WHATEVER THE COST: A Mark Cole Thriller Read Free Page A

collection of foreign intelligence and the conduct of overseas operations, Ho was a feared and respected officer; and yet he still shrank from the man in front of him.
    Both men accepted that this was how life was in their great nation – the system revolved around fear; fear of your superiors, fear of failure, and most importantly of all, fear of their great Communist Leader, President of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. As soon as the people below you stopped being afraid of you, you were finished. It was survival of the fittest in its purest human form, and both U and Ho reveled in such a system. If other counties didn’t agree with how they did things, it just meant that they were weak.
    ‘When is it due in Karachi?’ U asked next, his voice still lilting softly.
    ‘Seven days sir, it should dock on Monday at twelve noon.’
    U nodded his head. ‘Good. Excellent. Are the correct assets in place in Pakistan to receive the goods?
    ‘Yes sir, our agents are ready and waiting.’
    ‘Excellent,’ U repeated, before concern furrowed his brow. ‘Is there any danger of our cargo being intercepted? I have heard that there is much danger from pirates in those waters, and I am fearful that the Fu Yu Shan is just a civilian ship.’
    Ho had anticipated this question, and had his answer already prepared; he knew U would expect no less. ‘We have examined patterns of attacks in the area, and foresee no difficulties,’ Ho said confidently. ‘Pirates are becoming much less common, and tend not to attack ships of this size any more, especially with the increased naval activity and better on-board security measures and tracking devices. And,’ he continued with a glint in his eye, ‘there are armed guards in case of any trouble, as well as two of our own men who we managed to place aboard the ship as crewmembers at Dalian.’
    ‘Are they good?’
    Ho nodded . ‘The best, sir. Both experienced Captains from our Sniper Brigades.’
    U grunted in satisfaction. The Sniper Brigades were North Korea’s elite of the elite. He was confident that the men would guard the cargo with their lives.
    U was due in a meeting with the Minister of State Security later that evening, and he knew that the minister would be briefing President Kim the very next morning. He was only grilling Major Ho because it was of such paramount importance that everything was in place, that the operation went perfectly.
    As President Kim had made clear on more than one occasion, the inevitable and destined reunification of Korea depended on it.
     
    The two men whose documents named them Xiao Tong and Yan Yanzhi looked at one another, one brief glance that carried with it an hour’s worth of conversation. There was no fear in their eyes, no panic; only clear, hard resolution.
    It was time to fight.
    Xiao Tong – born Jang Kuk-ryul, in a little village outside the North Korean capital of Pyongyang – had been asleep when the pirates first boarded the ship. His comrade-in-arms, Yan Yanzhi – who Jang knew by his original Korean name, O Sin-sul – had been keeping watch, and saw the pirates silently slipping aboard and assassinating the ship’s guards.
    A soldier from the age of eighteen, O had been a member of the elite Sniper Battalion One for ten years. He was a hardened professional, and therefore managed to restrain the urge to take on the ship’s attackers head-on. Against such odds he would more than likely lose, and Jang would probably end up being killed in his bed.
    And so O had made a tactical retreat, waking Jang and collecting their hidden weapons cache before heading to the cargo hold. After all, their mission was the cargo, and not their fellow crew members. All that mattered was protecting the crate which had been taken aboard at Dalian.
    And now, as they waited in the cargo hold, they knew what would have already happened above. The pirates – for that is surely what they were – would have secured the ship, rousing men from