Red Phoenix Burning (14 page)

The artillery barrage had stopped, but while Rhee was telling the others about their new orders, Ma, still on lookout, reported, “Column approaching from the southeast.” He said it softly, but Rhee could still hear the excitement.

Rhee ordered Ma and Oh to start packing while he and Guk studied the approaching troops. It was a classic armored attack, with a wedge of tanks in front, followed by armored troop carriers. All right, Rhee realized. The barrage hadn’t been badly planned harassing fire. It was a badly timed preparatory barrage. It should have lasted longer, until the advancing troops were much closer to their objective. It was supposed to keep the defenders’ heads down.

But the defenders were definitely not suppressed. Antitank emplacements with 130mm guns were firing at the armored spearhead, while antitank missiles leapt out toward the lead vehicles. The tanks started to take hits, while somewhere behind the attackers, artillery—heavy mortars from the sound—began dropping smoke and high-explosive shells onto the defenders.

Although Rhee had been ordered to leave, he found it almost impossible to look away from the fight before him. They had a perfect vantage point from which to watch the attack. Both sides were using outdated equipment, all of Russian design, then either copied by the Chinese and sold to North Korea, or made by North Korea herself. North Korean copies of Sagger antitank missiles were blowing up Chinese copies of T-55 tanks, while Russian M-46 field guns from the Cold War blew up equally old Russian-built BTR-60 armored personnel carriers. He thought about the slaughter that would happen when his army met its antiquated, poorly trained opponent.

That’s right, tear yourself apart
, he thought grimly.
Fewer DPRK soldiers for us to deal with
. He took one last look, trying to note losses, and turned to help Ma and Oh with the packing. He told Guk, “Keep a sharp lookout all round.”

Even as he packed, his mind tried to find a solution to their impossible orders. It was a little more than thirty kilometers to the spot on the coast where they’d cached their swim gear. He’d planned to use twilight and all night to cover that distance, swimming out to the submarine just before dawn. It would have been a hard march, but possible.

Now, they had to cover that same distance in seven hours, in full daylight, and the clock was already ticking. Softly but triumphantly, Master Sergeant Oh announced, “Finished!” He looked expectantly at the colonel.

By rights, Rhee should have huddled with the team to go over the plan. Instead, he asked Guk, “Anything moving to the northwest?” That was the direction they’d come in from earlier that morning. The battle raged to the east. Guk answered, “It’s clear.”

“Then let’s go. I’ll lead.” The grove from where they’d observed the battle extended around the side of the hill and touched a gully on the other side. Moving in daylight without the night vision gear was easier and faster, but they had to pause more frequently to check for observers. Their North Korean uniforms might prevent them from getting shot at on sight, but it was better not to be seen at all.

A road behind the hill they’d used forked both north and west. They’d come in along the north fork last night. This time they’d head west, toward the coast.

It had taken fifteen minutes to get down the hill, and behind him, he could almost watch the others doing the math. This was taking too long. They reached the edge of a copse of trees, and Rhee knelt to check the terrain ahead. Master Sergeant Oh knelt close behind him and whispered, “Sir, what’s the plan?”

“Don’t get seen, don’t get shot,” Rhee answered, and scanned the road ahead with binoculars.
There. That’s the plan
. “There’s a vehicle at the crossroads ahead. That’s our ride. Pistols ready.”

Rhee stood, straightened his uniform and cap, and walked out of the copse toward the crossroads. The others followed in column, rifles slung.

The junction between the northern and western roads was garrisoned by three soldiers and a political commissar, a lieutenant, who spotted the approaching party and saluted crisply.

“Report,” ordered Rhee in his best command voice, as he returned the lieutenant’s salute.

“Lieutenant Kang Yong-suk, on post as ordered at 1100, no traffic, one deserter captured.” The lieutenant gestured with an expression of disgust toward the back of the vehicle. A single corporal, dirty and bruised, sat in the back of a UAZ-469 utility truck, gagged, with his hands tied. “He’s from the Second,” the lieutenant explained, indicating the regiment that was attacking. “He was trying to slip past the checkpoint.”

Rhee nodded and turned, but instead of approaching the prisoner, used the movement to conceal drawing a knife. He suddenly turned back and buried it in the lieutenant’s side, just under the rib cage, and angled up. The young officer collapsed. The other scouts were farther away from their targets, and fired their silenced pistols almost simultaneously. None of the North Koreans even had a chance to ready their weapons, much less get a shot off.

