She said, “You stated you heard a single shot behind you before the automatic fire began. Where did that shot come from?”
“I don’t know. It was just a quick pop. But it was from somewhere in the rear of the protesters… or maybe behind the protesters. It didn’t sound too close.”
“Was it a pistol or a rifle?”
“I couldn’t tell. Why, what’s the point?”
“Please Major, answer my questions. I’ll explain later.”
“Okay, fine.”
“Are you sure the Korean police officer you chased was shooting into the crowd?”
“He had an M16 aimed in our direction, the weapon was bucking, and people were getting hit and falling over. Yeah, I’m sure.”
“But he stopped shooting when he saw you coming? Why?”
“At the moment he saw me, he had just emptied a magazine. I saw him reaching into his vest for a fresh mag, then I guess he made a quick assessment and decided he wouldn’t get it inserted before I got to him.”
“How long does it take to change magazines?”
“A highly trained soldier can accomplish it in maybe ten seconds. Someone less familiar with the weapon might take twenty, thirty seconds. You need to push a button to get the old mag out, then ram in the new mag, then pull back the charging handle to chamber a round.”
“The film we’ve viewed shows you were still twenty to thirty yards from him when he dropped the weapon and ran. Why do you think he ran?”
I thought that was a stupid question and responded accordingly. “How about because he was killing people and didn’t want to get caught.”
“Major, please, this is important. The camera shots we got from the news organization are blurry. The cameraman was under fire and swinging the camera around, so the focus wasn’t good. You had a good look at the shooter. Tell me what you think went through his head.”
“What I think was that he wasn’t going to take any risk of getting caught. I had a riot baton in my hand. I was running fast. He was thirty or so yards away and he was a very fast sprinter. He made a split-second choice and it was the wrong one. He should’ve jammed in that magazine and blown me away. Alternatively, maybe he just figured he’d murdered enough people already.”
She cocked her head. “Jump forward to the point where you had him cornered in the shop in the dead-end alley. He fired some shots, and you went down with a shard of glass in your leg. That’s what you said earlier, right?”
“Right.”
“You went in and his corpse was behind the counter?”
“Correct.”
“You rolled him over and the pistol was in his mouth?”
“Correct. At first I thought I’d hit him with a lucky shot, because he was lying on his stomach and there was a big hole in the back of his head. Then I rolled him over and saw his own pistol stuck inside his mouth.”
“So you believe he committed suicide?”
“Unless someone helped him stuff his pistol inside his mouth, I think that’s a fairly safe conclusion.”
“But you saw no one else inside the shop?”
“No. Nobody. And I checked for a rear entrance, because I wondered why he hadn’t simply fled. There wasn’t one.”
“Why would he have killed himself?”
“I don’t know. However, I’d like to go on record as saying I’m damn glad he did. It’s probably the only reason I’m alive.”
She was starting to reach down and shut off the recorder when I reached over and grabbed her hand.
“There’s another thing,” I said. “He was wearing gloves. A pair of white cloth gloves, like you see taxi drivers over here wear. They were soaked with blood.”
“Gloves?”
“Yeah, white ones. I mean, it’s May, so it’s damned hot, and I thought that was odd. What I think is, he was wearing the gloves so there wouldn’t be any fingerprints on the M16. Maybe he and the other shooter planned all along to just drop their weapons and run.”
“You’re sure about the gloves?”
“Of course I’m sure. Check with the Korean police.”
“We’ve talked with the Korean police. They haven’t mentioned anything about it.”
“Well, he was,” I insisted. I mean, it wasn’t a big point, and it certainly wasn’t conclusive, except it implied a degree of premeditation on the shooter’s part.
She shut off the recorder.
“Okay,” I said. “What’s this about?”
A big gush of air came out of her lungs, like someone who’s under a great strain.
“While you’ve been in this hospital a very ugly dispute has erupted between our government and the Republic of Korea. The slaughter, it’s all that’s been on the news. The problem is nobody knows what happened, or why. There’s a war of finger-pointing going back and forth.”
I sat up. “Finger-pointing over what?”
“The protest, or demonstration, was approved by the city of Seoul and was under South Korean civil protection. That much is indisputable. The South Koreans, of course, don’t want to be blamed for the massacre of fourteen American citizens and the wounding of seventeen others. They’re claiming an American protester fired the first shot, then one or two ROK policemen returned fire in self-defense. You yourself admit you heard the first shot fired somewhere behind you. Other eyewitnesses corroborated the same thing.”
I thought about this. It met with the facts. It made sense out of a chaotic event. But it didn’t make complete sense.
“Then why did my shooter run? If he was simply returning fire, why’d he flee? And what about the other one, the second shooter?”
“Nobody’s sure. It’s believed the second shooter was an ROK police officer as well. He was wearing a police uniform and he dropped his weapon and ran. It was an M16 with all the serial numbers filed off. Nobody has any idea who he was.”
“He was an ROK police officer? And they don’t know who he was? How can that be?”
“That’s the question of the hour, isn’t it? There was a lot of confusion at the massacre site. A number of ROK police cars were dispatched to the scene, but nobody was taking a roll call as they arrived. He made his getaway in a police car. That proved to be a very clever move, because the ROK police dispatchers immediately put out a net call for every unit to look for a ROK police car and… well, you can imagine how chaotic that became.”
“And you believe they honestly don’t know who he was?”
“Who can tell? Maybe they’re just covering up. Or maybe they really don’t know. It’s terribly convenient for their side of the story not to have him around for questioning… but it’s also inconvenient, isn’t it?”
“And the shooter I chased, he’s dead, so there’s nobody to say why they opened fire.”
She stood up and straightened her dress. “That’s the gist of it.”
“And it’s their country.”
“Basically, yes,” she replied, picking up the recorder and placing it in her purse. “I’ve got to hurry and get this transcribed and sent back to Washington. For obvious reasons, your testimony is considered crucial.”
Before she could walk out on me, I said, “Hold on. What’s my position in this thing? I mean, if the two police officers were merely responding in self-defense, where do I stand? And what about the fact that the guy I was chasing popped a South Korean in the head?”
“That’s all under continuing investigation. The ROKs admit that you were very brave for chasing him off that hillside. It saved lives. They also think it’s possible he committed suicide. They’re doing an autopsy on his body now. But you’re still being charged with assaulting a police officer, and for stealing his weapon. As for the other body that was found in the alley, there’s still questions about who popped him in the head, as you put it. The bullet that killed him passed through his cranium and hasn’t been found. The poor guy was a mentally handicapped adult.”
