Mr. Kill (22 page)

When his guts were empty he stood and looked at me, bleary-eyed. “How long does this goddamn boat ride take?”

“Eleven hours. Another two hours left,” I said.

“Two hours?” Ernie groaned.

Before we left Hialeah Compound, I’d checked with Specialist Holder at Headquarters Company about the personnel assigned to the Special Forces Training Facility, Mount Halla.

“I have no data on them,” he told me. “The Green Berets run their own show. They don’t want rear-echelon pukes like us mucking around with their personnel records.”

“Do you have any idea how many trainers are assigned?”

“No idea. All I know is that combat units from up north in the 2nd Division area are flown out of the DMZ all the way down south to Cheju Island for specialized training. Rappelling. Mountaineering. Commando tactics. Things like that. How many Special Forces troops are assigned there at any given time, I don’t know.”

“Who’s the commander?”

Holder thumbed through a stack of computer printouts. “Some guy with about half his jaw blown off. Weird-looking character. Looks like a puppet made by Señor Wences. But mean. Don’t ever mention his jaw. Here it is.” Holder pointed to a name. “Laurel, Ambrose Q., Lieutenant Colonel. Not exactly a name you’d associate with someone so tough.”

“How’d he lose his jaw?” Ernie asked.

“Vietnam,” Holder replied. “Training Montagnards or something like that.”

It wasn’t much information, but it was a start.

We returned to billeting, woke up Riley, and gave him the chore of contacting the Air Force and compiling a list of zoomies who were on pass or leave or official travel on the days of the two assaults on the Blue Train.

“Can do,” Riley said, without complaint, sitting upright on the edge of his bunk, holding his head, trying to clear his mind. He was a blowhard and a drunk, but in the final analysis Staff Sergeant Riley was one hell of a soldier. He’d complete the mission, no matter how miserable he felt. I told him where we were going.

“Cheju-do?” he said. “This is no time for a vacation.”

As the most southerly spot in the Republic, Cheju Island was known for its warm weather and balmy beaches, a Korean version of Hawaii.

“This is no vacation,” I said. “We’re going to check out the Special Forces.”

“Those guys? You think one of them might be the Blue Train rapist?”

“Could be. We won’t know until we check.”

“They’ll eat you for lunch.”

“We’ll see about that,” Ernie replied.

We left Riley sitting on the edge of his bunk, growling, spitting up, preparing to become human again.

The ferry that ran from the Port of Pusan to Cheju Island was huge. It was said that it could hold three hundred passengers. There were only about two dozen of us aboard on this trip, though, maybe because it was the last ferry to depart in the evening. Ernie and I were the only foreigners. The other passengers kept to themselves, mainly because they were couples, recently married. Cheju Island had become the traditional place for a honeymoon in Korea.

Ernie stared at the happy couples. “What are they grinning about?”

“They just got married, Ernie.”

“That’s a reason to be happy?”

I slapped him on the shoulder. “You’ll cheer up when we hit shore.”

Ernie’s eyes spun, and he leaned over the railing and threw up again.

The ferry disembarked at a pier about a half mile from Cheju-si, the city of Cheju. In the early morning sunlight, Ernie and I carried our overnight bags and stood in line at a covered awning waiting for a taxi. When it was our turn, I leaned in the passenger-side window and spoke Korean to the driver.

“The American compound on the side of Mount Halla, do you know where it is?”

He nodded.

“How much?”

“
Meto-ro dobel
,” he said. Double meter because it was outside of his authorized area of operations. That’s the way cabs are regulated in Korea. If they transport a fare outside of their designated area, they aren’t allowed to bring a fare back. Therefore, the passenger must pay double. Ernie always balked at this arrangement, figuring they’d pick up an illegal fare on the way back anyway. Still, it seemed fair to me. We climbed in.

I asked the driver if there were yoguans in the area of the compound and he said there were. We sped along the edge of Cheju City and we were almost immediately thrust into a lush green countryside. Rice paddies stretched all around us and ran up the sides of hills, leading in a terraced parade up toward the huge mountain that loomed off to our left. Ernie peered out the window.

“It’s smoking up there.”

