Текст книги "Fallout (2007)"

Автор книги: David Michaels

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

He did a quick search of Pak's studio apartment and found no one else home. In the bedroom, however, he did find a portrait of Pak sitting with a woman and two young girls. Many North Korean political up-and-comers were given two residences: a working apartment in Pyongyang for use during the week and a private rural home for weekends. This, Fisher suspected, was where Pak's family was. Also in the bedroom he found a wireless-capable laptop and, in Pak's nightstand, a Type 69 7.62mm pistol in a leather holster along with two fully loaded magazines. He pocketed the pistol and the magazine and turned his attention to Pak's closet. He found what he was looking for almost immediately: the thigh-length black leather coat Pak had been wearing at the Site 17 platform. In the coat's left pocket he found Stewart's thumbnail beacon. He stared at it a moment. Thanks, Calvin. He stuck it in his pocket, grabbed the laptop, and returned to the living room.

He pulled the iPhone from his pocket, called up the iPod feature, scrolled to the Eagles' "Hotel California," and punched a code into the keypad. The screen changed to an amber-on-black compasslike display with the words ENGAGED > SEEKING SIGNAL flashing near the bottom edge of the screen. Fisher spent the next ten minutes sweeping the apartment for audio and video devices. He found none, so he went into the kitchen, found an English-version of Diet Coke, then returned to the living room and sat down in a wing-back club chair a few feet from Pak's head. He stuck a magazine into the pistol, chambered a round, and waited.

FISHERwas almost finished with his Diet Coke when Pak began stirring. He groaned, and his eyelids blinked open, then closed again as he tried to focus. He tried to raise his hands to his face; his knuckles rapped the underside of the coffee table with a dull thud, and the vase teetered, then went still.

"Just lie still," Fisher said. "It'll be easier for both of us."

Pak went still. He rotated his eyes and craned his neck until he could see Fisher. Instead of the typical "Who are you" and "What do you want," Pak said simply, "You're an American." His English was only slightly accented; Fisher noted his use of the contraction. Pak had had extensive language training, which was to be expected from an RDEI agent.

"I am," Fisher said.

"Don't you know where you are? You'll never get out of the city alive. You probably won't get off this block alive."

"We," Fisher replied.

"What?"

" We'llnever get out of the city alive." He held up Pak's pistol. "I guarantee you, if that time comes, you'll go before me."

"How'd you find me?"

"Western imperialist technology at its best."

"Why have you come here?"

"Complicated question." Too complicated,Fisher thought. If not for Omurbai and Manas, Pak would have gotten a bullet a long time ago. But that wasn't the situation, was it? He needed Pak alive. "I want you to tell me where Carmen Hayes is, and I want you to tell me everything you know about Manas: Where it is, where Omurbai plans to use it, and how to neutralize it."

Pak offered him a condescending grin. "I'm not going to help you."

"I thought you'd say that," Fisher said. "And I'm sure I'd have a hard time changing your mind. Am I right?"

Pak nodded.

Fisher gestured to Pak's laptop, which sat, powered up, on a side table. An SD/USB card reader jutted from one of the laptop's side ports. "You've got some pretty good encryption on there. Unfortunately, it's not good enough. Right now, I'm loading a virus onto your hard drive. I won't pretend to know how it does what it does, but here's what I do know: Two hours from now, and every two hours after that, if a specially coded e-mail doesn't land in your in-box, the virus goes active."

"That's your plan?" Pak said, smiling smugly. "You're going to ruin my laptop?"

"No, I'm going to ruin your life. You see, you trusted your encryption a little too much–put too much dicey information on your hard drive. What that virus will do is plant digital tracks in every corner of your life–your e-mail accounts, your finances, your travel logs–and the story it will tell is that of a traitor, a trusted RDEI agent who volunteered to spy for the United States and has been feeding the CIA information for the past three years. You might not be afraid of what I can do to you, but I know you're afraid of what your bosses at the SSD do with traitors. I've seen video of their interrogation methods. It's not pretty. But, of course I'm sure you know that."

"I don't believe you," Pak said. " Theywon't believe it."

"Bad gamble," said Fisher.

And it was. This was no bluff. The CIA's biggest contribution to Fisher's mission was one of its most prized agents, an executive secretary in the comptroller's office at the State Security Department. While none of the information she'd passed to Langley had been of strategic value, it had given the CIA's Intelligence Directorate an invaluable glimpse into the administrative side of North Korea's security services, allowing it to build from the inside out profiles of more than a dozen RDEI agents: where they went, how they traveled, and through which banks and front companies money was moved. It had been a jigsaw puzzle of daunting complexity, but it had paid off. Fisher's threat to Pak was a case in point.

