Foxbat (5 page)

Almost in the centre of the city of Pyongyang stood a plain six-storey concrete building.
Like most of the other structures in the vicinity, it carried no sign or logo to enlighten the curious about what activity might be carried on inside it. Here, as elsewhere in North Korea,
curiosity was not encouraged, and anyone considering just walking in would get little further than the double doors of the entrance. The armed guards posted there would guarantee that.

This was the headquarters of Central Committee Bureau 39, a deliberately innocuous title
obscuring the fact that the organization was the hub of North Korea’s government-sponsored drug production and smuggling network. The building now appeared almost deserted, lights
burning only in the entrance hall, and in the one office currently occupied.

After Pak Je-San’s proposal had been accepted, he’d worked with Kim Yong-Su –
not an enjoyable experience – in putting a number of procedures in place to ensure that all details of their operation remained totally secret. Approving his suggestions, Kim had then
issued instructions to the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. Those orders, in turn, had filtered down through the various levels of command, their content becoming progressively less
informative as they descended, until at the very bottom level every troop commander and radar officer had received little more than the briefest possible instructions and a telephone
number.

But that was enough. The call from the radar-watch supervisor at Pyoksong reached the
switchboard at Bureau 39 headquarters, and was automatically diverted to Pak’s phone because tonight, not unusually, he was sleeping in his office.

The call had awoken him from a deep slumber, and on answering it he was somewhat confused. He
hadn’t expected to be disturbed, but if anyone was going to call him, it was likely to be someone from Russia. So it took him a few seconds to grasp what the
so-ryong
was telling him.

‘We think it might be an attempt to land an agent, sir.’

‘Where, exactly,
so-ryong
?’ Pak was now fully awake.

The major carefully explained where they’d lost contact with the radar return, some three
kilometres off the coast.

‘Projecting the track, sir, we think the vessel must have made landfall somewhere to the
south of Suri-bong.’ He started to say something else, then broke off with a muttered apology as something distracted his attention. In a few seconds he resumed his report.
‘I’ve just been advised by one of my staff that the contact has reappeared on radar, and is now heading south-west. We believe it’s a small powerboat, and that it’s
currently returning to its parent vessel.’

‘Which is what?’ Pak asked. ‘A submarine?’

‘Not likely so close inshore, sir, and we’ve already provisionally identified the
larger vessel as a fishing boat with South Korean registry. It’s sailed out of Inchon on the same route about a dozen times over the last month, and our patrol boats have already
checked it twice. We could intercept it before it gets back to Inchon.’

‘No, that vessel is unimportant. Even if we did stop it, we would find nothing of interest
on board, and our action would just warn Seoul that we know what they’re up to. We must forget the fishing boat and concentrate on finding the man they’ve dropped off.’

‘I don’t understand. Why would they infiltrate a spy
there
?’

‘There’s a lot you don’t understand about this situation,
so-ryong
. I know exactly why they landed their man where they did, and I know where he’s currently heading.’

Richter reached the steel centre span of the hangar and swung himself up onto it. There was
just enough space between the beam and the roof panels to allow him to crouch down. His arms and legs were trembling from the strain of the climb, and he needed a few seconds’ respite
before tackling the next phase.

He looped his safety strap around the beam, out of the way, then tested the roof with his gloved
hand: it was made from corrugated iron panels. Taking the collapsible jemmy from his pocket, he extended it and eased the point between two of these panels and pulled gently. With a faint
creak, the lower one gave slightly. He repositioned the tool and applied pressure again, and this time it lifted far enough for him to see the sky. It would, he reckoned, be a big enough gap
for him to climb through.

He checked his equipment to make sure everything was properly attached, then seized the sides of
the opening he’d created, and pulled himself up. He wriggled through the gap and lay flat on the roof, checking all around him before moving on.

At that moment Colin Dekker was still looking in the wrong place, at the nearer edge of the
roof, but he now spotted Richter within seconds of him emerging. He nudged Wallace and gestured towards the hangar.

‘Alpha and Bravo, look sharp,’ he said into his microphone. ‘Spook’s
just climbed onto the roof. Let me know if any of the guards spot him.’

Beside him, Wallace trained his sniper rifle on the roof of the hangar, pinpointed Richter
through the scope, then dropped the muzzle of the weapon so that it would cover the sentries on the ground.

‘Spook. I’m moving forward towards the gantry,’ Richter said softly. He was
confident that the roof would take his weight – having seen the immensely strong steel skeleton supporting it – and now his biggest concern was to avoid making any
noise.

