by Martin Limon
Il-yong squirmed in panic. I craned my neck and pulled him up and placed my mouth on his. Gently, I breathed air into his lungs. He sputtered and coughed but then came back for more. We were still drifting downstream but not fast enough. I started grabbing rock outcrops above me to pull myself along. Il-yong wanted more air. I kept hoping that we’d reach the end of this tunnel any second, but when I realized that we wouldn’t, I bent forward and tried to blow more air into his mouth. It didn’t work. He was squirming now in total panic. The last of my air escaped upward and bubbled away. I clawed forward-cursing the people who’d written that ancient manuscript, cursing Il-yong’s mother for taking me down here, cursing Eighth Army for sending me to North Korea-and then finally, grasping forward for the next handhold, I missed. No rock. I panicked, but then I realized that there was nothing left to grasp. The tunnel had ended.
I kicked forward and finally got my head above water. It was pure darkness, but at least I was breathing. I rolled on my back, floating. Il-yong wasn’t moving. Desperately, I swam toward the side of the current and finally hit rock again. I pulled myself up as far as I could, tilted Il-yong’s head back, and gently blew air into his mouth. Nothing.
Something splashed behind me. I stuck out my leg, a body rammed into it, and then hands clawed up my pant legs. I couldn’t see her face, but from the feel of her body I knew it was Doc Yong.
“Light,” I shouted. “Quickly. We have to get him on shore.”
She clambered over me, kicking and shoving, not worrying about hurting me. I heard her hands shuffling through her backpack and a light switched on. At first I was blinded, but I recovered quickly.
“Here,” I said, “take him.”
She reached down and pulled him up. I clambered after them and reached a gravel-strewn beach. I ripped Il-yong out of Doc Yong’s hands and held him by the ankles upside down. Water cascaded out of his throat. Then I cradled him in my arms and gently blew air into his lungs.
Nothing.
“Do something,” I said.
Doc Yong ripped him out of my arms, turned him over, and pressed her fist into his stomach. More water poured out. She blew into his lungs, again and again. After what seemed like a lifetime, he coughed.
Then he was crying.
Doc Yong hugged him and cried and finally reached out one hand and enveloped me with her arm around my neck and we were all crying.
13
The cavern was honeycombed with tunnels. There were dozens of dead ends that fell precipitously into rushing waters, tunnels that climbed up and then down and appeared to have no end, and tunnels made of loose rock that could fall and crush the unwary explorer. In fact, many people had been mangled in this nightmarish underworld. We spotted skeletons, probably half a dozen of them, some surrounded by brass studs and amulets that must once have been fastened to leather garments. When we swiveled the beam of our flashlights, skulls grinned up at us. Daggers and swords lay rusting. One of the skeletons was so ancient that when I touched it with a stick, it crumbled to dust.
Before leaving the underground river, we had dried ourselves as best we could and changed into the dry clothes Doc Yong had kept wrapped in plastic. Despite the darkness and freezing cold that enveloped us, Doc Yong’s mind was as sharp as ever. She had committed to memory the instructions contained in the ancient manuscript and slowly, painfully, we made our way through that unholy pit. The turns never seemed to end. Sometimes we were climbing up, sometimes sliding down. I wondered if we’d lost our way, if she was just afraid to tell me. With an effort, I pushed such thoughts away. We trudged forward in silence.
Occasionally we stopped to rest. And when we did, I watched and listened. No sound behind us. No traces of light. Senior Captain Rhee Mi-sook and her minions hadn’t followed us into the underground river. None of them wanted to commit suicide. She probably assumed we were dead. When I was sure no one was following, we resumed our trek.
Finally, we saw starlight, glimmering through a small opening. It took us two hours of steady work, hoisting jagged rocks and tossing them aside, to finally expose a passageway wide enough for Doc Yong to climb through. Once she was out, she started pulling away rocks from her side. When we thought it was safe, we shoved Il-yong through, and I followed.
At last, the three of us stood on steady ground, breathing fresh air.