“Mount Halla’s a live volcano,” I said.

“Oh, great. First I get seasick; now I get splashed with molten lava.”

The road was a narrow two-lane highway. Three-wheeled trucks and other cabs and ROK Army military jeeps sped past us. After about a mile, we veered toward the sea and the driver pointed toward a rocky promontory.

“
Haenyo
,” he said.

I rolled the window down to see better.

“Haenyo,” Ernie repeated. “What’s that?”

“There, Ernie,” I said, pointing. “Those little black dots in the water. See that?”

“Yeah. I see ’em. So what?”

“That’s them. The haenyo. The women of the sea. They dive for things.”

Ernie raised himself to get a better look. “You mean like they dive for pearls?”

“Not too many pearls left, I don’t think. They dive for food. Sea anemones and octopus and seaweed and stuff like that.”

“They make a living doing that?”

“Yes. It’s like fishing. See those floats nearby? Those are the game bags where they keep their catch.”

Ernie glanced at me. “How do you know so much about the haenyo?”

“I read about them. At the Eighth Army library.”

Ernie plopped back into his seat, staring at me in disgust. “You would.” To Ernie, reading was something that was done on an as-needed basis only, when you were desperate for information.

The cab turned off the main road and started bouncing over a dirt track. We climbed steadily up Mount Halla. The road turned back on itself, reversed course again, and suddenly we popped into a tunnel hewn out of solid granite. The tunnel ran about a hundred yards, then emerged onto a shelf overlooking a plateau. We turned and turned again, finally crossing a ridge and looking down upon a valley with a mountain stream. On the far edge of the stream, across a short wooden bridge, was a gate covered by an arch that said Mount Halla Training Facility, and in smaller letters, United States Army Special Forces, Cheju Contingent. The buildings were Quonset huts painted puke green, the roads between them covered with neatly raked gravel, broad enough for a squad of soldiers to march through. Closer to us sat a village of about thirty buildings. The ones on the edge were farmhouses covered with thatched straw. Closer in to the main road that ran across the bridge were a few two-story buildings.

“A G.I. village,” Ernie said. “I’d recognize it anywhere.”

A sign said Nokko-ri. Nokko village. The cab driver drove through the narrow roads and took us to the one yoguan in town. He waited patiently as I counted out his fare. Faces peeped out of windows, slender fingers parted beaded curtains. Ernie climbed out of the cab, stretched, and gazed around, tucking his shirt in his pants, chomping on ginseng gum.

We were something new to the people of Nokko-ri; G.I.s arriving on their own, in a fancy city taxicab, not in a military formation.

Ernie studied the unlit neon signs of two bars: the Sea Dragon Nightclub and the Volcano Bar.

“I think I’m going to like it here,” he said.

The owner of the Nokko-ri Yoguan was delighted to see Ernie and me and told me, in Korean, that she could order food in, or even a hostess if we wanted one. I thanked her but told her we didn’t need any of that right now. What we did do was rent a room, dump our overnight bags, and head back out toward the main gate of the Mount Halla Training Facility.

There were no MPs at the front gate, only surly Korean contract security guards. As soon as they saw our CID badges, they picked up the phone and called their superiors.

Ernie and I waited. After twenty minutes, Ernie was becoming increasingly antsy. “Who do these guys think they are,” he asked, “keeping us waiting like this?”

“Look at this place,” I told him. The facility was like the Special Forces’ own little fiefdom. Instead of a moat, a wooden bridge across a narrow stream. Instead of stone walls, chain-link fences. Instead of a castle, Quonset huts. “Way out here, whoever the commander is probably isn’t used to interference. When some honcho comes down to visit or an Eighth Army inspection team shows up, that Colonel Laurel gets plenty of warning. They’re not used to two CID agents dropping in unannounced.”

“Well, they better open the gate pretty soon,” Ernie replied, “or I’ll kick the damn thing in.”

After another five minutes of waiting, Ernie made good on his pledge. He kicked the wooden pedestrian gate.

15

A
n American staff sergeant in tailored green fatigues stood before us, his fists pressed against his hips, a pistol belt wrapped around his narrow waist. His jump boots gleamed with black polish, and a floppy green beret sat snugly atop his head. He was a muscular man, built low to the ground, making it seem impossible for anyone—or anything—to knock him over. He grinned at us.

