Free 1000 Yards - 01 by Mark Dawson

but, when she turned back to Milton, she looked concerned.
    “What is it?”
    “Kun was supposed to meet us here. He was going to drive you out of the city.”
    “He’s been delayed?”
    “No, he would not allow that to happen. My brother is a very dependable man. I am afraid that he must have been arrested.” She frowned, composing herself, and then set her face with a stern expression. “It is no matter. I know where you need to go. I will drive you.” She opened the door and pulled herself inside. “Quickly. We cannot wait.”
    Milton tossed the rifle inside and got in after it, sliding the side door closed. Su-Yung reversed and, driving with particular care, drove them up the ramp and out onto the street. Milton risked a glance out of the window: the crowd from the Square was beginning to disperse, hundreds of people choking the pavements, some of them walking in the road. There was no sign that anything was amiss. The noise of his six shots would have been absorbed by the clamour of the Parade. Milton doubted that these people would ever know what had just taken place three hundred feet above their heads; the regime would suppress the news, replacement generals would be promoted to fill the spots vacated by the dead, and little would change. But those men would know, now, that they were not safe, not even in the redoubt of their own capital.
    Milton sat quietly in the back, shielded from observation. He knew that if they were stopped it would be almost certain that he would be seen and, if that happened, there would be more bloodshed. He laid down the sniper rifle and collected the M-4 instead. He popped the magazine free and checked the load. He slid it back into the port and punched it home with the heel of his hand. Then, he took the tracking device from his pocket. It was small, about half the size of a smartphone, and would transmit his location and receive the location of his destination via the American military’s GPS satellite network. It was accurate to a metre and the battery was good for a week. That ought to be long enough. He thumbed the switch and a red light glowed to signify that the unit was active.
    Su-Yung drove on.

 
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19.
    MILTON KILLED the engine of the boat and left it drift. He was two miles off the eastern coast, drifting through a thick blanket of sea mist. He had initially thought that the weather had been kind, shielding him from view as he put out from the tiny inlet near to Jungsan in Pyongyang Province. On two occasions he had heard the engines of old Russian-built MiGs overhead, and both times the jets had curved away with no indication that he had been seen. Now, though, the fog was less helpful. It blinded him, too, and he needed to see where he was going so that he could make his rendezvous.
    It had taken him and Su-Yung two days to reach the coast. The first day was the worst, crawling through the city until they found quieter roads where they could travel more quickly without causing suspicion. They found a deserted barn near Taedong and sheltered there until darkness had fallen, and then set off again. They travelled only at night, driving carefully, the van’s lights off, the M-4 laid out across his lap and the 9mm thrust into the waistband of his jeans. There had been several moments where he had been sure they were about to be discovered. The worst was the army jeep that had bounded along the main road just as they had turned off it. The driver had stopped at the beginning of the bridge that spanned the creek they had just crossed, the spotter in the back scanning the landscape with a pair of infra-red binoculars. A big .30 calibre machine gun was mounted on the back of the jeep; if they saw them, he knew that that monster would chew them up. Su-Yung and Milton were quiet, hardly breathing, but the soldiers did not see them. They moved away after a long five minutes and they did not come across them again.
    The North Korean landscape recalled the black brushstrokes