RW14 - Dictator's Ransom

by Richard Marcinko

  But being the devil has its advantages. Every culture is fascinated with you. The officers’ eyes were as wide as those of a five-year-old meeting Santa for the first time. While I’m sure two or three would have picked up a knife and stabbed me through the heart at a word from the captain, most looked as if they would gladly join the Dark Side if I said the word.

  We ate silently, as is the custom in North Korea. The meal concluded with toasts of soju, a traditional Korean liquor made from rice. It tastes like a sweet and mild vodka. It’s not Bombay Sapphire, but given the alternatives it’s not half bad. The captain poured me a drink. Remembering my manners, I rose and bowed as I took the small glass.

  “Don’t I get any?” asked Trace as the captain passed her by, spilling a small drop from his bottle into the glass of the man next to her. North Korean society is extremely male-oriented, and it probably didn’t occur to the captain that Trace would even be interested in a drink. In fact, he may not even have noticed her.

  “You sure you want some?” I asked.

  Trace looked at my glass and decided she wasn’t really thirsty after all.

  There’s a saying in Korea along the lines of “il bul, sam so, o ui, chil gwa”—you can’t have just one, three is too little, five’s the right number, seven’s pushing the limit. The captain went five rounds, him filling my glass, me filling his. The officers’ rations got smaller each time, their glasses being filled more for form’s sake than inebriation.

  As we drank, the captain tried walking a line between interrogation and conversation. He looked old enough to be my father, with big age spots covering both sides of his head. While thin, he had plenty of energy. Veins popped from his neck, and he held himself the way a rooster holds himself when inspecting his hen house. The lieutenant who had welcomed us aboard acted as translator, engaging in long discussions with the captain before rendering anything into English. He seemed to be a political officer of some sort rather than a member of a specific department aboard the ship. His temples were gray but he was clearly one of the “younger” members of the ship’s complement. Even the ensigns were well into their thirties.

  “What happened to your ship?” the captain asked.

  “We didn’t have a ship.”

  “No ship?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve been following the Russian freighter for a long time.”

  “You were aboard it?”

  “For a while.”

  “How did you get there?”

  “You might say we dropped in.”

  “You were stowaways?”

  “Not precisely.”

  My answers confused the translator, and it was pretty clear from his reaction that neither he nor the captain believed that an American ship wasn’t sailing nearby. But they gave up asking about that, turning instead to questions about the U.S. Navy. I told him again that it had been quite a while since I’d been in the service. I was now a private contractor, working for Kim Jong Il, not the U.S. This, too, they couldn’t quite understand; the translator seemed to think we were some sort of defectors.

  I tried asking some questions myself, mostly about the trawler, but the response amounted to polite shrugs. Finally, some secret signal passed through the room and the entire company began filing out.

  “Do we get a tour of the bridge?” I asked the interpreter.

  The captain’s face grew grave as the question was translated. On the one hand, showing the bridge to an American devil dog could be considered a treacherous betrayal of the homeland. On the other hand, I appeared to be a friend of the country’s most exalted leadership, a man who should be afforded every courtesy and also a very dangerous person to make unhappy. Make the wrong choice, and he could easily face the firing squad. Make the right choice—and he could face it anyway. This was North Korea.

  “Maybe I should inspect your escorts instead,” I said, rescuing him from his dilemma. “It’s an impressive array of ships around us.”

  This brought immediate relief to the captain’s face. Trace and I were soon led to the quarterdeck, where we watched the motley patrol craft zip back and forth importantly for a half hour. We also saw the Russian freighter, now standing completely still to the east.

  “Are you escorting the freighter into port?” I asked the captain.

  The captain gave the translator a one-word answer; it came to me as a long-winded dissertation on the many missions a navy might have at any one time.

  “I heard that speech when I signed up,” I said. “What’s the freighter doing?”

  The translator shrugged, then shook his head.

