“Today’s task, today’s job to complete.”
September 4th, 1966: 10 PM
The three refugees huddled on the mountaintop, surveying the drop below. The descent, sheer and unforgiving, was going to be difficult. The long walks had already worn down Suk Hing’s shoes, and the previous day’s climb had ruined them completely. The spares she had replaced them with were now equally threadbare, the soles thin and smooth, making them slippery. She wondered if she might be better off attempting the descent barefoot, but the mountainside was barbed with shale outcroppings, edged like knives. What little protection her shoes could still afford would be better than no protection at all; she would just have to be aware that her feet could give way at any moment, and try her best to compensate. They were so close: plunging to their deaths from the clifftop was not an option.
They studied the cliff face in silence, their minds trying to plot a route along the mountain’s vertiginous, geologically plotless, decline. It looked absolutely terrifying, their most difficult challenge yet, even without the soldiers positioned at various points along the base below. Suk Hing thought back to her days in the park, meeting with other like-minded people who all planned to make the trip. Her mind drifted over each one, wondering how they had fared and whether they too had arrived at this very spot, trying to work out how to make the descent without falling to their deaths, just as she was now. She wondered if there might be bodies, twisted and broken and forgotten in the crevices, or lying prone among the sea-lyme grass dotting the plain below. Then, she recalled something else, a piece of information she had heard during one of the meetings.
“Someone once said that the patrols only move every four hours, but I’m not sure whether to believe that. It seems an awful long time for a place they know to be a high-risk area,” she whispered to the others. “Maybe they rely on the soldiers positioned in the mountains and the spotters in the planes, and if nobody has reported anything then maybe they feel secure in the fact that no one is suddenly going to appear here,” Bui stated.
“They wouldn’t take that kind of chance; I just don’t trust that information. I think we should wait for a while and keep an eye on them. We can use Bui’s watch to time their movements.”
The others agreed. They checked the time and settled in for a long wait on the cold, hard ground. It didn’t take long for Suk Hing to begin shivering, and she had to set her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering. They waited there in the dark, doing their version of reconnaissance on the soldiers below. Her mind began to recollect the journey, all that they had been through, and how far they had come. It seemed cruel that people could have made it this far only to fall, get caught, or drown. Suk Hing wondered if the eyes of the world were watching China, if they knew of the adversity the people faced, of the bravery of those who tried to escape. Perhaps the government were covering it up, playing down the situation, but surely those in Hong Kong would know. She had no idea what happened to people who reached the other side, but whatever awaited her there it couldn’t be worse than her life here.
Suk Hing’s reflections were broken by a fleck of white light moving below and to the right. The soldiers were moving. Bui checked his watch: two hours had passed.
“It looks like they carry out patrols every two hours, not four.”
They watched as the beam from the soldier’s flashlight below them jerked and bobbed from right to left, sweeping the area.
“Definitely a patrol,” Lum Jong said. “We should get moving just as they pass directly below us. I don’t think they’ll hear us when we’re this far up, and by the time we get lower, they’ll be well on their way. That gives us the maximum time to get down, or to maybe get away if we fall and are still alive.”
“What if there’s a second patrol moving from left to right, like a relay? We’ll be sitting ducks stuck halfway down if that’s the case,” Suk Hing argued. “Or maybe they get so far along and turn and come right back.”
“All the more reason to move now and get down as far as we can, as fast as we can. Last time you got down and ran and that didn’t work. This time, we should get down and hide down there, timing our run better. There must be somewhere to hide closer to the bottom. We don’t have to go all the way to the plain, just far enough until it isn’t so steep and we’re much nearer to where we need to be.”
Suk Hing wasn’t convinced that this was the best plan, but she couldn’t deny that her last attempt had failed. Even Lum Jong and Bui didn’t know that she had actually made it to the water; she had never told a single soul. With Bui as nervous as he was, this wasn’t the time to share that information with them. There was also a small part of her that was glad to have someone else strong around, someone else to make some of the decisions and take control now and again. She decided that she would follow the plan. The more time they spent discussing it the more time they wasted, and another patrol could already be on their way.
