And then one of them bit me.
18
Actually, it wasn’t a bite. Rather, it was a strong hand that pulled me to the surface.
Sputtering, coughing, gazing around me in the cold sea, I was disoriented and it took a while for anything to come into focus. A half-dozen black figures floated nearby. Then I realized who they were. The haenyo. Somehow they’d anticipated Parkwood’s path and set up an ambush in this narrow strait. There were many clans of haenyo throughout these islands, not all on Cheju, and it seemed they communicated well. Someone shouted. Colonel Laurel. He was in the water too, swimming madly, and then I realized what he was angry about. The boat was floating away. In the melee, the boat had almost been capsized. Parkwood had fallen off, the M-16 rifle with him, but he’d managed to climb back aboard. I raised myself as high as I could in the choppy waves but could only see the back of someone hunched over the outboard motor. In a few seconds, the engine sputtered and then roared and finally started to pull away until it disappeared into the mist.
The haenyo motioned for me to start swimming for shore. I did. But I stopped every few yards to survey who was left in our little school of swimmers. Laurel shouted, “Your partner, he’s not here!”
“Where is he?”
“He’s still in the boat. I think he hit his head on the bulkhead. Hard.”
“Christ,” I said. “How about the M-16?”
“The bottom of the ocean,” Laurel said.
“We have to get to a phone,” I said.
“That we do,” Colonel Laurel agreed.
I turned and started swimming toward land. I was swimming against the current. It was difficult. One of the haenyo came up beside me and motioned for me to aim farther to the left. In twenty minutes, Colonel Laurel and I and half a dozen women of the sea were climbing up a sea-soaked ladder to the dry, splintery planks of a fisherman’s landing.
The boat was found late that evening, about 2 a.m., on an island called Shinji-do, some thirty miles north of the straits where the haenyo had rescued Colonel Laurel and me. According to the local KNPs, no trace of Parkwood had been discovered. Ernie, however, had been found. Alive. He’d been transferred to a medical clinic and from there a ROK Navy chopper had flown him to Hialeah Compound in Pusan.
I learned all this through a phone conversation with Inspector Kill. He was coordinating the all-points bulletin the Korean National Police had put out for Sergeant Ronald T. Parkwood. From the landing point of the little craft on Shinji-do, it was a short walk to a main highway; from there, it was thought Parkwood had waved down a local cab and caught a ride to the Shinji Bus Station. A ticket seller there remembered trying to communicate with a hairy- fisted foreigner who wanted to buy a ticket to Pusan. Of course, she couldn’t sell him a direct ticket to Pusan. He had to buy a ticket north to Kuangju first, and from there he’d be able to catch the eastbound express that left every twenty minutes for Pusan. The foreigner hadn’t understood all this but hadn’t made a fuss, because the bus to Kuangju had been about to leave and apparently he’d been in a hurry. His change, the ticket seller said, was thirty won-about five cents-and he didn’t bother to wait for it, just grabbed his ticket and left. The young woman was afraid that the police were there about the thirty won but relieved when she discovered they weren’t.
“Anyway,” she told the KNPs, “foreigners are always trouble.”
The KNPs were still trying to locate the bus driver and the stewardess on the Shinji-to-Kuangju express, but so far they hadn’t found them. Kill doubted they’d have much to say, but it was a base he had to cover. Police in Kuangju were at the bus station now, interviewing ticket sellers and others who might’ve spotted Parkwood. There are no US military bases in that part of Korea, so chances were that an American would be remembered.
“How about the bus station in Pusan?” I asked.
“We have some good men there,” Inspector Kill assured me. “Also at the train station.”
“Good. I should be in Pusan before sunrise.”
Colonel Laurel, with the help of the haenyo, had already hired a car.
When I walked into his ward in the Hialeah Compound Dispensary, Ernie was sitting up in his hospital bed.
“Did you see the jaws on that nurse?” he asked.
“Jaws?”
“Hips. I’m tired of skinny Korean girls.”
I poured myself some water from a jug sitting on Ernie’s nightstand. “Not all Korean girls are skinny.”
“Show me a fat one.”
I decided to change the subject. “You ready to get back to work?”
“Yeah.” Ernie threw back the covers and kicked his legs off the edge of the bed. “Where are my shoes?”
“Over there. In the closet.”
Ernie padded barefoot across the room, stripped off his hospital gown, and started putting on his clothes.
“I don’t remember nothing,” Ernie said, “from when you jumped at Parkwood until I woke up with the KNPs shining a flashlight in my eyes. I was still in that boat, on a beach somewhere.”
“Shinji Island.”
“Wherever. They helped me into the backseat of their patrol car and later, from the roof of their police station, I was airlifted back here.”
“You didn’t hear Parkwood say anything?”
“No. He was gone when I came to.”
I sipped on the water. Ernie finished tying his shoelaces.
“He could’ve killed you,” I said.
“Yeah. Good for me he didn’t.”
“But why not?”
“Why not? You think maybe he should have?”
“He’s killed two people that we know of so far. Mrs. Hyon and Specialist Vance.”
“Maybe I’m not his type.” Ernie slipped on his jacket, checking to make sure that his CID badge was still in the inner coat pocket.
“Maybe he’s through with killing.”
“Don’t count on it,” Ernie said.
As we walked out of the clinic, nobody tried to stop us. The front door opened automatically to a late morning of swirling ocean mist.
“Maybe we should check out some weapons,” Ernie said, “from the MP arms room.”
“Maybe we should,” I said.
Riley was in his room at Hialeah Billeting, drunk again.
“Where you guys been?” he growled.
“Goofing off,” I said.
He nodded his head knowingly. “I thought so. The Provost Marshal is pissed that you took this guy, Parkwood, into custody and then you let him go.”
“Actually, we never had him in custody.”
“That’s even worse. If you’re alleging that he’s the Blue Train rapist, they want him interrogated to see if it’s true or not.”
“It’s true,” I replied. “Eighth Army is just looking for a way to weasel out of this.”
“They’re not trying to weasel out of nothing. They want him in custody and they want him interrogated and they want it to happen now.”
Riley’s eyes rolled and his head lolled on his neck. He reached across the footlocker and grabbed a bottle of Old Overwart and poured himself a shot glass full of amber fluid. Sticking out his thin lips, he sipped carefully.
“What happened to the Country Western All Stars?” I asked.
“You just missed them. They left for Seoul about an hour ago, including Casey.”
