Hunt the Dragon (20 page)

Something rustled to his right, and he saw a flash of silver and fluorescent orange. Thought he might be having a stroke, then realized it was Dawkins rolling in the Kevlar blanket until he hit the base of a tree and stopped. Crocker had lowered the makeshift stretcher to the ground and was bending over Dawkins and offering him a hand up before he realized what he was doing. Through the dim light he saw dirt and leaves matted on Dawkins's hair and face. His eyes shone, but his voice was shredded with exhaustion.

He said, “Leave me. I'll die here. Thank you for what you did. It was…good.” This came out in one continuous stream, as though he was expending his last bit of energy.

Crocker wasn't about to accept it. “No. Not happening.”

“No, no, it's okay. I'll die here…Just get a message to my wife.”

“Get the fuck up!”

Crocker pulled him to his feet, stood him up, leaned him against a tree, and peeled the wet leaves off his face.

Dawkins shuddered and started to weep. He said, “I told you…I can't do this.”

“You have no idea what you're capable of, Dawkins. No fucking idea. We're going to get through this together.”

“No…”

“Hold on to my hand.”

The warmth felt good. Crocker was sitting before a fire. Holly handed him a cup of tomato soup with big brown croutons floating in it. He leaned forward to sip it, and stumbled. He quickly caught himself before he let go of the makeshift stretcher.

“Boss!”

He thought he saw Cyndi lying on it, naked, a red hibiscus blossom behind her ear.

“Boss, this okay?”

He saw Akil looking back at him, his eyes bigger and darker than usual. They were standing in a little oval clearing in a dense stand of trees.

“Boss, you all right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, this is good. Thanks.”

He let go of Dawkins and lowered the stretcher to the ground, then stood there trying to think what to do next.

“Lie next to Sam,” he said to Dawkins. “Wrap the blankets around yourselves. I'm gonna build a fire.”

A massive shiver ran from Crocker's feet all the way to his head, snapping his teeth together.

“I'm gonna start collecting wood,” he said to Akil. “I want you to surveil the area. See if there's anyone in the vicinity.”

“I'm going to look for a hotel with a pool. Take a swim, then catch a movie.”

“You're funny.”

“What's the plan? Stay here tonight and look for an exfil site in the a.m.?”

Crocker was finding it hard to think that far ahead. “Something like that…”

Next thing he remembered, he was searching through the pack for the med kit and locating a thermometer, which he placed in Dawkins's mouth. The little LED screen read 93.5 degrees Fahrenheit.

“I feel sick,” Dawkins moaned, his skin pale and lips still blue.

“Stay under the blankets. I'll get you warmed up.”

Definitely stage two hypothermia,
he said to himself.

H
e was
on his hands and knees, using the lid of the PRS kit to dig a hole about a foot away from a modest-sized tree, which would help to disperse the smoke. A gust of wind blew up his back and he shivered. Akil sat six feet away, gently rubbing blood into Dawkins's arm. He saw Crocker staring at him and stopped.

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You hear something, boss?”

“No. Did you?”

He couldn't remember what he had determined about their present location, but he thought it must have been acceptable, because they were still there, and he was digging.

He'd constructed so many Dakota fire pits that he could make one in his sleep, which was essentially what he was doing now. He saw Jenny at two and a half, standing in a wading pool in the backyard holding her arms out to him. He tossed a beach ball, which sailed between her outstretched arms and bounced off her nose.

He started laughing.

“What's so funny, boss?” Akil asked.

“I was remembering something.”

He blinked and looked down, and was surprised as how much progress he'd made. The main hole was about fourteen inches deep and eight inches wide. He'd already completed a narrower outlet hole at a slight angle on the windward side that intersected with the bottom of the pit. This would provide the fire with oxygen and keep it burning. Now all he had to do was fill the pit with the kindling he'd gathered and light it.

Which he did now, using the ferrocerium rod and rubbing his knife into it at a thirty-degree angle. The spark produced by the metal lit one of the open packets of treated cotton tinder. He tossed it into the pit and covered it with kindling, then set progressively larger sticks over the little flames.

They grew larger. The hotter the fire got, the more oxygen it sucked into the tunnel.

“You can laugh to yourself all you want, as long as you get shit done,” Akil remarked.

“Thanks, douchebag.”

Together they carried Sam closer and huddled around the fire. Akil cleaned the metal PRS kit holder in a nearby stream and filled it with fresh water. Crocker heated it over the fire, poured some into the lid, and passed it to Dawkins, who sipped some, then passed it to Sam.

“You're a fucking genius,” Akil said as he refilled the lid and passed it to Crocker.

The water warmed Crocker's insides. “No, I'm a frogman.”

