Hunt the Dragon

by Don Mann

  Nan woke up suddenly at one a.m. in the bedroom of her temporary apartment, looked at the clock, and sighed. Today was her husband’s forty-seventh birthday, and she hadn’t heard anything more from the FBI, except that they had passed on the information she had received to the appropriate authorities. They hadn’t specified who those authorities were and what actions they were taking to rescue her husband.

  The FBI had asked her to keep the information she had received to herself, which she had. It amused her now when friends, family members, colleagues at work, and neighbors continued to relate their theories of what had happened to James—he had run off with another woman, he had taken his life because he was suffering from depression, he had been abducted by a cult.

  The questions she asked herself were more pertinent and troubling: Had the government demanded James’s release from North Korea? If the North Koreans refused, what action was the United States going to take? And why were FBI agents guarding her and Karen? She wanted to trust her government and decided that she would, even though she was by nature skeptical.

  Now she got out of bed in her cotton nightgown and walked on bare feet to her daughter’s bedroom. She sighed at the sight of Karen sleeping with a stuffed rabbit clutched to her chest and a framed picture of James on the pillow next to her.

  If there’s a silver lining or a blessing in all this, she said to herself, it’s that in a strange way this ordeal has pulled the three of us closer together.

  Crocker felt sick to his stomach as he looked over his shoulder at the tin-roofed hut on the bluff. Forty feet in front of him, Akil stood on the shore of the bay trying to push a wooden post low enough to free the metal chain around it that was attached to a small boat. The chain grated against the wood, but he couldn’t manage to push the post down far enough.

  Stealing the boat had been Crocker’s idea, but now he wondered if it was smart.

  “Try not to make so much noise,” he said to Akil as he watched him struggle.

  “You know a better way of doing this?”

  Absent a metal saw or other tool to cut through the chain, which they didn’t have, he didn’t.

  When Crocker cast his gaze back toward the dim light in the window of the hut, the muscles in his stomach contracted. The lion’s share of the rabbit he had captured and cooked earlier had gone to Dawkins and Sam. Then he remembered how he had tried to preserve those last four water purification tablets by putting half, instead of a whole one, in the gallon bag he carried.

  Bad decision!

  He started to scold himself and then stopped. He needed to focus. It had taken them six hours to descend to sea level. All of them were tired and weak. Sam was running a fever.

  Hearing the grate of the chain again, he turned and saw that Akil had manipulated the dock post to a forty-degree angle and was using the heel of his right boot to push the chain over the top. Crocker watched as Akil stopped, leaned over, and threw up into the water.

  Fuck!

  He crossed to help him, then turned to recheck the hut.

  “Let’s try together.”

  The combined power of Crocker’s arm and Akil’s leg pushed the chain free. Akil stepped down into the open boat, stopped, and leaned over the side like he was about to get sick again.

  “I think it’s the water in the bladder. Don’t drink it.”

  “Too late.”

  Together they fetched Sam and Dawkins. With them loaded into the boat, they pushed off and used the lid and bottom of the PRS kit to paddle into the bay. When they were a hundred meters out, Crocker couldn’t hold in the contents of his stomach any longer. Half a minute later, his stomach muscles contracted and his pharyngeal reflex activated again.

  This time nothing came up except a ribbon of bile. He rinsed his mouth with a handful of salt water and continued paddling.

  “When are we gonna try the engine?” Akil asked, his face appearing greenish in the moonlight.

  “Let’s get out farther. How are you feeling?”

  “Like shit. Why?”

  Another two hundred meters out, he squirmed past Dawkins and Sam, both lying on the bottom and already asleep, and pulled the cord to start the little four-horsepower Chinese Seanovo outboard. It coughed and ignited on the third try. Steering the boat south, he wondered how far the percussive pop of the engine would travel.

  A feverish feeling was coming over him. Minutes later, when Dawkins opened his eyes and reached for the water bag, Crocker stopped him.

  “Wait.”

