Peter Cawdron - Feedback

A voice came over the intercom. “We’ll be landing in approximately five minutes.”

Jason looked out the window. They were flying along a valley, dipping below the lush, green hills on either side. They touched down and came to a stop in sight of a sign that read: Welcome to Portland, Oregon — Alis volat propriis — She flies with her own wings.

Being airborne had never felt better to Lee. Even in the darkness above a hostile country, he felt at home in the cockpit of a helicopter.

Sun-Hee’s brother looked scared senseless. The whites of his eyes were evident as he yelled over the sound of the rotor blades.

“You are heading toward Pyongyang!”

“I can explain,” Lee replied, struggling to be heard over the sound of the helicopter. “Look for some headphones in the back and we can talk.”

Once they were well clear of the camp, Lee took the helicopter up a couple of hundred feet so he could get a feel for the lay of the land.

Broken clouds drifted across the sky. Patches of moonlight revealed dark shadows where the hills below gave way to gullies and valleys. Occasionally, a small village or a farm appeared. Lee adjusted his course, heading north-northeast in the general direction of Pyongyang.

Sun-Hee’s brother rummaged around behind the seat for a while before emerging with several sets of headphones. He tried to hand a pair to Lee, but Lee yelled above the noise, saying, “You’re going to have to put them on for me. With this hand, I can’t put them on and fly at the same time.”

Sun-Hee’s brother leaned across the cockpit and slipped the headphones over Lee’s head, catching his ears awkwardly and twisting the cartilage. Lee plugged the loose cord into a phone jack and Sun-Hee’s brother copied him. Jason had a pair of headphones on as well, but his weren’t plugged in. Glancing over his shoulder, Lee could see the young boy was fascinated by their flight. He peered down at the landscape rushing by beneath them.

Lee held the control stick between his legs and adjusted the microphone on the side of his headphones before explaining his thinking.

“At night, a helicopter can be heard for anywhere from two to five miles, depending on altitude and wind conditions. By heading North, we’re misleading them. Hopefully, it will take them some time to respond, and when they do start looking for us, we want them to look in the wrong place. This should confuse the fuck out of them!”

Sun-Hee’s brother nodded, smiling. The North Koreans Lee had met so far seemed to shrink from profanity, but Sun-Hee’s brother clearly understood what Lee meant and seemed to approve. Lee smiled as well, happy that his comment had helped put the soldier at ease a little.

“Look at the lay of the land,” Lee added. “There are several valleys running east to west. The shadows get deeper to the west as they lead down toward the sea. We’ll drop down below radar and follow one of them out to the ocean.”

“And pick up Sun-Hee?” the brother asked.

“No,” Lee replied. “We’d never make the border. We need to ditch the helicopter. We’ve got to draw our pursuers off in a feint, double back and leave by sea. If we can get them looking in the wrong direction, looking for the wrong mode of transport, we just might stand a chance of getting out of here alive.”

A soft hand rested on Lee’s shoulder. Jason couldn’t have heard what was said, but he seemed to be expressing his gratitude for their escape.

Lee breathed deeply.

For the first time since he’d been captured, he had the luxury of relaxing. He was still nervous, but flying was second nature. To be cocooned within the familiarity of the cockpit of a helicopter was understandingly soothing for him. A slight vibration came through the cyclic control, renewing the ache in his hand, but it was an ache he welcomed, one he wouldn’t try to avoid. He was flying, free. Freedom itself lay a long way off, but to feel the pulsing downdraft of the rotor blades with their steady rhythm was deeply reassuring.

“What’s your name?” he asked the brother.

Lee thought he had perhaps five to ten minutes before the North Koreans were able to mount an aerial response. Right now, the biggest temptation he faced was to react too quickly and give away their true intention. He began a slow descent. Something that would be barely noticed on the radar, something that would be incidental rather than important to the various radar operators who were undoubtedly tracking their northward progress. His faux heading had to be convincing, so he made small talk with Sun-Hee’s brother, wanting to settle the butterflies in his stomach.

Sun-Hee’s brother didn’t reply.

Lee looked sideways at him, looking to see if he’d heard him. The young soldier looked back. He seemed distracted. The enormity of what he’d just done was probably only now setting in. There was no going back, and that must have weighed heavily on the young man.

“Seung-Chul,” he responded reluctantly.

“Well, Seung-Chul. It’s nice to meet you.”

There was silence for a few seconds. Lee eased his descent, feeling he was rushing. The helicopter continued to race forward, but the downward motion was slight. In the distance, Lee lined up a gully roughly a mile or so ahead that appeared to wind its way down to the lowland.

“What made you do it?” he asked, adjusting his rate of descent, wanting to bottom out at ten to twenty feet above an open paddock at the base of a sloping hill. By his reckoning, he figured they were two minutes out. Lee was careful to keep his airspeed consistent so there was no indication they were changing heading as they dropped below radar. A forest lay to one side with a large mountain beyond that. With any luck, it would look like they’d crashed at the base of the mountain.

“Honor.”

“Honor?” Lee replied, genuinely surprised by Seung-Chul’s response.

“Grandfather said he would not rest until you were free and honor had been satisfied.”

Lee nodded.

Seung-Chul continued, saying, “Debts must be repaid. Anything less would bring shame and misfortune. Grandfather demanded you be freed. I told him, this would cost us our lives. He said he didn’t care. I told him, you must take us to America. That was the only way I would agree to help.”

Lee smiled, understanding what Seung-Chul meant. His words were hyperbole, an exaggeration. America was too far away to be literal, but to the North Korean mind, South Korea was as decadent and extravagant as the USA. With US troops stationed across the border, just to make it below the 38th parallel would be akin to reaching America. For Seung-Chul, America meant freedom. Freedom was what he wanted. In rescuing Lee, he saw a means of escape for him and his immediate family.

“And Sun-Hee?”

“She is well,” he replied, with a deferential nod of his head. Apparently, nothing more needed to be said on the subject. “She and grandfather await us with a fishing boat in a cove beyond the village.”

“Good. Good,” Lee replied, noting the way the trees to his right swayed in the downdraft of the helicopter. Judging distances at night was never easy. Rather than relying on depth perception, he sought to use the trees, paying careful attention to how the branches at various heights swayed differently. He could see across the treetops. A few more feet and they would drop below the level of the tree tops, which he figured put them roughly thirty feet off the ground.

“Hold onto the boy,” he said. “From here on out, the ride’s going to get rough.”

Working with his foot pedals, cyclic control and the handbrake-like collective, Lee brought the chopper through an arc to the left, turning west. Normally, he would have allowed the helicopter to drift into a high, banking arc that ensured good ground clearance, but they had to stay under the radar. Now, time was of the essence. Whatever aerial resources the North Koreans had deployed would be screaming in toward this point. He had to put some distance between them, and quickly.