  I watched it for as long as I could. While the patrol boats were near it, it didn’t look as if any were actually tied up to it. And there didn’t seem to be any larger cargo ships—the sort that would carry a nuclear weapon, for example—coming out to meet it.

  NORTH KOREA’S WESTERN navy is headquartered at Toejo Dong, about two-thirds of the way down the coast from the border with Russia. North Korea’s biggest port on the west coast, though, is Wonsan, which is closer to South Korea. Wonsan’s facilities rival most in Asia, certainly in size. It also has a large collection of old ships and patrol craft, the majority of which are about as seaworthy as the clunker car (i.e., Rent-A-Wreck) in your neighbor’s driveway. But if you’re a navy buff, calling at Wonsan would probably feel like dying and going to heaven.

  If my sources are correct, Corvette 531 was home-ported at Wonsan, and at first I thought that was our destination. But in fact we were going to a much closer and smaller base, Songjin. (Called Kimch’aek on most civilian maps, it’s about 220 miles south of Vladivostok.) We reached it an hour after lunch ended, the long arm of its breakwater sticking out a finger to greet us as we approached.

  One thing I’ll say for North Korea—they have nice beaches. They’re sandy and never crowded, unless you count the obstructions designed to prevent an amphibious assault. Take away the minefields, and the beach north of Songjin would be a perfect vacation spot, even if you do have to bring your own beer cooler.

  The captain went to attend to business on the bridge, leaving the translator to act as tour guide as we sailed toward the port. He claimed not to know much about the military base or the area, and rather than answering my questions about how I would get in touch with Sun and Kim, told us about local legends involving sea dragons. Without exception, these involved a gorgeous maiden manhandled—god-handled?—by a wayward sea god, who was then put in his place by a hero. The maiden was really a dragon in disguise. The hero had to decide whether to become a dragon himself, or give up the best sex he had ever had. Guess what the hero chose.

  The city has an ironworks as well as the military base, but Songjin or Kimch’aek’s claim to fame as far as the West is concerned are the mountains nearby: they house a substantial part of North Korea’s nuclear arms program.

  In 2006, the North Koreans set off a test nuker forty-two miles north of Songjin. Even though the bomb was a dud—it produced an explosion the equivalent of maybe five hundred tons of TNT,28 about what a good backwoods still would produce if the pressure got too high—it wet the pants of enough diplomats and talking heads to get Kim Jong Il yelled at by the Chinese.

  But I digress.

  Our ship went straight into the harbor, tying up bowfirst at a long, wide cement pier directly below the city, a term that applies only loosely to Kimch’aek. A whaleboat was lowered to bring us ashore. As we approached the dock, a small marching band appeared, arms and instruments swinging in precision. The moment we climbed up the wooden ladder to the pier the band began to play “Patriotic Song,” the Korean national anthem. The musicians looked like they ranged from nine to twelve and had the most serious expressions as they worked their way through the number.

  Trace and I were led to a spot on the pier where it met the road. A dozen girls in white dresses stepped forward and began throwing red flags around; the show looked like what you’d see if a busload of cheerleaders had been pressed into duty warn
ing people of impending road hazards. When they finished, the band did another number designed to make us feel right at home. Since they didn’t know the “Star-Spangled Banner” or even “Yankee Doodle,” they played what I believe was “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” the only American song they knew.

  When the music stopped, a man dressed in white stepped out from behind the band and began speaking to us in Korean. The translator nodded and smiled encouragement, but didn’t bother telling us what the guy was saying.

  “What the hell is he talking about?” Trace whispered.

  “Got me. Probably welcoming us to Korea and telling us how great the motherland is.”

  “I think he’s trying to sell us insurance,” said Trace. “I wish they’d get us some chairs. These crappy boots are killing me.”

  The speech went on for forty-five minutes. Finally, a pair of troop trucks arrived, followed by three black Hyundai sedans. A company of soldiers mustered from the trucks as a fresh shift of men in Korean proletarian suits filed from the cars. Two little girls from the band were given flowers and sent to the head of the line.

