the enemy. Rucksacks, lighter now with only ammo, rations, and survival gear, were strapped to backs and loose buckles and ends secured. Each man also donned night-vision goggles which gave him an oddly mechanical appearance, like a robot in a cheap SF horror film.
Huerta and Sikes checked a waterproof map. The SEALs had arrived precisely on the strip of beach chosen from the satellite photos they'd studied at Coronado and during their trip across the Pacific. The North Korean Army camp where at least some of the prisoners had been sighted lay four miles inland, near the village of Nyongch'on-ni. Other features were marked on the map, possible targets for air raids, possible locations of American prisoners, but the team's first priority was to check the camp identified as Nyongch'on-kiji.
Huerta pulled back the velcro seal of his luminous watch and checked the time. It was 0240 hours. They could be there in an hour or two if nothing delayed them.
Each man already knew his place in patrol formation. Huerta, as assistant squad leader, took position behind Vic Krueger, who was lugging one of the team's two M-60 machine guns. With another silent hand motion from Sikes, the team began moving, treading up the slope as silently as ghosts in the night.
CHAPTER 18
Huerta lay flat on his back in the muddy ditch, moving in tiny increments beneath the chain-link fence which surrounded the inner compound of the North Korean base. Runoff from repeated rains had carved this channel beneath the fence unnoticed by its builders, and now the SEAL was using it to gain entrance to the area suspected to be where the Koreans were holding the crew of the U.S.S. Chimera.
He was unarmed save for a knife and his Mark 22, a silenced, custom-made 9-mm first used against guard dogs in Vietnam and subsequently known as the 'hush puppy.' Those were for use as a last resort only, of course. The last thing he needed at the moment was a dead guard; if he killed someone, he would have to drag the body out of the camp and hope the sentry's superiors thought he'd deserted while on watch.
He'd left his night-vision gear with the others as well; it was too easy to become reliant on those technological wonders, too easy to lose touch with the night. And now Chief Huerta was the night, a black shadow among shadows, edging silently under the fence through the runoff gully.
He'd already traversed the first, outer fence, using bolt-cutters to snip through a few links of the fence in the shadow of a guard tower next to a pole. The rest of the team waited for him outside.
The camp identified as Nyongch'on-kiji lay in a high saddle in the ridge line some seven miles south of Wonsan's waterfront district, surrounded on two sides by rugged escarpments which climbed higher still. A highway passed through the saddle, connecting Wonsan with the town of Anbyon ten miles to the south. At this hour there was little traffic.
The SEALs had reached the eastern slope overlooking the camp after an hour's hike from the coast. From the vantage point of their OP amid boulders, brush, and the scraggly, stunted pines that clung to the rocky slopes in this region, they'd surveyed the camp, identifying the building which was their prime target. One of the long, single-story structures inside the inner fence was the building in the satellite photo which had first confirmed the presence of Westerners inside the Nyongch'on compound the previous day.
That building was Huerta's target now. He'd been lucky so far: no encounters, no guard dogs, and only isolated glimpses of sentries doing their rounds in the distance. If he could get close enough to the suspect building to confirm that Americans were being held there now…
Coyote heard it first, a muffled thump as though something had landed on the roof of the hut. He'd been lying awake on the straw ticking which served as a mattress, and the sound seemed to originate beyond the wooden timbers of the ceiling directly over his head. He sat up. Commander Wilkinson, lying nearby, sat up as well.
'What is it?' Wilkinson's whisper was harsh in the near-darkness. The room's interior was dimly illuminated by the indirect light from the compound's streetlights spilling through the narrow windows high along the two long walls.
'Something on the roof,' Coyote replied. His heart pounded in his chest. The night's quiet had seemed as much a torture as the beatings he'd endured earlier. Their captors had taken many of the men out in small groups, beaten them, threatened them with torture or death, demanded their signed confessions, then returned them to the Wonsan Waldorf. The sudden end to the routine was ominous. The uncertainty was as much an instrument of torture as North Korean boots and rifle butts.
Coyote heard a faint, scuffling sound. Something heavy was sliding down the roof now, making its way from the peak of the roof toward the south wall. He followed the movement in the near darkness, then rose, tiptoeing past sleeping or unconscious men toward the wall and its line of windows. Several other men, aware now that something was going on, rose and followed him.
The faint light from the sky was suddenly blotted out. Straining against the darkness outside, Coyote realized he was looking at the silhouette of a man's head, lowered over the edge of the roof and peering into the window upside down. A sudden, unreasonable hope flared in Coyote's chest. 'Who's there?'
'What was the monster killed by Bellerophon?' a muffled voice replied.
Wilkinson, standing on top of an overturned bucket at Coyote's shoulder, stiffened. 'Chimera,' he said, leaning against the open window.
'Well, either you people are round-eyed North Koreans with a classical education, or you're just the guys I'm looking for,' the upside-down shape whispered. 'Chief Huerta, USN SEALS.'
Coyote sensed the excitement spreading through the room, heard the hasty, whispered words as more and more of the men of Chimera's crew awoke.
'Is it a rescue?' Coleridge asked.
'Not yet,' the SEAL replied. 'We've got a team in place outside the camp. I'm just here to make sure you're you. How many guys are in there?'
In quick, terse exchanges, Wilkinson answered the SEAL's rapid-fire questions, giving him the numbers he needed: 170 prisoners, including 18 badly wounded men who would need stretchers and special care if they were to be moved.
'You mean all of you are being held in one place?' the SEAL asked.
'Yeah,' Wilkinson replied. 'I think they're still trying to decide what to do with us… and it's easier to guard all of us together.'
'Well, that's good, anyway,' Huerta said. 'Makes it easier to get you all out.'
'When?' Wilkinson asked. 'When's the rescue?'
'Can't say yet, sir,' the SEAL replied. Evidently, there was light enough at his back for him to recognize Wilkinson's uniform and rank bars. 'First thing is to let people know you're okay.' There was a pause. 'You got a place in there to hide some weapons?'
Coyote thought about a corner tucked away among the rafters he'd noticed earlier, a spot someone could reach by getting on someone's shoulders. 'Yeah!' he said. 'There's a place!'
Huerta hesitated, as though thinking it over. 'Okay. Somebody reach through the window.'
The windows were too narrow for a man to squeeze through ? the reason, perhaps, why they weren't barred or screened over ? but Chief Bronkowicz helped Coyote up so he could stretch his arm over the sill. It was a long reach. The eaves of the roof extended well beyond the wall, but Coyote felt something cold and heavy placed in his open palm. He pulled it back inside. Light gleamed from the parkerized finish of a.22-caliber pistol, the barrel swallowed by the heavy cylinder of a long suppressor.
Two times more, Coyote reached into the night, retrieving a Marine Kabar combat knife and two fully loaded magazines for the pistol.
'Listen up now,' the voice at the window said. 'It's vital that those weapons not be seen by the gooks, get me? They see those, they'll know we're in the area.'
