by Mike Ramon
Chapter Thirty
Fort Hood, Killeen, Texas
June 16 -- 11:11 UTC/6:11 am local time
The ambulance had arrived in the small hours of the morning, before the sun has risen over the state of Texas. The ambulance, followed by four unmarked SUVs, was driven straight to the base’s medical building, where an entire wing had been cleared for privacy. The only people on the base who knew who was being transported were those with the highest security clearance. The NTRA agents travelling with the special “patient” were once again using FBI credentials as cover.
The woman’s name was Mihn Ji-hyun. She was twenty-eight years old, the daughter of a factory worker, and she had joined Violet Dawn three years before. Her brother had brought her into the organization shortly before he was killed by North Korean border guards while crossing back into the North after a mission in China. This was the extent of the information that she had given to her interrogators while under guard at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas.
That was when the decision was made to move her to Fort Hood, where she could receive a more thorough interrogation. It had been a two and a half hour drive, the ambulance escorted by four vehicles, two carrying NTRA agents and two carrying soldiers who were dressed in civilian clothing but were armed to the teeth, ready to counter any attack on the convoy.
Just after six o’clock, when the patient was settled in and the doctor gave the okay, Agents Sarah Marquez and Tom Mulroney set out to begin their questioning. Seated near the hospital bed--to which Mihn Ji-hyun was restrained--sat Tong Jung-ho, an interpreter sent from Washington; he was a middle-aged man with a dour face and thick glasses.
Agent Mulroney laid a black plastic case on a rolling table and opened it, revealing several glass vials, and syringes with plastic caps covering the sharp ends of the needles. He nodded to Agent Marquez. Agent Marquez looked at the woman lying in the bed with her eyes closed. An IV line ran out of one thin arm to a bag of clear fluid.
“Ms. Mihn,” Agent Marquez spoke. “Can you hear me?”
The interpreter repeated the question in Korean. The woman in the hospital bed didn’t respond, and didn’t move at all.
“Ms. Mihn, my name is Agent Marquez. I need to ask you some questions. And I need you to give me honest answers to these questions. Do you understand?”
Again Mr. Tong translated, and again there was no response from Mihn Ji-hyun. Agent Marquez let out a quiet sigh.
“Please, Ms. Mihn,” she went on. “We would like to make things as easy on you as possible. You were injured the day of the raid; I understand that you were shot in the chest. I know that you must be in a considerable amount of pain.”
Mihn moaned at this, as if acknowledging that she was indeed in pain.
“Once we are satisfied that you have told us all that you know, we will let the doctor give you something for the pain,” Agent Marquez said.
Agent Marquez waited for Mr. Tong to translate before going on:
“If you refuse to cooperate, we can make you even more uncomfortable than you already are. We don’t want it to come to that, however. Are you willing to answer our questions, Ms. Mihn?”
Mihn Ji-hyun opened her eyes and looked at Agent Marquez for a moment, and then closed her eyes again, having said nothing.
“Are you a member of the terror group known as Violet Dawn?” Agent Marquez asked.
No reply.
“What are the names of your superiors within the organization?”
Nothing from the injured woman.
“Do you know what was in the trunk that was kept in the basement of the house?”
After Mr. Tong had translated, and after Agent Marquez saw that Mihn Ji-hyun was content to remain silent, she looked toward where Agent Mulroney stood near the rolling table and gave a slight nod of her head. Agent Mulroney put on a pair of latex surgical gloves, extracted a small packet from the case and tore off one end. He slipped an alcohol pad out of the torn packet and wiped down a spot on Mihn Ji-hoon’s arm near the inside crease of the elbow. He moved back to the table, tossed the used alcohol pad aside, and took a small glass vial out of the case; it was filled with a cloudy liquid. He set the vial down on the table, took one of the needles out of the case and slipped off the plastic cap. With the needle in one hand, he picked up the vial in the other, inserting the needle through the rubber stopper at the top end of the vial and drawing a small amount of the milky fluid into the syringe. He extracted the needle and set the vial back down on the table.
He bent down, inserted the needle at the spot that he had swiped with the alcohol pad and depressed the plunger. The response was immediate. No sooner had Agent Mulroney taken the needle out of her arm than Mihn Ji-hyun started moaning deeply. The moaning got louder, and she started struggling against her restraints. Mr. Tong looked away from her, visibly uncomfortable with this interrogation method, but Agent Marquez did not look away. While the injection would cause the Mihn Ji-hyun great pain, Agent Marquez knew that there was little real risk to the woman.
“Ms. Mihn, if you cooperate with us my colleague will give you another injection that will counteract the effects of the first one. The pain will stop.”
When Mr. Tong failed to translate Agent Marquez looked at him.
“Please, Mr. Tong; tell her what I said.”
He did so. Mihn gave no sign that she heard him. She was trying to pull her wrists free from their restraints, groaning in pain. She started rambling in Korean.
“What is she saying?” Agent Marquez asked.
“She’s says to make it stop,” Mr. Tong said. “She also says that she wants you to let her go.”
“Tell her that it will stop when she starts cooperating.”
Mr. Tong told the woman, raising his voice to be heard over her groaning. The woman responded to him. To Agent Marquez, it sounded like she was struggling to keep from screaming.
“She says that she will answer your questions if you stop the pain,” Mr. Tong said.
“Tell her that if she is lying just to get us to stop, that Agent Mulroney will inject her again, and this time it will be a double dose.”
He translated, and Mihn Ji-hyun responded, sounding like she was on the edge of hysteria.
“She gives you her word that she will cooperate,” Mr. Tong said.
“Okay. Go ahead, Mulroney.”
Agent Mulroney repeated the procedure, only this time he used a vial filled with a clear liquid. He cleaned a patch of the woman’s skin near where he had made the first injection, and gave her a second one. Within fifteen seconds the moans and groans subsided, and Mihn Ji-hyun laid her head back on the bed and closed her eyes. A tear spilled from one eye, tracing a path down one flushed cheek.
“Ms. Mihn, can you confirm that you are a member of Violet Dawn?” Agent Marquez asked.
The woman spoke quietly after Mr. Tong had translated the question.
“She asks that you come closer,” Mr. Tong said. “She says that she is too tired to raise her voice.”
“Why do I have to come closer? I don’t understand Korean; you’re the one she must speak to.”
“I…speak…English,” Mihn Ji-hyun said with apparent effort. “I…speak…to you.”
“Why didn’t you let us know that you spoke English before now?” Agent Marquez asked.
“Come. I…speak to you.”
Agent Marquez hesitated, but relented after reminding herself that there was little the woman could do to harm her on account of the restraints. Agent Marquez got up out of her chair and moved to the bed. Mr. Tong moved his char back to give her more room. Agent Marquez bent over the woman, who still had her eyes closed.
“Ms. Mihn,” Agent Marquez spoke. “Tell us where we can find other Violet Dawn cells here in the United States. We know that the one you belonged to isn’t the only one.”
Mihn Ji-hyun opened her eyes, and for a moment she and Agent Marquez were staring at each other. The restrained woman struck out the only way that she could; she spit into Agent Sarah
Marquez’s face. Agent Marquez jerked away from the bed. She wiped her face with her sleeve as Mihn started to laugh.
“Dog bitch!” Mihn yelled. “Dog bitch! Dog bitch!”
Agent Marquez went back to her chair.
“Agent Mulroney,” she said, “Give her a double dose.”
Two armed soldiers stood guard outside the hospital room. When the screams first started they thought about going in to see if everything was okay. But they had been warned to stay out of the room unless they were called for. They obeyed their orders.