“To drop into these caverns,” Inspector Kill said, “would be suicide if you didn’t know that there was a route out. And know how to find that route.”
“Okay,” I said. “This stuff is of great interest to spelunkers,” I said, “but what good is it to us today?”
“What?” Kill asked.
“Spelunkers,” I repeated. “People who crawl through caves.”
“For fun?”
I nodded. “For fun.”
Inspector Kill shook his head, unable to imagine such a thing being fun. He rose to his feet. “I’ll show you why this information could be valuable.”
We walked over to a map of Korea tacked to his wall. He pointed, still wearing his white gloves.
“Here,” he said, “are the Kwangju Mountains.” He pointed to a range that slashed across the center of the Korean peninsula. “According to that fragment, the wild man dropped into the caves here, near Mount Osong, and led his pursuers through a maze of caverns and underground rivers that took them three days to traverse. Eventually they emerged here.” Kill pointed again. “Somewhere near Mount Daesong.”
I studied the two points, my mouth falling open. “Oh,” I said.
“Now you see the value of this information?”
I nodded.
“The rest of the manuscript,” Kill continued, “could be of vital national interest. One side, where these men entered the caves, is in North Korea; the other side, where they emerged, is in South Korea.”
“The remainder of the manuscript,” I said, almost speaking to myself, “shows the way beneath the DMZ.”
The Korean Demilitarized Zone is the most heavily fortified demarcation line in the world: 700,000 Communist soldiers in the north; 450,000 ROK soldiers in the south. Not to mention a division of 30,000 American soldiers sitting smack-dab in the middle.
“So maybe now,” Inspector Kill said, slipping off his gloves, “you’ll tell me where you found this fragment.”
“Maybe I will,” I said. But for some reason I hesitated.
“Okay,” Kill said. “You think about it. I’ll lock this fragment in the safe.” He did. Then we started discussing the Blue Train rapist. Ernie puked over the railing.
When his guts were empty he stood and looked at me, bleary-eyed. “How long does this goddamn boat ride take?”
“Eleven hours. Another two hours left,” I said.
“Two hours?” Ernie groaned.
Before we left Hialeah Compound, I’d checked with Specialist Holder at Headquarters Company about the personnel assigned to the Special Forces Training Facility, Mount Halla.
“I have no data on them,” he told me. “The Green Berets run their own show. They don’t want rear-echelon pukes like us mucking around with their personnel records.”
“Do you have any idea how many trainers are assigned?”
“No idea. All I know is that combat units from up north in the 2nd Division area are flown out of the DMZ all the way down south to Cheju Island for specialized training. Rappelling. Mountaineering. Commando tactics. Things like that. How many Special Forces troops are assigned there at any given time, I don’t know.”
“Who’s the commander?”
Holder thumbed through a stack of computer printouts. “Some guy with about half his jaw blown off. Weird-looking character. Looks like a puppet made by Senor Wences. But mean. Don’t ever mention his jaw. Here it is.” Holder pointed to a name. “Laurel, Ambrose Q., Lieutenant Colonel. Not exactly a name you’d associate with someone so tough.”
“How’d he lose his jaw?” Ernie asked.
“Vietnam,” Holder replied. “Training Montagnards or something like that.”
It wasn’t much information, but it was a start.
We returned to billeting, woke up Riley, and gave him the chore of contacting the Air Force and compiling a list of zoomies who were on pass or leave or official travel on the days of the two assaults on the Blue Train.
“Can do,” Riley said, without complaint, sitting upright on the edge of his bunk, holding his head, trying to clear his mind. He was a blowhard and a drunk, but in the final analysis Staff Sergeant Riley was one hell of a soldier. He’d complete the mission, no matter how miserable he felt. I told him where we were going.
“Cheju-do?” he said. “This is no time for a vacation.”
As the most southerly spot in the Republic, Cheju Island was known for its warm weather and balmy beaches, a Korean version of Hawaii.
“This is no vacation,” I said. “We’re going to check out the Special Forces.”
“Those guys? You think one of them might be the Blue Train rapist?”
“Could be. We won’t know until we check.”
“They’ll eat you for lunch.”
“We’ll see about that,” Ernie replied.
We left Riley sitting on the edge of his bunk, growling, spitting up, preparing to become human again.
The ferry that ran from the Port of Pusan to Cheju Island was huge. It was said that it could hold three hundred passengers. There were only about two dozen of us aboard on this trip, though, maybe because it was the last ferry to depart in the evening. Ernie and I were the only foreigners. The other passengers kept to themselves, mainly because they were couples, recently married. Cheju Island had become the traditional place for a honeymoon in Korea.
Ernie stared at the happy couples. “What are they grinning about?”
“They just got married, Ernie.”
“That’s a reason to be happy?”
I slapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll cheer up when we hit shore.”
Ernie’s eyes spun, and he leaned over the railing and threw up again.
The ferry disembarked at a pier about a half mile from Cheju-si, the city of Cheju. In the early morning sunlight, Ernie and I carried our overnight bags and stood in line at a covered awning waiting for a taxi. When it was our turn, I leaned in the passenger-side window and spoke Korean to the driver.
“The American compound on the side of Mount Halla, do you know where it is?”
He nodded.
“How much?”
“Meto-ro dobel,” he said. Double meter because it was outside of his authorized area of operations. That’s the way cabs are regulated in Korea. If they transport a fare outside of their designated area, they aren’t allowed to bring a fare back. Therefore, the passenger must pay double. Ernie always balked at this arrangement, figuring they’d pick up an illegal fare on the way back anyway. Still, it seemed fair to me. We climbed in.
I asked the driver if there were yoguans in the area of the compound and he said there were. We sped along the edge of Cheju City and we were almost immediately thrust into a lush green countryside. Rice paddies stretched all around us and ran up the sides of hills, leading in a terraced parade up toward the huge mountain that loomed off to our left. Ernie peered out the window.
“It’s smoking up there.”
“Mount Halla’s a live volcano,” I said.
“Oh, great. First I get seasick; now I get splashed with molten lava.”
The road was a narrow two-lane highway. Three-wheeled trucks and other cabs and ROK Army military jeeps sped past us. After about a mile, we veered toward the sea and the driver pointed toward a rocky promontory.
“Haenyo,” he said.
I rolled the window down to see better.
“Haenyo,” Ernie repeated. “What’s that?”
“There, Ernie,” I said, pointing. “Those little black dots in the water. See that?”
“Yeah. I see ’em. So what?”
“That’s them. The haenyo. The women of the sea. They dive for things.”
Ernie raised himself to get a better look. “You mean like they dive for pearls?”
“Not too many pearls left, I don’t think. They dive for food. Sea anemones and octopus and seaweed and stuff like that.”
“They make a living doing that?”
“Yes. It’s like fishing. See those floats nearby? Those are the game bags where they keep their catch.”
Ernie glanced at me. “How do you know so much about the haenyo?”
“I read about them. At the Eighth Army library.”
Ernie plopped back into his seat, staring at me in disgust. “You would.” To Ernie, reading was something that was done on an as-needed basis only, when you were desperate for information.