He stood on the other side of the concourse and watched as the young man boarded the flight to Omaha. Once the door had closed and the plane had taxied away from the terminal, Cheng retrieved the boarding pass that the young man had slid inside his Wall Street Journal.
After checking the name and departure time, he then sought out his gate and his new flight to Nashville.
CHAPTER 26
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NORTH KOREA
Are you getting all of this?” Les Johnson asked as he watched the buzz of activity through his binoculars.
About three square miles of the valley had been fenced like a large tic-tac-toe board with something going on in every square. In one, men were learning how to operate old tractors. In another, men on horseback were being shown how to herd cattle. There were pens with pigs, pastures with sheep, llamas, goats, and more cows, along with field after field planted with all kinds of crops.
A water wheel built along the stream powered a gristmill of some sort. Red-and-white-bladed windmills pumped water into troughs for the animals. American cars and trucks from the seventies and early eighties traveled along dusty roads, transporting hundreds of people and assorted supplies. If this wasn’t the DPRK, it could have easily been a scene right out of the American heartland. Even the clothes looked American.
“I’m getting it,” replied Jimi Fordyce as he took picture after picture.
“What the hell are they up to?”
“Farming,” the little boy answered when pressed by Billy Tang. His name was Jin-Sang, but after all three SEALs had called the kid Ginseng for the fourth time, Tang had given up trying to correct them.
Jin-Sang was eleven and looked eight years old only because he was so badly malnourished. Tang had offered the boy some of his peanut butter and he had scarfed it down and then looked to the rest of the group to see what else they might have to offer. He had huge eyes and an unbelievably frail body. It was no wonder to any of them that his leg had snapped so easily.
Though terribly underweight, the boy was indeed bright. He had lots of questions for Billy Tang, but Tang wasn’t interested in sharing anything but pain meds and nourishment with the little guy. The American had his own questions.
The boy knew something bad had almost befallen him. He wasn’t sure what the other three soldiers had intended to do to him, but he knew it was serious. He also knew it was Tang who had intervened on his behalf, even to the extent of pointing a gun at one of his comrades. While the boy didn’t understand everything that was going on, he knew enough to know he needed to stay on Tang’s good side.
“Where do you live?” Tang had asked.
“In the camp,” the boy replied.
“The soldiers’ camp?”
“No, the prison camp.”
“Are you a criminal?” Tang asked.
Jin-Sang shook his head. “My father was. They brought us all to the camp.”
“Is your father at the camp?”
“No,” the boy said. “He is dead.”
“What about your mother?”
Tears welled up in the boy’s eyes. “She is also dead. They both died in there.”
“You said you have a sister?”
Jin-Sang wiped away his tears. “Yes, but she is sick. She needs food, meat. I also make tea from the pine needles. They have vitamins.”
Tang was aware of the tea North Koreans made from pine needles. It contained a ton of Vitamin C. “If you’re a prisoner, what are you doing out of the camp?”
“I was born there.”
“Born there?”
“Yes, my sister was five years old when my father was arrested and they brought us here.”
“But how did you get out?” Tang asked him.
“I know the camp and I know the guards. The camp is not well maintained. As long as I bring them rabbits, the guards pretend I do not sneak out and I pretend there are no holes in the fence.”
“Jin-Sang, look at me,” Tang had insisted. “How long will it take them to notice you did not return last night?”
The boy shrugged.
“Have you ever gone out and not returned to the camp the same night?”
The boy shook his head.
“Will the guards come looking for you?”
The boy shrugged again. Tang was getting frustrated. He knew how evil the camps were. All of the prisoners, including the children, were taught to snitch on one another. Even family members were encouraged to turn one another in. Informants were rewarded with extra rations. “What about your classmates, your teacher? They’ll notice you are gone.”