Dawn was breaking in vivid splashes of color when Kyu-Chul landed the CH-47F Chinook helicopter on the roof the eight-story, block-long US Embassy building at 188 Sejong-daero. Jonguo-gu in the heart of Seoul. Immediately Yo-Han started gathering the North Korean prisoners and moving them out of the chopper onto the flat roof. They were frightened and disoriented, but McCall jumped out and moved among them, telling them that they were in a safe place. It did not take long before yellow-jacketed guards had surrounded the helicopter with automatic rifles. Fredrik Jorgensen spoke Korean to them, explaining that these were prisoners who had been liberated from a North Korean prison camp. Granny lifted Liz Montgomery out of the chopper. By that time Ambassador Harry Harris, U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, had been summoned. McCall had been briefed on him by Control. Ambassador Harris was the first Asian-American to hold a four-star rank in the US Navy and the first to head USPACO. He held the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award, the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, plus 3 Navy Distinguished Service Medals, 2 Bronze Stars and the Air Medal. McCall recalled that he had also been awarded the Republic of Korea’s Tong-il Medal in 2014. As startling as their arrival on the roof of the US Embassy had been, the Ambassador swiftly took charge of the situation. McCall gave him his passport. Granny gave him his passport that he had stolen back from Myang-Sook-Jang’s desk, along with Liz Montgomery passport. He also handed the Ambassador Fredrick Jorgensen’s Dutch passport and Water Coburn’s South Africa passport. Harry carried out Walter Coburn from the chopper.
“This man needs urgent medical assistant,” McCall said. “He’s been shot. The wounds are life-threatening.”
The Ambassador quickly ordered a wheelchair up to the roof of the Embassy. He handed the four passports back to McCall. He left Fredrick Jorgensen’s passport with the US Ambassador. Harry had now evacuated all of the North Korean prisoners, doing a head count: Sixty-six in all. More US Embassy staff had made it up to the roof now, accessing the situation for themselves. McCall made sure all of the North Korean prisoners were beneath the rotors. Then he turned and gave Kyu-Chul the high sign. The helicopter lifted up off the roof before any of the guards had a chance to bring their weapons on it. The mercenary banked steeply over the building, heading back to the Yangyang Airport where the chopper would be picked up by Kyu-Chul’s “friends”. The US Embassy staff escorted the North Korean ex-prisoners to four conference rooms on the third floor of the building, supervised by Granny and Liz Montgomery. McCall elected to go with the wheelchair down to the street level. The EMT’s lifted Water Coburn onto a gurney and closed the back doors. McCall hitched a ride with the ambulance to the Korea Univ Guro Hospital at 148, Gurodong-ro, Guro-gu in Seoul.
The ER doctors worked on Coburn and then sent him up to the OR. McCall waited for him in a spartan waiting room until one of the doctors came to tell him that Coburn was out of danger. It had been touch-and-go, but the bullets that had struck him had missed vital arteries. The physician said that Coburn was conscious and had been asking for Robert McCall. McCall showed the doctor his passport. The physician said he would have to make out a report about the gunshot wounds. McCall had been expecting that. He would be happy to sign any paperwork he was given. He did not mention the fact he was going to be leaving South Korea that night.
McCall found Walter Coburn in his private room on the second floor. He pulled a chair over to Coburn’s bed. He had been instructed by Coburn’s doctor that he had only a few minutes with him. The South African contractor looked pretty good to McCall after all he had been through. His voice was rough, but strong.
“How are you feeling?” McCall asked.
“Like I was dragged backwards through a meat grinder. Do these doctors know where I came from?”
“They only know you were shot multiple times,” McCall said, “and were brought to the Univ Guro Hospital here for treatment. Whatever else you tell them is up to you.”
“Have all of the western prisoners been accounted for?”
“They have. Liz Montgomery is with them at the U.S. Embassy. Fredrick Jorgensen has been translating. When I left there was a mob scene in four conference rooms where the North Korean prisoners were being processed. I think it was just getting through to them that they were free and on South Korean soil.”
“Did Granny make it out alive?” Coburn asked.
“He did.”
“Bloody good.” Coburn squinted at him through the sunlight reflected through the window. “Your name’s McCall, right?”
“That’s right.”
Coburn nodded. “Granny talked about you. He said if there was one person who could get us out of that hellhole it was you.”
“I had help.”
“Yeah, a couple of Korean mercenaries were with you. One of them didn’t look like he was old enough to shave.”
“They got the job done.”
“Too right they did.:
He handed Walter Coburn back his passport which he left on the bedside table.
“Thanks. I figure you aren’t going to be staying around for long.”