The three took a deep breath, shared a look, and began the treacherous descent. Suk Hing was torn between taking it slow, aware both of the inadequate grips on her shoes and the risk of falling, and hurrying down so they had time to hide if they made it to the bottom. Lum Jong had taken the lead, with Suk Hing following and Bui at the rear. As Lum Jong began to move, Suk Hing realized that the question of whether to take the descent slowly or quickly was largely moot. She had to follow the pace set by Lum Jong or Bui might get too close, having to stop behind her. Downward momentum would help them maintain their balance, so stopping wasn’t an option for any of them. She just hoped that Bui could handle this; if he fell, he would likely take them all with him on his way down.
Suk Hing had never been as scared in her life as she was during that time, not even when she awoke on the beach to find herself under a halo of gun barrels. There were no trails, no set routes. She could hardly see a thing and had to blindly follow Lum Jong’s lead, hoping that she could emulate his movements as he struggled to find toeholds and places to grip as he went. She wasn’t as strong as he was, and neither was Bui. She hoped he took that into consideration as he led them on their way.
Eventually, Suk Hing felt the ground beneath her shift, as the cliffside’s near perpendicular incline evened slightly into a steep but less hazardous slope. She stopped and looked around for potential hiding places. A few thickets of trees dotted the escarpment, but they didn’t extend very far. She waited for Bui to reach her, thinking this would be the best place to find a hiding spot while they tried to time their run. In the hiatus, Suk Hing had lost sight of Lum Jong. She looked into the near distance, but couldn’t see him anywhere; darkness cloaked the landscape like a shroud. She dared not call out, so she took Bui’s arm and moved further down towards the base of the mountain, assuming that Lum Jong had carried on further down. As Suk Hing’s eyes readjusted in the gloom, she spotted Lum crouched just past the edge of a tree line about twenty yards in front of her. Beyond, the slope became gentler and then flattened out, stretching into the large expanse of exposed area that they had seen clearly from their perch on the cliff face earlier.
As they stood together staring out over the road separating them from the patrol area, Suk Hing couldn’t believe that they had all made it safely down. Her heart was pounding and her breathing was ragged, but she was alive and, for the moment, in one piece. It seemed like a miracle, one she hadn’t believed possible when she had first turned her back on the cliff edge and took that first step down into the empty, black expanse.
Her relief was short-lived. The telltale beam of a flashlight was moving in their direction. It was much larger and brighter than the pinprick they had made out from the top of the mountain. She gestured to the others.
“Hide!,” Lum Jong said, and they moved without hesitation. Suk Hing grasped Bui by the arm, pulling him alongside her in case he froze. She found a large rock and looked around anxiously as she ushered Bui behind it, following only once she was certain he was hidden from the view of the approaching patrol. The two of them huddled there together, hoping that the dogs wouldn’t catch their scents, and hoping that Lum Jong had also found cover. Suk Hing wanted to call for him, to ensure he was all right, but it would have been suicide. Forcing her voice back into her throat, Suk Hing instead focused her attentions on Bui, on ensuring that he didn’t panic and flee crashing through the trees, giving away their position.
After a while, she plucked up the courage to peek over the top of the rock. She couldn’t see any light at all, not even the retreating glow of the flashlight. The patrol must have passed by. Lum Jong must have been safe. Suk Hing stood up slowly and motioned for Bui to follow. They crept quietly to the other side of the rock. Suk Hing tried to remember the direction in which Lum Jong had moved after he’d told them to hide.
She searched behind nearby rocks and checked the surrounding trees to see if Lum Jong had climbed up into them to stay out of sight. She tried to move as quickly and quietly as possible, Bui close on her heels. There was no trace of Lum Jong, or any sign that someone had passed this way. The surrounding vegetation appeared undisturbed. Suk Hing thought that she may have travelled in the wrong direction, doubling back and moving in a zigzag pattern in case she had missed him first time round.
