As the truck rounded a corner, Lee fought with his hands to steady himself. His bound fingers grabbed at the corrugation built into the steel deck beneath him, and he tried to avoid bumping into what felt like wooden logs or boulders on either side of him. Lee shifted his knees, trying to get some grip when a boot kicked him in the stomach.
“Lie still!”
Lee grimaced. He hadn’t anticipated the blow. He had no way of knowing he was being watched and the boot caught him on the side of the hip, causing a jolt of pain to surge through his body. He groaned in agony, sliding into the closed tailgate as the truck rounded another corner.
It was at that moment he understood the gravity of his situation.
Lee had been part of evade-and-escape drills during his compulsory service in the South Korean air force and understood what was happening. This was the first stage of his imprisonment. No one ever escaped, either from the training exercises or the real thing. Evade and escape was a misnomer. Evade meant prolong and delay, hopefully buying others time. Escape was a false hope, something to help you through the initial interrogation. His heart sank at the realization he’d probably spend the rest of his life in a North Korean labour camp, but he knew even that estimation was overly generous. In reality, his life was probably now measured in terms of days or hours, not years.
Several boots pinned him to the metal bed of the truck, preventing him from swaying with the suspension. What he’d thought were logs were actually the boots of at least a dozen soldiers sitting on either side of him, facing in toward him. They joked among themselves, knowing he was listening.
“We will be rewarded for catching this American dog.”
“Ha, not dog. He is a pig.”
“Swine!”
“He is a spy. He will be shot.”
“Not before Eun-Yong has had this son of a bitch castrated.”
“Ha!” another soldier replied, but it wasn’t so much a laugh as a forced response to meet peer expectations.
The soldiers were cruel, kicking him without warning as he lay there trying not to move, but that was the role of soldiers from all nations, he understood. They had to dehumanize their enemy. It was the only way to justify their acts. Just yesterday, he was an officer, a title that carried a sense of pride and prestige and now he was a prisoner. One brutally subjugated by an enemy. He already felt his sense of self-esteem slipping away, driven from him by the petty violence being arbitrarily inflicted on him as he lay there blinded by a sack pulled over his head.
“Stupid fool,” another voice said, and a boot crushed his little finger against the steel bed of the truck. Lee cried out in pain.
“Be quiet, idiot!” another voice cried out, kicking him the small of his back with a steel-toed boot.
The truck slowed. Lee could hear muffled voices speaking from the cab. The driver was talking to a sentry. He could hear other vehicles idling nearby. A helicopter flew low overhead. The smell of diesel hung in the air. He was at a checkpoint, possibly at the entrance to a military compound.
Lee tried not to panic, but he couldn’t help himself. The sack over his head made it hard to breathe. His arms were pinned behind him in a stress position. His leg hurt. Without being aware of it, he began to hyperventilate.
The butt of a rifle hit him on the head, knocking his forehead against the metal and he screamed in agony.
“Shut up, you suckling pig!”
Again the butt of the rifle struck him, only the wooden stock glanced off his shoulder and onto the floor of the truck, sparing him from the full force of the blow.
Lee whimpered. Blood pooled in his mouth.
The truck continued on, turning to one side. Gravel crunched beneath the wheels, a stark contrast to the squelch of mud and rock he’d heard before. He’d entered a military base, he was sure of it.
The truck came to a halt. Seconds later, he heard a steel tailgate being lowered and felt himself being lifted out of the truck. Several soldiers had him by his upper arms. They dragged him over and dropped him like a sack of coal. He expected to fall to the ground, but landed on the back of the truck. He could feel the edge of the truck fall away beneath one leg. A couple of soldiers on the ground grabbed him, pulling him over the edge. They held him by his shoulders, allowing his feet to swing down on to the gravel.
“Come, you lazy heifer.”
The references to farm animals surprised him. He’d expected more vulgarity, but North Korea was an enclave, an isolated country not subject to the Hollywood tropes of verbal abuse. For them, these references must have been insulting comparisons.
His captors pushed him on in front of them as his head hung low.
Lee tried to walk, but could only shuffle. He was still reeling from the blow to his head, and the bullet wound to his right thigh ached. Without being able to look at the wound, he figured the bullet had only grazed the muscle. When he’d fallen in the village, it must have been largely from shock. There was some kind of bandage wrapped around his leg, stopping the bleeding, but had the injury been bad, he wouldn’t have been able to walk at all. Small mercies, he thought to himself as he continued on.
The world seemed to spin around him in the darkness. He could see glimpses of mud and rocks out of the bottom of the bag over his head.
Someone grabbed the sack from behind, grabbing a handful of hair along with it and jerked his head back, forcing him on at a faster pace. His feet struggled to respond. That was the point when Lee realized they’d taken his boots. He was still wearing his damp socks, but his boots had been removed, perhaps as a trophy, or perhaps just out of practical necessity by another soldier wanting better boots.
He was pushed into a hut. His feet caught on the step in the doorway, and he struggled not to fall to the floor as he was dragged inside.
A chair scraped across a wooden floor.
Someone untied his hands before pushing him down in the chair and strapping his forearms to the arms of the chair.
Lee tried to be objective and observe the fine nuances around him. This was an endurance trick the South Korean military had taught him during his evade and escape training. As a prisoner, he was powerless over all aspects of his confinement save one, his mind. He had to keep his mind sharp, to look to learn from the subtle nuances of his captivity. Details were important. Details spoke louder than words, and what’s more, they were a distraction, a way of removing himself from the emotionally crippling reality that surrounded him. His captors would want to break him, and the truth was, they would, given time. His only hope was to hold out as long as possible and slowly capitulate, to appear more broken than he was. This was a game of deception on both parts, only the North Koreans were working with a stacked deck.
Details. He’d keep his sanity only by focusing on details, and so he drove his mind to be clear and objective.
Previously, Lee’s hands had been bound with rope no thicker than his little finger. The rope had been too thick to break, but it wasn’t the sort of hand spun rope he’d expect to find in a fishing village, it had to be something the soldiers had carried with them. Now, though, thick leather straps bound his forearms and lower legs to the chair. His hands were free, which seemed strange. Although he was relieved to get some feeling back into his wrists, he was alarmed by the change. He understood that everything he was enduring had a purpose, nothing was accidental or haphazard. More often than not, that purpose would be brutal and cruel. Lee doubted this wooden chair held any relief.
The sack was pulled from his head.
There was no one in front of him or to either side. Whoever it was that pulled the sack from his head remained out of sight behind him. Light peered under the door to his right. From the angle, it couldn’t have been more than seven in the morning. Given the angle of the sunlight, he was facing roughly due north. This is good, he thought. Keep focusing on the minutia, work those details.