by Ed Nelson
Another letter was from Mr. Monroe informing me that the movie, “Escape From Siberia,” had finished filming and was now in post-production. They hoped to have it in theaters by Christmas.
He had also sent the stills that I had requested to the young lady in Spain. It was unfortunate that they had leaked out to the tabloids. While helping the film's publicity they did nothing for the lead actor. Mr. Monroe didn’t even bother to express regrets that it happened.
That was good, I hated crocodile tears.
I spent several evenings with the Imperial family. I have never met a more vicious group of monopoly players in my life. That even includes my sister Mary.
I wanted to do some more parachute jumping or skydiving as it was now being called but was forbidden because the chance of injury went up with each jump.
I asked Whitehall what British parachutist emblems that I could wear because I had earned the Chinese “Dragon,” with five jumps from an airplane, one being at night.
I was informed that since the Coldstream Guards were not a parachute regiment but a regiment of the foot, I could only wear the “lightbulb,” this being a parachute without wings.
Bummer.
The long wait was finally over on a Friday. The SEAL Team 2 element made it to Beijing.
They were in mufti, civilian clothes to the uninitiated. This mission was so black that I don’t think even those of us going on it were cleared. The US government was never, ever involved in assassinations unless they were successful and had a good result. Then it was statesmanship by different means. Something like war is diplomacy by other means.
I was glad to see Harry Beal. I considered him a good-luck piece.
They were a tired-looking bunch, not just from the flight but from their last mission. I was glad that we had no timetable. There were eyes on Haoran and there was no indication he was coming out of hiding. Reports were that Haoran had gained weight and looked like he spent his days drunk.
Maybe we would get lucky, and he would do himself in, I wasn’t picky about how he went.
The team took the next two days to rest up. They looked a lot better the next time I saw them. This was in a conference room at army headquarters.
Harry told me they were finding this weird; they had always thought they would be fighting with China instead of joint missions.
The aerial photos were all laid out. I kept my mouth shut and let the experts do their thing. I was glad I did. My plan to fly in wasn’t that far off course. It was the delivery system that I had wrong.
They proposed using a glider made of canvas and wood which would have an extremely low radar profile. We would glide in and not have to jump at all. That was the plan.
The Chinese Air Force tore that plan apart. The mountains along the border would have many unpredictable winds and the North Koreans had many single-engine aircraft patrolling the border zone just for such incursions.
It would have to be a parachute jump after all. I had mixed emotions. Gliding in would reduce the risk. But dang it, I had earned those jump wings and wanted to use them. Probably childish but it is what it is.
That was my take. Harry Beal said, “They didn’t hire us to do easy.”
Chapter 40
I did find out how we would keep track of the person who jumped before you. We would have a light on top of our helmets pointing up. If we jumped with the proper separation, we would be able to see at least the person in front of us.
Weather and clouds permitting you might see everyone in the stick. The only fly in that ointment was that the more and lower cloud cover the better. At least for concealing our jump.
We performed several jumps at night to make certain I knew how to do it. They had many jumps like this. When the sky was clear, it was easy to follow the others in. The more clouds the harder it was.
Even SEALs had limits on what they could do. It was decided that the perfect cloud cover for our purposes would be fifteen hundred feet. We would fly most of the trip two hundred feet above ground level.
This would keep us invisible to the older type of North Korean radar.
At the last minute, we would rise to fifteen hundred feet to allow a safe distance to jump. The downside of this it might put us on the North Korean radar.
We were going to sacrifice the aircraft. The C-47 had a rudimentary autopilot. I would fly the plane with the help of the SEALs. One of them acting as the copilot to provide muscle on the controls.
It took a lot of strength to operate them. While only three hundred miles it would still be a hairy hour flying at low altitude. When we were in line with our jump-off point, I would line the plane up so that it would cross the landing zone and then head out to sea.
We hoped it would make the coast before being shot down by North Korean air defense jets. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, they may not even have many jets in flying condition.
There would be two fresh corpses on board, young men killed in auto accidents, at least that was what I was told.
China is China.
The bodies would be dressed in civilian clothes and there would be two hundred kilos of heroin onboard. If shot down over the sea the plane might sink and be a mystery. If it didn’t sink or was shot down over land, then we had set it up to make them look like drug smugglers.
Our weight for each jumper was almost at the maximum. Including our body weight, we were jumping with three hundred and sixty-five pounds.
Since Harry was the lightest of us, he had the most gear. He told us to be nice to him or he wouldn’t share the K-ration packs. If it took longer than a week to hike out of North Korea, we would have to supplement the food locally.
Knowing that I made a point of having my longbow and several dozen arrows as part of my load.
The bow wasn’t my normal bow. It was a composite using fiberglass. In the center of the bow, it had brass screw fittings so that you could break the bow down to half its length. So, the bow and the arrows would fit in a package three feet long.
