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COWBOY WOKE UP IN A cold sweat. His heart was racing. The room he was in was completely dark and he had no idea where he was. The last thing he remembered was falling in the woods. Everything after that was a blur.
As his eyes adjusted, he realized he was in a bedroom of some sort. The walls were barren and there appeared to be no windows, but he could just barely make out a door to his right. As he felt around and his eyes adjusted further, he realized that the hard surface he was lying on was a single-bed mattress.
Shifting in the bed, Cowboy felt something pulling in his forearm and saw that he had an IV attached. As he tried to sit up, a sudden pain shot through his body. He moved his hand to the source of the pain in his abdomen and found that it was heavily bandaged.
He felt like he was in a fog, but as he tried to sit up despite the pain, everything started to come back to him. He remembered falling down the side of a hill after taking a round during a firefight. He vaguely remembered being captured and then trying to run when their convoy was ambushed. There had been a man dressed in black standing over him after he fell. He didn’t know who the man was, but he remembered the man saying something to him in English.
After that, he had no idea what had happened. He had lost consciousness at some point while being disarmed and dragged out of the brush. He had no idea who had him, where he was, or how long he had been there, but it appeared that someone had at least tended to his wounds – this time with more care than the field medic that had done a half-assed job of bandaging his gunshot wound earlier.
Cowboy gingerly sat up and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. He had been stripped down to his boxers and an undershirt at some point during his capture. He slowly stood and pulled the IV out of his arm. His bare feet felt the cold and dusty concrete as he tried to orient himself in the darkness.
Finding the nearby wall, Cowboy shuffled along the concrete floor. He was hoping to find another door or window to at least give him an idea of how to plan his escape. As he reached the corner, he suddenly saw a light come on illuminating the bottom of the door to his right.
With the new light illuminating the tiny room, Cowboy searched for something that could be used as a weapon. He saw that he was two steps down from the door in a room that was barely big enough to fit the bed. The IV had been hung from a small pole above the bed.
As he heard the door unlock, he moved as quickly as he could back to the bed. The pain was overwhelming as he reached the bed and pulled the thin blanket back over him. The door opened and the silhouette of a small man appeared. He lingered in the doorway and then stepped down, apparently carrying a box as he approached Cowboy’s bedside.
The man set the box down next to the bed and then walked around to Cowboy’s IV. Cowboy prepared to strike as the man pulled the loose IV up from the ground.
“How are you feeling?” the man asked in heavily accented English.
Cowboy said nothing, still pretending to be asleep as the man turned to face him.
“It’s okay,” the man said. “I am not here to harm you.”
“Who are you?” Cowboy asked cautiously.
“I thought I would ask you the same thing,” the man replied. “But my name is Pak.”
“They call me Cowboy.”
“Cowboy?”
“Good enough for now, mate. Now, where am I?” Cowboy asked as he sat upright in the bed.
Pak tried to push Cowboy back down. “You should rest. Your injuries need to heal. I managed to remove the bullet but your body will need time to heal. You lost quite a bit of blood, and we could only give you a small transfusion with what we had available.”
“What is this place?” Cowboy asked. He reluctantly complied and slid down in the bed and let his head fall onto the pillow. Pak held Cowboy’s arm and reinserted the IV.
“It is my home. We are a few miles from Kaesong. It is a small village called Changp’ung,” Pak replied as he gently lowered Cowboy’s arm back to his side.
“How did I get here?”
“You were rescued by our group. You are very lucky they brought me to you when they did. Otherwise you would be dead. Or worse, in a North Korean prison.”
“Why? Who are you? What group?” Cowboy pushed. “Why would you help me?”
“Your accent...Brit? Aussie?”
“British,” Cowboy replied.
“Ah, yes, of course,” Pak replied. “It’s so hard to tell the western accents apart. That would make sense. MI-6?”
“No,” Cowboy replied flatly.
“Well, I have worked with MI-6 and the CIA for many decades. I have housed many of them in this very basement.”
Cowboy suddenly shot back up in the bed. “Do you have a way to contact them?”
Pak waved his hand and tried to push Cowboy back down by his shoulders. “You mustn’t work yourself up.”
“I need to get word back home. I think my associate may be in trouble,” Cowboy said anxiously.
Pak seemed to consider it for a moment and then said, “Ah, yes, the American.”
“The American? So, you’ve seen him?”
Pak shook his head. “I didn’t see him, but I know that an American was found by soldiers not too far from here yesterday when you were found. Your plane crashed, yes?”
“Yesterday? Is that how long I’ve been out?”
“You were badly injured,” Pak replied.
“Do you know where they’ve taken him?”
“No, but they will take him where they take all of the spies – Hoeryong Reeducation Camp,” Pak replied. “It was closed in 2012 and now serves as an interrogation and torture site for political dissidents and those caught spying. It is the most secure prison in all of North Korea.”
“I have to get word out to my friends back home,” Cowboy said.
“I’m afraid there’s nothing they can do,” Pak replied. “It is the most heavily guarded prison. Even if you could break in, your friends would never make it out alive. I’m sorry, but your friend is as good as dead.”
“Do you have a way to get in touch with your CIA or MI-6 contacts?” Cowboy asked.
“Yes, I have a satellite phone that I can use in emergencies.”
“Alright, mate, well this is a bloody emergency. Let’s go get it.”