What Fisher did not tell Pak was that while he was unconscious another program on another SD card had plucked from the laptop's hard drive every piece of data within a certain range of file extensions, the passwords and log-ins to a half dozen SSD intranet portals, including Pak's office e-mail account. Once the program had completed its search, Fisher had loaded the contents onto his iPhone for encrypted burst transmission back to Third Echelon, where Grimsdottir and Redding, working at tandem workstations, were sorting through the data.

"That's not possible," Pak said. "You'll miss something."

Fisher smiled. "I doubt it. I happen to work with a woman who's frighteningly good at what she does, and right now you're her only project. Did I mention she was kind enough to open a private account at Syndikus Treuhandanstaltbank in Liechtenstein? You've got a small fortune in there. You'll never see it, of course, but your bosses will."

Pak's eyes shifted, and Fisher saw for the first time a hint of fear.

"Make no mistake," Fisher continued, "when we're done with you, you'll be the greatest traitor your country has ever seen. Or, option two: You agree to help us." Fisher spread his hands and gave Pak a friendly grin. "It's your call."

"How do I know I can trust–"

"You don't. There're only two things you can count on right now: one, that we can and will burn you; and two, whatever else happens, the first hint I get that you're double-dealing us, I'll put a bullet in your head. That's the deal. Take it or leave it."

Pak closed his eyes, took a deep breath, let it out. "I'll take it."

39

" SLOWdown," Fisher ordered Pak. "You don't want to get a speeding ticket."

Pak eased up on the gas pedal, and the car–a 1990 Mercedes 300 Diesel that Fisher assumed was another RDEI perk–slowed to below 50 kph. The tires beat out a steady rhythm on the highway's expansion joints, lulling Fisher toward drowsiness. He shook it off and focused.

Knowing he was losing ground to exhaustion, Fisher had taken out some insurance against the inevitability of Pak trying to make a move: Tightened around the base of each of Pak's ring fingers was a wire-thin flexicuff. The other ends were secured around the steering wheel's lower half. He had enough length to operate the Mercedes but nothing else.

They'd been traveling for forty minutes. In the side mirror Fisher could see the lights of Pyongyang in the distance, but out here, just six miles outside the city, it was pitch-dark, save what little moonlight filtered through the low cloud cover. It was as though they'd passed through a curtain on the capital's eastern outskirts, from lighted skyscrapers and streetlamps to blackness.

With one eye trained on the iPhone's screen, which currently displayed a hybrid satellite/road map of North Korea, and one eye tuned toward Pak, Fisher ordered him to turn left off the two-lane highway onto a narrow gravel road that took them into a stretch of rolling hills covered by evergreen trees. Fisher watched the latitude and longitude coordinates at the edge of the iPhone's screen scroll until finally they stopped and started flashing.

"Stop here," Fisher ordered.

Pak pulled to the side of the road and shut off the engine. Fisher took the car keys.

"I'm taking a little walk," he told Pak. "If you can manage to gnaw your fingers off before I get back, you're free to go."

"You're a funny man," Pak grumbled.

"So I've been told."

Fisher climbed out, clicked on his penlight, then started up the hillside until he reached the tree line, where he stopped and reoriented himself to the iPhone's screen, and kept going, following a game trail higher into the trees. After sixty seconds he stopped, checked his position, then turned left, took four paces, and knelt down. He broomed the pine needles away with his hands. Lying there half buried in the dirt was a wood handled gardener's trowel. Fisher started digging. It took only a minute to unearth a black Gore-Tex rucksack. He smiled to himself. Hello, old friends.

Fisher hadn't asked, and Lambert hadn't offered an explanation, but just before leaving Washington he'd given Fisher a set of latitude and longitude coordinates. "If you have to go to ground."

He didn't have to look inside the bag to know it contained his full mission equipment loadout: tac suit, goggles, SC-20 rifle and pistol, OPSAT, his Fairbairn-Sykes dagger–all of it would be there.

Fisher didn't need an explanation of how the bag found its way here; he had a solid hunch: Against every operational tradecraft rule in the book, Tom Richards had instructed their spy in the SSD's comptroller's office to take a drive in the country.

Thanks, whoever you are,Fisher thought.

He picked up the bag and started back down the path.

TWENTYminutes later, back on the main highway, Fisher's Bluetooth headset vibrated; he tapped the connect button.