I had it made special by a friend of Rod Bell’s, Wilber Allen, Jr., who was experimenting with new types of bows.
He called this one a compound bow. It had pulleys on both ends of the bow to reduce the needed pull weight allowing for a shorter bow.
Rod introduced us one afternoon while at the archery range at the studio. Will as his friends called him was there to help Rod do some stunts.
Later over a couple of beers Will describe what he was doing. I had to open my mouth and ask why not make a true longbow into a compound bow.
Will pointed out the idea was to reduce pull weight to what normal people could use.
“Well, I’m not normal, can you make me a compound bow that is also a longbow?”
In theory that would increase the power of my longbow spectacularly.
The idea intrigued Will and I committed to paying for the materials for a test bow. The result was a three-hundred-pound pull bow. It took one hundred and fifty pounds to draw but was released with three hundred pounds of energy.
We played around with it and found that we could shoot an arrow and hit the target, as far as you could see the target. We even experimented with a small side-mounted telescope on the bow. It was incredible.
It would kill a deer at five hundred meters if you could shoot that accurately. This was shortly after my return from East Germany, and I didn’t have deer in mind.
We had to wait ten days for the weather to be as we wanted it. The CIA had pictures of the site and it looked good. The large flat plain near the river was clear. We hoped to get enough reflection off of the river to help.
The evening of the flight in we gathered at the airbase. I walked around the C-47 to make certain it was okay. It was my third walk around the aircraft that day.
I had double-checked the fuel to make certain there was no water in it. The oil sumps were full and no sign of leakage.
As I walked around a truck pulled up and two body bags were unloaded. They were placed near th
e front of the aircraft. The SEALs and I would have to wrestle them into place before jumping. There were also several large cases that I assumed contained the heroin.
Harry led the team in the last check of their gear. All was good so we boarded. I was now checked out on this aircraft, so it wasn’t as hard to take off. I lifted the tail up as we went down the runway.
Steve, one of the SEALs, was in the righthand seat. My hands were on the controls along with his. He was doing the heavy lifting of the controls. We had agreed that my strength had to be husbanded so if there was an emergency, I could handle it.
The first leg was easy from Fengcheng, China to Gulouzi, China, as there was radio guidance from one airport to the other.
We had to navigate from Gulouzi to Phyongwon, North Korea before jumping out near Pyongyang. The weather was good, the cloud cover was thin and low. I kept us flying just above the various hills and mountain peaks we saw.
Fortunately, the peaks not only stuck up above the cloud cover, but they were also good navigational aids. Harry Beal holding a chart told Steve and me when and where to turn. We flew from peak to peak.
Even so, I was still nervous about our course until we saw a few lights ahead which had to be Phyongwon or Seattle. I was hoping for Phyongwon.
The river we were hunting for came up exactly at the right time. We studied the terrain down below hoping to get a hint of the flat land we wanted to drop on.
Two things happened. First a jet, probably a MIG came rocketing by us. Next, we saw lights below. We had found our field and from the lights, it looked to be occupied by a North Korean regiment.
We had to make a quick decision. The jet had a large turning radius so we could drop below the cloud cover and hide for a minute or two. I did that.
Without any prompting, the other SEALs started unpacking our deadheading passengers. Grim times, grim humor.
I followed the river north hoping to find another large open field. Two minutes of flight brought us to one. I yelled,
“I’m bringing around to go on autopilot. Get ready to jump.”
I turned and brought the plane back on a course on what I thought was the large open field. A corpse was placed in the right-hand seat. I set the autopilot and one was put in the left seat.
For some reason, I told the dead pilot, ‘Second star to the right and straight on until morning.’
We rushed to the back of the plane. All were kitted and hooked to the static line. Harry who was to be last in line checked me out as far as correct connections. I returned the favor.
When I said he was good, he yelled, “Jump.”
We went out the door one after the other. We each had our equipment bag hooked to one of our feet below us. We had to push them out the door. There was no jumping as such; the bags pulled us with them.
It was a clear night, and I could see the lights on the back of all their helmets. After the shock of my chute opening, it was a pleasant night for a ride.
Chapter 41
All good things must come to an end, especially a parachute ride to earth. No sooner the chute in front of me collapsed than I was coming in hard and fast.
It seemed that way in the dark. Not having the proper depth perception was a hindrance to a standup landing. It turned out what we thought was a flat field was a rice paddy. That was good and bad.
The mud made the landing a little softer, the water got us wet. That didn’t slow us down from the immediate objective. Gather the collapsed chutes and get as far away as possible. We had no idea if we had been spotted bailing out of the doomed C-47.
With an armload of parasail silk and our equipment bags slung over our shoulders, we headed north. It was the direction of the Chinese border. We had a little over a hundred miles to go if you measure by air. It was more likely two hundred by ground.
