The Golden Catch

by Roger Weston

  Little warehouses of food and ammunition, clothing, old bulletproof vests, medical and other supplies were buried all over the harbor area and well camouflaged. The vault was dark, and after removing his snowshoes, Frank hurried down the tunnel.

  As he anticipated, the men picked up his trail and he soon heard their voices. Several minutes passed when a body stepped through the snow-covered hatchway and plunged twelve feet down into the vault, landing just inches from Frank. The body buckled on the floor. The man groaned. Frank leapt onto him, delivering a fierce blow to the bifurcation of the carotid artery that immediately left the man unconscious. Frank grabbed his lariat and gained his feet. He held the rope out and waited.

  He heard excited Korean chatter up above. He waited perhaps ten seconds, when suddenly an unsuspecting face looked down into the hole. The man’s eyes took a moment to adjust to the light.

  Frank swung the loop up, pulled the rope tight around his neck, and tugged. The man slid in through the hole and fell twelve feet onto his head. Frank didn’t have to neutralize him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Chull-su moved very cautiously when he sent out the patrol. Murdoch was dangerous and these greenhorns didn’t appreciate what they were up against.

  Hang Doo-hee and Bae were walking ahead of him; a sailor with black-rimmed glasses named Won-song brought up the rear. They moved slowly and tightly. Time passed like nagging torment. Since the last attack, Chull-su heard screams and pleas in the distance.

  The search was confusing. They followed a set of horse tracks, which led them in a maddening circle. They came upon tracks all over the place now. Most were from his own men. But Chull-su had no way of knowing which ones were which, and each time the tension level rose. With each new set, he sent Hang Doo-hee or Bae to scout it out. They’d follow for twenty or thirty meters and then return. From there they’d all move on until they came across more tracks. And the process was repeated.

  They spotted a bridge with tracks over it. Hang Doo-hee felt this was a likely ambush site. He was a former soldier with combat experience. He approached the bridge like a cat stalking a bird. He wore no hat and kept his bald head slightly sideways. His eyes were narrow, curved slits. He searched under the bridge, but found nothing.

  They followed the cries, but the cries stopped, and all they found was a body. They worked their way down to the beach. They passed some rusty oil and gas drums and other debris peeking out of the snow. They moved along the beach for a while.

  And then the American yelled to them, a voice on the fog: “Too many have died, already. Leave the island now.”

  And the voice seemed to come in off the water. Chull-su was startled. Was he on the pier? or at one of the points which Chull-su had glimpsed earlier? Or down the beach in one direction or the other? He couldn’t be sure.

  The whole coast was engulfed in a soupy fog.

  “Magook,” he yelled. “You’re getting desperate, you’re getting scared, your luck is running out. Twenty men are hunting you. You cannot possibly get away. Give up.”

  Silence followed.

  ***

  After tethering his horse, Frank took an old frag grenade from the saddle bag and went to the submarine base. The buildings were now buried ruins, so the midget submarine was the only relic in sight. The “Type A” was a two-man sub, 24 meters long, and 2 meters in width. The conning tower rose roughly 2 meters from the hull.

  The beach dune was slowly claiming the old sub, banking up against and burying most of her starboard side. With snow piled on top of that, only her port side was completely exposed. A bomb blast had long ago ripped a large hole just below the conning tower which now provided access; you simply stepped in through the rent in the side.

  The old submarine railway was buried, but a ramp-like grade sloped down to the sub between snow-covered dunes. Korean tracks scribbled a busy sketch in the snow around the sub and ramp. He walked up onto the dune behind the tower and ducked down, burying himself in snow. Since the snow in the area was already stirred up, he didn’t expect the additional disturbance to attract any attention. And he waited.

  He didn’t like waiting for the action to come to him. It was axiomatic in the art of war that the side to stay behind its fortified line was always defeated. But guerrilla warfare had its own demands, and waiting was often one of them. Circumstances governed action. Neutralizing the enemy was the only issue; preferred method of warfare was irrelevant.

