Alien Secrets. Ian Douglas

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СКАЧАТЬ for the approach of North Korean sentries.

      They’d already scouted the area, photographing everything and uploading it all to an orbiting satellite. They’d collected soil samples; these would be tested back in Japan for the presence of certain isotopes, which would prove whether or not the recent bomb test had been of an ordinary atom bomb, or of a much larger and more deadly thermonuclear warhead. Right now the SEALs were just observing the activity in the valley below.

      “Whatcha got, Sandy?” Hunter asked. The team members were linked by small, voice-activated radios with earplug receivers.

      “A small quake … three … maybe 3.5. Might be subsidence of the main chamber, or maybe a tunnel collapse.”

      “Brewski?”

      “No new radiation, at least not yet. But the background count is still pretty high.”

      “Copy that.”

      Hunter felt exposed up here under a dull, overcast sky, and was still concerned that the NKs might have infrared sensors that could detect them despite the heat-masking effects of the ghillies. They’d been up here for hours already though, silent, unmoving, and there’d been no sign at all that the North Koreans were aware of their presence.

      He glanced at the pile of rubble that was Nielson. If things went south, or if direct intervention was called for, they could call in a flight of Tomahawk cruise missiles from off the coast, and the AN/PED-1 LLDR, or lightweight laser designator rangefinder, would guide them in smack on-target.

      He sincerely hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. He doubted that it would even do anything. That was a huge mountain over there.

      The southern flank of Mantapsan—Mantap Mountain—was the site of North Korea’s lone nuclear test facility, an isolated and barren wilderness honeycombed with tunnels. The village of Punggye-ri lay twelve kilometers to the southeast, while just two kilometers to the east was the Hwasong concentration camp, the largest in North Korea and the source of the slave laborers who’d been forced to carve tunnels hundreds of meters long into the side of the granite mountain.

      Pyongyang had set off six nuclear tests here, beginning in 2006. The last and biggest, estimated at between two hundred and three hundred kilotons—ten times the power of the weapon dropped on Hiroshima—had been detonated just five weeks ago, on September 3. The North Koreans had claimed that this had been their first test of a thermonuclear weapon—a hydrogen bomb—and it was to verify this claim that the squad—eight men out of SEAL DEVGRU—had been deployed, first to Yokosuka, Japan, then to the rugged coast of North Korea. They’d inserted by an MH-60 Blackhawk stealth helicopter, an aircraft identical to the ones used to take down bin Laden two hundred miles inside Pakistan. Flying nap-of-the-earth through the rugged mountain passes of eastern North Korea, they’d touched down in the middle of the night less than ten kilometers from their target. An overland trek through the roughest terrain imaginable had brought them here to this hillside, giving them a vantage point from which they could observe the base directly.

      Satellite imaging could do only so much. Sometimes, when it was vitally important to get solid intel, ground truthing was necessary.

      And the US Navy SEALs were very, very good at this sort of op.

      “The background rads are not good, Skipper,” Brunelli whispered over Hunter’s earpiece. “We’re at ninety rads. I would suggest it’s time to get the hell out of Dodge.”

      Hunter continued watching the tableau below. The prisoners were being forced into a line. One man struggled then fell, and was mercilessly beaten by two guards with truncheons.

      They’d known they were going into a contaminated area. The reports from defectors coming out of North Korea over the past month had told of trees and vegetation dying near the test site, and of personnel from the test site not being allowed into the capital of Pyongyang because of the possibility of contamination. A couple of seismic tremors had jolted the mountain within minutes of the blast, and the Chinese had warned that the entire mountain could collapse, releasing a vast cloud of deadly radioactivity across the region.

      The hillside on which the SEALs were hiding was as sere and blasted as the face of the Moon. Dead trees and dead grasses covered the slope, confirming the defectors’ reports. Their ghillies, rather than incorporating leaves and the greenery assorted with woods, were festooned with gray and brown knotted strips, making each of them resemble a pile of rock, even from close by. Hunter couldn’t see Brunelli even though the other SEAL was just a few meters away … and he knew where the man was.

      Below, the prisoners were being led into the gloom of the open tunnel mouth. Satellite imagery had suggested that the North Koreans were using slave laborers from Hwasong to clear out collapsed tunnels. If the leaked radiation was bad up here, it must be ten times worse down there … a death sentence for men forced to work in those depths for more than an hour or two.

      How, Hunter wondered, did they deal with the guards? Rotating them in shifts of perhaps fifteen minutes each? Or maybe they simply hadn’t told them that working in those tunnels was to be sentenced to a slow and very nasty death. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was not known for its concern for people.

      “Got anything, Colby?” Hunter asked.

      “Negative, Skipper. Chitchat between the command post and a forward bunker … Hold it. Someone’s yelling.”

      Hunter’s spine prickled at that. Had they been discovered?

      “Commander!” EN1 Taylor whispered with sharp urgency.

      “Whatcha got, Taylor?”

      “Sir! What in the everlasting fuck is that?”

      Hunter rolled on his side, turning to look. Something was emerging from behind the crest of their hill. “Oh, my God …”

      A flying saucer—there was no other term for the thing. At least sixty yards across, its surface gleaming silver with such a high polish that it was imperfectly reflecting the rocks and scree over which it soundlessly drifted, it hung in the leaden North Korean sky effortlessly and soundlessly, drifting slowly against the wind.

      Hunter had been a Navy SEAL for twelve years, now. He knew intimately the aircraft both of the United States and of other countries, as well—from the new F-35 Lightning II fighters to the hush-hush SR-72 “Son of Blackbird” now being developed by the Skunk Works.

      As for the DPRK, their air force still consisted of obsolete hand-me-downs from China and Russia, the Q-5, the Chengdu J-7, and the like. So this—this was something new.

      The eerily silent movement of this thing reminded Hunter of a dirigible, like the Navy airships used to track incoming drug smugglers in the waters around Mexico. But this thing, this monster …

      Hunter raised the binoculars and let the autofocus sharpen the image before pressing the trigger button for the high-def video. It was tough to get the entire craft in frame all at once. He zoomed back so that he was getting more than a vast, curved mirror floating overhead.

      Video of a real, live, honest-to-God flying saucer! The boys back in Yokosuka weren’t going to believe this …

      He saw something breaking the polished surface … a kind of window or transparency, wider than it was tall. There was white light spilling СКАЧАТЬ