by Larry Bond
Kavkaz’s captain kept them waiting for a couple of minutes before replying. Mahoney read the signal aloud as it was blinkered over. “This is a Soviet ship in international waters. You are interfering with our right of innocent passage.”
“Innocent, my ass!” muttered the American captain. He scribbled a testy response and waited while Mahoney sent it over. He hoped the kid wasn’t going to try to “burn up” his opposite number by sending so fast the Russian couldn’t follow along. It was a favorite game among signalmen, but this message was something he wanted the Soviets to ponder.
“Thach to Soviet ship. I repeat, this is a maritime exclusion zone. Failure to comply with my order will be treated as a violation of said zone. You will leave immediately.”
“We have no information on such a zone.” The American captain nodded and smiled grimly. This kind of bullshit could drag on for hours, and Admiral Brown had made it all too clear that he wanted results, not negotiations. The Soviets had been duly notified. Now he would make the notification a warning. He pushed a button on the squawk box. “Guns. Prepare to fire a shot across that son-of-a-bitch’s bows.” The Thach’s gunnery officer had been waiting for just such an order, and everybody on the bridge heard the alarm bell and the mechanical whine as the frigate’s single-gun 76mm turret slewed toward the Kavkaz. This time the message got through.
ABOARD THE USS CONSTELLATION
Brown watched the dot representing the Soviet intelligence trawler pull away from his formation. Its captain had made it clear that he was doing so only under protest and because of a “Yankee threat to initiate unprovoked hostilities.” The admiral knew that the Soviets would soon broadcast TV pictures of an American warship “bullying” an unarmed vessel, but it didn’t really bother him very much. Maybe that was precisely the right kind of signal to send to potential adversaries around the globe.
Kavkaz really was dragging its heels, though — moving away so slowly that it would take most of the day for the trawler to clear the exclusion zone.
Brown didn’t push it. As soon as he was satisfied that the Soviet ship really was leaving, he recalled the Thach. Just to keep the Kavkaz honest, every so often a pair of armed attack jets would overfly the ship — low. Until they were exactly one hundred nautical miles away, he wanted that seagoing collection of Soviet intelligence agents to know they lived at his sufferance.
Brown studied the display as his task force turned onto its primary course. The distance from Okinawa to Korea’s east coast was roughly six hundred nautical miles, and at an average speed of twelve knots, the trip would take just over two days. He expected the real North Korean threat to begin once they left the East China Sea and entered the Yellow Sea near the Korean coast. The admiral rubbed his eyes and wondered just how much sleep he would get until then.
A radar operator suddenly sat up straight in his chair. “Airborne contact, range one eighty miles, no friendly IFF.”
Not much, Brown judged, moving toward the command phone.
CHAPTER 30
The Bridge
DECEMBER 30 — NEAR HANGJUSAN CASTLE, SOUTH KOREA
The battered Army three-quarter-ton truck ground its way across the Haengju Bridge along a single lane reserved for northbound traffic. Tanks, trucks, jeeps, and artillery pieces moving south packed the other three lanes, crunching over sand laid on the highway to improve traction. Temperatures all over Korea were falling, and chunks of ice now bobbed and spun in the Han River, rolling westward toward the Yellow Sea. It was quickly growing into the worst winter in recent memory.
Once across the bridge, the truck turned out of traffic onto a small access road winding southeast with the river on one side and towering, snow-dusted evergreens on the other. Dozens of other vehicles moving along the same road had already melted the snow on its surface into a slippery, slushy gunk, and it took the driver several minutes of frantic gear-shifting to force the truck up the road to its destination.
“This is the end of the line, sir. HQ of the First of Thirty-Ninth.”
Second Lieutenant Kevin Little stared at the ramshackle collection of tents nestled among the tall green trees. For a moment the scene summoned up half-forgotten memories of family ski trips in the Washington Cascades. He held on to the memories like a lifeline as he climbed out of the heated cab and stood shivering in the raw air. Rhee slid out beside him. Then he pulled his gloves off, zipped his white camouflage jacket all the way up, and struggled to pull the gloves back on over fingers that were already growing numb. It didn’t do much good. The weather was getting worse and the wind cut deep through every layer of clothing he had on.
