“Here we go,” said the helicopter’s pilot, dipping the aircraft downward.
The helicopter arced over the roadway, the pilot making sure everything was clear before settling down in the field nearby.
Rankin and the two men in the rear of the chopper hopped out as the Little Bird settled down. While the other soldiers hauled the gear to the brush, Rankin located the large rock near the road that was to serve as a signpost. When he found it, he took out a can of white, luminescent paint and put a big blot on the stone. Then he ran to a set of rocks near where the others were burying the gear and sprayed them.
By the time he finished, the others were already hopping into the Little Bird. Rankin kicked some of the dirt where his paint had gone awry, hiding it, then hustled back to the helicopter.
22
The heat from the explosion was so intense Ferguson rolled on the ground, thinking he was on fire. By the time he realized he wasn’t, he could hear sirens.
“Guns?”
“Here, Ferg,” yelled the marine from the other side of the car.
“We want the highway.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
Ferguson leapt to his feet and began running in the direction of the road, crossing toward the perimeter road and then climbing the fence; with his arm, he pinned down the barbed wire strands at the top, ripping his parka but getting over without tearing his body to shreds. As he hit the ground, he saw a car approaching from the direction of the highway. Ferguson ducked behind some trees. Once the car passed — it turned out to be just a car, not the police as he’d feared — he climbed one of the trees and looked back in the direction of the plant they’d just escaped from.
“What’s goin’ on?” asked Guns from below.
“They’re putting out the fire,” Ferg told him. He slid back down. “You got the gamma meter and the laptop?”
“Left it in the car, Ferg. I’m sorry. I got everything else.”
Almost on cue, a fireball rose from the vehicle. The laptop had self-destructed.
“Sorry,” said Guns.
“It’s all right. Wouldn’t have been a good idea to go back and get them anyway. Most of those guys were carrying submachine guns instead of fire extinguishers.”
23
Thirty minutes after leaving the emergency supplies, the pilot of Bird One homed in on a small blot of black in the center of his green night-vision goggles. The blot was an uninhabited atoll eight miles east of North Korea’s Taehaw Island, itself a dozen miles off the mainland. During the early spring and summer, North Korea’s small fishing fleet regularly plied these waters, but in late fall the fishing was terrible, and the potential for ferocious storms kept the area nearly empty.
“We’re sixty seconds from go/no go,” the pilot told Rankin.
Rankin switched his radio onto the command frequency, linking with Van Buren.
“Bird One ready,” Rankin told Van Buren.
“You’re good to go,” said Van Buren. “Be advised there are two fishing vessels approximately three miles southeast of your target.”
“What are they fishing for at one o’clock in the morning?”
“Thinking here is that they’re smugglers, bringing goods back from China,” said the colonel.
“Thirty seconds from go/no go,” said the pilot.
“Roger. Team is committed,” said Rankin. He switched into the shared frequency, talking to the other three helicopters that made up the emergency extraction force. They’d all rendezvoused en route after dropping off their caches. “We’re committed. Two minutes to target.”
An officer might have said something like, “Make it look good,” but Rankin left it at that. The bullshit pep talks always bugged him when he’d been a member of Special Forces.
Technically, he still was a member of Special Forces, and, in point of fact, several of the men on the mission with him outranked him. But joining the First Team had put him into his own special category, not only in terms of rank — there was no question Rankin was in charge of the extraction team — but also in terms of the government bureaucracy. Officially, he was assigned as a special aide to someone at the Pentagon whom he’d never met. Unofficially, he worked for Ferguson and the CIA. They took their orders, to the extent Ferguson took orders, from Corrine Alston and maybe — Rankin wasn’t entirely clear because he didn’t get involved in that end of things — from the head of the CIA.
The First Team gig was the sweetest assignment Rankin had ever had, a grab bag of action that never got dull. Working with Ferguson was the only downside. The CIA officer was extremely clever and could handle SpecOps as well as the fooling-people spy stuff, but Rankin didn’t appreciate his wisecracks and know-it-all attitude. Without the CIA agent around, though, things were good.
“Beach is clear, sir,” said the pilot.
“Let’s get in,” said Rankin.
The helicopter zoomed over the rock-strewn beach and turned toward a small knot of trees. Rankin leapt out as it touched down, racing through the copse to make sure no one had managed to hide themselves here. The two Special Forces soldiers who’d been in the back of the chopper fanned out, making absolutely sure the spies in the sky hadn’t missed anything.
The small island was barely two and a half acres, so it didn’t take that long to search.
“Landing area is clear. Chopper Two, come on in,” Rankin said over the radio when the reecee turned up nothing beyond a few pieces of driftwood. Then he went to help the pilot get the camo net on Bird One, just in case the smugglers decided to bury their loot here.
24
Corrine Alston tried to look nonchalant as she was ushered into the back of of the elementary school auditorium by one of the president’s traveling staffers. Three or four hundred kids sat at the edge of their seats, quizzing President Jonathon McCarthy about the presidency.
“What’s the best thing?” asked a gap-toothed third-grader in the fifth row.
“The best thing about being president is that no one can give me time-outs,” said McCarthy.
The kids thought that was pretty good and began to clap.
“Plus, I get to have ice cream at any time of day I want, and no one can tell me no.”
The applause deepened.
“And, if I want to stay up past my bedtime, I just go right ahead.”
There were loud cheers of approval. McCarthy segued into a story about a frog he had brought to school in his pocket when he was in second grade; the amphibian had gotten loose.
“Not that you should follow my example,” added McCarthy at regular intervals, relating the havoc the creature caused as it worked its way through gym class and into the principal’s office, where it cornered the