“Mount Daesong,” Doc Yong said.
Above us loomed jagged granite. Below, a valley glowed with a thousand lights. Electricity everywhere. A ribbon of road snaked off into the distance, automobiles and buses crawling along it like illuminated insects.
South Korea. We’d made it. We were safe.
Il-yong cried for a while, but eventually, tied securely to his mother’s back, he fell asleep.
We made our way downhill, Doc Yong bracing herself by leaning against me when possible. When we finally reached the outskirts of the first village, people looked away, afraid that we were spirits of the dead emerging from the mountain.
In a way, we were.
The voice of the Charge of Quarters at the barracks was barely audible through the phone lines. He said, “Who is this again?”
“Sueno,” I shouted. “Staff Sergeant George Sueno. I need to talk to Bascom. He’s in room 15-A.”
“Hold on, I’ll check.” Footsteps clomped down a noisy hallway.
I was exhausted, barely hanging on. The wound in my calf throbbed painfully. During the excitement in the tunnels, I hadn’t felt it at all, but now it was back with a vengeance. For a second, darkness clouded my vision, but I fought it off. Five minutes later, the CQ came back. “Not in.”
“What?”
“Bascom’s not there. His roommate says he’s out in the ville.”
I should’ve known. Still reorienting myself now that I was out of the tunnel, I realized that it was Friday night.
“How about Riley?” I said. “Staff Sergeant Riley.”
There was a long sigh of exasperation. “Hold on. I’ll get him.”
Three minutes later, a gravelly voice came on the line. “Sueno, is that you?”
“It’s me.”
“You son of a bitch! Where the hell are you?”
“In a village called Daesong-ri.”
“In North Korea or South Korea?”
“South, you idiot. You need to have Ernie hop in the jeep and come out here and pick me up.”
“He’s out in the ville.”
“So go get him.”
“Okay.”
Riley was befuddled. And not sober. I gave him directions and made him write them down. I told him I’d be in a yoguan, a Korean inn, called the Inn of the Righteous Dragon. “You got all that?”
“Got it.”
Sober, Staff Sergeant Riley was one of the most efficient men I knew. Half-looped, he was hopeless.
I hung up, thanked the woman who owned the inn for the use of her telephone, and returned to our room. It was a warm ondol — floored cubicle and Doc Yong had already rolled out the sleeping mats. Even though we had no South Korean money, Doc Yong had concocted a story of us hiking on Mount Daesong, getting lost, losing our money when we fell into a stream, and borrowing these tattered clothes from farm folk. She spoke Korean in such a cultured way that the proprietress had been sure she was talking to a woman of substance. She consented to hold our bill until our friends arrived with money from Seoul.
We’d already eaten in our room, a warm bowl of udong noodles accompanied by steamed rice and cabbage kimchi. Il-yong played with a metal spoon while I told Doc Yong that Ernie would probably make it out here by about noon tomorrow.
“I don’t want anything to do with the South Korean police,” she said.
“I know that,” I told her.
She loathed the South Korean authorities, seeing them as true traitors of their people. The people who ran South Korea now were the same people, literally, who’d worn Japanese military uniforms and hunted the Manchurian Battalion through mountains and valleys during the Japanese co
lonial period, when Doc Yong’s parents had dedicated their lives to freeing Korea from foreign oppression and slavery. Although as an orphan she’d grown up in South Korea, Doc Yong had never lost her disgust for the Japanese collaborators.
Another complicating factor was that Doc Yong was wanted for murder.
Shortly after the Korean War, a group of thugs had taken over Itaewon, the red-light district of Seoul, and ordered the murder of those who opposed them, including Dog Yong’s parents. She’d been six years old. Almost two decades later, Doc Yong and other sympathizers from the Manchurian Battalion took their revenge. One by one, the thugs, who were now prosperous businessmen, were found hacked to death and lying facedown in pools of their own blood. That’s why Doc Yong had been forced to flee to North Korea.
