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Skipper placed himself in the hands of the ROK Army Special Forces "Black Berets" who met his flight at Pusan and escorted him through a very brief, private customs check then drove him to a nearby Korean base where he met with General Kim. Skipper and the general inspected the equipment he was providing for Skipper's mission. Then, over a simple meal of pibim pap (steamed vegetables and rice) and the ever present kimchee (spicy, fermented cabbage), they discussed possible outcomes of the mission ahead.

Three hours later, in the belly of a Korean C-130 Hercules transport, the lighting was adjusted from bright incandescence to the soft red glow which allowed Skipper to gain his night vision.

It was dark outside -- and cold. The ground temperature had been only five degrees above zero and dropping when they took off and it was much colder up here. Skipper stared into space as though he could look beyond the metal skin of the Hercules and mentally checked through all his preparations again. In less than fifteen minutes the Korean Load Master would open the big doors in the tail of the plane and Skipper would step out into the frozen night sky.

The doors began to scissor open accompanied by the banshee howl of the wind and a sudden stab of cold. The Load Master signaled with six fingers. Six minutes to the target. Skipper began his pre-jump equipment check.

The Load Master signaled again. One minute. Then he blew across his palm and pointed, indicating the direction of the winds aloft. It would be important to Skipper on the way down. Skipper hooked his arm around the hydraulic lift of the tailgate and peered into the blackness below. Nothing. Looking back at the Load Master he saw the signal for thirty seconds. Again he searched the blackness below. There it was! The beacon light on Pak's radio antenna flashed in and out far below behind the thin cloud cover. Skipper got to his feet and stepped to the edge of the ramp. He turned and gave the Korean Load Master a quick "thumbs up," and with one little hop he was gone.

The cold was numbing. Fighting the desire to double up into a ball against it he stabilized his position in the air. He got his bearings on the beacon light below and started tracking toward it, the wind screaming around him like liquid nitrogen forcing its needles of cold through every seam in his clothing.

As Skipper streaked through the black night sky toward his target he watched the altimeter on his wrist wind down. At 1500 feet above sea level he reached back and released the small deployment chute into the wind and felt it pull the main canopy which spilled out behind him. At 1100 feet above sea level he was jerked upright as the olive drab nylon rectangle caught the air and blossomed to life. Because the monastery clung to a mountain side more than 900 feet above sea level Skipper was now less than 200 feet above a flat concrete rooftop at the rear of the monastery when his chute opened. There was little wind and the only discernable sound was the hum of a generator somewhere nearby. After the roar of the engines and the screaming wind during free fall, to Skipper the near silence was deafening.

Nearing the rooftop Skipper unhooked his harness, stalled the parachute and dropped silently onto the concrete. As he touched down he quickly turned and gathered up the lines and most of the canopy before it collapsed on the roof then crouched next to a ventilator stack to gets the feel of the area around him; smelling its smells, listening to its sounds.

Skipper could make out the silhouette of a short tower to the southeast. A slight easterly breeze carried the low hiss and sputter of a small gas stove and the smell of cooked rice and kimchee. From time to time he heard a slight cough, a muffled blowing and a low comment about the cold. "A guard shack or watch tower," he guessed. There were no other signs of human activity. About fifteen feet away was a double metal loop -- the top of a ladder leading downward. Abandoning the parachute against the ventilator Skipper moved toward the ladder.

At the ladder Skipper took another quick look around and then peered into the space below. It was vacant. Grabbing the rungs he swung out and, with the arches of his boots braced against the outsides of the ladder, slid quickly down to the pavement below. Once down he edged around a corner trying to match what he saw with the information and aerial photographs General Kim had provided. Everything looked about the same, although there had been some recent additions. Five minutes of cautious movement brought him to the service door he sought which lead through a wall into the area which was once the monks' living quarters. General Kim believed it was now used as a sort of guest house. Pak's suite was believed to be deeper inside the mountain.

