least a dozen sentries posted around the hangars ranged inside the boundary fence. Most seemed to be smoking, the sudden flares of brightness unmistakable through the NVGs. That was good news from the point of view of the SAS team, because sentries with lighted cigarettes give away their positions every time they draw in a lungful of tobacco smoke, but also have degraded night vision and are less likely to be fully alert.
‘That’s it,’ Richter murmured into his boom microphone, ‘the second one from the left.’
The satellite pictures they’d studied at Hereford had clearly identified the hangar that Six and the Americans wanted investigating. They’d also shown, on three separate passes, that it normally had sentries posted on all of its four sides, which presented a problem, but Richter thought he’d worked out a way around that.
‘Still happy with the plan?’ Dekker asked.
‘I’m not happy with any of this, but I don’t see any other way of getting a look inside. Do you?’
‘No, not unless we take out about half those sentries first. And since the Head-shed’s very keen to ensure nobody knows we were here, that’s not an option.’
‘Right,’ Richter said, ‘we’d better get on with it.’
To the front of their position, a wadi ran diagonally towards the airfield’s boundary fence. It looked around four or five feet deep, enough to conceal a crouching man, and was the obvious way to reach the fence undetected, which now made Dekker nervous.
‘If I was in charge of security at this place,’ he said, ‘I’d stick a handful of Claymores in that ditch. I think our best approach is straight to the fence, keeping low. The guards are positioned around the hangars, not on the boundary, and there aren’t any watchtowers or dogs to cause a problem.’
Dekker turned aside for a short conversation with his number two – a small wiry sergeant-major named Wallace – then he briefed his men. Just he and Richter, accompanied by a trooper carrying a collapsible aluminium ladder, would cross the open ground to the airfield boundary, while the rest of the men stayed well back. If they reached the fence undetected, Richter would use the ladder to get inside. Then it had to be all up to him, since he was the deniable asset, carrying no possible means of identification. The SAS troopers would protect his progress, of course, but under no circumstances would they themselves enter the base. That had been made very clear at Hereford. Richter must get inside, carry out his surveillance, and get out again, alone.
Richter checked his gear. Like the SAS troopers, he was wearing all-black combat clothing, but he wasn’t carrying the usual assortment of weapons, ammunition and equipment. He had a Sig 226 in a holster strapped to his thigh, which he really hoped he wouldn’t have to use, because that would blow the mission; a set of compact binoculars; a collapsible jemmy; a coil of thin but very strong climbing rope, two webbing straps and a harness; and a high-specification digital camera inside his jacket. And that, apart from a slim leather wallet containing a selection of specialized lock-picking tools, was pretty much all he had. Stealth, not firepower, was his most important weapon here.
‘Ready?’ Dekker asked, and Richter nodded. ‘Right, let’s go. All callsigns, heads-up. Spook’s going in, immediate.’
Dekker led the way, sliding backwards from the top of the rise until he could stand up safely out of sight of the air base. A trooper appeared beside him and placed his 203 against a rock. The ladder, folded and fitted to the frame of his Bergen, was a cumbersome and bulky load, and he didn’t want to carry the rifle as well.
There were dips and rises on the desert floor, and clumps of rocks between their position and the perimeter of the air base. Dekker quickly sketched out a route that would make the best possible use of what cover there was available, then set off. Richter followed, the trooper with the ladder behind him. The three men proceeded slowly, only one at a time, so as to minimize the possibility that their movements would be seen. The nearest sentry was only about one hundred yards away, which was far too close for comfort.
They were forty yards from the fence when Dekker suddenly dropped flat, followed by the others. He’d seen headlights approaching from inside the airfield. The vehicle came closer, apparently following the perimeter track. It passed directly in front of them without slowing down, and they could see it was an open jeep or similar with a machine-gun mounted on the back.
‘Probably just a roving patrol,’ Dekker suggested, his voice sounding alarmingly loud in Richter’s earpiece. ‘No doubt checking that all the sentries are still awake.’
‘Which they are, unfortunately,’ Richter replied.
They resumed their slow and steady progress, and five minutes later the three of them were crouching in a slight dip in the ground only fifteen feet from the fence. It was a typical low-security barrier: steel posts about ten feet high set into concrete bases, with heavy-duty wire netting strung between them, supported by horizontal steel cables.
‘No sign of sensors,’ Dekker observed, ‘and it’s definitely not electrified, so you won’t fry when you touch it.’
‘That’s encouraging, at least.’
Dekker slid the folding ladder from the trooper’s Bergen frame and laid it out flat on the ground. Most collapsible ladders have joints that click loudly when they snap into place, but this one had been specially manufactured for the Regiment. It was absolutely rigid when assembled, but the joints closed in complete silence.
In less than a minute the ladder was ready. They checked in all directions, making sure that they were still unobserved, then Dekker stepped forward and leant the ladder against one of the steel posts supporting the fence. The ladder itself was twelve feet long, since the analysts at JARIC had calculated the height of the fence at ten feet, based upon the length of the shadows they’d observed on the satellite imagery.
Richter climbed up swiftly, swung his leg over so that he straddled the fence, his feet resting safely on one of the horizontal steel cables, pulled the ladder up and over, then lowered its base to the ground inside the airfield. Then he slid down it, lifted the ladder away from the fence and placed it flat on the ground.
Outside the wire, Dekker gave him a thumbs-up, then the two men melted away into the night.
Richter was inside. Now all he had to do was complete the mission and get out again. It sounded easy enough if you said it quickly.
Chapter Two
Monday
North Korea maintains a huge standing army of just over a million men – almost as many as the United States – with a further five million troops in reserve. It has some eight hundred combat aircraft, three thousand five hundred tanks and over ten thousand artillery pieces. Almost without exception, these men, aircraft and weapons are located within forty miles of the border with South Korea, not least because technically the two nations are still at war, despite the armistice signed in 1953. Virtually every battle plan that the North Korean forces have prepared is aimed at either repelling an invasion from the south, or actually launching an attack on its more prosperous neighbour.
The gulf between the two countries is vast. South Korea is about twenty per cent smaller than its brother nation, but has twice the population, a gross domestic product
What North Korea hates – and fears – more than anything is the nation immediately south of the Demilitarized Zone. Or, more precisely, that nation’s huge silent partner, America.
For any country with an extensive coastline, and especially one suffering from what amounts to government-orchestrated paranoia, radar surveillance of all its borders and seaward approaches is essential. In the south-east of its territory, North Korea has radar heads located on the Kuksa-bong peninsula, the island of Sunwi-do, and on the promontory extending due west of the South Korean island of Gyodong-do. All are left unmanned, their signals fed through a combination of cables and microwave links to a central radar station just
