A forlorn-looking pile of ashes and brown-edged scraps of paper bore witness to the convulsive activity in the compartment just 30 minutes earlier. Scar quickly surmised what had happened.
“What were you doing here?” he asked through his translator. “Burning your secret orders?”
“Making ice cream,” Bucher answered.
A trooper kicked the captain backward into a bulkhead so hard he saw stars. His knees buckled but the North Korean jerked him to his feet to continue the inspection.
After brief tours of the engine room and galley, Bucher and his escorts arrived at the SOD hut. The skipper’s heart sank. Heaps of unburned documents lay near the open security door. Just beyond was a mattress cover stuffed with more paper. Bucher didn’t know what the materials were, but he was shocked that Steve Harris and his men hadn’t gotten rid of them.
Scar’s eyes widened as he took in the racks of banged-up listening equipment. Bucher stepped into the crypto center, noting with relief that the code machines appeared to be thoroughly smashed. One KW-7 remained online, humming faintly. Max ordered Bucher to shut it off, but he refused. A soldier decked him with a savage hand chop to the back of the neck, and the interpreter cut the power.
Lying on the floor, Bucher saw a couple of other soldiers clearing papers away from the heavy steel door. He felt in his pants pocket for his cigarette lighter, thinking he might be able to start a fire and slam shut the door. But before he could make his move, a trooper dragged him to his feet and held a bayonet to his chest. Then, amazingly, the North Koreans forced him out of the hut and closed the door behind them, inadvertently locking it. The captain silently rejoiced. Now there was no way to get in without a blowtorch.
Bucher was marched to the forward berth area. Almost all of his crew sat before him blindfolded and bound. Soldiers were thumping them with rifle butts while confiscating their personal property. “One of those thieving bastards just stole my watch,” growled an angry sailor. “Share the wealth—that’s communism,” said another. A sharp command from Scar halted the plunder.
Bucher wanted to stay with his men, but the North Koreans took him back to the passageway where Hodges lay. The young fireman made no sound or movement. Baldridge, the corpsman, was tending to the other wounded fireman, Steve Woelk, who was bleeding from his groin, hip, and buttocks.
“What about Hodges?” the captain hissed.
“He’s dead, sir,” replied the medic. “Died about ten minutes ago.” Woelk, he said, needed a surgeon.
A soldier responded to their hushed conversation by kicking Bucher in the back, while another karate-chopped Baldridge’s neck. The captain’s back throbbed with pain from the multiple assaults. Two troopers started to work him over, kicking and clubbing with their rifles. Bucher curled into a ball next to Hodges’s corpse to protect himself. His ribs felt like they were about to cave in.
The captain was deposited in the wardroom for the rest of the trip to Wonsan. About three hours after the Pueblo was seized, he saw the glow of dock lights through a porthole. He felt the engines slow and then a hard bump as the ship thudded against a wharf. Shouts broke out and the deck overhead vibrated with the clomping of military boots.
Colonel Scar and Max reappeared with what Bucher thought were a North Korean admiral and general in tow. The skipper was pushed into his stateroom, frisked, and, in spite of his loud protests, relieved of his ring, watch, and wallet.
“Why are you spying on Korea?” Max demanded. “You are a CIA agent bringing spies to provoke another war!”
“Absolutely not!” Bucher rejoined. “We were conducting oceanographic research in international waters. This is a research ship that has nothing to do with the CIA or armed aggression.”
Jabs to his jaw and neck cut him off. “You will all be removed from the ship, tried, and shot,” Max said angrily. Bucher’s hands were tied and a blindfold pulled over his eyes.
The captain and his men were forced across a narrow gangplank onto a floodlit pier. The night air was intensely cold. As soon as the sailors appeared, angry shouts erupted from what sounded like a large crowd. Bucher’s eye covering slipped just enough for him to see soldiers straining to hold back hundreds of furious civilians. The mob surged toward the sightless crewmen, shrieking and spitting and, despite the soldiers’ exertions, landing some punches and kicks. Policarpo Garcia, a ship’s storekeeper from the Philippines, got booted in the rump with such force that “the toe almost go inside my rectum.”
Bucher knew these enraged, lunging people would tear him and his men to shreds if the soldiers didn’t keep knocking them down and pushing them back. Years of relentless anti-U.S. propaganda by Kim Il Sung’s regime had made Americans as popular in North Korea as smallpox. Someone in the crowd screamed in English, “Death to the American bastards!”
The sailors were hustled past the apoplectic civilians onto waiting buses. Moments after sitting down, Bucher was taken off and returned to the ship. His blindfold was ripped away, and he saw several North Koreans struggling with the SOD hut door.
“Open it!” Max commanded. The captain shrugged as if the massive door with its combination lock were a mystery to him.
Someone stuck a pistol in his ear. “Open it or be shot right now!” Stubbornly, courageously, Bucher refused. At least he’d die fast, without having to endure torture. Instead of blowing his head off, a trooper kicked him hard in the belly. Then Steve Harris was brought back and told to open the door. He, too, bravely refused.
Bucher was blindfolded again and frog-marched past the screeching crowd at the pier. Gobs of spit landed on him.
On the bus, soldiers had resumed looting the Americans. Over the commotion Bucher thought he heard his Filipino and Mexican-American sailors being singled out for especially harsh treatment. He realized why when Max loudly proclaimed, “You have been trying to make infiltration of North Korea with South Korean spies! You are criminals who will be tried in our People’s Court and shot!”
“Bullshit!” Bucher yelled. “There is nobody but Americans in this crew!”
He was dragged off the bus and placed in what seemed to be a staff car; guards on both sides pummeled him. Max got in, and the captain demanded that his men be kept together and treated in accordance with the Geneva convention.
“You capitalist dogs and Korea are not at war, so no Geneva convention applies,” the interpreter said contemptuously. “You have no military rights at all. You will be treated as civilian espionage agents of the CIA.”
After a bumpy ride that lasted about 15 minutes, the car stopped. Bucher was taken into what might have been a police station. His men already were there and being beaten, as their cries and groans attested.
“Stop this brutality!” the skipper hollered. The North Koreans shoved him into a small room and slammed the door.
In the sudden quiet, Bucher realized his hands had gone numb from the bindings. His gut ached from the soldier’s boot, as did much of the rest of his exhausted body.
Soon he was in the staff car again. After another brief ride he arrived at what sounded like a railroad station, with an old steam locomotive hissing as it awaited passengers. He was guided up some steps, down an aisle, and into an ice-cold, coach-style seat. The skipper sensed the presence of his men. No one breathed a word, hoping that the short lull in the beatings would be extended. A whistle blew and the locomotive pitched forward.
God only knew where it was headed.
John Wright sat strapped in the cockpit of his F-105, feeling the powerful Pratt & Whitney engine idling behind him. On the tarmac his crew chief drew himself to attention and snapped off a salute.