Battlefield 4

by Peter Grimsdale

Genres: Thrillers; Spy Thrillers

Synopsis

The explosive, action-packed prequel to EA's mega-selling video game, BATTLEFIELD 4. It's 3am and 20 below zero on the Chinese-North Korean border. Shanghai-based CIA operative Laszlo Kovic's mission is going straight to hell. Tasked with exfiltrating a North Korean nuclear scientist, he unwittingly leads a team of Marines into a deadly ambush. Bruised, battered and frostbitten, he returns to Shanghai seeking answers. Was he set up or did someone leak the mission? Within hours people are trying to kill him and China's own spies are after him. Against orders, Kovic assembles a crack team from Shanghai's underworld - a master hacker, a cat burglar and a former special-forces sniper. His quest takes him to the heart of a deadly conspiracy involving a sinister American-born Chinese gangster and one of the country's most revered leaders. As Shanghai descends into chaos, can he stop the plot before East and West erupt into a global war?

Release date: October 24, 2013

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 304

Sample

1

Chinese–North Korean Border

The wall of wire stretched 880 miles. It was twelve feet high, supported every hundred yards by a concrete post that split into a Y near the top to make a double row of razor. The message was clear: do not cross.

Kovic wished he hadn’t.

He watched the border disappear under them, barely visible in the darkness, the condensation on the inside of the Sea Hawk’s windows already freezing. Olsen, the lead Marine, pressed the mic close to his mouth, his face a sickly green from the instrument lights.

‘Maybe you’ll start the next Korean War.’

Olsen’s look said all he felt about the CIA.

This was supposed to be the Station Chief ’s big play. ‘Do this right,’ Cutler told Kovic, ‘the White House’ll be calling to congratulate you in person. Highbeam’s our biggest coup since Bin Laden.’ How many times had he heard that one? Cutler was new to the region, impatient to make his mark, China just a stop on the elevator to Langley’s seventh floor. ‘It’s all fixed with Beijing, they’re right behind us. First ever Sino–US covert; too bad we can’t tell the world.’

Kovic knew the Chinese would have vetoed that. They preferred it backstage. Beijing had pitched in, giving them the forward position with refuelling for the helo and arranging for a power cut to black out a corridor thirty miles into North Korea ten minutes before they hit the LZ.

He picked at the ice on the window beside him. A piece slid away exposing the dark nothing below. A few wisps of low cloud flashed by. The Sea Hawk bucked as it swung hard left, slinging the Marines out of the flimsy picnic chairs they’d brought along for the ride. The pilot let out a whoop.

‘Go easy, Tex. This ain’t the rodeo.’

Kovic had wanted this done with his own assets hand-picked out of Shanghai, but the Chief vetoed that. ‘Highbeam’s expecting John Wayne; he sees a bunch of Chinese riding into town, he could panic.’ What did Cutler imagine this was, a meet and greet? With all their kit on plus the amount of light they’d be shining on him, their man wouldn’t even see them; they might as well be Klingons. But Cutler wanted it his way, never mind if it was the best way, and that meant Marines.

‘Ten minutes to LZ,’ came Tex’s voice over the headset.

A sudden updraught silenced him and tossed them all out of their chairs again.

‘Hey, Mr Pilot – you want my breakfast all over your nice clean chopper?’ shouted Faulkner.

‘This joyride better be worth it,’ said Olsen, looking at Kovic.

‘You bring my boys back in one piece,’ Garrison, their commander, had warned Kovic when he heard he’d be leading the mission. He had reasons for saying so that neither of them ever wanted to go over again.

Kovic gazed at them. Even in their body armour, they all looked too young to be there, though he knew that he was, by their standards, middle-aged. The trouble with experience was you knew all the things that could go wrong.

He decided it was time to put them in the picture; Cutler had insisted he wait until they were airborne. He flicked on his mike.

‘Listen up, guys, this here Highbeam wrote the Dear Leader’s entire missile launch protocol, source code – the whole shebang. He is the man behind North Korea’s nuke capability. Defectors don’t come much higher up the food chain than this.’

Hype didn’t come easily to Kovic. His default mode was blunt truth, in a plain wrapper, no ribbons or bullshit, but he needed these guys enrolled.

‘Fuckin’ A, man!’ Deacon, the baby of the group and the noisiest, was the first to react, as if to make up for his youth. ‘We goin’ make his-sto-ree.’

‘That’s the plan, bro,’ nodded Kovic, hoping it would be the right kind of history.

