18 Dragons Read online

  18 Dragons

  An Ellie O’Conner / TEAM 99 Novella

  Jack Hardin

  First Published in the United States by The Salty Mangrove Press

  Copyright © 2019 by Jack Hardin. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  New to Jack Hardin?

  The Apostate

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  Chapter One

  Blood was congealing behind his teeth. Teeth that now resembled tiny, broken tombstones. He parted his swollen lips, and a long string of red mucus dripped toward the concrete floor. His head sagged painfully toward his naked chest.

  The ropes cut into his wrists, keeping him suspended above the floor where the tips of his toes barely reached. It was dark in the small room. For now.

  Quiet too.

  The man was Jonathan Nance. Five days before, he had entered North Korea for the third time in under a year. This time, as he had the previous two visits, Nance had arrived under the name of William Powell, with a cover of a freelance journalist. This trip, he had been treated with the same respect as before. When he had stepped off the airplane at Pyongyang International Airport, he had been escorted to a small, windowless room, where he was questioned about his intent for his visit and where he planned on staying each night. It was a typical course of action for the five to six thousand Westerners who visited the closed country every year. After the questioning, he was assigned a liaison from the tourism bureau. Nance knew well enough that the liaison was not the DPRK’s way of showing hospitality, although it was always presented in such terms. No, the liaison was a diplomatic babysitter, there to ensure that North Korea’s Western guest did not take any unapproved pictures or visit an area of the country that may not reflect the full glory and wisdom of the Supreme Leader. The country had a GDP per capita of less than $1,000 per year, and Pyongyang went to great lengths to keep anything less than its architectural and artistic glories away from Western eyes.

  Nance’s mission had been simple enough. Defectors who had fled the country over the last couple of years spoke of an underground leader who lived on the outskirts of Pyongyang in Kangnam County. Nance’s mission was to shake his liaison and then secure a clandestine meeting with the underground leader who had inside information on the inner workings of the Mansudae Assembly Hall, the seat of the Supreme People’s Assembly.

  But that had not happened. Yesterday morning, just before his alarm went off, Nance had been woken by a series of furious knocks at his hotel room door on the twentieth floor of the Yanggakdo Hotel. They hadn’t let up until he had opened the door, groggy from sleep and still wearing his boxers. He was immediately arrested by a barking lieutenant. His bags had been taken, his room torn apart and searched. Then he had been brought here, wherever here was. Probably the basement beneath the Ministry of State Security.

  He heard a key in the lock, and when the door opened, bright, white light from the hallway streamed in, forcing him to squint his swollen eyes. A short, middle-aged man in uniform walked in. He had dark hair, cut short, and heavily slanted eyes. His English accent was surprisingly good, nearly masking a native North Korean intonation.

  He removed his forage cap and tucked it under his arm. He addressed his prisoner. “I am Lieutenant Commander Lee Kwan. I have listened to you answer our questions. You have not yet been honest with us.”

  As Nance replied, pain radiated across his mouth. “Like I’ve said, I’m a journalist, here to...” He paused. The swelling was making it difficult to enunciate his words. “Here to document the glories of your beautiful country.”

  “Yes. So you’ve said. Who do you work for, Mr. Nance?”

  “I’ve told you all a hundred times.” He winced. “I’m a freelancer. That means I’m a—”

  “I know the meaning of freelancer, Mr. Nance. That may be your skin.” He leaned in and poked Nance on the shoulder. “But that is not your substance.” Kwan raised his chin and looked coldly at the broken man before him. “You work for the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States government.”

  “No—”

  “I know this, Mr. Nance. There is no sense in denying it. It would be better for you if you were truthful. Better for us all.”

  Nance swallowed back more clotted blood in an effort to coat a dry throat. “Fine. Think what you want. If you won’t believe me, there’s nothing more I can say.”

  “Then you will be executed.”

  Nance huffed. “You…can’t do that.”

  His interrogator smiled. A forced, plastic smile. “Are you a citizen of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Then as a citizen of the United States, you will know that the DPRK has no diplomatic relations with your country. With you, we may do as we please.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Now. I will give you one more opportunity to tell me the truth. Who are you?”

  What Nance would never admit was that Lieutenant Commander Kwan was right. Nance was entering his seventh year with the CIA. His head slumped back down, and he looked at the floor. How had the North Koreans discovered the truth of his identity? North Korea was a surveillance state through and through. They dissected every foreigner who visited the country. His cover was well established: the Agency had even published several non-critical articles in the Times under Nance’s nom de guerre, William Powell. He had a website with his curriculum vitae and several videos hosted on YouTube where he discussed his love for the beauty of North Korea.

  His cover had been secure. Very few people outside of the Deputy Director himself had even known about it. And those few people Nance trusted implicitly. They were not moles; they were not traitors to this cause. He was sure of it. But then, how was he discovered?

