Thunder in the Morning Calm (21 page)

“Yes, sir, we do. The Koreans have the location. It’s at thirty-six degrees, thirty-four minutes, eight seconds north latitude and one hundred thirty-one degrees, two minutes, fourteen seconds east longitude.”

“Very well. Alert the Pentagon. Request any US ships in the vicinity to conduct search-and-rescue efforts. Let them know that Commander McCormick was on board. I’m sure that the president will have a personal interest in that.”

“Aye, aye, Admiral. I’ll send a flash message, giving it highest urgency. That will get an immediate response.”

Beechcraft Bonanza G36
over the Sea of Japan

W
e are approaching our position off Ulleung-do Island,” Jung-Hoon said. “The island will be about twenty miles over to our left, and the ferry lane is about ten miles to our left. They come from the Korean peninsula and loop out east of the island before going into Dodong. Be on the lookout for any vessels.”

“I’ll check it out,” Gunner said. He unbuckled his harness, got out of the right cockpit seat, and slipped into the back of the plane, where Jackrabbit was loading .223-caliber bullets into magazines.

The jump seat right behind Jung-Hoon was empty, and Gunner took it and peered out the window. The cloud cover had cleared. An orange-pink late-afternoon seascape painted the sea and the sky to the west. The sun was large and low in the sky.

His eyes scanned the horizon. Still nothing but the empty waters of the Sea of Japan.

He pondered the absurdity of it all. What if he did see a ship? So what? Would that change their mission? Of course they could always dump their weapons overboard and make an emergency landing in Japan, and Jackrabbit could tell the Japanese that they’d gotten disoriented or something. That was one of the contingency plans.

Gunner dismissed that thought. At this point, they were in. There was no turning back.

The brave men of the American Revolution had a saying, “Live free or die,” that had spurred freedom-loving Americans since the early days of the republic. Most modern-day Americans, addicted to their iPods and smartphones and social networks and unreal reality TV shows, did not understand the saying. Most had never even heard it. Too many modern-day Americans, lorded over by their masters, never complained as long as their fat bellies were full, he thought. Freedom, sadly, no longer mattered. Free was now the goal. Get something for nothing. Get free goodies from the government. Let someone else pay.

But a precious few still remembered and understood the saying that was attributed to the great Revolutionary War hero General John Stark, a great New Hampshireite. General Stark, the hero of the Battle of Bennington, was invited to a reunion, but because of his failing health had to decline. He scribbled a toast on parchment that was carried by horseback courier to the celebration, a toast to which his former men raised their glasses. On the parchment, since yellowed with age, the general wrote the immortal words: “Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.”

And thus the phrase “Live free or die” became the state motto of New Hampshire and the war cry for freedom-loving Americans who would rather die than be lorded over by a tyrannical government bent on taking away the basic freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

“Live free or die.” Gunner mumbled the words that were lost in the roar of the plane’s single-rotor engine.

If any American soldiers remained in North Korea, he would draw
back the curtain on their imprisonment. He would set them free or he would die trying. If the end of his days on earth was imminent, at least his life would have been worthwhile.

He squinted off toward the western horizon. Rubbed his eyes and squinted again. “Jackrabbit, pass me the binoculars.”

“Sure, Commander.”

Gunner, his squinting gaze fixed on a location to the southwest, held his arm out toward Jackrabbit. When he felt the binoculars in his hand, he brought them up to his eyes. The vessel was cutting through the water, moving from left to right.

“I’ve got a vessel near the horizon, gentlemen,” Gunner announced. “Looks four to five miles out.”

“Let me take a look,” Jackrabbit said, squeezing himself into the left side of the cabin beside Gunner. Gunner handed him the binoculars.

“Which direction?” Jung-Hoon asked.

“Well, if we’re still flying north, looks to be just south of due west from us,” Jackrabbit said.

“That’s the direction of the ferry routes going into Ulleung-do Island,” Jung-Hoon said. “They may not be able to see us from this distance. It depends on how the sun is hitting the plane.”

South Korean fishing trawler
MinCho
the Sea of Japan

T
he seventy-five-foot white wooden trawler
MinCho
plowed through choppy seas. Standing on the starboard front deck, Park Chan-Ho checked his watch. The
MinCho
should be approaching its homeport of Dongdo on Ulleung-do Island within the next thirty minutes.

The strong afternoon wind was blowing out of the west, which meant the closer they got to the island, the calmer the water would get as the jagged mountains on the island blocked the west winds.

The day was good. They had been blessed with a large haul of yellowtail tuna and amberjack. Park, the fifty-five-year-old longtime first mate aboard the trawler, was tired, sore, and looking forward to getting back to Dongdo and unloading the haul, some time with his woman, and a good night’s sleep. Then back out to sea before dawn the next day.

He stuck a cigarette in his mouth, cupped his hand against the breeze, and flicked the wheel on the lighter.

Aah. Nicotine. He held the smoke in for a moment, then exhaled.

Off toward the eastern horizon, where the dark-blue waters of the sea meshed with the darkening skies in the direction of Japan, he noticed something small and yellow, lit by the orange rays of the afternoon sun, flying low over the water. He squinted and looked again. What was it? An airplane? A helicopter? A low-flying missile? No. He took a drag on the cigarette. A missile would not be yellow. And flying north? Not possible.

He looked hard again and convinced himself that it was a small aircraft. Probably a single-engine plane.

Park stepped into the cabin area, out of the wind, where his friend and longtime sea dog, Captain Cha Du-ri, stood at the wheel of the trawler.

“Captain, there is a small aircraft on the horizon. It’s yellow. The same color on the all-vessels notice we heard a while ago. You should have a look.”

“Take the wheel,” the captain said to the second mate, a twenty-two-year-old recent hire.

