Ballistic Force Read online

  Much as he wanted to defend his cousin, Tokaido knew the colonel had a point. A number of times when he’d conversed with Seung-Whan, Akira’s cousin had dismissed Seoul’s close proximity to the DMZ and said he’d decided years ago that there was no point to living in fear of things he had no control over. Tokaido understood the rationale, but there was a difference between being fearless and foolhardy. Now it was looking as if Seung-Whan was paying a price for the latter.

  Tokaido glanced back down at the transcript and read it over yet again, hoping somehow to glean more information. There was so little to go on, however. It wasn’t even clear how many people had been aboard the yacht when it was seized. For that matter, Tokaido didn’t know for sure how many people Lim had taken on the trip besides his wife and daughter. “Some friends” had been all he’d said.

  On his third read-through, one word in the transcript jumped out at him. He looked it over, then glanced up at Michaels.

  “It says here that those aboard the ship were ‘incarcerated,’” he said. “Are you sure that’s the right translation?”

  Michaels nodded. “I heard the message myself. Yeah, whoever was on board that ship was taken into custody. They weren’t executed, if that’s what you mean.”

  Tokaido nodded bleakly, already beginning to fear the worst. “At least, not yet,” he said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Changchon Rehabilitation Center, North Korea

  Lim U-Pol and her life-long friend Ji Lhe-Kan had been laboring in the poppy fields for nearly five backbreaking hours when one of the guards blew a whistle announcing the end of their workday. The two women were every bit as filled with fear and apprehension as when they’d first stepped off the truck that had brought their families here to the camp, but the work had numbed them, and exhaustion had turned them into automatons. Just as they’d lost themselves in the redundant task of extracting resin from the poppies, the two women now mindlessly followed the example of the other workers and turned over their scraping tools and the small plastic containers they’d filled with resin, then fell into line for the long march back to the prison camp.

  U-Pol was so drained that it took all her concentration merely to stay awake and put one foot in front of the other. There was one saving grace to her fatigue: as with work ordeal in the fields, it proved a potent distraction, leaving her with little time to dwell on the fate of her husband and daughter, who’d been led away, along with Ji Lhe-Kan’s husband and son, shortly before the women had been first put to work. No indication had been given as to what lay in store for the men, but U-Pol assumed they had been diverted to some more strenuous labor. As for Na-Li, U-Pol had seen the way the commandant had looked at her daughter, and the thought of what he might have had in mind for young woman was unbearable to contemplate, so she’d struggled to block the matter from her mind.

  Soon, the prisoners found themselves heading past a clearing where a handful of soldiers had begun to fling several corpses, one after the other, into a shallow pit barely deep enough to hold them all. The sheer horror of sight alone was enough to unnerve U-Pol, but when it dawned on her that her loved ones might be among the dead, her pent-up emotions suddenly erupted in a sob so loud and wrenching that it doubled her over. Fortunately she wasn’t alone. An equally profound wailing broke out among some of the other prisoners, men and women alike, and several of them strayed from the column, rushing toward the makeshift burial site. They were intercepted by the guards, who brusquely herded them back while shouting for silence.

  During the commotion, Ji Lhe-Kan hurriedly spoke with the prisoner ahead of her, then turned to U-Pol and whispered that those being buried were prisoners that had been killed during an incident that had occurred before their arrival at the camp.

  “Our men are still all right,” she added quickly. “Na-Li and Rha-Tyr, too. You’ll see.”

  U-Pol nodded faintly, but she was consumed by doubt and she saw that her friend, too, was nowhere near as confident of their loved ones’ fate as she was pretending to be. The two women clutched hands briefly, as if attempting to lend strength to one another.

  “Move on!” one of the guards shouted, further startling the women by firing a warning shot into the air with his carbine. “Unless you want to join them!”

  When another soldier aimed his rifle at U-Pol and Lhe-Kan, the two women pulled their hands apart. U-Pol struggled to regain her composure, but as the prisoners resumed their march back to camp, the image of the mass grave continued to haunt her. She wept quietly, biting her knuckle each time another anguished sob swelled in her throat.

