The Hidden Trail in the Mountain
"I guess it works for me."
Rumble-rumble—
A patrol car from the Annam West Precinct came to a stop at the end of the logging road.
When the engine died, a brief silence settled over the mountain.
Leaves whispering in the wind gave the place an eerie, uneasy air.
Click—
The car doors opened, and three people got out.
Song Tan and Lee Joo-seok, along with Yu Jeong-ho—the man they had arrested as the drug supplier.
The two of them flanked Yu Jeong-ho, his wrists cuffed, and led him slowly into the woods while staring at the coordinates blinking on the phone screen.
"Is this the place?"
"It has to be somewhere around here..."
Yu Jeong-ho stopped and looked around nervously.
"If you can't find it, that goes on top of the lie you told the detective."
"No, seriously, this is the place. Damn it, I'm telling you."
Now that they had actually arrived, Yu Jeong-ho scratched his head in frustration, bewildered by that strange phenomenon where one tree suddenly looked exactly like every other tree.
His eyes darted around faster than ever.
Then, all at once, he let out a shrill cry.
"Found it! Over there!"
Where his finger pointed, a single tree stood with a red string tied around it.
It was clearly meant to mark the spot, but not so obviously that anyone passing by would notice at once.
"If we get closer, you should be able to see where someone dug into the ground."
The two men holding Yu Jeong-ho walked up beneath the tree.
When they brushed away the pile of fallen leaves, a patch of earth with a noticeably different color was revealed at once.
It was the trace of ground that had been dug up and then covered over again.
"Right."
Squatting down to inspect the soil, Lee Joo-seok nodded.
He searched the area with a flashlight, sweeping it over the stones beneath the tree, the roots, even the surrounding heaps of dead leaves.
But nothing came up.
Lee Joo-seok pressed his lips together once, then looked around the area.
"Not even a cigarette butt."
The surroundings were too clean.
So clean there wasn’t even the kind of trash you’d expect to see lying around.
That meant this wasn’t a place people normally passed through.
"That bastard's really careful, huh."
Lee Joo-seok let out a hollow laugh.
There wasn’t even one decent lead to hand over to forensics.
"Do you know how bad it is? I never even got a look at his face while I was taking the goods. The guy's slimy as hell."
"Shut up, you bastard. You're no saint yourself."
When Lee Joo-seok glared at him, Yu Jeong-ho gave a little whimper and shrank his neck inward.
The only thing they could really call evidence was the red knot tied to the tree.
Lee Joo-seok carefully untied it, put it into a plastic evidence bag, and tucked it away in his pocket.
Then, all at once, he realized something.
The junior partner who had been making him uneasy on several fronts lately was far too quiet.
Only then did his eyes find Song Tan.
"Hey, what the hell are you doing over there?"
Lee Joo-seok asked, looking bewildered.
Song Tan was nearly lying flat on the dirt, even pressing his nose against a rock and sniffing at it.
Song Tan straightened up and walked over to Lee Joo-seok.
"The person who buried the drugs didn't come up from below."
"What? Then you mean..."
Lee Joo-seok's gaze rose toward the low mountain ridge.
"There isn't a single footprint. How the hell did you figure that out?"
"Because there are other traces. Would you look here, please?"
Lee Joo-seok dropped flat onto the ground and studied the pile of leaves Song Tan had disturbed.
Seen from the side, there was the faintest impression of something having been pressed down there.
So slight you could stare at it with your eyes wide open and still wonder whether you were imagining it.
"I looked, but there wasn't any sign like this lower down."
After a moment’s thought, Lee Joo-seok offered an objection.
"Could be it wasn't made by a person. Boars or deer could leave something similar, couldn't they?"
Song Tan nodded as if agreeing.
"You're right, senior. But if you look above the place where the leaves were pressed down—like this."
Song Tan shone his flashlight on a tree.
The beam started at the ground and climbed the trunk, then stopped on a branch jutting out to the side.
"A smaller branch has been broken by outside force. That's a height no wild animal could ever reach."
Lee Joo-seok had to swallow his surprise.
He had looked too, after all, yet these were traces he hadn't noticed at all.
Even if you brought in an experienced detective, finding clues like that in one glance was no easy thing.
"So? What do you think?"
At some point, Lee Joo-seok had started asking Song Tan for his opinion first, and listening seriously when he answered.
He didn't even realize he was doing it.
"If those bastards really came down from somewhere in the mountain, there should be traces like this scattered intermittently along the way. If we follow them upward, we may be able to find their base."
