Okinawa (4)
The moment Yeon-woo set the grass alight, the flames tore outward at a terrifying speed.
This was nothing like an ordinary fire. It spread the way flame races across a floor soaked in oil — a rolling tide of fire surging in every direction.
He had deliberately doused the rear of the forest — the intended point of origin — with a massive quantity of specialized white phosphorus solution, which was why the blaze leapt so fast from that first spark.
Yeon-woo watched the sea of fire for a moment, then turned away.
This way, even if they investigate later, pinpointing a clear point of origin will be nearly impossible.
Fires caused by spontaneous combustion often leave no obvious starting point. The ground holds more flammable material than most people realize. Methane (CH₄), diphosphine (P₂H₄), and phosphine (PH₃) produced by the decay of plants and animals in a forest can oxidize and spark natural flames on their own — the phenomenon people call will-o'-the-wisp.
And the toxic gas their manufacturing plant pumps out every day makes the perfect excuse.
This was a facility deliberately hidden on a remote island. There was no chance the people who built it in a lawless zone had bothered to comply with environmental regulations. The volume of toxic byproduct gas released while producing the drugs was staggering. The more thoroughly anyone investigated later, the more they would conclude that the conditions for spontaneous combustion had been created by the facility itself.
Yeon-woo stood at the cliff edge, pulled the iron stake and rope free from the ground, and scuffed the soil clean with the sole of his boot until every trace was gone. Then, hands pressed neatly to his hips, he dove cleanly toward the sea.
Splash—.
A small spray of water rose as he hit, and a moment later Yeon-woo broke the surface again. Climbing aboard the boat, he checked the disguise mask still fitted over his face — no damage. Good.
Han Hae-un watched him, then spoke.
"All right. Let's move. Time to clock out."
"Yes, sir."
The four of them rowed until the island had put a respectable distance behind them. By then the fire must have been raging hard — even with their backs to the island, a red shimmer danced across the pitch-black surface of the sea.
"Burns nice," Lee Gyu-jin said with a grin, still pulling at the oars.
Neither Park Jung-hyeon nor Lee Gyu-jin had received any advance briefing from headquarters or Alpha-Beta about the facility they were destroying today. The need-to-know principle held: the less you knew, the better. They weren't carrying out the operation out of some burning sense of justice. Deciding whether a mission was just or not was the job of the commander and headquarters. Like every soldier, they ran when told to run and shot when told to shoot.
But they had crisscrossed the island themselves, spraying the solution, and so they had inevitably seen what kinds of facilities stood there. Lee Gyu-jin, born and raised in America until his discharge from the U.S. Air Force, felt his teeth grind at the mere mention of drugs. The Philadelphia he had grown up in had long since been overrun by them. Through this operation, he had gotten a rough sense of the kind of crimes the people Alpha-Beta was targeting were committing.
Not that it matters who the enemy is — if Alpha-Beta says run, I run; if he says shoot, I shoot…
Still, once the outline of the organization they were facing came into focus, a sense of mission settled on top of his loyalty to Alpha-Beta. And in proportion to that, more power flowed into Lee Gyu-jin's arms as he rowed.
"Delta. You're pulling too hard. The boat's drifting to starboard."
Omega's voice from behind made Lee Gyu-jin flinch and ease off.
"Ah — copy that."
Once the boat had put enough distance between itself and the island, Yeon-woo started the motor from the rear seat. Speed climbed at once, and the rubber boat cut across the dark water.
"Copy that."
Yeon-woo nudged the motor's position based on Kim Su-hyeok's voice in his ear. Lee Gyu-jin, sitting up front, cocked his head.
"Okay, look — I felt this when we were coming in on the motor, too. Five degrees, sixteen degrees… Team Leader can calculate that off a map, but how are the rest of us supposed to know how much to adjust?"
He wasn't talking to Yeon-woo, of course. It was a grumble aimed at Kim Su-hyeok back at headquarters in Seoul. But Yeon-woo answered with a faint smile.
"Call it instinct. About this much, right?"
Headquarters came back over the radio at once.
"Kh— ahem."
With nothing left to say, Lee Gyu-jin scratched his head.
Then Yeon-woo looked at Han Hae-un and gave a quiet nod. Han Hae-un spoke.
"Time to move to the next step. Have we secured the data on vessels transiting territorial waters tonight?"
Kim Su-hyeok's answer came through.
"Will it pass within visual range of the island?"
Listening to the exchange between Han Hae-un and Kim Su-hyeok, Yeon-woo looked back. Far in the distance, a faint red glow was still visible — the island, by now burning hard in every direction. But the earth is round, and at sufficient distance an island slips below the horizon. The same held for the sightlines of any commercial vessel passing through nearby waters.
Yeon-woo ran a quick calculation, then spoke.
"How tall is that Norwegian ship?"
From eye level, the horizon sits at roughly four kilometers. At a height of twenty meters, the visible horizon extends to about sixteen kilometers.
