"I understand, sir. No problem."
"I told him to do whatever you tell him to do, and to ask no questions."
"Thank you, sir."
"If you need anything else, give a call.”
"Thank you very much, sir," McCoy said, and handed the handset to the corporal.
"Major, would you be willing to lead my Marines—the jeep and the weapons carrier—to Division?" McCoy asked.
"Certainly," Major Masters said. "Anything I can do to be of service. . . ."
[TWO]
Seoul, South Korea
1935 28 September 195O
Staff Sergeant John J. Doheny, USMC, thought it highly unlikely that "fleeing remnants" of the North Korean Army would drive boldly up Korean National Route 1 with their headlights blazing, but it never hurt to be careful.
"Heads up!" Doheny ordered when the headlights first illuminated, then stopped at the wrecked and burned General motors 6x6 truck he had ordered dragged into the middle of the road as sort of a prebarrier to his roadblock fifty yards up the road.
"Halt, who goes there?" a voice in the darkness called to the lights.
That was Corporal Daniel Meredith, USMCR, whom Doheny had stationed with three other Marines, one of them armed with a BAR, in the ditches on either side of the burned truck barrier.
On one hand, Doheny thought, that sounded a little silly, as if they were at Parris Island or someplace, waiting for a drill instructor to inspect the guard post and demand a recitation of the Ten General Orders, instead of here, in the middle of a war.
On the other hand, he couldn't think of any other challenge that could be made that did the job as well. What else could Meredith shout? "Hi, there! Mind stopping there a moment, and telling me who you are?" or maybe, "Pardon me, sir, are you a friendly or a fucking gook Communist?"
"Marines!" a deep voice called back.
The beam of one flashlight and then another appeared, one from each side of the road. If his orders had been followed—and Sergeant Doheny had no reason to think they hadn't—PFC Miller, the big hillbilly with the BAR, now had it trained on the vehicle on the road from his position nowhere near the flashlights, waiting for orders to fire from Meredith.
Sergeant Doheny could now see enough to know there was something really strange down there. There were three men in a strange-looking jeep. The two in the front had their hands over their heads. The one in the back just sat there.
There was an American flag draped over the hood of the vehicle.
As Doheny got to his feet, he saw Meredith come onto the road from behind the vehicle, holding his carbine at the ready.
A moment later, Corporal Meredith bellowed, "Sergeant Doheny, I think you better come down here!"
Doheny ran quickly down the ditch, pushing the safety off on his M-1 Garand as he did. When he was beside the funny-looking vehicle, he came out of the ditch, holding the Garand like a hunter expecting to flush a bird.
A not-at-all-friendly voice called to him from the vehicle.
"Doheny, tell that moron to get that fucking light out of my eyes, or I'll stick it up his ass!"
"Who is that?" Doheny called back.
"Gunner Zimmerman! Are you blind as well as deaf?"
I knew I knew that fucking voice!
Staff Sergeant Doheny and Master Gunner Zimmerman had been professionally associated at one time or another at the USMC Recruit Training Facility, Parris Island; Camp Lejeune; and Camp Pendleton.
Doheny was more than a little in awe of Master Gunner Zimmerman. He was a Marine's Marine: tough, competent, and fair. And—although Zimmerman had never said anything about it himself—Doheny knew that during War Two Zimmerman had been a Marine Raider.
"Turn those fucking flashlights off," Sergeant Doheny ordered. They were out immediately.
"Jesus, Mr. Zimmerman, what the fuck are you doing out here?" Doheny inquired.
"Major McCoy," Gunner Zimmerman said, "this is Staff Sergeant Doheny. He's not too bad a Marine—when he's sober."
Sergeant Doheny saluted.
"Sorry, sir," he said. "I didn't see any insignia. . . ."
"How are you tonight, Sergeant?" McCoy replied, returning the salute.
"Can't complain, sir. Sir, with respect, what the fuck is this vehicle?"
"We took it away from the prisoner in the backseat, Sergeant," McCoy said. "As best as I can tell, it's a Chinese copy of a Russian vehicle the Russians copied after a German jeep."
