The Ghost War

“Depth?” Beck said to Kang.

“Twenty-four feet. Lucky we ride high. This thing’s just a big lake.” Indeed, the Yellow Sea was exceptionally shallow. It got its name from China’s Yellow River, which filled it with mountains of silt. Its average depth was less than 150 feet.

“Anything in our way!”

“Smooth the whole way in.”

From here, the Phantom could reach shore in thirty seconds, but Beck didn’t want to move until he knew what awaited them. A couple of miles east, a cluster of lights, seemingly placed at random, glowed weakly. Through his night-vision binoculars, Beck looked west and east as far as he could, then tried again with his thermal scope. He saw nothing but the lights and the dying stone wall.

“Cut the engines,” he said.

The twin Mercurys stopped. In the hush that followed Beck heard only the breathing of the men around him, the listless slap of the waves, the faint beeping of the Phantom’s radar. There were birds and animals and people too in the hills up ahead. Had to be. But they were silent as ghosts.

“Must be what the moon is like,” Kang said.

“Imagine living here.”

A whistle sounded to the north, eerie and distant. Choe said something in Korean.

“He says it’s a steam train,” Kang said. “The North Koreans still run coal locomotives.”

The whistle faded. Beck signaled to Choe to turn the engines back on and a moment later heard their reassuring rumble.

“Bet you can pick up waterfront property cheap around here.”

“Seth, was it this dark when you came over here before?”

“Once yes, once no. You’re figuring—”

“Not figuring anything yet.”

An alarm on Kang’s laptop beeped. He tapped a few keys and the monitor opened up. “Well, this isn’t good. Two boats, coming around Kudol”—a spit of land about ten miles southeast. “They were hanging close to the coast before, so the Hawkeye didn’t pick them up.”

“How fast?”

“Twenty, maybe twenty-five knots.”

“Aiming for us.”

“Looks that way.” The laptop beeped again. “More bad news.” Kang pointed to the screen. Another white blip was moving toward the Phantom, this one from the southwest. “He was stopped in open water, maybe twenty-five miles out. I had him figured for a fishing trawler. Now he’s moving our way.” The screen beeped again. “This one too, straight in from the west.”

“They’re setting up a cordon?”

“Looks that way.”

“Can we outrun it?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. For a few minutes.”

Beck checked his watch. 2330. No way was he waiting a half-hour. He would give the Drafter ten minutes, no more. He had been in tight spots before. During the first Gulf War, his SEAL team had landed in Kuwait City to sabotage a Republican Guard tank brigade. In the Philippines, he’d helped fight an ugly counterinsurgency against the Muslim guerrillas of the Jemaah Islamiyah.

But this mission felt different, not like a fight at all, more like they were bait dangled before a hungry animal. He was sure they’d been set up. Though all this activity could still be a coincidence, North Koreans out on pleasure cruises in the middle of the night.

Yeah, right.

POINT D WAS A SMALL INLET formed by a creek that flowed into the Yellow Sea from the northeast. A good spot for a pickup, easy to find in satellite photographs. And with the tide high, the Phantom could ride in nearly all the way to the beach.

“Ted,” Kang said urgently, “these just popped.” He pointed at two yellow blips on the radar screen. “Jets,” Kang said. “At three thousand feet. Just under the cloud cover. Running at three hundred fifty knots.”

“How far?”

“Sixty kilometers. Six, seven minutes, give or take.”

Choe sputtered in Korean and pointed at the shore. A man in a baggy nylon jacket had stepped out of the woods, walking strangely, almost limping. He raised a pair of binoculars and slowly scanned the water. As he spotted the Phantom, he waved slowly, metronomically. A backpack was slung across his shoulders.

“Well, hello, soldier,” Kang said.

Beck stared at the man through his own binoculars, trying to decide if he was looking at Sung Kwan, the Drafter. The CIA had secretly taken long-lens photographs of Sung at its meetings with him. Twelve hours before, in a secure room in the American embassy in Seoul, Beck had stared at those pictures, trying to memorize Sung’s face.

But Sung had few distinguishing characteristics. He was short and squat, like many Koreans, and wore the oversized glasses that Korean and Chinese men favored. His most notable feature was a birthmark on his left cheek. Beck peered through his own binoculars, looking for the birthmark. He thought he saw a smudge on the man’s cheek, but couldn’t be sure. Too bad Sung wasn’t seven feet tall or missing an arm.

“Bring us in,” Beck said to Choe. “But slow. And be ready to take off.”

“Slow,” Choe said. He eased the throttle forward. They were two hundred yards from shore, then one hundred, and through his binoculars Beck could clearly see the birthmark.

“That’s him,” Beck said. He waited for the trap to spring, for North Korean soldiers to pour out of the trees. But the woods stayed silent. Sixty yards out, the depth finder beeped.

“Any closer and we beach,” Kang said.

Choe was already swinging the Phantom around. Beck stepped out the back of the pilothouse and waved for Sung to swim out to the boat.

The North Korean limped into the sea. Halfway out, with the water at his shoulders, he began to yell.

“He can’t swim,” Kang said.

“He can’t swim? Maybe he should have thought of that before he chose this godforsaken beach for his pickup.” Beck took one more look at the shore. Still silent. “I guess this is why I get the big bucks.”

Beck pulled off his clothes and his pistol and put them in a pile and dove off the Phantom into the cool salty water. He swam underwater as long as he could, coming up for air a few feet from Sung. He reached Sung and wrapped his arms under Sung’s shoulders, the grip lifeguards used to save drowning swimmers. Sung’s body was flabby in his hands.

Panic filled Sung’s face and he struggled, from fear or surprise or both, his arms swinging wildly. But Beck overcame his thrashing and dragged him back to the Phantom, where Kang pulled him up.

“GO,” BECK YELLED as soon as he’d hoisted himself out.

Choe pushed the throttle forward and the boat took off, swinging hard right, throwing Beck against the pilothouse wall.

“Dammit, Choe.”

Choe let up on the throttle and the Phantom straightened out. They headed southwest, skimming the waves at fifty-five knots.

“You all right?” Kang said.

“Fine.” Beck’s forehead was throbbing, but he counted himself lucky. They were halfway home. Sung chittered at them in Korean.

“He says he’s sorry he doesn’t know how to swim,” Kang said.

“Me too.” Beck flipped on the pilothouse lights. The birthmark was unmistakable.

“Calm down,” he said to Sung in Korean. “You’re safe.” He pushed Sung onto a bench at the back of the cabin. “Just sit.”