Mercenaries rescue two members of a North Korean all-girl band from execution, then make a shambles of Kwan-li-so No. 22, a North Korean concentration camp at Hoeryong, as they make their escape and discover a forgotten American POW from the Korean War.

SYNOPSIS:

CHARLES WINCHELL is a tall middle-aged pipe-smoking, cowboy boot, hat and buckle-wearing former intelligence agent from Texas, who thinks of himself as a first rate psychic. He firmly believes in the old saying that age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill!

His partner is DWIGHT DAVID BRACKENTHWAITE, formerly of Her Majesty’s Secret Service who loves more than anything to tweak the tail feathers of any two-bit sadistic dictator anywhere in the world.

The group has carried out dangerous missions in the past and they are fully prepared to die, if necessary, to follow Charles and Dwight to Hell and back. It consists of BENJAMIN KITTSMILLER, a first rate stunt pilot, race car driver and explosives expert. At the age of 62 Ben is the oldest of the group who reminisces about the glory days of running moonshine for his Grand-pappy through the hills of eastern Kentucky. Ben is a wisecracking son of the hills who isn’t bothered by rules. He dreams of re-living those wonderful by-gone days.

KIM CHIN HO, at 22, is still a child in the eyes of the others, but he can disassemble and re-assemble anything mechanical while blindfolded, a talent that will be vital to the mission ahead.

YANG “WEN” WEN (23) is an assassin who lost an eye in a terrorist attack in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in western China. He was a trained sniper and counter terrorism specialist in the People's Liberation Army Special Operations Forces, but under Charles’ tutelage, he is one of the world’s top snipers and assassins.

Wen’s partner is a beautiful but deadly Chinese woman, FANRONG “RONG” LUO, from Shenyang, aged 27 and engaged to an American intelligence officer. She shows no mercy towards her adversaries. She is an efficient killer who sometimes likes to make her enemies suffer a little before she kills them.

Charles’ group of mercenaries find and free two band members from the Morganbow Band in a political prison in North Korea just hours before their scheduled execution on trumped up charges of treason. They are victims of a farce called a “trial” and beaten and raped by sadistic guards who know that the women will soon be dead and not able to testify against them in later war crimes trials.

The chase is on as prison guards drop by the dozens into the tunnel system that honeycomb the mountain and race after Wen, Rong and the two women who are on electrified skateboards in scenes reminiscent of the ore car chase scene in “Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom”. They eventually reach a mountainside in North Korea where the rest of the group is waiting, leaving in their wake dozens of dead guards, mangled motorized skateboards, and destroyed tunnels and skateboard troughs. They virtually fly out of the tunnels and land on a level area where the group with a puffing locomotive and ore cars on an abandoned ore railway line are waiting.

With helicopters overhead and with the two freed prisoners, they virtually fly down the mountain in their little ore train with guards in unpowered ore cars chasing behind. The guards realize too late that they have no brakes and one by one fly off the rails and down the mountain to be smashed on the rocks below.

Fanrong Luo convinces Charles that since they are already in North Korea and not too many miles from a major Gulag called Section 48 that they have a moral obligation to try to free the prisoners consisting of families of North Koreans who helped Americans during the War. She says that there is also a rumor of an aging American POW in the gulag. She goes ahead and contacts an informant at a mining town at the end of the rails and the two arrange to have two wood-burning armored ore trucks waiting to take the group to the gulag at the edge of the town.

Upon reaching the town, the group of rescuers pile into the trucks with their weapons and ammunition and race to the gulag. As air raid sirens wail, they smash through the barricades and perimeter walls, through the open area inside the walls as they battle guards from the moment they reach the first barricade. Ben sets up an anti-aircraft machine gun in one of the ore trucks and brings down two attacking North Korean helicopters before the trucks reach the interior of the Gulag.

Once inside, Charles is the first through the opening they blasted through the wall with one of the trucks, and there, as families of prisoners run out, sitting along a back wall is an ancient, bearded, and half-dead American soldier who, when he realizes who and what Charles represents, feebly stands and, with tears streaming down his cheeks, salutes and identifies himself as the last American POW held in that gulag. He wonders what took Charles so long to rescue him.

Charles, upon seeing the soldier, cries for the first time in his adult life, returns the salute, and helps the POW back to the trucks which are now loaded with freed prisoners. They begin to smash their way out of the gulag, bringing down walls, as Ben slips away to blow up the “interrogation” and torture rooms with explosions that can be felt for miles. Ben jumps back into the second truck as he is wounded in the butt by a guard. They continue to exchange fire with guards as they move through the village leveling buildings as they go. Ben hits one building that stored ammunition, creating a series of explosions that appear like a Chinese New Year’s celebration. They fight to reach the Tumen River that marks the boundary with China.

Reminiscent of the movie “The Gauntlet”, they smash their way through the village and to the river. Firing from both sides intensifies and Rong is wounded by a ricocheting bullet inside the truck as they turn to ford the river.

Chinese PLA soldiers and border guards shout encouragement from across the river as the trucks enter the river and the group fights its way to the international border. Once they reach the Chinese side of the river, cheering breaks out among the Chinese soldiers and they run to help the escaping group safely out of the trucks and to waiting medical help. The North Koreans turn and walk back into the village, shaking their heads in disappointment that they could not stop the escape.

Charles reports to the PLA commandant that he has rescued two innocent victims of the North Korean dictatorship and an un-accounted for American POW. The commandant, a man with a heart and a hatred for everything Korean, shakes Charles’ hand and welcomes him to the People’s Republic of China.

Richard Welch

131 E. La Espina

Green Valley, Arizona 85614

(520) 977-3071

Richard-welch@msn.com