He stayed in a crouch, just in case any of the guards looked up: the sight of a man standing
upright on top of the hangar in the moonlight would bring an instant burst of fire from the ground. Not only would he be less noticeable on all fours, but it would also enable him to spread
his weight more evenly on the rooftop.

The panel he’d forced open was close to the front of the hangar, so it took only a couple
of minutes, even moving slowly and with the greatest care, for him to reach the lighting gantry. From the satellite pictures, the structure had looked fairly substantial, but Richter guessed
that at least some of its apparent width was actually shadow, because when he stopped directly above the main doors and looked down, the gantry seemed incredibly narrow.

He glanced over the edge of the high building, looking straight down. The guard was visible
below, leaning back against the main entrance doors, a cigarette burning in his mouth, and his rifle slung over one shoulder. The advantage for Richter was that human beings are very limited
in their normal field of view: most regard the world at eye level and below, and rarely bother looking up. The bad news is that people in some occupations, pilots and professional soldiers in
particular,
are
trained to look up, and if the guard below did so while Richter was crossing the gantry over to the adjacent hangar,
he’d be a sitting duck.

Stepping back from the edge, Richter murmured into his microphone. ‘Spook. I’m
starting across now.’

‘Alpha One. Roger that.’

The gantry wasn’t going to get any wider however long he hesitated, so Richter took a deep
breath and lowered himself onto it. He deliberately ignored the guard below, and also the two sentries standing in front of the target hangar, because clearly there was nothing he could do
about them. If any of them spotted him, the first he’d know about it would be a bullet. He concentrated on moving steadily and silently, taking care not to kick against anything –
a floodlight or the gantry itself – or trip over the cables, and focused, instead, on getting to the far end.

Halfway across, a sudden gust of wind rattled the entire structure, and for a minute or so
Richter paused, just in case a sentry heard the noise and looked up, but then the breeze died away and he continued his careful progress.

Less than four minutes after he’d stepped onto the gantry, he climbed off it thankfully
at the other end, and began crawling up the gently sloping roof towards the central ridge. He wouldn’t need to get into this hangar: merely force a panel and look carefully inside, and
record whatever he saw there with the camera.

More or less reaching the centre of the roof, he took out his jemmy, and began to lever up a
panel. The sound of tearing metal was not loud enough to be heard by the guards below, and soon Richter was able to lift the entire panel free and peer down, along the narrow but powerful
beam of his torch as it illuminated the interior of the hangar.

Directly below him was a small electric-powered towing truck, normally used to manoeuvre
aircraft in and out of the hangar or around the hardstandings. To one side of that, closer to the wall of the building, was another cherry-picker, but what astonished Richter was what else
occupied the hangar.

‘Shit a brick,’ he muttered as he fished the Nikon out of his pocket. ‘Six
will never believe this.’

Well before he left Seoul, Yi Min-Ho had spent several hours with his colleagues at
Naegok-dong working out the optimum route to his objective, though there had actually been little choice. The coastal area was mainly flat, but cultivated and inhabited, and therefore
potentially dangerous. The hills extending north of the coast provided very difficult terrain and, although taking that route would guarantee the least chance of being detected, it would take
him an unacceptable length of time to reach his objective.

So Yi stayed near the coast, and followed the main – almost the only – road. He
walked along the grass verge because the sound of footsteps – even those made by his rubber-soled boots – risked alerting someone to his presence. Every fifty paces or so he
stopped and listened for a short while, in case his ears might detect something his eyes had missed.

Twice he froze into immobility on hearing the sound of movement nearby, his hand reaching for
his pistol, but each time the noises faded away. Animals, he assumed, resuming his solitary march. Once a vehicle – an old truck lacking one of its headlamps – rattled past the
ditch where he’d already taken cover. He stayed motionless for a few minutes after it had passed him, just in case anyone was following it on foot.

His GPS unit told him that he’d covered almost three kilometres in the first hour, and he
calculated that he should reach the vicinity of Ugom in another two. Yi stopped between two stunted bushes for a brief rest, ate a small chocolate bar and washed it down with a mouthful of
water, then resumed his steady progress eastward.

Richter held the Nikon firmly by the strap and aimed it at the far end of the hangar, pressed
the button, then moved the digital camera slightly to cover the next section of the floor of the large building. Because of the filter, the electronic flash was invisible to his eyes –
and more importantly, invisible to the sentries standing outside the building – but was ideally matched to the infrared-sensitive media inside the camera.

He took a dozen pictures, then another couple just in case, switched off the Nikon and replaced
it in his pocket. There was no way he could refit the metal roof panel, so he just pushed it down until it was more or less level with those either side of it.