We trudged through the ankle-deep water for several hundred yards before we reached dry ground. After that, we marched inland until we reached a forest. In the dark, we had no idea how large it was.
We had two small intrenching tools, folding shovels to us civilians. We used those to bury the parasail silk. Carefully not to leave a trace of the hole we had dug we spread downed leaves over the freshly turned earth. One good rain and you would never know it had been disturbed.
I asked Harry if he had any idea how long it would take us to walk north to the Chinese border.
“I don’t know, depends on how long the mission takes.”
I had forgotten, these were SEALs on a mission. They weren’t about to let a mere North Korean regiment get in their way.
We had a good idea of where we were at as we had come down near the river. All we had to do was follow it south and we would get back to our target.
Keeping to the woods and its concealment we headed south using compass headings.
At the hint of daybreak, we started looking for a place to hide all day. There was nothing good nearby, so we went under the low-hanging branches of a large evergreen. The branches brushed the ground so when we got against the trunk of the tree we couldn’t be seen easily.
If we were being hunted by dogs it was all over.
We ate, took care of our physical functions in a cathole, then slept in our lightweight sleeping bags. The SEALs set up a watch rotation. I got to sleep most of the day, catching the last watch as the day was fading.
We went south for most of the night until we reached the edge of the woods. In the distance, we could see the lights of the resort that was our target. We set up the same style of camp as the night before.
The next day was spent observing the North Koreans that had moved into the field that had been our jump target. They showed no sign of moving. If anything, it looked like they were settling in for a long stay.
The SEALs spent the five days and nights, snooping and pooping as they called it. They scouted out the area. During the day l kept watching to see if Haoran made an appearance. I saw him twice with my binoculars. Each time was the same patio that he had used previously.
The NK troops had any shot to him blocked.
After a week we all decided that the mission couldn’t be accomplished without committing suicide. We weren’t into that, so we decided to head home.
We could only move at night, and we would be doing good to cover ten miles a night. It would take us at least twenty days to reach the border.
Since we didn’t have enough food, we would have to live off the land or scrounge what we could. My bow came in handy for that.
As our food dwindled our packs got lighter. We had halazone tablets to purify our water. I brought down several rabbits the first two days on the march. They helped the food supply.
We did everything we could to avoid people but one evening we were sighted. I had just shot a small deer and we were field-dressing it. Steve noticed a man watching us butchering the deer from the woods.
We had choices, we could kill him, we could ignore him, or do what we did, we signaled him over and after taking a few cuts gave him the rest.
He spoke no English; we spoke no Korean, but you could tell he was glad for the food. Harry pointed at each of us and then held his finger up to his lips as though he wanted the man to be quiet.
He nodded his head enthusiastically. We went our way; he went his loaded down with half a deer. We never had anyone chase us from that incident so communication must have occurred.
We continued like this for a week, more and more hills had to be detoured. Try that at night with no lights. Several times we had to backtrack because of small box canyons or deep fast-moving streams.
That is when we started leaving small blazes on trees and trail markers so we could backtrack as needed.
We did have a radio, but it was to be used sparingly if at all. Once a week Harry would call in and let the Chinese military know that we were okay and still moving.
One night we walked into a dead-end valley. It wasn’t a straight trip to the end. It had several twists and turns, and we had to cross two streams
on the way.
It was getting near daylight, so we decided to camp there. For once we got lucky, there was a rock overhang which we could sleep under. It was a shallow cave, but it would hide us.
The next day we had a meeting. We were all tired and needed rest. We decided this was as good a place as any to spend a couple of days.
Our K-rations were long gone, we were now living off the land. It is a good thing these guys were well trained. My scouting experience was good but not close to their training.
They knew which plants we could eat. My bow was invaluable as I kept us in protein. Some days it was only a small squirrel, once more it was a deer.
We feasted that night.
We holed up there for three days. After that, we were rested up enough to continue. A hard fact was that if we hunkered down our diet would cause us to lose strength and we would never make it.
As we had been avoiding human habitation, we only had a loose idea of where we were at. The closer we got to the border the more NK patrols there would be.
To get an idea of how far we needed to go we headed a little north by west after backing out of the dead-end canyon.
This would take us near the coast of the Yellow Sea and villages, from there we could figure out how far we had to go. There are times when you think you are smart then the world shows you how dumb you are.
We found a village. They had no signs! All we could do was to continue north hoping to see a sign which matched the writing on our map.
We finally came to a town that had railroad tracks. Most importantly, it had a railroad station with a sign. We were able to determine we were only ten miles from the border.
I even briefly thought about riding the boxcars as far as we could until a slow train chugged into the station. It had a soldier was sitting on top of each car.
We moved further inland and continued our journey. That night we covered most of the ten miles. Harry took a chance and called in on the radio and let them know we were approaching the border. It wouldn’t do for us to walk all this way and get shot by the Chinese.