"Even so, isn't it too much for just the two of us? We should request backup—"
"Didn't Yu Jeong-ho already tell us? The moment they think there's a problem, they'll erase their tracks and disappear."
Yu Jeong-ho nodded in agreement.
"Right. They sent me messages before saying they'd go completely dark the second things went south."
"They may already be making preparations. That means the golden hour is almost up."
Lee Joo-seok bit his lip, glanced up at the mountain peak, then nodded.
"Damn it all. Fine. Sink or swim, let's hit them first and see what happens."
Song Tan nodded and began climbing the mountain, following the traces.
Lee Joo-seok watched his back with complicated eyes, then seized Yu Jeong-ho by the nape of the neck.
"Let's go."
"Huh? Why am I coming too...?"
"Then you want to stay here by yourself? Sure, that works too."
As Lee Joo-seok moved to cuff him to a tree, Yu Jeong-ho panicked and waved both hands frantically.
"Whoa! No way! I love hiking!? Please take me with you!"
"Then shut your mouth and follow quietly."
Yu Jeong-ho clamped his cuffed hands over his mouth and wordlessly trailed after the two of them.
***
The air in the remote mountain was especially cold.
Song Tan bent his knees and lowered his gaze close to the ground.
As expected, several leaves were pressed down in an unnatural way.
What's more, even on a slope, the spacing between them was quite regular.
That proved the person had gone up and down this mountain often.
Following the traces upward, he soon reached a point where there were no leaves at all.
Song Tan's eyes caught on a blade of grass bent slightly to one side.
Even the soil around the roots was subtly exposed.
From that, he could narrow down the other party's route to some extent.
Song Tan climbed without hesitation, while behind him Lee Joo-seok and Yu Jeong-ho scrambled upward like men possessed.
"Huff, huff—no, Detective-nim, wha—huff—how do you know where you're going? Are you a flying squirrel or something? How the hell are you—huff—climbing this mountain so easily?"
"Hoo... I don't know, you idiot."
Lee Joo-seok caught his breath once, then stared at Song Tan's back as he strode ahead.
He prided himself on having stamina that would never lose to anyone, yet his junior partner's breathing remained as steady as if he were walking on level ground.
Grinding his teeth, Lee Joo-seok quickened his pace.
"S-slow down, please!"
"Shut up. If you can't keep up, you can stay here."
Yu Jeong-ho looked around the mountain's own brand of gloom, then moved forward with a face full of despair.
Song Tan examined a tree closely.
Scratch marks on the bark appeared only on one side.
And the height was nearly consistent.
No matter how careful a person is, the body still tends to lean the way it's used to moving.
As they climbed a little higher, the air changed.
It should have been a ridgeline where the wind blew, but instead the silence was unnaturally still, as though the air itself had stopped.
"Hiss... Haaah."
Song Tan closed his eyes and drew in a long breath.
A strangely intrusive, alien odor had caught in his nose.
"It's not far from here."
"Huff, really?"
"Ughhh, p-please save me."
Yu Jeong-ho, on the verge of collapse, spread himself in a big X on the ground and begged for mercy.
But Lee Joo-seok paid him no mind at all, his gaze fixed only on Song Tan.
"Those little holes over there are burrows where rodents live. But as you can see, they're all empty. Even the bird droppings stop at this radius. Animals don't abandon their homes or their usual paths without reason. That means something threatening must have appeared in this area."
Lee Joo-seok let out an admiring sound before he could stop himself.
"How the hell do you know stuff like this?"
The question burst out of him in spite of himself.
Tracking someone's trail on an empty mountain? They were calling it a trail, but it was barely visible at all.
Maybe someone from a special forces unit or an intelligence service could do it?
No—Lee Joo-seok himself had served in the Marine Corps Reconnaissance Unit, and even then, it was anything but easy.
"I've always been interested in things like this, so I read a lot of related books when I was young."
"You can do all this just by reading books?"
"I guess I can."
Lee Joo-seok was left speechless.
"We're almost there. Let's hurry."
Song Tan quickened his pace, and Lee Joo-seok followed with a face full of thought.
Yu Jeong-ho, completely resigned to his fate, almost crawled after them on all fours.
How much time had passed like that?
"Found it."
At last, Song Tan stopped.
Midway up the mountain, hidden behind dense trees, stood a building, its form only faintly visible through the leaves.
It looked like a mountain lodge, but depending on how you looked at it, it could also have been a private house.
