Ernie and I both nodded.
“Works out a lot,” he continued. “Sort of buff, for a rear-echelon puke.”
“That’s him,” I replied.
“He was into diving.” Ernie and I both stared at him blankly. Warnocki continued. “Between cycles, Colonel Laurel gives water survival courses to anybody who’s interested, using the techniques he’s learned from the haenyo.”
“Did you go?” Ernie asked.
“Of course. All the SF personnel did. He’s our commander.”
“And Parkwood went too?”
“Yeah. Held back, though. Didn’t mingle with the rest of us.”
“So if you were trying to get off this island,” Ernie asked, “and you figured that even if you managed to get on the ferry, you’d probably be picked up by the time you landed in Pusan, where would you go?”
“I’d steal a chopper,” Warnocki said.
“And if that wasn’t available?”
“A boat.”
We started to run, but Warnocki shouted for us to wait. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. Inside a padlocked filing cabinet, he lifted out a pistol belt with a holster and strapped a. 45 automatic pistol around his waist. Outside, he slid back the bolt to make sure a round was chambered. The three of us climbed in Warnocki’s jeep.
“Something’s wrong,” Warnocki said.
The three of us were lying on a sand dune, looking down on the boulder-strewn beach next to the ancient wooden quay where the haenyo launch their craft. Lieutenant Colonel Ambrose Q. Laurel was sitting on a flat rock with his back to us, staring out to sea. Two haenyo, clad in full-body wet suits, were working listlessly on repairing nets.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Colonel Laurel never sits stilclass="underline" he’s always on the go. And he wouldn’t ignore the haenyo like that. He has great respect for them.”
Behind us, boots crunched on sand.
I turned to look to see who it was, but by then Warnocki was rolling down the sand dune like a mad dervish. As he rolled, he reached in his holster and somehow pulled out the. 45. He raised it and a shot rang out. I blinked in surprise and struggled to stand up. Ernie was already on his feet, hands held to his side, strangely immobile.
And then I realized why he was immobile.
The death end of an M-16 semiautomatic rifle was pointing right at him.
Sergeant Ronald T. Parkwood held the rifle, pointing it directly at us as he climbed the sand dune. His face was unshaven, his eyes squinting in rage, glaring at us over a nose that wasn’t as huge as portrayed in the witnesses’ sketches, but pretty good-sized anyway.
“Drag him up here,” Parkwood shouted.
And then I realized what he meant. Warnocki sat on the far side of the dune, clutching his right thigh, cursing, trying to stop the bleeding. His. 45 lay a few feet from him in the sand.
“If you try for it,” Parkwood told Warnocki, “you’ll be dead.” Then he turned to us. “Now drag him up and get him down to the beach!”
Ernie and I did what we’d been told. Once we were on the far side of the dune, Warnocki was able to hop, with our help, down the ten yards to the beach. The haenyo had stopped working, and were staring at Parkwood. Colonel Laurel stood up.
“You’ve shot one of my men!” he roared.
“Shut the hell up!” Parkwood replied. “Any more mouth and I’ll shoot you. And these haenyo while I’m at it.”
Colonel Laurel clamped his mangled jaw shut.
“In the boat,” Parkwood said. “Everybody.”
We walked toward the pier.
“Leave him here,” Parkwood said, pointing the rifle at Warnocki, “on the beach where I can see him.”
We sat Staff Sergeant Warnocki down on moist sand.
“Now everybody, up on the quay. Into the boat. And don’t launch until I give the order.”
It was a fairly large boat, with no sail, only two oars on either side. Seating planks crossed it with enough space for about ten people, about the size of a normal fishing party of haenyo. There was an outboard motor at the stern. Colonel Laurel sat farthest forward, then the two haenyo, and finally me and Ernie.
Warnocki stared after us angrily. With that leg, even if he managed to crawl back to the jeep, he wouldn’t get far. He was losing blood at such a rate that he’d probably pass out soon. Still, Parkwood wasn’t taking any chances. Just as the rest of us sat down in the boat, Parkwood, still on the beach, aimed the M-16 rifle at Warnocki and fired.
Warnocki scrambled backward like a crab. The first round missed. The second came closer, grazing Warnocki, I think, on the shoulder. But by then, Warnocki was at the top of another sand dune and rolled down to safety on the other side.
Colonel Laurel had risen to his feet and started moving toward Parkwood. Parkwood swiveled the rifle, pointed it at Laurel, and growled, “Sit down!”
Colonel Laurel sat.
The haenyo stared at the bottom of the boat, as if in complete defeat.
Parkwood braced himself against a wooden stanchion and took a bead on Warnocki’s jeep parked on the edge of the highway some quarter-mile distant. He fired a single round, apparently hitting the radiator because a puff of steam rose into the cold blue sky.
Satisfied, Parkwood sloshed through shallow water and climbed in the boat, sitting with his back to the outboard motor, grinning at us. Keeping the rifle in his lap, he jerked on the lanyard and the engine started up. He unhooked a line and putt-putted the boat away from the quay. After crossing a few small swells, we were at sea, heading I wasn’t sure where.
At first we all just stared at one another and at the still-smoking rifle in Parkwood’s lap. As the ocean rose and fell, it seemed to calm us, and the hopelessness of the situation started to sink in. We were being taken out to sea by a madman, by the Blue Train rapist, by a man who’d already proven his disregard for human life. As long as he held that rifle, we were defenseless against him. And as we floated on this cold, dreary sea, there was no help in sight.
About a mile out, still in sight of the coastline, Parkwood ordered the haenyo off the boat.
Colonel Laurel protested. “We’re too far out,” he said. “They’ll never make it.”
“Bull,” Parkwood replied. “These women can swim for miles.”
The haenyo apparently agreed with him. They glanced back at Colonel Laurel, as if in apology. He nodded back, granting them permission. After all, on Cheju Island women are the breadwinners-or seafood winners, if you will-and these women had families to support. As sleekly as a pair of seals, the two women rolled off the edge of the boat and started paddling their way toward shore. Once they were about a hundred yards away, they stopped and stared back, as if saying good-bye. Then they turned toward shore and started seriously stroking toward home.
Parkwood ordered Ernie and me farther toward the front of the boat. Now the three of us were on one end, Parkwood on the other. He kept his finger in the trigger housing of the M-16, the barrel lying loosely on his lap. With the other hand he steered the boat away from Cheju Island.
“Where are we going, Parkwood?” I asked.
“Shut the fuck up.”
I shut up.
After a few minutes of glaring at the endless sea, he spoke again, this time directing his comment to Ernie.
“So, how’s Marnie?” he asked.
“Marnie?” Ernie was as surprised as I was.
“You know who I’m talking about,” Parkwood replied. “Is she still screwing Freddy Ray?”
The original complaints by the Country Western All Stars regarding various missing items-a microphone, a pair of panties, and finally a single cowboy boot-we had assumed were the results of carelessness or the booty of the occasional souvenir-hunting thief. They had seen a pattern in it; Ernie and I hadn’t. Now I realized that those were precisely the items that I’d seen earlier in the living quarters at the commo site atop Mount Halla, all jumbled in with a ton of other items, but there nevertheless. Most recently I’d also seen a red lace bra and panties. Originally, I’d written it off to G.I. bravado. There’s not a barracks in the US Army where a set of female panties isn’t prominently displayed somewhere, as a trophy of conquest.