Seawolf Mask of Command (39 page)

Kristen was bent over a box, checking off items against a packing slip attached to the lid, when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Assuming it was Martin or Miller, she looked back calmly. But instead of her two shipmates, she saw Fitzgerald looming over her, his hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, Kristen,” he said politely.

She sprung to her feet, spinning frantically, and striking his arm with her own, forcing his hand off her. “Don’t touch me!” she warned, feeling her blood instantly boiling with rage.

“Hey!” Fitzgerald started as he stepped back defensively. “Take it easy,
lieutenant!”
he told her as he held his hands up innocently.

Miller and Martin stopped what they were doing and looked up at her with shocked expressions. Several SEALs had stopped what they were doing as well and were now watching.

“Take it easy my ass!” she snapped angrily. “
You
don’t touch me, ever!” she snapped with venom in her voice. She could feel her heart racing and the adrenaline surging through her veins. Her usual thin veneer of calm was gone. She was literally trembling with fury.

Fitzgerald blushed slightly and looked around at the men watching them. Kristen’s left hand was up to defend herself, but her right was held back in a balled-up fist and ready to pummel him if he took a single step toward her. Not that she doubted his ability to overpower her. But she would not willingly allow this man to touch her under any circumstances.

“Just relax, Kristen, I was just ...” he offered, holding his hands up innocently.

“My rank is Lieutenant Junior Grade,” she corrected sharply and then added, “
sir!
” Kristen knew she’d overreacted, or at least those watching must be thinking so. But at the moment, she was struggling just to form sentences without screaming at him.

Chief Miller slowly stepped between them and looked at her curiously. “Miss?” he asked calmly, his eyes studying her with worry.

Kristen didn’t respond. She was breathing heavily and realized she was shaking from nervous energy. But she kept her eyes on Fitzgerald, making it clear she’d forgotten nothing from her time in Corpus Christi.

Fitzgerald took a step back, and looked around. He was embarrassed, which she thought was almost funny. He’d always been a smug, arrogant bastard. “All right then,” Fitzgerald replied slowly. “Lieutenant,” he added. “I just wanted to know if you needed anything.”

“The test pack,” she replied, not lowering her guard. She was certain that to the SEALs and the others, she had to look like a fool. Fitzgerald was easily a hundred pounds heavier than she, and the fact she looked ready to attack him must have seemed ridiculous. But she kept her guard up just the same. “I can’t find the test pack,
sir.”
She then asked, “Do you know where it is?”

Fitzgerald shrugged his shoulders. “It should be here,” he replied glancing about at the boxes of gear. “Do you really need it?”

Kristen’s jaw tensed angrily. Fitzgerald, besides being a first-class scumbag, was also an idiot. She lowered her guard and stalked away from him to a ship’s phone mounted on the bulkhead. She picked it up and dialed as she kept her eyes on him. Everyone in the torpedo room was still watching her, except for a few SEALs who assumed the show was over and went back to work.

“Bridge,”
she heard Reynolds’ voice.

“Mister Reynolds, this is Lieutenant Whitaker. Can I speak with the captain? It’s important.” She then saw the color drain from Fitzgerald’s face. It occurred to her that he was afraid of her. Or, more accurately, he was afraid of what she knew about him.

“Brodie.”

“Sir, this is Lieutenant Whitaker,” she replied. “Have we cast off from the
Cable
yet?”

“No, the DDS is still being installed, why?”

“The LMRS is incomplete,” she answered. “We’re missing a piece of equipment I need to test the system,” she explained. “I’ve checked the torpedo room twice, and it isn’t here.”

“Have you checked with Fitzgerald?”

Kristen noticed Brodie using only Fitzgerald’s last name. No rank, no mister, just his surname. Anyone might not have noticed this subtle nuance, but Kristen’s powers of observation were extraordinary. She couldn’t help but consider the significance of this. Even Martin rated a “Mister.”

“Yes sir, and he doesn’t know where it is.” she replied. “I think it might still be on the
Cable
, sir.”

“All right, check to make certain it isn’t somewhere on board while I check with the tender,”
he ordered.

“Aye-aye, sir,” she replied appreciating the fact he didn’t question her by asking if it was “really important” like Fitzgerald had. Kristen hung up the phone and then explained the situation about the missing test pack to Miller and Martin.

“I’m looking for a shipping container marked with the words: LMRS Test Pack,” she told them. “I’ve checked in here twice but need to check the passageways to make sure it wasn’t left lying about somewhere.”

Kristen retraced the path the men who carried the equipment had most likely taken in hopes of finding the missing test pack somewhere on the
Seawolf.
She’d gone all the way aft to where a First Class Petty Officer was supervising the loading of some fruits and vegetables. She asked them about the box, but they hadn’t seen it. She then went forward, and as she passed through the control room, the XO—who was talking on a ship’s phone—stopped her. “Are you looking for a grey transport box about four feet square?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” she replied, relieved it had been found. “Where is it?”

“It is coming down the weapons hatch right now,” Graves informed her and then motioned up toward the sail. “The skipper wants you to check to make certain it’s the right box.”

Kristen went aft and, wasting no time, found a sailor carrying the box down through the weapon’s hatch.

“The skipper said this is important, ma’am,” the sailor offered as he hefted it.

Kristen had him set it on the deck, and she quickly inventoried the box, finding everything accounted for. She reported the same to the bridge and then hefted the box and headed for the torpedo room. But she’d barely gone ten paces when two seamen she barely knew stopped her and took the box.

“You’re supposed to be on limited duty, ma’am,” they explained and carried it forward for her. Kristen didn’t argue at the sudden display of chivalry. During all the activity, several of the blisters on her left arm had ripped and some of the scabs forming over the lesser burns had torn open and there was fresh blood on her arm. If the captain or the XO noticed, she would be back on bed rest for a month.