"Huff, those crazy bastards. They built a storage shed in a place like this?"
Lee Joo-seok was certain now.
That had to be the bastards' hideout.
At the same time, he couldn't help but be stunned by Song Tan's ability to find it for real.
"What should we do?"
Setting aside his shock for the moment, Lee Joo-seok fixed the building with a sharp stare.
"First we need to make sure this is really it."
Lee Joo-seok removed the handcuff from his left wrist and hooked it around a tree trunk.
"You wait here."
The flustered Yu Jeong-ho rambled on anxiously.
"How am I supposed to stay here alone? I'll scare myself to death."
"Scared? Or would you rather just take a nice long nap?"
When Lee Joo-seok raised a fist, Yu Jeong-ho jerked and then gave an awkward laugh.
"Haha... no, of course not. Go do your thing. I'll keep watch here."
Lee Joo-seok nodded and motioned toward Song Tan.
"Let's go."
"Yes, sir."
***
The building up close was practically a derelict house.
The roof was so worn it looked like it might collapse any second, and the outer walls were stained as though no one had ever bothered to clean or repair them.
Keeping their breathing low, the two of them dropped into a crouch and approached the building.
Clatter—
The sound of metal striking metal.
Along with the dull thud of footsteps on a wooden floor taking someone's weight.
Faint, but unmistakable, signs of life drifted from inside.
The two men pressed themselves against the outer wall and moved toward the window.
The window was half-covered with boards so that nothing inside could be seen from the outside.
Song Tan pointed somewhere with a finger.
It was a vent at the back.
The rusted wire mesh was bent slightly at one corner.
Through the gap, the interior came into blurry view.
Soundproof booths had been installed along the walls, and machines of unknown purpose sat on metal shelving.
With his eyes wide open, Lee Joo-seok muttered in a low voice.
"Those crazy sons of bitches. This isn't a storage warehouse... It was a manufacturing plant!?"
Caught off guard by the unexpected turn, Lee Joo-seok lost his voice for a moment.
In the meantime, three men wearing masks and gloves were seen moving something around in a flurry of activity.
Lee Joo-seok lifted his radio, his eyes heavy and dark.
"This is Inspector Lee Joo-seok of Annam West Violent Crimes Team 1. Confirmed a narcotics manufacturing facility disguised as a derelict house on the mid-slope of the mountain near Amdong-dong. Sending GPS coordinates now. Multiple suspects presumed, large quantities of chemical compounds loaded on site. Emergency backup requested. Dispatch detective task force and narcotics unit immediately."
After finishing the transmission, Lee Joo-seok whispered in a low voice.
"This is way beyond what the two of us can handle. Let's wait for backup."
Song Tan glanced through the gap in the vent, then said flatly, "If we do that, I think the fish will all be gone by the time they get here."
"What?"
Startled, Lee Joo-seok looked inside again.
Over and over, the men were throwing things away, burning things, moving things.
Anyone could see they were erasing evidence.
"Damn it..."
Lee Joo-seok chewed on his lip, suddenly cornered.
There didn't seem to be time to wait for backup after all, just as his junior partner had said.
If they handled this wrong, all the key evidence could be wiped out.
"How about we just clean them up ourselves?"
"Don't make it sound so easy. We don't even know how many men are inside. And we can't be sure what kind of weapons they're carrying."
"And yet we can't just let them slip through our fingers right in front of us."
For a moment, Lee Joo-seok fell silent, then fixed the drug manufacturers with a blazing stare.
As he did, the memory of Song Tan casually crushing gangsters just a few days earlier flashed through his mind.
"You really sure about this? The way they walk makes me think those bastards are probably doped up. And junkies don't give a damn about right or wrong. Who knows what the hell they'll do."
"It's fine. When I was younger, I dealt with people high on much worse things than this."
"What did you say?"
Song Tan smoothly changed the subject.
"I'm more worried about you, senior. Can you arrest them without hurting them?"
"Now's not the time to worry about that! We grab them first, talk later."
"We should worry about it. It'd be disgusting to catch the culprit in a good mood and still get disciplined for it."
"Shit, then what the hell am I supposed to do? Just stand here and watch?"
"If possible, please use joint locks to dislocate them rather than breaking bones. That's something I can clean up afterward."
Lee Joo-seok had no idea what the hell this kid was talking about, but he nodded anyway.
Right now, what mattered was nabbing the drug manufacturers cleanly and all at once.
"Let's go."
Without another word, the two men exchanged a look and moved in a crouch toward the back of the building.