‘Spook. I’m on the way back,’ he murmured into his microphone, then started
crawling across the roof back towards the lighting gantry.

‘Roger,’ Dekker replied. ‘Heads up, all callsigns. Watch the guards, but
don’t fire unless you’ve no other option.’

Wallace settled the stock of the rifle comfortably into his shoulder and aimed it along the
left-hand side of the nearest hangar, looking out for the sentry.

Before stepping out on to the lighting gantry, Richter checked below for the current
positions of the guards, who still appeared totally unaware of his presence. The return trip seemed to take less time than before, and within five minutes he was crouching on the roof of the
first hangar to make a final check all round him, before re-entering the building itself.

He slid his legs into the gap where he’d lifted the panel, his feet locating the steel
beam. He crouched down on it and did his best to pull the panel back into place behind him. It wasn’t a good fit, and would be obvious to anyone doing an inspection of the roof, but
from the ground it would probably pass muster.

Rather than crawl precariously back down the sloping roof girder, Richter decided it would be
quicker to use his climbing rope, and go straight down to the floor of the hangar. He draped it over the main roof
spar, both ends of it easily reaching the ground. He
looped the safety strap around the beam, clipped it to his harness, and altered his position until he was lying flat across the steel spar.

Trapping the two lengths of the dangling rope between his boots, he also gripped it firmly with
his right hand before totally letting go of the beam itself. The safety strap immediately tugged at his harness, and he reached down and released the clip, allowing the strap to slide around
and off the steel beam and dangle loose below him. The descent was fast and easy, Richter letting the doubled-over climbing rope slide through his gloved hands, till in seconds he was
standing on the hangar floor.

He tugged one end of the rope, pulling it clear of the beam, then coiled it and looped it back
over his shoulder. He next walked over to the cherry-picker and lowered its cradle to ground level, then checked around with his torch that he wasn’t leaving anything behind him. Seeing
nothing out of place, he crossed over to the side door he’d used to enter. At least he wouldn’t have to pick the lock this time, nor was he wasn’t going to bother relocking
the five-lever mortise. He’d merely close the door behind him and walk away.

Richter pressed his ear to the door and just listened for a few seconds. ‘Spook. I’m
coming out,’ he said into the microphone, and waited for Dekker’s acknowledgement. Then he turned the handle of the Yale lock and eased the door open.

Wallace moved the rifle across to cover the side door of the hangar, watching for Richter to
re-emerge. He saw the doorway turn black as the door opened inwards, then a dark shape appeared and looked cautiously in both directions. The sentry wasn’t in sight, and within seconds
the door was closed again behind him.

But as Richter started to sprint across the open ground towards the cover of the oil drums, the
guard suddenly stepped around the corner, then froze as he saw a running man.

‘Boss,’ Wallace hissed urgently.

‘I see him. Alpha Two – take him out.’

Wallace shifted his aim fractionally, centring the cross-hairs on the sentry’s chest.
Above the sight picture, he saw the Algerian open his mouth to shout as he began unslinging his AK47 assault rifle. Then Wallace squeezed the trigger. The sniper rifle bucked against his
shoulder, but the suppressor reduced the noise to a muffled thud, and the guard tumbled backwards, the Kalashnikov falling from his lifeless hands.

Hearing the faint noise of the shot coming from outside the boundary fence, Richter glanced
round even as he ran. He absorbed the scene in an instant. Time was now crucial, as sooner or later one of the other guards would be bound to notice that the sentry was missing, and head
around the side of the hangar to check on him. The team had minutes at best to get away from here.

Richter raced straight for the section of fence where he’d stashed the ladder, lifted it
up and leant it against a post. In front, he could see Dekker moving quickly towards him in a crouch, another SAS soldier right behind him. Richter climbed up and perched for a moment on top
of the fence, while he swung the ladder over, then slid down to the open ground outside.

‘Time we got out of here,’ Dekker observed.

‘Roger that.’

As they turned away from the fence, Richter felt a slight tug on his left boot. He glanced down
and spotted what they’d all missed, but it was now too late. The thin silver trip-wire gleamed in the darkness.

‘Oh, shit.’

Behind him security lights suddenly flared into life, illuminating the boundary fence and the
open ground outside it. Simultaneously, sirens started their atonic wailing. Their supposedly covert insertion and surveillance operation had just turned very
overt
indeed.