But now we were back. Somehow I had to get her off the hook for that crime and at the same time convince the United States to reinforce the Manchurian Battalion before they went under. I wasn’t sure how I would do it. I just knew I had to.
The next morning, I was standing outside the Inn of the Righteous Dragon when Ernie’s jeep rounded the corner.
Ernie was driving slowly, unlike him, peering out the side of the jeep, searching for addresses. I ran forward, waving my arms. Ernie turned off the ignition and hopped out. We stared at each other.
“What the hell happened to you?” Ernie asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You look like shit. Your face is sunburnt, your arms and legs are all cut up, and even from here I could count your ribs.”
“I lost a little weight.”
“I’ll say. Didn’t they feed you up there?”
“Sometimes.”
Ernie turned back toward the jeep. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“There’s a couple of people I want you to meet.”
I led Ernie into the inn.
Il-yong liked him right away. They played a game where Ernie hid a coin and Il-yong squealed with delight when he occasionally managed to grab it. Doc Yong knew Agent Ernie Bascom from before, when she’d been in charge of the women’s health clinic in Itaewon. As part of our duties as Criminal Investigation agents, we’d worked with her on many cases, mostly involving young women who were raped or otherwise abused. In the past she’d been cold to Ernie, barely tolerating him in fact, but this time she ordered him to sit down in front of her and made him swear never to report her presence to anyone in the South Korean government. He swore.
After paying the bill, we hopped in the jeep and headed back to Seoul. Doc Yong sat in back, clutching Il-yong, terrified-I thought-by the opulence she saw around her. The neon signs, the whizzing traffic, buses full-to-bursting with people commuting to and from work. The noise, the honking, the whistles. The shops packed with food and radios and televisions. The gaudily painted movie marquees. None of this was part of life in North Korea. In the “people’s paradise” workers stayed put, living either near their factories or in them. Nobody commuted. Nobody had cars. Traveling was considered suspicious activity. Disloyal. Here, everyone was on the move. The bustling city of Seoul was disorienting to me too. People hurtling this way and that. There didn’t seem to be any order to this society. I wasn’t sure I could get used to it.
That afternoon, we found a place in Itaewon for Doc Yong and my son to stay. After they were settled in, Ernie drove me to the Yongsan Compound. First we stopped at the emergency room of the 121 Evacuation Hospital and a medical aide there redressed my wounded leg and gave me a shot of something to keep the swelling down. Then we went to my room in the barracks where I was greeted by a few of the guys I knew. I showered and changed into my dress green uniform.
A half hour later, I reported to the J-2, the Chief of Military Intelligence for the Eighth United States Army, U.S. Forces Korea, and the United Nations Command. Within minutes, a meeting was convened and a row of officers sat on a dais before me. One of them was Major Bulward, the man who’d led my briefings before I’d departed for North Korea. The senior officer was Colonel Yancy, Chief of Intelligence for Eighth Army.
“They want what?” Colonel Yancy peered at me, his blue eyes incredulous in his puffy red face.
“Ammunition,” I repeated. “Weapons. Medical supplies. It’s an insurrection, sir. The Manchurian Battalion wants to lead the fight against the Dear Leader. They don’t want him to inherit power from his father. Others will join them, like the Second Corps commander in the Hamgyong Province.”
“And how do you know this?”
“Bandit Lee told me.”
“Who’s he?”
“The leader of the Manchurian Battalion.”
My debriefing continued like this for hours, Eighth Army wanting mainly to know where the tunnel was, but I refused to tell them. Not until I was promised two things. First, a commitment that they’d supply ammunition and medical supplies to the Manchurian Battalion. With helicopters, the supplies could be flown right across the DMZ and dropped near Mount O-song. This suggestion was received with resounding silence. Second, that Eighth Army would obtain a full pardon from the South Korean government for the charges that had been lodged against Doctor Yong In-ja before she’d fled north.