“I have a ride back to the States tonight,” McCall said.
“Going to take Granny and Liz with you?”
“That’s the idea. What will you do once they tell you can leave the hospital?”
“I’m a South African contractor,” Coburn said. “I haul goods all over Europe. I have a missionary school I look out for in South Sudan. Government forces have been killing and decimating the people for years. President Salva Kiir got booted out and that left the country under martial law. The UN has 7500 troops on the ground there. I need to get back to my missionary parish, make sure they are all right. I would like to look Granny up one of these days. We bonded. That happens when you are blowing the shit out of a prison camp. Where I would find him?”
“Probably in Central Park in New York City playing chess.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Coburn were getting heavy-lidded. McCall stood up. “Get some rest. That missionary school in South Sudan needs you.”
Walter Coburn opened his eyes again, looking at McCall with a sudden fierce intensity. “Any idea where that asshole Korean mercenary took our beautiful Deva Montgomery and Daniel Blake?”
“Not yet.”
“What was his name?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’re going to find him?”
“Count on it,” McCall said.
“Are you going to take Granny with you?”
“I would have a lot of trouble keeping him away,” McCall said. “It’s a safe bet they flew out of North Korea, so they could be anywhere by now.”
Walter Coburn looked back up at McCall’s face with some intensity. “Granny said that you don’t give up. He had a nickname for you. Something about the odds being in your favor.”
“That sounds about right. You saved a lot of lives today, Walter. Get out of this hospital. Those missionaries are counting on you.”
“Too bloody right.”
Walter Coburn had closed his eyes again. One of the nurses came into the room at that moment. She looked at Coburn’s vital signs as McCall was leaving.
McCall took a cab to Tapgol Park on 97 Jongno Street in the center of Seoul. Kyu-Chul was sitting on the steps of a ten-story stone pagoda in the park. A high-rise towered over it. There was another glass-encased monument of Wongaksa which had been built in 1471. Tourists and locals strolled through the park. Kyu-Chul straightened when McCall approached. He glanced around them.
“Where’s Harry?”
“Trapped in the US Embassy making sure the North Korean prisoners are getting treatment for the horrors they suffered in Commandant Jang’s prison,” McCall said. “The Embassy are making calls to various family members who are enroute to the Embassy. All the North Korean prisoners were suffering from malnutrition and dysentery.”
Kyu-Chul nodded. “Harry will disappear from the Embassy as soon as he can and meet me here.”
“You had no trouble returning the Chinook CH-47F helicopter back to Yangyang Airport?”
“My friends were waiting for me,” Kyu-Chul said. “I owe them. It’s a debt they will call in at some point.”
McCall and Kyu-Chul strolled away from the stone pagoda through the trees of the park.
“Where do you go now?” McCall asked him.
“Kashmir in India. The conflict there has separatists attacking the existing Indian government. There have been hundreds of casualties, mainly among children. There is a train in Bannu Station that has been filled with two thousand refuges meant to hold no more than a thousand. Five thousand lie on the station platform suffering from pneumonia and cholera. They sold everything they carried with them, umbrellas, pots, pieces of clothing, to pay for food. I have to reach that station and get the refugees onto that train.”
“Do you know any of them?”
“Not a soul.”
“Then why do you it?”
Kyu-Chul shrugged. “Why not?”
McCall nodded. It was the answer he was expecting. “Will you take Harry with you?”
“Just as soon as he finishes his latest Lego game.”
“You’ve been together a long time.”
“He would not survive without me.”
At that moment McCall saw Harry jump out of a cab and hustle through the park toward them. He was out of breath when he reached them.
“Man, getting out of the US Embassy was tougher than getting into Commandant Jang’s prison. I left Fredrick Jorgensen doing his interpreter thing. The US Ambassador had already called the CIA who will want to question all of us, but that was the time I bailed. I gave the Ambassador a description of that Korean hitman who visited Jang. What was his name again?”
“Ji-Yeon,” Kyu-Chul said.
“Right. Your dude Granny had already given Deva Montgomery’s description to the Ambassador, along with the Associated Press journalist, Daniel Blake,” Harry said. “God knows where Ji-Yeon took them. As far as the North Korean government is concerned, there was no prison camp located just south of the Yalu River. The North Koreans were holding no western prisoners. I wanted to tell the Ambassador that the prison camp was no longer in existence because we blew the shit out of, but I did not think it was my place to mention that. Liz Montgomery, the photojournalist babe, is pretty distraught about her sister Deva, but she is keeping it together. I believe agents of the CIA are on their way to the Embassy.”