  He reached into the pouch on his belt, retrieved a whole purification tablet, tossed it into the bag, sloshed it around, and handed the bag to Dawkins.

  “Give it another minute. Then it should be good.”

  He blinked into the sun that was starting to dip west, opened his eyes again, and shielded them. His body ached and felt hot, his head hurt, and his mouth and throat were dry. He drank from the two-thirds-full bag of water and looked around the boat. Dawkins sat in the middle, running a wet rag over Sam’s forehead and neck. Akil slumped in the bow of the twelve-foot-long craft with his legs propped on the side.

  How he could sleep or even rest in that position surprised Crocker. More importantly, the position of his body was pushing the little craft east. He corrected course south and tried to fix their position in the haze-filled bay. They appeared to be about a half mile east and three-quarters of a mile south of Ung-do. He made out the shape of the larger Ryo-do ahead, but couldn’t see the mainland. Judging from the picture of the bay he held in his head, they were almost parallel to Munchon. Another twenty or thirty miles, and they’d reach the south end of Hamgyong Bay.

  He lay with his back against the stern, holding the steering arm on the Seanovo to keep their course steady and let the sun draw the sickness out of his body. He dreamt he was riding his Harley down Route 29 past the town of Covesville in the Shenandoah Valley. Now he was passing some Monacan Indians, the tribe that had once mined copper from the hills nearby and tried to keep away from white settlers, who spread epidemics of smallpox and influenza.

  Feeling sick himself, he awoke to the sound of the engine sputtering. Dawkins looked anxious as the engine coughed one last time and stopped.

  “You want me to look at it?” Dawkins asked.

  “No point. We ran out of fuel.”

  It took some vigorous shaking to wake Akil. When he opened his eyes, he seemed disoriented. Crocker changed positions with Dawkins and fed Akil sips of water. He was running a fever, too, so he splashed cool water from the bay over his face and chest.

  “Where the fuck are we?” Akil asked.

  “Same place we were last night—Hamgyong Bay, North Korea.”

  Hunger gnawed at Dawkins’s stomach, Sam’s, too. Crocker told them to take sips of water and hold it in their mouths before they swallowed. He and Akil paddled, singing in unison, descending from ten thousand bottles of beer on the wall to zero as the chop tossed the little boat from side to side.

  They continued despite the wind, falling temperature, and lack of food. After the sky turned dark, Akil began humming an Egyptian lullaby over and over, and Dawkins and Sam fell asleep.

  When Dawkins awoke hours later, he saw the two men still paddling with the lid and bottom of the PRS kit. He couldn’t fathom how they had been able to continue this long. When he turned to ask Crocker how he felt, he saw his eyes were closed.

  The SEALs paddled all through the next day and into the night before they both collapsed from exhaustion. One minute Crocker’s arms and shoulders ached, and the next he was lying in bed with Cyndi, completely rested and pain-free, eating pancakes covered with butter and maple syrup from a wooden tray. Then the tray and bed shook as though the house they were in had been hit by an earthquake.

  He heard the wood crack, which jarred him awake a split second before the front of the little boat shattered on a sharp rock. Bracing himself, he saw Akil struggling to hold on as the boat pitched right. The splash cooled his face, and a second later he was
in the water, flailing his stiff, tired arms, trying to get them to work. Even in his weakened condition, he remembered why he was doing this—the mission, the freed hostage, their escape from North Korea. His feet touched soft silt and he relaxed. Cold surf slapped his chest. To his right, he saw Akil helping Dawkins to the shore.

  As these impressions coalesced, he scanned the narrow ten-foot-long strip of beach and a cliff above it covered with foliage. A voice in his head told him to look for a structure or lights. Then he forgot.

  They were lifting Sam and carrying him out of the water when Akil slipped. Crocker bent down to help him up, tasting salty water and resisting the impulse to drink it. They set Sam down on the sand. His head felt so heavy he could barely hold it up. In his mind he was reaching for something—the reason for being where they were, an idea of what to do next.

