1.

Impressions of North Korea:

Cold. Crappy food. Cheap booze.

Great place to hunt. Especially if you're with the world's cruelest dictator.

Not a good place to be a shot, especially by said dictator.

But let me start at the beginning...

#

It was springtime at Rogue Manor:

The snow had melted, the crocuses and whatnot were pushing their pointy buds up through the turf, and there was a lovely scent in the air.

Gunpowder, that is.

It was the first week of April. Trace Dahlgren had just finished running some of the new recruits through a makeshift obstacle course on the back forty, trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. This was just a preliminary trial, so we gave the kids a break - there were only two sections of live fire, and in both cases the shooters were instructed to keep their aim a six inches from anything moving.

Any recruit who stopped, of course, was fair game.

"No casualties," said Trace, reporting in at lunch time. She sounded disappointed.

Red Cell is an equal opportunity employer - we hire ex-Army as well as ex-SEALs - and as a former blanket hugger Trace Dahlgren gives the company that well rounded culture the human resources department would love to brag about, if we had a HR department. She learned how to break in new recruits while working with Delta Force, the Army's anti-terrorist unit. If you're a faithful reader of the books, you'll recall that Trace was a member of Delta's female squadron. At five-eight and one hundred and thirty pounds, she has assets male shooters don't, which makes her deadly undercover. Her real love, though, is busting humps during training - even I have trouble keeping up with her PT routines at times - which is why she's in charge of what we call pre-recruitment month at Red Cell.

The participants call it hell, along with some other choice terms of endearment. Basically, if you make it through the month with all of your limbs intact, we offer you a job. The pay's great and the benies can't be beat, though rumor has it the boss is a mean son of a bitch.

We were in the process of gearing up for some new business ventures in eastern Europe, and I was more than a little interested in finding out about what the new crop of recruits looked like. But before I could ask for a detailed report, Rogue Manor's early-warning radar began sounding an intruder alert.

No, it wasn't a high-tech burglar alarm - it was the dogs, barking at the black Lexus LS 460L speeding up the driveway.

Didn't look to be a bill collector, but I wasn't expecting a ride to the airport either. I went out on the porch and waited while the driver tested how well the brakes worked, slamming to a stop in the muddy gravel in front of the house. A short, height-challenged man jumped from the front of the car as it stopped, running to open the rear door. The dogs, of course, found this all in good fun, and bounded around the man, yapping up a storm.

"Meomcheseyo!" shouted the man, and right there I had a feeling that the day was going to be more interesting than usual. Because not only was he speaking Korean - loosely translated, "Meomcheseyo!" means "God damn it, stop right now!" - but he was doing it with a North Korean accent.

In dog speak, "Meomcheseyo!" means something like "Come on and jump on my car, lick my face, and hump my leg." Which the dogs gladly proceeded to do. They were so enthusiastic to have a potential playmate who spoke their language that I had to whistle twice before I got their attention.

It took them a few seconds to remember who it was who kept their food dishes fulled. They gave me a collective blank doggie look, the sort of thing you'd expect to see on a clerk at the DMV if you asked for something close to quitting time.

"Inside, now," I told them.

They gave the air a sniff, decided they didn't like what they smelled, and headed inside.

In the meantime, a gorgeous woman had emerged from the car. When I say gorgeous, I don't mean drop-dead gorgeous - I mean kick you in the throat, douse you with kerosene, burn you to a crisp with no trace of remorse gorgeous.

She was Asian, and as I gathered, Korean. Black hair, red short, short skirt . . . you can fill in the rest yourself.

"Annyeonghaseyo," I told her, bowing my head, both in respect and to get a closer look at her legs.

"Enough with the Korean. You are Demo Dick, Rogue Warrior?"

I love a woman who gets to the point. Not to mention one who is holding a pistol six inches from my heart.

I have no idea where she'd been hiding it when she got out of the car; there sure wasn’t any extra room in the dress.

"Nice gun," I said.

"It's loaded, Dick."

"So are you."

"Very funny."

The chauffeur had recovered from his encounter with the dogs and was reaching into his jacket.

