Kwon Taekjoo stared squarely at Lee Cheoljin, who had finally reached the end of the deck. The voice in the earpiece tried stopping Taekjoo. Taekjoo turned the device off. Finally, only Lee Cheoljin and Kwon Taekjoo stood on the windy deck.
Lee stared down at the endless black waters before him. His grip on the deck railing tightened. Taekjoo closed in. Lee was backed up and cornered. There was nowhere he could run to, and he began wielding the knife in the air. It was his last resort to save himself—a meaningless, futile attempt. Once someone is scared, any threat they make holds no power.
“Step back!”
Lee lashed out as Taekjoo walked confidently toward him. He looked back and forth between the black current of the ocean and the approaching Taekjoo. He slashed the empty air again with his knife.
“I said step back!”
He yelled fiercely, not knowing what to do. Taekjoo casually pulled out his Colt, turning Lee’s knife into a useless strip of metal.
Lee’s stare, restless and anxious, suddenly left Taekjoo. His eyes were looking at something farther behind.
BANG—Taekjoo pulled the trigger, and his bullet precisely found its target. However, it wasn’t Lee Cheoljin who screamed and collapsed to the ground. It was Kim Yeonghee. She had been silently approaching Taekjoo.
Kim’s ivory-colored coat was stained with red. She sank to the ground, holding her mangled right hand. The Colt she held previously also fell to the ground, shooting a fire in the air. Her target could’ve been Kwon Taekjoo. It could also have been Lee Cheoljin, whose cover had been blown.
Taekjoo turned back to face straight ahead. In the meantime, Lee abandoned his knife and turned around, his back now facing Taekjoo. He took a deep breath, holding onto the deck railing. In response, his shoulders rose, and his back hunched. Taekjoo had a bad feeling. In that moment, Lee Cheoljin’s body, barely clinging to the railing, suddenly lurched to the other side.
Taekjoo was left speechless for a moment.
He sprinted toward the guardrail, but before he could reach it, he heard the water splash. He looked down and saw a patch of the dark waters churning with white froth.
Taekjoo looked around, his eyes searching for Lee Cheoljin, but the man was nowhere to be found. And so, he started waiting—for a good while. Lee’s head bobbed up from the white froth. To jump from that height was no different from suicide.
But as if to laugh at Taekjoo’s assessment, suddenly, another ship appeared. It was an old fishing vessel. Its lights were all turned off, which was probably how it passed through all authority checkpoints.
Emerging from the darkness, the vessel slowly drew closer to Lee Cheoljin. Taekjoo had not seen this coming. This could have been Lee’s true escape plan all along. He would direct his trackers’ attention to the return ticket he booked. Then, as soon as he retrieved the object from Kim, he would vanish into thin air in the middle of the sea.
Taekjoo fired instantly at the vessel, but it was not easy to aim at a target he couldn’t see. Plus, the man was the target of his mission, but it would give Taekjoo some headache if he killed the man. After all, if he had been given permission to kill, Taekjoo would not be here in the first place.
The goal of this mission was to eliminate North Korean spies in the South—specifically, those who had long embedded themselves in South Korea, infiltrated the government and political institutions, and stolen state-level classified information. There were probably many accomplices, colluding with them and helping them all along. Taekjoo had to dig up the root; he couldn’t simply cut the shallow stem named Lee Cheoljin.
All the while, the passenger ferry kept sailing, increasing the gap between itself and the fishing vessel. A man came out from the wheelhouse. He pulled Lee up the ship. The first thing Lee did was take off his soaked jacket. Indeed, flotation devices of all kinds were strapped to his body. On the deck of the moving vessel, Lee Cheoljin raised a hand mockingly. He had the look of victory on his face.
Taekjoo grinned before wiping the crooked smile off his face. He whirled on the spot and headed straight to Kim Yeonghee.
Kim was trembling from the pain of her mangled hand. And all the while, she struggled to get something out. It was poison. The woman was attempting suicide. Kwon Taekjoo struck her neck with the blade of his hand. Kim lost consciousness immediately. Taekjoo quickly stuffed a handkerchief into her mouth. It was to prevent her from harming herself once she was awake. Then, he held her left wrist and twisted it to her back.
There was a ring on her ring finger. It barely had any scratches. It seemed to have been bought recently.
“A pretty ring, huh? Let me give you a bracelet to match.”
Taekjoo took out a pair of handcuffs, and with a clicking sound, one cuff was fitted to the woman’s wrist and the other to the railing.
Once everything was settled, Taekjoo switched the radio back on.
“You. Get here in eight seconds.”
“Come again?” the person on the other end asked back, sounding confused. Taekjoo ignored the voice. His focus was already directed at his watch. He pressed the reset button on the side of the watch. The numbers that showed the time disappeared and were replaced by a live GPS feed. It was Lee Cheoljin’s location. Taekjoo planted a tracking device by the man’s waist when they had been briefly tangled earlier. The red dot that indicated the target’s location was slowly moving out of the map. Taekjoo was running out of time. He took one deep breath and ran toward the end of the ship.
When he reached the end of the deck, Taekjoo didn’t hesitate but stepped on the railing and jumped. In the blink of an eye, his sight was filled with darkness. The wind from all directions pierced his body. The fall lasted longer than he had expected.
With a deafening splash, the surface of the water surged sharply. Taekjoo had hit the black waters. He felt the impact ripple through his entire body. It felt as though every muscle was being torn. Every opening of his body was filled with seawater, bubbles bursting around him. Taekjoo floated in the water for a while to mitigate the pain he felt. He slowly swayed his limbs to hold his position against the waves. He opened his eyes to look around him, but without a single source of light, he was swallowed in pitch-black darkness.
Taekjoo kicked hard and brought himself to the surface. High tides kept coming at him, and it was getting difficult to hold his position.
He barely brought his wrist up and pressed the reset button on his watch once again. The geolocation map disappeared, and the whole watch face lit up, blindingly bright. Taekjoo directed the stream of light into the open air. Two or three seconds later, he heard the sound of a familiar machinery. It was the sound of a motorboat engine. The noise kept growing louder and louder before it ceased. The propeller stopped as well, and the white froth of the seawater slapped Taekjoo. It was followed by a sermon from above his head.
“Jesus, you’ll end up drowning if you keep on going like this.”
Yun Jongwoo, who clearly made a mad dash to get to Taekjoo, reached out his hand. Taekjoo took the hand and jumped onto the boat. It bothered him that he was soaking wet from head to toe. Despite the biting cold, Taekjoo wasted no time. The first thing he did was take off his watch and chuck it at Yun Jongwoo. Jongwoo didn’t ask any questions. He looked at the red dot on the watch face, then maneuvered the boat to chase after it. In the meantime, Taekjoo took off his wet jacket, catching his breath.
The motorboat sliced through the black waves as it picked up speed. It thudded loudly, jumping up and down the elevated tides. The red dot had almost disappeared from the geolocation map. But now, it was getting closer and closer.