  As the procession reached the camp and wound its way around the periphery fence, U-Pol and Lhe-Kan found themselves horrified anew as they were led past a spot where a young male prisoner had just made an unsuccessful escape attempt. He’d apparently made it as far as the top of the innermost fence before sentries in one of the nearby lookout towers had gunned him down, and though he’d been killed, his shirt and one of his pant legs had snagged on the thick coils of barbed wire topping the fence and he hung suspended, arms and legs pinned at an angle that made it look as if he were still alive and dancing in midair. A pair of guards had just reached the body, one carrying a ladder and bolt cutters, the other tugging at a leash to keep a full-size Rottweiler from sniffing at the pool of blood collecting on the ground directly beneath the bullet-riddled corpse.

  “The third one this week!” a guard walking alongside U-Pol and Lhe-Kan said with a snicker. “You’d think they would know better by now!”

  U-Pol tore her gaze from the grisly sight, blinking away a fresh flow of tears. She could hear Lhe-Kan weeping directly ahead of her, as well, but moments later the other woman’s sobbing stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and soon U-Pol saw the reason why. As they were herded through a side gate into the prison yard, she saw Lhe-Kan’s son, Rha-Tyr, standing bare-chested amid a handful of other young men who’d been given sledgehammers with which to pound away at some of the larger rocks that had just been brought down from the mines.

  Rha-Tyr spotted the women in midswing and offered them a faint smile before he brought the hammer crashing down. He glanced around him, making sure that none of the guards was watching him, then gestured faintly over his shoulder. U-Pol looked past him to the side of the mountain overlooking the camp and saw the openings to several mine shafts.

  “Seung-Whan and Pho-Hwa must be in the mines,” U-Pol whispered to her friend. Now that they were within the confines of the camp, the guards had moved away, leaving them free to talk.

  Lhe-Kan nodded hopefully. “I told you they’d be all right,” she said.

  “I don’t see my daughter anywhere,” U-Pol murmured, scanning the grounds for her daughter. Na-Li , however, was nowhere to be seen.

  “Maybe she’s already in the barracks,” Lhe-Kan suggested, indicating the flimsy structures they were heading toward.

  But U-Pol had her doubts, and a quick glance inside the barracks confirmed her fears. While the others began to collapse onto the wood-planked floor, eager to escape into the clutches of sleep, she and Lhe-Kan left the barracks and continued to search the grounds. Finally, U-Pol looked past the far perimeter of the camp and saw a small bungalow resting on a knoll surrounded by trees. Judging from the condition of the structure and the surrounding landscape, U-Pol guessed it had to be the headquarters for those who ran the camp. Again she recalled the way the commandant had looked at her daughter and she began to shudder. Lhe-Kan put an arm around her and the two women dropped slowly to their knees without taking their eyes off the bungalow.

  “No,” U-Pol sniffed. “Please, not my daughter…”

  WHEN NA-LI awoke, hours later, the clothes she had worn to the concentration camp were missing. In their place, a pair of crude sandals lay atop a coarse muslin frock that had been placed haphazardly at the foot of the bed. As she fingered the material, she felt the urge to cry yet again, but this time the tears wouldn’t come. She dressed slowly, her body still aching.


  She was slipping her feet into the sandals when the door opened. Na-Li let out an involuntary gasp and recoiled as Yulim entered the bedroom, followed by one of the guards, who was carrying two overnight bags. Na-Li recognized the bags. One belonged to her, the other to her father. The bags, along with those belonging to her mother and the Ji family, had been confiscated from the family yacht and tossed into the front cab of the truck that had brought her and the others to Changchon. She’d doubted she would ever again see her tote or the belongings it contained, and yet here they were.

  “Did you sleep well?” Yulim casually asked Na-Li as he took her bag from the guard and set it on the bed.

  Na-Li stared at the man, incredulous. After what he’d done to her, how could he stand there and speak to her as if he were some loving uncle checking up on a favorite niece who’d come visiting the for weekend? She tried to muster some righteous indignation, but, as with her stifled tears, she found herself unable to act on her emotions.

  Yulim nudged Na-Li’s bag closer to her and zipped it open.