"Sam, it's Grim. Will and I are almost done sorting through the dump from Pak's laptop. About two months before Carmen Hayes went missing, Pak was assigned a new password and log-in to an SSD intranet portal. The portal address has changed, but the e-mail account associated with it hasn't. There's a backlog of e-mail that shows spikes at times that correspond with some interesting events–namely the mortar bombardment in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz president's resignation, Omurbai's reappearance, Calvin Stewart's transfer to the Site 17 platform . . . that sort of stuff. All related to Manas."

"Anything worthwhile?"

"The e-mails are encoded–some kind of digital one-time pad setup, which means only Pak and whoever he was exchanging e-mails with had the decryption algorithm, and it probably changed frequently. I've got enough messages with enough repeated phrases and references to start piecing it together from the back end, but it's going to take time.

"But here's what you need to know. First of all: Is Pak within earshot?"

"Yes."

"Then just listen; don't let on. All of the e-mails Pak sent through this portal go to a single routing station about ten miles east of Pyongyang. I've been tracking you, and I think he's taking you on a wild-goose hunt. You're about five miles southeast of the routing station and heading away from it."

"I see."

"And he's taking you straight into a military restriction zone."

"Huh."

"I'm looking at the sat pics right now. If you keep going down the road you're on, you'll run smack into a checkpoint, and within a half mile of you there's a dozen antiaircraft sites, bunkers, infantry barracks, and radar sites. According to Langley, that whole area is a retreat for North Korean Workers' Party bigwigs. It's one of the most heavily guarded sites in the whole country."

"Good to know."

"What're you going to do?"

"I'll get back to you." Fisher disconnected. He turned in his seat and leveled the pistol with Pak's chest. "Stop the car."

"What?"

"You heard me. Stop the car."

In the corner of his eye, through the windshield, Fisher saw a glimmer of light. He turned. A quarter mile down the road a pair of floodlights came to life atop a guard shack that straddled the road. The lights pierced the windshield. Fisher squinted.

Pak slammed the gas pedal to the floor. The Mercedes's powerful engine roared, and the car lurched forward. A half second later, Pak spun the wheel hard left, and the car skidded, sliding sideways down the road, and then suddenly they were airborne. Fisher went weightless for a moment before he was slammed forward again. His forehead cracked against the dashboard, and everything dimmed.

Fisher was vaguely aware that the car had come to a stop. He opened his eyes and looked around. The Mercedes was sitting right side up, angled downward in a drainage ditch. Fisher touched his forehead and his hand came back red. Beside him, Pak was unconscious, sitting upright in his seat, his head leaning against the side window, both hands still tethered to the wheel. Down the road he heard voices calling in Korean, then an engine accelerating toward him.

Move, Sam, don't think. Move!

Fisher cast his eyes around the car for the pistol and spotted it lying on Pak's floorboard. He retrieved it. Using both hands he smeared blood from his forehead down over his face and neck. He opened the car door, rolled out onto his knees, and tried to stand, but fell. He took three quick breaths to clear his head, then tried again and forced himself upright. He looked left. Down the road, not more than a hundred yards away, a vehicle was speeding toward him. He tucked the pistol into his front waistband, then climbed up the embankment and ran around to Pak's side. He paused to wave his hands at the approaching vehicle in what he hoped was the universal Help megesture, then stumbled to Pak's door and began fumbling for the handle.

The vehicle–a jeep with three soldiers, Fisher now saw–skidded to a stop. The headlights pinned Fisher. The soldiers climbed out, rifles in hand, and encircled him.

"Pak!" Fisher cried, mush-mouthing his marginal Korean. "Jom do-wa-ju-se-yo!"Help me! Fisher turned his face in quarter profile toward the soldiers. Fisher was hoping the sight of blood, combined with his obvious panic, would have the desired effect. "Jom do-wa-ju-se-yo!"he cried again, batting at the car's door handle and waving an arm toward the soldiers.

One of them, evidently the senior of the trio, barked an order. Fisher caught a snippet: ". . . go help . . . !"

It was exactly what Fisher had been waiting for. He drew the pistol from his waistband and spun. He ignored the two soldiers closest to him, who had lowered their rifles and were stepping forward to help, and focused instead on the third, who was holding his rifle at ready low. Fisher fired two shots, striking the man's center of mass, then sidestepped left, adjusted his aim, fired twice more, then again, dropping the two other soldiers in midstep. He hurried forward, kicking rifles away as he went, and checked for pulses. All three were dead.