Naively, I expected immediate compliance. Maybe they’d court-martial me later for trying to run my own foreign policy, but right now they were under pressure to act. After all, any delay could endanger the first armed uprising that Kim Il-sung’s regime had faced since taking power in 1948. Surely, if they practiced what they preached, if-as we’d so often been told-the godless North Koreans were the worst threat to Western civilization since the Black Plague, the anticommunist honchos of the Eighth United States Army would want to help. When they dissembled, I was appalled.
“They’re dying up there,” I told them. “Maybe they can hold out for a few days. Maybe only a few hours. We have to act now.”
“We understand your concern,” Major Bulward said.
“It’s more than concern,” I said. “They’ll be slaughtered.” I thought of the men of the Manchurian Battalion who’d risked their lives to rescue me from torture. I thought of the people who’d so generously nursed me back to health, who’d taken care of my son, who’d protected his mother from harm. “We have to do something!” I said. “We have to act now.”
But no one acted. Negotiations dragged on. Gradually, it dawned on me that they weren’t going to act. Instead, they kept hammering me for information on the tunnels. I kept refusing. Demanding now, in writing, the two things I wanted. Resupply for the Manchurian Battalion and freedom for Doc Yong. I was threatened with not only court-martial but also being charged with every crime in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Still, I’d been around military law enforcement long enough, and the uses and abuses of power in the Eighth United States Army, to know that when you have a bargaining chip, you don’t give it up. Not without ironclad guarantees.
And I had the tunnels.
Enraged, Colonel Yancy restricted me to the compound. For security reasons, he told me. But the real reason was that after having spent so much time in North Korea, and after having expressed views sympathetic to the Manchurian Battalion, the honchos of Eighth Army no longer trusted me. If they ever had.
Now, with the suspicion that had so unexpectedly turned my way, I wouldn’t have left the compound anyway. I didn’t want anyone following me to the hooch where Doc Yong and Il-yong were staying.
I did manage to break free from my briefings for long enough to make it over to Eighth Army Finance and collect the back pay that was due me. I’d never had so much money in one chunk in my entire life. Some of it I converted to won.
At night, Ernie took the money I’d converted and a few things-baby oil and fruit juice and cartons of powdered milk-out to Il-yong and Doc Yong. He took a circuitous route and promised he’d watch for anyone tailing him. I longed to go with him but dared not. Who knew what spies were lurking? It was too dangerous. Not only could I be court-martialed for violating my restriction, but, without a pardon, if D
oc Yong were arrested, she might spend the rest of her life in a South Korean prison.
After two days, it was apparent that Eighth Army wasn’t going to budge. They weren’t going to provide ammunition and medical supplies for a group of fighters whom they considered to be Communist bandits and enemies of their allies in the South Korean government.
Still, they wanted the information on the location of the tunnel. I refused to give it to them. They eventually did what I’d been expecting, formally threatening me with court-martial.
“That’s why we sent you up there,” Major Bulward told me. “To gather intelligence for the United States of America. You’re under orders to provide that information.”
Still, I refused.
The federal penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth was a long way away. In the wheat fields of Kansas. But if I had to go there to protect Doc Yong and my son, I’d do it.
Strange told us to meet him at the “snatch bar.” It was actually the Eighth United States Army Snack Bar. GIs called it the “snatch bar” because occasionally a young soldier managed to form a liaison with one of the American female civilians or dependent teenage daughters who frequented the busy cafeteria. Of course, when one did, he’d blather the news all over the barracks.
Strange was the NCO in charge of classified material at the headquarters of the Eighth United States Army. I didn’t believe he was one of those lucky GIs. Not with his potbelly, receding hairline, and cigarette hanging limply from a plastic holder. Still, he thought he was Mister Cool.
“They’re not buying it,” he told me.
“Buying what?” Ernie asked.
“Sueno’s bargain. He wants his girlfriend let off…”
“She’s more than my ‘girlfriend,’ ” I said. We’d been through too much together for our relationship to be brushed off so easily.
“Okay,” Strange said. “Whatever she is. And you want the tunnel used to send weapons and ammunition to this Mongolian Battalion…”