Feedback

by Cawdron, Peter

  Sun-Hee's brother rummaged around behind the seat for a while before emerging with several sets of headphones. He tried to hand a pair to Lee, but Lee yelled above the noise, saying, “You're going to have to put them on for me. With this hand, I can't put them on and fly at the same time.”

  Sun-Hee's brother leaned across the cockpit and slipped the headphones over Lee's head, catching his ears awkwardly and twisting the cartilage. Lee plugged the loose cord into a phone jack and Sun-Hee's brother copied him. Jason had a pair of headphones on as well, but his weren't plugged in. Glancing over his shoulder, Lee could see the young boy was fascinated by their flight. He peered down at the landscape rushing by beneath them.

  Lee held the control stick between his legs and adjusted the microphone on the side of his headphones before explaining his thinking.

  “At night, a helicopter can be heard for anywhere from two to five miles, depending on altitude and wind conditions. By heading North, we're misleading them. Hopefully, it will take them some time to respond, and when they do start looking for us, we want them to look in the wrong place. This should confuse the fuck out of them!”

  Sun-Hee's brother nodded, smiling. The North Koreans Lee had met so far seemed to shrink from profanity, but Sun-Hee's brother clearly understood what Lee meant and seemed to approve. Lee smiled as well, happy that his comment had helped put the soldier at ease a little.

  “Look at the lay of the land,” Lee added. “There are several valleys running east to west. The shadows get deeper to the west as they lead down toward the sea. We'll drop down below radar and follow one of them out to the ocean.”

  “And pick up Sun-Hee?” the brother asked.

  “No,” Lee replied. “We'd never make the border. We need to ditch the helicopter. We've got to draw our pursuers off in a feint, double back and leave by sea. If we can get them looking in the wrong direction, looking for the wrong mode of transport, we just might stand a chance of getting out of here alive.”

  A soft hand rested on Lee's shoulder. Jason couldn't have heard what was said, but he seemed to be expressing his gratitude for their escape.

  Lee breathed deeply.

  For the first time since he'd been captured, he had the luxury of relaxing. He was still nervous, but flying was second nature. To be cocooned within the familiarity of the cockpit of a helicopter was understandingly soothing for him. A slight vibration came through the cyclic control, renewing the ache in his hand, but it was an ache he welcomed, one he wouldn't try to avoid. He was flying, free. Freedom itself lay a long way off, but to feel the pulsing downdraft of the rotor blades with their steady rhythm was deeply reassuring.

  “What's your name?” he asked the brother.

  Lee thought he had perhaps five to ten minutes before the North Koreans were able to mount an aerial response. Right now, the biggest temptation he faced was to react too quickly and give away their true intention. He began a slow descent. Something that would be barely noticed on the radar, something that would be incidental rather than important to the various radar operators who were undoubtedly tracking their northward progress. His faux heading had to be convincing, so he made small talk with Sun-Hee's brother, wanting to settle the butterflies in his stomach.

  Sun-Hee's brother didn't reply.

  Lee looked sideways at him, looking to see if he'd heard him. The young soldier looked back. He seemed distracted. The enormity of what he'd just done was probably only now setting in. There was no going back, and that must have weighed heavily on the young man.

  “Seung-Chul,” he responded reluctantly.

  “Well, Seung-Chul. It's nice to meet you.”

  There was silence for a few seconds. Lee eased his descent, feeling he was rushing. The helicopter continued to race forward, but the downward motion was slight. In the distance, Lee lined up a gully roughly a mile or so ahead that appeared to wind its way down to the lowland.

  “What made you do it?” he asked, adjusting his rate of descent, wanting to bottom out at ten to twenty feet above an open paddock at the base of a sloping hill. By his reckoning, he figured they were two minutes out. Lee was careful to keep his airspeed consistent so there was no indication they were changing heading as they dropped below radar. A forest lay to one side with a large mountain beyond that. With any luck, it would look like they'd crashed at the base of the mountain.

  “Honor.”

  “Honor?” Lee replied, genuinely surprised by Seung-Chul's response.

