Permafrost. M. Schwartz
leaving a three-foot hole near the lock, lots of debris, and, most importantly, a way in. They made an effective breaching weapon destroying the door but not much else. Baron walked the spool of det-cord back a few feet around the corner of the rickety building and awaited orders to blow the charge. Once they set the charge off, Baron knew they would have less than fifteen seconds to find the hostage before the captors would put a bullet into his brain; they had to be fast and precise. A double-click came over the radio, and Baron pressed the ignition button. A fraction of a second later, he could feel the quick concussive blast roll over his body and pass beyond him, taking air slightly out of his lungs like a surprise cough. The explosion was sharp but not deafening. The fragmentation of the door and wooden projectiles ricocheting off the interior seemed to make more noise and last longer than the split second charge.
“Go loud!” Coleman shouted into his throat mic. Without a moment’s hesitation, even before the final wood fragments fell back down to the swampy earth, the team was inside, clearing the building. The sound of boots on wood pulp and creaking boards filled the previously silent space. The operators cleared each room with practiced precision.
“East room, clear!” Baron heard a voice bark. His target was the south room.
“West room, clear!” Another shout. Baron headed into his designated room. Inside the room was a man holding a pistol to the hostage’s head. The armed man was violently shaking, and sweat was beading up and trickling down his bald head as he looked around the room, head twitching from one spot to the next.
“South room, problem,” Baron calmly whispered into his mic, indicating to the rest of his team to head in his location.
“Don’t you assholes come any closer! I’ll kill him!” the sweating man shouted. His gray shirt was soaked around the armpits and had speckles of moisture on his chest. The summers in Tampa were smothering hot and humid, but this was fear-induced sweat. Baron had learned to tell the difference.
“Please don’t let him kill me! Do something dammit!” Now the hostage starting to struggle against the strong muscular arm of the criminal that was against his throat. Great situation we have here, Baron muttered to himself.
“Sir, I need you to put the weapon down. This won’t end well for you if you keep holding a gun to his head. Can we talk for a second before things spiral?” Baron was hoping his team members were in position to back him up. He could not take his eyes of the gunman, which meant he could not look behind him to see if they were place. He had one play, and if it didn’t work, it would get messy. Fast.
“I said shut up! Say one more word, and he is dead! I don’t care if I die!” The man was losing his grasp on his own mortality and panicking. Not a good combination. Baron cleared his throat, and the next sound that filled the room was the crack and hiss of a projectile flying past Baron’s head. A split second later, red exploded on the front of the hostage taker’s forehead, and he collapsed hard to the ground. The captive ran forward into the arms of one Lieutenant Coleman.
The heavy thud of industrial bright lights turning on filled the house with a low hum, and a buzzer sounded. Men and women with clipboards entered the shanty house to write their reports and criticisms of the training operation. The pretend hostage taker who was “shot” in the face finally stood up.
“Son of a bitch, Coleman, did you have to shoot me in the forehead again? These paint bullets hurt, man!” the man said, rubbing the paint off of his face.
“Sorry, Chuck, what can I say? I don’t like negotiating,” Coleman replied to him laughing. Around Coleman, the other operators were pounding their fists and slapping each other’s backs in congratulations on another successful training op. The Navy kept coming up with more and more ridiculous training scenarios to make sure the teams stayed sharp. Baron loved the challenges and unique situations that were thrown at them constantly. They were usually difficult and unique scenarios that required various skill sets and gear; no two missions were alike in location or objective. Though he did wish they had a real mission, it had been a few months since the last time they were down range in theater, and no training mission or mock scenario no matter how good could equal real live combat. The people who built the scenarios were the best, and they were extremely believable; but deep down, everyone knew it was still training, and there was not any real danger, outside of a failed parachute opening, or an explosive charge gone wrong. There simply was no substitute for real enemies firing real bullets.
“Team Trident, good work on the op,” a booming voice came over the intercom system. “Sorry to break up the fun, but you have a live mission brief in one hour. This is not a drill. Get your butts back to MacDill now.” MacDill Air Force Base was home to many units, most notably, US SOCOM. The United States Special Operation Command was the home of all the military’s special operators, from all of the branches. The team cheered at the news of a live mission; training could only do so much before even that got boring. Baron reached over on a nearby dresser that was inside the room the hostage had been, grabbed a pair of car keys, and clicked the lock button. A pearl-white Jeep Rubicon in the rear of the building chirped, and its head lights came on.
“Found one, c’mon, y’all.” Baron clicked into his mic. The operators dropped their training gear on the floor and made for the car.
“Hey, that’s my car! You can’t take that!” a man in a suit shouted to Baron.
“I’ll get her back to base just fine. Don’t you worry, sir. She will be parked outside the SOC.” Baron turned the key and changed the radio to the local rock station. AC/DC’s song “Dun Dirt Cheap” was on, and he cranked up the volume. The team laughed at the poor guy whose car just got commandeered as they piled into the jeep.
Forty minutes later, the team was in dry workout clothes and tennis shoes sitting in a row of chairs in front of a projector screen, waiting for the brief to start. A few minutes later, the room went black, and the report began. A female’s voice filled the room coming in over the speakers giving the verbal representation of the images on the screen.
“Hello, Trident. This will be your brief for your upcoming mission. Classification is TS-SCI, compartments RR and HT.” The operators opened their green notebooks and started taking notes. “We have reports that a Dr. Ji-Ho Park, a distinguished virologist and microbiologist from Stanford University is missing. Dr. Park holds dual citizenship of South Korea and America. Normally, you wouldn’t be mobilized for a simple missing person. However, we have multiple reports from credible local assets that while he was on vacation in Seoul, Dr. Park was shoved into a van and that van was later seen making a run for it to the North. While we are still investigating what Dr. Park was working on and why anyone would want to kidnap him, your mission is to drop near the northern border of South Korea and cross into North Korea where the kidnappers will most likely think they have succeeded and dropped their guard. Stop the vehicle and rescue Dr. Park. Questions?”
“What is the DLZ?” Baron asked. Last time he went on an op, their designated landing zone was supposed to be near a river, but thanks to a heavy gust of wind, it ended up being in the middle of a market, which caused quite the stir in the small Malaysian community.
“DLZ is here, approximately ten miles northeast of the South Korean city Cheorwon, on this mountain range.” the presenter’s voice explained. A topographical map zoomed in on the mountain they were to be aiming for during the drop.
“What is our exfil, I mean, exfiltration locations?” Coleman questioned the woman giving the brief, trying to avoid common shorthand the team used in official briefings.
“Once you stop the vehicle on this road, you will exfiltrate out of the country the same way you came in and wait for nightfall. Once it’s dark, you will use your GPS locators and signal a local resource that will be in the area doing geographical surveys of the mountain ranges. It won’t be around long. The window is twenty to twenty-one hundred hours local time. Miss that window and you will be walking back to Seoul.”
The SEALs laughed at the notion and welcomed the challenge to miss their ride just to hike through the Korean mountain ranges. Although they were laughing now, the team understood the risks of going into the hermit kingdom that was notorious