“Same thing, only different.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Akil's wide face creased into a grin. “It means you're feeling better. Later we'll go looking for some Korean babes to keep us warm.”

“You're crazier than me, and always have been.”

“Crazy keeps me sane.”

Now that Crocker's mind was clearer, he realized that he'd forgotten to examine Sam. In the reflected light from the fire he cut away the right leg of Sam's wet suit. His ankle was completely dislocated, and the fibula and tibia had both sustained compound open-wound fractures. The pain had to be excruciating, yet as far as he knew, Sam hadn't swallowed any medicine, nor had he complained.

Most of what Crocker found in the med kit were Israeli bandages, tourniquets, tape, QuikClot, and triangular bandages—more suited to dealing with combat wounds. At the bottom of Suarez's pack he found a universal SAM splint and a vial of extra-strength Motrin.

He fed Sam two pills, cleaned the wounds, and stabilized his ankle by placing the splint around the bottom of his bare foot, wrapping it around both sides of his ankle and securing the aluminum alloy bands with a bandage and tape.

Crocker slept for thirty minutes and woke up remembering Suarez, Naylor, and Hutchins. He asked Akil, who was still awake, to watch the camp and keep the fire going while he went back to look for them.

“Is that smart, boss? You want the pistol?”

“You keep it. Guard the camp.”

At the beach he looked out over the bay and saw that the Ung-do complex was no longer burning. Patrol boats and helicopters with searchlights traversed the seas south, west, and even east of the island. None of them bothered to look north.

Eventually they'll turn this way,
he said to himself, trying to be realistic. Their current vulnerable state afforded no margin for error. Nor could they rely on hope.

He searched up and down the beach along the east side of the peninsula, then along the little area that jutted south, then west, making sure to walk along the water's edge so as not to leave footprints.

No sign of Suarez, Naylor, or Hutchins. No wreckage from the SDV, either. He gazed south one last time, praying that they were still alive and hadn't been captured.

Then he searched the beach again and tried not to feel sad.

He awoke stiff from his neck down and squinted into the sun shining through the leaves. The air carried the scent of burning wood. He saw Akil cleaning and drying his SIG Sauer by the fire pit. Sam lay beside him, sleeping. As Crocker stretched, he noticed that the skin around Sam's ankle was purple and swollen.

“How long did I sleep?” he whispered. “Where's Dawkins?”

“He went to the stream to wash himself.”

“This isn't a fucking camping trip. You shouldn't have let him go alone.”

“He insisted. I think he shit himself.”

“Which way'd he go?”

Akil pointed to his left—generally east.

Crocker pushed through bushes still wearing the smart suit and Merrell boots. Past a patch of honeysuckle, he saw Dawkins naked except for a gray T-shirt, with the water midway up his thighs—pale, vulnerable, and lost in his own thoughts. He was the kind of guy Crocker had passed hundreds of times in the mall and never given a thought to. He was the quiet, smart, physically meek student he used to terrorize in school.

Crocker had never asked him about the circumstances of his captivity, but wanted to. Now, as he stepped down the embankment toward the six-foot-wide stream, he saw something move up ahead on his right. The flash of a blue shirt, and then a boy of maybe seven holding a bamboo fishing pole. The kid turned right when he reached the stream and walked away from them, disappearing around a bend.

Back in the clearing, Crocker knelt beside Akil and said, “There are people living nearby, which means of one of us has to recce this end of the peninsula. You know anything about it?”

“From what I remember reading, it's sparsely populated. Small family farms and swampland. The population centers are farther south.”

“The other thing we've got to do is locate an exfil site big enough to land a helicopter,” Crocker said. “If we find one that's far enough from civilization, we'll signal tonight.”

“Sounds like you've been thinking.”

“If we don't find one, we'll keep moving and searching, which won't be easy with Sam. But if we follow the stream and use the purification tablets, we should have plenty of water. We also need to start looking for food.”

“Prime rib?”

“Fish heads and rabbit balls. I'll set some traps.”

An hour later, while Crocker was boiling water, a Russian-made Mi-14 helicopter passed overhead, then banked left back over the bay and returned. They hid under the thickest foliage they could find and waited. After a half-dozen passes it moved on.

After the sun went down, they feasted on two large trout Akil had speared in the stream, drank water, and rested by the fire. Shortly after midnight they broke camp, covered the fire pit, and hiked three-quarters of a mile northeast, picking their way through pine trees and swamp to a camping area that had been cleared near the beach with two rotting picnic tables. The overgrown narrow dirt road that fed it from the north looked like it hadn't been used in months.

While Akil, Sam, and Dawkins waited in the woods, Crocker stood in the clearing and activated the Emerson GPS distress marker for a full minute, then flashed it three times according to the prearranged emergency signal. He repeated the process three more times and waited. When an hour passed and no one came, he signaled again.

