The consequences of such a colossal attack could only be guessed at. If all or most of Pyongyang’s airpower—about 400 jet fighters and 80 light bombers—were knocked out, could President Park resist the impulse to invade the suddenly vulnerable north? Might the Soviets and Chinese feel compelled to move in to defend a prostrate ally? World reaction would be severe, the Korean Task Force warned, with a majority of U.N. member states condemning the massive retaliation as “a dangerously excessive measure, disproportionate to the provocation and too risky in terms of resumed hostilities in Korea.”
Berger’s group also suggested a naval blockade of Wonsan or a tank assault across the demilitarized zone aimed at destroying the headquarters of a North Korean infantry division. But a blockade would leave American ships open to attack by MiGs or deadly Styx missiles fired from patrol boats, while causing only minor inconvenience to communist naval vessels, which tended to hug the shore anyway. A punitive armor thrust through the DMZ would produce high casualties and, as Berger’s team noted, might also “result in major ground action which would be difficult to stop.”
The president’s impulse was to commandeer a North Korean ship. But doing that wasn’t likely to get the Pueblo crew home; nor was any other military action. On the contrary, any serious retaliation might prompt the communists to execute Bucher and his men.
And that was a horror that no one in the White House could abide.
For three days, Major Wright and his pilots sat in their cockpits, waiting for the signal to take off in their F-105s and sink the Pueblo. But the order never came and they finally were told to stand down.
Steaming with the Enterprise task force, Captain Denham was informed that his men needn’t practice lassoing the spy ship anymore; higher-ups had canceled the daring scheme to snatch it back from the North Koreans.
CHAPTER 7
SUICIDE IN A BUCKET
In the early hours of his second day in prison, Bucher decided to kill himself.
He was a physical and emotional wreck. Repeated beatings had left him pissing blood. Sleep was nearly impossible; his arms, legs, back, sides, and chest bore so many painful bruises that it was difficult even to lie down. Lingering nausea erased any desire for food.
A profound sense of shame tormented him. He berated himself for caving in so quickly to Super C. He should’ve held out longer, absorbed more kicks and punches and karate blows. Why hadn’t he called the communists’ bluff when they brought Howard Bland to the interrogation room? Maybe they wouldn’t have shot the young seaman after all.
It had all happened so fast, still was happening fast. Shortly after confessing, the captain was forced to appear at a staged press conference during which North Korean “journalists” hissed at him and angrily demanded details of how he’d spied on their country. Exhausted, deeply depressed, and reading from a prepared script, Bucher robotically confirmed every allegation.
There was no telling what the North Koreans would try to extract next. So far they’d been content merely to use him as a mouthpiece for obvious propaganda. What if they wanted more? His mind was a treasure chest of military secrets: details of U.S. naval war plans, submarine operations, undersea surveillance techniques, and agent landings. Could the communists pry open that mental lockbox with the diabolical levers of pain and fear? The truth was that they probably could.
Snow flurries thrummed against the window of his threadbare room. The ceiling light burned around the clock. Despair and loneliness plagued him. By now, he figured, the communists probably had pumped all the classified information they could out of Steve Harris and shot him. Other crewmen might be dead from wounds suffered during the attack or beatings in prison.
Suicide was contrary to Bucher’s life-loving nature and staunch Catholicism, but he felt he had no choice. He sensed he already was close to a breaking point from all of the beatings and intimidation; more concentrated forms of pain probably would cause him to fall apart completely. He feared torture much more than death, and killing himself quickly seemed a lot better than letting Super C’s thugs do it slowly. The last thing he wanted was to be reduced to a shattered wretch babbling his country’s secrets in exchange for even a brief respite from the torturer’s dreadful tools.
But if he were to take his own life, how exactly to do it? Bucher had no gun to blow out his brains with, and he lacked the physical strength and demonic willpower to bash them out against a wall. He might be able to fashion a noose from a blanket, but there was nothing to hang it from. He thought of breaking his window and using a glass shard to slit his wrists, but the noise would attract the guards who patrolled continuously just outside his door. If he jumped out the third-story window, he’d probably end up with no more than a broken leg.
The only other possibility was a metal pail in his cell. It had been filled with water so he could wash his face. In his desperation the skipper began to think he could drown himself in it. He’d heard that drowning wasn’t too unpleasant once you stopped struggling. To anyone in a normal frame of mind, the notion of drowning yourself in a bucket would be absurd. But the bereft captain thought it might work.
It had to work.
His cell was so cold that a thin layer of ice had formed over the water in the pail. Bucher speared his head through the ice. Most of the water slopped out and the shock of the freezing liquid brought him to his senses. To end his life this way, he realized, was impossible. Drenched and defeated, he pulled his head out.
By January 26, his third day in prison, Bucher was so weak he could barely walk. Interrogations and beatings went on day and night; the skipper heard shouts, scuffling, and muffled cries as his men were slugged and pistol-whipped. He tried to get a few minutes of sleep whenever he was left alone in his room. But almost as soon as he closed his eyes, horrific images filled his head: explosions ripping through his ship, bloody bodies carried off on stretchers, a man dangling from a meat hook.
Bucher developed a fever, his body racked by chills. Slumped in his chair, he sank into torpor and confusion. At times he thought he was delirious. He couldn’t distinguish between the moan of the wind outside the winter-bound prison and the cries of his men within. When the Koreans unexpectedly gave back his watch, he stared at it obsessively, trying to restore his sense of time. He began to hallucinate, seeing the dial replaced by the angry face of an interrogator shrieking threats at him. A nurse entered his cell and injected him with something; he wasn’t sure what.
When he finally had to move his bowels, he nearly fainted from the pain of the shrapnel lodged in his rectum. His body stank from stale sweat and suppurating leg wounds. Concerned by his shivering and lack of appetite, his captors moved him across the hall to a cell where the radiator actually emitted some warmth.
In his lucid moments the skipper yearned to see a mushroom cloud billowing above Pyongyang. An American nuclear strike meant his own immolation, of course, but Bucher wanted these piratical animals punished regardless. His Navy briefers had promised swift and forceful retaliation if anything happened to him and his men, but thus far there’d been no visible action. The North Koreans seemed nervous about the possibility of an air strike or commando raid, and kept the prison blacked out at night. They threatened to kill Bucher if his countrymen tried to rescue him or avenge the Pueblo’s capture.