  “Go ahead,” he encouraged her. “Everything’s there, more or less. See for yourself.”

  Na-Li stared at the bag, then glanced up at Yulim.

  “Why?”

  Yulim smiled benevolently. “I thought there might be something you’d like to take back with you to the barracks,” he said. “You can take one item. Anything you want.”

  Na-Li remained on her guard as she tentatively opened the bag and inspected its contents. Her wallet had been confiscated along with her CD player, her music and a sharp-handled comb, but otherwise, as Yulim had assured her, everything else she’d packed for the fishing trip was still there. A few days ago, if told to pick one item from the bag, she, without question, would have taken her makeup kit. In light of everything that had happened, however, the last thing she wanted was to make herself look more attractive. So, instead, she selected her charm bracelet, a cheap piece of jewelry to which, over the years, she’d attached a handful of small knick-knacks, each one reminding her of a special time in her life.

  “That would have been my guess,” Yulim told her. “It has sentimental value, yes?”

  Na-Li’s first instinct was to scream at the man and tell him to quit trying to be so nice to her. She wanted to damn him for the way he’d abused her and let him know that she’d overheard him conspiring with the other officer. She wanted to tell him that if was the last thing she did, she’d find a way to use that information to make him pay for what he’d done to her. Instead, however, she merely nodded demurely and closed her fingers around the bracelet.

  “I can go, then?” she asked.

  “Of course,” Yulim told her. He indicated the guard and said, “He’ll take you back to your family. In a moment. First we need to reach a little understanding.”

  Abruptly the smile left the lieutenant corporal’s face. He reached forward and grasped Na-Li by the jaw, tilting her head upward so that she had no choice but to stare into his eyes.

  “You’ll be back,” he advised her, his voice cold with menace, “and no one is to know about what goes on in this room. Is that clear?”

  Na-Li’s eyes widened with fear. The way Yulim was holding her jaw, it was impossible for her to speak. All she could do was nod.

  “If you talk—to anyone—I swear I’ll kill your mother and father, right in front of you,” Yulim warned. “And they’ll die slowly and they will be in great pain. Do you want that?”

  Na-Li shook her head as best she could. Yulim glared at her a moment longer, then slowly removed his hand from her jaw. The smile returned to his face.

  “I’m glad we understand each other,” he said. “And I look forward to our next visit.”

  Na-Li felt a sickening knot in her stomach. Yulim stepped back and gestured to the guard, who, in turn, snapped his fingers and motioned for Na-Li to come with him. Trembling, the young woman followed the guard from the bedroom and through the bungalow to the front door.

  Outside, the late-afternoon sun shone brightly and Na-Li had to squint as she took the first few steps down the walk leading to the camp barracks. Once her eyes had adjusted to the light, she noticed the activity in the work yard. Rha-Tyr’s back was turned to her as he hammered away at the rock pile. The teenager belonged to their high school water polo team back in Seoul and Na-Li had always been captivated by his swimmer’s physique, but now the sight of his glistening torso reminded her of the sweating man who had just raped her. Repulsed, she looked away and her gaze fell on her mother and Ji Lhe-Kan. The two women were standing near the barracks, watching her. U-Pol had her hand to her mouth and even from a distance Na-Li could see the look of horror in her mother’s eyes.

  Once she’d been led to the entrance to the compound, another guard threw the gate open and impatiently waved her through. Na-Li continued to walk slowly until she realized that she was no longer being followed by the soldier who’d brought her from the bungalow. She quickly lengthened her strides, then finally broke into a run, rushing past Lhe-Kan into her mother’s waiting arms.

  “My poor child,” U-Pol sobbed as she held her daughter close. “My poor baby! What did they do to you?”

  Recalling Yulim’s warning, Na-Li bit her lower lip, fighting back the urge to tell her mother everything that had happened. When she failed to respond, U-Pol broke their embrace and stared at Na-Li, whose jaw was still discolored where the officer’s hand had clenched it in his viselike grip.

  “What did they do to you!” she repeated.

  “Nothing,” Na-Li murmured. Grasping for some convincible lie, she told her mother, “They just had a lot of questions. They were just questioning me!”