"You can point anything you want at me," I told the woman. "But if he takes his pistol out of its holster he's going to eat it. And then the dogs are going to eat him."

The beautiful woman in the short, short skirt said something to him in Korean. The chauffeur frowned, but kept whatever weapon he had holstered.

"So, Mr. Demo Dick, you do not seem as brilliant in real life as you are on the page," said the woman, returning to English. "There is a little bit of fiction in your accounts, no?"

Everybody's a critic.

"Since you're such an avid reader, maybe you'd like to come inside and we can discuss things in a more pleasant atmosphere."

"You want to get me in bed, is that it?"

"If that's what it will take," I said.

She gave me a frown and changed the aim point of her pistol.

"I am not here to sleep with you."

"Who said anything about sleeping?"

She smiled. Unfortunately, our budding romance came to an abrupt end as Trace chose that moment to make her entrance.

And a rather spectacular one, I might add, as she had climbed out of an upstairs window at the back of the house, pulled herself onto the roof, and then threw herself down over Ms. Short Red Skirt in a full gainer that would have won a 9.0 from even the toughest Olympic judge.

Disappointed, I grabbed the gun as it flew into the air.

"Meomcheseyo!" I told the chauffeur as he once more reached for his gun. "One more inch and you'll have a new hole to eat kimchee out of."

Trace and Short Red Skirt rolled on the ground for a few moments. Red Skirt was beautiful and apparently knew some form of Korean kick-boxing. Trace - just as beautiful in her own Dalghern way - knew and is an expert in Jeet-Kune-Do, the martial art that Bruce Lee made famous. Apache-style streetfighting.

Wasn't much of a match. Trace had her pinned inside of ten seconds.

"You can let her up," I told her as the dust settled.

"What?"

"Go ahead, let her up."

"Dick - "

"No, go ahead. It's not every day the most hated dictator in the universe sends a personal representative to visit Rogue Manor."

Trace and Red Skirt gave me a funny look, but it was pretty obvious who she worked for. The only other people who would have been so rude were members of the Christians in Action - otherwise known as the CIA - and no intelligence officer was going to drive a Lexus limo this close to the Langley accounting staff.

"I am here to deliver an invitation to dinner," said Red Skirt, getting up.

"Why didn't you just say that in the first place?" said Trace.

"You interrupted before I could."

"The invitation you were trying to deliver had nothing to do with dinner."

"You'll have to forgive my associate," I told Red Skirt. "Apaches tend to be impatient, especially if there's a good brawl to be had."

Red Skirt reached back into the limo and pulled out a leather briefcase. Trace tensed behind her as she opened it, but all she produced was an envelope, the thick, fancy thing that generally arrives in the mailbox when one of the great aunt's grandchildren decides to get hitched.

"Mr. Rogue Warrior, hand-deliver" was written on the outside.

"Sealed with a kiss?" I asked, turning it over.

"I'd check it for a bomb," said Trace.

I broke the fancy on the back and slipped open the envelope. There was an invitation inside, engraved of course, written in both English and Hangul, the Korean script.

At least I assume that's what those squiggly characters were about.

The English was pretty direct:

Dear Mister Marcinko:

Your honorable presence for drinks and dinner is humbly requested by the great one, Kim Jong Il.

Ms. Chimdae will make the arrangements.

There's something about being called 'Mister' - especially when it's spelled out - that always gets me in a special place.

Usually my wallet.

"Thanks, but no thanks," I told Chimdae, handing back the invitation. "Have a pleasant day."

Chimdae gave me a blank look. Obviously no one in her experience turned down a request from Dear Leader.

I slipped the magazine out of her pistol, then handed the gun back.

"You do not understand, Mr. Rogue Warrior. This is a great honor," said Chimdae.

"Then I'm great honored to decline."

"You be sorry for this, Rogue Warrior," chirped the chauffeur. "Very sorry."

"Words to live by," I said before going back inside. . . .

(from Rogue Warrior, Dictator's Ransom.)

Nothing like a little fun and games

to work off the fried monkey brain dessert . . .

It all ended with . . . well, you'll have to read the book to find that out ...