by Larry Bond
He sprinted back down the length of the convoy, with PFC Bell right beside him. Anne scrambled out after them, feeling her heart pounding fast.
“Shit!”
“Get outta my goddamned way!”
The soldiers poured out of the truck, swearing at each other in their haste. One groaned and collapsed, clutching a sprained ankle. Sergeant Evans and another man grabbed the moaning private and dragged him away as the explosions moved closer.
Anne followed them as they half-ran, half-skipped over to a low earth bank that marked the edge of a frozen rice paddy.
She’d barely clambered over onto the other side when there was a roaring, whooshing sound. She didn’t need to be a veteran to know what was coming, and she fell flat to the ground.
WHAAAMMM! The shell exploded just as her body hit the cold earth, and she felt the ground buck beneath her. Heat and air rushed over her head, deflected by the earth piled to one side. The combination of the shock wave in both the air and the ground pushed and pulled at her body, and for a split second, it bounced her into the air. The force of the explosion surprised her. It reminded her of being caught by a strong wave at the beach and driven facedown into the sand.
She opened her eyes and mouth and immediately discovered another similarity: she was coated with dirt and dust. Most of the troops were already kneeling, looking at the other side of the bank. She got to her knees and followed their gaze. The shell had come down just fifty meters off the road and torn a still-smoking crater two meters across out of a rice paddy. The snow had been blasted off an area more than twice as large.
Sergeant Evans saw the look on her face and grinned. “The good news about being so far behind the lines is that they don’t shell you very often. The bad news is that when they do, only the big stuff can reach far enough.”
WHOOOOSSH.
“Down!”
WHAAAMMM! WHAMMM! WHAAMMM! More explosions rocked the ground all around the road. Anne lay flat, praying. She’d never been particularly religious, but it seemed like a logical thing to do at the moment.
The noise faded, leaving behind an eerie mixture of crackling flames, moans, and the whistling wind.
Evans raised his head and cocked an ear, waiting. When nothing more hit the ground for a couple of minutes, he stood up and shouted, “Okay, people. All clear. On your feet. Check yourselves and your buddies. Let’s go!”
Anne rose to her feet and stared at the scenes around her. The six trucks in their convoy looked unscathed, but the artillery had found the range farther back along the road. She saw a blazing pile of scrap metal canted over in a field and took several seconds to realize that the wreckage was a Hyundai that had been blown off the road by a North Korean shell. Several bodies lay motionless around one crater, the white snow rapidly turning blood red. She could hear children sobbing from somewhere ahead.
Anne swallowed hard and started toward the cries, but Hutchins stopped her with an outstretched hand. “There’s nothing you could do up there, Miss Larson. Look after your own people.”
She started to protest and then stopped. Hutchins was right.
The captain kept talking. “Go on, count noses. Make sure you see every person in your group. If people ran off by themselves and got hurt, nobody may have seen it.” He turned away to do the same thing for his own men.
As her staff filtered back from their hiding places, Anne walked from truck to truck, checking off each person’s name on the transportation order as she saw them.
They’d been lucky. Only one of her people had been hurt. Ed Cumber had taken a shell fragment in his chest. He lay along the side of the road, clutching his chest and swearing. Gloria crouched beside him, looking worried. Anne knelt beside her and with shaking fingers peeled away Cumber’s jacket to look at the damage. Fortunately the splinter had been slowed down so much by his winter coat and other clothing that it was only a superficial wound. Gloria didn’t seem very relieved, and it suddenly struck Anne that there were other reasons for her concern.
She pushed the thought out of her mind. Interoffice romances didn’t seem very important with people lying dead and dying all around them. Together they helped load the wounded man into one of the trucks where Hutchins’s medic could inspect the injury more thoroughly. He slapped a bandage on over the wound and shook his head. “Hell, I’ve gotten worse cuts shaving.”