The truck seemed to come out of nowhere. One minute the road was empty as far as Yi Min-Ho
could see. Then headlights came stabbing
through the darkness directly towards him. The unmistakable sound of a big diesel engine shattered the silence of the night.

He’d just crossed the bridge over the river that drains into the Teiton Wan bay at Ugom,
and was about to leave the road and strike out across country, heading for a narrow gap through the double line of hills that lay north of the town.

For an instant Yi didn’t move, a combination of fatigue and surprise momentarily dulling
his reactions, then he stepped unhurriedly off the verge – if the truck contained police or soldiers, a sudden movement would immediately attract their attention – and headed into
the adjacent field. But the moment he was clear of the headlight beams, he ran like hell.

The truck growled to a halt and Yi could clearly hear men shouting, followed by the sound of
their boots clumping loudly on the metalled surface of the road. He concentrated totally on keeping his footing on the uneven soil, and covering the ground as swiftly as possible.

The sudden flare of the truck’s headlights had impaired his night vision, and Yi stumbled
and almost fell three times in his desperate escape. But the men behind him experienced exactly the same problem, and the dancing beams of their torches were of little help because he already
had a substantial lead of about one hundred metres.

The ground beneath his feet began to change as scrubby farmland gave way to the uncultivated
terrain leading up to the foothills. Running across rough ground is very tiring, and Yi’s breath now came in short, painful gasps. He would be forced to stop soon, despite his desperate
situation.

Around him were clumps of bushes and stunted trees, and he realized that these offered the best
cover he was likely to find. He slowed down and skidded behind two trees growing close together, looking back down the slope towards the lights of his pursuers. They were now even further
away, probably two hundred metres, but Yi could clearly sense the determination in their pursuit.

What had started out seemingly as a simple chase was now transformed into a methodical search,
with about fifteen men spread out in a line and walking up the hill towards him. Making a conscious effort to slow his breathing, Yi pulled out his binoculars and focused them.

The moonlight was bright enough for him to detect that they were soldiers, assault rifles
slung over their shoulders. He’d obviously been unlucky enough to run into a North Korean Army patrol, but the surprise was that they hadn’t already started firing in his
direction. Because these were military, rather than the police, he didn’t imagine they would give up the chase easily, but whatever happened, he mustn’t get caught. Realizing he
would now have to put as much distance as possible between himself and such a determined pursuit, Yi replaced the binoculars in his pocket, turned northwards and jogged on up the hill.

In fact, luck had nothing to do with this encounter. The moment Pak Je-San ended the call from
the radar-watch supervisor at Pyoksong, he had proceeded to mobilize troops from the closest military establishment, which was the fighter airfield at T’ae’tan. There were very
few roads in that part of the country, so anyone landing south of Suri-bong had little option but to head east. And therefore Pak had guessed exactly where his quarry was going.

Suddenly the base came alive with the sound of vehicle engines revving up and with loudly
shouted orders. The sentries around the various hangars left their posts and began running towards the perimeter fence. It was only a matter of seconds, Richter realized, before they started
shooting.

‘All callsigns, Alpha One,’ Dekker shouted. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of
here. Break, break. Delta One and Two, get the Pinkies moving, immediate.’

The response from the two SAS troopers guarding the Land Rovers was instant. ‘Deltas
mobile, heading straight for you.’

The six SAS men were already up and running, weaving and dodging unpredictably from side to side
to make themselves as difficult targets as possible, but all the time heading away from the fence and the glare of the security lights.

‘Regroup in two hundred yards,’ Dekker instructed, as the metallic
clatter of a couple of Kalashnikovs on full auto echoed behind them, bullets spraying randomly in their direction. ‘But don’t return fire.’

They were already well away from the fence, so he knew the Algerians had to be firing blind.
Shooting back would just confirm their position, giving the enemy something definite to aim at.

Richter could see two pairs of headlights approaching, half a mile away to their right, the
vehicles bouncing wildly over the desert floor.

‘Regroup on me,’ Dekker called out, as he slid to a halt behind an outcrop of rock.
‘Anyone hurt? Any problems?’ It took less than ten seconds to confirm that none of them had suffered any injuries, then they started running again, this time in two loose groups
heading directly towards the approaching Land Rovers.

Behind them, the main gates of Aïn Oussera were open, and the first of the Algerian Air
Force trucks, loaded with heavily armed soldiers, were heading out in pursuit. Unfortunately the headlights of the SAS Pinkies would soon give them a clear target.

‘Delta One and Two, kill the lights,’ Dekker ordered. ‘Home in on our
torches.’

