by L. J. Martin
“Wait, wait, wait No military? We’re both jarheads from time past. You said two former SEALs and a lady squid—“
“‘Former’ is the operative word here...thus the cover.”
“So, what’s the cover?”
“The Pueblo.”
“A village?”
“No, dummy—the Pueblo. You remember: the former spy ship captured by North Korea.”
“Yeah, I remember. So, how’s that a cover?”
“While we’re kicking around north of the 38th parallel, we’re going to sink her.”
“Sink the Pueblo?”
“Sink the Pueblo. You remember the old bosun’s mate who’s coming with us? He’s actually Filipino. His daddy served aboard the Pueblo and spent a year in a North Korean prison. He’s dead, but his dying words to his kid were ‘Sink the Pueblo.’ The old man had studied the situation since he was released in 1969. He knew more about the Pueblo and her current location than anyone alive, including the CIA. He wanted her sunk, and his kid has picked up the mantle. The old man and the kid, if you can call a fifty-seven-year-old a kid, even studied the Korean language so they could sneak back in and blow her all to hell. And the kid is half Korean, from his mama’s side, and married to a Korean.”
“So, the North Koreans are using the Pueblo as a spy ship?”
“Nope, as an attraction and, to the embarrassment of the United States, as an example of western imperialism and the military superiority of North Korea For a few wons, you can visit her and laugh at Imperial America. The dead old man was head of a Sink-The-Pueblo organization, and his kid is now its president…more than four thousand dues-paying members…most Navy or ex-Navy, I understand.”
Pax has to smile. “So, as a distraction, we sink her and make America happy. I presume she’s tied up somewhere?”
“Yep, but sinking her might be a bit of a problem, as she’s on piers, permanently mounted next to a dock on the Potong River. She’ll sink, though, after we blow her bottom and her supports.”
“Oh, Ollie, what the fuck have you gotten us into this time?” He’s shaking his head, but with a crooked grin. I merely shrug, so he continues. “How much did you say, again?”
“Ten million.”
“Ain’t enough,” he says.
“What the fuck do you care? Odds are we’ll never make it back, and Uncle Sam won’t have to pay up. We’ll be consoled to know we haven’t added to the national debt—not.”
“A comforting thought. Thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
“When?”
“We leave tomorrow for Marine Camp Kinser on the west coast of Okinawa to meet up with the other volunteer crazies and get some training in a joint CIA/military facility. It seems since the fat little prick, Ding Dong, or whatever his name is, started launching wannabe ICBMs and building the big bomb, we have a training facility that replicates a typical North Korean village...and that’s where we’re headed.”
“Ah, so, grasshopper. Can’t wait.”
“Which only demonstrates your lack of even the most simple logic and reason.”
“Learned all I know from you, Reardon.”
“Which ain’t much,” I reply and hand him one of the North Korean CIA handbooks I’ve been given and a Conversational Korean-English dictionary. “So here’s some more learnin’ for you. Study up, and then pack light—very light, as we’ll be provided local duds. Needless to say you’ll get some new rags at Kinser. And I’ll get the latest in North Korean pajama wear.”
While Colonel Cho, North Korean State Security Department, watches his every move and examines every item of clothing and document he packs, Kim Hyun-hee silently seethes. He is angry, and for a very good reason. Even though he holds the honorable position of North Korean Ambassador to China, a position considered even more important than Ambassador to either Russia or the United States, he’s been removed from his former position as director of nuclear development, a position he was trained for and one he considers of strategic importance to the very existence of North Korea. But far more important, he fears the fact Supreme Leader Marshal Kim Jong-un has appointed his brother-in-law, Moon Kyung, to his former position. He is as young as and maybe even more impetuous than Kim Jong-un. And he is known to be shockingly unqualified.
The tiny country of North Korea, even with the world’s fourth-largest army, is centered between the world’s superpowers—China, Russia, and the United States.
One false move, and that fourth-largest Army could be destroyed with the push of any of three red buttons.
And the most tenuous of those are on the desk of China’s General Secretary of the Communist Party, Xi Jinping. Supposedly North Korea’s staunchest ally, China is the country they most fear. Kim Hyun-hee knows that one slip on his part, even the slightest irritation of Xi Jinping, and he, his wife, and two daughters will end up in one of Dear Leader Kim Jong-un’s re-education camps. In fact, as he packs to attend an international symposium in Belgium, his daughter, Sen Mi-ran, and granddaughters, Mi-na and Hye-ja, are packing to be the guests of Fang Chan-dong, the Director of K Camp 1, near Kaechon. Guests—prisoners—to guarantee his return from Belgium.
No high government official travels from North Korea without his immediate family being detained, in order to guarantee his return.
As Kim Hyun-hee seethes, he begins to relax. If all goes well, this is the last time he’ll be packing a bag under the stern eye of a Colonel of North Korea’s State Security Department, an organization like America’s CIA, responsible for foreign activities.
The last time.
