"This whole setup stinks," Bronkowicz said after they'd gone. "The bastards are violating every rule of prisoner interrogation going."
"What'd you expect, Chief?" one sailor asked. "The Geneva Convention?"
"Shit, no. But they're going about this thing all wrong. You want to brainwash a prisoner, you isolate him, don't let him talk to his buddies. You sure as hell don't try to get him to break in front of his shipmates. That just makes it harder."
"Sounds like you know something about brainwashing, Chief Zabelsky said.
"Hell, these are the sons of bitches that invented it. I just can't figure what they're up to, going' about it this way!"
"They're after me, Chief," Captain Gilmore said. There was anguish behind the eyes. "They got Pueblo's captain to cooperate by threatening to shoot his men, remember? I guess this time they're actually doing it just to prove they mean business. They want me to see you, to feel you dying, one by one, until I agree."
"You don't agree to nothin', Skipper," Bronkowicz said roughly. "Ain't none of us going to break for those bastards, and you shouldn't either."
As long as we're together, ain't none of us going to break," Zabelsky said. He glanced meaningfully toward the corner where Lieutenant Novak sat alone.
"That's not going to last, sailor," Wilkinson said thoughtfully. "He said 'camps,' plural. They're splitting us up. Just to make a rescue harder, if nothing else."
"They're never going to let us go," one sailor said, a low murmur in the silent room. "They're never going to let us go."
And Coyote had to agree. Added to the horror of the systematic killings was the chilling certainty that the North Koreans could never let any of them go now, not if the People's Democratic Republic feared the storm of world opinion the stories of Chimera's crew would raise once they won their freedom. Either P'yongyang didn't care about world opinion, or…
Or they did not plan on releasing them.
He faced the possibility that he might be forced to spend the rest of his life here, cut off from world and family and Julie.
"So what're we gonna do?" Bronkowicz asked. He glanced toward the door, as though uncertain whether he should say more. There'd been considerable speculation among the prisoners that the North Koreans might have listening devices hidden in the building walls, but since there'd been no search for the hidden weapons, no indication that they knew their base had been infiltrated that morning, it seemed safe.
But that could change at any moment.
"We have to make contact with the SEALS," Coyote said. He forced the image of Julie from his mind. "One of us has to get away, tell them what's happening."
"Maybe they know."
"How? They're watching, I bet, probably saw that Hip land. But we have to get word out that we're being moved at dawn tomorrow."
Coleridge nodded. "If a rescue is being planned, they have to know. Remember Son Tay."
There was no need to say more. Son Tay was the name of the North Vietnamese prison camp twenty-three miles from Hanoi which had been the target of an American raid in November 1970, a raid aimed at releasing American POWs held there. The operation had been a spectacular success in every way but one.
The POWs held at Son Tay had been moved elsewhere shortly before the raid.
It would be ironic indeed if an American rescue mission mounted to free Chimera's crew likewise arrived at the prison, only to find the place empty.
"I'll go," Coyote said quietly. He glanced up at the windows.
The late afternoon light was rapidly fading. "As soon as it's dark."
"Why you, son?" Wilkinson asked.
Coyote shrugged. "Any of the rest of you guys had survival training?" Several men nearby shook their heads. "E and E courses? No? Well, I guess I'm elected."
He'd known from the start that he was the logical candidate. Ordinary Navy training included staying afloat and survival at sea, but touched little if at all on the practical aspects of living off the land. As an aviator, Coyote had suffered through more than one survival course. He knew how to evade enemy patrols, how to trap small animals for food, how to find water, how to…
But then, what he was really counting on was finding the SEALS. There was no point in escaping at all if he had to face a sixty-mile hike to South Korea afterward. He would never make it past the patrols and mine-fields of the DMZ. Besides, any would-be rescuers had to be warned about the impending move.
"You'll want to take the pistol, then," Bronkowicz said.
Coyote shook his head. He'd already thought about that and discarded it. "No way. If I'm caught, the Koreans'll know we had outside help."
"Hey, guy, you can't just-"
"It'll be okay! You guys keep the gun, like Huerta said. You may still need it if… when things go down."
"Good God, man, how do you expect to get out?"
For answer, Coyote walked over to a wooden beam, one of a dozen along the walls of the building which supported the roof. He ran his hand over the age-roughened, splintered wood and smiled. "Someone get that SEAL knife and I'll show you."
Huerta pressed his eye to the rubber eyepiece of the starlight scope. "They're taking someone now." The whisper did not carry beyond the confines of the SEAL hide. Four other men, including Lieutenant Sikes, lay in the hollow, watching the camp below them through night sights and IR gear. The other SEALS were invisible in the rapidly gathering darkness, spread out along the hillside.
Sikes took his turn at the scope. "One man, two guards. Think he broke?"
Huerta shrugged silently. They'd not been able to hear what was going on in the camp, but it was clear something out of the ordinary was happening. A sentry outside the POW building had vanished inside for a moment, then left at a run, returning minutes later with help. Now a prisoner was being escorted across the compound toward the structure already identified as an HQ.
Jerry Kohl, one of the team's two snipers, shifted, following the men through his G3 rifle's Varo image-intensifier sight. "They're taking him past the fence."
"Keep cool, everyone," Sikes reminded them. "There's nothing we can do for the poor bastard now."
Coyote deliberately slowed his pace as he passed the ten-foot, concertina-wire-topped chain-link fence which ringed the camp. It was almost fully dark now, but he could see the lights of a village in the valley below the ridge-top saddle in which the camp was built, and the dark masses of surrounding mountains rising on either side, still faintly visible against the darkening sky.
"P'palli!" one of the guards barked. The order to hurry needed no translation.
Now what, Coyote asked himself. His pleas to see Colonel Li had been answered at once. Presumably, that was where they were taking him now, flanked by two flint-eyed North Koreans with AK assault rifles dangling from slings over their shoulders and Soviet-manufactured hand grenades on their belts.
And Coyote's only weapon was surprise, and the wooden stake he had tucked up his left sleeve.
It hadn't taken long to carve the makeshift blade from a flat sliver of wood peeled from one of the Wonsan Waldorf's roof supports, whittling it to wicked sharpness. With no cutting edge the thing wasn't much as a knife, but it would be deadly as a stabbing weapon if aimed at a soft target. It would give Coyote a single strike, no more, and a few seconds of surprise and confusion. He would have to get it right the first time.