Ballistic Force by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2013-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Chino Valley, Arizona

It was still dark out when Shinn Kam-Song stirred beside his wife in the bedroom of their Arizona trailer home. He checked the clock on the nightstand. 5:10.

Shinn was surprised. In the months since moving to Chino Valley, he’d disciplined his body to the point where, even without an alarm clock, he would unfailingly wake up at a few minutes before 5:00 a.m. This was the first time in weeks that he’d overslept. Of course, the previous night there had been the news item about the escalating crisis back home in North Korea. That, Shinn figured, may have had something to do with it. He’d been particularly unnerved by a sound bite in which one of Kim Jong-il’s military shills had boasted of the KPA’s nuclear capability. We now have it in our power to strike out at those who would do us harm, he’d said. Were they bluffing? Shinn wondered as he lay in bed, letting his eyes adjust to the predawn light. Or had a new crew of nuclear scientists indeed succeeded in picking up where he and the other members of the Project Kanggye team had left off when they’d defected? Had they truly managed to correct all the errors he’d laid into his data before leaving the country? It didn’t seem possible, but Shinn knew how determined Kim could be.

Shinn turned to look at his wife, Mi-Kas, who was dozing peacefully beside him. He suspected that he might have tossed and turned in his troubled sleep and he was concerned that he might have kept her up. In the faint light of the desk clock he could make out her features, and to him Mi-Kas was every bit as beautiful now as twenty years ago when they’d first met. Back then she’d been the wildly popular daughter of a high-ranking general in the KPA. Shinn, fresh out of Kim Il-Sung University with a master’s degree in physics and the high recommendations of his professors, had been sought out and recruited by the army and then given special treatment, including the right to attend social functions at the officer’s club in Pyongyang. It was there he and Mi-Kas had shared their first dance, and when they’d married less than a year later, their future had seemed bright and limitless. But it had been an illusion, and the more deeply involved Shinn had become with the activities of the Kanggye nuclear team, the more he, like his long-time colleague Li-Roo Kohb, had come to regret his path in life. By then, however, it had been too late. His course had been set, and the more time he’d been forced to devote to Kim Jong-il’s nuclear aspirations, the more he’d become dependent on Mi-Kas’ warm embrace and nurturing spirit to overcome his feelings of guilt and despair. Without her, Shinn felt, he was nothing.

The Korean kissed his wife’s bare shoulder and carefully eased out of bed, taking care not to wake her. Lying at the foot of the bed was Shinn’s small pet terrier.

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