North Korea
It was an incredible chain of stunning events, thought Kate, that had brought her to this cave with armed men outside, one of whom was shouting something in Korean into the cave, not sounding friendly at all. In the shadows of the cave, she continued to whisper cooing sounds into Terri's ear in an attempt to quiet Terri's delirious ramblings. Kate stroked the injured woman's temples with her fingertips.
Terri's semi-conscious eyes suddenly opened wide, normal and lucid. She gazed up with that unflagging inquisitive good nature that Kate had grown fond of. "What happened? Did we crash?" She started to turn her head, looking around. "Where are we?"
Kate wanted to ease Terri gently back into awareness of what had transpired. She clasped one of Terri's hands in hers. "There's been trouble; you'll be all right."
"Okay." Terri spoke the single word in the small voice of a child. She closed her eyes, saying no more.
At the mouth of the cave, Scott and Paxton remained one to either side, each with a finger on a trigger. Scott shouted something in Korean, responding to the men outside. There was a surly reply from without. Scott translated for the others.
"They're not soldiers. They're bandits. They've given us sixty seconds to surrender. Big Mouth out there says he's holding a fragmentation grenade with a ten-second fuse. We don't show ourselves, he throws in the grenade." Scott flicked a quick glance around the confines of the cave. "That means we all die."
"Well hell," said Paxton. "Let's do as the man says. Jesus, Commander. I don't want to die. You've got to get us back home. We've got to take any chance we can!" Paxton's blond hair was mussed, his face streaked with dirt and fear, no longer the movie-poster-handsome face.
Scott glanced at Kate. "Will Terri make it, if we move her?"
Kate rose from kneeling at the side of the woman who had become her friend during their intensive astronaut training together. "Terri's dead," she said in a grim voice. She unholstered her pistol.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure. And we're dead if someone out there throws in a grenade. I don't see where we have a choice."
Paxton looked mightily relieved. He looked happy enough to jump up and down. "Kate's right!"
Scott sighed. "She always is. Okay. I'll step out first. If they open fire, you two do your best. Good luck."
Kate started to say something, but Scott had already managed to hobble the single awkward step it took for him to swing his straightened leg through the shrubbery that choked the mouth of the cave. He disappeared from their sight, leaving Kate and Bob Paxton alone with the dead woman. When Kate's eyes locked with his, she saw that his were glassy with uncertainty. "Get a grip, Bob. This is no time to lose it."
Paxton didn't look so sure. "There was nothing like this in the goddamn training."
"Can it," she said. She couldn't believe that she had once been attracted to this man.
From outside, she heard Scott address someone in Korean. There was a cruel, guttural laugh and the briefest sound of a scuffle. Then she heard Scott grunt in pain. She could wait no longer. She'd rather die giving backup to a teammate than crouch here, hiding. She took a step forward, bringing up her pistol and bracing herself for whatever she would find confronting her.
Paxton's jaw dropped. "Kate, no, for Chrissake, wait! What if-"
She didn't have an opportunity to reply, nor to propel herself through the shrubbery as she'd intended to. Instead, Ron Scot was propelled into the cave under force of a powerful shove from outside. He plowed into her with enough impact to send them both stumbling backwards. Kate fought to maintain her balance, simultaneously steering Scott toward a rough, curved wall of the cave, where he could reach out a hand and steady himself on his good leg, to brace himself from falling. She noted that he wore a nasty purple bruise on his forehead that was swelling by the second, and an open, ugly red wound along the scalp line. Scott did not fall. He remained standing when Kate released him. This allowed her to spin around just in time to see the man, who had obviously shoved Scott, now come storming into the cave.
There was the cruelty of a killer about him, every bit as palpable as his foul body odor that permeated the dank closeness. He wore a dirty padded jacket and ragged pants. His face was scarred, probably from smallpox. He held an M16 automatic rifle.
Scott explained quickly, "His name is Han Ling. Three of his men are outside, and they're not much prettier than he is. He's Chinese, but he speaks Korean."
Paxton had stepped away from the cave entrance, pointedly keeping his pistol aimed at the ground, a sign of surrender. This did him no good. Before he could speak, before anyone saw it coming, the intruder whipped the rifle sideways in a sharp movement that snapped the rifle's butt squarely into Paxton's startled face. There was a bone-crunching sound. Paxton fell back with a cry, falling to the ground, the pistol skittering from his fingers. He drew himself into a crouch against the cave's wall, staring wild-eyed from behind the hands that he clasped to his face.
