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 colonial 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