  “Then let us not play games any longer, Mr. Nance.” Kwan removed his handgun from a holster on his belt. He racked the slide and pointed it at Nance’s face. “You have been found guilty of crimes against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. You have been found guilty of conspiracy against the Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. Your punishment...is death.”

  Nance had been trained to withstand interrogation. And he had held up well enough over what he imagined were a couple of days now since his arrest. He hadn’t given in, hadn’t pleaded for them to stop. And he had given them nothing. But now, as he stared down the barrel of a gun about to go off in his face, he felt a heavy weight of sadness for his little boy. He didn’t know what time of day it was, so he didn’t know what time it was back in Virginia. But his son was probably at kindergarten right now, or sleeping peacefully in his bed. Fresh tears stung his eyes as he considered that Marcia would have to raise Tommy alone. “Please,” he said quietly. “Please.”

  When Lieutenant Commander Kwan pulled the trigger, the shot reverberated across the co
ncrete walls of the small room, echoing and re-echoing like demonic laughter. Jonathan Nance’s head snapped back before rolling unnaturally back toward his chest.

  Kwan returned his gun to the leather holster at his side. He took a final look at the man he had just killed and left the room wearing a proud smirk.

  Chapter Two

  The crew chief lowered the rear ramp as soon as the wheels of the MH-47G Chinook came to rest on the tarmac. The chopper’s wash stirred Ellie O’Conner’s ponytail as she ducked and scurried across the tarmac, her pack across her back, her Mk 248 Mod 1 sniper rifle in hand. Behind her, the chopper’s Turboshaft engines shifted into a whine as the pilot shut them down. Ellie walked into the airplane hangar and headed toward the far end where a door led to TEAM 99’s private compound, a three-story concrete structure at the U.S. Army Garrison at Benelux in Brussels. The location was strategic. Brussels was not only the home of NATO headquarters but also provided ready access to locations in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

  “Pascal!” Ellie heard her agent designation echo across the airplane hangar—the only name by which she had been addressed these last four years. Captain Michael Harris stood at a metal door at the far end, his boot propping it open. “Mortimer wants to see you. Now.”

  She nodded at the captain as she went through the doorway. “Welcome back,” he said. She walked down the cinder block hallway, turned left, and took a set of stairs to the second floor. Her boot heels echoed on the concrete floor as she took the hallway all the way to where it terminated on an open door. She knocked on the door frame.

  “Come,” was the brisk reply.

  Virgil, one of the seven members of her team, was sitting in a chair in front of their boss’s desk. He held the title as the largest, most muscular member of the team. His legs were as stout as tree trunks and his complexion as smooth as butter, and he had plump cheeks that filled out a round face. He was wearing tan cargo shorts and a black T-shirt. His light brown hair was buzzed close to his scalp in a Marine-style cut. Ellie smiled a hello, unshouldered her pack, and set it on the floor. She pressed her weapon into it.

  Mortimer extended a hand toward the empty chair next to Virgil. She settled into it. Virgil gave her a once over and smirked. Her brown cargo pants were filthy with mud, and her hair and neck were caked with the stuff. She had changed shirts on the trip here. Virgil shriveled his nose. “Were you crawling through sewers?”

  “Jungle,” was her stunted reply. Mortimer was known for meetings that got right to the point. Ellie was anxious to get this over with. She wanted a hot shower.

  The office was scantily furnished. A couple of swivel chairs, a gray military-issue desk, and a short metal bookcase half-filled with books on the history of warfare and twentieth-century geopolitics. Large windows covered in radio frequency emanation film looked out over the runway. On one concrete wall was a framed American flag.

  Ellie’s pear-shaped boss was clicking away on his keyboard. A narrow set of bifocals were perched on the end of his broad nose. Even with his wide frame, his face did not carry any of the added weight. He was dressed in a navy blue pinstripe suit and a mellow green tie. Even within the privacy of the compound, Mortimer always wore a suit.

  He stopped typing and snatched his glasses off his face, leaned back in his chair, and addressed Ellie. “Using the information you provided, the Brazilian Air Force has just completed flyovers on the target site. All that remains of the mercenaries and their operation is ash and coal. Good job, Pascal.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The entire team knew each other on a code name basis only, all of them named after authors in classical literature. Ellie was Pascal, the other female on the team, Faraday. Their team leader was Voltaire, and the final four were Cicero, Virgil, Dante, and Darwin. Their team’s director, Mortimer, was named after the famed philosopher who edited the Great Books of the Western World. It was against protocol for the seven team members to discuss their backgrounds, families, or even their true identities. The reason for this was simple: in the event any of them were captured on a mission and interrogated—even tortured—they had nothing to give up, no information that could lead to anyone gaining knowledge of TEAM 99’s existence.

