Ballistic Force(91)

“I’ll let the Fates take care of that.”

Bahn stared into Bolan’s eyes, then leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. When she pulled away, she told him, “You never talk about your love life, but I assume there’s someone out there burning the home fires.”

“Something like that.”

She smiled again, then glanced to her right. The defectors were signaling to her from alongside the Cessna.

“Well, there’s my ride.” She punched Bolan lightly on the shoulder. “Go knock ’em dead, soldier.”

“Will do,” Bolan said.

He turned and watched Bahn stride across the tarmac. He knew the odds were he’d never see her again. But then, he’d thought the same thing twice before, only to find their paths cross again.

“Who knows,” he murmured to himself. “Time will tell….”





CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT


Changchon Rehabilitation Center, North Korea

As the guards dragged him through the twilight from Yulim’s bungalow to the prison yard, Sergeant Dahn had little trouble playing the part of a disgruntled malcontent. His skull still throbbed from where Major Jin had struck him with the whiskey bottle, and he had to breathe through his mouth because his sinuses were clogged from the swelling of his broken nose. And instead of one black eye, Dahn had two. Except for his uniform—bloodied from his nose—he looked like a boxer who’d wound up on the wrong side of one too many prize fights.

Dahn’s mood matched his sorry appearance. Once he’d come to the floor of Yulim’s den, Jin and the commandant had dragged him to the phone and presented him with a scripted preliminary report informing MII that suspicion of complicity in Operation Guillotine had shifted to several of Jin’s subordinates, including the private who’d been dispatched to kill General Oh. Dahn had had a gun to his head when he’d called in the report, with Jin vowing to pull the trigger if Dahn strayed from the script and tried to slip in anything that sounded like a possible code phrase that would inform MII that he was making the report under duress. He’d been told to blame a head cold instead of a broken nose for the obvious change in his voice.

Having no other real option, Dahn had played along, but the fear he’d initially felt after having his cover blown had now been replaced by a simmering rage. It was bad enough that he’d been forced to play double agent to save himself. The smug condescension with which Jin and Yulim had treated him had fueled his contempt for his tormentors. Yes, he would do their bidding as long as necessary, but if it was the last thing he ever did, Dahn was determined to see the day when he could turn the tables on the two conspirators.

It was in this glowering frame of mind that Dahn soon found himself hauled into the men’s barracks at the concentration camp. When the guards shoved him to the floor for extra effect, it was all he could do not to bolt to his feet and attack them. As it was, he cursed them with a flurry of epithets that went a long way toward convincing most of the other prisoners that his anger was genuine. The guards shrugged off the verbal onslaught and strode out of the barracks.

Dahn was struggling to his feet when one of the men reached out and lent him a hand.

“You seem to have fallen out of favor,” Prync Gil-Su told the undercover agent as he helped him to his feet.

Dahn immediately recognized the deposed captain from the description Yulim had given him. He gave no indication that he knew the man, however. Instead he glared past him at the bungalow doorway, shouting a few more choice curses at the guards, who had already left the building.

Prync introduced himself, and once Dahn had done the same, the organizer of the would-be prison revolt looked the sergeant over and asked, “What did you do to prompt such a beating?”

“You tell me,” Dahn responded bitterly. Concealed beneath one of the buttons of his uniform shirt was one of the bugging devices he’d intended to use on Jin and Yulim. Now it was Yulim who was eavesdropping on him from the sanctuary of his bungalow, so Dahn stuck to the cover story he’d been told to give in the hope of earning Prync’s confidence.

“I came here today on a routine field tour for the Ministry of Agriculture,” he lied. “I was supposed to make an evaluation of how to better improve the poppy cultivation, but after checking the soil I said the land could be put to better use growing potatoes or some other produce. I was just making a statement, but apparently they thought I was questioning the regime’s priorities, because the next thing I knew, I was being used as a human punching bag. And now, who knows, a misunderstanding on their part and I’m not only disgraced, but my life as I know it is over. Where’s the justice in that?”