"Don't push your luck, sow," he said, brewing the perfect blend of coldness and joy. "Just be quiet and do the job you're paid to do. Do you like making me angry? Do you want me to hurt you? Huh?"
He tightened his grip on her throat until her eyes watered, and she choked out a wheezy, gasping cry of pain and ecstasy. Gauron clucked his tongue and deposited the woman onto her desk.
"When will we have results?" he asked the sputtering woman.
She hacked a few more times. "Tomorrow morning."
"Can you do anything to speed that up?"
"Even if we administer drugs, it'll be more than six hours before they take effect. Besides, there are preliminary procedures and examinations."
"Well, you'd better get to work, then," remarked Gauron, "or I'll have to kill you, too."
Luckily, the three men didn't notice Sousuke hiding, even though they passed close enough for him to reach out and touch them.
From his hiding place, Sousuke could see the back of their suits out of the corner of his eye. These were not soldiers from this base but terrorists from the plane ride.
"Where is it?" asked one of the men.
"It's around here—in the only yellow container. There it is!" As they slid the yellow crate over, the ball bearings scattered on the floor, and a great rumbling noise filled the cargo hold.
"It won't just go off, right?" asked the most nervous-sounding terrorist.
"No. It's totally safe until the circuit's manually activated." They pried the lid off the container, looked inside the box, and whistled.
"Wow! That's way bigger than I expected!"
"We didn't want to take any chances in case we had to use it on the ground. Okay, there should be a red cord near the back. Take the electric tape off the jack and insert it into the socket marked three."
"Right. Inserting."
"Hold on, I'm not ready yet. Okay, now: Stick it in there."
"Is that it?"
"Yeah, don't touch anything else. And don't use any hand radios in a one hundred foot radius."
The lid clapped shut, and Sousuke heard the men brushing off the cuffs of their suit jackets.
"Who all knows about this?"
"Just Sakamoto, the boss, and us. None of the locals know."
"Okay. It's really a waste—there are some really cute high school girls up there. It'd be nice to take a couple of souvenirs, you know…."
"Don't be an idiot! The soldiers would notice and the boss would kill us all."
"The boss doesn't have to know!"
"I'll report you myself. I don't want the boss to kill
"Lighten up, I was just kidding," he said, and the three terrorists left the cargo hold.
Quickly freeing himself from the bags, Sousuke ran over to the yellow luggage container. After a slight pause, he opened the lid.
Shining his penlight on the contents, Sousuke confirmed his worst suspicions.
It was a huge bomb.
To be more exact, the crate contained two tanks, approximately five feet tall, and most likely filled with binary liquid explosives—the same kind used in AS rifles. The side of the tank had a case with a small electronic circuit and a backup circuit. Sousuke interpreted its blinking red light to mean that it could be activated at any time.
If a bomb this large exploded, it would blow the entire plane to bits. With a flip of a switch, four hundred civilians would be toast.
Sousuke knew a lot more about bombs than a regular soldier, but he was no specialist. On top of that, he didn't have the proper tools for bomb disarmament. He knew that defusing this bomb was beyond his capabilities—in fact, he was far more likely to detonate it by accident.
The plane crash would put the North Korean government in a tight spot—but not necessarily one that would develop into an armed conflict. The terrorists surely had taken all this into consideration when forming their plan.
But what reason could they possibly have to go to such great lengths to disguise their kidnapping of Kaname? Was she really harboring a secret worth the lives of several hundred civilians?