"My nose! Jesus Christ, he broke my goddamn nose!"
Kate and the bandit faced each other. Like Paxton, she held her pistol aimed at the ground. The intruder glared at her menacingly, and she took advantage of the opportunity he was obviously offering her by not opening fire and cutting her to ribbons. She let the pistol drop from her fingers. It clattered onto the cave floor.
The man gestured with his rifle. Paxton sidled over to join her and Commander Scott, near the sprawled remains of Terri Schmidt. The bandit scooped up their dropped pistols while maintaining a one-armed grip on his Ml6, a finger on the trigger and the muzzle aimed at them. He nonchalantly slipped the sidearms into a wide, colorful sash that served as his belt, with the pistol butts reversed, old American West style, for quick cross-draw. The bandit motioned them outside with the rifle barrel, issuing a gruff command in his own tongue.
Kate asked Scott, "What are they going to do with us?"
"I make out something about taking us into the mountains. He's speaking a regional dialect that I don't know."
Bob Paxton still held his broken nose with both hands. A stream of bloody droplets dotted his tunic. "This isn't happening," he gurgled. "This can't be happening."
"Move it, Specialist," ordered Scott briskly. "We'll try to set that nose as soon as we get our asses out of here. We're worth more alive than dead to them. If they'd wanted us dead, we'd damn sure already be dead."
Kate did her best to pretend that a gnarly mountain bandit wasn't pointing an automatic weapon at her. She spoke to Scott, nodding toward the body at their feet. "What about Terri? We can't just leave our dead."
Scott sighed. His eyes were infinitely sad. "We can't help Terri now. We'll do whatever it takes to recover her remains. But for now… I promised this guy we'd go where he wanted to take us."
The bandit seemed to understand what they were talking about. With a smile of pure maliciousness, he summoned up phlegm and spat upon Terri Schmidt.
Kate held her emotions in check. It was easy enough to do. At the moment, her emotions were utterly numb to the point of being nonexistent. She eyed the bandit coldly and spoke to Scott. "Sir, do you think he knows about the shuttle?"
"Don't know yet. Can't tell."
Paxton made a whimpering noise. "If I see a chance, I'm making a run for it."
Scott hobbled to the mouth of the cave. "With this busted stem, I'm not running anywhere." Kate could tell that he was doing his best to keep the resignation and defeat he must have felt from filtering into his voice. He disappeared from the cave.
She followed, but not before sending Paxton a glower even under the gun of the bandit who covered them with his Ml6. She hissed, "Don't blow it, Bob. Follow orders or we'll all die."
The bandit lost patience, and she and Paxton were both shoved from the cave, Kate first through the shrubbery, to the knoll of ground outside. Three bandits stood waiting on the knoll. Except for the fact that they were younger, no more than teenagers, in every other respect-from clothing to armament-they were nearly identical to Han; including sour body odor and bad attitude. They stood with their rifles aimed at Scott.
Despite his splinted leg, the flight commander was steady enough to halt the forward momentum of Paxton as the scientist was pushed out from the cave's interior. Paxton would have tumbled over a sharp drop-off, to further injury and possible death, if Scott hadn't been standing there to intercept him. Han stepped from the cave. He stormed over to stand toe-to-toe with Scott, shouting directly into Scott's face.
Scott winced. "This bastard's breath is worse than his B.O.!" he said to Kate and Bob. "I think he's telling us that if we go with him, we might live."
"I have no problem with that," said Kate. She had difficulty keeping her voice steady in the face of four rifles aimed at her, but she succeeded.
Paxton was still gurgling painful complaints, his hands clenching his broken nose. "We're totally screwed! That old man who brought us here, he sold us out. I knew we shouldn't have trusted him!"
Scott turned without comment. He lifted his arms and extended both of his hands, to Paxton's face, batting away Bob's defensive gesture. With a nimble, self-assured twist, he delivered a single, savage jerking motion, resetting Paxton's nose with an audible clack!
Paxton stepped back, at first in shock, then becoming aware that he was no longer in excruciating pain. Han Ling and the other bandits viewed this with some good humor.
Han Ling snarled at Scott.
Scott listened, then said to Paxton and Kate, "Okay, let's do as the man says. We follow the trail that brought us up here, back down the way we came until we're told otherwise." He glared at Paxton, his eyes clouding. "Are you all right, Bob?"
"I-I'm all right," Paxton stammered. "But, Commander, we have to get away from these guys!"
