“They want us to shoot them,” he said quietly.
“Shoot them!” Ryder exclaimed. “Jesus Christ! What the hell is going down here?”
“They say they’ll be tortured and left to die slowly for the death of these guards.”
“Where’re they from?”
“Labour compound, five klicks north of here – Camp 19.”
“You mean like a Russian gulag?” Grace shot.
“Sounds worse,” Bom replied.
As they spoke, Grace tended to the two injured women. “These women are totally exhausted and badly beaten. They are near death,” she said sadly, comforting the worst of the two.
The strongest looking of the four men spoke in a listless tone. Bom translated. “He says he’s the detachment leader.”
“Ask him why these women are in such a terrible state,” snapped Ryder, shocked at what he was seeing.
Bom did and replied. “The camp is full of women and children; these three are of many regularly abused by the camp officers, get little sleep and have had recent abortions. They were of no further use. Logging work normally finishes them off. He says inmates are used as human guinea pigs; they’re treated like animals.”
Thoughts flashed through Ryder’s mind on aspects he had learned from SIS files about North Korean gulags; the brutality, the depravity and dehumanization of the inmates. Over 400,000 men, women and children suffered daily, simply because they could not accept the harsh doctrine of Kim Jong Un’s dictatorial regime. Entire families, including children, were incarcerated and punished for one member’s indiscretion, even for the most simplest of political statements against the regime or on the basis of denunciation by those who sought revenge on innocent individuals. There were no human rights whatsoever in the thirty or so gulags scattered in the more remote northern regions. The beating and killing of inmates was not only tolerated but encouraged and even rewarded. These prison camps were throwbacks to those run last century by the Stalinist and Maoist communist regimes. They were used to eradicate political dissidents, whilst providing continuous cheap labour to manufacture goods and to mine for minerals. Kim Jong Un, like his father, Kim Jong Il, gloried in this heinous past.
“Why’s he there?” asked Ryder, anger showing.
Bom put the question and gave the answer. “Political detainee once held high-rank in the government’s electronic communications division. For various reasons he did not come up to expectations.”
“They’re being systematically starved,” Grace said, voice quivering. “Do we have any food to spare?”
“No,” Ryder shot back. “We need food ourselves.”
“I have enough,” Grace quickly replied, sadness in her voice as she looked down on the skeletal body of the worst of the two women. “This woman needs nourishment immediately,” and she reached into her pack offering what was left of her rations, but all the woman could do was look at it with glazed, unseeing eyes.
Ryder said nothing; the women had not the strength to eat what was offered.
The Korean spoke and Bom translated. “They only eat the daily corn cake with water, together with dead rats eaten raw and anything else edible that comes their way. He says not to waste food on them, they want to die with our help.”
Appalled at the desperation of these poor people, Ryder asked, “Where is the camp?”
Bom put the question and came back shortly with a look of surprise. “He wants to know who we are and won’t tell us unless we agree to end their misery.”
Ryder was taken aback by the reply, but knew they would have to kill them anyway; no one could remain alive to tell of their presence.
“Tell him we’re British and here to help rid his country of the dictator.” He paused and looked the man straight in the eye. “Tell him also we’ll do as he asks.”
Bom did. The man bowed his head and shortly looked up again. His eyes filled with tears as he spoke.
Bom quickly translated and there was a real edge to his voice now. “He says the camp is very small compared to the others. It houses around 1,500 inmates, mainly political and of the Christian faith. Apparently the regime hates that faith more than any other.” He turned to Grace, then back to Ryder. “He also states that the inmates are primarily used to test biological and chemical agents.”
Ryder and Grace threw an urgent, hopeful glance at one another. In the silence that ensued only the sounds of the forest and the jingling of the mules’ harness could be heard.
“What type of testing?” shot Grace. She was all business now.
Bom asked, conveying the answer. “He doesn’t know. Says many are deformed and disfigured by the experiments and often die slowly. Some die quickly. Others are just beaten to death.”
“Do they carry out the testing in the camp?” Grace pressed.
Bom asked and quickly replied, “No; the inmates are taken somewhere outside the camp.”
“Does he know where?” Ryder pushed, his anticipation growing.
“No,” replied Bom.
“How long are inmates away from the camp?”
“Some a long time, others no more than a few days. Some only a few hours and some never return,” Bom came back.
“That could mean lab facilities are close to the camp – the one we’re looking for,” said Grace, staring intently at Ryder.
“Let’s just hope it is,” he replied with a sense of relief. “Can he tell us anything more about where the inmates are taken, how they are taken and at what intervals?”
Bom asked and translated the reply. “Inmates who’ve been there and survived say they are taken into an underground facility somewhere in the surrounding hills. Some are transported by truck, others by mule-drawn cart, but most are marched. The frequency is maybe two or three times a month and only in darkness.”
Ryder knew there was nothing more to be gained hanging around any longer. “We’re done here,” he said, looking with sorrow at the group of quietly sobbing men and women. “Greg, hand him your pistol. We can only give him a few minutes.” He and Grace then walked a discreet distance away and waited.
Grace buried her head in Ryder’s shoulder and he comforted her. She did not want to watch. Several short ‘phuts’ from the suppressed pistol told them it was over. The Korean killed his six companions in quick succession and then turned the gun on himself.
Bom retrieved the pistol from the forest floor.
“Let’s bury them and those bastards,” Ryder said, nodding towards the dead soldiers. “We don’t want them to be found in a hurry.” Fortunately, the ground was soft and the two men quickly dug shallow graves amongst the trees and scattered leaves and branches over the freshly dug soil. They then led the mules and cart into the denser part of the wood, unharnessed the animals and shooed them away.
When they were satisfied the area showed little sign of what had happened, Ryder, Grace and Bom hurried away from the clearing and headed towards the next rendezvous point with the others. Shaken by the whole episode, they hoped maybe they were finally on the brink of discovering the bio-lab they had come all this way to find.
20
Hugging the rugged south Chilean coastline in the shoals, 150 nautical miles and fifteen hours later, K449 cautiously approached the narrow stretch of water between Penin and Brecknock Islands at the western end of the sixty-mile long, gently curving, doglegged Cockburn Channel. It was deemed necessary from here on in to make way at periscope depth to see where they were going and to lessen the use of active sonar to detect underwater objects in their path. Since his encounter with the American submarine, Captain Kamani worried that even in these back channels and waterways, enemy submarines could be lurking. He worried too that American military satellite coverage may even exist in these more remote regions to detect the wake of the periscope as it sliced through the cold, grey waters. However, the likelihood of submarines outweighed the presence of satellites.