"I'll be damned," Doheny said, and then stepped close to the vehicle and looked in the backseat. There was enough reflected light from the headlights for him to be able to see a hatless North Korean officer tightly trussed up and then tied to the backseat.
"What happened to the truck?" Zimmerman asked.
"No fucking idea. I had it drug into the road so anyone coming down the road would have to stop.'
"Good thinking, Sergeant," McCoy said. "How do we get around it?"
"Sir, if you're careful, you can get around it in a jeep," Doheny said. "I done that. I don't know about in this."
"Well, we'll try. What's between here and Seoul, Sergeant?"
"There's a checkpoint at the pontoon bridge over the Han River, sir. And that's about it. So far as action is concerned, we've got it pretty well cleaned out, but there's action north and east."
He pointed. There were flashes of dull light, and booming noises. It could have been a distant thunderstorm. It was, in fact, artillery.
"You got a landline to the checkpoint?" Zimmerman said. "I would really hate to get this close only to get blown away because somebody thought if it's riding around in a gook vehicle, it's probably a gook."
Sergeant Doheny sensed that the explanation was a shot at the major.
"No problem, sir," he said. "Anything else I can do for you?"
The major turned around and said something to the North Korean officer, who, after a moment, responded. Then the major turned to Sergeant Doheny.
"The colonel needs to relieve himself, and so do I. Can your people untie him, and watch him?"
"Yes, sir. We're about fifty yards the other side of the truck."
"Okay. We'll do that next. And then . . . have you got any sandbags?"
"Yes, sir."
"I'll need a couple of them, please."
"Yes, sir. Sandbags?"
"Empty ones."
"1 got stacks of them, sir."
"I think two will be enough, thank you."
[THREE]
The House
Seoul, South Korea
2O45 28 September 195O
The sound of the cannon fire and the muzzle flashes lighting the sky had grown progressively louder and brighter as they approached the center of Seoul. There was obviously fighting, heavy fighting, on the outskirts of the city.
They were stopped three times inside the city, twice by Army military policemen and once by a Marine patrol, but the American flag on the hood and Zimmerman's gruff declaration that they were "transporting a prisoner"—and, of course, the prisoner himself, with two sandbags over his head—was enough to satisfy the MPs and a Marine sergeant. They were not asked for either orders or identification.
The city was in ruins. The North Koreans had defended it block by block, and there was smell of burned wood and rotting flesh. The streets were full of debris, and their progress was slow.
But finally McCoy turned the Russian jeep off a narrow street, stopped before a wrought-iron fence in a brick wall, and blew the horn.
Immediately—startling them—floodlights mounted on the brick wall glowed red for an instant, then bathed them in a harsh white light.
Master Gunner Zimmerman bellowed the Korean equivalent of "Turn those fucking lights off!"
The lights died and the gate swung open. As McCoy drove though it, he saw that an air-cooled .30-caliber Browning machine gun was trained on them.
The building inside the wall looked European rather than Asiatic. It was of brick-and-stone constru
ction, three stories tall. It had been built in 1925 for Hamburg Shipping, G.m.b.H., which had used it to house their man in Seoul. It was purchased from them in 1946 by Korean Textile Services, Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Far East Fur & Textiles, Ltd., of Hong Kong, which, it was alleged, was owned several steps distant by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. It was known as "The House."
A Korean in U.S. Army fatigues came out of the front door as McCoy pulled the Russian jeep up in front of the veranda beside three jeeps and a three-quarter-ton ambulance. The overpainted Red Cross markings on the sides of the ambulance body were still visible.
The Korean—he was at least six feet tall and weighed about 200 pounds, enormous for a Korean—came down the stairs, slinging his Thompson submachine gun over his shoulder as he did.
He said nothing.
In Korean, McCoy ordered, "Take the colonel in the house. Put him in one of the basement rooms. Once he's there, put a guard on him, untie him, take the sandbags off his head, and give him something to eat. I want him alive and unhurt."
The enormous Korean nodded his understanding. "The others?" he asked in English.
"They'll be here early tomorrow morning, all of them," McCoy said. Then he asked, "Is he here?"
"In the library," the Korean replied, again in English.