  He heard voices. Two Koreans came down the ramp. Frank saw them through a small peek-hole in the snow just above his rifle.

  He rose in the snow and swung his rifle over the conning tower. Hostile greeting awaited as the second man opened up on roaring automatic, swinging his rifle hysterically; flesh-seeking ammo ricocheted and scattered on the conning tower. Frank answered in kind: the blazing muzzle of his AK executed a small arc, the reports coming together as stark thunder. A rainstorm of ordinance made contact with the enemy, punching him backwards like he’d been hit with a jackhammer, socking and thumping him down, leaving him sprawled and terminated in the snow.

  The second man dropped to his knees and blasted away on full automatic, swinging his rifle from left to right. Frank squeezed off another burst, two slugs catching his forehead, a crimson mist settling on the snow behind him. Before moving on, Frank executed a tactical reload, slamming in a new magazine against a half-spent one.

  ***

  Hang Doo-hee was on point as they moved down the beach. His ears ached from the cold, but he didn’t want to dull his senses by wearing a stocking cap. He wore the military coat that he stole when he deserted the Korean army. He deserted after learning he was about to be arrested and court marshaled for assaulting a superior officer. In the Korean Army, he’d received numerous medals, and finally joined special forces, where he was trained by elite American advisors.

  He walked in front of Chull-su, his sick leader. The man deserved to die.

  Hang Doo-hee concentrated on listening and watching. He was hunting a living, armed enemy. The high couldn’t be matched. More than once he saw himself back in the demilitarized zone, conducting patrols, hunting communist infiltrators.

  He held his AK firmly, and due to the fog, moved the selector switch to automatic. When they came to the pier, they searched between and around the four floating pontoon cubes that rested nearby. Someone had been there and gone.

  Chull-su snapped his fingers. Hang Doo-hee looked over at him, and Chull-su motioned for him to check the pier. Hang Doo-hee didn’t like it. Waves had washed over the big dock and left ice. No tracks were visible on the ice. He had no idea what was out there, who was out there.

  The American was in his own territory and was killing Chull-su’s men. Hang Doo-hee scowled and slowly started moving down the pier. He moved slowly and carefully, one step at a time.

  He focused on survival. He was possibly entering a hot zone, and he felt the tension. The mental drain was tiring. In the DMZ, there were hot zones; he’d nearly died in one. He lived then, he’d live now. The American was formidable, but Hang Doo-hee would kill him.

  He moved slowly. After he’d gone a hundred yards, he could go no further. The pier had been ravaged by storms. The pilings leaned at angles as though they’d all been pulled over by some unworldly force. Hang Doo-hee didn’t know how much farther the pier went due to the fog, but given the tilt and the ice, he turned back. The fog was so thick on the harbor that he couldn’t even see the Pinisha, though he could hear the generators, and the ship wasn’t far off.

  Back at the beach, he shook his head at Chull-su , who pointed up the shoreline.

  Hang Doo-hee led the patrol up the beach. At one point he saw footprints in the rocky sand. The American had run at the water’s edge and wavelets had washed most of the prints away. If he turned inland, his prints would become visible. They never turned inland. He was on the American’s trail.

  ***

  Abby heard the voices echoing through the frosty, damp vapors. Hearing
Frank’s voice, knowing he was alive gave her purpose, renewed determination to find him, but she wasn’t sure which direction his voice came from. She kept replaying his ghostly tone and his ominous warning to the Koreans. She knew there were a lot of Koreans and suspected they were spread out all over the place. She didn’t know which way to go.

  She heard one man plead in Korean, his voice betraying fear and misery: “Someone help me.”

  There was no reply. It was eerily silent for a while then the same voice moaned out again. “My leg . . . I’m bleeding . . . help me . . .”

  Perhaps this last plea brought help. Abby heard no more of the wounded man’s pleading after that.

