Ballistic Force(83)
Zane Island, Pacific Ocean
The aircraft carrying Shinn Kam-Song and Li-Roo Kohb had been retrofitted with a ten-seat passenger cabin located between the cockpit and the plane’s massive cargo hold. The two scientists were seated in the rear of the cabin along with Shinn’s wife. The woman was sound asleep, her head resting on her husband’s shoulder. Shinn himself had managed to doze off briefly, only to be awakened by a suddenly jostling within the cabin. He stirred slightly, then closed his eyes again, but when the plane suddenly began to lose altitude, he snapped to with a start.
“Don’t worry,” Li-Roo Kohb whispered to him. Gesturing toward the guards seated two rows ahead of them, he continued, “I heard them say we’re getting ready to land. We probably just ran into some turbulence.”
One of the guards whirled in his seat.
“No talking!” he warned.
“Leave us alone!” Li-Roo retorted angrily, taking the guard by surprise. “You have us where you want us, so quit your bullying!”
The guard rose from his seat, brandishing his carbine.
Li-Roo taunted him. “Go ahead, shoot us! Then try to explain to your superiors why you failed to bring us back alive!”
Shinn, who was every bit as fed up as Li-Roo, joined in the taunting, mimicking the guard’s nasally voice. “‘They were talking, sir! So I shot them!’”
The guard’s face reddened and he cursed the defectors, but before he could do anything rash, Hong Sung-nam bolted from his seat at the front of the cabin and grabbed the man’s rifle.
“Enough!”
The guard sullenly dropped back into his seat as Hong eyed his prisoners.
Shinn’s wife, who’d been awakened by the altercation, turned to her husband and asked, “What’s happened now?”
“I was just telling our hosts that if they want our cooperation they’re going to have to start treating us with a little more respect,” Li-Roo explained, his eyes on Hong.
“We haven’t gagged you,” Hong countered. “We untied you and let you sit together. What more do you want?”
“Perhaps a little more privacy,” Li-Roo replied calmly. “Perhaps being allowed to have a little conversation without being beaten or having guns rammed in our faces.”
“Yes, is that asking too much?” Shinn added bitterly. “Or are you really afraid two old men and a woman are going to be able to hatch a plot to get the upper hand on you?”
Hong stared silently at the defectors for a moment. Much as he liked the idea of rewarding the prisoners’ insolence by having them tossed out of the plane without parachutes, he knew as well as they did that it was in his best interests to bring them back to North Korea alive.
“Fine,” he finally conceded. “Talk all you want. Any more taunting, however, and we’ll just tranquilize the three of you for the rest of the trip.”
“Fair enough,” Li-Roo said.
Hong turned his back on the prisoners and cautioned the guards to exercise more restraint, then returned to the front row of the cabin, just as Bryn Ban-Ho was emerging from the cockpit, where he’d been conferring with crew personnel on the ground at Zane Island.
“They’ve finally cleared us for landing,” he told Hong. “We’ll refuel, then continue on to Kaesong.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day,” Hong said. “The sooner we turn these prisoners over, the better.”
Once he’d told Bryn about the latest confrontation with Shinn and Li-Roo, Bryn smirked cynically.
“The one thing I don’t understand,” he said, “is why KPA is so eager to have these people returned alive in the first place. Do they really think there’s a way they’ll be able to get them to cooperate? And if they’ve betrayed us once, who’s to say they won’t turn around and do it again?”
Hong shrugged. “That’s not our concern. If we bring them back alive, there will be promotions and commendations. That’s all I’m interested in. If it turns out afterward that they were returned in vain, the fault will lie with the poor idiots who take them off our hands. Let them worry about it.”
Bryn nodded and peered out one of the windows. Staring, he saw the vast, gleaming waters of the Pacific Ocean as well as the palm-shrouded terrain of Zane Island. They were close enough now that he could also make out the airfield where they would be landing. Just a quick stop, he figured, and they’d be in the home stretch.
THE HOPE FOR THOSE who’d overtaken the FETC facility had been that the REDI agents would deplane with their prisoners while the cargo plane was being refueled, but as the aircraft was coming in for a landing, the pilot reported that all passengers would remain aboard.