Ballistic Force. Don Pendleton

this way. If this Yong-Im guy’s who I think he is, we’re definitely not talking about just street gangs and drug-dealing anymore.” Tapping the paper for emphasis, she added, “What we’ve got here is a hit list.”

      CHAPTER THREE

      Canoga Park, California

      It was a little past eight in the morning when Hong Sung-nam pulled his rental van to a stop halfway down the block from Dr. Yong-Im Hyunsook’s one-story tract home. He’d planned on arriving sooner but had gotten hung up in traffic. It had also taken longer than expected to apply the slap-on decals that would make the van appear as if it were part of the local cable company’s truck fleet. Hong was dressed in a plain navy-blue outfit that closely matched the uniforms worn by the company’s field workers. He’d picked up the outfit at a secondhand store in Koreatown the previous afternoon. It was missing the Trident Cable logo, but Hong doubted anyone would notice. If anything, he was more concerned about the short sleeves, which barely covered the freshly inked Killboys tattoo on his right bicep. There was also the matter of the name tag sewn above the right pocket of his shirt. There weren’t many Koreans named Norm.

      As he waited inside the van, Hong saw an overweight, middle-aged man in a peach-colored sweat suit jogging his way on the sidewalk. The hit man quickly grabbed the clipboard on the seat beside him and glanced down at it, scribbling gibberish as he waited for the jogger to pass. Moments later, however, he was startled by a rapping on the passenger-side window. Hong looked up and saw the older man gesturing for him to roll down the window. Hong tensed, then leaned over and cranked the handle, lowering the window a few inches.

      “What’s up?” the jogger said. “They told me on the phone it’d be a couple days before they could get somebody out here.”

      Hong thought quickly and responded, “Change in schedule.” His English was fluent but bore a heavy Korean accent.

      “Decent.” The jogger pointed back the way he’d come. “Only thing is, you’re at the wrong end of the block. I’m the last house on the right—22421.”

      Hong glanced at his clipboard, pretending to look over his work orders for the day. “I have three calls on this block,” he told the man. “You’re on the list.”

      “Perfect,” the jogger said. “With any luck, I’ll be able to catch the ball game tonight, right?”

      “Right,” Hong said.

      The older man stepped back from the van and resumed his jogging. Relieved, Hong tossed the clipboard onto the seat and glanced behind him.

      Crouched in back of the van was a twenty-year-old Korean-American wearing an outfit similar to Hong’s. Ok-Hwa Zung was a new initiate into the Killboys. His older brother was already a gang member, and this day Ok-Hwa hoped to come at least one step closer to earning his stripes. As such, he was nervous with anticipation. Looking out through the van’s rear windows, he watched the jogger turn the corner, then lowered the 9 mm pistol he’d just yanked from the waistband of his slacks.

      “I hope he doesn’t cause us any problems,” Ok-Hwa murmured.

      “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Hong told him. “We’ll be finished with our business and out of here before he realizes he’s not getting any service today.”

      “And when that happens he’ll call the cable company,” the younger man countered. “They’ll figure out we were impostors.”

      “We have no control over that,” Hong said. “Besides, by then we’ll be halfway to Nevada.”

      “If nothing goes wrong,” Ok-Hwa said.

      “Nothing will go wrong,” Hong assured him. “Now put the gun away and stop worrying.”

      The younger man fell silent. Hong turned his attention back to Dr. Yong-Im’s house. They were in an older neighborhood on the western fringe of the San Fernando Valley, an hour’s drive north of the Killboys’ Koreatown headquarters. Large shade trees lined the parkways and over the years their roots had buckled the sidewalks, requiring asphalt patches to keep people from tripping over the raised edges. A few of the yards were well-kept, but most had balding lawns riddled with weeds and surrounded by scraggly, overgrown plants. Hong knew that by U.S. standards this was a lower middle-class neighborhood, but compared to conditions back in North Korea, these people were living in the lap of luxury. And yet they were still concerned about such frivolous things as cable reception. Back home, Hong’s people were lucky if they even had a television capable of picking up state-sponsored broadcasts on the only available channel. Ball game? Back home the only thing to watch was propaganda speeches and reruns of the previous year’s victory parades down the streets of Pyongyang.

      Hong’s envy was surpassed only by his hatred for Americans, which had intensified during his surveillance of the neighborhood the past few days. He’d had his fill of the self-satisfied way these people went about their business, oblivious to hardships endured by the rest of the world. If he had his way, instead of a panel van he’d be here in a tank, blasting rounds into these homes and then picking off the residents with a machine gun when they rushed outside in fear. That would show them.

      At half-past eight, Dr. Yong-Im, a short, balding man in his early fifties, emerged from his house and picked up the copy of the morning paper lying in the driveway. He took the paper with him as he got into his Camry sedan and backed out into the street, then headed away from Hong’s van toward the far end of the block. If he stayed true to his routine, Yong-Im would soon be at the local Starbucks coffee shop, where he’d spend the next hour nursing a latte as he worked his way through the paper. Hong figured that would be all the time he and Ok-Hwa would need.

      “Let’s go,” Hong told his colleague.

      Hong grabbed the clipboard and a tool kit, then the two men got out of the van. An unseen dog yapped a few times at them from one of the neighboring backyards, but they reached Yong-Im’s house without any further run-ins. On the remote chance that anyone might be watching from inside one of the nearby homes, Hong and Ok-Hwa lingered a few moments in the driveway, dividing their attention between the clipboard and the roofline of the house. Hong made it appear that he was trying to track down the cable junction box, then led Ok-Hwa through a side gate to the backyard. There, tall cinder-block walls covered with creeping fig blocked their view of the adjacent yards and, by the same token, insured that no one could see them as they carried out their assignment.

      Ok-Hwa had been tapped for the mission because of his experience as a electrician’s assistant, and he put that experience to quick work, pinpointing the home’s security system and then tracking the wiring to an outside circuit box. Once he’d shut down the system, he signaled Hong, who proceeded to use a locksmith’s pick on the sliding-glass door that led to Dr. Yong-Im’s family room. It took him all of thirty seconds to trip the lock and slide the door open.

      Yong-Im lived alone, and inside Hong was relieved to see that the place was sparsely furnished. That would make things easier.

      “I’ll start in here and work my way to the kitchen,” Hong told Ok-Hwa. “You take the den and the bedrooms. You know what to look for.”

      Ok-Hwa nodded. “If he’s lucky, we’ll find it. Otherwise…” The younger Korean grinned malevolently and dragged an index finger across his throat.

      Hong corrected Ok-Hwa. “If we don’t find what we’re looking for, the good doctor will only wish he were dead.”

      CHAPTER FOUR

      South Kangwon-do Province, North Korea

      General Oh Chol of the Korean People’s Army grumbled under his breath as the military jeep carrying him through the mountains bounded over yet another deep rut in the narrow dirt road. His lower back was aching, and he’d forgotten to bring along his pain medication. There was a part of him that wished he’d forgone security considerations and taken a helicopter from Kaesong. It would have been faster