Kevin had seen the frostbite cases piling up at the field hospital they’d been sent to after the search-and-rescue chopper picked them up behind enemy lines. The medics had said that most weren’t serious, but he’d seen some men who were going to lose fingers and toes — no matter what the doctors did for them.
He and Rhee had been lucky. Each had escaped with a minor case of exposure, a few cuts, and some bruises. Nothing that two days of enforced bed rest and hot food hadn’t been able to put right. But now they were going back into the thick of it. He shivered again, though not from the cold this time. The thought of seeing more slaughter sent a chill up his spine. He’d seen enough in his first battle to last a lifetime.
“We’d better report in.” Rhee’s breath steamed.
“Yeah.” Depression settled in over Kevin, a mantle of gray despair and self-doubt so tangible that he felt his shoulders slump beneath its weight. He’d failed up on Malibu West. What use could they possibly have for him now?
He heard the Korean lieutenant ask a passing GI the way to the battalion CO’s quarters. Kevin felt lower than he’d ever felt before in his life, and he was content to let Rhee lead him deeper into the cluster of camouflage-netted tents.
Major Donaldson was waiting for them in a small, tarp-floored tent crowded with maps, radio gear, and a charcoal-burning camp stove. The short, square-jawed major had been running the battalion since the first day of the war. The old CO, Colonel Harriman, was on his way home minus a leg, thanks to a North Korean 152mm shell.
Donaldson greeted them with a quick, tired smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes and waved them over to chairs clustered around the stove. He didn’t waste time on small talk but started right in asking questions about what had happened at Malibu West. Kevin had already written up an after-action report back at the field hospital, but the major wanted to hear it firsthand.
When Kevin told him about the jamming that had made it impossible to call in artillery support, Donaldson grimaced. “Goddamn if I don’t know just what you mean, Lieutenant. The NKs were able to do the same thing all up and down the Z.” The major rocked back slightly on his camp stool. “Well, I can tell you that we’ve been paying some pretty serious attention to those jamming units since then.”
He smiled thinly. “A little radio triangulation and a few quick salvos of eight-inch arty fire usually works wonders for the commo situation.” He waved Kevin on with his report.
Kevin told him everything — all the way up to their pickup by the SAR helicopter. He could hear the strain in his own voice but felt oddly removed from it all. Almost as though it had happened to someone else in some other place at some other time.
When he finished, Donaldson sat silently for several seconds, his eyes fixed on Kevin’s face as though searching intently for something hidden there. Then he leaned forward and laid a gentle hand on Kevin’s knee. “Now look, Kev. What happened to your platoon happened in other places, too. And I want you to know that I believe you did everything you could under the circumstances. You personally led your troops up until the last possible moment in the middle of the worst kind of nightmare any commander could face. No one could ask for more than that. If you hadn’t played dead when you did, the results would still have been the same — except that I’d be short another platoon leader. As it is, you’re here and alive and I can use you.”
“But — ”
Donaldson interrupted him. “No buts about it, Kev. It wasn’t your fault. You understand me?”
Kevin nodded as if he did.
“Good. Okay, then. Let’s get down to brass tacks.” The major pulled his hand back and stood up. He stepped across the tent to a map covered with cryptic grease-pencil markings. The two lieutenants followed him.
In short, clipped sentences Donaldson brought them up to date on the overall situation facing the Combined Forces. Put simply, it was grim. North Korea’s armored spearheads were driving hard, gaining ground and inflicting serious casualties on the units trying vainly to stop them. More troops were desperately needed.