  “Grandfather said he would not rest until you were free and honor had been satisfied.”

  Lee nodded.

  Seung-Chul continued, saying, “Debts must be repaid. Anything less would bring shame and misfortune. Grandfather demanded you be freed. I told him, this would cost us our lives. He said he didn't care. I told him, you must take us to America. That was the only way I would agree to help.”

  Lee smiled, understanding what Seung-Chul meant. His words were hyperbole, an exaggeration. America was too far away to be literal, but to the North Korean mind, South Korea was as decadent and extravagant as the USA. With US troops stationed across the border, just to make it below the 38th parallel would be akin to reaching America. For Seung-Chul, America meant freedom. Freedom was what he wanted. In rescuing Lee, he saw a means of escape for him and his immediate family.

  “And Sun-Hee?”

  “She is well,” he replied, with a deferential nod of his head. Apparently, nothing more needed to be said on the subject. “She and grandfather await us with a fishing boat in a cove beyond the village.”

  “Good. Good,” Lee replied, noting the way the trees to his right swayed in the downdraft of the helicopter. Judging distances at night was never easy. Rather than relying on depth perception, he sought to use the trees, paying careful attention to how the branches at various heights swayed differently. He could see across the treetops. A few more feet and they would drop below the level of the tree tops, which he figured put them roughly thirty feet off the ground.

  “Hold onto the boy,” he said. “From here on out, the ride's going to get rough.”

  Working with his foot pedals, cyclic control and the handbrake-like collective, Lee brought the chopper through an arc to the left, turning west. Normally, he would have allowed the helicopter to drift into a high, banking arc that ensured good ground clearance, but they had to stay under the radar. Now, time was of the essence. Whatever aerial resources the North Koreans had deployed would be screaming in toward this point. He had to put some distance between them, and quickly.

  Lee opened up the throttle, tilting the helicopter forward and racing along barely twenty feet above the undulating grassy meadow. He slipped into the gully, keeping to the moonlit side. Their shadow was slightly ahead of them, giving him a good visual indicator of their height.

  Seung-Chul had turned to one side. He had his shoulder over the back of his seat, holding Jason firmly as the chopper swayed from side to side in the darkness, following the contours of the gully as they sped through the night.

  “Some cloud cover would be nice,” Lee mumbled to himself, forgetting he was transmitting. Seung-Chul must have heard him, but he didn't respond.

  Lee's eyes scanned the distance, noting the subtleties of the terrain, observing how the river wound its way through the widening gully. He had to anticipate obstacles like trees and cliffs well in advance.

  At the breakneck speed they were tearing through the gully, his reaction time was roughly two hundred yards. If he hadn't responded at least two hundred yards before he reached a bend in the river or a stand of trees, it was too late and he knew it. His mind was focused. He barely blinked. Every muscle in his body was tense. The helicopter responded to the slightest twitch of his hands, the softest touch of his feet. In that moment, he and the machine were one.

  The angle of the moonlight caused the landscape to look skewed. Shadows stretched to one side, obscuring the actual height of the trees lining the banks, making them look monstrous and hideously d
istorted. The river swelled in places, providing plenty of space for the helicopter. In other sections, it narrowed to no more than ten to fifteen feet wide, forcing him to pull up above the trees.

  For the most part, the hills on either side were well above the helicopter, hiding them from any airborne search. At least there were no power lines, he thought. If he'd tried this stunt in South Korea, the all but invisible power lines would have cut the chopper into strips of metal ribbon.

  The gully opened up into a valley, forcing Lee to fly in the dark shadows. There were places where he had no depth perception and no points of reference. In those areas, he eased up on their forward speed, wanting to give himself more reaction time. Against his desire to stay concealed, he eased higher out of necessity.

  Not knowing where the North Korean radar stations were located or what search pattern the air force would adopt, he had no way of knowing how effective or ineffective his measures were. For all he knew, they were already following him. They could be sitting a thousand feet up watching his pathetic attempt at escape, waiting for him to put down, or holding off and observing as other air units converged on them.

