What did I say about Terry needing his fix?” Allison says. “Look at him. It’s like his switch has been flipped on.”

“I think it’s Nadya who needs to pop a stay-awake, or whatever flicks her switch,” Rob says. “Did you sleep at all, Nadya?”

Uh-oh, I’m thinking.

“Up your bum, mate,” Nadya snaps. “You didn’t have the longest, most tedious dinner of your life with the senior Russia analyst from Langley. It could have been over twice as fast, if the old lech had focused mostly on business instead of mostly on my tits. Gave me bad dreams.”

She leans a little forward, looks over at Allison, and laughs. “Now Rob’s doing it, too. This is covert harassment. I’m filing a complaint with Human Resources.”

She doesn’t look at me. Her attitude’s perfect—treat Terry like you’ve always treated Terry. “At least that one’s not sexist,” she says, nodding in my direction.

None of us even notice the plane’s taxiing, until the pilot’s voice comes over the intercom, announcing we’re cleared for takeoff in Korean-accented English.

“Hey, where’s Westley?” I ask, more than a little late.

“He’s already been out there for a few days, playing golf with Mister Kim,” Allison says. “Korean businessmen have picked up bad habits like that from their Nipponese counterparts.”

“A nice walk, spoiled,” I say.

“Where’d that come from?” Rob asks.

“Some rabid anti-golfer. Read it someplace,” I say.

Then we’re accelerating a whole lot faster than any jet I’ve been on, and the lift-up’s much more sudden, the climb so steep it’s disconcerting. My hands squeeze the chair arms hard. Feel embarrassed when I notice my white knuckles. Hope the others didn’t see. I deliberately relax my hands. I’m used to the long, slow lumbering of C-130s, which always feel like they’re never going to get airborne.

Allison’s up and booting one of the laptops as soon as we level out. She types a few words, taps one key, waits a second, then shuts down. Must be an e-mail.

“Cool plane. Kim’s done it right,” I say. “But you said noncommercial all the way. This can’t have the range to cross the Pacific.”

“It might. But he doesn’t use it for that,” Allison says. “He keeps this stateside, for local hops here and there. He’s got something a bit bigger for intercontinental.”

“Oh, it’s huge,” Nadya says. “Enormous.”

“Nadya’s phallic obsession,” Allison says. “You wouldn’t believe what she did when we saw an ICBM in North Dakota once.”

“I missed that one,” Rob says.

“She stroked it!”

“Cow!” Nadya says. She can’t stop herself from giggling then.

Fucking sorority house again. The mood’s too flip, too light. It’s making me uneasy. But then I remember we’re just going to California, hang out with Mister Kim and his people for a week or so, everybody getting comfortable with everybody. And then Busan, the man’s hometown. The mission won’t get serious until Vlad. I relax a little. Too used to the raw, rough ways my team eased tension on the way into a hot LZ. Or on the way up for a HALO—high-altitude, low-opening parachute drop. Training or real world, never mattered which. One felt the same as the other. That was the fucking point, wasn’t it?

And I miss that shit, I realize. It’s insane, of course. Nobody should miss live fire, or jumping out of a perfectly airworthy plane at thirty-five thousand feet in the dead of night, free-falling for thirty-two thou, then popping a chute so you can float right into the kill zone of dudes who’re just dying to smoke you.

And I can’t wait, I’m thinking, to get to Vlad. Tried for years now to put that jones for adrenaline dumps behind me. But even a whiff of action, I want into it.

“Terry’s going all pensive on us,” Allison says. “Thinking deep thoughts, are you?”

“Terry’s taking a nap,” I say, settling deeper into my chair, shutting my eyes, and hoping I’ll see only Nadya in my dreams.

No such luck.

The bone-dry, bone-chilling desert night. No moon. No wind, no sound except the bass vibe of our well-muffled dune buggy easing up a little rise, poking its snout over
the edge. Below us, maybe a thousand meters off on flats dull gray against the black night sky, we see the ominous silhouette of what’s got to be a T-55 tank, laagered up with three APCs. A company of Iraqi soldiers, still and featureless as logs, lying close around a small fire. Nobody’s up and walking, nobody’s on sentry duty. Assholes. No discipline at all. Or maybe they figure they’re so far behind the front line they can relax.

Allahu akbar
, you poor bastards. God’s scourge has a visual.

JoeBoy whispers to his radio. The radio hisses back. White teeth gleam out from his camo-smeared face. I figure it’s a grin.