Behind him, Fisher heard a groan, then Pak's voice: "You still won't get there."

Fisher turned around and walked back to the car.

Pak said, "In twenty minutes there will be a hundred soldiers looking for you. You won't make it." He coughed, then hawked up some mucus and spat it on the ground.

"Maybe," Fisher replied, "but I'm not inclined to take your word for it. One question before I go: There was a man who was looking for Carmen Hayes. You know who I'm talking about?"

Pak furrowed his brows, then nodded. "A private detective. So?"

"Were you the one who put him in that chamber at Site Seventeen?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Couldn't leave him alive."

"But why that way?" Fisher asked. He wasn't sure why any of this was important to him, but for some reason he couldn't pin down, he needed to hear the words. "Why kill him like that?"

Pak shrugged. "Why not? I was curious." Then Pak's face changed. His eyes focused on Fisher's, and he smiled smugly. "You knew him, didn't you?"

"I knew him. His name was Peter. He was my brother."

Pak laughed, a mocking snort. "Peter. Yes, I put him in there. Locked the door myself."

"Did you let him out?"

Pak frowned. "Let him out?" He laughed. "Why would I let him out?"

Peter must have somehow broken out after Pak and his people had left, found a life raft, and set off, hoping against hope he'd be spotted. He probably had an idea he was already dying.

"So you just left him there to die," Fisher said.

"He deserved no better," Pak replied. "He wasn't a man. He cried. He begged and screamed like a–"

Fisher raised his pistol and shot Pak in the forehead.

Pak's head snapped back, his eyes bulging, mouth frozen open in midsentence.

40

FISHERslowed his pace, trotted down an embankment, and dropped belly first into the foot-wide stream there. Ten seconds later a convoy of two jeeps and four trucks roared by on the road and disappeared around a bend.

Fisher keyed his SVT. "Status," he said.

"I've got a real-time satellite feed," Grimsdottir said. "An NK expert from the DIA named Ben is sitting next to me."

"Morning, Ben," Fisher said pleasantly.

"Uh . . . morning sir."

"He'll tell us what we're looking at," Grimsdottir said. "Lambert and Redding are here, too."

Lambert said, "Sam, it looks like Pak's prediction was dead-on. They're mobilizing everything in the area. Right now it's about a company's worth–maybe a hundred fifty men. On the plus side, they're not organized. I think your ruse at the checkpoint might buy you more time than we'd thought. We're seeing a good-size cluster of vehicles around the crash."

After dispatching Pak, Fisher had done a series of things in short order: picked up the shell casings he'd expended, stripped Pak's car of its license plate and any documentation inside, cut Pak's hands free of the wheel and pocketed the flexicuffs, maneuvered the dead soldiers, including their rifles, back to the jeep and arranged them as they'd arrived, then plucked a pair of grenades off one of their belts and pushed the jeep forward until it rolled down the embankment and bumped into Pak's door.

He'd then stepped back to check his handiwork. Satisfied, he'd shouldered his rucksack, then pulled and popped the grenades and dropped one each into the jeep's and Mercedes's gas tanks.

He was fifty yards away, crouched in the undergrowth, when the explosion turned the sky orange.

"Long shot as it is," Fisher said now, "with luck it'll take them a while to figure out it was more than an accident. With even more luck, they won't figure it out, but I'm not counting on that."

"Probably wise," Lambert said. "You've made good time. Three miles in twenty-two minutes."

Fisher had taken a previous five-minute break to strip out of his civilian clothes, bury them, and slip into his tac suit and gear. Tactically, the change had of course made sense, but on an intangible but no less important level, it had also helped him switch mental gears. He was on the run, deep inside Indian country. This was his element.

"Getting old," Fisher said. "Used to be a little faster."

Fisher checked his watch, then looked eastward. The horizon was fringed with orange light, but directly above him the sky was swollen with rain clouds. Daylight was fifty minutes away. He needed to find a bolt-hole.

"Any ideas?" Fisher asked. "I need to disappear in the next thirty minutes."

"We're looking," Grimsdottir said.

Ben's voice came on the line. "Sir, within a quarter mile of you–to the east and west–are two SAM sites," he said, referring to surface-to-air missiles. "The normal complement for these are twelve men apiece. They're not hardened soldiers, but I'd still give them a wide berth. To the south, where you just came from, is that NKWP retreat and checkpoint, another SAM site, a radar station, and a supply depot. To the north, where Miss Grimsdottir tells me you're headed, are some empty artillery positions–basically crescent-shaped sandbag revetments; a barracks, which we believe is only partially manned; and an abandoned sewage disposal plant."