Eight hours earlier he had watched them step out of the Sea Hawk at the base outside of Xian, all tough guy banter and rap star swagger, and thought to himself how foreign they appeared – another reminder to him of how used he’d gotten to China. They looked every inch an invasion force, standing guard over the machine like they’d just put down in Mogadishu, eyeing all-comers as if they were hostiles, even the ground staff preparing to refuel. The Chinese weren’t big on manners, but if you wanted the place to work for you, you needed to show some respect.

‘He’s a high value catch so you treat him good, make him welcome,’ Kovic added, knowing that after six months on pirate deterrence in the South China Sea they needed to reset their attitude. The six of them packed themselves into the Sea Hawk’s cramped airframe, encased in all their kit: high molecular polyethylene helmets, ballistic plates and fleeces under their tunics, an M4 and a Beretta M9 each – typical Marine overkill – plus the new-issue four-tube NV goggles. Deacon and Kean were playing with theirs, like kids at Christmas. Tex the pilot had brought a customised M79 grenade launcher with the barrel cut so short it looked like a musket out of Pirates of the Caribbean.

‘I can’t shoot for shit, so this kills everything in a ninety-yard radius without I even open my eyes.’

‘Yeah, he shoots better with his eyes shut, dontcha, Tex?’

Kovic kept it simple, just a pair of two-barrel NV goggles and his Sig Sauer P226 with a Nightforce scope, suppressor and five or six clips.

‘Smooth, man.’

Deacon admired the P226, still nodding in time to whatever was coming through his earbuds. Faulkner was absorbed in a game on his phone. Kean was curled up like a cat, out cold – though it didn’t stop him from farting, which he did often.

‘Hey, Kovac.’ Faulkner glanced up, waving a half-eaten Hershey Bar. In his enormous baseball-mitt hand it looked like a matchstick.

‘Kov – ich.’

‘This make you homesick?’

He shook his head. Somewhere along the way he’d lost his taste for American candy, and a lot of other things American too. He thought about what he could be eating now, like the special prawns with abalone at Mancun’s. If home was anywhere now, it was Shanghai. Everything he needed was there, everything in the world: imported or knocked off, in the malls and the movie theatres and along the sidewalks, where every kind of delicacy could be found, in delicious, steaming dishes. And then there was Louise, neither American nor Chinese, whom Shanghai had unexpectedly brought into his life. What was she doing now – apart from wondering where the fuck he’d gone this time?

Faulkner bit off a chunk of chocolate, talking as he chewed.

‘So, Jason Bourne, how come you sitting in a Hawk full of Marines, ’stead of jumping across rooftops somewhere?’

It was a good question. He could easily have passed on this one. His infil clearance had expired, he hadn’t used a weapon since Afghanistan, he was out of shape plus he had plenty going on in Shanghai. Every bone in his body had told him to stay away, but he knew he needed to make some sort of show for Cutler if he was going to stay in his post. They hadn’t exactly bonded. ‘Watch your back,’ Krantz on the desk back at Langley had warned him, ‘Cutler’s looking to China to make him King of the Hill. Stroke his dick a little, on account of your résumé’s got a bit more meat on it than his.’

It was true, Kovic had done more than his share of hot postings: in Lebanon disrupting Hezbollah, in Liberia to sting an arms dealer, a stint undercover in Grozny posing as a Chechen returnee, two long tours in Iraq and then Afghanistan. His colouring and pronounced cheekbones meant he could pass as local pretty much anywhere from Vladivostok to Venezuela. Shanghai was supposed to be a reward, ‘a chance to reinvent yourself ’ Human Resources had claimed. The first two years he’d hated it, struggling with the language and trying to crack the mysterious codes by which China operated. Now he couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. If he had any say in it, he would die in the East – though not in North Korea, and not tonight.

Price, the tall quiet one, chipped in.

‘If this screws up, who we call?’

Olsen shut him up. ‘Hey, kid, no one’s gonna screw up, okay?’

It was about time Olsen spoke some sense. He and Kovic knew full well that if they did screw up, they’d be on their own. This one was a deniable. The others didn’t get that, but who could blame them? They were serving soldiers with rules to play by. In the CIA rule one was don’t get caught, because no one will come for you.

‘It gets to daylight, we outta here, man,’ said Price. ‘Package or no.’

Kovic nodded. As they got closer to the LZ some bravado was wearing off. Sometimes the ones who looked the toughest had got boot camp confused with the gym.

‘For sure. But no package, no bonus,’ said Faulkner.

The talk of money woke Kean up.

‘No bonus means I gotta do ’nother tour, or the old lady’s lawyer’s gonna have my ass.’