  Lee breathed in short bursts. His heart pounded. His concentration sharpened, focusing on the grainy view before him as his eyes strained to make out details in the dark.

  He saw a fishing village well before he got to it, but there was no advantage in changing course. By the time he recognized the dark shape of the huts nestled together on the bank of the river mouth, it was too late. They would have already heard the helicopter. There was nothing for it but to keep going.

  The hills parted, revealing the broad, flat expanse of the sea.

  As they passed low over the village, Seung-Chul said, “It is OK. They have no radio, no phone.”

  “Is this your village?” Lee asked, easing the helicopter to the left, following the southern shoreline and speeding away above the crashing waves.

  “No. It is Byul-Ma-Ul. It is perhaps ten kilometers north.”

  “OK, that's good.”

  The helicopter was low enough to kick up spray with its downwash. Lee knew that that would make them more visible, but since the village had no way of contacting anyone, there was no point hiding from them. It was aircraft and radar that worried Lee.

  They rounded the peninsula. Lee was tempted to cut across between the finger of land jutting out into the ocean, but the further he strayed from land the more likely it was they'd be picked up by radar. Instead, he cut back in, continuing to follow the shore as he weaved his way to the south.

  “Where's this cove? Where will your grandfather be?”

  “It is hard to tell at night,” Seung-Chul replied.

  Lee wanted to swear, but he didn't. The young soldier had probably never seen the area from the air, let alone at night.

  “Can you describe the cove?” Lee asked, slowing his speech, aware his mind was racing as fast as the helicopter. Patience was needed. “Is it to the north or the south of your village?”

  “To the north.”

  “OK,” Lee replied. “That's good. I can work with that.”

  The coastline turned on itself, angling back toward the open sea. They followed another sprawling peninsula, mostly denuded of trees. Jagged rocks and broken cliffs marked the landscape.

  “What else?” Lee asked

  “There's a cliff,” Seung-Chul replied.

  Lee had seen plenty of cliffs.

  “How would you get there from your village?”

  “To get there by land, we would follow the road north along the ridge for maybe five or six kilometers. The cliff has a sheer drop into the water, but there is a pebble beach to one side. A path leads down to the beach.”

  There was no way Lee was going to be able to spot a path from the air in the dark, but the description of the cliff face was good. Most of the cliffs he'd seen had been formed by landslides or had rocky boulders at their base. Very few dropped straight into the ocean.

  “Is the cove facing the open ocean? Or does it run along the peninsula, facing the far shore?”

  “It faces the ocean.”

  “Shit!” Lee cried, realizing they'd just passed the cove as they rounded a rocky outcrop on the headland. They'd begun heading back along the far side of the peninsula. He pulled the chopper around above the land, gaining height as he turned back on his path. There, anchored not more than a hundred yards off shore was a small fishing vessel, just a black dot floating on the waves.

  “Look,” he said, pointing at the beach. Someone was standing on the beach beside the darkened outline of a rowboat. The man ran for the tree line as Lee brought the helicopter down, setting the craft on the pebbles. He eased the helicopter in, kicking up spray as the chopper touched down.

  “Listen,” he said. “I need to ditch this chopper out there in the water. Our escape depends on stealth. If they find this helicopter sitting on the shore, they'll know where we left from. I'm going to have to sink this thing.”

  “OK,” Seung-Chul replied.

  “Take the boy with you. I need you to pick me up out there, OK?”

  “OK.”

  Seung-Chul opened the cockpit door and a blustery cold downdraft whipped around the cramped cabin. Seung-Chul took Jason's hand, pulling him out. At first, Jason resisted, pulling away from the North Korean soldier.

  “Go!” Lee cried. “It's OK. I'll join you.”

  Reluctantly, Jason followed Seung-Chul onto the pebble covered beach. They sheltered themselves, hiding their faces from the hurricane whipped up around them by the rotor blades as Lee took to the air again.

  Lee took the helicopter out over the water. He turned, watching as Seung-Chul met with the man on the beach. That had to be his grandfather.

