BECK SAT BESIDE KANG,
who was tracking the radar link from the Hawkeye on a titanium-hulled laptop attached to the Phantom’s dash.
“How’s it look around the LZ?” The landing zone.
“Quiet.” Kang was thirty-eight, though he looked younger. A tattoo of the ace of spades covered his right forearm, near the elbow. Beck had wondered about the tat for weeks, but he hadn’t wanted to ask.
Kang tapped on the laptop’s keyboard and the screen lit up with white blips. “That’s Incheon. What a real port looks like.” He clicked on the keyboard again and the screen returned to the dark area farther west. “And that’s North Korea. Dead as a whatever.”
“The good citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic don’t need the corruptions of the outside world.”
“Yeah. Like food.”
“Well, they managed to come up with a nuke,” Beck said. “How’s the boat running?”
“Choe says it looks great,” Kang said. He said something in Korean to Choe, who nodded vigorously. Beck’s Korean was weak, and Choe’s English was worse, so Kang played translator. Choe tapped the throttles forward. The engines rumbled and the Phantom’s cabin began to vibrate.
Beck looked at his watch. 1725. He wanted to reach the landing zone at exactly 2330. No reason to spend more time in North Korean waters than necessary. The Yellow Sea was flat in the summer. If they wanted, they could run safely at sixty knots. But Beck preferred to keep them in the high teens. The slower pace would save fuel and keep noise to a minimum. They would leave here in five minutes, give themselves plenty of time.
But before they went . . . Beck touched the plastic bag in his pocket. He didn’t want to have this conversation, but he saw no other choice. He motioned to Choe to cut the engine. The Phantom sat beside the dock, bobbing on the low waves.
“Before we go—” Beck pulled out the bag. Inside were three glass capsules. “L pills.”
“L pills?” Choe shook his head in confusion.
“L for lethal. Cyanide.” Choe still wasn’t getting it, Beck saw. “Poison. If they catch us. You bite down on the glass.” He took a capsule out of the bag and pretended to put it in his mouth.
Choe slammed a hand against the dash of the boat and stammered angrily in Korean. Kang put a hand on Choe’s arm, but Choe shook him off.
“He says you’re crazy,” Kang said. “He says—”
“Never, never,” Choe said in English.
“He says it’s a sin.”
“Yes, sin.”
“Fine,” Beck said. “But tell him he knows as well as we do, if we get caught, no one’s coming for us. No prisoner exchange. And the North Koreans, they’ll make it hell. These pills, they’re quick, and they work.”
Kang translated, rapid-fire.
“One more thing,” Beck said. “Tell him, he should at least carry it. So he has the choice.”
Choe shook his head, fired back in Korean, and turned away.
“He says no,” Kang said. “He says even talking about it is bad luck.”
Beck ran his tongue over his teeth. His mouth felt dirty and he knew he’d smoked too many Camels this day. “More for me, then. You want yours?”
Kang reached out. Beck shook the little capsule, hardly an inch long, into his palm.
“Remember to give it back to me when we’re done,” Beck said. “You don’t want these lying around the house.”
“Roger that.”
Beck stuffed the baggie with the other two pills into his jacket. He checked the disposable cell phone he’d bought the day before. His station chief had the number. If Langley had decided to abort the mission, the call would have come to this phone. But Beck hadn’t been expecting a call, and sure enough, none had come. He looked once more at his watch. 1730.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Go west, young man.” Koreans called the Yellow Sea the West Sea.
“Yes, skipper,” Kang said. “A three-hour tour, right?”
“Something like that.” Beck hummed the famous theme song, hoping to clear the cabin of the bad karma the pills had brought. “Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip.”
“Think Ginger and Mary Ann will be waiting for us in Pyongyang?”
“Let’s hope we never find out. Sing it with me now. ‘If not for the courage of the fearless crew, the
Minnow
would be lost.”’
