Attack of the Seawolf

Su Lee snapped off the images, the photos captured on the camera’s computer memory, satisfied that she had gotten it all. After one last glance at the huge armored force in the valley below, she climbed back onto the rickety bicycle for the trip back to the village, to her room in the women’s dormitory of the farming cooperative. Although it was risky to be out in the middle of the night, her situation gave her an implied cover — as a former prostitute under rehabilitation, her nocturnal activities would immediately be assumed to do with her original crime. No one would suspect her of espionage. Unless they found the KL-87’s digital camera in her bag. And who would want to search a prostitute’s handbag?

She pedaled through the moonlit night back to the village, past the sleepy and shabby buildings of the farm cooperative, until she reached the hut of her own co-op. She parked the bicycle against the building and slowly climbed the creaking stairs to her tiny room.

She shut the door behind her, set the digital imager on the bed, and pulled the remainder of the KL-87 set from its hiding place in her beat-up suitcase, wrapped securely in old clothes.

The KL-87 was a three-module secure communications system, newly developed in the United States by DynaCorp International. The first module was the digital imager, a camera that took photographs recorded not on film but on a computer hard disk for later uplink by the transmitter module. The second piece was a small computer keyboard and tilting screen, used for typing in a message and encoding it. The third module was the transmitter antenna assembly, which took the encrypted messages and digital camera images and uplinked them on a time-varying secure UHF frequency to an orbiting U.S. communications satellite in a geosynchronous orbit over the western Pacific. The entire kit, when stowed, took up no more room than two shoe boxes, but weighed a solid ten pounds.

Su Lee checked the door and the window, then sat on the bed to begin her typing, the message introducing the uplink of the photos with a brief verbal description of the P.L.A force strength. She typed in the instructions for encoding the message, plugged in the digital imager, tied in the transmitter, and hit the two key combination ordering the unit to transmit. Satisfied, she watched as the unit transmitted the signals to the satellite above. It was unfortunate that the photographs contained so much data — the transmission would take almost fifteen minutes to uplink all the bits from the photos. Su was about to cover the KL-87 with a bundle of clothing from the suitcase when the door crashed open.

Su Lee stared down the barrels of three AK-47 automatic rifles held by three Red Guards. She felt a burst of adrenaline, a flash of raw fear, soaking her armpits, nauseating her stomach. In reflex, she plunged her hands under the KL-87, getting under its weight, and threw the connected modules at the first of the Red Guards. As the unit flew through the air, Su turned and plunged through the window, falling the twenty feet to the street below. Pain shot through her chest as ribs punctured lungs. Blood spurted from her neck, her flesh ripped apart by the fall through the window’s thick glass. Su pressed a hand to her neck, the slick warm liquid soaking her arm. Above her, rifle fire sounded in the room, blowing the remainder of the glass from the window, showering her with fragments. One guardsman appeared at the window while footprints sounded on the street coming from the direction of the door.

By now blood surrounded Su. She couldn’t move her legs, and the boots of the guards were thumping closer. Agony flooded her, more at being caught than at her injuries. In a savage movement of her free arm she pulled out the hem of her tunic, and with it, two tiny white pills she had carried with her since her arrival at Loyang. She bit both of them and swallowed, an almond bitterness filling her mouth.

By the time the guardsmen arrived to drag her up by her arms, Su Lee was dead.

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA HEADQUARTERS, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE

Director Robert M. Kent frowned as he put the coffee mug down on his desk. The brew had gone cold and bitter. He looked up at Steve Jaspers, the Deputy Director of Operations, and accepted the briefing folders Jaspers handed over.

“The China penetration operation has derailed, sir,” Jaspers said without preamble, sinking into a couch in front of Kent’s large desk.

“Six penetration agents were sent in. Two were lost on insertion, the other four reported they were set up and in position, but as of now the final four are compromised.”

“Details,” Kent said, opening the folder to the first page, showing a passport photo of an attractive young oriental woman and beneath it a summary of her background.