Excerpt from The Blue House Raid

Not according to plan watch a reading

A half hour later, Jun-seok heard a voice and the snapping of twigs. Another team, he thought—they should be more quiet—but it wasn’t. Below Jun-seok, no more than ten meters away, appeared a man of nineteen or twenty. He wore shabby work clothes and held a sickle in his right hand. Another man, early twenties, A-frame on his back, followed. Jun-seok caught a third movement and noticed two more young men angling off to the left.

The man with the sickle looked at Jun-seok, Yoon, and Ho, then looked away. He sidestepped left as though he hadn’t seen anything. He flicked a hand at the second man, who was setting down his A-frame.

“Hey there,” said Ho, contorting his voice to a southern accent.

Both young men looked up.

“Hey there,” said the one with the sickle.

“As you can see,” said Ho, “we’re soldiers. We’re with the 26th Infantry Division. We’re investigating suspicious activity in this area.”

The sickle man said, “So that’s it. We thought you were choppers too, horning in on our territory.” He gave a chuckle that came out flat.

Jun-seok examined the threads of his captain’s phony uniform, bare and seedy in the daylight filtering through the leafless trees. He listened to his captain’s tinny rendition of a southern dialect. He didn’t sound at all like the man with the sickle.

Ho edged down the slope as the two young men stiffened. Jun-seok stiffened too. If the men ran, they would have to be chased down with daggers. Firing a submachine gun or pistol was out of the question.

“What’s your name?” said Ho.

“Woo,” said the first man. “We’re both Woo. We’re cousins.”