“They are going to want to interrogate you about what happened at that prison camp,” McCall said.
“There’s nothing we can tell them,” Kyu-Chul said. “We were never in North Korea.”
McCall nodded and held out his hand. “I would never have made it without you.”
“It’s what we do,” Harry said, and his signature grin flashed.
The two Korean mercenaries shook hands with McCall, somewhat somberly. He left them walking through the little park arguing about the final Games of Thrones episode.
McCall called Granny on his cell phone and his cab pulled up outside the Seoul Ace Tower near Jonggak Station where Harry had told him there was a fabulous Starbucks. He found it on the second floor, a triangular bar filled with various coffee drinks and welcoming baristas. Granny and Liz Montgomery were seated at the end of the bar on low, cloth-covered stools. Both of them were sipping Teavana Blueberry Bliss tea and were holding hands. Liz looked about at the end of her emotional endurance. Both of them had changed from the North Korean prison uniforms to western clothes which consisted of jeans, dress shirts and lightweight jackets which one of the Embassy assistants and gone out to purchase for them. Liz was wearing a Nike running shoe in a light blue. Granny had been given a Nike Vapor Max in pink. McCall handed Granny two passports, one for himself and one for Liz.
“I handed Water Coburn his passport and he kept hold of Fredrick Jorgensen’s passport to give to him. Walter is out of danger, resting comfortably.”
“The Ambassador at the US Embassy was good enough to get us new clothes,” Granny said. “He asked us to wait until the cavalry had arrived at the Embassy along with several CIA agents. I did not want to seem ungrateful, because the Ambassador was compassionate and savvy, but I knew we were not going to stay long. He wanted to hear our story from the beginning, but I didn’t think that Control would appreciate that.”
“Control was out of the loop,” McCall said.
Granny nodded. “I figured as much, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Do we have a ride home?”
McCall nodded. “Waiting for us at Incheon International Airport, but we won’t be travelling on a regular commercial flight. Are you both ready to go?”
Liz reached out for Granny’s hand and held it tightly. “Granny took care of Myang-Sook-Jang,” she said. “He did that much for me. But it is not enough. I need to know where my sister Deva has been taken.”
“Granny and I will find her,” McCall said.
“You can promise me that?”
“I can.”
Liz nodded her thanks. “Then get me the fuck out of this country.”
McCall and Granny slid off the bar stools, leaving their teas behind. Outside McCall had already called for a taxi to take them to the airport. The cabbie dropped them off at the far end of the airport where the hangers were located. Hayden Vallance was waiting for them on the tarmac in his Global 6000 Vista 9H-VJJ jet. He had flown to Seoul in the hope that McCall had got out of North Korea. He had not been surprised to get the call on McCall’s cell phone. His other passengers were Granny, a friend of McCall’s, and Elizabeth Montgomery, a photojournalist whom Vallance knew by reputation. She looked exhausted and shaky, but she walked up the steps with Granny into the Vista jet.
Vallance looked over at McCall. “When I didn’t from back from you I didn’t know if you were lying in a mass grave somewhere in North Korea.”
“It was touch and go for a few hours,” McCall admitted.
“Did everyone at that prison camp get out in one piece?”
“I lost two of the prisoners to a terrorist mercenary named Ji-Yeon.”
“I know of him,” Vallance said. “He has got quite a reputation. A nasty piece of work.”
“Liz Montgomery is a photojournalist. It was her sister who was kidnapped. The other captive was a journalist working for Associated Press named Daniel Blake. They were hauled onboard a MD-500 military helicopter by Ji-Yeon and taken out of North Korea.”
“Where are they now?”
“I don’t know,” McCall said.
“But you’re going to find out.” Vallance said. “I’d like be on that rescue mission when you find them.”
McCall looked at him with some irony. “I thought you didn’t get involved in missions that have nothing to do with you?”
“It must be associating with you,” Vallance said, wryly.
“You did come back for me in Syria.”
Vallance nodded. “I did. It was against my better judgement. Let us get of here before the South Korean police take a good look at your passports.”
McCall climbed the steps into the Vista jet. Hayden Vallance climbed after him and closed the jet door. Five minutes later the Bombardier Global Vista 9H-VJJ lifted into the sky and headed back toward New York City.
Tony Palmer stood in Alexa Kokinas’s darkened hospital room. She was asleep. Her doctors had her hooked up to an EKG machine to monitor her heart and an IV had been inserted into a vein in her hand. The bruises on her face and arms were purple where they had crushed small blood vessels under the skin. Her right eye had closed almost shut. Her left eye was still a slit. There were lacerations on her face and one of her cheekbones and been fractured and surgery had been required to replace the bone chips. She was breathing on her own, but a respirator was standing by.