  “How are you?” he asked. “You look tired.” Mortimer’s question had nothing to do with personal concern. It was his subtle way of reminding her to keep her head in the game, regardless of how she felt.

  “Fine, sir.” Truth be told, she was tired. She had just spent the last two weeks slogging through a Brazilian jungle, pulling reconnaissance on a radical neo-communist sect responsible for terrorist attacks in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Phoenix. But the exhaustion was nothing that a couple of green smoothies and a full day of rest couldn’t fix. Provided she was even given a full day of rest. And seeing that she was sitting here in front of Mortimer, with Virgil beside her, she was betting that her odds weren’t so good.

  Their director picked at the corner of a blue file folder and removed it from the desktop. He extended it across the desk to his number two operative, then grabbed another and held it out to Virgil. Mortimer, who had held positions at the Pentagon, the NSA, and the CIA, was TEAM 99’s primary source of information relating to their missions. It was a rarity that an officer from Langley would come out and brief them in person. “You both will be leaving the day after tomorrow. Destination is China.”

  China. It had been nearly two years since Ellie had been sent there.

  “Elimination,” he continued, speaking in his usual clipped manner. “Langley has confirmed that the target is leading a high-level hacking effort targeting U.S. federal infrastructure. Some of which has been successful, leading to the loss of at least three undercover Americans abroad. Dozens of others have been exposed.”

  Neither operative opened their file. They kept their eyes on their boss. Everyone on the team had learned to do so early on. The file was to be read after Mortimer dismissed you, not before. Here, he would provide the bird’s-eye view, and the file would color in the details. “Captain Harris will brief you at 0700 tomorrow morning. You’ll be going in on Danish passports as photographers for National Geographic.”

  Ellie heard Virgil give an audible sigh. Of the seven members of the team, Virgil struggled the most with working up a proper accent of any kind. He could pull off a proper English or Canadian accent with great effort. She’d heard him try for an Irish turn of phrase once before, and it came out sounding like a drunk leprechaun that may have spent time in Paris. And that was being generous. Thankfully, they were going to China, not Dublin, so a drunk French leprechaun should be enough for a Chinese customs official.

  “Exfiltration,” Mortimer continued, “will be mediated through a local source. It will take several sprints to get you out which means you’ll be in-country post-mission longer than usual. But make it work. The termination site will be over two hundred kilometers inland, which means we are relying on domestic assets to equip you and get you safely back out of the country. I cannot emphasize enough that this must be clean. Get in, drop the target, and follow your directive to exfil to a T.”

  Both of Mortimer’s operatives acknowledged their director in unison before he dismissed them. Ellie picked up her pack and weapon and, at Mortimer’s request, shut the door behind them. She and Virgil walked down the hallway in tandem. He tapped the folder with the back of a finger. “Since I’m a slow reader, I’m off to make sense of all this.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Always enjoy going into the field with you, Pascal. Good to have you back.”

  “Thanks, Virgil. Work on your accent while you’re at it.”

  He sighed and turned down another hall, heading for his quarters.

  Ellie went up another flight of stairs and cut down a narrow corridor. Arriving at a metal door, she scanned her badge. Once the light on the security pad blinked orange, she placed her thumb on the small screen. It read her print, and the light switched to green, gave a double beep, and the door latch clicke
d back. She entered a small room where steel cabinets with welded mesh doors lined the walls. Ellie stepped to the far end and scanned her thumb again. The door popped opened, and Ellie slid her rifle into the rack.

  She had spent her last hour on the Chinook cleaning her rifle. It was now ready for the next mission, whatever and wherever that happened to be. It wouldn’t be China. They wouldn’t be able to bring anything into the country with them. She shut the door. The mechanical lock groaned shut, and a metallic click and a small green light at the top of the door told her that all was secure.

  She walked to the other end of the room and set her duffle bag on a stainless steel table and began removing the contents: dirty clothes, night-vision goggles, ammunition, three grenades, three cartridges, a tactical knife, a Beretta with four magazines. She placed the weapons in another cage above the table and secured the door. Someone would come for all this later. They would remove, wash, and clean the rest of the contents and repack them for the next mission.

  Taking the blue folder with her, she exited the room and made her way back down to the communal room on the second floor. The expansive room was an open floor plan and, like the rest of the building, formed entirely of unpainted concrete. A pool table and a ping pong table sat on the far side, several leather couches surrounded a flat screen TV, and an eating area sat near the kitchen. Ellie went to the sink and washed her hands before drying them and grabbing a clean glass from the cabinet and filling it with water.

  Faraday was at the table, fork and knife in hand, working at a steak. She smiled when she saw Ellie. “Hey, you’re back.” Cicero was on the couch, his back to her, watching reruns of 24. He swiveled and turned around. His brows lifted when he saw what was tucked beneath her arm. “You got a blue folder already?” He looked her over. The mud was still caked to her boots and pants. “Have you even showered yet?”