Anne moved away from the truck slowly. Up till now she’d never really thought about how her responsibilities had changed with the transition from peace to war. Normally she supervised her staff’s office work and left it at that. But now, suddenly, she found herself responsible for their safety, for making sure they were fed and had places to sleep. She shook her head. This wasn’t the kind of job that she’d trained for. Anne decided she’d start watching Hutchins and Evans more closely. She had a lot to learn.
Except for the PFC with the sprained ankle, Hutchins’s men hadn’t suffered any injuries, but one of the convoy’s six trucks had been laced with fragments. Two tires were flat, and it wouldn’t start. She asked the captain if it would be a problem.
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. We can get it fixed. The concussion probably knocked loose some of the…”
A Korean officer, a lieutenant, appeared out of the crowd and saluted Hutchins. The American straightened up and returned his parade-ground salute. “Yes, Lieutenant?”
The Korean’s English was word-perfect. “Sir, can your people board immediately? My men will have cleared a path for your vehicles in a few minutes.” Even as he spoke, a group of soldiers in battle dress appeared out of the crowd. They started shoving people off the road in both directions. Under their direction cars were driven off the road and carts were dragged off into the open fields. They were efficient, and any Korean civilians who argued suddenly found themselves looking into the muzzle of a bayonet-tipped rifle. Watching, Anne felt guilty that so many people were being threatened to clear the way for her group.
Hutchins started giving orders. “Miss Larson, get your people loaded. Sergeant, we’ll have to tow that damned truck. Get the one ahead rigged up.” Everyone scurried to obey, eager to get moving and out of the cold. And away from the carnage behind them.
Anne watched from the cab as they moved slowly through the mass of silent, weeping people. Bell cursed quietly as he wove his way around occasional obstacles and a shell crater that forced him off into the snow. His cheerful disposition had vanished somewhere back up the road.
At last the roadblock appeared, a massive-looking fortification of cement blocks and sandbags. Two tripod-mounted machine guns faced north in front of a dugout large enough to hold a dozen or more men. The headquarters building sat off to one side, with a South Korean flag flying defiantly overhead.
As they stopped at the roadblock, another South Korean officer approached, and when he saw Hutchins, they exchanged simultaneous salutes, followed by a handshake. “I am Captain Sik. May I see your travel orders, please?”
The Korean examined all the papers with the care of someone buying a used car. Every person in the convoy had to produce identification, and Sik went so far as to check the copies to ensure that they were all identical. It took almost twenty minutes to plow through the paperwork.
“Captain,” Hutchins asked, “how’s the road up ahead?”
The South Korean looked up from the last few sets of ID he’d been inspecting. “Relatively clear, but I would advise you to stay close together and to avoid stopping. Many people are trying to get rides south in military vehicles. They have tried to block some trucks with trees or other obstacles.” He shrugged. “Unfortunately, I don’t have enough troops to man the roadblocks and patrol the roads.”
He handed the sheaf of papers back and added one more piece of his own to the stack. “Your papers are in order, and I have heard about the order evacuating U.S. civilians from Seoul, so I have not been very strict with you. But please validate your pass at each checkpoint. A new order has come through ordering the ar
rest of anyone moving south without authorization.”
As they climbed in and drove off, Anne muttered to Hutchins, “So he wasn’t strict with us. Hah!”
“Nope. He wasn’t,” Hutchins replied with a deadpan expression, arms folded across his chest. “He didn’t have his men search the trucks. He didn’t search us. And he didn’t check our vehicle markings against the unit issuing our orders. He might have phoned back to verify them, too.”
He jerked his head back in the direction they had come from. “Did you see the third-degree every Korean civilian was getting? Even a signed pass and valid ID card might not get you past those guys. You might be carrying contraband, or have some other suspicious reason for wanting to go south.”
She looked at him unbelievingly, so he continued, “Look, this country is losing the war right now. I’ve heard stories of Korean and American units folding and running, or being overwhelmed by sheer numbers. So you can bet the government isn’t going to allow everybody to suddenly decide to visit their uncle Kyung in Pusan. The roads have to be kept clear for military traffic.” Hutchins realized he’d been preaching and stopped in embarrassment.