  Someone asked, “Where are we?” in a weak, pleading voice.

  He couldn’t answer. Leaves rattled above him. Through them he made out stars.

  Picturing Holly and Jenny standing over him, he awoke. The warmth of the sun felt good. An orange crab waited a few feet from his arm. He sat up and saw a man in a dirty shirt and black pajama pants squatting next to Akil and feeding him something from a ladle. He wondered if he was dreaming.

  “Akil?” His throat was dry and caused his voice to crack.

  The man with the ladle pivoted his head toward him. He looked old, withered, and Asian.

  “Where are we?”

  Crocker slapped a fly off his wrist. His body begged to sleep, but something told him not to. He fixed his eyes on the yellow bucket. The man kneeling beside it muttered something that didn’t make sense.

  He heard Akil moan “More.”

  “More what?” he asked.

  Akil turned and looked at him sideways. His eyes were red, his neck and face covered with thick, dark beard, and his forehead was chalky gray.

  He thought he heard Holly say, “It’s okay. You can rest now.” But when he blinked again, she wasn’t there. Looking at his blistered bare feet, he pushed himself up.

  “Akil, what’s going on?”

  He found his boots in the sand near where he’d been sleeping but couldn’t find his belt.

  “Akil, who took my weapon?”

  “You didn’t have one,” Akil replied weakly. His lips were badly cracked. “I did. Besides, he’s friendly.”

  “Who’s friendly?”

  The word didn’t make sense.

  He woke up in a dark place. Thin ribbons of sunlight peeked through rough boards. Someone handed him a plastic cup.

  “Drink this. Drink it slowly.”

  He didn’t recognize the man’s roundish face. The liquid brought his body alive, but it didn’t feel good. Pain and nausea radiated from inside him.

  “Drink.”

  It tasted sweet. He wanted to be alert.

  “Drink slowly. A little at a time.”

  The man looked familiar. Wisps of brown hair fell over his high forehead.

  “Dawkins?”

  “Yes.”

  He saw a gray wolf staring at him. He stared back. It licked his face.

  He sat leaning against something. Someone was running a wet cloth over his forehead. He opened his eyes and tried to focus.

  A man said, “See if you can get more water in him. Then feed him some rice.”

  “I’ll try.”

  He sat alone in a boat on a lake. Someone was calling him from a distance. He heard his voice skip over the water. A light blinded his eyes.

  A candle was burning. In the glow he saw Sam’s face. He was sitting up next to an Asian boy who was holding a red plastic rectangular device that looked like a Game Boy. The boy pushed the buttons at the bottom of the screen and the device made funny noises.

  A wave of information hit his brain at once, causing his head to hurt. “Sam?”

  “Yeah, boss. How you feel?”

  “Better, I think. Where are we?”

  “We’re safe for the time being.” Sam pointed. “In that plastic bag in front of you is a bottle of water and a plate of food.”

  “Yeah?”

  “We got some into you earlier, but you need more.”

  He untied the knot in the plastic bag, removed the bowl of rice and chopsticks, and started to shovel food into his mouth. When he took a long drink of water, his stomach felt like it was going to burst.

  “Slow is better,” Sam said. He crinkled his eyes and then returned them to the little screen. Crocker thought he hadn’t seen him looking this happy and healthy in a long time.

  “How’s your ankle?”

  “Hee cleaned it up and rebandaged it. She gave me some ginseng and herbs to battle the infection.”

  “Who’s Hee?”

  “Dang’s wife. He’s the guy who owns this little plot of land. He’s away now working at a farming cooperative up the road. He and his son, Ju, found us yesterday.”

  Crocker shoveled more rice into his mouth. “Where are we exactly?”

  “About eighteen miles south of Wonsan, still in North Korea.”

  It started to come back to him, the mission, the SDV, the crash. “How far are we from the border?”

  “Somewhere between forty and fifty miles. We did good.”