“Yes, sir,” the second mate said and stepped behind the wheel with a tinge of excitement lighting his face at the notion of taking the wheel.

Park opened the wheelhouse door and stepped out on the wooden deck with the captain.

“Where?” the captain asked.

Park scanned the skies for a moment. “I don’t see it now, Captain, but it was out there.” He pointed to the east. “Flying from right to left, very low, going north.”

“You have an extra cigarette?” Captain Cha asked.

Park handed his boss a cigarette and the lighter. A second later, a cloud of smoke rose from the captain’s lips and blew out to sea, following the direction of Park’s smoke. “You believe this may be the same plane we received the distress call about?”

“I cannot say, Captain. Probably not. We are way north of those coordinates. But I am sure I saw a small plane and it was yellow.”

The captain took a drag on his cigarette. “You are sure it was yellow?
Perhaps it looked yellowish in the late-afternoon rays of the setting sun.”

The captain had a point. This late in the day, the sun did indeed have a way of distorting colors. “I wish you had seen it. The plane looked like a bright painted yellow. I do not think it was the reflection of the late-afternoon sun.”

The captain, who liked cigarettes as much if not more than Park did, seemed more enthralled with his tobacco than discussing a mysterious airplane in the distance that had vanished. Through a smoke cloud, he said, “You feel confident enough in your spotting to recommend that I call it in to the Coast Guard?”

“That is up to you, sir.”

“And I did not see what you saw. You did not answer my question. If I call it in, and if the Coast Guard officers then meet us in Dongdo, they will question you about what you saw. That means you will not help me and our young new second mate haul all these fish out of the hold. We’ll have to clean up the boat by ourselves too. We’ll have to get the trawler ready to go out again in the morning. And since our young apprentice in there has little experience in these matters, you know what that will mean, do you not?”

“Yes, sir,” Park said. “That means that you would be left to do the bulk of the work by yourself.”

“That is correct, Park.” Another drag on the cigarette. “I will call the Coast Guard if you feel certain that you spotted the missing plane, not just any plane. So my question is, do you feel confident enough in your spotting to recommend that I call it in to the Coast Guard?”

Park flipped his ashes over the side of the trawler. A gust of wind blew smoking ambers back along the side and out past the churning waters in the wake of the stern. “Perhaps you are right, Captain. Perhaps I saw the yellow reflection of the sun’s rays on the fuselage. It makes no sense that the missing aircraft would have wandered this far north.”

“You are a good man,” the captain said, patting Park on the back. “Now, go in the wheelhouse and relieve our young friend. I am afraid with him steering we might wind up in Tokyo.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Beechcraft Bonanza G36
over the Sea of Japan

W
e are now slightly north of the DMZ,” Jung-Hoon said, “and approaching our midcourse correction to the west-northwest. I will climb to one thousand feet and glide the plane down into the water. Once we ditch, we may have five minutes to get the raft inflated, get our equipment, and get out. That’s if we are lucky. Jackrabbit, is everything ready to go?”

“Zodiac boat, check,” Jackrabbit said. “Weapons, check. MREs, check. Tent, check. Electronics, check. We’re ready to take a swim if we need to. It’s now or never.”

“Okay,” Jung-Hoon said. “I’m breaking to the northwest in … stand by … three … two … one … setting course for three-zero-zero degrees.”

Gunner felt the plane bank in a loop to the left, low over the water. He looked at the GPS map now blinking in the center of the plane’s instrument panel.

They had turned in a west-northwesterly direction and were flying straight toward the North Korean shoreline. This marked their final course change. Gunner’s heart pounded, for with this turn, there was no turning back.

Down below, swells rolled gently. No whitecaps were in sight.

Gunner turned around and saw Jackrabbit putting gun oil on the barrel of one of the M-16s. He caressed the barrel with his hands as if it were some sort of idol-god. With the droning roar of the plane’s
engine filling the cabin, Jackrabbit’s eyes danced and sparkled as they ran up and down the barrel of the rifle. And that grotesque scar on his face morphed into a wicked smile as he touched the weapon with what seemed like a sense of reverence. He almost looked like a crazed killer in a trance, Gunner thought.

Sea of Japan, full flight path with fake Mayday site,
North and South Korea, Japan

Maybe that’s exactly what he was … a crazed killer in a trance. Of course, how could one serve in the Special Forces without being a crazy, ruthless killer at heart?

Maybe there was a reason he had expatriated from the United States to Korea.

“Hey, Jackrabbit.” Gunner broke the trance. Jackrabbit’s eyes left the gun, and the scar changed from a wicked smile to a grotesque scar.

“What?”

“Question.”

“Fire away.”

“Well, don’t take this the wrong way, but if I’m getting ready to go into battle with somebody named ‘Jackrabbit,’ I’d like to know why he’s named Jackrabbit.”

Jackrabbit snickered, laid the gun down, and leaned forward. “It started when I was eighteen years old, just before I joined the Army. We were huntin’ for deer down around Lake Phelps, near my hometown of Creswell, North Carolina. Me and my daddy and a couple of buddies.

“Well, we were in the corner of a peanut field, over by the edge of the woods, when out from the other side there ran up the biggest buck I ever saw. Must’ve been a fourteen-pointer.

“It was my turn to take a shot, so I cocked that little Winchester 30-30 I’d gotten for my sixteenth birthday, and I bore down on the deer. I knew I had him good. Had his neck right in my gun sights. And just before I squeezed the trigger, something spooked him. That ole buck turned tail and ran right back across that field, zigzagging away from me as fast as he could run.

“Well, I was mad as all get out when I looked down and saw what spooked that buck. Standing right there on his haunches beside where the buck had been, eatin’ peanuts, was the biggest jackrabbit I ever saw. At least it looked like a jackrabbit to me. Must’ve been four foot on its hind legs!