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” muttered Trace as we took the bouquets.

  “We’re just being honored,” I told her.

  “That’s what they tell cows before they get slaughtered.”

  “This is really very flattering,” I told the translator, who was smiling next to me. “But I really do have to see General Sun. We do have important business.”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. Marcinko. This will be done. But you are an honored guest. First you must be welcomed. We must continue.”

  Two more men approached, followed by the honor guard and the rest of the men who’d come from the cars. One of them carried a small box. I thought by now the only thing left for them to do was to present us with the key to the city, but it turned out I was wrong.

  The box contained two pairs of handcuffs. And just in case we didn’t understand what they were for, our honor guard locked and loaded.

  25 Underwater Demolition Team, the precursor to SEALs. Haven’t you read my first book yet?

  26 Apparently we’re not supposed to talk about the satellite system the navy uses to track ships at sea.

  27 Anti-Submarine Warfare; less formally, pounding submarines into whale piss.

  28 Some estimates go as high as two thousand tons, which though generous is still too small to indicate a successful explosion.

  10

  [ I ]

  GOING QUIETLY WOULD have been the smart thing to do, both tactically and strategically; resisting wasn’t going to help me accomplish my mission. But there’s something stubborn in me. Call it fashion sense: I’ve never been very big on jewelry, especially stainless-steel bracelets.

  I shook my head. When the first man approached with the shackles, I expressed my opinion somewhat more forcefully, throwing him into the crowd. I hoisted the next as well, tossing him onto the roof of the Hyundai. Starting to tire, I didn’t bother throwing the next man; I just pushed him off the side of the pier.

  Just before the man hit the water, one of the soldiers presented me with his AK47. Fortunately, he only hit me in the head. I spun around, intending to grab the rifle out of his hand, but instead found it pointing at my chest. Before I could decide which way to lunge for it, I felt a sharp prick at my neck. The next thing I felt was my knees hitting the concrete. My face followed as my body jerked wildly and I had an electrifying experience—one of the men in the civilian suits had fired a taser at me, and the jolt was so overwhelming that it took a few seconds for my brain cells to figure out what the hell was going on.

  They didn’t like it very much. But they couldn’t do much to stop it.

  Trace was undergoing a similar experience, minus the slam to the head. She dove at one of the soldiers, grabbing his gun. The taser hit before she could get her finger on the trigger, but what stopped her from firing was the fact that one of the little flower girls was in the way. Her hesitation allowed the Koreans to hit her with another jolt; at that point she blanked out, and was probably lucky not to have had a heart attack.

  The next hour or so passed in a blur. My legs were shackled and I was stabbed with a hypo of something that made me feel as if sacks of cement were tied to every bone in my body. We were placed—dumped might be a better word—in the back of one of the troop trucks. We drove west for somewhere between twenty and forty minutes until we reached a compound used as a military prison and concentration camp, the sort of place where uppity North Koreans were sent to learn their manners. Trace was lifted out of the truck on a stretcher. The guards tried to make me walk. I couldn’t quite talk my legs into it, and ended up crawling from the back of the truck to the entrance of a large stone building that served as the camp’s processing center and headquarters.

  The Kimch’aek Hilton was presided over by the only fat person I saw the entire time I was in North Korea. He waddled out from behind his desk as I crawled in. Putting his hands on his hips, he grinned and leaned over me, muttering something in Korean to the effect that I was a lowly worm.

  Even without a full translation, I took that personally.

  “Listen, motherfucker,” I said. “I have to see General Sun and the Great Leader. And your ass is going to be kicked from here to Pyongyang if something happens to me. Or my assistant.”