South Korea’s vast reserves were mobilizing, but the process of getting them to the fighting front had been badly disrupted by NK commando attacks and by the need to secure logistics centers, headquarters sites, and communications facilities against new raids. American reinforcements were on the way, but they would be slow in arriving. Even with every available cargo and troop carrier plane pressed into service, it could take up to ten days to ship a full division by air. The units coming by sea would take even longer to get there. It took time to bring mothballed cargo ships back into service, time to load them, and even steaming at full speed the ships would take at least ten days to cross the Pacific. All of which meant that the Combined Forces’ retreat wasn’t likely to stop anytime soon, Donaldson told them.
When he came to the high command’s decision to pull back south of Seoul, Rhee’s face tightened and the South Korean stood rigid as a statue. Kevin suddenly remembered that Rhee’s family lived in one of the capital’s northern suburbs.
Donaldson traced the route of the North Korean column pushing west of the city. It was headed straight for them. Notations on the map showed its steady progress. “Now that is what we’re up against. We’ve got to slow this column down. The roads through Seoul are completely choked with refugees and other units, and there’s still a lot of our guys on this side of the Han. And that bridge” — Donaldson jerked a thumb over his shoulder back toward the span they’d crossed earlier — “that bridge is the only one left standing west of the city. It’s the only way a lot of our people are going to make it out.”
The major tapped the map again. “Okay, that’s one reason we have to buy time. The other’s just as important.” He ran a finger along the riverline. “This is our next main line of resistance. But it’s just a hollow shell right now. The engineers are working fast and we’re getting more troops there as quickly as possible, but it ain’t gonna be quick enough unless we can put a crimp in dear old Uncle Kim’s advance up here.” He pointed to the red arrowhead in Wondang — just six kilometers up the main highway.
Both Kevin and Rhee nodded their understanding. Things were pretty bad all over.
“Now that’s where you come in. I need two officers to command a provisional company I’ve formed from the battalion’s service units.”
Kevin’s heart sank as Donaldson ran through the forces he was expected to lead into battle. Seventy-four supply clerks, maintenance techs, and MPs serving as riflemen, organized in two below-strength platoons, and a scratch weapons platoon made up of six M60 machine gun teams and four Dragon antitank missile teams. Even with the platoon of South Korean M-48 tanks Donaldson promised to attach, the provisional company sounded like a half-baked abortion that wouldn’t last ten minutes up against the North Koreans. A picture flashed in front of his eyes, the dead heaped at the bottom of Malibu’s main trench. It was going to happen again.
He glanced quickly at Rhee. The South Korean had an eyebrow arched slightly but showed no other sign of perturbation. How could he stay so cool?
“We’ll give you as much support as we can, Kev. You won’t be out on your own, that I promise you.”
Kevin shifted his gaze back to find Donaldson looking closely at him. He nodded and tried to smile. He’d heard that promise before and knew just how far it went. Not far at all.
Donaldson looked at him, his face serious. “I wouldn’t ask you to go back on the line so soon, Kev, but I haven’t got anyone else. Matuchek’s got his hands full over at what’s left of Alpha, and I’m already short a company commander. I’m short lieutenants, too. O’Farrell’s dead, three others are wounded, and another’s MIA.”
The major stepped back from the map. “I’m afraid you’re it, mister. Lieutenant Rhee will continue as your liaison officer and second in command. Sergeants Bryce, Geary, and Caldwell will be your platoon leaders. Any other questions?”
Kevin couldn’t think of anything more to say and Rhee stayed silent.
“Great. All right, the trucks will be here inside an hour to move you up to the front, so you’ve got that long to get some chow, meet your troops, and get acquainted.” Donaldson held out a hand. “Good luck to both of you, and I’ll see you on the other side of the Han.”
First Rhee and then Kevin shook his hand, saluted, and left the tent.