  “Akil and Dawkins okay?”

  “They’re in the main house helping Ju’s sister with something.”

  “How sure are you that we can trust these people?”

  “About sixty percent. They’re real nice, and they’ve been hospitable, but Dang confided to me that if we’re still here when the soldiers come around, he’ll have to report us. Otherwise they’ll kill him and his family.”

  “How likely is that to happen?’

  “He said patrols come through here at least once a week. Sometimes as many as three times. It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Rumors. Reports.”

  Crocker finished the bowl of rice and fish and set it aside, then took another long gulp of water.

  “How long have we been here?” he asked.

  “A day, more or less.”

  “We’d better leave soon.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  The next night Crocker presented Dang with forty of the hundred dollars he kept in the sole of his boot. The four Americans thanked him and his family, and set off through a field of new wheat with the moon over their shoulders.

  Dang had advised them to move farther inland and avoid the coast, which he said was more heavily patrolled. The KPN was constantly on the lookout for South Korean naval vessels and North Korean refugees escaping south. For that reason, the prospect of the Americans commandeering another boat and reaching South Korea by sea wasn’t good. Furthermore, as Dang explained, the currents along this part of the coast were particularly strong and the waves high, because they were no longer in the bay.

  So they walked slowly in single file, Sam for the time being hobbling on crutches Akil had made for him. Dang had also supplied them with a piece of canvas tarp that they could use as a makeshift stretcher when Sam got tired. Each man carried a plastic bag containing more plastic bags filled with rice and pickled fish, a large bottle of water, and something Dang had called doraji, which was bellflower root brined in vinegar.

  It felt good to have a calm, full stomach and to be moving again. For these two things, Crocker was enormously grateful to Dang and his family. They were another example of a phenomenon he had experienced in war-torn parts of Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. In all of those places, he had come across generous, decent people who had no allegiance in the local conflict and whose basic humanity trumped religious, cultural, and political differences.

  Now, as he walked, he asked God to bless them with abundance, happiness, and health.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  And lead us not into temptation,

  but deliver us from evil.

  —The Lord’s Prayer

  They had camped in a thicket at
the base of a hill and slept for several hours. As the sun started to rise, they were attacked by swarms of flies and mosquitoes, and a very foul smell that blew in from the west. Despite the discomfort, Crocker determined that it was too dangerous to move. Not until he scouted the area. So while Dawkins, Sam, and Akil covered themselves with the blankets and tarp and tried to rest, he set out alone.

  It was an overcast spring day of moderate temperature with long streaks of gray in the sky—some dark, others taking on an almost lavender hue. The sweet smell of wildflowers and new leaves was blotted out by thick, disgusting rot whenever the wind blew. It caught in Crocker’s throat as he peered from behind bushes to look for signs of human life. Saw no houses, roads, or farms to the south or west. His view north and east was hindered by tall trees two hundred meters away.

  Using whatever he could find for cover, he picked his way west to the base of a hill covered with the same red pines they had seen on the peninsula. The hill rose several hundred meters, with a rough, rocky base and no trails or roads leading upward.

  As he used a branch to pull himself up, two jets ripped through the sky. He traced their dark profiles under the layers of cloud.

  MiGs of some sort, he thought. Ridiculous fucking country.

  Dang had explained that while the government spent most of its money on its million-man army, navy, and air force, a sizable segment of the estimated twenty-million-strong population was starving. He, his wife, and son were lucky, Dang said, because not only did he earn a modest salary as assistant manager of the local government farming cooperative, but they also grew crops of their own on their little plot of land. Especially in the northern part of the country, thousands of adults and children died each year from malnutrition. Thousands of others succumbed to dehydration and dysentery, which they got from eating roots, leaves, or cobs of unripe corn.

  Sick, Crocker thought as he climbed three-quarters of the way up and started to circle south. Isn’t the first responsibility of any country to take care of its people? Sure, protecting them is important, but what’s the point of protecting them if they’re starving to death?