He’s more concerned about his alimony payments than getting his balls blown off by the North Koreans, thought Kovic: easier to fear the devil you know. They’d all volunteered like good patriots, but it was the money that fired them up. He didn’t have the heart to tell them that the fabled spec-ops bonus was discretionary, down to some anonymous bean counter in the bowels of the Pentagon.

‘And I ain’t gonna get no Chinky tail tomorrow.’

‘Ain’t that why your old lady’s got her lawyer on you in the first place, on account you can’t keep it zipped up?’

‘Yeah, baby! They don’t call it The Beast for nothin’!’

Kovic smiled. A million Pentagon directives on the use of appropriate language and these guys were using the same terms his father had. It must be true what they said, that travel narrowed the mind. When he had once dared to warn Cutler about some xenophobic slight, the Chief looked at him over his glasses. ‘We’re not here to make friends, Agent Kovic, we’re here to get even.’

That was US foreign policy in a nutshell, and from the mouth of one who had made a career out of missing all the big and ugly shows. Kovic despised desk jockeys like Cutler, who in turn was threatened by Kovic’s field record. That was what irked Cutler most about him, Kovic figured, and explained his need to remind him who was boss. And God help you if it was an election year.

Kean was in full flow now, spurring on the others.

‘At Susie’s Bar in Ningbo they got these twins—’

‘They ain’t real twins, jerk-off. They just all look the same to you. They show you a girl and her grandmother you’d think they was twins.’

‘At least I don’t gotta pay for it.’

‘Deacon, you’re a virgin, man! You don’t even know where to put it.’

Another ripple of laughter shook the picnic chairs.

Olsen growled.

‘Enough already. Change the channel, will ya?’

‘Hey, Kovic: I been wonderin’ – do they really got them straight pubes?’

Olsen gave Deacon a look that silenced him. There was a lull. Tex was slowing down. He turned briefly and gestured at the ground.

‘Whoo-yeah! Santa and Rudolf twelve high!’

Snow. The supposedly state of the art meteorological imaging from Fleet Command had confirmed clear skies. They might as well have gone with Pyongyang TV’s weatherman, whose forecast had to be approved by the Party. Wouldn’t you know, thought Kovic: this job just keeps on getting better and better.

What he didn’t know then was that the snow would save his life.

2

LZ, North Korea

The Sea Hawk’s engine note changed to a heavy drumming pulse as the rotors flared and brought it to a hover. Kovic slid the door open and the icy gale blasted away the warm human fug that had built up on board. He scanned the barren moonscape below. None of what he could see remotely resembled the satellite images. Cutler’s information had been thin. All he’d said was that Highbeam’s vehicle would be parked up north of a cluster of concrete blocks imaginatively referred to in the brief as a ‘deserted village’. ‘Just swoop and scoop,’ he’d added, smirking at his great new catchphrase.

Kovic spotted a dark-coloured station wagon pulled off the road. Better be him and not some young lovers seeking a commodity even rarer here than food – privacy.

He switched to the troop net, went over the drill again.

‘We surround the vehicle, one at each corner, no closer than ten feet, weapons down but ready. We don’t want him thinking we’ve come to kill him. Once I’ve confirmed ID, he gets out the car, we frisk him. If he has luggage I have to check it. We’re on the ground ten minutes. No more.’

‘You the boss,’ said Kean.

Olsen cut in. ‘My information was two minutes.’

‘We leave when I say; when I’m good and ready.’

There wasn’t time to go over just why Olsen felt like he did about taking orders from the CIA. Kovic knew all too well. He and Garrison went right back. He knew about their unfinished business. Right now he just needed Olsen to get the job done. They weren’t going on vacation together – just in, out, and home. No friending on Facebook.

‘You want to get out of here sooner,’ he told him, ‘get on and tell your men who goes at which corner.’

Olsen sighed then assigned each man a corner. Kovic didn’t care which of them went where; he just wanted a clear chain of command.

‘Okay, Tex, put us down.’

As they descended, Kovic flipped down his NV goggles, blurring the snowflakes into clumps like bright white cotton balls. Fucking useless piece of kit. The frozen hillside looked barren and empty; he preferred working in crowded places with a multitude of distractions. Out here there was nowhere to hide.

The snow was coming down thick and fast now, transforming the locality into an unlikely Christmas card scene in March, not to mention a white carpet of light which would show them up like figurines on a wedding cake. But they weren’t doing stealth tonight. The Sea Hawk’s clatter saw to that.

There were no new cars in North Korea, just as there were no new washing machines or TVs. If you saw a beat up old Nissan like the one they were looking at cruising your neighbourhood in America you would call your kids inside, here it was quite likely to be the personal transport of the nation’s top nuclear programmer.

