Deng stepped back from the path and halted as the others went by. When the last soldier was even with him, Deng raised his rifle and swatted the man in the face with the butt of the weapon, knocking him down. Once the man had fallen to the ground, Deng kicked him several times.

“Are you still hungry?” Deng demanded. “Are you still tired?”

The soldier shook his head emphatically, spitting blood from his mouth.

“I did not think so. Get up and get moving. If you say another word, I will shoot you.”

Up at the front of the patrol, Major Wu waved them on. “Hurry, hurry,” he said, smiling.

Cole led the way deeper into the thick brush and scrub trees, keeping well away from the Chinese patrol that they had encountered earlier. If they ran into more enemy troops, this mission was going to be ended before it even got started.

“Keep an eye open, kid,” Cole said. “We won’t be the only ones who saw that pilot’s parachute.”

“I guess that means we won’t be the only ones looking for him.”

“You catch on fast, kid.”

Cole smiled to himself. He thought about what a greenbean Tommy Wilson had been when they first arrived in Korea. Their basic training had been cut short due to the desperate need for troops. The United States military had been caught by surprise and been totally unprepared for the well-coordinated invasion of Seoul and other cities by the North Korean Communists.

But since their arrival, the kid had learned more than a few hard lessons about being a soldier. His education had begun at the awful Chosin Reservoir campaign. Somehow, Cole, the kid, and their buddy Pomeroy had survived that icy disaster.

Since then, they had fought together across Korea, most recently in taking and holding Sniper Ridge at the Battle of Triangle Hill. Pomeroy had been badly wounded while serving as Cole’s spotter — his extra eyes and ears as Cole took on a savage enemy sniper. Cole felt responsible for Pomeroy being hit. That wound had turned out to be Pomeroy’s golden ticket back home. If Cole could help it, he wanted to make sure that the kid made it home in one piece. He wondered if maybe he should have ordered him back to camp with the others. Right now, their chances of success weren’t looking all that good.

“How do you know which way to go?” the kid asked. “Look at all these hills and woods. Getting to that pilot is gonna be like finding a needle in a haystack.”

“Nothing easy about it, and that’s a fact,” Cole said. “But we’ve got to try. Imagine how you would feel if you were that pilot.”

“Yeah, he’s probably not feeling all that great right about now. He’s got to know that the Chinese will be after him, like you said. Hell, I’m nervous and there’s not even anyone after me.”

“We’ve got to hurry. I’m gonna move fast. Keep up now. Finding one lost soldier is bad enough.”

Cole had seen the parachute drifting lower, and had a picture in his mind’s eye of about where it would have gone down. Despite what the kid had said, it wasn’t quite as bad as finding a needle in a haystack. It was maybe more like finding a pitchfork in a haystack.

He was using two of the distant hills as landmarks. As long as they kept lined up on them, they would be heading in the right direction. Cole only got occasional glimpses of those hills, however, as they fought their way through the thick cover. While the brush and scrub trees made the going tough, the cover also served to hide them from any curious eyes. He couldn’t forget for an instant that they might stumble upon more Chinese troops at any moment.

Behind him, there was a sharp crack as the kid stepped on a fallen tree branch. Cole crouched, expecting at any moment for the woods to erupt in gunfire.

“Sorry,” the kid muttered.

“Next time, why don’t you send up a flare and make it even easier for the goons to find us. Watch where you put your feet.”

“Got it.”

They moved on. Above the trees, Cole spotted a trace of smoke. It was just enough for a cooking fire. The smoke meant one of two things. Either a Chinese patrol was out there, or a village. These hills were dotted with North Korean villages, some of them friendly and others not so much, especially if they had Communist sympathies.

One of the interesting things that Cole had found about the Koreans was that they rarely lived on individual plots, as Americans often did. Americans were very individualistic that way — Cole couldn’t help but think of the tiny shack where he had grown up in the mountains near Gashey’s Creek. Some might have found the family’s ramshackle cabin lonely or isolated. Cole couldn’t imagine living any other way and had built his own cabin in a remote location.

The Koreans preferred a village lifestyle, with dwellings grouped closely together. Many of the villagers were related somehow or had connections going back generations. The fields of rice and other crops that they cultivated surrounded the village and each day the farmers would head out to the fields, and then return at night. It was a more social way to live compared to the isolation of an American farmer.

If there was a village out there, maybe someone had seen something. He didn’t speak a word of Korean, but he was prepared to draw a picture in the dirt of a parachute. Hopefully, the villagers could point him in the right direction.

Cole picked up the pace. Soon, he heard the kid panting heavily behind him. The kid had been a football player back in high school and he moved like one, bulldozing through the brush. Cole moved almost silently, finding gaps between the scrub trees and avoiding stepping on any of the dry bracken that littered the ground.

He winced as the kid stepped on another branch. To Cole’s ears, the resulting crack sounded loud as a pistol shot.

“Keep up,” he muttered. “And for God’s sake, don’t make so damn much noise.”

They hadn’t gone another fifty feet when Cole heard shots up ahead, coming from the direction that they were headed in.

“What’s going on?” the kid asked.

“Sounds to me like maybe someone got there before us,” Cole said. “Let’s get a move on.”

“I thought we were hurrying.”

“That was just a slow hurry,” Cole said. “Now we’ve got to hurry.”

They heard two more quick shots, and then an eerie silence settled over the hills.

Faced with the Koreans pointed guns at him, Miller felt that he had no choice but to raise his hands in surrender. Shooting it out with the pistol didn’t seem like an option against a handful of guerillas — or whatever these soldiers were.

“Lieutenant Commander Miller, United States Air Force,” he said, his hands raised high. He wondered what else to say, such as I surrender. He settled on, “Don’t shoot.”

One of the Koreans stepped forward. Small and lithe, but unarmed, the Korean had Miller’s full attention. He noticed long hair tucked under her billed cap and with a shock, realized that he was being confronted by a young woman.

“You are American?” she asked.

Miller’s shock increased, owing to the fact that she had asked the question in English.

Dumbly, he nodded, then added, “Yes.”

“Put your hands down,” she said. Over her shoulder, she said something to the Koreans, who lowered their rifles.

Upon closer inspection, Miller could see that the weapons were antiques. If he wasn’t mistaken, one of the rifles had a curved lock and a percussion cap, like a Civil War musket. He preferred not to be shot by it, all the same.

The soldiers didn’t wear uniforms, but only dirty and ragged clothes, some of which appeared to be cast-offs from Chinese uniforms. How these fellows had obtained Chinese uniforms was a matter of open speculation.