2
It’s a little more than sixteen hours from Camp Pendleton to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa in a C-5 Galaxy, and we are soon to discover that, although the onboard food is fine, the Marine Corps still provides no booze. They haven’t gotten any more civilized since Pax mustered and I was thrown out. Not to be out-maneuvered, my forward-thinking amigo, Paxton Weatherwax, was clever enough to pack an oversized flask with twenty ounces of Jack Daniels. The jarheads are civilized enough to have ice and glasses, even if plastic.
We’re being escorted by a uniformed Navy cop wearing a U.S. Navy Master-at-Arms shield and a serious attitude, who’s so uptight you couldn’t drive a sixteen-penny nail up his butt with a sledge. But other than furrowing his brow deep enough so that we could plant a medium-size bonsai, he says nothing when each of us tops ice with three fingers of Jack until the flask is drained and we sleep, more than merely semi-shitfaced, in the uncomfortable tilt-back seats. There are a half-dozen other personnel onboard, but they are forward, and a few tons of generators and other equipment is secured aft.
My first time in Japan.
Okinawa is lots of multistory concrete buildings, both apartments and commercial, lots of them only two to five stories or so, lots of electric and phone lines, and like some other island countries I’ve visited, above-ground burials of the dead in crypts, which tells me there’s a very shallow water table.
We catch a ride in a battleship-gray Navy bus and are escorted to the rear, again with several vacant seats between us and a few squids in the front.
And like other countries with our military bases, it’s only high fences, a gate, and guardhouse separating a Japanese city from an American one. Except for a dozen pickets near the gate and a Toyota police car with a bored officer eyeballing the pickets, nothing seems out of the ordinary.
As we cruise onto the base, with typical housing of four stories and looking a little more like a prison cell block than base housing, I feel a little trepidation. Kinser was named for a young sergeant who threw himself on a grenade to save his buddies during WWII and who was posthumously awarded a Medal of Honor. We may be throwing ourselves on a figurative grenade for our country—and ten million bucks, which makes the effort way, way, way less honorable.
And if we disappear, no one will know of our effort. Maybe they’ll name an outhouse after us, but I doubt it. Caca happens.
The bus stops at the curb
in front of a building that’s windowless and at least forty feet tall. On the approach, I could see it was a few hundred feet deep, and I can see as we dismount with our small duffels—we were instructed to bring only the most personal gear—the building is twice as long as it is deep. There must be eighty acres under roof. The friggin’ building is so big it probably makes its own weather.
The Master-at-Arms opens a pass-through door into a darkened space, and, to my surprise, the cop closes it behind us without entering.
Several guys in odd, but I imagine, local dress—but white, black, and brown guys, not Japanese—ignore us, and we move forward to a lighted door out of which comes a stubby, swarthy Italian- or Greek-looking guy half a head shorter than either Pax or me and also in Korean native dress, and gives me a tight smile and extended hand as we near.
Someone from nearby yells, “If it ain’t USMC, Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children.”
“Reardon?” he asks, and I nod and smile, but my smile fades as his turns to a smirk. “I’m Commander Guido Garino. I hear you think you’re some kind of bad ass?”
Now that surprises me even more than the cop not following. Garino takes my hand and pumps it a couple of times, and then jerks me forward; the shit hits the fan as the guys we’ve passed are on us from behind. I’m good in an alley fight, but I’m taken completely by surprise and am pummeled to the hard-concrete floor by knees, elbows, and fists; a hood is over my head and my elbows sucked together behind me before I can get in a decent blow.
What the fuck?
I can hear Pax behind me, calling these guys some names that are likely not endearing them to us; then his voice is muffled, as if someone has stuffed a sock in his chops. Not wanting someone’s dirty laundry in mine, I grit my teeth and stay quiet as they roll me on my back, hoist me, drop me on a hard surface up off the floor, and strap me down. They make the mistake of strapping my chest first, and I raise my knees all the way up against my gut, and instinctively drive both feet into a voice to my left and feel them both bury into some guy’s gut. He oofs, and, before I can take much pleasure, the blows rain down on me again, and three guys have my legs pinned and strapped; I feel a towel pulled tight across my face.
“Now, tough guy,” a voice growls, “let’s see if you’re half as tough as you think you are.”
It goes on for what seems an hour but is probably no more than fifteen minutes, as four or five times I feel as if I’m going to pass out and know I’m drowning. I can hear Pax in the distance, coughing and spitting. He’s stopped cursing the boys, and I’m glad he has, as I don’t think we’re in any position to antagonize them more.
Finally, it stops, and the towel and hood are removed. I’ve been water boarded.
I’m gratified to see one of them, a black guy who’s even bigger than Pax or me, sitting on a folding chair, eyes bulging, still holding his gut.
The stubby, swarthy guy is grinning at me.
“Untie me, and I’ll put that stupid grin down your throat,” I snap at him.
“You guys are okay, but I ain’t untying you until you swear to be a good boy. Former jarhead Recon, so we hear?”
“You hear right, asshole.”
He laughs. “That would be ‘asshole, sir’ to you, but since you’re now a fat, lazy civilian, you’re forgiven...” He laughs again and then adds, “We’re about to go to chow. You can come with us, or you can stay here and wait for another bath. Your choice.”
Not a lot to choose from. Stay strapped to a bench full of splinters or go to chow.
“Chow,” I say, and hear Pax being given the same options. He wisely chooses as I do.