Not that the pain in her arm was the most significant problem she was currently facing. Besides Fitzgerald, whom she’d sooner flush out of the submarine using one of the commodes, she couldn’t help but wonder just what they were all heading into. SEALs, nuclear weapons, mine hunting drones…. The future seemed to be rushing toward her with the speed and mercy of a bullet.

Osan Air Force base, South Korea

S
ergeant Yong-sun Kwon stepped from building 37A and onto the apron alongside the runway. He pulled the collar of his field coat a bit tighter about his neck as the bitter cold immediately began to penetrate the layers of clothing. Besides his winter clothing, his body armor provided more protection than did his helmet. His tactical harness was more of an impediment than usual, considering his additional load. Normally, the base security guards carried just a single thirty-round magazine for their M-16s. However, stowed in the ammunition pouches on his harness, Yong-sun had nine fully loaded magazines for the M-16 on his right shoulder. In addition to this impressive arsenal, he carried four M-67 fragmentation grenades on his kit. The 9mm on his right hip wasn’t part of the standard load out for the base security force, either. But he carried it as well as an additional three magazines of ammunition for the pistol. Simply put, he was armed for war.

A war he had never truly expected to come.

“Damn cold tonight, Kwon,” he heard the deep southern drawl of his American counterpart as he appeared around the corner. His name was Rogers, and Yong-sun knew the Airman First Class well. They’d been walking patrol together on the joint American and South Korean Airbase for six months. The tall, lanky African American had recently met a local Korean girl and he was already talking marriage. He was one of five brothers and sisters, and his mother worked in Birmingham, Alabama at a public school in the cafeteria. Rogers’ favorite music was rap and he routinely listened to his preferred artist, Ludacris, when they walked patrol together, even though this violated standing orders for sentries.

So, they were both breaking the regulations.

“What say we find a nice dark spot behind one of the hangars and get the hell out of this wind?” Rogers suggested as he stepped beside Yong-sun, not noticing his friend’s arsenal.

Yong-sun nodded, not having expected it to be this easy. “Lead the way,” he directed Rogers. The Americans never ceased to amaze him. Certainly their military equipment was phenomenal when compared to their potential enemies, but—from Yong-sun’s experience—the Americans were soft and lazy. He couldn’t understand how they had achieved such greatness. They were decadent, arrogant, and—most important to Yong-sun—they were too easily fooled.

Rogers continued to chatter as he led Yong-sun away from the security post toward one of the hangars housing F-16 Falcons of the 51st Fighter Wing. The lighting around the hangars was usually quite good, and there were security cameras to help augment the roving patrols. But security cameras could be disabled, and even on a modern base like Osan, there were always places to hide.

Rogers turned the corner around the rear of a hangar and stepped out of the wind and into the deep shadows. He was still talking as Yong-sun drew his knife. The first indication Rogers had of danger was when Yong-sun kicked out, striking the rear of the taller man’s left knee with enough force to rupture the hamstring tendon. Rogers was about to scream in pain, but he was already falling back as Yong-sun’s left hand clasped around the man’s mouth to silence him. He brought the American down backward and the knife flashed. He inserted it expertly into the side of the American’s throat, driving it through both carotid arteries before jerking the blade back and forth, cutting his way out through the rapidly dying man’s trachea and esophagus. Rogers’ lower body jerked violently in death, but there was no real struggle, only shock on the American’s face.

Yong-sun wiped his blade off on the American’s uniform then returned the knife to its sheath. He then stripped the dead man of his single thirty-round magazine and added it to his own arsenal. He removed Rogers’ small radio and slipped it into a cargo pocket. He then dragged the still twitching body deeper into the shadows. It wouldn’t be found until the morning, and by then the base’s problems would be far worse than one dead sentinel.

He hadn’t expected this. In fact, if the truth be known, he had liked Rogers. The American was funny and the two had passed many a night laughing together. But Rogers was the enemy. This had been ingrained into Yong-sun from a young age. Rogers was part of the decadent western, capitalist nations that prevented a unified Korea. The West’s reasons were simple: to maintain their workers in chains, they had to prevent the spread of the great socialist revolution. This, too, had been deeply ingrained in him. But the psychological conditioning had been only part of his training after he’d been plucked from one of North Korea’s reconnaissance brigades by the NDE, North Korea’s premiere intelligence agency.

It had been a great honor, but the honor had led to three years of intensive training so he would be able to blend in once he reached South Korea. His identity had been carefully prepared, a plausible history, meticulously prepared documents inserted by other agents into the South Korean databases so that when Yong-sun arrived, no one questioned his identity.

Despite the exhaustive preparation, despite the mental conditioning and harsh indoctrination, he still hadn’t expected war, even though he had hoped for it. But the previous day when, as his training had dictated, he adjusted the FM radio in his quarters to pick up the North Korean government broadcast, he’d heard the code word activating him. At first, when he’d heard the phrase, he’d gone numb with disbelief, wondering if he had—by chance—misheard the transmission. But then it had been repeated. There had been a brief moment of anxiety, but then elation. He’d been in South Korea for seven years, and it had been difficult to blend in amongst the people of the South who’d been brainwashed by their consumer society to believe they were truly free.

But the time had come. The struggle to unite the two countries would be difficult. There could be no doubt. But the preparations had been extensive, and the North’s military was prepared. All Yong-sun had to do was his part and trust his fellow soldiers to do theirs. The Supreme Leader wouldn’t have ordered the attack if he hadn’t been certain. After all, the Supreme Leader was perfect, just as his father and grandfather had been.