“Welcome,” he said, “to the greatest training facility in the world.”

His name tag said Warnocki. I showed him my badge and told him why we were here, explained that we wanted access to the unit morning reports, the daily count of personnel strength.

“You suspect one of
us
?” he asked, jamming a thick thumb into the center of his chest. “You think a Green Beret could be the Blue Train rapist?”

“We suspect
everybody
,” Ernie said, “until they’re cleared.”

Warnocki’s grin grew even broader. “Man, I’m going to enjoy seeing you explain that to Colonel Laurel.”

“How about the morning reports?” I asked.

“No way is this staff sergeant going to give you access to Official Use Only information.”

“We have an open writ,” I told him, “backed up by the Provost Marshal of the Eighth United States Army.”

“Well, la-dee-da.”

“You could come up on charges, Warnocki, for obstructing an official investigation.”

He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “You’ll have to talk to Colonel Laurel about all that. If he tells me to die, I die. If he tells me to show you the morning report, I show you the morning report.”

“Okay, then,” Ernie said. “If that’s the way you want it. Let’s talk to him.”

“You know how to swim?” When neither Ernie nor I answered, Warnocki continued, “That’s where he is right now. Swimming. Or, more exactly, diving. With the haenyo.”

Ernie and I glanced at each other.

“That’s right,” Warnocki said. “Between training cycles, that’s how he relaxes.”

“Fine,” I said. “Take us to him.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

Warnocki shrugged again. “Okay,” he said. “Your funeral. Follow me.”

We followed him out of the guard shack and onto the main compound, across the broad expanse of gravel where three poles stood bearing the flags of the United States, the Republic of Korea, and the United Nations. Beyond that were half a dozen Quonset huts.

“No cycle in right now,” Warnocki said. “An artillery unit from the Second Division is supposed to be flying in tomorrow. We have a week to take them through rappelling, mountaineering, commando intercept, interrogation resistance, and patrol tactics, and, if we have time, a little waterborne survival training.”

“That’s where the diving comes in?”

“Colonel Laurel’s an expert at it.” Warnocki grinned again. “Without equipment.”

“Where’s the rest of the cadre?” I asked.

“In the motor pool,” Warnocki replied. “Pulling maintenance on our vehicles.”

“Don’t you have Koreans to do that?”

“Yeah. But somebody has to supervise.”

“How many other Special Forces personnel do you have here?”

Warnocki grinned again. “You’ll have to talk to Colonel Laurel about that.”

Three jeeps sat at the edge of the motor pool, along with an army puke-green bus and a two-and-a-half-ton truck. No other American personnel—or Koreans, for that matter—were visible.

Warnocki hopped into the nearest jeep and said, “All aboard.”

I sat in the passenger seat, Ernie in back. Warnocki started the engine and spun around in a U-turn, and soon we were heading out the back gate of the Mount Halla Training Facility; a listless Korean security guard pushed it open for us, and then we were barreling downhill on dirt roads, too fast for comfort.

Unconcerned, Ernie gazed at the craggy peaks in the distance and the ocean glimmering blue in glimpses below. I turned in my seat and looked back. Above the training facility, a communications tower teetered on the edge of a precipice; beyond that, wisps of smoke rose steadily out of the caldera of the volcano known as Mount Halla. I breathed deeply of the fresh sea air, thinking of the mystery man who’d brought an ancient fragment from so far away, thinking of the woman who’d been murdered, thinking of her crying children. Thinking of what the Blue Train rapist had next on his checklist.

Before we’d left Hialeah Compound, Marnie Orville had complained because Ernie wouldn’t be seeing her that evening.

“But you’re the one who got Ernie in trouble,” I told her. “You didn’t tell the truth about what happened between him and Freddy Ray Embry in Taegu. You said Ernie started it.”

“But that wasn’t my fault,” she whined. “I had to protect Freddy Ray.”

“
Protect
him?”

“If he gets kicked out of the Army,” she continued, “how is he going to pay his child support?”