THE KIMPO AIRPORT CUTOFF, SOUTH OF WONDANG, SOUTH KOREA
Kevin lay on his stomach in the snow, flattened behind a log just inside a copse of evergreens covering a low hill above the highway. Montoya, his new radioman, huddled beside him, teeth chattering in the cold. Troops of his 1st Platoon were spread out on either side in a line through the trees, crouching low in firing positions hastily scraped out of the frozen ground. They’d only had time to lay a few logs over their holes for overhead protection against artillery fire. To his left a two-man Dragon team sheltered behind a clump of brush, just at the limit of his vision. To the right the squat shape of an M-48 tank lay partially concealed by white camouflage netting. Rhee squatted behind the tank, ready to relay his orders to the South Korean crew inside.
Kevin lifted his binoculars and scanned the ground to his front. The hill fell away gently, sloping down to the multilane road leading to the Haengju Bridge. Beyond the highway the landscape opened up into a checkerboard pattern of diked rice paddies broken only by a raised railroad embankment running parallel with the highway. Helmeted heads bobbed above the nearest rice paddy dike where his 2nd Platoon was supposed to be lying hidden and then disappeared as quickly as they’d surfaced.
Without taking his eyes away from the binoculars, Kevin snapped his fingers and held out a hand for the radiophone. Montoya pushed it over to him.
“Echo Five Two, this is Echo Five Six. Keep your people down. We’re gonna have company in a bit, and I don’t want to give ’em anything for free. Over.”
Sergeant Geary, the 2nd Platoon’s CO, answered himself. “Roger that, Six. Out.”
Kevin handed the phone back to Montoya. Shit, these people were green. They were going to get sliced apart by the North Koreans. He didn’t even know their names. He held the thought for a second and then wondered what they thought of him. Nothing good, that was for sure.
The story of the massacre on Malibu West had run through the battalion like wildfire, and he’d seen the looks thrown his way by the men of his own company on the ride north. He knew what they saw. A washed-out wreck. Before leaving Battalion HQ, he’d seen himself in a mirror and been shocked. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, his face was deathly pale, and he’d developed a nervous tic on his left cheek. The nerve pulsed irregularly, tightening the skin for an instant and then releasing it. How could anyone draw confidence from someone who looked like that?
He shook his head. No way. No one could or would. Move on, Kevin, the thought came. Move on. There’s nothing you can do about it. They’ll either follow you or they won’t. But you’ve got to act as though they will.
He lifted the binoculars again, surveying the rest of the battle positions he’d picked for his troops. The 1st Platoon held this low, forested hill; 2nd Platoon’s squads were deployed along the other side of the road. He’d divided the machine guns and Dragon missile teams of his understrength Weapons Platoon among the two rifle platoons. The three attached M-48s were spread out in a rough arc along the fringe of the woo
ds — a deployment that gave them good fields of fire out into the rice paddies beyond. The trucks that had carried his troops up from the battalion HQ waited behind the hill, hidden on a narrow side road. Kevin had pressed their drivers into service as extra riflemen. He wasn’t sure how useful they’d be in a fight, but at least it would keep them from abandoning the company when the first shells started dropping.
Other hastily formed companies were dug in to the east and west of his force — in position to cover his flanks if the North Korean advance guard spilled off the highway.
He shifted his gaze north up the highway, seeing the smoke drifting lazily away from Wondang. A mixed bag of American and South Korean armored cavalry units were up there, dueling with advancing North Korean tanks and infantry. They’d bought enough time for his men to arrive and filter into hastily prepared positions, but the price had been high. Now they were getting ready to break off the battle, dash back south, pass through his positions, and cross the bridge.
Kevin frowned and felt the nerve in his cheek jump. Once that happened the North Koreans would be on the move — coming on fast to cut off any stragglers left on this side of the Han.
Montoya nudged him. “It’s the major, Lieutenant.”
Kevin took the handset. “India One Two, this is Echo Five Six, over.”
Major Donaldson’s voice crackled through the receiver. “Covering force is pulling out now. Stand by for handoff. Over.”
“Roger, Two. Out.” Kevin felt his hands trembling. The enemy was on the way. He lifted the handset again. “This is Echo Five Six. Handoff imminent. Keep an eye peeled for friendlies and hostiles and hold your fire until I give the word. Acknowledge.”