They drove on in silence, past a ragged line of civilians walking south in the cold — mothers carrying their babies, older children carrying household goods and family treasures heaped on their backs, and old men and women staggering along beside them. Anne kept her eyes on the road ahead. She knew they couldn’t possibly carry any of the refugees lining either side of the road, but that didn’t soothe her conscience very much.
Now that they were past the control point, the traffic wasn’t too bad, and they made good time to the junction with Highway 47. As they turned south off the highway onto a narrow gravel road, Anne looked at the map with concern. The sun was already starting to sink lower in the west, gleaming over a landscape that again looked peaceful.
“Shouldn’t we have stayed on the road to Suwon?”
Hutchins tapped the map. “Suwon’s a major airbase, and I don’t want to be anywhere nearby if the NKs decide to raid it. A convoy like this would be a fat target for some MiG. We have absolutely no protection against an air attack.”
She sighed. Hutchins was right again. And infuriatingly so. Anne settled back into a fog of her own thoughts as they drove through a host of tiny, look-alike villages — through Yamok, Chaan, and Paran. The farther from the war they got, the more peaceful the landscape looked. She looked for details that would tell her why it looked less troubled, but she finally decided it was her own lessened tension.
She finally relaxed enough to think consciously about Tony. It occurred to her that he must be wondering why she hadn’t already called from Japan. Well, with any luck she’d get a chance to see him in person before they were flown out of Kunsan. Anne frowned. She’d have to find a way to get word to him somehow. Maybe she could call when they stopped for gas. …
WEST OF TAECH’ANG, SOUTH KOREA
The boat slid up onto the beach quietly, gently scraping far enough inland so that a chance wave couldn’t carry it back out into the Yellow Sea. Eight men in wet suits rolled off onto the wet, white sand. They crouched in a rough semicircle, hastily stripping plastic coverings off their weapons while scanning the area for signs of movement.
Nothing. Only the soft crash of waves breaking offshore. The moon hadn’t risen yet and low clouds covered most of the stars. The North Korean commando team leader waved his men into action. One scuttled inland a few yards and dropped back to a crouch with his automatic rifle at the ready.
The others pulled waterproofed packs out of the boat and then peeled off their wet suits.
They wore South Korean army uniforms. The team leader, now wearing captain’s bars, studied the luminescent numbers on his wristwatch. Two minutes. It was time to go. He signaled the sentry back into the boat.
As the man struggled into his scuba gear and settled in at the helm, the others pushed the lightweight boat off the beach and around so that its bow pointed seaward. From the stern a specially quieted engine sputtered, then caught, and the boat slid out to sea through the surf. It submerged just offshore, leaving only a faint, rippling wake behind.
The captain smiled to himself. So far, everything had gone according to plan. Liberator had dropped them off at exactly the right position to make their run in to the beach, and Pyongyang’s information on the beach patrol schedules had been perfect. He dropped to one knee, unfolded a small map, and studied it with a small, shielded penlight.
Yes, they’d landed in the right spot. The fascists mined all but a few beach approaches that were carefully guarded at night, but there were always paths left through the minefields for use by sentries and patrols. One lay just a few dozen meters inland to the south.
He snapped off the penlight, folded his map, and rose to his feet. His men stood with him, slung their M16s, and picked up their waterproofed packs. There wasn’t any further point in acting furtively. They were now just another South Korean army unit patrolling the beach.
With the captain leading, they moved off into the darkness in single file. He kept his eyes on the ground in front as they walked. Sand. Sand mingled with clumps of grass. A small rise off to the right lined with barbed wire. There. Two short, red-flagged stakes marked the beginning of the path through the minefield — their path into the so-called Republic of Korea.