The straps are loosened, and my adrenalin level recedes.
Swarthy extends a hand. “Garino,” he says, still grinning.
“Reardon. That’s Weatherwax.”
“We know. And that’s the last time you’ll hear it or use it. From now, on you’re ‘Cheech,’ and he’s ‘Chong.’ But we’ll shorten you to ‘Chee,’ as it’s more Korean.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
He laughs. “And your buddy called us lots worse. In case you don’t get it, we’re your backup. And it helps if we respect you and actually give a shit what happens to your dumb ass. We don’t gotta like you, but if we lay it on the line for you, respect matters.”
“Justifiably,” I say.
We start moving away, Pax surrounded by a half-dozen guys, as am I.
Garino talks as we walk. “You guys are now cousins. Stay strong, and you’ll be our brothers before you leave here in ten days for downrange. We’ll be taking nothing but Korean from now on, Chee...except for some educational lectures.”
I smile for the first time since opening the door to this artificial world, as we enter a village built inside the building. A village with dirt-and-brick-like streets and clapboard-and-paper houses. If I had any idea what a North Korean village looked like, I’d swear we were in one.
“Downrange,” I say to Garino, “might be a cakewalk after hanging with you assholes.”
He laughs. “That’s the idea, Chee.”
3
Lunch isn’t rice and fish-heads, as I suspected it would be, but it isn’t much better. We are given a generous ten minutes to down a bowl of fried rice and that iconic Korean dish, kimchi—fermented vegetables. A rather rancid cabbage, in this instance, with maybe radish and some orange chips that could be carrots. It is all washed down with a weak version of the Korean national drink, soju.
Garino informs me in careful Korean and helps me with my translator until I figure out we’d likely have soju that was much stronger when in-country if we have a chance for a drink, as much as one hundred proof.
They walk us out of the village to a classroom, also in the huge building, and begin speaking English as soon as we enter.
Garino waves me over to the desk at the head of the classroom, where an Asian guy sticks out his hand and says, “I’m Bojing, your instructor for the next few days and then your team member. Friends call me ‘Bo.’ I know who you are, so you and Weatherwax take a seat, and we’ll get started.”
“See you at 1500,” Garino says and heads for the door.
“What then?” I call after him.
“A leisurely stroll around the obstacle course.”
“Whatever,” I say.
He laughs. “This is your last easy day, cowboy.”
“What-the-fuck, over,” I say and find a seat at the head of the class, next to Pax.
Bo holds a laser pointer and turns it to one of five bulletin boards and two blackboards, all filled with maps and pictures.
“Gentlemen,” he says, “you’re about to get the first cram course in all things ‘NK.’”
And he begins.
“North Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which we’ll call ‘NK’ to speed things up, is a country of forty-six thousand five hundred square miles...for comparison, that’s one fourth the size of California. Pyongyang is the nation’s capital and largest city. NK is bordered on the north by China and by Russia along the Amnok and Tumen rivers, and to the south by the Republic of Korea, separated by the heavily fortified Korean Demilitarized Zone. On her west is the Yellow Sea and on her east the Sea of Japan.
“She has a standing army of one point two million and an armed reserve of nine and a half million. The small country of twenty-eight million or so has the fourth-largest army in the world—“
Pax can’t help himself and interrupts: “So, we send in five guys, and, not counting the reserve, they’re out numbered two hundred thousand to one.”
Bo gives him a tight smile. “This, as you well know, is a surgical operation to extract three women. With luck, and if you’ll pay attention, there won’t be a shot fired. Now, may I continue?”
“Be my guest,” Pax says, returning the tight smile. Then he adds, “I’ll interrupt only if I know my buddy here doesn’t understand.”
“Very amusing,” I say, but Bo ignores us and continues.
&
nbsp; “At the beginning of the twentieth century, Korea was annexed by the Empire of Japan. After the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II in 1945, Korea was divided into two zones along the 38th parallel by the United States and the Soviet Union...”
As he talks, he’s using a laser pointer on a map.
“...with the north occupied by the Soviets and the south by the Americans. Reunification was attempted but failed, and in 1948, separate governments were formed. The north became the socialist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and the south, the capitalist Republic of Korea. North Korea, wanting reunification, invaded the south, which led to the Korean War. The Korean Armistice Agreement brought about a ceasefire, but no peace treaty was signed. Technically, they’re still at war.
“North Korea calls itself a self-reliant socialist state and formally holds elections. They, of course, are a joke. Critics regard the north as a totalitarian dictatorship. Various media outlets have called it Stalinist, noting the elaborate cult around Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994. He is the country’s ‘eternal president.’ Kim Jong-il, known as ‘eternal General Secretary,’ father of the current jerk, died in 2011. You know, like in China, the family name is first—‘Kim,’ in this instance. And ‘Kim’ is as common in NK as ‘Smith’ and ‘Jones’ in the USA.
“The fact is the country is a totalitarian nightmare. The worst human rights record in the world. Too many violations in North Korea to count. The Workers Party of Korea, led, of course, by a member of the ruling family, yields almost absolute power in the state and leads the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland, of which all political officers are required to be members.