Crocker repeated the same sequence for the next three hours, while Akil sat with Sam and Dawkins. Straining his ears for the sound of an approaching helicopter, he grew frustrated. The signal from the Emerson distress marker wouldn't last forever, and they had no extra batteries.

Figuring that there was a possibility that the North Koreans had picked up the signal, he joined the others and they hiked as fast as they could two miles north along the beach, skirting several huts, until he found what he thought was a suitable clearing. They made makeshift beds of twigs and dried grass to elevate their bodies off the cold ground. Then Sam, Dawkins, and Akil slept while Crocker kept watch.

As the sun spread its fingers across the sky Crocker considered the possible reasons why the
Carl Vinson
's rescue team hadn't responded—weather, mechanical problems, North Korean air patrols. He decided there was no reason to lose hope. They would try again tonight and every night after that until the battery wore out. Then he'd think of something else.

Three nights later, Davis sat in the Tactical Operations Center (TOC) on the
Carl Vinson,
positioned
approximately eighteen nautical miles from the Hamgyong Peninsula, staring at the large digital map of North Korea in front of him, praying for a red beacon to appear. Even though the clock on the wall read 0213 hours, the dark room was still crowded with more than a dozen male and female techs sitting before screens and computer terminals, monitoring nearby ships, aircraft, and weather.

Davis had spent the past several nights and mornings right here, watching in frustration as the emergency beacon moved north up the east side of the peninsula, and the Air-sea Rescue Team (ART) failed to respond. He had volunteered to be part of the four-man team that would fly on the specially designed stealth Blackhawk helicopter—the same one used in the Bin Laden raid—that waited fully fueled and geared up on the
Vinson
's flight deck. All he, the other three members of the team, and the 160th SOAR Night Stalker pilot and copilot needed was a go order from the carrier's commander, Vice Admiral Stanley Greene, who had been granted final authority by the commanders at SOCOM in Tampa, and they'd be aloft.

The first night the emergency beacon had showed on the screen, Greene ordered the rescue team to stand down because of the number of North Korean air patrols in the area. The second night he used the excuse of unstable weather. Last night he'd explained that the survivors on the ground were signaling close to a populated area. Davis had pointed out that the latest satellite imagery and heat signatures indicated that it was only a collection of small farms about four miles from the site.

Now Davis willed so hard for the beacon to appear that his head hurt. Those were his teammates on the ground. All of them alive and uninjured, he hoped. Even though he had a wife and two young children waiting at home in Virginia Beach, part of him remained with his teammates, in enemy territory, looking for a way out.

The first satellite images of the destroyed Ung-do facility, received a day and a half ago, had filled him with an enormous sense of pride. That was quickly giving way to frustration and anger. Davis considered himself thoughtful and reasonable—the kind of person who saw all sides of a dispute. But now he couldn't understand why officers on the
Carl Vinson
weren't willing to take the risks and launch the rescue.

Last night he'd tried to convince the Blackhawk pilot to disobey orders. When that failed, he had unleashed his frustration on the ship's operations officer, calling him “a disgrace to his uniform” and “a fucking coward.”

He apologized later, at breakfast. That wasn't like him, he explained. He was usually the mellowest guy on the team, referred to by his teammates as “surfer dude” because of his laid-back demeanor and blond hair.

Now the same operations officer looked back at him and shrugged. Davis glanced up at the clock. Another ten minutes had passed, and the beacon still hadn't appeared. His stomach roiled and he started to sweat as he realized that it was growing too late to launch a rescue tonight.

One of the technicians squeezed Davis's shoulder as he headed for the exit.

“Maybe tomorrow night,” he said. “Don't give up hope.”

The twenty-two men and two women who made up North Korea's military and political leadership had been stunned by the attack, which completely disabled Office 39's operation, resulted in the death of its leader, the Dragon, and set back their nuclear program five to ten years. As they waited in the plush red velvet seats in the beige marble conference room under military headquarters in downtown Pyongyang, they knew they should expect reprisals.

They had been sitting for two hours now, waiting for their thirty-two-year-old Supreme Leader to appear and rail at them. All of them secretly wanted that. They hoped for a catharsis, a cleansing, followed by a call to action. That they could accept. It would help them map the future. What they were hearing instead was that the Supreme Leader had literally become sick with humiliation. So sick, in fact, that he couldn't fathom a response to the attack.

He had reputedly told an aide, “There's no point trying to cover the whole sky with the palm of your hand,” a variation of a Korean proverb. What the Supreme Leader had meant by it was the subject of much speculation. Maybe he was saying they had been deluding themselves into believing that they were a strong country, and this attack had revealed that they were weak. Maybe that's why he was allowing himself to feel humiliated.