Another shot rang out.
“Sniper,” I said.
I peeked around the boulder, searching for someone on the promontory above us. I saw nothing. Doc Yong looked. After she pulled her head back to safety, she said, “There, at the very top. Beneath some shrubs.”
I looked where her finger pointed and saw him. Just as I pulled back to safety, a third shot rang out.
It was then that it all came back to me.
“Quick,” I said. “Paper!”
“What?”
“Paper! Pencil!”
Quickly, she rummaged through her canvas backpack and pulled out a short pencil and a pad of tattered pulp. I started jotting furiously. It was all there in my mind: unit designations, personnel strength, number of guns and armored vehicles, and, most importantly, which routes they would be taking up into the Kwangju Mountains.
Two more shots rang out.
“There’s more of them now,” Doc Yong said. “Come on. We have to go.”
“Fire back,” I said. “I’m almost done.”
Doc Yong unstrapped the Kalashnikov from her back, lay down next to the boulder, aimed, and fired. Then she sat back facing me. “Not even close. That won’t hold them long.”
I continued to scribble.
“You’ll be able to read that?” she asked.
“When we get back, I’ll recopy it.”
“If we get back.”
Finally, I was done. The firing had stopped.
“They’re trying to get closer,” I said.
We hurried off, crawling through the brush. Unfortunately, not being able to stand up, we weren’t sure where we were going. Only when it was too late did we discover that we’d gone in the wrong direction. A cliff loomed before us.
“We have to go back,” I said.
Doc Yong grabbed my arm. “Too late,” she said. “They’re too close.” She pointed through the shrubbery. In the early morning gloom, I spotted two dark shapes sliding down the slope behind us, no more than a hundred yards away. “If we crawl, it will take too long,” she said. “If we run, they will pick us off.”
I looked down over the cliff. After about twenty feet of rock, a sandy slope tapered steeply to the ravine below.
“We have to jump,” she said.
I glanced back at the snipers. They took turns changing positions, so the stationary one could provide covering fire.
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll go first.”
“No, me.”
I wanted to argue with her, but before I could speak she was already over the edge. She dropped along the jagged rock and landed with a thump on the sand below, immediately tumbling down the hill. A shot rang out, missing me by a few feet. No time to wait. I slid over the edge. All I remember is slamming into about a thousand protuberances until I finally hit the sand. Fifty yards later, I rolled to a halt, stunned but still conscious. I sat up, searching for Doc Yong.
She hissed at me, waving her arm. “This way.”
I stood up unsteadily and staggered toward her. This time I didn’t hear anything. All I knew for sure was that someone must’ve swung an iron rod with all his strength, slamming it into the side of my calf and knocking me down.
And then Doc Yong was firing, her Kalashnikov on full automatic, and the next thing I knew, her hand was in my armpit and she was pulling and screaming at me to get up. I did, leaning on her, and we stumbled forward. Another round zinged past my head and then we were behind a rock.
It took us the better part of that day and into the late evening to make it back to the first guard post surrounding the Manchurian Battalion. I’d lost a lot of blood. All I remember is being carried by stretcher up a steep pathway. Then I passed out.
Il-yong sat on the floor next to me, playing with a ball of yarn. Doc Yong squatted next to my bedding, holding my scribbled notes in her hand.
“I can make out some of the numbers,” she told me, “and some of the words, but do you think you’re well enough to decipher it now?”
I held the paper unsteadily in my hand, staring at it. My eyes wouldn’t focus.
“Never mind,” she said, taking it from me. “We’ll try again after you rest.”
In the distance, an artillery round boomed.
“They’re getting closer,” I said.
“Never mind. You rest now.”
I did.
It had only been a shard of rock that hit my leg, kicked up by the round fired by the sniper. Fortunately, an artery hadn’t been severed, and what with antibiotics and the bandages being replaced regularly by Doc Yong, I felt alert by the next day.
The artillery rounds now fired almost every minute. I rewrote the entire order of battle, explaining it to Doc Yong as I did so. She seemed worried.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “This should help us.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “But the Red Star Brigade has made quicker progress than we hoped. Most of these places,” she said, pointing at the slip of paper, “have already been overrun.”
Nevertheless, she took the newly reprinted order of battle with her and told me she’d be back. While she was gone, I slipped into my clothes. Il-yong looked up at me and gurgled-as if he knew more than I did.
I was ushered into Bandit Lee’s presence. He wasted no time.
“We need ammunition,” he said.
I sat before him on a simple wooden chair, Doc Yong next to me.
“You must enter the tunnel,” Bandit Lee told me. “Our good Doctor Yong In-ja has memorized every word of the ancient manuscript. She will be your guide. It will be very dangerous. You might die. But if you survive, you must ask the Americans for resupply: ammunition, medicine, food. We will accept that from them, but we will accept nothing from the Japanese collaborators.”
To Bandit Lee, the Japanese collaborators were the colonels and generals, including President Park Chung-hee, who now ran the South Korean government. In fact, many of them had been young officers in the army of the emperor when the Japanese had ruled Korea. Bandit Lee might have been engaged in a deadly competition with the Dear Leader, the son who would replace his former comrade, Kim Il-sung, but he was mortal enemies with the men who ran South Korea. Americans, although enemies in the past, could be negotiated with.
“I have allies throughout the country. They are silent now, and afraid to act, but if the Americans help us, they will rise up and support the Manchurian Battalion. We will take over this government and a peace treaty will be signed. We will renounce Soviet-style communism and create a democratic socialist government with free elections. Then we will cooperate with the Western world. But only if you help us now, in our hour of need. That is your mission. You must convince the Americans to help us, or die trying.”
I bowed to the inevitable. He ordered us to depart within the hour.
As Doc Yong and I stood to leave, artillery roared in the distance. Units of the Manchurian Battalion were already on the attack, assaulting elements of the Red Star Brigade in the lowlands before they could fully deploy.
The entrance to the cave on the side of Mount O-song was well hidden. “This is why it has remained intact so long,” Doc Yong told me.
We had to climb for an hour to reach it and even then it was concealed by a rocky overhang no sane person would have any reason to explore. But the ancient manuscript, the one Doc Yong had memorized, gave exact directions to the cave.
Crawling flat on our bellies, we entered. I carried the heavier backpack, with a full day’s ration of beef jerky and my favorite traveling food, ddok. Doc Yong and I each held a flashlight and I had two spares in my pack, along with spare batteries and extra clothing wrapped in plastic. We didn’t carry water. According to the manuscript, there’d be plenty. Maybe too much. Doc Yong carried the most precious cargo strapped to her back: our son.
He was quiet as we entered the cave, his eyes wide, studying everything. Doc Yong and I also had claw hammers, looped metal nails, and ropes tied to the front of our chests.
We had left the compound of the Manchurian Battalion alone, no escort. Bandit Lee wanted the secret of the tunnel held closely.