  U-Pol put her fingers to Na-Li’s jaw. “This is not from questioning,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter, Mother,” Na-Li said. “Please, can we not talk about it?”

  Now that she had seen evidence of the unthinkable, the older woman could no longer turn a blind eye to what had happened. And, forced to confront the issue, U-Pol felt herself consumed by a sudden rage.

  “They swore you to silence, is that it?” she guessed.

  “Mother, please…”

  U-Pol pulled her daughter back into an embrace, then stared over her shoulder at the surrounding mountainside.

  “Don’t you worry,” she assured her daughter. “When your father learns of this, he’ll see that they pay! He won’t let them get away with this!”

  LIM SEUNG-WHAN angrily stabbed his shovel into the heap of loose rock at his feet, then heaved the load into the ore cart resting on the rusting tracks extending deep into the mountainside. Beside him, his long-time friend Ji Pho-Hwa was attacking the cave wall with a pickax. When Pho-Hwa glanced his way, tears streaked through the soot caking his cheeks. Lim looked away, his face turning red with shame.

  How had he allowed this to happen? Just two days ago the two men were enjoying themselves on the rear deck of Lim’s yacht, drinking and swapping stories as they waited for tuna to strike the heavy lines trailing from their fishing poles. Their wives were in the cabin playing mah-jongg and Pho-Hwa’s teenaged son was up on the foredeck flirting with Lim’s young daughter as they listened to some obnoxious rock-and-roll music on the radio. And after the fishing trip, Lim was looking forward to taking both families, along with his American cousin, Akira Tokaido, to watch his beloved Seoul Sky-Eagles at Freedom Stadium. Life was good. More than good. Things were perfect. And now? Now here he was, a prisoner of the KPA, separated from his wife and daughter, doomed to slave at the mines until the North Koreans decided what to do with him. All because he’d ignored Pho-Hwa’s warning not to venture too far north of Gyondongdo. “We’re here to fish,” Lim had teased his friend. “We need to go where the fishing is best.” He’d chided Pho-Hwa for being so worrisome, and after his friend had reeled in his first tuna of the trip—a four hundred-pounder that had put up a wonderful fight—Ji had stopped complaining and started to enjoy himself. Less than two hours later, the North Korean
s had pulled up alongside the yacht and everything had changed.

  There were eight other men working the vein alongside Lim and Ji, and so far they’d filled four carts with the rock they’d hacked loose from the cave walls. They were beyond the reach of daylight and had to work by the wavering glow of a kerosene lamp. Three armed guards watched over the group, filling the cave with the smoke of their cigarettes. Lim’s palms were bleeding where there had once been blisters, and the only thing that ached more than his arms was his lower back; it throbbed constantly and whenever he pitched another load of rock into the cart he felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his right hip. He didn’t dare stop what he was doing, however. When one of the other workers had slacked off a few minutes ago, complaining of leg cramps, the guards had laid into him with the stocks of their carbines, first targeting his arms and shoulders, then taking turns at his skull until they’d killed him. They pitched the man’s body into one of the carts and left it there as a warning for the others to keep working.

  As he was shoveling yet another load into the cart next to the one containing the body, Lim Seung-Whan mustered the nerve to lean close to his friend and look him in the eye.

  “I’m sorry, Pho-Hwa” he whispered. “Please forgive me.”

  Ji stared at Lim but said nothing. There was no need to. Lim could see there was no forgiveness in his friend’s eyes. He was about to plead further when he felt something slam into his back, directly between the shoulder blades. Crying out in pain, Lim pitched forward, colliding with Ji, then falling past him to the ground. The guard who’d struck him strode over and loomed above him, glaring, rifle stock poised for another blow.

  “No talking!” he warned. “You’re here to work!”

  Lim rose slowly to his knees. He was queasy and his back felt as though it was on fire where he’d been struck. But when the guard kicked his shovel across the ground toward him and shouted for him to get back to work, he did his best to shut out the pain and comply. He grabbed the shovel and used it as a crutch as he forced himself to his feet. Ji, meanwhile, was dragged to the other side of the cart and told to work another area of the cave.