After they’d searched the corpses for documents, Rhee ordered, “Put the bodies in the back.” All four then climbed aboard, and with Guk at the wheel, drove over to a clump of trees and dumped the bodies.

With the evidence of their crime concealed, Guk turned the vehicle around and took the western fork in the road. Rhee navigated, while Corporal Ma and Master Sergeant Oh sat on one side in the open back of the truck, facing the astonished prisoner. They’d ignored the deserter the entire time; still bound and gagged, he had watched the team’s actions with horror and fascination. He stared wide-eyed at the commandos.

Oh finished checking his pistol and met the prisoner’s gaze. “Shut up.”

“There’s probably another checkpoint at the next junction, about seven kilometers ahead,” Rhee said. “Be ready to shoot, but I’ll use the lieutenant’s orders and see if we can bluff our way through.” After Guk nodded his understanding, Rhee repeated his instructions to the two in the back.

Rhee sat in the cab, feeling the warm air flow past him, and compared it to their covert progress before. They were covering much more ground, although at greater risk. He’d hoped to find a checkpoint and hijack a vehicle. He just hadn’t expected to do it so quickly. But that had created a new question. What to do with the deserter? To Rhee, the answer was obvious.

“We’re taking the prisoner with us,” Rhee announced suddenly. Surprised, Guk let up on the accelerator pedal for an instant, then refocused on his task. The lieutenant paused for a moment before saying anything, which Rhee thought showed both wisdom and self-control. Rhee added, “We use the same flotation bladders we had on the equipment when we brought that ashore. We don’t even have to untie his hands.”
Although they probably would
, Rhee thought.

“And there’s room on the submarine,” Guk added, tacitly concurring. The vessel that had brought them to the coast, and would be waiting for them tonight, had room for over a dozen commandos, although a dozen would find it cramped. Five instead of four would not be a problem.

The local road, a two-lane graveled track, headed west. It was rough enough to keep their speed down, perhaps forty kilometers and hour, but it was much, much faster than walking. It crossed another road where Rhee had predicted they might run into trouble, but the junction was unoccupied, and they sped on. The next junction did have a checkpoint, but when they spotted Rhee’s uniform and rank, the soldiers braced and saluted, then waved them through.

They were almost halfway to their objective. The next road junction was near the coast, and Rhee enjoyed a quiet moment as they drove. The fields in this area were tilled, and the crop of potato plants was nearing maturity. Rhee couldn’t see anyone working them, though. He wondered if the farmers had fled or had been killed. He couldn’t believe the crop would be wasted in this starving country.
But by the time it’s ready to harvest
, Rhee reminded himself,
the South will be able to help
. Things were about to change.

A thump on the cab’s roof was followed by Master Sergeant Oh’s warning. “Movement on the left ahead. In the field.”

“Keep up your speed,” Rhee ordered, and scanned the low plants. There. He saw long shapes that might be soldiers lying in the rows of green leaves. Guk faced straight ahead as Rhee used binoculars, not only to check the left side of the road, but the right as well. Were they driving into an ambush?

He knew Oh and Ma in the back were ready for anything, but was also conscious of how exposed those two were, although the sheet metal cab offered little protection. Rhee searched the right side again. Nothing. “Be ready to floor it,” he ordered.

“Understood,” Guk answered. He had both hands on the wheel and was braced. They entered what Rhee thought was the kill zone, fifty meters away, and then they were past the spot.

The lieutenant had started to relax, breathing out in a long whoosh, when Rhee ordered, “Stop the truck!”

Guk stood on the brake pedal and Rhee bailed out the right-side door, shouting, “Ma, Oh!” He’d seen a flash of color and made a snap decision. As he came around the back of the truck, Rhee saw figures in the field spring up and run toward a distant wood line. Oh and Ma were already vaulting out of the truck and sprinting after them. Rhee called, “No weapons! Take them alive!”

Now behind the truck with a clear view, he could see two adults, towing a child as they ran. The man swung the boy, five or six, up into his arms and their speed increased.

