Peter Cawdron - Feedback

Lee opened up the throttle, tilting the helicopter forward and racing along barely twenty feet above the undulating grassy meadow. He slipped into the gully, keeping to the moonlit side. Their shadow was slightly ahead of them, giving him a good visual indicator of their height.

Seung-Chul had turned to one side. He had his shoulder over the back of his seat, holding Jason firmly as the chopper swayed from side to side in the darkness, following the contours of the gully as they sped through the night.

“Some cloud cover would be nice,” Lee mumbled to himself, forgetting he was transmitting. Seung-Chul must have heard him, but he didn’t respond.

Lee’s eyes scanned the distance, noting the subtleties of the terrain, observing how the river wound its way through the widening gully. He had to anticipate obstacles like trees and cliffs well in advance.

At the breakneck speed they were tearing through the gully, his reaction time was roughly two hundred yards. If he hadn’t responded at least two hundred yards before he reached a bend in the river or a stand of trees, it was too late and he knew it. His mind was focused. He barely blinked. Every muscle in his body was tense. The helicopter responded to the slightest twitch of his hands, the softest touch of his feet. In that moment, he and the machine were one.

The angle of the moonlight caused the landscape to look skewed. Shadows stretched to one side, obscuring the actual height of the trees lining the banks, making them look monstrous and hideously distorted. The river swelled in places, providing plenty of space for the helicopter. In other sections, it narrowed to no more than ten to fifteen feet wide, forcing him to pull up above the trees.

For the most part, the hills on either side were well above the helicopter, hiding them from any airborne search. At least there were no power lines, he thought. If he’d tried this stunt in South Korea, the all but invisible power lines would have cut the chopper into strips of metal ribbon.

The gully opened up into a valley, forcing Lee to fly in the dark shadows. There were places where he had no depth perception and no points of reference. In those areas, he eased up on their forward speed, wanting to give himself more reaction time. Against his desire to stay concealed, he eased higher out of necessity.

Not knowing where the North Korean radar stations were located or what search pattern the air force would adopt, he had no way of knowing how effective or ineffective his measures were. For all he knew, they were already following him. They could be sitting a thousand feet up watching his pathetic attempt at escape, waiting for him to put down, or holding off and observing as other air units converged on them.

Lee breathed in short bursts. His heart pounded. His concentration sharpened, focusing on the grainy view before him as his eyes strained to make out details in the dark.

He saw a fishing village well before he got to it, but there was no advantage in changing course. By the time he recognized the dark shape of the huts nestled together on the bank of the river mouth, it was too late. They would have already heard the helicopter. There was nothing for it but to keep going.

The hills parted, revealing the broad, flat expanse of the sea.

As they passed low over the village, Seung-Chul said, “It is OK. They have no radio, no phone.”

“Is this your village?” Lee asked, easing the helicopter to the left, following the southern shoreline and speeding away above the crashing waves.

“No. It is Byul-Ma-Ul. It is perhaps ten kilometers north.”

“OK, that’s good.”

The helicopter was low enough to kick up spray with its downwash. Lee knew that that would make them more visible, but since the village had no way of contacting anyone, there was no point hiding from them. It was aircraft and radar that worried Lee.

They rounded the peninsula. Lee was tempted to cut across between the finger of land jutting out into the ocean, but the further he strayed from land the more likely it was they’d be picked up by radar. Instead, he cut back in, continuing to follow the shore as he weaved his way to the south.

“Where’s this cove? Where will your grandfather be?”

“It is hard to tell at night,” Seung-Chul replied.

Lee wanted to swear, but he didn’t. The young soldier had probably never seen the area from the air, let alone at night.

“Can you describe the cove?” Lee asked, slowing his speech, aware his mind was racing as fast as the helicopter. Patience was needed. “Is it to the north or the south of your village?”

“To the north.”

“OK,” Lee replied. “That’s good. I can work with that.”

The coastline turned on itself, angling back toward the open sea. They followed another sprawling peninsula, mostly denuded of trees. Jagged rocks and broken cliffs marked the landscape.

“What else?” Lee asked

“There’s a cliff,” Seung-Chul replied.

Lee had seen plenty of cliffs.

“How would you get there from your village?”

“To get there by land, we would follow the road north along the ridge for maybe five or six kilometers. The cliff has a sheer drop into the water, but there is a pebble beach to one side. A path leads down to the beach.”

There was no way Lee was going to be able to spot a path from the air in the dark, but the description of the cliff face was good. Most of the cliffs he’d seen had been formed by landslides or had rocky boulders at their base. Very few dropped straight into the ocean.

“Is the cove facing the open ocean? Or does it run along the peninsula, facing the far shore?”

“It faces the ocean.”

“Shit!” Lee cried, realizing they’d just passed the cove as they rounded a rocky outcrop on the headland. They’d begun heading back along the far side of the peninsula. He pulled the chopper around above the land, gaining height as he turned back on his path. There, anchored not more than a hundred yards off shore was a small fishing vessel, just a black dot floating on the waves.

“Look,” he said, pointing at the beach. Someone was standing on the beach beside the darkened outline of a rowboat. The man ran for the tree line as Lee brought the helicopter down, setting the craft on the pebbles. He eased the helicopter in, kicking up spray as the chopper touched down.

“Listen,” he said. “I need to ditch this chopper out there in the water. Our escape depends on stealth. If they find this helicopter sitting on the shore, they’ll know where we left from. I’m going to have to sink this thing.”

“OK,” Seung-Chul replied.

“Take the boy with you. I need you to pick me up out there, OK?”

“OK.”

Seung-Chul opened the cockpit door and a blustery cold downdraft whipped around the cramped cabin. Seung-Chul took Jason’s hand, pulling him out. At first, Jason resisted, pulling away from the North Korean soldier.

“Go!” Lee cried. “It’s OK. I’ll join you.”

Reluctantly, Jason followed Seung-Chul onto the pebble covered beach. They sheltered themselves, hiding their faces from the hurricane whipped up around them by the rotor blades as Lee took to the air again.

Lee took the helicopter out over the water. He turned, watching as Seung-Chul met with the man on the beach. That had to be his grandfather.

Lee watched as Jason climbed in the rowboat. He wasn’t sure who climbed into the boat with Jason and who pushed the boat back out into the waves, but within a minute, one of the two men was rowing the boat toward the fishing vessel bobbing on the ocean.

“Well,” Lee said, working with his foot pedals, easing back on the controls and positioning the helicopter roughly fifty feet away from the fishing boat. “This never gets any easier.”