"For now," said Kate, "let's just work at staying alive." Turning to face her commander, Kate offered, "Lean on me, sir."
"No, thanks, Kate. I can make it."
"Don't be macho, commander. Please."
"Sorry, ma'am," he said with a failed attempt at a Southern drawl. She happened to know that he was, in fact, from Minnesota. "It's just the way I was brought up. Let's move out."
One of the bandits took the point position. The other two fell in behind, and their small group began making its way down the winding path. Han strode with the Americans. Kate was thankful that they were upwind of the man. From time to time, one of the renegades would laugh or shout out something to prod the Americans, and would laugh when someone cried out or stumbled.
Scott's splinted leg nearly gave out from beneath him twice. Each time Kate was there to lean a shoulder in against him so he did not fall, but kept moving along the treacherous path. Each time, he would grunt a quiet, "Thanks, Kate" for her ears only, excruciating pain etched into his whisper, but he was determined that their captors not know the extent of his suffering, which they surely would somehow exploit. For his part, Paxton stumbled along as if in a trance.
The mountainside sloped gently, but the thickening of the forest was dramatic, hardwood trees and teak cloaked in darkness. Trees to either side of the trail were towering giant pillars. The trail became more winding.
After awhile, the bandits grew tired of the harassing. They continued on in silence, except for Han Ling's occasional snarled command, indicating a change in direction when they reached a fork in the trail. A jab with the barrel of his M16 into the back of the nearest prisoner would emphasize a new direction to take.
They continued on for what Kate's wristwatch indicated was about forty minutes. From time to time, a helicopter gunship could be heard rotoring overhead. The forest was dense, the treetops meeting far overhead. The choppers would eventually fly away.
During one such flyover, Kate asked Scott, "What do you make of it, Commander?"
"Han and his boys aren't concerned," Scott mumbled through teeth clenched against pain, "so why should we be?"
"Whoever brought us down," she mused, "someone's catching hell back at that landing field."
Scott grunted. "Never underestimate an American space shuttle crew. They should have had their choppers in the air. Then they could've followed us. They lost time, and we used it to cover up and evacuate." Weary to the bone, he sighed. "Poor Terri. Damn, I hate to lose her."
Bob Paxton continued stumbling along like a zombie. Only his eyes seemed fully awake, continuing to anxiously flit about.
Ahead of them, the point man halted where the trail crested a hill. He whispered a frantic, low-pitched warning and dived into foliage along the trail. Kate heard what the point man heard: the clumping of feet, a small group of men advancing toward them from beyond the crest of the hill, advancing at a good clip. Kate heard snippets of conversation in Korean, and that universal clinking and clanking of field-outfitted soldiers on patrol.
The bandits reacted with speed and silence, accustomed to eluding and surviving in this hostile wilderness. Han flung himself at the clustered Americans, knocking Kate, Scott, and Paxton collectively off their feet, into the brush. Han landed atop Kate. Scott was gasping in agony. Paxton's ragged breathing sounded like he was having a panic attack. The undergrowth clawed at Kate's face. Han snarled in Korean.
Scott started to translate. "He says-"
"I think I know what he said." Kate spoke with difficulty because of the foul-smelling bandit atop her. "Stay down and keep quiet or we'll be the first to die."
Bol Rhee's patrol had seen no trace of a space shuttle. They had seen nothing but inhospitable, uninhabited, rugged terrain, and Bol expected nothing but hours more of the same before the afternoon rendezvous with a gunship that would transport them back to the base. His platoon was traveling at combat intervals along the winding path. He overheard the muttering of his men, the eternal soldier's lament about the cold, the sore feet, hunger and sleep deprivation. He was not inclined to quell these grumblings, as he felt much the same.
He walked next to the radio man, though he knew full well that there was no way a helicopter gunship could be called in, considering the density of the surrounding forest.
His platoon was cresting a ridge when a figure unexpectedly jumped from the trail-shouting, screaming, and gesticulating wildly-startling everybody. A man, blond-haired and wild-eyed, came running at them. Blood was smeared across his pale face. He came, shouting in what Bol recognized as English, though he did not understand the language. Screams seemed to be of warning.
Something was not right. Bol opened his mouth to order his men to fall back, to seek cover. Saffron muzzle flashes spat like fiery arrows from either side of the trail. Next to Bol, the radioman's head exploded, spraying Bol's face with hot droplets of blood. He darted for cover with his men, some of whom were falling, mowed down under the hellish onslaught. Bol and a few others managed to return fire.