The sheet-like material covered him down to his thighs. The plain white covering rendered every part of him above the knees almost invisible against the background of virgin snow that lay over everything in sight.
Marcus left the rest of his gear and set off in the direction of the voices, directly northwest of the trail. The metallic clinking and scraping had become rhythmic. It sounded as if someone were trying to dig through concrete with a pickaxe. Every so many beats, there was a solid, stone-like crack, then the metallic sound resumed, beating the same rhythm.
Realizing that if they were military personnel they may not graciously accept the idea of a civilian coming up on the work they were doing, Marcus would verify who they were before walking into their area. It would also be good stalking practice. He hadn’t needed to sneak through snow for a long time, and this gave him a good opportunity to make sure he kept that skill up to par.
If they were friendly looking, he would approach them. If they or their work seemed like something that ought not to be disturbed, he would simply fade back into the wilderness.
Marcus stealthily moved forward until he was able to make out the voices more clearly. He stopped, crouched in the snow, and sat still. He relaxed his body to get his breathing under control. He concentrated intently on identifying what he heard. As he sat in the quiet of the forest, a nervous trepidation crept over him. Some of the voices occasionally spoke loudly, calling out an order to someone else.
When he drew closer, Marcus’s ears picked up details of their voices, their tones, inflections, and sounds. They were not speaking English. It took several seconds before his mind adjusted and he recognized the language of the speakers — Korean. At first he did not recognize the dialect.
Marcus had been stationed in South Korea off and on throughout his career, and in the early nineties had done a one-year exchange tour with the South Korean ROK Marines, one of the toughest organizations he had ever encountered. The ROK Marines performed almost weekly raids into North Korean territory; often snatch & grabs or psy-ops missions, during which they would attempt to kidnap an enemy soldier, or simply slit the throat of every third man in a barracks while they slept in their beds, then slink back across the border in the darkness.
Initially, Marcus thought they were South Korean soldiers on a training exercise, but something sounded strange. The way they talked, and some of the words they used — their grammar did not follow the South Korean speech patterns he remembered. The words rose and fell to the wrong rhythm. Inflections rose when they should’ve fallen, too much accent on certain syllables and sounds. The voices spoke openly in the forest fifty yards ahead of him. Marcus suddenly recognized their accent. Alarms went off in his brain.
They were North Korean.
Marcus’s mind shifted to a tactical bearing. Whoever these men were, it was unlikely they belonged here. He lowered himself deeper into the snow and moved carefully forward to investigate.
If these were North Korean soldiers, they were probably special operations. They would have guards posted, snipers.
Thirty yards from the source of the voices, Marcus knelt low in the snow. He stayed motionless for several minutes. From an observation post somewhere nearby, a soldier was watching the forest. Before he could move any further, Marcus had to find that guard.
Marcus scanned the area slowly with his binoculars from right to left and back again. As he made the second sweep, he found what he was looking for. A wisp of steam floated from within a small mound forty yards to his left and halfway between him and what sounded like the main party. He watched the mound and saw the steam rise again, highlighted against the dark gray and brown of the stark vegetation. It was the breath of a man.
He stared intently through his binoculars at the ground beneath the misty fingers that slowly rose from the snow-covered forest floor and found what he was looking for — an angular black object, dull and metallic. The front sight of a rifle, a Kalashnikov, became barely visible amidst a shadowy tangle of dark twigs covered in dollops of snow.
It was a good sniper hide. Marcus had been lucky that he came from the angle he did as he approached the site. He was only barely out of the soldier’s field of view.
He crept stealthily past the sniper, even keener to any and every noise and movement in the wintry forest. The sounds of the arctic wilderness in winter have a different quality to them than in summer. Snow muffles some sounds, while the hard, frozen trees and rivers may echo others loudly. What sounds like someone walking in the distance, may turn out to be one’s own footsteps reverberating between the trees.
Marcus rose silently and moved through the forest landscape with absolute skill and natural talent, as one both born in the forest and trained as a warrior.
As he drew near the source of the voices, he could clearly hear their brisk conversation. He crouched low and skirted the area until he had moved behind a stand of willows. The cluster of thin, straight branches burst up and out from the snow atop a small rise that looked twenty yards down into the area of the voices.
Through the tight clump of leafless sticks, Marcus could make out half a dozen men surrounding a hole in the ground, around which the snow had been cleared away. Piles of gear were laid out in an organized fashion. There was another man in the hole looking down and talking. All of the men were armed with folding stock AK-74 assault rifles, side arms visible.
Marcus took up the binoculars and looked closer. The six men around the hole were leaning over, looking down into it and commenting to one another. A second man stood up inside the hole and gave directions to the group above. One of them ran to a pile of equipment and brought back a black metal crow bar.
One of the men outside the hole put a radio up to his mouth and spoke. Marcus saw movement out the corner of his eye, about thirty yards away to the northwest of the hole. He turned his binoculars in the direction. Another man, a white smock over his clothing, strode into main group, holding two rabbits up by their ears.
One of the men down by the hole shouted. “Aigo! Chungshi Dongmun! Toki kachua! Toki do mashiso!”
The men started clapping their hands and exclaiming how delicious the rabbits would be for their dinner. As he came down, the man with the radio put it back up to his mouth and spoke. There were now nine men that Marcus could see — the sniper he had passed, and probably two or three more out on guard posts.
As he observed the men, there was a sudden burst of excitement in the hole. The one who had ordered the crowbar stood up and shouted to the others. All but two of them ran back to the hole. The other two discussed how to prepare a meal of the rabbits. Marcus understood enough of the conversation to form a strong idea of what they were talking about.
“Bali! Hurry up! This is it! We’re almost in! Come here and help pull this metal cover off! Bali!”
Ropes were lowered into the hole. Five men on top tugged with extreme exertion against whatever was down there. After a full minute of strained pulling, there was a metallic crack, like a broken bell being rung, and the five men moved backwards, pulling their load to the surface.
Over the side of the hole rose what looked like a several-hundred-pound sheet of steel, about three-by-three feet square and more than an inch thick. After setting it down, the men looked into the hole. One of the men stood up with an expression of frustration wrinkling his face.
“Aigo! More concrete and rebar! These Migook don’t want anyone getting into this bunker. We will keep digging until we get through the crack. We know it is less than half a meter thick.”
“Captain Park,” said one of the soldiers. “Let me trade places with you for a while. I am ready for more digging.”