She and Bui moved some distance in the other direction, but they still couldn’t find Lum. They navigated their way back to their original hiding place behind the large rock, using it as a point of reference. They worked their way back up the slope in case he had retreated further up the mountain, but they found nothing. Lum Jong seemed to have vanished.
On their way back to the rock, Suk Hing spotted another beam of light. She couldn’t be certain, but it seemed like the patrols were circulating every ten minutes, not every two hours, as they had initially thought. The current patrol was again coming from their right. Suk Hing deduced that a constant stream of patrols would be making their way back and forth in front of them. Perhaps other spotters had seen something suspicious and alerted the soldiers here to be on their guard. As the light approached, Suk Hing once again pulled Bui into hiding. He was shaking badly; the frequency and proximity of the soldiers were clearly terrifying him. After a few interminable minutes, Suk Hing stuck her head out of hiding and looked around. She couldn’t see the light anymore but it worried her that it had disappeared so quickly. Had the soldiers taken a different route, maybe moving off their regular path because something had caught their attention? If that was the case, they could appear anywhere at any moment. Suk Hing knew she had to make a decision.
“Bui, we have to go. Now.”
“No! We can’t leave Lum Jong.”
“We’ve looked in every direction except forward,
maybe he’s already gone. Have you thought of that?”
“He wouldn’t leave me,” Bui said, almost pleading.
“He knew you were with me, and he knew I would make the decision to go. We’ve done all we can. We’re not trackers, but we can’t even see a place where he might have hidden. We could be here for hours looking and never find him. By then it will be daylight. Is that what you would prefer? Because if it is, you might as well step out there and give yourself up right now.”
Suk Hing knew she was being harsh, but it was the only way she could make Bui pull himself together and think logically. She wanted him to survive this; she wanted him to be free.
“Please, Bui,” she said, changing tactics. “We can’t stay here any longer; it’s getting more and more dangerous by the second. We’ve wasted enough time looking and put ourselves at risk in doing so. Either Lum Jong has gone already, or he will understand why we decided to go. Maybe he’ll even catch up. He’s fast and he’s strong, right?”
Bui simply nodded, looking pale and miserable.
“Right, so we have to go now. Come on, please. We need to move.”
“I don’t want to go without Lum Jong. I’ve never mentioned this, but I’m not a very good swimmer. He was supposed to help me in the water. Suk Hing, without his strength, I’ll never make it. I know you worked as a lifeguard, but you couldn’t support me all the way, not for eight hours solid and fighting against waves and currents.”
Suk Hing hung her head. As much as she would like to think she might be able to help Bui swim, she knew in her heart that he was right. She was an expert swimmer, yet even she had been exhausted after the swim the last time, and hadn’t had the strength left to fight the ebbing tide. There was no way she could make it if she had to pull Bui along with her.
“Okay, then,” she said sadly. “Then these are your choices. You can come with me, hoping we make it across the highway and find him already there, and maybe even spot him in the water. Once we get far enough out, he might even wait for us to catch up with him. If we don’t find him, you have to swim; you have to believe you can do it. I do.”
“I don’t think I can, not without Lum Jong. The water scares me too much.”
“Then the only other choice is to turn back now. I’m sorry Bui, but it would be the safest option. Once we’re at the other side of the road, there is no turning back and no time to hesitate. At least from here, you have a chance. I’ll go on by myself, and once I hit the water, or if the soldiers spot me and give chase, you grab the opportunity while they’re distracted. Get yourself back up that mountain and follow the trail home. Do what we did on the way here, travel at night and hide during the daylight hours. You’ll find your way.”
“I don’t know what to do; I don’t want to go back to that life.”
“It’s time to make up your mind, Bui, because I’m going while I still can.”
Without another word, Suk Hing turned and ran.