“Marnie,” I said, staring directly into her pale blue eyes, “when we first met you, you said that Freddy Ray
wasn’t
paying his child support.”

“That was just a little white lie.”

“A little white lie? The Army takes these things seriously.”

“I just wanted to find him so I could tell him that he ought to take his responsibilities as a father more seriously. Casey misses him, and she keeps asking me why her daddy never comes to see her.”

“You caused all this trouble just for that?”

“Yes,” she snapped. “Just for that. My daughter is important to me.”

I had said the wrong thing and now she was indignant. Still, I soldiered on.

“When he showed up at your BOQ at Camp Carroll in Waegwan,” I said, “you suspected Freddy Ray of being the peeper, didn’t you?”

Marnie crossed her arms. “I’m not sure.”

“That’s why you sent him away without talking to him,” I continued. “It suddenly dawned on you that maybe he was the one following you from compound to compound, the one stealing small items. Isn’t that what you thought, Marnie?”

“You’re the detective,” she snapped. “Why don’t you find out?”

“Maybe I will,” I said, “once I have a little time.”

Marnie snorted. “We’re not important enough.”

There wasn’t much point continuing to talk to her. Instead, I said good-bye, then said good-bye to the other ladies of the Country Western All Stars and told them I hoped we’d be back from Cheju Island soon enough to catch their act again. Shelly, the lead guitar player, stepped forward and hugged me. Then she leaned away, smiling, and squeezed my hand.

Marnie followed me outside, where the others couldn’t hear. “I don’t think Freddy Ray’s the peeper. I did, but I don’t anymore,” she said.

I turned. “Why not?”

“Because of what he did last night in Taegu. He came for me. He didn’t sneak up or peep through a window, he knocked on the door like a man.”

“And punched out Ernie.”

Marnie shrugged and turned and walked back into the Quonset hut.

Lieutenant Colonel Ambrose Q. Laurel looked spindly in his head-to-toe black wet suit, a tremendous contrast to the burly Warnocki. About a dozen women sat on rocks on the beach, the hoods of their wet suits pulled back, revealing suntanned faces and moist black hair. The sea was blue close in, then gray, fading into a solid wall of mist about a hundred yards offshore. Most of the women were working on equipment—netting, flotation devices, sturdy-looking wooden-handled knives—and while they worked, they smiled at us, amused to have so much G.I. company.

“You dive with these ladies?” I asked Colonel Laurel.

“That’s right,” he said, staring directly at me, his gnarled face without expression.

He was not a tall man, five six or five seven, and he couldn’t have weighed more than 140 pounds. His grim expression was partly caused by the awkwardness of his situation. The full-length photo I’d seen in his personnel folder showed him standing proudly in his dress green uniform, shoulders thrust back, chest dripping with medals. But what wasn’t hidden, neither in his photos nor in this personal encounter, was the savage wound to his chin. Much of the jawbone had been blown off. It was partially reconstructed now, but still protruded only slightly below his mouth, an oddly shaped mass, not the pugnacious square jaw that a military man covets. He shoved his misshapen face out at me, and at Ernie, as if he were ready to fight.

“We’re here to check your morning reports, sir,” I said, “for the last two or three weeks, however far back we have to go. We’d like to know who in your unit was on leave, temporary duty, or who has otherwise left Cheju Island and traveled to the mainland.”

“Why?” he asked.

I told him.

“None of my men,” he said slowly, enunciating every word, “would ever be involved in such a thing as a rape or a murder.”

Then he stood silent, daring us to speak. I dared.

“Nevertheless, we have to check. It’s our duty.”

Something told me that long, involved explanations were not going to work with this man. Get right to the point. Stand your ground. Ernie stood at my side, unmoving. The haenyo sensed the tension between us, and the clinking of equipment grew more sporadic.

Colonel Laurel’s intelligent blue eyes held mine. Was he wavering? I couldn’t be sure. The thin lines of his lips were unreadable. Finally, he spoke.

“The men in my unit have no need of rape. Women flock to Green Berets.”

“Yes, sir. I’m sure that’s true. Still, we’d appreciate it if you’d give Sergeant Warnocki here permission to show us the records.”