“‘The
Minnow
would be lost.”’
If Choe got the joke, he didn’t smile. He looked away, out the front window. He pushed forward on the throttle and the Phantom slid away.
2
DRINK THIS AND YOU’LL GROW WINGS ON YOUR FEET.
John Wells wound down the throttle with his gloved right hand. Beneath him the engine groaned and the tachometer rolled toward 8,000 rpm and the big black bike jumped forward. Wells leaned close to the bike’s angular gas tank to lower his profile against the wind. Still he had to fight to keep upright. The Honda was a meaty motorcycle, heavier and wider than a true racing bike.
Wells lifted his head and peeked at the speedometer. Ninety. He’d imagined faster. Beside him the highway was a blur, the trees beside the road blending into a single leafy cipher. He was halfway between Washington and Baltimore, hardly a rural oasis, but at 3:00 A.M. even the interstate was empty. At this speed the road’s curves disappeared in the dark. Interstates were built for bad drivers, Wells knew, grandmothers heading to the mall, truckers high on meth and anxious to get home. They were built with soft curves to forgive mistakes.
Even so, Wells was pushing the limits of this highway. Anything could take him out. A raccoon prospecting for garbage. A car changing lanes and forgetting to signal. A broken bottle blowing out his front tire, sending him over the handlebars and into eternity. A stupid, pointless way to go. Yet here he was in the dark, as he’d been the week before, and the week before that, on the nights when midnight and 1:00 A.M. came and went and sleep remained foreign territory.
Here the rich, smooth pavement soothed him. The speed made his mind vanish, leaving him with snatches of half-remembered songs, some old, some new. The words blended into a strange poetry he could never remember when the rides were done.
Wells relaxed the throttle and the tach and the speedometer dropped in unison. At seventy-five the wind dropped slightly and the Springsteen in his head faded.
From his earlier rides he knew he was approaching the sweet spot. He slowed to sixty as the road lifted him gently over a low hill. The trees disappeared. To his right, a shopping center parking lot glowed under oversized lights. Behind a blue Dumpster, two police cars nuzzled beside each other, windows down, the cops inside telling each other stories to make the night pass. Just a few hours to go. It was close to 5:00 A.M., and the sun would be up soon enough. Wells thought of Exley, alone now in their bed, wondering when he’d be back, and in how many pieces.
Jennifer Exley, his girlfriend. His boss at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he worked as a—as a what? Hard to say. Last year he and Exley had stopped a terrorist attack that would have dwarfed September 11. Now he was back in Washington, and—how to put this politely?—at loose ends. Osama bin Laden wasn’t happy with him, that much was certain. In an hour-long communique that even Wells hadn’t bothered to sit through, bin Laden had promised eternal glory to anyone who killed him. “Allah will smile on the martyr who sends this infidel to hell . . . .” Yadda yadda yadda. But as a practical matter, Qaeda couldn’t touch him, at least in the United States. So Wells was waiting for a new mission. In truth, though, he couldn’t imagine what that might be. He wasn’t built for desk work.
Meanwhile, he burned his days with three-hour- long workouts, and his nights with these joyless joyrides. Exley hated them, and a week earlier, Wells had promised her they would end. He’d thought he was telling the truth. But this morning he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Exley hadn’t argued when he rolled out of bed and pulled on his jeans and grabbed his helmet. No, Exley hadn’t argued, hadn’t said a word, and Wells supposed he loved her for her silence.
But not enough to stay.
Now Wells flexed his shoulders and stared down the perfect three-lane void ahead. This time when he twisted the throttle he didn’t hesitate but instead pulled back as far as he could. The bike surged, and suddenly Wells heard:
Just don’t play with me ’cause you’re playing with fire....
Not the confident strut of Mick Jagger but the bleak, reedy tones of Johnny Thunder.
