"She is still alive!" Rex was astonished. The odds against it were overwhelming. Could it really be true? His heart raced. Although she had been lost for over 50 years and Rex had tried to locate her for many of those years, the news caught him unprepared. His deceased wife's sister had somehow survived the war in Korea and subsequent starvation at the hands, first, of the brutal dictator Kim Il Sung, and then of his no-less-brutal son Kim Jung Il in North Korea. It had been Oakson's greatest wish to find her much-loved sister and, if possible, be reunited with her. With the memory of his wife forever at the front of his mind, he quickly resolved to help the sister escape to South Korea as she now wished. With his special knowledge of the Korean DMZ, he hoped to sneak into North Korea undetected and return with the sister-in-law he had never met. It would be an extremely dangerous undertaking though. The 4 km width of the DMZ was far from demiliterized with mine fields and frequent patrols from both the north and the south. On top of that he might encounter wild boars, Asiatic black bears, leopards or even Amur tigers if some reports were true. He hoped the reports of tigers were mistaken. If he managed to get lucky and cross the zone without incident, there were still approximately 750,000 North Korean soldiers spread out along its 155 mile length. They would not welcome him. In reality, if they saw him, he could expect to pay the highest possible price for his little jaunt. Rex had always been a closet adrenaline junkie. Still he keenly understood the gravity of his intended endeavor. He didn't have a death wish. He enjoyed living. He did believe, however, in calculated risks. He did a sanity check. Would a sane person even consider making a round trip across the DMZ? If they knew what Rex was planning, most people would mentally assign him to an institution where he couldn't hurt himself. His sisters would be absolutely horrified if they knew what he had in mind. At age 62, more of Rex's life lay behind him rather than ahead of him. This was now, by far, the biggest thing that Rex wanted to accomplish in his remaining years. He had no children and had not remarried. No one depended on him. If those years were cut a few years short, what would really be lost in the grand scheme of things? Rex had an unusual self-confidence. It had undoubtedly been a factor when he was hand-picked to be part of the elite JSA unit at Panmunjom, Korea back in 1969. He used to think of himself as THE guardian of South Korea standing in the middle of the DMZ with his .45 caliber pistol holding the screaming hordes of bloodthirsty North Korean commies at bay. In his heart, he knew that because of HIM, the South Korean population down in Seoul and further south would be able to sleep soundly at night. Rescuing the sister would a very risky task, but maybe the aristocrat Om family would finally forgive him, an American commoner, for marrying their pure-blooded progeny and diluting their line. He knew that aiding her sister would have greatly pleased his wife. There was no question. He would do it to honor her memory. He would go to Korea, fine-tune his plan, and bring his sister-in-law to freedom.