  The translator hadn’t accompanied us, and I have no idea whether fatso understood English. His expression didn’t change one iota. He said something about clothes, and I was immediately dragged to a room at the side. A set of large pajamas and sandals were thrown in behind the guards as they left. I got changed in slow motion. My body didn’t hurt, really, but I felt as if my brain was sending messages to my muscles via tin cans and string. The pants were an inch or too short, but they were dry. The shirt was a size or two too big. The guards came back and zapped me again, putting a spark in my ass that sent me back against the wall like a drunken sailor at fleet landing, almost too late for the last liberty launch. I blacked out, and when I came to I was in a prison cell.

  I’m sure the place will be featured in Home & Prison next month. Measuring roughly six by eight feet, its back and side walls were made from large stone blocks. The floor was rough concrete, with a good portion of pebbles exposed. There were no windows, and while the place looked older than dirt, there was no sign that anyone else had ever been there—no scrapes on the walls, no hash marks in the cement between the stones. The bed was a thin blanket on the floor. Overhead, a single light-bulb cast a pale light from behind a metal cage. There was a bucket in the corner; that was the bathroom.

  Rusted iron bars lined the front of the cell. The walls extended far enough beyond the bars to cut off the view of the corridor. Stones lined the opposite wall, but I sensed there were more cells on my side of the corridor. I couldn’t hear anything, except for the occasional shuffle of a guard who appeared intermittently, sneered in my direction, then returned down the hall.

  Whatever drug they had hit me with in the truck was still slowing me down. I alternated between trying to get my senses back by doing sit-ups and push-ups, and just lying on the floor in a daze. Twice I was brought a cup-sized tin full of rice, but the rice looked almost black. Even if I’d been hungry there was no way I would have touched it.

  I knew things were getting better when I was finally able to count off a hundred sit-ups without losing track. I got up and paced off the cell, then sat against the back wall, trying to adjust my hearing to the sounds of the place. Feet scraped somewhere in the distance. As I listened, I decided that they belonged to a guard walking a patrol in a corridor to my left, probably watching the access point to the section where I was.

  When Trace and I had first gone aboard the Korean patrol boat, I figured that sooner or later, someone would tell Sun about me and he’d send someone out to bring us back to him. But now I wasn’t so sure. Maybe he had already been told about me, and this was his response. I was reasonably confident that Doc, or someone from t
he navy, had overheard my transmission and would be keeping an eye on the ship Polorski had boarded. But I knew also that I’d no longer be the priority—Polorski and whatever nuke he managed to weasel out of the North Koreans in exchange for Yong Shin Jong was.

  Can you spell “expendable”?

  Maybe an hour after my head had cleared, a pair of guards approached the cell. I rose from the floor and watched as they unlocked the door. There were two locks, and each guard had only one key, a good precaution that made it harder to get out by simply overpowering them.

  Door open, the men stood back in the hallway. I left the cell, not exactly sure what to expect. The guards weren’t telling in Korean, English, or Swahili. They stood behind me as I walked out, then followed as I went down the hall, passing four empty cells before coming to an archway. Another guard stood to the right, blocking off an alcove that was a dead end anyway. I turned to the left and found myself facing an open gate to a courtyard.

  Recreation time.

  The yard came out of the back of the building. It was narrow but deep, measuring roughly ten feet by nearly a hundred. The sun was about halfway up the sky; I’d lost an entire day.

  The weather had turned chilly and I jogged along the fence line to stay warm. The guards stayed by the building, taking out cigarettes to smoke. The drugs and electric zaps had let my muscles relax so much that they no longer felt tired; if the circumstances had been different, I might have asked about getting a supply of the dope they’d used.

  An inmate worked on the other side of the fence in the far corner, poking at rocks with a long wooden rake. He was an older fellow, and seemed to ignore me as I jogged. But as I passed, he hissed my name just loud enough for me to hear.

  I continued past, pretending to grow more and more tired as I turned the corner past the guards and continued my circuit back in his direction. Gradually I slowed, as if losing my breath, until I was walking with my head hung down and my hands on my hips.