Palmer felt a rage inside him that had not subsided since he had first looked at her.
There was a soft knock on the hospital door that made Palmer turn. Detective Frank Macamber stood in the doorway, motioning for him to join him. Palmer took one last look at Alexa’s face, then he exited the room and closed the door behind him. Small, muted sounds came down from the nurse’s station where several of the nurses were accessing laptop computers. There was a sense of suppressed urgency to the activity in the ward. Two more detectives, Pete Hightower and Saul Cooper, were talking in muted tones to a doctor at the nurse’s station. Detective Macamber took hold of Palmer’s right arm in a vicelike grip. His florid face was flushed with color and his eyes were dark, grey chips.
He lowered his voice tersely. “What the hell happened to your partner?”
“She checked out an abandoned warehouse on Fremont Street.”
“I know the one. Down the street from O’Grady’s Saloon.”
“That’s the one,” Palmer said. “She routinely checks there on her way home. This time the gate was ajar and the padlock and been smashed. She went inside with her weapon drawn.”
“Didn’t she call for backup for Christ sake?”
“She did, but not right away. In the darkness she was attacked by six men wearing black clothing. All of them were wearing ski masks. She was disarmed and thrown to the warehouse floor. One of them used a taser on her, drive-stun capacity. It incapacitated her to the point where she could offer no resistance.”
“Son of a bitch! She should have waited for back-up! Jesus Christ! I knew something like this would happen to Alexa. She is deaf, for God’s sake! She should not have been on patrol alone. A deaf cop is a liability. It was only a matter of time before she would turn the wrong way and let a perp disarm her!”
“She was brutally attached, Frank,” Palmer said. “They used a stun gun on her. There were six of them.”
“Any descriptions that Alexa could give you?”
“She said she only saw shapes and shadows.”
Macamber nodded, as if he were tracking with this logic. “A street gang using the warehouse for drugs. Your partner happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Alexa said they were waiting for her.” Palmer said.
Macamber looked at him. He looked back at Alexa’s hospital room. “Did she say that?”
“That was my impression. They were expecting her.”
Frank Macamber looked back at him. “How could they have been expecting her?”
“She checks out that warehouse every day. Routine. They were lying wait for her in the shadows. She said it as a coordinated assault. They knew what they were doing.”
“I guess they could have jumped her in any dark street.”
“They chose a place that was abandoned, where no one could disturb them except maybe a homeless person taking shelter from the cold.”
“All speculation. We need a description! Height, weight, any distinguishing marks or tattoos.”
“She was drifting in and out of consciousness,” Palmer said. “I couldn’t get much out of her. I thought I would go back to that warehouse and take another look around.”
“Fuck you,” Macamber said. “That’s a crime scene. I have got several of my Officers in there right now. The last time I checked, Palmer, you were not a detective. You were a patrolman. I already had a meeting with my Captain at the precinct. You are going to be assigned a new partner until we see how Alexa pulls through. Even if she does recover, she’s finished as a Peace Officer.”
Palmer was keeping a tight rein on his emotions. He had wanted to give Macamber the chance to make a mistake. Get caught out in a lie. But he was too smart for that.
“Alexa will recover from this assault.”
“You don’t get it, do you, Officer Palmer,” Macamber said. “Your partner is toast. It was terrible what happened to her, but it was her own fault. She should not have gone into that warehouse alone. Rookie mistake. A costly one. She is lucky these animals did not beat her to death. We are going to find the men responsible for this cowardly assault. But leave that to us. I am mounting a full-scale inquiry. The Elite are going to be beating the sidewalks and turning every rock over. We are going to find these assholes and bring them in. You stay out of it. Are we clear here? Let me and my squad do their job. We got this.” He put a meaty paw on Palmer’s arm. “Anything Alexa needs, we’ll be there for her. You can tell her that.”
Macamber let Palmer go and moved over to where his two detectives were talking to Alexa’s doctor in subdued tones. Officer Palmer moved back into Alexa’s room and stood looking down at her bedside. She had still not moved from her fitful sleep. He leaned over her.
“I know who was responsible for this attack,” he said softly.
Alexa did not stir. Two nurses came into the room with a doctor Palmer had not seen before. He left them to it and existed the room. Detectives Hightower and Cooper had left. Frank Macamber was standing at the nurse’s station staring at Palmer. His expression was as empty as his eyes. Officer Palmer walked down to the bank of elevators. He knew in his heart who the perpetrators were.
But proving it was something else.