Colonel Laurel stared at us for what seemed like a long time. The only sound was the gentle washing of waves on the beach, the occasional swish of thread through netting, and the steady cawing of sea birds. Finally, Colonel Laurel spoke.

“You think you can come to Cheju Island and just decide that you’re going to poke your noses into the personal records of the brave men of the Special Forces?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “You think I’m some nervous career officer who falls apart at the sight of a couple of CID badges? You think you frighten me? You think that prissy-ass, no-combat-experience Provost Marshal up there at Eighth Army scares me?”

Colonel Laurel paused. Ernie took the opportunity to roll his eyes and stare up at the sky, clicking his gum loudly. Laurel turned his attention to him.

“Am I boring you?” he asked. “You think I’m just being difficult? You think that if you dial up some chief of staff back in Seoul that I’m going to roll over and allow you access to the movements of my men?” Laurel stepped toward Ernie, his arms akimbo, an enraged rubberized scarecrow.

“I think, sir,” Ernie replied, keeping his voice steady, “that I know what they used to say in Nam: the Special Forces take all the glory while the grunts do all the dying.”

For the first time, Warnocki stopped grinning. He stepped closer to Ernie, as if to take him down from behind. I moved closer to Warnocki. By now, Ernie and Colonel Laurel were nose to nose, glaring at one another. Ernie’s nose was about half a foot higher. The haenyo sat immobile.

“You get anywhere
near
my unit morning reports,” Colonel Laurel told Ernie, “or anywhere near my
compound
, and I will personally plant my army-issue combat boot up your rear-echelon ass.”

“Why wait,
Colonel
?” Ernie replied. “You can try it now.”

With a motion that was too fast for me to stop, Warnocki grabbed Ernie’s left wrist and, in some deft twisting motion, rotated the forearm upward. Involuntarily, Ernie bent forward at the waist. Without thinking, I hopped forward and slammed Warnocki with a straight left to the side of his head. The tough man staggered, didn’t go down, but released his grip on Ernie.

Ernie swiveled on Warnocki, raising his right fist when Colonel Laurel shouted, “At ease!”

The sound was so loud, and so jarring, that all of us—me, Ernie, and Warnocki—froze in mid-motion.

“Assume the position of attention,” Colonel Laurel commanded.

We did.

Laurel walked up to Ernie and stood there for a long time, letting the strength of his authority seep into our overheated minds.

“You will
not
,” he said finally, “under any circumstances, have any more conversations or associations with any of the men in my unit. And you will
not
, under any circumstances, access the records of my unit’s personnel strength or of my men’s comings and goings. Not unless,” he added, “I release the information myself. Is that understood?”

Ernie nodded.

“Is that
understood
?” Laurel shouted.

“Yes, sir.”

“Warnocki,” Laurel said, spinning away, “take the jeep back to the compound.”

Warnocki nodded, grabbed his beret, which had fallen into the sand, replaced it on his almost-bald head, saluted Colonel Laurel, and trotted off toward the jeep. On the way, he grinned at me broadly. It wasn’t a friendly grin. More like being laughed at by a skull.

After Warnocki disappeared, Colonel Laurel turned back to us.

“If you mess with my men again,” he told Ernie and then me, “I won’t stop him next time.”

“
Stop
him?” I said. “You were about to lose one muscle-bound staff sergeant.”

Laurel stared at me, his face once again unreadable, looking very much like a sinister puppet. Without saying anything further, he turned and marched across wet sand. The haenyo stood as he approached.

Together, the rubber-clad troupe of females followed Colonel Laurel to a boat with an outboard motor. All of them climbed aboard except for two sturdy women who shoved the boat out toward the breakers, turned it around, and then pulled themselves aboard. Laurel jerked on a hemp lanyard and the engine of the old boat coughed to life. He and the women bounced over the waves and then, after about fifty yards, faded into the mist.

Ernie dusted sand off his trousers.

“‘About to lose one muscle-bound staff sergeant,’” he mimicked. “Man, Sueño. That doesn’t sound like you.”

“Women have been raped,” I said, “in front of children. One of them brutally murdered, in front of children. To me, all this macho posturing is less than nothing.”