Thunder in the Morning Calm

Kim Yong-nam Military Prison Camp
Hamgyong-Namdo Province
120 miles north of the Demilitarized Zone
the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)

early twenty-first century

T
he morning sunlight beamed through the barred windowpane above the bunk. Feeling its slight warmth on his face, Keith opened his eyes and squinted into the glare.

Another morning. Another day.

He rubbed his eyes and rolled slowly to his side. The aches and cricks had worsened over the years, but arthritis had not debilitated him. Not yet anyway.

His mission was not yet done.

He pushed himself up from the hard mattress. Hot, searing pain flared and burned within his elbows. He would have bitten a bullet, but four of his teeth had fallen out and three more were half chipped or broken. And even if he had all his teeth, they took his bullets from him long ago. He exhaled, blowing through the red-hot fire flashing from his elbows and his knees.

Mornings were the hardest. He would feel better in a moment. But not yet. He grimaced, grabbed his left knee, and squeezed hard. He glanced over at the two figures covered by gray blankets on the other side of the room. Robert and Frank, his only living links to a happier world, were not yet awake.

The sun’s rays had not reached their bunks. They were not yet stirring. Their blankets rose and fell, up and down, ever so slightly, barely visible, providing evidence of the breath of life. For this, the first blessing of a cold autumn day, Keith closed his eyes and thanked his Creator.

Once there were ten of them.

Now, only three.

Death claimed them over the years, one by one, whittling their numbers to a fragile trio of the fading elderly. He guessed that they had reached their eighties by now, although he was unsure even of that. The seasons and the years had marched slower with time. The earth had slowed her axial spin so as to prolong the torture to which they had been condemned. There was no way to track time. Not anymore. Keith never feared death, yet fear had not escaped him. Indeed, the fear of outliving the others, of remaining as the last man standing, loomed always as his greatest nightmare.

Blam! Clang-a-lang-a-clang-a-lang-a-clang-a-lang
. The metal trash can bounced across the concrete floor, down the middle aisle between the bunks.

“Get up, old dogs!” The guard loomed in the doorway with a bullwhip in hand. Like every new whipmaster over the years, this one too would prove himself on this, his first day on the job. “Water time! Move! Move!”

The guard clicked his heels. He was standing just in front of two other jackbooted guards with semiautomatic rifles. “Get up, swine! Perhaps today we will shoot you all!” He laughed. “Or perhaps we shall cut you up and sell you at the market.”

Self-bemused at his own ranting monologue, the guard stepped into the cell and kicked the trash can again.

Clang-a-lang-a-clang-a-lang-a-clang-a-lang.
Then
whap whap
against the concrete floor.

Keith swung his feet over the edge of the bunk.

His buddies shifted in their bunks. Robert’s arms shook and his face twisted with pain as he tried to get up. His weathered forehead showed deep lines and wrinkles. He opened his mouth wide, desperately trying to suck oxygen into his lungs. The whipmaster ignored Robert, at least for the moment. He turned and marched back outside the prisoners’
concrete barracks and perched himself at the entrance, where he continued to bark a string of orders.

Keith’s feet found his worn leather sandals on the concrete floor. He slipped into them and stood up.

Robert wheezed, coughed, and again tried to stand. His legs shook as he pushed himself up from the low-lying cot. Keith reached out, found Robert’s elbow, and helped steady his friend. Frank fell into line.

Wearing only heavy black-garb pajamas, they shuffled out the door toward the waiting guards.

Keith always tried to focus on things of the Creation … the sunshine, the colors of the trees, the moon and stars when he could see them —

Whap!
The whip cracked on the ground behind them. “Faster, old goats!”

These things — the moon, the stars — reminded Keith of the Creator … somewhere … still in control … somehow. But now, each day it was harder somehow than in the years when he had relied on the strength in a younger body to survive. Now each day was —

Whap!

Sometimes classical music played in his mind and gave him inspiration. Sometimes he heard the great hymns of the faith. This morning the lyrics and words of Beethoven’s Ninth danced in his head … “Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory —”

Whap!

“Oooooooooooooeeeeeeehhh!!!” Keith dropped to the rocky ground. The whip had opened a gash in the top of his foot. He grabbed his foot and lay there. Above him, the world spun in a painful blur.

Angry voices of three guards filled the air. The two with the rifles yelled at the one with the whip, who yelled back. One of the rifle bearers knelt down, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, and tied it around Keith’s bleeding foot as a makeshift bandage.

Blood soon soaked the handkerchief, its white cloth yielding to the crimson flow.

“Get up, old dog! Get moving or there will be more of that.”

