Cole returned to the main line, having outfoxed the pursuing Chinese and delivering the downed pilot and three civilians to safety — not to mention himself and the kid. Considering what they had been up against, it was no small feat. But if Cole had expected praise, he was sadly mistaken.
“Don’t ever pull a stunt like that again, Cole, you got that?” demanded Lieutenant Ballard, hands on hips, as he glared down at the sniper using all the advantage of his six-foot-three height.
“Yes, sir.”
Ballard always seemed to have it in for him. Even after all that they had been through, the lieutenant did not seem to trust him entirely or much like him. It probably had something to do with the fact that Ballard was a college-educated officer and Cole was a nobody hillbilly — but deep-down, Ballard likely knew which of them was the more capable man.
For his own part, Cole didn’t give a damn what Ballard thought. He considered the lieutenant to be a decent officer, just as Ballard would have reluctantly admitted that Cole was a capable soldier. As for being a hillbilly, no arguments there — that had been Cole’s nickname for years now.
The lieutenant could dress him down all that he wanted, but to Cole, the words were only like so much water off a duck’s back.
However, the pilot was having none of it. After all, he had just been rescued by Cole and seen him in action. He didn’t give a damn if the man talked like a peckerwood and had a Confederate flag painted on his helmet. As far as he was concerned, Cole was the real deal.
“Now hold on a minute,” Lieutenant Commander Miller said, stepping forward to address Ballard. “I owe this man my life. Without him, I’d be a Chinese prisoner and halfway to Beijing by now.”
“You’re the pilot who got shot down,” Ballard remarked.
“Lieutenant Commander Jake Miller,” he said. “And yes, I did get shot down — along with my wingman. But not before we took out a few of those MiGs. We were fighting Soviets up there, not Chinese or sorry-assed North Korean pilots. Hell, I don’t think those people fly anything more than kites.”
“Soviets?” Ballard seemed surprised.
“Sure, they’re mixed up in this war, although they’re trying not to get their hands dirty. I think they would have left us alone, but we weren’t going to stand for that.”
Ballard didn’t seem to know what to say. Instead, he turned his attention to the three civilians. The older man and the boy kept their eyes on the ground. However, Jang-mi glared defiantly at the officer.
“The last thing we need is more gooks around here. Who are these people, anyhow?” Ballard asked, clearly bewildered. He was even more surprised when it was the Korean woman who answered him.
“We helped save your pilot,” she said. “I am not a gook. I am Korean. You can call me Jang-mi.”
“You speak English?”
“When I must,” she said. “Many people in our village died when the Chinese soldiers came looking for your pilot.”
“Your village?”
“Many miles from here, between the Imjin-gang and the Lǒngmo Sanseong. You would call it Fortress Lǒgnmo.”
“Fortress?” To his surprise, every response from the woman seemed only to prompt more questions and leave him more confused. He was not aware of any fortifications beyond Outpost Kelly. From the corner of his eyes, Ballard noticed a grin play over Cole’s thin lips.
“Yes, it is where my ancestors stood against the Japanese and the Chinese. You see, my people are used to fighting invaders.”
“It was Jang-mi and these two who found me after my parachute came down,” Miller explained. “There were some others, but they didn’t make it.”
“We ran into some Chinese,” Cole explained. “Just a patrol, but they were determined cusses, I’ll give ‘em that. The thing is, sir, there’s a whole lot more Chinese out there. A lot more than we thought. Hell, I’d say there’s a whole army out there in the hills.”
“That’s nonsense,” Ballard said. “We’ve seen some enemy activity, but there is no evidence of a large army.”
“I have seen them,” Jang-mi spoke up. “Many Chinese soldiers.”
“She’s right,” Miller said. “When I was coming down in my chute, the hills looked like they were crawling with Chinese.”
Ballard looked at Cole. He didn’t know these other two, even if one was a fellow officer, and so he did not trust their observations. Even if he didn’t like Cole, he knew that his designated sniper wasn’t one to exaggerate.
Cole nodded curtly. “It’s true. If the Chinese are headed our way, I reckon we’re in trouble.”
“Nuts,” Ballard said.
To add to the situation, it seemed that there was a lot of rain coming. It was what the Koreans called a monsoon. Korea’s weather wasn’t all that different from that of the United States, with a few notable exceptions. The summers could be hot and humid, with temperatures getting into the nineties. Winters tended to be cold and dry, although the mountainous regions received their fair share of snow — just ask any survivors of the Chosin Reservoir campaign about that.
What made Korean weather a bit different was monsoon season, generally a couple of weeks each summer and winter. This occurred when moist air swept in from the Pacific and brought with it deluging rains — or snow in the winter monsoon season. The weather pattern was a little like what Americans would call “El Nino” in decades to come.
While the South Koreans were well-familiar with the monsoon season, this was something new for many of the U.S. troops.
“Gonna rain,” Cole announced, sniffing the air like a caveman. As someone who had lived his whole life mostly outdoors, he was attuned to the weather and the seasons.
“If you say so,” the kid replied, looking doubtfully at the Korean sky. He saw a few clouds, but it didn’t look like rain to him.
Cole took out his trenching tool and dug the ditch deeper around their pup tent, which was comprised of two canvas shelter halves buttoned together along the ridge.
The kid watched him for a moment, then joined in with his own trenching tool. He knew that not much got by Cole. If the hillbilly said it was going to rain, then you had better dig a deeper ditch around your tent.
The tent didn’t provide more than basic shelter. Two short poles raised the roof just enough for them to sit upright as long as they were directly under the highest part of the tent. There wasn’t any floor.