"How far?" Fisher asked.

"Half a mile."

"Will is downloading a higher-resolution annotated map to your OPSAT right now," Lambert said.

Twenty seconds later it was on Fisher's screen. He studied it. Three hundred yards to the west of his position, at the end of the drainage ditch in which he lay, was a grove of trees running from north to south.

"What is that?" he asked.

"Pecan orchard," replied Ben. "It runs north for about a mile, right past the sewage plant."

"My kind of place," Fisher said. "I'm moving."

TWENTYminutes later, having picked his way from tree to tree through the pecan grove, Fisher dropped to his belly in the tall grass that bordered the sewage plant's fence. He switched his goggles first to NV, then infrared, scanning the plant's outbuildings and roads for activity. The plant, which roughly covered a square mile, was laid out in an L-shape, with a pair of rectangular Quonset hut-style buildings aligned on each arm of the L and a filtration pond situated between them. Running into the pond on a raised, cross-girdered platform was a six-foot-diameter sewage pipe.

He saw neither movement nor signs of habitation on the grounds. No lights, no cars. He zoomed in on one of the buildings. The windows were covered in an even layer of dust and grime. He studied the dirt parking lot and was about to zoom back out when something caught his eye: a pattern in the parking lot's dirt.

"Grim, do we have any data on the weather around here? Specifically, wind patterns."

"Hold on," Grimsdottir said. She came back thirty seconds later. "This time of year, steady winds; northerly; average speed, about twenty miles an hour."

"Bingo," Fisher muttered.

"What's that?"

"Tell you later." Fisher flipped a switch on his goggles, linking them to his OPSAT. "Are you seeing this?" he asked.

"We see it," Lambert replied. "Bad feeling about those buildings, Sam."

"I agree. They'll eventually get to them. Grim, how long has this plant been abandoned?"

"Checking . . . Best guess, about two years. Why?"

"The sewage pipe running into the filtration pool . . . Just wondering how dry it's going to be."

There was a long pause, then Grimsdottir said, "Oh, boy. Better you than me."

"Lamb?"

"I agree. It's your best bet, Sam."

"Okay, I'm moving again."

RACINGthe coming dawn, Fisher scaled the fence and sprinted, hunched over, across the open ground to the edge of the parking lot, where he crouched down. He could now see the windblown streaks in the dirt lot. But in lee of the buildings, along their southern walls, the dirt showed no streaks. The plan Fisher had been contemplating solidified in his mind.

He sprinted across the lot to the nearest building's long wall and knelt at a mullioned window. He looked over his shoulder. Perfect. Where he'd passed over ground not shielded by the buildings, his footprints were clearly outlined in the dirt. Before long, with the coming of daylight, the wind would come up and hopefully wipe them clean.

Fisher drew the Sykes from its sheath and smacked the handle against the glass. The mullioned square shattered. Fisher reached through the opening, unlatched the window, and slid it up. He crawled through, closed the window behind him, and looked around. The building's interior was dominated by three open, steel-sided storage pools topped by a catwalk.

He found what he needed almost immediately. Fisher ran forward, ducked between two of the pools, then to the opposite wall, where he crouched before a window. He unlatched the window, slid it up a half inch, then back-stepped to the ladder, carefully stepping in his own footprints.

Fisher climbed the ladder to the catwalk and sprinted down its length to the far wall and the opposite ladder. Where the catwalk met the wall, there was a waist-high railing; above this, a louvered vent leading to the outside.

Fisher climbed the railing and balanced himself on the top rung as he wrestled the vent free from the wall. He placed the vent beside him on the railing so it was balanced against the wall, then pulled from one of his waist pouches a six-foot length of parachute cord. He secured one end to one of the vent's louvers, the other to his ankle.

Next he boosted himself in the opening, rolled onto his back, and wriggled through until he was suspended, his torso outside, his legs inside. A few feet above his head was the roof's peak. He grabbed the edge with both hands, then gradually drew his legs through the vent and slowly let them drop until the vent cover, still attached to his ankle, popped back into the opening. He gave the cord a firm tug to ensure the vent was locked into place, then released his right hand from the roof and undid the knot.

He placed his right hand to the roof, took a deep breath, and chinned himself up to the roofline. He hooked a heel on the edge and rolled himself over.

Almost there, Sam.