"They'll be on a route well beyond sixteen kilometers. The odds of that ship spotting a burning island are essentially zero."
The Norwegian freighter discovering the fire was unlikely. Hearing Yeon-woo's assessment, Han Hae-un issued the order to Kim Su-hyeok.
"Then we proceed as planned. Head for the Norwegian freighter's projected route."
Yeon-woo swung the motor. They cut across the water for a while, and eventually a large freighter appeared in the distance, green and red running lights blinking in turn.
Park Jung-hyeon pulled a piece of equipment from his pack, powered it on, and threw it into the sea. Working a controller that looked like a toy RC car remote, he sent a small, thermos-sized machine — missile-shaped — knifing through the water at high speed toward the Norwegian vessel.
It was not, of course, a missile. It was a strategic device designed to approach an enemy ship, hijack its maritime signals, and jam them.
"Transmit the distress signal."
From headquarters, Kim Su-hyeok routed through the relay device Park Jung-hyeon was piloting and accessed the Norwegian freighter's communications system.
Camp McTureous, U.S. Naval Base, Okinawa.
In the middle of the night, a phone rang in the quarters of Lieutenant Commander Louis E. Gayler. Gayler rubbed his eyes, got up, and answered. An urgent voice came through at once.
"What? Distress signal? Ship run aground?"
Gayler frowned.
"A fire on an island? Which island?"
"N-17? Where the hell is that. Then just notify the Japan Coast Guard and be done with it, no? It's not even our jurisdiction, and you said it's uninhabited."
He said it, then fell silent for a moment, thinking. If something went wrong later, the blowback for a lazy response could land squarely on him. Long years in the service had taught Gayler one thing: when an irregular situation cropped up, handling it strictly by the book was best for your career.
"No. Dispatch one fast boat to the coordinates in that distress call. And contact the Japan Coast Guard immediately."
Back at headquarters, Kim Su-hyeok had used a tool Han Hae-un prepared before leaving the country to hack the freighter's outbound signal and transmit a distress call about the island to the U.S. military — false in origin, but not false in substance.
"Then we're done here. Pull out."
Hearing Kim Su-hyeok's report, Han Hae-un nodded. Everything they had set out to accomplish that night was finished. It was time to head for shore.
Meanwhile, as dawn broke, a man sprawled haphazardly across the tidal rocks stirred and pushed himself up. Everything from the back of his neck to his lower back felt like it was about to snap.
"Urrgh…"
Moving like a zombie, he worked his stiffened body bit by bit until he was upright, then clutched his spinning head and rubbed his eyes. His mind still refused to process what was happening. A sharp, acrid smell filled his nose.
He sat up, shook his foggy head, scrubbed his face dry with his hands, and looked ahead.
"Wh-what the hell…"
The landscape visible over the gentle slope of the hill was ash-gray in every direction.
Did I pass out after snorting something…?
He slapped his own cheek hard. The stinging pain came through clear and sharp. Staggering to his feet, the man crawled up the hill on all fours — and the view only got worse.
Everything in his field of vision looked like it had noise running through it. Everything was either blackened to a crisp or a heap of ash mixed with dark gray.
He had no memory of why there had been a fire, or why he had been lying on the rocks — but he suspected himself.
"D-did I set the fire while I was high?"
He frantically searched his clothes. A small lighter came out of his pocket. His. He had left his cigarettes back at the barracks but somehow brought the lighter with him.
Looking back and forth between the lighter in his hand and the burned-out island, the man flung it toward the sea with all the strength in his trembling arm. It flew in a pathetic arc, bounced off the rocks with a clatter, rolled, and sank weakly into the water.
"I-I don't know. I don't know anything about this."
On shaking legs, the man made a wide circuit of the island that had burned through the night. After a long walk through the ash, he came upon a heavily collapsed ruin. Where warehouses and a factory should have stood, everything had been completely gutted — only a few steel rebars, twisted like taffy, hinted that something had once been there.
"A-are they all really dead?"
His eyes darted rapidly. If they were all dead, maybe — just maybe — a chance to escape this hellish island had finally appeared. He had been trapped here for three full years. They supplied food, alcohol, and cigarettes, and outside of work hours they barely even bothered to watch what anyone did. You woke up, went to the factory, and worked until the sun went down. The reason they didn't bother with surveillance was simple: there was no way off this hell. No matter where you looked on the island, you never saw a neighboring island — never even a passing ship.
"Hey!"
A Westerner called out from the direction of the barracks. Startled, the man looked over — and saw his fellow captives standing with a group of Westerners in military uniforms. The man shouted something in English over his shoulder.
"We've got one more survivor on the island!"
The faces of the colleagues standing beside him looked bright.
C-could they be here to rescue us?
Meanwhile, word of the incident reached Baeksol around noon the following day.
"You piece of—! What the hell did you just say?!"
A man roared in a voice like metal scraping metal, snatched the nameplate off his desk, and hurled it across the room.