McCoy nodded, and he and Zimmerman got out of the Russian jeep and walked into the house.
The library was the first door on the right off the foyer. McCoy pushed open the door and walked in.
The first time McCoy had been in the room, the bookshelves lining three walls had been full. Now they were bare. The Inmun Gun had stripped the house of everything reasonably portable as soon as they had taken over the building.
"It's not amazing how little is left," Dunston had philosophized, "but how much."
Dunston, a plump, comfortable-appearing thirty-year-old whose Army identification card said that William R. Dunston was a major of the Army's Transportation Corps, sat at a heavy carved wooden table. A Coleman gasoline lantern on the table glowed white, and Dunston was using it to read Stars and Stripes, the Army newspaper.
Dunston was not actually a major, or even in the Army, despite his uniform and identity card. He was in fact a civilian employed by the Central Intelligence Agency, and before having been run out of Seoul by the advancing North Korean Army had been the Seoul CIA station chief. After the landings at Inchon, Dunston had flown back into the city as soon as enough of the runway at Kimpo Airfield had been cleared to take an Army observation aircraft.
McCoy and Zimmerman pulled chairs—one heavy and of carved wood matching the table, the other a GI folding metal chair—to the table and sat down.
"What's with the Coleman lantern?" McCoy asked by way of greeting. "I heard the generator. . . . The perimeter floodlights are working."
"No lightbulbs," Dunston replied. "I'm working on it. Probably tomorrow." He paused, then went on: "I was getting a little worried about you, Ken."
"We're all right," McCoy said. "But I'm hungry and thirsty."
"Hard or soft? There is also a case of Asahi cooling in the fridge."
"I think one medicinal belt, and then beer," McCoy said. "Food?"
"There's steaks and potatoes, no vegetables."
"Hot water?" Zimmerman asked.
Dunston nodded. "And your laundry awaits," he said.
"I'm going to have a beer, a shower, a drink, and a steak, in that order," Zimmerman said.
A door opened, and a middle-aged Korean woman stood in it waiting for orders.
Dunston, in Korean, told her to bring beer and whiskey and to prepare steaks.
"I think if you had found him, you'd have said something," Dunston said.
"Close, goddamn close, but no brass ring," McCoy said. "I wouldn't be surprised if he saw us looking for him."
"But you think he's alive?"
"I'm pretty sure he was alive six, eight, maybe twelve hours before we found his arrow."
"Did you tell the general?"
McCoy nodded.
"I sent a message through the 7th Division G-2," he said, "and sometime tonight, I want to get a message out to the Badoeng Strait."
The USS Badoeng Strait (CVE 116) was the aircraft carrier—a small one, dubbed a "Jeep Carrier"—from which Major Malcolm Pickering had taken off on his last flight. His wing commander, Lieutenant Colonel William "Billy" Dunn, USMC, was doing all he could to locate and rescue Pickering; McCoy wanted him to know what had happened on this last ground search mission.
"No problem," Dunston said.
"What's going on here?" McCoy asked.
"It says in here," Dunston said, dryly, tapping Stars and Stripes, "that Seoul has been liberated. I guess nobody told the artillery."
"I wondered what all that noise is," McCoy said. "But that's not what I meant. I got a message from Hart saying to be at Kimpo at 0900. What's that all about?"
"El Supremo's flying in. He's going to turn Seoul over to Syngman Rhee. I guess the general's coming with him."
El Supremo was General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Allied Powers, and, since shortly after the Korean War began, Commander, United Nations Forces in Korea.
"They sent you a message?"
Dunston shook his head no.
"I'm a spy, Ken. I thought I told you. I've got a guy at Haneda. The Bataan’s being readied as we speak."
McCoy chuckled. Haneda was the airbase outside Tokyo where the Bataan, MacArthur's personal Douglas C-54 transport, was kept.
"I wish I had better news for the boss."
"That he's alive is good news."
"Yeah, and six hours after I tell him that, we'll find his body."
"The bastard walks through raindrops, Killer," Zimmerman said. "You know that."
"Where's General Howe? And did you tell him that MacArthur and the boss are coming?" McCoy asked.