The chase ended halfway across the field, where Ma tackled the slower woman. The husband hesitated, and Oh reached him, pistol drawn. He raised his hands as Ma pulled the woman to her feet. The adults were quickly searched, and their hands were bound behind them with zip ties. Oh got them started back toward the road, with Ma carrying the struggling child.

The adults were both in their late twenties. The man wore a white shirt and tie, and it was the white color in the field that had caught Rhee’s eye. The woman wore a skirt and drab green blouse, and heels, which certainly had not helped her cross-country performance. As the group passed the spot where the family had lay hiding, Oh picked up a cloth bundle.

Rhee could imagine their thoughts. They had been spotted and captured by the army. Their fate was sealed. Both the woman and child were crying, fearful. The husband’s expression shifted from fear to worry to anger and then fierce control.

As they reached the truck, Rhee gestured to Oh and Ma to load them in the back. The civilians’ eyes widened first at the sign of the battered soldier, gagged and bound, and then gasped at the bloodstains on the truck bed. The mother, barely coherent, begged for mercy, while the man offered unspecified valuables if the woman and child were released.

Taking their cue from Rhee, the soldiers said nothing, but were as gentle as they could be getting the civilians into the truck. Rhee got in the back with them and Master Sergeant Oh. He told Ma to ride in front.

In an attempt to lower the noise level, Rhee drew his knife and cut the woman’s bonds, then gestured to Oh to give her the child. The pair clung to each other, still tearful, but silent. Rhee uncapped his canteen and offered it to the woman. With only a moment’s hesitation, she took a sip herself, testing it, then helped her son take a drink, then a longer one, before taking another herself. She passed it back to Rhee with an expression that combined gratitude and fear.

The truck was moving again, and Oh passed their identity documents to Rhee. They were indeed a family, and the husband was a municipal official in Chongju. They lived in town. While Rhee checked their papers, Oh searched the small bundle. He opened it for Rhee’s inspection to reveal a sheaf of North Korean won, some Chinese yuan notes, a few rings, and a GPS device.

The man, silent until now, tried again to bargain with the commissar officer, almost pleading as he tried to explain why they were hiding in the field as the army vehicle passed. Rhee remained silent, and kept his expression unsympathetic. Finally, the child, exhausted, fell asleep.

The major, with his truck full of prisoners, was passed through the next and last checkpoint with a salute, and they headed toward the coast. He’d been expecting to arrive here on foot, and Rhee had to consult the map to find places where they could hide a large vehicle. A farm building a few kilometers from the shore was the most likely spot, so Rhee had Guk drive the truck as close to the shore as possible. After it was unloaded. Guk would take it alone to the chosen location, conceal it, and then come back as fast as he could.

By now it was late afternoon, but there was still time for Guk to make the trip and be back before sundown. The truck stopped and Guk and the others quickly unloaded, while Rhee kept watch and checked the map one last time. Oh and Ma led the prisoners, in single file, down toward the beach, while Rhee handed the map to Guk and said, “I’ll see you soon.”

Guk saluted and smiled, then jumped into the cab and roared off. Rhee hurried to join the fearful but confused captives as they picked their way across the uneven ground. While Ma and Oh watched the prisoners, Rhee kept watch toward the road. There was no traffic, and it soon disappeared from view as they descended into a gully that led to their cache.

While the two enlisted men recovered the swim gear, Rhee studied his captives, sitting on the ground. He imagined the thoughts going through their minds, but derived no pleasure from sustaining the mystery. Until Guk returned, which wouldn’t be soon enough, the prisoners could not know the team’s true identity.

They took turns keeping watch out to sea, as well as landward. It was almost an hour later that Ma, on lookout near the crest of a grass-covered dune, whistled and held up a thumb. Five minutes later, a winded but cheerful Lieutenant Guk tumbled down the slope and saluted, reporting, “Done.”

With a sigh of relief, Rhee drew his knife and cut the ties on the now thoroughly confused prisoners. Dropping to one knee and facing the group, he said, “In spite of these uniforms, my men and I are soldiers from the South. We will be leaving soon,” he pointed out to sea, “on a submarine that will meet us offshore. If you come with us, you will be safe, although you will be questioned.” He didn’t bother mentioning that if they didn’t want to come, they couldn’t be allowed to live. In the corner of his eye, he saw Guk, standing casually with his weapon at rest, but angled toward the prisoners, just in case.