The wipers made a single sweep and through the screen Kovic could just make out a lone figure at the wheel. In his experience defectors could often be a pain in the ass. Some had an over-inflated sense of their own value and tried to strike last-minute deals, or showed up with loved ones they’d decided they couldn’t be parted from – girlfriends, boyfriends, mothers and other assorted hangers-on hoping for a place on the American magic carpet out of whichever hellhole they’d had the misfortune to be born in. One guy Kovic had lifted in Beirut tried to bring his dog. Some, fearing reprisals, had a last-minute change of heart. Those were the emotionally tough ones. There were gulags filled with the extended families of these people – everyone they had ever loved or given birth to, mere hostages in waiting.

Tex set the Sea Hawk down on the road.

‘We have now landed in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Set your watches back fifty years.’

‘Keep her running, Tex.’ Kovic jumped down and ducked under the rotors.

‘I’m going to walk up this left side of the road until I’m parallel with the driver’s window. Olsen – move your men into position when I start talking.’

The snow was gathering thickly on the ground. Kovic approached the car, stopped twenty feet away and trained his torch on the figure at the wheel: high forehead, hollow cheeks, long upper lip, slight break in left eyebrow – check. He was wearing a suit that was much too big for him, the cutting edge of DPRK couture no doubt. He had an unnatural grin on his face. And he was shaking so much the lapels of his coat were vibrating. Kovic quietly cleared his throat and switched his brain to Korean, running a quick mental check that he’d got the guy’s real name right.

‘Shun-kin, I bring greetings on behalf of the government of the United States.’

The man at the wheel continued to grin but didn’t move, didn’t even look round. Deacon, Kean, Faulkner and Price took up their positions, one at each corner, with Olsen at the back, bookending Kovic. He wanted Highbeam to see the men; give him a sense of security and reassurance that this was for real.

Kovic kept his NVs flipped up so he looked a bit more human and stepped closer to the driver’s window. The interior smelled of ashtrays and sweat. There was a large fake leather suitcase on the back seat, much like the one his grandparents had brought with them to America back in the thirties.

‘Are you ready to take these brave steps to freedom?’

No words, just a series of rapid nods.

‘It’s okay, you can speak to me: I’ll understand.’

Kovic’s flair for languages was another thing that spooked Cutler who preferred to do all his talking through interpreters.

Still the inane grin and the shaking. And still Highbeam didn’t move. Kovic took another step towards him. In Pakistan he’d had to strap one guy to a stretcher and carry him after he passed out from fear.

‘Shun-kin. Please step out of the car. We are taking you to America. You understand? We are taking you now.’

What was it that rooted him to the spot where he sat? Last-minute doubts, fear of the unknown? The realisation he could never return home?

Perhaps the sound of a Yank speaking his native language was too disconcerting. This time Kovic tried English, and a little more urgency.

‘Hey, Shun-kin, time to go, okay?’

The Korean opened the door and stepped tentatively out into the night. Despite the cold he was gleaming with sweat. The inane goofy grin didn’t make him look too bright either. Close up he looked so young – too young. Either the guy was a child prodigy or—

As Kovic reached forward to shake his hand, the Korean jumped to the left and started to run. Kean, who was nearest, blocked his path.

‘Get away from me!’ he screamed in clear English. He pushed at Kean, his narrow frame making no impact on the solid, stocky Marine. ‘You must get away from me! They’ve—’

Kean almost had him in a bear hug.

Then Kovic suddenly understood. He screamed at Kean.

‘Run, man, run! Drop him! Go! Go!’

The first detonation, an igniter, came from somewhere on the guy’s chest. Kovic caught sight of it just as he turned to run. The second explosion turned night into day and lifted him off his feet as the force propelled him halfway back to the Sea Hawk. He slammed down on to the road and rolled in the snow.

Shun-kin was gone, vaporised in the blast. The car was on fire, setting off a third explosion as the gas tank caught. Kean lay fifteen feet from where he had been standing; one arm gone, his face a mask of blood. Deacon, dragging one leg, got to him first. Kean reached up to him, then flopped back. He was gone. Deacon’s face was frozen in shock.

Tex was at the controls, yelling into the net.

‘Kovic, talk to me!’

The blast had temporarily knocked out Kovic’s hearing, but his mind was in hyperdrive. Shun-kin had tried to run; he hadn’t detonated the device himself. It couldn’t have been on a timer as there was no knowing their exact time of arrival. So someone else with sight of them had triggered it. He whirled round and shouted to Tex to lift off, get out of range. On the ground the helo was a sitting duck and they needed eyes in the air.

‘Go round; tell us what you can see.’

Snow and gravel whipped around him as the Sea Hawk ascended.