  Lee watched as Jason climbed in the rowboat. He wasn't sure who climbed into the boat with Jason and who pushed the boat back out into the waves, but within a minute, one of the two men was rowing the boat toward the fishing vessel bobbing on the ocean.

  “Well,” Lee said, working with his foot pedals, easing back on the controls and positioning the helicopter roughly fifty feet away from the fishing boat. “This never gets any easier.”

  He unbuckled his three point harness seatbelt. He hadn't even been aware he'd strapped it on inside the North Korean army camp, but he had out of habit. Now, he was focused on doing whatever he could to free himself from the helicopter once he'd ditched her. He'd been dragged beneath the waves once before and he didn't want to go through that again. Holding the control stick between his legs, he pulled the headphones off and tossed them to one side.

  The rowboat reached the fishing vessel. Jason climbed aboard. His small frame was easily distinguishable in the dark.

  “It's now or never,” Lee said to no one in particular. What he was about to do ran against everything he knew and counter to every safe choice he'd ever known about flying. Ditching in the ocean was dangerous at the best of times. There was no right way to conduct a controlled ditch. If there was, he'd never heard of it. He decided his best bet was to set down lightly, as though he were landing on the beach again.

  Easing the helicopter down, Lee watched as the chopper skids dipped beneath the water. He lowered the chopper further until the water lapped at the door.

  Lee kicked the door open, wedging it open with his boot as the cold water lapped in around the foot pedals. Breathing deeply, Lee powered down the chopper, cutting the power to the engine just as he would if he'd set down on land.

  The chopper began to sink, gently slipping beneath the waves as the rotor blades still whizzed by above the cockpit.

  Water poured in through the open door, chilling him.

  Salt water soaked through the bandage on his hand, searing the wounded stubs where his fingers had once been.

  Lee froze.

  He couldn't leave the cockpit until the rotor blades had stopped turning. The helicopter twisted as it sank, with the open cockpit door tilting down toward the bottom of the ocean. Water rose u
p around his neck and head, forcing him to take one last breath. The chopper shuddered under the torque as the rotor blades struck the water, and that was his cue. Lee pushed off, diving down and out of the cockpit.

  Something caught around his boot. The cord from the headset had wrapped around his left foot. He struggled, shaking his foot as the helicopter plunged into the depths, dragging him deeper. Although the laces on his boots were undone, he couldn't shake the boot loose. Using his other boot, he managed to pry his foot free, and kick toward the surface.

  His lungs were burning as he burst up through the waves.

  Lee's clothes were soaked. The heavy overcoat he was wearing began dragging him back down into the murky sea. With only one good hand, Lee struggled to stay above the choppy waves. He choked on a mouthful of water.

  Suddenly, a hand grabbed him by the collar. He twisted, turning, grabbing at the rowboat and kicking against the ocean. It took him almost a full minute before he managed to clamber into the boat, dripping with sea water. Lying on his back, gasping, Lee looked up into the grinning face of the old man he'd seen in the hut.

  “Thank you,” Lee said, coughing and spluttering.

  “It is we who should thank you,” the grandfather replied with a smile, resting his hand on Lee's shoulder.

  Chapter 16: Escape

  After a four hour drive, they pulled up next to a fire station in North Bend. A faded wooden sign outside announced the name of the suburb: Windsor Park.

  Twilight cast a warm glow over the distant hills. A community baseball diamond across the street had its floodlights on. Parents sat on metal bleachers watching their children play on the grassy field overlooking the sprawling Coos river. The North Bend nuclear power plant sat on the edge of a wide s curve in the river.

  “Stay here,” Lachlan said, getting out with Stegmeyer and Vacili.

  Vacili was quiet. As a cameraman, being introverted probably came with the territory. Jason had seen him filming, running digital video backups and uploads from his laptop, but he had barely said two words to him in the last day. Vacili appeared to be content recording history rather than participating, but the fact that he was there spoke volumes. The very act of accompanying them was dangerous, and he could spend the rest of his life in a federal penitentiary just for being present. Jason preferred not to think about that too much.