possible for the U.S.-ROK forces to retake the DMZ, the American troops that liberated the Uijongbu POW camps and set the then emaciated Tae free had come too late for Tae’s family. His wife and eight-year-old son had been strafed and killed, his nineteen-year-old daughter, Mi-ja, captured, betrayed by a boyfriend, Jung-hyun, who, an active member of the SFR— Students for Reunification — had talked her into the huge student demonstrations against the Americans that had preceded the NKA invasion. Jung-hyun, like so many from the SFR, was now believed by the U.S.-ROK intelligence to be an NKA officer somewhere in the North.
Now, amid the roar of battle, looking down on the wind-flattened green of the rice paddy, Tae was braced to jump but knew he must wait — watching long, dense trails of white smoke rising from where the Cobra escorts had dropped smoke canisters to curtain off the paddy from the thick scrub on the northern side of the east-west ditch. The scrub was erupting with dust from the fragmentation rockets and tracer from the 7.76-millimeter, so powerful, it was cutting saplings clean through, branches trembling, then flung to the ground, creating more dust, on fire and adding to the smoke.
Tae lifted his squad automatic weapon and waved the six other men to follow him out. Heads lowered, rivulets of water spreading away from them through the violently shivering grass, the men spread out, the splashing sound of their canvas-topped boots lost amid the whistle of bullets and machine-gun fire coming from beyond the scrub through the smoke screen, the shuffling noise of the big 120-millimeter mortar adding to the scream of the Hueys’ engines as the choppers hovered a foot or so from the ground while they unloaded, bullets thwacking into the fuselage. But Tae was unafraid, already well ahead of the squad, traversing the ditch and, to the other squad members’ astonishment, going straight over its protective wall into the thick smoke cover.
“Jesus!” shouted one of the air cavalrymen. “He’s crazy!”
The soldier was right. Something had happened to Tae the night that the North Korean major had brought in what he called a
Tae had withstood the initial beatings, steeled himself enough to get through the unrelieved panic of the NKA soldiers holding him down, one of them stuffing a filthy rag, stinking of gasoline, into his mouth, pushing him underwater, then tying him to a chair, blindfolding him, suddenly tipping the chair back, catching it, setting it upright, tipping it back again to increase the panic. And men, as four men held him, another taking the pliers to his testicles. But his last torture had its own answer — a half second after they began, he blacked out. They’d left him for two days — back in his cell — giving him plenty of time to think about the pain next time, his strength fading, his only food a scum-rimmed rice cup of watery soup, a small piece of rancid meat flung into it. It was white and they told him it was fish, but he knew it wasn’t, having seen dozens of rats scampering through the cells and feeling them scuttling over his face and stomach during the night. When they brought him into the tent the third day, the major had asked him if he had enjoyed the meal. Tae, his arms pulled back and pinned by the guard, looked at the NKA major and, with his voice hissing through the broken teeth and raspy from dehydration, replied, “Very much. Thank you.”
“I’m glad you did,” said the NKA major, walking over and smiling down at him. “It was one of your allies.”
Tae did not believe him until he was dragged back into the cells again for refusing to identify any of the KCIA section chiefs. He knew that the NKA guards, as UN troops had discovered in another Korean War long ago, were regarded as the cruelest possible captors, surpassing even the brutality of the Japanese. Still, he was not prepared for what he saw. A white man, limbs tied to an upright mattress frame that was propped against the shell-pocked remains of the Uijongbu Catholic church, was being used for bayonet practice — the man still alive. It turned out that the man was not one of the Swedish UN observers from the DMZ but a young American from a signals corps captured near Uijongbu. What Tae remembered most about the man was how long it had taken him to die. A squad of NKA militia, having cut a crude U.S. of A. flag on his stomach, had bayoneted him again and again, literally disemboweling him, then, once he’d been cut down from the frame, hacked him to death, in the same way as in the 1979 “incident” when NKA troops had stormed across the DMZ and murdered two Americans who had been trimming a tree for a better view across the line.
The next evening, Tae had been taken back to the dimly lit interrogation tent. He would never forget the cloying smell of the flickering paraffin lamp, the enormous shadows of the interrogator and the guard, or the fragrance — of something so sweet, so familiar, that even in the semidarkness, heavy with terror, he knew it was his daughter.
The North Korean officer had asked Tae once more for the names of the KCIA agents. Tae said nothing and tried to smile at his daughter, but when she saw what they’d done to him, she began to cry. The NKA major gave an order and the guard jerked Tae’s head back against the chair, gagged him, and taped his eyelids back so that he was forced to watch his daughter.
Tae gave him the names and the NKA major raped her. After, as the NKA major stumbled breathless, satiated, back from her discarded form, Tae, in an agony the likes of which he had never known, heard his daughter whimpering like a dog in the far darkness of the tent, huddled in the corner, clutching her muddied clothes.
The NKA major gave her to the troops to do as they would.
It was the last Tae had seen of her. The NKA major was one of those reported killed during Freeman’s raid on Pyongyang, the name of the young American soldier who had shot him, Brentwood, one that Tae would never forget-But it was not satisfaction enough. With the madness that turns sorrow to rage, all Tae wanted to do now was to find Mi-ja and to kill every NKA he could find. Most of all he wanted to kill Jung-hyun, who had betrayed his daughter. And though he had already had more search-and-destroy missions in the last week than anyone else in I Corps, he had particularly wanted to go on this mission. Intelligence had received information that the company of NKA the air cavalry was now engaging was led by officers formed from the South Korean chapters of the Students for Reunification.
Ahead, through wafts of acrid white smoke beyond the slight rise of an irrigation ditch, Tae could see the wooden stock of a RPK 7.62 machine gun, surrounded by concertina wire, sweeping through a wide field of fire. Their bursts were too long — the barrel would overheat But it you rushed the wire alone and tried to go through it, it would wrap itself around you faster than any concertina. And too far for a grenade. The choppers had all gone. If the air cavalrymen didn’t move now, they would lose the advantage of the smoke screen.
Tae checked to make sure that the barrel of his SAW wasn’t clogged with paddy mud. He waved for two air cavalrymen to come up to his position. One man, steadying his helmet with his left hand, mouth parched with fear, drew level with him behind the ditch.
“Thought we were gonna get some F-14s up here,” the American said, eyes squinting skyward. “Off the carriers.”
“They’re busy,” said Tae. “Carriers have all been called up North.”
“Fuck!” said the cavalryman.
“Russians are moving against the Aleutians,” Tae explained.
“Fuck the Aleutians. Send the Tomcats here.”
“They don’t see it that way,” said Tae. “I want you to cover me.”
“Where are you goin’?”
Tae indicated the machine gun still stuttering away.’ “They’ll have to change a drum soon.”
“Yeah—” said the cavalryman. “That’ll take ‘em about two seconds flat.”
“You ready? “asked Tae.
“Down!” yelled the cavalryman. The air filled with a
“Ready?” asked Tae again. “We’ll have to do it without the Tomcats.”
The cavalryman nodded, his mouth too dry for him to speak.