‘Hey, back here, now!’

Olsen was yelling and waving, as if Tex would see him in the dark. Kovic moved past him and caught sight of Deacon curled up in a semi-foetal position, holding his chest as if the contents would spill out if he let go. Kovic rushed to him, ripping a tourniquet from the side pocket of his fatigues. His whole torso was a mass of blood.

‘Steady now. Don’t breathe so hard.’

‘Fuckin’ suicide—’

Kovic knew Shun-kin wasn’t a suicide bomber. He had tried to warn them, even though he knew he was done for. He had probably saved Kovic’s life.

‘Hey, look!’ Faulkner was pointing. The ‘deserted village’ was alive with men moving toward them.

‘Fucking ace,’ Olsen spat.

Kovic grabbed Deacon and hauled him behind what was left of the station wagon, then went back and got his M4. His goggles were gone, swept off by the blast, and his eyes were full of dust. The temptation was to squirt a lot of bullets around and hope some made their target. Better to resist that, try to think, he told himself. He peeled Deacon’s NVs off his helmet and put them on. There were maybe a dozen North Koreans, just black silhouettes against the whiteness, armed with their standard issue Russian RPKs. At least those would be hard work in the dark and snow and he guessed they wouldn’t have NVs or lasers. On the other hand the RPK’s drum magazines would have seventy-five rounds, good for spray and pray. There were no more than thirty rounds in Deacon’s M4; he was going to need every one of those. Seeing movement ahead and to the left, he jumped up and loosed off half a dozen shots. Three Koreans sprawled in the snow with head wounds, pools of blood merging into a huge spilled snow cone. If they were going to get out of this at all, there was going to be a lot more blood.

Kovic saw a sniper run towards them, then vanish into the shadows. He aimed into the spot, fired and heard a scream.

‘Where’s Faulkner?’

He was staggering towards them in a daze, clutching his shoulder, his weapon dangling uselessly from his smashed hand. Kovic ran and pushed him to the ground while Price covered them. He pulled a bandage from his kit and tore Faulkner’s sleeve away with his teeth before wrapping the arm as best he could. There was morphine in the kit too, but something else now grabbed his attention.

Olsen was shouting on the net to Tex.

‘The fuck you doing? Cover, for fuck’s sake.’

‘We gotta be outta here.’

‘Negative.’ Kovic didn’t need this right now. ‘We got to neutralise all this first. He comes near, he’s a sitting duck.’

Olsen wasn’t listening. Kovic gripped his shoulder and spun him around. ‘They take one shot at him we are lost, got it? No one comes for us.’

Olsen shook off his grip, his face contorted by rage.

‘You took us straight into an ambush, you fucking moron. You were set up. Your intel was shit. It was fucked up from the off. I’m getting my guys outta here. This mission is officially fucked. I’m taking my guys out and you – can go fuck yourself.’

Kovic lunged at Olsen but he dodged and slammed his knee into his balls. Then Olsen landed a boot in his stomach, sending him sprawling in the snow.

And then they heard the deep thrum of the chopper. Barely visible, a grey blur behind the snow like a half tuned television image, the Sea Hawk moved above them. Tex was bringing it back.

‘Sayonara, assholes.’ Tex yelled over the radio. It was as if the whole covert thing had gone to his head. His side window was slid back and he was waving his grenade launcher where he thought the NK were positioned. He blasted it as he made his second descent.

But as Olsen gestured to Price to help Faulkner towards the LZ the Sea Hawk lurched sideways, as if grasped by a giant unseen hand that had reached out of the cloud. The engine revs shot up to scream level as the nose tipped up as if struggling for altitude. The whole machine started to slide sideways, the tail rotor combing the ground right where the Koreans had taken up position. One of the main blades snapped free and catapulted end over end away into the night. Then the helicopter started a slow motion barrel roll and finally slammed on to the ground. Kovic threw himself over Faulkner and Price and Olsen stumbled behind the remains of the station wagon as the helo exploded in a fireball, spraying the area with clumps of disintegrating machinery before erupting into a mushroom of fiery smoke.

There was nothing to say. They were thirty miles into North Korean territory, their ride home gone, their advantage of surprise non-existent, with a column of flame and smoke rising into the night to alert anyone else in a ten-mile radius who still didn’t already know they were there. Alone, Kovic could maybe have gone to ground, evaded any patrols and tried to make the border. But with two dead and three wounded—

Olsen looked at him full of contempt. ‘Another one for the CIA Hall of Shame.’

Kovic was past anger. ‘You’re the one told him to turn back.’

Olsen jutted his jaw towards Kovic as if to say,. . .