The whipmaster’s voice had lost part of its anger. Keith thought the strike to his foot probably was an accident. Poor aim. Most of the
guards’ tactics these days were more psychological than physical. And this guy was new. Has to show who’s boss.

Keith pushed himself back to his feet, grateful the whip had not struck Robert. He limped back into line with his buddies, the aching in his knees now throbbing in a rhythmic, synchronized cadence with the throbbing pain in his foot.

They shuffled up a hill to a long wooden trough, the kind that horses and pigs drank from back home.

“On your knees!”

The three men dropped down and, like dogs lapping from a mud puddle, began licking water from the trough with their tongues. At least the water was fresh.

“Enough!” the whipmaster yelled. “Into formation. To the latrine!”

Keith and Frank got back on their feet. But when Robert pushed himself up against the front of the trough, trying to stand, he lost his balance and tumbled to the ground. He lay there, wheezing and coughing. One of the guards, the one who had bandaged Keith’s foot with his handkerchief, laid down his weapon and helped Robert back to his feet.

“
Kamsamnida
,” Robert said.

The guard responded with a stern-faced nod.

Robert’s wheezing was getting much worse. He had another coughing jag and turned a dusky blue.

The wind brought a whiff of the latrines over to the right. The three old men were used to it and shuffled in line toward the stench of human excrement.

Whap!

Again the bullwhip slapped the ground.

Not far beyond the drinking trough, off to the right, were the unmarked graves of their buddies. Each day as he walked by, Keith prayed for their families. Keith had considered taking his own life, as one man had done years ago. The man had fashioned a makeshift noose from strips of a sheet he tied together and hanged himself.

But Keith could not abandon Robert and Frank. Not now. Robert likely would not survive another frigid Korean winter. Keith was certain of that. And he wanted to be able to bury him, as he had the others. And he wanted to bless Robert’s grave with the love and respect he deserved from his countrymen.

No, he could not abandon them, not now or ever. Cowards chose suicide. And suicide was an affront to the very faith that had kept him alive all these years.

They would hang together until the end.

Semper Fidelis.

Once a Marine, always a Marine.

Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI)
Suitland, Maryland

T
he massive Suitland Federal Center, located in suburban Maryland just eight miles southeast of the Pentagon, sprawled across 226 acres of grass, well-manicured shrubbery, and brick-and-mortar federal office buildings.

Reachable by subway off the Washington Metro’s Green Line, yet unknown to most Americans, the center is home to several federal agencies, the most recognizable being the United States Census Bureau.

From the Pentagon, the ride to Suitland by car was scenic, even on a barren mid-November day. Crossing the Potomac River, the government-issued Ford Taurus passed by the Jefferson Memorial and the Tidal Basin, the reflections in the pools and basins of Washington’s great monuments a reminder of the great force for freedom that America had been, still is, and, hopefully, will remain.

But in a few short minutes, the images of grandeur disappeared as the Taurus left behind the glamorous buildings of government and drove into the crime-infested southeast sector of the city, past the Washington Navy Yard to the right and slumlord government housing to the left.

In the front passenger seat, Lieutenant Commander Gunner McCormick, United States Navy, checked his watch. They had departed the Pentagon thirty minutes after the end of rush hour, with plenty of time to spare, unless one of those notoriously inconvenient Washington-area fender benders paralyzed traffic.

“We’ve got a few minutes, sir,” said the senior chief petty officer driving the Taurus. “Be happy to stop and buy you a coffee.”

“Sounds great, Senior Chief,” the commander said. “I could use the caffeine. Come to think of it, I could use a smoke.” He checked his watch again. “But I’d rather be early than take any chances. How about on the way back I buy you a coffee or, better yet, maybe something a little more substantial.”

“That’ll work,” the senior chief said, sporting a sly grin as the Taurus rolled east across the Pennsylvania Avenue bridge spanning the Anacostia River.

Not much was said for the rest of the trip as the commander gathered his thoughts. Three days ago, they plucked him off his ship in the Pacific, flew him to Hawaii, then to San Diego, and then to the Pentagon for one day. And now they were driving him over to Suitland, to the Office of Naval Intelligence, for a top-secret meeting about a top-secret subject. He still had no clue why he had been called.

His boss at sea, Rear Admiral James S. Hampton Jr., had not been too happy about it. But then, Admiral Hampton had not been happy about much lately. Gunner thought the admiral had been on his case over just about anything and everything. He had no idea what was bothering him. Who knew? He’d learned long ago that in the Navy, you don’t second-guess the orders of your superiors. Half those orders never made sense anyway. And you don’t try to read officers’ minds. Flag officers, especially, could change their minds as quickly as the wind shifts directions. So what was the point?