We’d slept all night in the jeep. Ernie had found a place to pull over and even though he would’ve liked to have kept the engine running so we could keep the heater on, he’d turned it off to conserve fuel. We’d bundled ourselves up as best we could in every piece of field gear we’d brought and managed to get a little sleep-not much, because of the biting cold. Captain Prevault fared best. She curled up in the back seat on top of the mostly empty duffel bags and slept like a housecat on a fluffy couch.
I awoke first and stepped outside the jeep and stretched myself. Then I walked to the edge of the clearing beside the road. A creek gurgled at the bottom of an incline. I walked downhill, squatted next to the water, and washed my face. I found an isolated area downstream above the water line and did my business, digging a hole and covering it up like the Army field manual tells us. Soon Ernie and Captain Prevault were up and following my pattern. I’d brought a toothbrush and a razor blade but figured I’d wait for hot water before trying to scrape the stubble off my chin. Once we’d all performed our morning toilette, we climbed back in the jeep and Ernie drove off. I studied the map.
“The closest village,” I said, “to the last known position of Echo Company is up ahead about three or four klicks.”
“What’s it called?”
“I’m not sure if this is a name or just a description.”
“What is it?”
“I-kori.”
“Which means?”
“Two roads.”
“They didn’t put a lot of thought into that name.”
And when we reached the village, we realized why no one had.
“There’s nothing here,” Ernie said.
Captain Prevault leaned forward, her hands on my seat. “That looks like a cattle pen,” she said.
“Or a pig pen,” I corrected. I doubted there was a lot of high-end livestock up there.
“And chicken coops,” she said.
“Yeah,” Ernie replied, “but they’re all empty.”
“Let’s talk to that guy, up there.”
I pointed. Ernie slowed the jeep next to an old man pulling a cart along the side of the road.
“Anyonghaseiyo,” I said.
The man grinned and nodded but didn’t stop walking. Ernie kept pace with him.
“Yogi-ei I-kori iei-yo?” Is this Two Roads?
He nodded.
“No one lives here?”
He shook his head.
“During the war,” I said, “I understand there was an American army unit nearby.” His face remained impassive. Then I said, “Do you know where I can find Hunter Huk?”
The old man stopped his cart. Ernie slammed on the brakes and backed up a few feet. As I waited for the old man to speak, I noticed his cart was full of edible plants, probably pulled from the edge of the stream that ran parallel to the road.
“Hunter Huk?” he repeated. His voice was reedy and tattered, as if he’d used it for far too many years.
“Yes,” I said. “Hunter Huk.”
The old man shook his head. “Who told you of him?”
“A woman down the road.” I pointed back from where we’d come. “She told me he was the only one who could lead us to the cliff where the American military unit had once set up their equipment.”
The old man nodded. “That’s true enough.” We waited for what seemed like a long time. “I wouldn’t advise you to look for him.”
“Why not?”
“You can only find him in the mountains, and it’s cold up there.”
I nodded.
“And once he finds you, he always exacts a price.”
“What kind of price?”
The old man shook his head once again. “Too high of a price. Go back to Seoul. Leave these mountains alone.”
“We are determined to climb Daeam Mountain.” I pointed toward the cliff the monks had originally told us about. “How do I get up there?”
“By helicopter,” he said. His face was straight; it wasn’t a joke.
“If I walk, how would I get up there?”
“You are in I-kori,” he said. “The road you are on now is the first road. The second road is the one you just passed. It leads into the mountains.”
“Have you been there before?”
“Never.”
“Why not?”
The man shook his head once again and grabbed the handle of his cart. “Go back to Seoul,” he said and started walking away.
We tried the road. Ernie drove along its unpaved surface. It was bumpy and uneven, but the US Army jeep was designed for just this type of terrain. Each of the four tires had its own independent suspension so the tire on the left could be in a ditch and the tire on the right could be elevated over a bump. They weren’t connected by an inflexible axle. This made moving forward possible and Ernie was a good driver, but we knew the main danger when driving a jeep over rough terrain was its inherent instability. GIs were constantly driving jeeps too fast and taking corners too sharply and thereby turning their jeeps over. Ernie wouldn’t do that, I hoped, but the road was becoming progressively more treacherous. And steeper. And then we were winding in and out of stands of pines, and the road wriggled up Daeam Mountain like a cold-weather serpent. Periodically I spotted the cliff that was our destination.
We must’ve reached an elevation of at least a thousand feet when we finally hit a dead end. Ernie climbed out of the jeep and surveyed the obstacle. It was a wall of earth and rock.
“This looks man-made,” he said.
Even though it was covered with vegetation, I agreed with him. It appeared the rock cliff behind had been blown up with explosives for the express purpose of causing this avalanche. “They wanted to block the road,” I said.
“Did a good job of it, too.”
I glanced upward. If I backed up about twenty yards, I could just make out the eastern edge of the cliff that had once been the home of Echo Company. Using my Army-issue compass I took a reading on the direction.
“Can we make it up there before dark?” Ernie asked.
“I think so,” I replied. “If we hustle.”
I started to tell Captain Prevault to wait there for us when she cut me off and said, “No way. You’re not leaving me here. I’m going with you.”
And so the three of us packed up our gear, climbed carefully over the rock wall, and started humping our way up the last couple of miles between us and the old home of the Lost Echo. Halfway up, I tossed a newspaper-wrapped package to Captain Prevault. She opened it, looked inside, and said, “You’ve been holding out on us.”
Ernie glanced at the package and said, “Kimpap. You bought it from the old woman at the farmhouse?”
“I figured we’d need a little extra on the road.”
We stopped in a clearing to rest for a while and wolfed down one tube each of the glutinous rice wrapped in paper-thin seaweed, saving the rest for dinner. I drank deeply from the water in my canteen, and then we stared back up the trail.
The view from the cliff was breathtaking. It was apparent why Echo Company had picked this spot to set up their signal equipment. Far to the left, fading out of sight in the thick mist, was the eastern coast of Korea, and if I calculated the azimuth on my map correctly, there would’ve been a straight line of sight to the US Navy vessels anchored off the coast of Sokcho. To the right, the valley stretched away far to the north, probably to units operating on the enemy side of the 38th Parallel. The valley below looked like a panorama set up by giants. Tiny little people moved between tiny little houses, and smoke rose from chimneys like wavering threads of black silk.
“The top of the world,” Captain Prevault said.
“That’s what it seems like.”
We still had maybe an hour of daylight, and I didn’t want to waste it. Systematically, we searched every square foot of the scalloped shelf of the cliff, a natural formation that was about the size of a regulation baseball diamond. We paid particular attention to the back wall because there was an overhang there that would’ve protected the Americans from rain, snow and, with any luck, incoming enemy artillery.
We found a number of items: old K-ration tins, a P-38 handheld can opener, a moldy brass belt buckle, a couple of rounds of M-1 rifle ammunition, and a brown combat boot that was so worn it had a hole in the sole and rips in the leather near the ankle.