The engine roared and the speedometer needle jumped from fifty-five to eighty-five and kept going. When it topped one hundred, Wells flattened himself on the gas tank and hung on. For dear life, he thought. Though anyone watching might wonder exactly what those words meant to him. And then everything faded but the wind and the road, the bike jolting off every crease, its wheels caressing the highway, and Springsteen’s unmistakable voice in his ears:
Drink this and you’ll grow wings on your feet.
Wells glimpsed the speedometer, its white needle past 120, its tip quivering. It maxed out at 125, with the tach in the red zone at 9,000 revolutions per minute. He had never pushed the bike so far. He laid off the throttle and watched himself come back to earth.
A few seconds later, he heard the siren screaming. The lights pulsed red-blue-red-blue in his mirrors, half a mile behind but gaining fast.
He flexed his hand around the throttle. Part of him wanted to wind it down and take off again. He doubted the trooper could match his speed. He could probably get to the next exit and disappear.
But Wells didn’t want to tangle this cop in whatever game he was playing with God, or himself, or the patron saints of the interstate. Instead of taking off, he flicked on his turn signal—see, Officer, I’m careful—and eased the Honda to a stop in the breakdown lane. As he waited, he patted the bike’s gas tank as if it were a horse that had just won the Kentucky Derby. Despite the trouble he was facing, an absurd pride filled him at the speed the machine had achieved.
The Crown Victoria screeched to a stop behind him, its headlights glaring.
“Turn off your vehicle, sir. Now!” Underneath the cruiser’s scratchy speakers, Wells picked up a trace of nervousness. This trooper was probably just out of the academy, stuck on the overnight shift, jumpy about pulling over a triple-digit speeder with no backup. Wells pulled the little black key from the ignition and dropped it on the cracked pavement.
“Off the bike. Now.”
Wells wondered if Exley would appreciate the irony of his being shot in a traffic stop after getting the bike to 125 without a scratch. Probably not. The statie crouched behind the door of his cruiser, hand on the butt of his pistol. He was young, Wells saw. Maybe twenty. He had a thick, square face, but even so, he hadn’t lost all his baby fat. “Don’t look at me, sir! Look straight ahead!”
Wells looked straight ahead, wondering why he always got sideways with the cops.
“Helmet on the ground.”
Wells pulled off his helmet. His eyes burned from the wind. Next time he’d wear goggles under the face plate. Next time?
“You have a wallet? Identification?”
“Yes, Officer.”
“In your pants or your jacket?”
“Pants.”
“Take it out. Slowly.” Wells pulled off his gloves and fished at his wallet. “Put it on the ground and kick it to me with your foot.”
“Kick it with my foot? Not my hand?”
“You’re talking back, asshole?” The trooper no longer sounded scared, just pissed. “I have you on the gun at one eighteen.”
Wells dropped his wallet on the ground, and kicked it toward the trooper. The kid was about to get the surprise of his life, he thought.
“Lean forward and put your hands on the bike.”
The metal of the gas tank was cool under his fingers.
“Do not, don’t, move.” The statie grabbed the wallet, flipped it open.
“Mr. Wick? James Wick? That your name?”
“Not exactly, no, Officer.” Might as well tell the kid. When he got brought in, the truth would come out anyway.
“You’re telling me your license is fake?”
“There’s an ID card inside.”
A few seconds later: “Is this real? Is that you?”
“I’d be awful dumb to lie about it.”
“Turn toward me. Slowly.” The officer looked at the CIA identification card in his hand—the one with Wells’s real name on it—then at Wells. “You expect me to believe this crap?”
Then Wells heard the faint thump of a helicopter’s blades. A few seconds later, the trooper heard it too. Together they looked up as the helicopter closed on them, dropping through the night, landing on the side of the highway, a black two-man bird with a long narrow cockpit. The passenger door opened and a man Wells had never seen before stepped out.
The trooper’s mouth dropped open. Wells was just as shocked. The agency had been watching him? Watching these rides? Did he have no privacy left?