North Korean Blowup Read Free

see the tank yet, but it’s coming. Sound getting louder.”
    “Roger that. Let us know when you see him.”
    Hunter turned to the Marine. “Tran is our lead scout. He can hear a fly walking across a carrot cake at fifty yards.”
    Two more ladders came, and SEALs with Bull Pups soon checked over the wall.
    “Bancroft, come in,” Hunter said.
     “Yo, Cap. See the tank yet?”
               “Not yet. You’ve got the con at the front gate. Keep three or four men on the wall and the MG’s ready at the gate. I don’t think you’ll have much business there.”
    “Quiet so far. They’ve taken away about twenty wounded who had trouble walking. More blood drying on the street out there.”
    Hunter climbed one of the ladders and watched the rear street. There blocks down he saw a tank come around the corner and head for the compound. “Ronkowski, did they ram the wall with the tank or use the big gun to punch a hole?”
    “The gun, a one oh five I think it carries.”
    The tank was four hundred yards off. “Let’s see if we can hit his tracks and put him dead in the water,” Hunter said. He pulled up his own Bull Pup and sighted in on the tank. Two other twenties fired before he did. He watched the target. One round was low, another went over the rig. He watched the tank turn sideways for a moment. He fired. The round hit the turret and might have done enough damage to stop the big gun from swinging around. Another round slammed into the tank and exploded on the running gear but the tracks were not damaged.
    Two more rounds zeroed in on the side of the tank and the last one blew the tracks off the big rollers. The tank could only drive in circles with one tread off. They watched as the turret swung the big gun around, but it stalled and couldn’t come around far enough to aim at the compound. The top of the tank opened and three men scrambled out and looked at the tread. Hunter laser sighed in on the tank and fired. The air burst staggered two of the men and put the third down. The men limped off behind the tank.
    “Watch them, Tran. If they move it, let me know.”
    They took the other two ladders back to the front wall.
    A half hour later, darkness took over the scene. Hunter put two men on ladders at the front wall with thermal imagers. They are hand held gadgets about four inches square with a screen. Firemen use them to find people in smoke filled rooms. You point the front at an area and if any humans or large animals are there, it reacts to the body heat and shows with a white image on the black screen at the back of the box.
    “You men with the TI’s. If you see any suspicious men wandering up toward the wall put a warning shot near them. If they keep coming, blast them into hell.”
    “That’s a wilco, Cap.” Lawrence said.
    Lt. Ronkowski looked at Hunter. “Wilco, what’s that?”
    Hunter grinned. “Not used much anymore. It was big in the army in World War II. It means Will Comply. Another service short cut. We got used to using it after seeing some old war movies.”
    “Cap, I’ve got a runner,” Lawrence said.
    “Coming toward the compound?”
    “Affirmative.”
    “Take him out.”
    They heard a three round burst from the 5.56, then another three rounds. As the lead messengers hit the rebel one set off a hand grenade he carried blasting a thunderclap of sound and a flash of light as hand bomb exploded.
    “Splash one,” Lawrence said.
    A moment later another grenade went off just inside the compound wall, down fifty feet. Lawrence turned his thermal imager that way and saw a man running away from the wall.
    “Saw that one, but no shot,” he radioed.
    In the next half hour three more men tried to throw grenades into the compound near the front gate, and all three were nailed before they could launch the hand bombs. One must have already pulled the safety pin, because when his dead hand relaxed from the grenade, it exploded in a Fourth of July flash of deadly