Free The Expediter by David Hagberg

you’re interested in what’s happening down there, I can give you the CNN feed from Hawaii, we just passed over the islands.”
    “CNN is fine,” Pak said, and he donned a set of headphones as directed and a moment later an announcer was speaking in English about the developing serious situation between the Chinese and North Korean governments.
    In Pyongyang, the Korean Central News Agency had made no mention of the assassination or of the escalating tensions with China, but CNN featured the incident as its lead story. The facts were from the Chinese point of view. They were identifying General Ho as a high-ranking diplomat who’d been sent to Poyngyang to discuss ongoing terms of the nuclear disarmament agreement that North Korea had made, and the increased Chinese aid that was being offered in exchange for a new stability on the peninsula.
    It was speculated that Kim Jong Il had refused to give up the six to eight nuclear weapons already built, and had threatened to unleash a nuclear war unless Beijing backed him up. And some analysts were predicting that China would invade its ally and take Kim Jong Il down, which would in all likelihood mean an exchange of nuclear weapons that would probably spread to Seoul, Taipei, and even Tokyo.
    So far there had been no response from North Korea, though Deputy U.N. Ambassador Lin Hun-Haw was currently en route from Pyongyang and was expected to make a statement tomorrow to the Security Council.
    Pak lowered the headset and glanced back at Mr. Lin, who was seated on the armrest of one of the seats, staring at him.
    “Are you finished, Colonel?” the pilot asked.
    “Yes, thank you, I’ve heard enough. How soon before we land in San Francisco?”
    “Depending on ATC, we’ll be there around 2000 hours.”
    “Do you understand what is required?”
    The pilot was uncomfortable, but he nodded. “Yes, we understand what you mean to do. We’ll cooperate with State Security.”
    “Good man,” Pak told him. “If something goes wrong you’ve never heard of me. Perhaps I was a stowaway.”

 
     
     
FIFTEEN

     
    Pak, dressed in gray slacks and a dark blue windbreaker with SFO SECURITY in gold letters on the back that had been hastily prepared for him by Special Branch, dropped down into the electronics bay beneath the cockpit floor when the aircraft came to rest to be refueled. It was twenty minutes after eight, local, which made the timing tight, but not impossible.
    He glanced up at the captain and copilot and nodded, but said nothing. Their nonpassenger was leaving by the basement door, and once he was on the tarmac he was no longer their concern. Captain Lee reached over his armrest to close and lock the access hatch, plunging Pak into nearly complete darkness, except for the jewel lights on the equipment panels.
    A star fastener tool had been taped to the wheel well hydraulics maintenance hatch, and Pak set to work removing the twelve fasteners that held it in place. Five minutes later he set the tool aside, and carefully prized the hatch up from its seal and set it down.
    The pavement was two and a half meters below, and Pak immediately smelled a combination of odors; kerojet, hydraulic fluid, diesel fumes from the refueling tanker, and another, perhaps that of the sea. He climbed down into the well, replaced the hatch overhead, thenthreaded his way through the landing gear struts down to the nose wheels where he held up for a moment in the relative darkness.
    Strong lights bathed the aircraft and the fuel truck that had rumbled out one hundred meters from the main terminal building. No one was being allowed off the aircraft, and no one would be subject to a customs check until they landed in New York City early tomorrow morning, so security was minimal.
    Pak climbed down off the wheels, and nonchalantly walked around to the other side of the truck so that it was between him and the airplane, and headed across the tarmac to the open door of the baggage bay beneath an