Tang insisted. “He’s a fucking kid and he’s starving. What would you do?”
“It’s not my fight,” Fordyce replied.
“Not your fight? You’re a Navy SEAL, for Christ’s sake. You’re a good man. All three of you are. I know that. I also know that we’re different than the North Koreans. Life means something to us. Freedom means something to us. We can save this boy. We have to save him. And as far as his sister is concerned, if she has even one piece of intel that can help protect our country, I’m willing to do what it takes to get it.”
Fordyce began to interrupt, but Tang motioned to be allowed to finish. Fordyce allowed him to speak.
“I have enough red herrings, fake backstories, and outright deceptions planned that if I got captured, and that’s a big if, I could keep the North Koreans chasing their tails for months. By the time they untangled everything and figured out that I was American and not South Korean, you’d all be long gone,” said Tang. “I wouldn’t compromise this operation.”
“Not at first,” replied Fordyce. “But they’d torture you, too, and eventually, you’d tell them everything.”
“Of course. No one can hold out forever.”
Lieutenant Jimi Fordyce looked long and hard at both of his SEALs, but he didn’t need to ask Johnson or Tucker what they thought. They were his brothers. He could read their minds.
Looking back at Tang he said, “I’d better not regret this. Okay, let’s map out how we’re going to make it happen.”
CHAPTER 35
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* * *
BEIJING, CHINA
Colonel Shi studied the report on his screen. He was not happy with what Cheng had discovered in Nashville.
Ren Ho had personally approved each of the Somalis for the operation. He should have been able to anticipate that Wazir Ibrahim would be a problem. Cheng had done the right thing by eliminating him. Ibrahim was a disaster waiting to happen. On the other hand, Mirsab, the engineering student who had been paired with him, was a different problem.
One of the greatest difficulties of dealing with educated people was that they made educated guesses. It had been assumed that the engineering students would ask questions, and Ho, posing as their handler, “Henry Lee,” had been instructed what to tell them.
The devices they would be assembling had been smuggled into the United States in pieces. In their training, they had been given a wiring diagram, several innocuous components, and a battery. There was no way that they could figure out what they were being asked to build. When the students did ask what it was, Ho delivered his prepared response.
Because of all the secrecy, the students naturally assumed they were participating in something illegal. They each came from a very poor family and the money being sent home was more than they would earn in a lifetime. That alone should have cut off any questions, but the Second Department had wanted the engineers to be told what to think, rather than trying to figure things out on their own.
What Ho had conveyed was that they were creating a “temporary Internet” that would act like a network of nationwide cell towers. With it, a series of incursions into corporate computer systems would be conducted and never be traced. The fact that the targets were corporations, the item to be stolen was data, and that the network was untraceable had satisfied all of the students. All, it appeared, except for one.
When it came time to practice launching the attack, Ho provided dummy containers for the devices and stressed the importance that they all launch at the same time. If they didn’t, he warned that the network would not be fully functional, and their plan would collapse. That’s why the students had been issued partners. The Somali men were there not only as an extra set of hands to help transport and assemble the equipment, but also to handle any problems that might arise en route to or during the launch.
Once their task was complete they would all rendezvous with Ho in Boise, receive their final payments, and be provided with routes to return home.
It was a solid, plausible explanation, but somehow their Nashville student, Mirsab, had discovered the real purpose of the devices. What Shi put down to an educated guess may have been just that, or it may have just been wildly lucky. Either way, the colonel wanted to know how Mirsab had arrived at his conclusion and, more important, if he had shared it with