Retreat, Hell! Part 6

And then, "Yes, sir, I'll do that, sir."

Then he handed the handset back to McCoy.

"The colonel wants to speak to you, Major," he said.

"Yes, sir?" McCoy said.

"Sorry about that, McCoy. He doesn't know what's going on, and for obvious reasons-G.o.d save us all from well-meaning idiots-I didn't want to tell him."

"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 1950.

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 6 6 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?" "Hi, there! Mind stopping there a moment, and telling me who you are?" or maybe, or maybe, "Pardon me, sir, are you a friendly or a f.u.c.king gook Communist?" "Pardon me, sir, are you a friendly or a f.u.c.king 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, pus.h.i.+ng 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 f.u.c.king light out of my eyes, or I'll stick it up his a.s.s!"

"Who is that?" Doheny called back.

"Gunner Zimmerman! Are you blind as well as deaf?"

I knew I knew that f.u.c.king voice!

Staff Sergeant Doheny and Master Gunner Zimmerman had been professionally a.s.sociated 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 f.u.c.king flashlights off," Sergeant Doheny ordered. They were out immediately.

"Jesus, Mr. Zimmerman, what the f.u.c.k 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 f.u.c.k 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 d.a.m.ned," 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 f.u.c.king 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? Sandbags?"

"Empty ones."

"I got stacks of them, sir."

"I think two will be enough, thank you."

[THREE].

THE HOUSE SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA 2045 28 SEPTEMBER 1950.

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 the 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 f.u.c.king 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 construction, three stories tall. It had been built in 1925 for Hamburg s.h.i.+pping, 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 bas.e.m.e.nt 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 Stars and Stripes, the Army newspaper.

Dunston was not actually a major, or even in the Army, despite his uniform and ident.i.ty 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, G.o.dd.a.m.n close, but no bra.s.s ring," McCoy said. "I wouldn't be surprised if he saw us looking for him."