  Fortunately, she was still breathing after nearly coming face-to-face with one of those killers. But she wasn’t doing anything to help Frank. Her chances of even finding him were small. The area stretched far in all directions, and she couldn’t see more than a few feet.

  Better she hiked back up into the hills where she would be safer. Down here, there was nothing she could do but stumble around in the fog. Hiking back up the hill, she found her legs carrying her lightly. She’d gone perhaps fifty yards when she heard a voice--and it was uphill from her.

  “See anything?” the voice said in Korean.

  Another voice answered, “I’ve found tracks leading down toward the water. Let’s see where they go.”

  Abby missed a breath. The very tracks she was following uphill, the Koreans were now following downhill, right toward her. She turned and quickly started downhill. After only a few steps, she slipped and fell flat on her face. After wiping the snow from her face, she looked around for her gun. In the snow there were two sets of horse tracks, her own tracks, and the disturbance where she’d fallen. But her gun was lost under the snow.

  Frantically she dug in the snow, but she couldn’t find her rifle. She reached down into the powder and felt around with her arms. Nothing. Then it occurred to her. The gun had slid like a ski. But how far might it have gone? She made a guess of five or six feet and started digging there. She didn’t find it, and the men couldn’t be far away.

  She heard something. She stiffened, listened intently. The men were closer than she thought. There was no more time to look for her gun. She rose and started down the hill, hiking as fast as she could. She fell a second time, but got up and hurried on into the thickening vapors.

  She followed the horse tracks for lack of a better direction to go. Then she decided that if she turned in another direction, there was a fifty-fifty chance her pursuers would continue to follow the horse tracks and she’d lose them. So she broke away and headed down toward the water, hiking through the fuzziness of the island’s smoky stretches. The muscles in her legs burned. She slowed down to a more manageable stride since she might have to keep going for a long time. She’d gone quite a ways when she saw a big Korean emerge from the ghostly vapor.

  And he was looking straight at her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  After checking out the pier, Hang Doo-hee returned to the beach, where Chull-su and the others awaited him. His senses were heightened enough that if he made contact, his reactions would prove deadly. He assumed point, and the sweep continued. As he progressed down the beach, the terrain steepened. Soon he was moving along rocky cliffs over the water. And it started snowing.

  When Chull-su called Mok Don on the walkie-talkie, Hang Doo-hee stood lookout and listened. While they were waiting, Hang Doo-hee reached under his jacket and felt the dog tags on his necklace that rested against his chest. There were four dog tags, and he rubbed them together for good luck. One of the tags was his. The other three tags he took off North Korean infiltrators years ago after killing them in the DMZ.

  Mok Don came on the walkie-talkie. “What’s going on out there?”

  “We’re trying to flush him out,” Chull-su said. “We killed one and wounded the other. Murdoch is still alive.”

  “He better be. I want him now.”

  This mission stank. Hang Doo-hee didn’t like it when the enemy’s life was considered more valuable than his own. Not only that, he was guarding against an attack while Chull-su spoke too loudly. It angered Hang Doo-hee to think the American could probably hear the conversation, too. Chull-su was compromising their position. Easily a fatal mistake.

  “We have more casualties,” Chull-su said.

  “How many?”

  “Several.”

  “With twenty men you can’t get him?”

  “Of course we can.”

  “Murdoch is an assassin.”

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me?” Chull-su said.

  An assassin. Hang Doo-hee’s adrenaline picked up. He thought he was tracking a fisherman. Now suddenly he’s hunting an assassin.

  “Don’t question me,” Mok Don said. “I tell you what you need to know.” There was a pause . . . “I don’t care who he is; he can’t kill all of you. Bring him in alive.”

  “What about the wounded? Somebody will have to--”

  “Do your job.”

  “We’ll get him.” Chull-su stuffed the walkie-talkie into his pocket.

  Hang Doo-hee turned on Chull-su. “What makes you think you’ll get Murdoch? He’s already taken out several of your men.”