Major General Ralph Howe, a World War I crony of then-Captain Harry S Truman, was in the Far East as the personal representative of the President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of its Armed Forces.
"I got a message from him about six o'clock, saying he's with Chesty Puller's Marine regiment," Dunston said. "And no, I didn't tell him. (a) I figured they'd get word to him, and (b) I didn't want him to ask how come I knew."
The Korean woman came into the room carrying a tray. It held quart bottles of Asahi beer, a quart bottle of Famous Grouse scotch, and ice and glasses.
"Where'd you get all the booze?" Zimmerman asked.
"I paid a courtesy call on General Almond," Dunston said. "That general knows how to go to war. With a trailerload of hootch and cocktail snacks, and clean white sheets. Almond told his aide—Haig?—to take care of me."
"Why did Almond tell El Supremo Seoul's been liberated?" McCoy asked, indicating the pounding rumble of the heavy artillery with a finger pointed at the ceiling.
He reached for the bottle of whiskey and poured two inches in one of the glasses. Zimmerman picked up one of the beer bottles. Dunston slid him a bottle opener.
"I think it was the other way around," Dunston said. "And Almond is too smart to disagree with El Supremo. MacArthur said he wanted Seoul liberated within two weeks of the landing at Inchon, and by God, it has been liberated."
"We bagged a North Korean lieutenant colonel—" McCoy began.
"And his Russian jeep," Zimmerman interjected.
"And his jeep?" Dunston asked, smiling. "What are you going to do with that?"
Zimmerman opened the bottle, and then left the room, drinking from the bottle as he walked.
"—who I turned over to Paik Su," McCoy went on, "with instructions to put him in the basement, feed him, and make him comfortable. I think he's important. Probably an intelligence officer, maybe a political commissar, but somebody important. I think he should be interrogated by somebody besides Zimmerman and me—or, for that matter, you. This guy is not impressed by a couple of clowns riding around the
boondocks in a jeep. But I think he might respond to somebody he thinks is important."
"Paik is very good at getting people to tell him things," Dunston said.
"And there is always thiopental sodium, but that also requires that the interrogator know what questions to ask. What we may get from this guy will be something—and I have a gut feeling there will be something—that he lets slip, not something Paik, or a needle in his arm, 'persuades' him to tell us."
"I know just the guy, an ROK bird colonel," Dunston said. "I'll handle it. Go get a shower and something to eat, Ken. You look beat."
"After I get a message off to the Badoeng Strait."
"I can do that, too, if you'd like," Dunston said.
"Thanks, Bill, but I'd rather do it myself," McCoy said.
He stood up and held the whiskey glass out. "And before I have another of these and go to sleep. I'm beat."
"You've been up since four, and I don't think you got much sleep last night,"
Dunston said. "Ken, if all you've got to tell Colonel Dunn is where Pickering was—or wasn't—I can use that overlay and send the message."
"I'd rather do it myself," McCoy said. "But for the second time, thanks, Bill."
He walked out of the library and climbed the stairs to the radio room on the third floor. Coleman lanterns were on each landing. The radio operator on duty was a not-unattractive Korean woman in her thirties. She sat at a table on which was an aluminum teapot on an electric stove, an ashtray, a typewriter, and a fully automatic M-2 .30-caliber carbine. The radio room had a lightbulb dangling naked from the ceiling.
McCoy nodded his head and said, "Di-San."
Possibly to restrain the romantic tendencies of McCoy's Marines, Dunston had told them that Di and her husband had been prewar employees, and that after torturing the husband for several hours, the North Koreans had finally killed him, then, after subjecting the woman to multiple rape, had for some reason let her go.
Her head barely moved in a nod acknowledging McCoy.
"I'll have a short message for the Badoeng Strait," McCoy said.
Her head bobbed almost imperceptibly again, and she turned to one of the radio sets and began to make the necessary adjustments.
McCoy took a map of Korea and a translucent overlay from a table drawer, put the overlay on the map, and made a pencil note of the coordinates on the overlay. Lieutenant Colonel Billy Dunn, on the aircraft carrier, had an identical overlay. Without the overlay, the coordinate keys would be useless.
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