Skipper passed through the door and stepped into a small courtyard. There were cells, or single rooms, on three sides and opposite was a door leading into a different part of the complex. He was moving very carefully now. He thought of fog and moved like fog. With fluid, vaporous ease he flowed from the wall to the nearest cell and sliced a small hole in the paper door with his knife. He scanned inside the room with a small, passive night-vision device he carried in a pouch on his belt. In the eerie green glow he saw the room was unoccupied. He moved on to the next.

Peterson woke up groggy thinking he'd had too much soju, a Korean rice wine (similar to Japanese sake), the night before. He needed to go to the toilet.

Arnburg and Peterson had been sharing custody of a small balloon containing the microfilm and the key to the safe-deposit box in Hong Kong. No one was likely to find it where they had it hidden but Freddy needed to go, so the balloon had to come out. It was Jack's turn to carry it for a while anyway. Freddy sleepily pulled on his pants and a jacket and stepped out the door. Pak had modern plumbing in his personal quarters deep within the mountain but he had chosen to leave the majority of the monastery in its original state. A small outhouse adjoined the outer wall across the small courtyard.

Skipper stopped breathing. Every muscle remained immobile. Two cells away he'd heard someone moving and now he was stepping outside. Caught in the open with virtually nowhere to go Skipper slipped into a slightly darker shadow cast by a post. The man walked away from him in the direction of the outhouse about twenty feet away. It was Freddy Peterson. That pockmarked face had been vividly recalled in Skipper's dream. There was no mistaking it even in the darkened confines of an old Korean monastery. Skipper's eyes narrowed as he took a slow, deep breath.

It was cold and Freddy shivered as he hurried across the small courtyard to the outhouse. As he squatted over the hole in the floor he carefully caught the little balloon, wiped it clean and held it tightly in his left hand. He didn't want to have to climb down into the frozen waste below trying to find it.

As the little door closed behind Peterson Skipper moved in swift, ethereal silence to the shadows beside the outhouse. He controlled his breathing - making no sound. The flickering moonlight glinted dully off the razor-like edges of killing steel Skipper withdrew from the sheath on his right calf. Yoshi's combat knife would taste blood tonight. The wind picked up driving the clouds before its icy moaning.

Freddy heard the wind, too. He felt it swirl up through the hole in the floor he was squatting over. Shivering again he stood up and fastened his pants. Turning up his collar and squeezing the balloon tighter in his left hand he stepped outside.

Suddenly a hand clamped a vice-like grip over his nose and mouth and he was pulled over backward as a knee slammed painfully into his tailbone. Skipper emitted a low hissing sound in his ear which instantly summoned up all Peterson's childhood fears of monsters in the night to crowd his brain with terror and temporarily paralyze him with fear. The ground rushed up at his face as he was twisted in midair and his head yanked back at a crazy, impossible angle. Then a cold, searing pain sliced twice across his throat. Slammed on his stomach on the frozen dirt his eyes grew dim and his pain faded as his life's blood turned the neatly swept grey earth black beneath him. His last vision was that of the little yellow balloon as it rolled out of his hand.

Skipper also saw the balloon and quickly guessed what it was. As he picked it up he thought, "Patti, where are you? Let's get the hell out of here". He hefted Freddy's body and slid it head-first down the hole in the outhouse. Freddy's six-foot-four frame was too tall to fit all the way in so Skipper left him with his feet sticking out. Looking at the soles of Freddy's shoes Skipper chuckled and thought grimly, "You never did fit in, did you Freddy?" He turned away and began searching for Patti.

* *

Skipper passed through a door into a hallway leading back into the mountain. One moment he was in a Buddhist Monastery and the next he passed through an ornate, heavy, iron-bound door into a dank concrete tunnel lit only by occasional overhead bulbs.

The guard he met just inside the tunnel unwillingly but quietly answered Skipper's questions telling him the American girl was being held in a cell further down this tunnel. A short, sharp double strike to the sides of the guard's neck and he slumped to the floor. He'd wake up in a couple of hours with a terrific headache. Skipper continued down the tunnel, running silently. There was no place to hide in this bare tunnel which extended a hundred yards into the mountain.

