Foxbat by James Barrington Read Free Book Online Page A

against anything –
     a floodlight or the gantry itself – or trip over the cables, and focused, instead, on getting to the far end.
    Halfway across, a sudden gust of wind rattled the entire structure, and for a minute or so
     Richter paused, just in case a sentry heard the noise and looked up, but then the breeze died away and he continued his careful progress.
    Less than four minutes after he’d stepped onto the gantry, he climbed off it thankfully
     at the other end, and began crawling up the gently sloping roof towards the central ridge. He wouldn’t need to get into this hangar: merely force a panel and look carefully inside, and
     record whatever he saw there with the camera.
    More or less reaching the centre of the roof, he took out his jemmy, and began to lever up a
     panel. The sound of tearing metal was not loud enough to be heard by the guards below, and soon Richter was able to lift the entire panel free and peer down, along the narrow but powerful
     beam of his torch as it illuminated the interior of the hangar.
    Directly below him was a small electric-powered towing truck, normally used to manoeuvre
     aircraft in and out of the hangar or around the hardstandings. To one side of that, closer to the wall of the building, was another cherry-picker, but what astonished Richter was what else
     occupied the hangar.
    ‘Shit a brick,’ he muttered as he fished the Nikon out of his pocket. ‘Six
     will never believe this.’
     

    Chapter Three
    Monday
    North Korea
    Well before he left Seoul, Yi Min-Ho had spent several hours with his colleagues at
     Naegok-dong working out the optimum route to his objective, though there had actually been little choice. The coastal area was mainly flat, but cultivated and inhabited, and therefore
     potentially dangerous. The hills extending north of the coast provided very difficult terrain and, although taking that route would guarantee the least chance of being detected, it would take
     him an unacceptable length of time to reach his objective.
    So Yi stayed near the coast, and followed the main – almost the only – road. He
     walked along the grass verge because the sound of footsteps – even those made by his rubber-soled boots – risked alerting someone to his presence. Every fifty paces or so he
     stopped and listened for a short while, in case his ears might detect something his eyes had missed.
    Twice he froze into immobility on hearing the sound of movement nearby, his hand reaching for
     his pistol, but each time the noises faded away. Animals, he assumed, resuming his solitary march. Once a vehicle – an old truck lacking one of its headlamps – rattled past the
     ditch where he’d already taken cover. He stayed motionless for a few minutes after it had passed him, just in case anyone was following it on foot.
    His GPS unit told him that he’d covered almost three kilometres in the first hour, and he
     calculated that he should reach the vicinity of Ugom in another two. Yi stopped between two stunted bushes for a brief rest, ate a small chocolate bar and washed it down with a mouthful of
     water, then resumed his steady progress eastward.
    Aïn Oussera Air Base, Algeria
    Richter held the Nikon firmly by the strap and aimed it at the far end of the hangar, pressed
     the button, then moved the digital camera slightly to cover the next section of the floor of the large building. Because of the filter, the electronic flash was invisible to his eyes –
     and more importantly, invisible to the sentries standing outside the building – but was ideally matched to the infrared-sensitive media inside the camera.
    He took a dozen pictures, then another couple just in case, switched off the Nikon and replaced
     it in his pocket. There was no way he could refit the metal roof panel, so he just pushed it down until it was more or less level with those either side of it.
    ‘Spook. I’m on the way back,’ he murmured into his microphone, then started
     crawling across the