The eight men headed east, off the beach and onto the flat inland plain. They walked more quickly now, making sure only that they stayed between the pairs of stakes planted every few yards. The captain paused to check his watch again. Five minutes since they’d landed. They were still on schedule.
“Halt!” A high-pitched, nervous voice came out of the darkness ahead of them. The captain and his men froze. There wasn’t supposed to be a guard post on this path. Other raids and infiltrations were supposed to have distracted the imperialists’ attention away from this landing site.
‘Advance and be recognized.” This time the voice was accompanied by the sharp click of an M16’s safety being snapped off.
The captain kept his hands well away from the pistol holstered on his waist and stepped forward slowly. “Beach patrol. Captain Yi.”
A flashlight came on and centered on his face — blindingly bright. He blinked. “Get that light out of my face, you fools. And stop acting so surprised to see us.”
The flashlight went out. That was better. The captain could just make out a sandbagged foxhole a couple of meters ahead. He edged closer. There were two South Korean army privates in the foxhole, but only one had his rifle up and trained in the right direction. The other was nervously shifting a flashlight back and forth from one hand to the other. The captain smiled. They must be reservists hastily recalled to arms without adequate training.
“Sorry, sir. But we weren’t expecting a patrol for another hour.” Was the rifle barrel aimed at them starting to drop?
The captain took another step forward. “They’ve changed things around. Weren’t you notified?”
One hand reached slowly into his tunic and pulled out a short, broad-bladed commando knife.
The young South Korean soldier with the flashlight didn’t see it. The flashlight beam had ruined his night vision. “No, sir. I’m sorry about the light. I’m afraid you startled us.” The captain saw him turn and bend down to pick up an object. A field telephone? He tensed.
“I’ll just report you in to HQ, sir. That way the other outposts won’t be so jumpy.” The private lifted the receiver.
As he did, the captain lunged forward and down into the foxhole, shoving his knife into the man’s throat up to the hilt. Blood spurted out over his hand and uniform sleeve and the private gagged, frantically pawing at him before falling back limply against the sandbagged walls. The captain jerked his knife back out and wheeled to face the other sentry. But the man was already dying, his larynx crushed by a steel-tipped kick. The commando who’d delivered the kick grinned, his teeth gleaming in the darkness. The captain grinned back.
He unfolded his map again, looking for their objective. He traced a line toward it, looking for potential obstacles. One road, a low rise, the village of Taech’ang proper. Nothing more than that. The Chosan River bridge lay just an eight-kilometer jaunt away. He smiled. He and his men would be in position in a matter of hours.
The captain put his map away and took his rifle back from another commando. He looked down at the dead South Korean sentries. The unexpected encounter had been an inconvenience, but it wasn’t necessarily a fatal one. They’d police the area to remove all signs of a struggle and carry the bodies away with them. With any luck the South Koreans would assume their men had simply deserted.
They wouldn’t think that for long, but the captain and his men didn’t need long. Besides, he doubted that the fascists would be able to find them anyway. After all, they’d be hiding in plain sight. He held the thought and started issuing the necessary orders. His commando force had a bridge to visit before the night was through.
CHAPTER 33
Search
DECEMBER 31 — SOUTH OF PARAN
The sound of the truck was comforting. They were moving south, and Anne could feel the distance between the war and her increasing, stretching thinner and lighter. She could also feel the pull of Kunsan. For everyone else it was just an intermediate stop on their way to Japan, but they didn’t have friends there.
Anne tried to eat her spaghetti and meatballs as they drove. Hutchins had handed her an “MRE” and told her it was dinner.
MRE stood for “meals, ready to eat” and was the U.S. Army’s replacement for the legendary “C” ration. It was a green plastic bag the size of a large book. Her first problem was tearing open the thick plastic. In the end she had to borrow Private Bell’s razor-sharp bayonet.
Inside were other pouches. One held the dinner, labeled “Spaghetti and Meatballs.” Another held dried fruit. There were other packages with cheese and crackers, utensils, and so on.