He backed up twenty paces, then sprinted forward and leapt over the gap to the next building and kept running along the peak, his boots pounding on the tin roof until he reached the opposite edge, where he stopped.

He smiled. Love it when a plan comes together.

Ten feet below him was the raised sewage pipe; to his right, thirty feet away, it ended at the filtration pool. Fisher jumped down and headed for the opening.

41

FISHER'Seyes snapped open. Trucks,he thought. Took them long enough.

After sliding into the pipe, he'd crawled for a hundred feet until the opening was but a distant circle of gray light, then chose a patch of the pipe's corrugated bottom that looked slightly less sewage-encrusted than the rest, and settled in. He took off his rucksack, propped his head against it, and folded his hands across his chest. It took forty minutes for the adrenaline buzz in his limbs to wear off and for his mind to stop spinning. He drifted off to sleep.

He rolled onto his belly and looked down the length of the pipe to the opening. A gust of wind whipped around the opening, peppering the sides with grit. He caught the ozone scent of rain. He checked his watch: seven thirty.

From outside came the roar of engines–three, he estimated–followed by tires skidding in the dirt and barked orders in Korean.

He'd chosen the sewage plant as his bolt-hole not only for its proximity but because he was certain the North Koreans would consider it a worthy site to search. A critical part of E&E (escape and evasion), was to sometimes give your pursuers exactly what they expected.

Two minutes passed. An alarmed voiced shouted, followed by more barked orders. Fisher caught only one word: window. In his mind's eye, he saw the soldiers breaking down the building's door . . . men racing down the catwalk to search the storage pools, another one finding the open window on the opposite side of the room . . .

Their quarry had been here not long ago but had since moved on.

Fisher froze.

On the other side of the pipe's wall he heard scrabbling sounds: hands slapping on girders, followed by grunts of effort, then boots walking on the roof over his head and moving toward the opening. A pair of male voices muttered back and forth. Fisher waited until the footsteps were farther down the pipe, then shifted the rucksack so it sat in front of his face. He peered through the straps.

Moments later a pair of faces appeared, upside down, in the pipe's opening. Voices echoed down the pipe.

". . . anything?"

"No . . . light . . ."

A flashlight clicked on and played over the inside of the pipe for ten seconds, then clicked off.

From outside, nearer to ground level, a commanding voice barked a question, and one of the men answered: "No, nothing."

The heads pulled out of sight.

THEsearch lasted another twenty minutes. Five minutes after the engines had faded into the distance, Fisher keyed his SVT. He brought Lambert and the others up to speed, then asked, "Any luck nailing down what the hell I'm looking for and where I can find it?"

"We think so," Grimsdottir replied. "We mapped the area using Pak's e-mail cluster and the routing station they went to, but that still leaves us a lot of ground to cover. We're studying the overheads right now. Be back to you as soon as possible."

Lambert came back on the line: "How're you holding up?"

"Good. Got a whole day's nap ahead of me. What more could a man want?"

"A whole day's nap in your own bed at home instead of a sewer pipe in the middle of North Korea?" Lambert offered.

"Killjoy. How's our friend, Omurbai? Still talking?"

"Almost constantly. He's running on all channels, all day, either live or repeats."

"Anything new?"

"More of the same. His Manas rhetoric is ramping up, though. That's got folks around here worried."

In this case, "folks" meant the CIA, the president, and the national security council.

"I can only imagine," Fisher replied. "How's our door replacement coming?"

Fisher was referring to DOORSTOP, the operational code name for a plan to deal with Omurbai and Manas should Fisher fail on his mission. While Fisher had been in the air on his way to Pyongyang, the Joint Chiefs had begun pre-positioning U.S. military assets to deal with Kyrgyzstan. AH-64 Apaches, AH-1 Cobras, and UH-60 Black Hawks had been put on ready alert at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, as had elements from the Seventy-fifth Ranger Regiment and Eighty-second Airborne Division, while in the Arabian Sea the aircraft carrier Reaganhad taken up station off the Pakistani coast.

If Fisher managed to uncover the locations in which Omurbai planned to introduce Manas, DOORSTOP's forces would move in to secure the sites. If, however, Fisher failed, DOORSTOP's mission would be to attack Omurbai's forces in and around Bishkek in hopes of shutting Manas off at the tap. Of course, this plan made a dangerous but unavoidable assumption–that Omurbai would be keeping Manas in the capital and that he hadn't already dispatched it to pre-positioned teams throughout the country. If this was the case, the United States had little hope of stopping Manas.