“That big fucker. Light it up, Luther!” JoeBoy says. Snake’s behind the twin 50s mounted on the roll bar. “Yeah, man,” he says. “Light the fucker up.”

I shoulder a LAW, brace myself against the roll-bar, center the tank in the glowing green reticle of the sight. The sight image jitters. I take a deep breath, steady down, half exhale.

“Rock the ragheads, man,” Snake says.

One press of one finger.

I’m rocked hard when the missile whooses off, then blinded by the brilliant white flash as it whangs into the tank and explodes. Half-blind as JoeBoy slams the buggy, revved to the max, over the ridge and redlines across the flats straight toward the pillar of flame. Snake’s loosing shattering bursts of armor-piercing and incendiary rounds from the 50s, screaming “Fry! Fry, motherfuckers!”

White flash and red flare bypass my eyes, go straight into my brain as the APCs erupt, one after the other. A few dark figures flicker behind this scrim for a second. I hose them down, emptying two mags with my MP5 on full auto. Then there’s nothing moving but heavy waves
of smoke breaking over the flames in slow motion. Until it’s Fourth of July again as Iraqi ammo cooks off into the sky. I try to blink away the awful glare. Doesn’t work. Too bright.

It’s daylight coming strong and straight in my face through the Gulfstream’s portholes I’m blinking away, waking. We’re racing the sun, the sun’s winning as it always does. Allison and Rob are dozing. Nadya’s reading a paperback. She glances up, sees my eyes are open, gives me a small smile of complicity. Then she goes back to her book, whatever it is. I stare at her a while to wipe the dream away, then watch the terrain appear through the cloud cover as the plane descends. Allison and Rob stir, stretch.

The pilot’s good. He brings us down very steep but so smoothly the Gulfstream’s tires barely squeal. Allison and Rob unbuckle. Nadya puts her book into her shoulder bag. The little kimono bows us out of the plane.

Nobody’s waiting for us at the plane’s hangar, which is as far from the main terminal as the dimensions of this small airport allow. There’s a black Land Cruiser parked beside it. One of two guys in white jumpsuits hands Allison a key as she steps off the gangway, then joins his mate in off-loading our bags and wheeling them to the vehicle. Allison drives, Rob’s riding shotgun, Nadya and I are in the rear seat. Feels like a chunk of time went missing. The early sun’s slanting sharply over the wooded mountains to the east. It’s only around eight in the morning, local, though my watch says eleven.

As we wind up into the hills, I catch a glimpse of the Pacific. Then we get to Carmel, and I feel low-rent despite the suit and the Cruiser. We park and head off for breakfast. I see a couple of Hummers, a $150,000 Mer
cedes Gelandewagen, one hand-built Morgan among the BMWs, Porsches, and Lexus SUVs. Lots of folks dressed like rich lumberjacks: plaid shirt-jacs, more likely cashmere or alpaca than cotton flannel. Same style idiom in Jake Moon’s, a pancake house disguised as a Gold Rush saloon. Cappuccino’s five bucks a pop, and fifteen gets you a short stack of Jake’s rugged flapjacks—your choice of mango, passion fruit, kiwi, papaya, or organic whole-wheat blueberry. We’re crammed around a small table with a tin top, in the rear. I order blueberry.

“I believe, no, I’m
sure
that is Clint Eastwood,” Nadya says, pointing at the take-out counter up front, where a tall, lean guy is buying a bag of muffins. “He’s not still the mayor, is he?”

Allison glances over. “Old,” she says. “Ancient.”

“Not so,” Rob says. “Hope I look that good when I’m his age.”

Nadya snorts. “Highly unlikely. You don’t look that good now.”

“Could we possibly take a banter break? For once?” Allison says, picking at some unrecognizable fruit in her pancakes. “So, Terry, a little parting of the ways coming up.”

“How’s that?”

“Westley’s staying with Kim. You’ll be staying on the compound with Kim’s security guys. Rob and Nadya and I are camping out about a mile away. You could call it a motel, but it’s a dozen little log cabins around a main cabin. Very fancy cabins, actually. Four-star accommodations.”

“And what am I going to be doing, exactly?”

“Well, first you’ll meet Mister Kim. See if he approves of you. If he does, you and one of his guys will team up, do what security always does.”

“If Kim doesn’t approve?”

“Oh, he will. He knows all about you.”

“And if I don’t approve of him?”

“You’ll have to deal with it. Prep’s over. As of today, you’re on the job.”

“HELLO, MISTER PRENTICE,” KIM SAYS, SHAKING MY
hand, smiling. “Are you by chance Native American?”