Skipper drew to a halt in front of another ornate door. To the left a short hall ended at metal fire doors over which was a sign printed in Hongul (Korean characters) reading "Communications - Authorized Personnel Only." Looking down the corridor to the right he spied a medical cart standing outside one of the doors.

Before he could decide which way to go, the ornate doors in front of him swung open and a guard backed through toward him, bowing into the room in front of him and swinging the heavy doors closed. No sooner had he let go the doors' iron rings than his neck was broken and Skipper carried him down the hallway to the fire doors.

Skipper reached under his jacket and withdrew a MAC 11 submachine gun equipped with a silencer. He'd elected to carry a MAC 11 rather than his customary Colt .45 auto on this mission. Although the MAC 11 was larger than a standard .45 auto and only fired a .380 round; it had a far greater magazine capacity, was capable of fully automatic fire and, when equipped with a silencer, operated with little more than the sound of it's metal parts clicking together.

Bracing the dead guard against the fire doors he tripped the latch and shoved him into the room then dove through the door, rolled once and fired two, two-round bursts hitting both men in sight. They slumped to the floor, both shot in the head.

Skipper moved to the console in the middle of the room, stepping over the body of one of the dead men. He quickly scanned the communications capabilities of Pak's stronghold. "Impressive!" Then, picking up a telephone handset he dialed a long series of numbers. Within a few seconds he heard the phone ring on the other end.

"Hello, Johnson here." Bert sounded beat and Skipper knew he'd have his umpteenth cup of coffee in front of him to get through the afternoon's work.

"Bert, this is Skip. I think I have your package but I won't know for sure what's in it 'till later. I'm looking for Patti now. I'll call you again when I know more and for sure not from here. I'm in the enemy's camp. Gotta go. Bye."

"Skipper? Hot damn. Where are you, boy? Hey!" The line went dead. Bert hung up the phone and wondered whether he should notify the company hierarchy. He decided against it until he had more concrete news to give them, but a broad smile creased his face for a moment only to be quickly replaced by a look of concern for his friend. Skipper had a playful side to him and an often strange sense of humor. It was like him to make a phone call from the middle of the "enemy's camp." He'd once had his picture taken by a Green Beret teammate while standing in front of Hanoi City Hall eight years after U.S. involvement in Vietnam was officially over. Sometimes Skipper had to laugh in the face of danger just to say he'd done it.

Skipper stood back from the console, aimed the MAC 11 at strategic points in the electronic gadgetry and fired short bursts putting the communications center out of commission. Reloading, he walked out the door.

Deeper within the mountain Pak was delighted. Looking at a small strip of microfilm through a microfilm reader he chuckled to himself. His hunch had paid off. The two Americans had the plans with them all the time. After drugging their soju the night before Pak had gone into the small hospital and directed his staff to search their body orifices. When they found the small balloon containing the film and the key Pak had them replace the film with another roll. They had no nearly matching key so Pak ordered it replaced in the balloon and the balloon put back where they'd found it. He could get the key later. Arnburg and Peterson weren't going anywhere. Let them think they still had their secret.

For Pak, the funniest part was that even if they did manage to escape they wouldn't know they'd been foiled until they tried to sell the plans elsewhere.

Patti looked dumbly at the man standing in front of her. He looked familiar but she wasn't quite able to put her finger on just who he was. And why had he knocked out the nurse? She wasn't sad about that, but she didn't know why.

Then she realized he was calling her by name, and his voice was so familiar and reassuring. "Skipper?" She thought, "He said his name's Skipper. Is this Skipper? Yes!" Her words burst out, "Oh, Skipper! What's going on? Why am I here? What's happening to me?" Patti was beginning to sob and she grabbed her throbbing head with both hands feeling as though she'd had too much to drink at a university sorority party.

Skipper held her close and calmed her. "Patti, keep it together, okay? We've still gotta get outta here. It won't be easy but we'll make it, okay? Trust me."