Their tent was not the Ritz, but after the mission to rescue the pilot, they had some welcome down time. Nobody was shooting at them, at last.
The pilot along with Jang-mi and her companions were staying at the MLR for now. With the hills crawling with Chinese, it would be dangerous for Jang-mi and her companions to try to get back to her village. Besides, how much of the village was even left after what the Chinese had done to it?
As for the pilot, he was cooling his heels until he could get a Jeep ride out of here. Again, the Chinese hadn’t been making that an easy proposition.
For Cole and kid, some extra time without much to do was welcome for a change. It helped that they had plenty of rations and actual choices — the canned franks and beans were the most popular among the men, with Hershey bars for dessert. They could make fires to heat up their rations and boil coffee. Unlike the Chinese, they didn’t need to hide their cooking fires from enemy planes or from the Chinese, who knew they were there and were watching them from the heights of the Rice Mound, about a mile distant from the outpost.
During the night, there had been a hot little fight to repel a small raid against the line of tanks defending the crest of the hill that anchored this section of the line, but it had not been a full-fledged attack. One thing about the Chinese was that they loved their raids and they were excellent night fighters.
“I heard those guys let the Chinese through,” the kid said, nodding at several soldiers from the Puerto Rican regiment who were walking by at the moment. Even by the standards of troops who had been in the field a while, these fellows looked sloppy — some not wearing helmets, uniforms a mess, and none of them carrying weapons in a combat zone as required.
“If Lieutenant Ballard sees them, he’ll have a fit and give them hell.”
“For all the good it will do,” Cole said. “I understand that most of them don’t speak English.”
“No wonder the Chinese got through our lines and hit those tanks.”
“One thing about the Chinese is that if they want to get through, they usually do,” Cole said. “They must have been after those tanks to knock ‘em out. They may be planning a larger attack.”
“I sure hope not,” the kid said. “I’m no general, but now would be a good time for the Chinese to catch us with our pants down.”
Cole grunted. “You got that right, kid. Let’s hope the goons don’t figure that out.”
One of the units assigned to the outpost was rotating out and new troops were coming in. This meant that for a few days at least, there would be new soldiers and new officers who didn’t yet have their bearings. If the Chinese had any inkling of that situation, it would indeed be a good time to attack.
Mail call came around. It was a testament to the efficiency of the military that letters and packages reached them even out here, but then again, mail from home was considered almost sacred. The kid went down to collect his mail. He almost always got a letter from home or from a girl he was sweet on back home.
Cole didn’t bother. Instead, he spread out his rifle on a blanket and began to clean it meticulously. He did this daily, whether or not the rifle had been fired or dragged through the mud and dust.
The kid came back all smiles. “Cleaning your rifle again. Why don’t you just wait until before we go on patrol?”
“If you’re always ready, you ain’t got to get ready.”
“Maybe you can tear yourself away from that rifle long enough to take a look at your mail.”
“What?”
He looked up in surprise at the envelope the kid was waving at him. Cole had received exactly two letters while in Korea, both from Norma Jean Elwood.
“It’s your girlfriend again,” the kid said. Because he had read Cole’s two previous letters to him, this could only mean that this was another letter from Norma Jean.
Truth be told, she was the reason why Cole was in Korea in the first place. He had been hunting on a fall morning back home when he came across two men about to attack the young woman after her old car had broken down. Those two lowlifes had ended up dying of lead poisoning, and Cole had been left with the choice of prison or Korea. He didn’t regret those events at all and would do it all over again in a heartbeat rather than choosing to leave Norman Jean to the wolves.
Cole shook his head at the proffered envelope.
“Go on and read it to me,” he said. “I’ve got gun oil all over my hands.”
The kid tore open the envelope. Although Cole hadn’t come out and said it, the kid had figured out by now that the hillbilly couldn’t read. The kid had even written back to Norma Jean on Cole’s behalf.
He knew that he could josh Cole about spending all that time cleaning his rifle, but he left the topic of illiteracy alone. He thought it would be a bad idea to embarrass Cole about not being able to read — not if you wanted to live to tell the tale. If Cole liked you, you could consider yourself lucky. If you got on his bad side, you were just a step away from getting flensed by that big Bowie knife he carried. When Cole got mad, he had the coldest, hardest eyes that the kid had ever seen.
Without further comment, he cleared his throat and read:
Dear Caje,
Another season has gone and went, so I reckoned I should write. I do appreciate your letter. It was real nice to get that.
The mountains have changed a lot because many of the younger people who left for jobs during the war never came home. That’s the way of things, I suppose, but I never plan to leave home. I want to stay here and raise a family someday. What do you think of that?
I hope you don’t mind that I went by your workshop and swept out the cobwebs and mice. Mrs. Bailey said that was all right to do. I figured it was the least I could do so that is ready when you come back.
Maybe that won’t be so long from now. President Truman says this war won’t last much longer, and who don’t believe what they say in Washington?
“Well how about that,” Cole said. He was a man who mostly kept his emotions in check — except for the angry ones — but he had to admit that the letter made him feel an unexpected warmth inside. It wasn’t the words so much as the fact that someone on the other side of the world gave a damn about Caje Cole. She was even looking after the workshop that Hollis Bailey had given him.
“You want to write her back?” the kid asked.
“No,” Cole said.
“What? Why not? She’s got it bad for you, you know.”
“The next time I say something to Norma Jean, it’s going to be in person, not in a damn letter.”
Cole went back to cleaning his rifle, his lips tight, but he was grinning to himself.