We’re standing on the redwood deck partly cantilevered out over the Pacific, Kim’s house set back maybe a hundred meters, and Westley’s just made the introduction. He’s hovering at my elbow now. Allison, Rob, and Nadya are just behind. They’ve already been presented; that hierarchy thing Eunkyong was so firm about. I’m not surprised by my ranking, but Kim’s idea of an opening line is something else.

“I believe there’s Lakota, perhaps some Comanche in my bloodline, sir,” I say, bowing very slightly, a little less than I’ve been instructed to. Fuck the truth.

“I hope you don’t think me blunt, Mister Prentice,” Kim says. Damn, I was sure I’d kept all feeling masked. “Only a bit of pretty outdated Korean culture, this interest in physiognomy. You’re not offended?”

“Offended? Not at all, sir. I’m proud of my ancestry.”

“Yes, I share that. So when I first came to America as
a student, I’d get angry as hell when people almost automatically assumed I was Chinese. Or, worse, Japanese.”

Westley laughs softly. “You know Americans, Mister Kim.”

“Oh, I do now. Now I know very well that those who haven’t spent time in Asia simply lack an eye for the differences. And I understand those differences even seem quite subtle to those more well traveled, though they’re far from subtle to us.”

“The attendant on your plane, Mister Kim, was clearly Japanese. The pilot was Korean. But the copilot was probably Cantonese, or at least his grandparents were,” I say.

“An experienced eye, Mister Prentice,” Kim says. “And what did you see in the face of the man at the front gate?”

“A mix of Manchu and Mongol, I think. His grandparents would’ve likely arrived in Korea during or just after World War Two.”

“Your Mister Prentice is very sharp,” Kim says to Westley.

“Our team members are always experienced, and professional,” Westley says.

“Mister Prentice, let me introduce you to my assistant, Mister Park,” Kim says. A Buddha steps forward, six-two and maybe 240 pounds of him, face expressionless. He was not presented to Allison and the rest. Hierarchy again. “What do you make of Mister Park?”

“South Korean by name, but from the far north by blood,” I say.

“Ha-ha!” Kim smiles at Park, who bobs his head. Then Park and I shake hands, and I say, “Always a pleasure to meet a colleague,” in passable Korean. He grins.

Kim gestures toward the house, which appears to be an enormous plate of glass framed by redwood logs at
the corners, and leads the way. Park sticks close to him, which gives Nadya the chance to slide by me, ram an elbow into my ribs and mutter, “Bloody show-off.” Inside, Kim suggests coffee and a chat to Westley and the others. “Perhaps,” he says, “Mister Prentice would like Mister Park to show him our arrangements?”

Westley nods at me, and I go off with Park on a tour. “How much you know, Mistah Prentice?” he asks as soon as we’re out of earshot, heading down a corridor lined with celadon porcelain vases—probably priceless antiques, plain-looking as they are—on wooden pedestals.

“Enough,” I say.

“I already figured that. I mean Korean talk.”

I laugh. “Memorized a few phrases, like the one I used with you. That’s all.”

“Pretty good trick, Mistah Prentice. You gotta lot of those? You some kind of tricky fella?”

“Usual tricks of the trade.”

This brings on a Buddha smile, narrows the hard black slits of his eyes. Then we’re outside, moving along the compound’s perimeter in bright California sun. Park slips on shades. “Goddamn bright. Most days, fog, lotsa clouds, like at home,” he says.

He doesn’t say much else for a while. We just walk. Everything’s a test, I’m thinking. Thanks, Allison.

The side of the house that faces the road has no glass; it’s all wood with a kind of gull-wing tiled roof that’s traditionally Korean, according to the photos in the books Eunkyong made me study. The grounds look wild, nature undisturbed for the most part. But there’s some telltales here and there. Little humps in the ground that don’t look quite right, for instance.

“You got motion sensors in the ground, and you got
infrared beams on those,” I say, pointing to the posts of the slatted wood fence anyone could climb. Park just grunts.

I start scanning more intently. In some of the wind-bent, torturously twisted coastal pines I see boxes no bigger than cigarette packs, almost but not quite perfectly camo’d, like the cameras serious deer hunters place along likely buck trails. “Smile, Mister Park,” I say. “We’re on TV right now, aren’t we?”

“Hunh,” he mutters, keeps walking. I stop.