Patti nodded, her head against Skipper's chest. She trusted him completely. She knew if she was with him she'd be okay, no matter what. But she was still scared -- more scared than she'd ever been in her life. Nothing in her past had prepared her emotionally for the impact of the past several days -- or for the violence she would soon see. Viewing violence on TV or reading about it in the paper was only the flimsiest facade of the stark horror of the real thing. Patti was recoiling from reality but Skipper was there to guide her through.

Jack Arnburg was groggy and when he rolled over and tried to put his arm around Freddy he realized he was alone.

"Freddy?"

There was no answer other than the night wind sighing around the edges of the rice paper doors. Arnburg stumbled into his pants and shrugged on a coat. He didn't want to leave the warmth of the sleeping pad and the floor. The heat radiating through the floor from the traditional charcoal heating system contrasted sharply with the chill of the room. He decided Peterson had probably gone to the can outside or to the kitchen for a drink.

Arnburg couldn't understand why he felt so thick-headed and wondered if he was coming down with a cold. He shuffled outside into the frigid air to go to the can himself. As he neared the outhouse he could make out a dark stain on the ground outside the little door that was swinging back and forth with the lightly gusting breeze. Then he saw Freddy's feet and his scream brought the guards on the nearby roof to their feet with a start.

The alarm sounded as Skipper and Patti made their way out to a side courtyard where General Kim's information indicated a likely place to scale the wall and escape. Hiding in the bushes near the wall they could see the guards searching - starting from the other side of the courtyard and working in their direction. Patti was terrified. Her heart pounded so that she should the whole world could hear it. She inched closer to Skipper. A lone guard worked his way through the bushes toward them. Skipper motioned to Patti to stay put and moved off silently in the guard's direction. Moments later Patti heard a Korean voice call out to the others from the direction in which Skipper had disappeared. The other guards answered and left the courtyard.

Skipper returned carrying a pair of insulated coveralls the guard wouldn't need and found Patti trembling, fearing he'd been caught. In the safety of his company she remembered he spoke Korean fluently. Although she wondered briefly what had happened to the guard things were moving too fast to worry about it now.

Skipper was gone again and a dread chill shook her. Then he reached down from the top of the wall and pulled her up. They were soon sliding down the snow covered hillside toward a smaller compound below.

The smaller compound was the motor pool. They stopped behind a small outcropping of rock and again Skipper told her to stay put. He left her briefly, quickly returning to take her through the front gate. A guard lay face down near the gate with his face buried in a small patch of drifted snow which was half dirty-white, half black. She stood there staring at the corpse until Skipper started a sedan and pulled her inside. As they sped down the mountain Patti shivered uncontrollably, partly from the cold, partly from the trauma of seeing the body of a man so recently and violently killed but mostly from all these events which were so far beyond her experience and control.

* *

Skipper drove as fast as the icy, winding Korean roads and his amazing skill behind the wheel would allow making his way northwest into Kangwon Province. This was familiar territory for him. He'd served here while in the Army and had studied Taekwondo under Master Lee in Chun Chon. Now he headed for Master Lee's relatives who still lived there. He knew they'd provide safe lodging for them and he could get medical attention for Patti. Then he could sort out what needed to be done next.

During the last four days Skipper had been on short sleep rations. The last time he'd slept at all was for less than an hour on the transport plane during the short hop from Japan to Korea -- and that was more than twenty-four hours ago.

He and Patti were speeding north through Kangwon Province on a secondary road heading for Sokch'o where they'd turn west toward Chun Chon. The growing need for sleep forced Skipper to pull up at a roadside vendor where he bought a bottle of Coke and some No-Doze. Soon he felt his pulse rise and he was jolted back into wakefulness. Skipper knew he could make it to Chun Chon but he also knew he'd have to sleep very shortly after that.

He looked at Patti asleep in the seat next to him. Her hair was tousled and her bulky borrowed clothing was wrinkled and dirty. A pained, worried expression had worked its way into the lines that had creased her face during her captivity and grey circles had formed under her eyes. Skipper was worried about her but thought she'd never looked lovelier than she did at this moment. She was safe -- for now.