Immediately the headlights were extinguished, which would obviously slow their escape, but not
having the lights blazing might buy them a few precious seconds, or even minutes, while the Algerians tried to locate them. Meanwhile two of the troopers took out their torches and shone them
steadily, like beacons, in the direction of the approaching Land Rovers.

Dekker called a halt for a few seconds, while he looked back towards the airfield, checking
the disposition of the enemy troops. A couple of large trucks had emerged and were now heading in their general direction, but obviously the drivers had no firm idea where their quarry was
located. Richter wasn’t bothered about such vehicles – the Pinkies could outrun them, no problem – but the three smaller ones were a definite concern. In the lights from the
perimeter fence, they looked like either open jeeps or Land Rovers, and in each one he could discern the unmistakable shape of a heavy machine-gun, set on a pillar right behind the driver.
Whatever those vehicles were, they had pretty much the same armament as the Pinkies, and could also probably match them for
speed. But before Richter could suggest any
action against them or their occupants, Dekker was already issuing orders.

‘Alpha Two, Bravo One, take out their jeeps.’

‘Roger.’

As Richter watched, Wallace unslung his sniper rifle, dropped into a prone position and rested
the bipod on an almost flat rock in front of him. He paused for a few seconds, slowing his breathing as he took aim at the moving target still nearly a quarter of a mile away. Then the rifle
kicked in his hands, the sound of it a flat slap in the desert night. Outside the gate, the front tyre on one of the jeeps suddenly exploded, the vehicle lurching to one side and stopping
immediately. It was a hell of a shot in the circumstances.

‘Brilliant shot,’ Richter muttered.

‘I was aiming at the driver,’ Wallace confessed.

At that moment the other sniper fired but missed: the bullet’s impact with a rock
somewhere near the gates was clearly audible. The Algerian soldiers reacted immediately. Half a dozen of them moved forward to whatever cover they could find, and began loosing off shots from
their Kalashnikov assault rifles towards the SAS troops. They weren’t aimed rounds, just supporting fire designed to make their unknown attackers keep their heads down. Behind them, the
two remaining jeeps manoeuvred to the rear of the three-ton trucks and out of sight.

‘One down, two to go,’ Dekker muttered. Behind him, the two Land Rovers lurched to a
halt side by side amid swirling dust. ‘Mount up and let’s get the hell out of here.’

Inside thirty seconds, the two Pinkies were on the move again, the drivers pushing them as hard
as they could which, without lights, wasn’t very fast. The terrain was rocky and uneven, strewn with boulders the size of small cars, which loomed up faster than Richter, for one, was
comfortable about. But just as dangerous were the smaller rocks, any one of which could smash a sump or transmission housing, or burst a tyre. The drivers kept swerving violently from side to
side, picking the best path they could through the tortured landscape.

‘We’re trading speed for invisibility,’ Dekker said, ‘but once
we’re clear of this area we can use the headlights. And,’ he added, pointing east, where the first fingers of red and yellow grew visible against the
dark blue
of the sky, ‘it looks like the sun will be up in about thirty minutes.’

At that moment two sets of headlights suddenly stabbed through the darkness towards them from
behind. The Algerians had sent their two jeeps ahead in pursuit, and they were approaching fast. Like the SAS vehicles, they’d been driving without lights until confident they were
getting near to their quarry, but now they were only about a hundred yards behind, and closing quickly. So the moment one of the escaping Land Rovers was briefly illuminated by the
pursuers’ dancing headlamp beams, the shooting started.

Dekker glanced back, and made the obvious decision. ‘Hit the lights,’ he ordered.
‘Now we need the speed, and let’s try to frighten them off.’

Wallace stood up awkwardly in the bucking vehicle, and seized the grip of the Browning
machine-gun. He took the best aim he could and loosed a short burst at their pursuers. Unsurprisingly, none of the bullets appeared to hit its target, but within seconds the headlights behind
them started dropping back.

‘Good,’ Dekker muttered. ‘Now, if they’ll just stay out of our way until
we reach the Herky-bird, we should be OK.’

And then things seemed to happen in slow motion. As Richter glanced at the other Land Rover,
only a few yards in front, its left-side front wheel bounced upwards, being deflected by a football-sized rock. That shouldn’t have been a problem, but at almost the same moment the
right-side wheel dropped down into a pothole.

The Pinky was already unbalanced, and this sudden lurch to the right completed the process. The
Land Rover slewed inexorably sideways, the driver fighting for control. Then it toppled over, its right side smashing into the ground. Scattering men and equipment, it continued sliding
several yards before impacting a massive boulder, then stopped dead.