  Chull-su was looking angry. “What do you suggest?”

  “He may be dangerous, but I can kill him. I’ll lead the way. You follow me. Very slowly. And keep quiet.”

  “I’ll cover from behind,” Chull-su said. “Bae, you stay next to me. Won-song, you follow.”

  Wearing a black knit facemask, Bae’s head began shifting back and forth.

  “Some fisherman.” Won-song said, “We’re not hunting him, he’s hunting us.”

  Chull-su pointed at him. “Shut up.”

  “He’s killing us, one by one.”

  “Enough.”

  “You heard Mok Don. We have no idea who we’re dealing with.”

  “I told you to shut your mouth. You don’t respect Mok Don? You don’t respect DowKai authority?”

  Chull-su lifted his AK-47 and fired a burst into Won-song’s face at point-blank range. Brains and gore exploded out the back of his skull. The right side of his face was blown off before he hit the ground.

  Hang Doo-hee was shocked. His muscles tensed, ready to swing his rifle at Chull-su if he tried to take him out too.

  Chull-su glared over at him and gestured for him to get moving.

  Hang Doo-hee nodded, but didn’t like having this lunatic behind him. He moved slowly through the fog along the top of the cliff. Occasionally they heard some distant yelling of men, but mostly it was quiet. After a while they started seeing footprints all over. Hang Doo-hee slowed down even more.

  “It must be him,” Chull-su said. “There are footprints and horse tracks. We’re getting close.”

  “Freeze,” Hang Doo-hee said, holding up his hand to warn the others.

  “What’s going on?” Chull-su said.

  Hang Doo-hee looked back at him. “See anything unusual?”

  “Get to the point.”

  “If you want to live, keep your eyes open. See those trip wires?” Hang Doo-hee pointed.

  Chull-su took a few steps forward. He gestured to Bae. “Keep back, everybody.”

  Hang Doo-hee shook his head. “He strung the wires around that white stake, which he thought would blend in with the snow. Thought we wouldn’t see it in the fog; and if we did, and stepped over them, one of us would fumble and set off a charge. Wait here.”

  Hang Doo-hee followed the wires for thirty meters, where he found them attached to another white stake and two hand grenades. It was sloppy work: The snow was tampered with all over, and he spotted a poorly concealed land mine. There were probably several more in the area from the looks of the snow. Carefully he made his way back.

  “Looks like Murdoch set up a mine field over there. The mines are rusty, probably left on the island in World War Two. And the wires are attached to corroded hand grenades. I’m not s
ure if any of that stuff is still capable of detonating, but I don’t want to find out the hard way. There’s enough space over by the cliff to go around. The snow hasn’t been disturbed over there. Bae, you go first.”

  Bae nodded and started over toward the edge of the cliff. He looked back, his eyes wide open, peering through the holes in his knit facemask.

  Hang Doo-hee said, “Stay away from that stake. The grenades might still work.”

  Bae nodded again. “No problem. There’s plenty of room.” He hiked past the stake, very carefully moving along the edge.

  “Good,” Hang Doo-hee said--but suddenly the edge of the cliff gave way, and Bae screamed. In the blink of an eye, he disappeared down the edge of the cliff. The scream lasted maybe a couple seconds. Hang Doo-hee heard a soft thud and some tumbling rocks; after that, silence. Hang Doo-hee approached the edge and looked down. Bae was buried under a slide of snow and boulders.

  Hang Doo-hee returned to Chull-su. “He’s dead.”

  Chull-su cursed.

  “It was a snow cornice,” Hang Doo-hee said. “The edge was unstable there. The American knew it.”

  “You knew,” Chull-su said.

  “I suspected a trap.”

  Chull-su said, “You try and sacrifice me and I’ll put a bullet in your back.” He paused and looked around. “Let’s head back down to the beach. The whole area’s probably booby-trapped.” He cursed.

  “Keep your voice down,” Hang Doo-hee said. “We’re in the middle of a kill zone.”