“Seen enough,” I say. “The place is taped. You got a guy in a room somewhere twenty-four seven, watching monitors. Also watching a computer screen with an image of the fence perimeter. The line’ll start strobing exactly where anybody or anything breaks the beams. I’d have to see a schematic to tell if the system has any video shadows. But it wouldn’t matter much, would it? Because there’s multiple beams along the fence top, since a single can be stepped over by guys who figure there is one. And nobody can come under cleanly because the motion sensors’ll give them away.”

“Right so far, Mistah Prentice,” Park says.

“Power goes down, you got a generator that kicks in automatically. But there’s a second or two delay before the monitors go back on. Somebody really clever could take advantage of that, get pretty close to the house. But then they’d fry. Because you’ve got every possible entrance wired, instant battery backup.”

“Goddamn right.” He’s grinning.

“If I want to take this place out, it goes out, though.”

“How you do that, Mistah Prentice?”

“Roll up in a van, forget stealth, just stand on the roof and send about six RPGs into the place. Then a couple of LAWs, just ’cause I like fireworks with big booms.”

Now the Buddha laughs. “You musta spent a lot of
time in crazy places. This is California, Mistah Prentice. No craziness like that here.”

“Nah, nothing like that here. Never happen, Mister Park.”

“California. So hey, you call me Sonny, okay?” he says, leading me to the left side of the house and down some steps to the entrance of a wing that’s less than half aboveground. Inside, there’s the room I expected: a bank of monitors, a computer, and intercom, radio and phone setups. A Korean sitting on a swivel chair turns, glances without much curiosity at me for a second, then turns back to the screens. I see not only the outside is covered; on one screen the corridor with the celadon vases appears, on others other rooms, and on one the great glass-walled room overlooking the pool, deck, and ocean, Kim and Westley and the rest sitting around talking. There’s no sound.

We move along a short corridor lined with doors. Sonny opens one. “Yours,” he says, gesturing into a room that could be one lifted whole from a decent airport hotel, except it has no windows. It does have a big bed, a desk with a laptop, a TV, a mini–stereo system on it, an overstuffed easy chair, big closet set in one wall, and a full bathroom, complete with white hotel towels. My suitcase is already on the luggage rack.

“Good enough,” I say.

“Damn bunker,” Sonny says. “Me, I’m in the next room. Don’t like being underground.”

So, this Buddha’s a little claustrophobic. I’ll remember that.

“Let’s get outside, Mistah Prentice,” he says, and then we’re through another door, up another set of steps and onto the deck around the pool, salty sea-taste in the wind. Sonny sucks in a deep breath.

“Ahh. Good, good. This I’m liking. Mistah Kim, he
love this, too. We got places like this in Korea,” he says, sweeping his arm toward the gnarled trees, the cliff, the glittery heaving expanse of ocean.

“You work for Mister Kim long?”

“Ah, six, seven years.”

“Professional question?”

“Sure thing, Mistah Prentice.”

“You ever have to take out anyone coming at Mister Kim?”

The Buddha stops his raptuous comtemplation of the sea, looks obliquely at me. “No,” he says, after a moment.

“You ever have to defend him at all from an assault, a snatch attempt?”

“No.”

“Security always this heavy?”

“Heavy? Nothing heavy here, Mistah Prentice.”

“Don’t think most of the neighbors have more than standard burglar alarms. Which makes motion sensors, guys like you, and the video watcher in the bunker kind of heavy by local standards. Like you said, this is California, not some crazy place.”

“You got some kinda point here, Mistah Prentice? Some kinda problem or something?”

“No. Just a little curious how long things have been this way.”

“Long time, just me with Mistah Kim.”

“Good enough,” I say. “So when did it ratchet up?”

“Ratchet?”

“When did the electronics, the extra men get added?”

Sonny looks at me fully now. Can’t tell exactly what’s going on behind those black slits. Could be suspicion, could be some quick calculation of how much he ought to reveal.

“Little while after Mistah Kim start going up to the North, that Mistah Westley start coming around a lot.
That Mistah Westley, he start telling Mistah Kim I’m not enough anymore.”

“Mister Westley, he’s kind of nervous,” I say. “Sees ghosts, I think.”

“Hah!” Sonny barks. “That’s exactly what I think. Sees a damned lot of ghosts. Everywhere, all the time. Keeps telling Mistah Kim ghost stories. Mistah Kim, he don’t believe in ghosts. But pretty soon I got a lot of assistants anyhow. Pretty soon we got motion sensors, all kinda shit. Military-type shit.”

“And no ghosts ever show up?” I say.

“Fuck no. Any do, they probably belong to Mistah Westley, damn straight.”

I can’t tell if he means me or not.