Chapter Sixteen

Cole moved swiftly down the line of men that was preparing to move out.

By mid-morning, the task force had been assembled. It was being called Task Force Ballard, in keeping with the tradition of naming similar units after their commanding officer. Whether Ballard’s name was about to become famous or infamous remained to be seen. Cole couldn’t help but recall that it was Task Force Faith that had been involved in the Chosin Reservoir campaign that he remembered all too well.

He’d heard something about how back in the old days, a group of soldiers asked to carry out an impossible task, a suicide mission, really, were called Forlorn Hopes. For Forlorn Hopes, their reward was often promotion or redemption. Right now, that seemed just about right.

At the front of the column were members of his own squad. Other than giving a nod to the kid, he barely gave these battle-hardened veterans a glance. They could be counted on to do whatever needed to be done.

He was surprised to see Lieutenant Commander Miller at the front of the group, along with Jang-mi and the two Korean villagers.

“You’re not coming with us, are you?”

“Sure I am,” Miller said. “My wings are clipped for now, so I might as well make myself useful.”

Miller wasn’t wearing a helmet, but had somewhere found a broad-brimmed bush hat like the Puerto Rican troops sometimes wore. On anyone else, the hat would have looked ridiculous, but it matched the pilot’s jaunty personality. The pilot noticed Cole’s stare.

“Like the hat? I got it from one of the Borinqueneers.”

Cole shook his head. “I’ve yet to meet an officer with a lick of horse sense. Sir. I do see you have a weapon and not just that pistol.”

Miller held up a 12-gauge combat shotgun. At close range and loaded with buckshot, the shotgun was a formidable weapon. “I’m not much of a shot,” he admitted sheepishly. “I figured it would be hard to miss with this.”

Cole grinned. He was well aware of the damage that a shotgun could do. “Sir, any Chinese who get close to the business end of that scattergun will be on their way to Commie heaven.”

Nearby, Jang-mi stood watching the exchange quietly. Though small, she looked far more capable than the pilot. A carbine was slung over her shoulder and a large knife hung at her belt. Her hair was hidden under one of the ushanka hats similar to what the Chinese wore. Her face betrayed no emotion, but dark eyes assessed Cole in a calculating manner, as if sizing him up. Jang-mi was one tough customer. Cole liked that in a woman. He gave her an approving nod. Her assessment of Cole completed, she nodded back.

“Ya’ll ready?”

“Yes,” she replied grimly. To his surprise, she then turned to the pilot and smiled. “Jake said he would carry my pack, but I think I may have to carry him.”

“Ha, we’ll see about that,” Miller fired back.

Cole looked between the two, more than a bit surprised. So it was Jake, was it? Miller was smiling back at Jang-mi with something like puppy dog eyes. Cole would have figured that Miller’s interest in Jang-mi would make as much of a dent in that tough exterior as rain beating on a rock, but he’d been wrong. There was definitely two-way traffic happening on this street.

He just hoped it wouldn’t mean that Miller or Jang-mi did anything stupid if one of them got in hot water. That would usually get both people killed.

Both the old villager and the teenager stood off to one side. They had improved upon their worn old clothes by donning some cast-offs from the American troops. The boy now wore a helmet and a jacket that looked far too big for him. The sleeves were rolled up. But his hands gripped a carbine easily enough. Cole didn’t have any worries about the Korean villagers holding their own.

He moved on. Checking to make sure that the men were ready to move out was Sergeant Weber’s job, but the sergeant was busy distributing a last-minute supply of ammo.

Besides, Cole wanted to see for himself what Task Force Ballard looked like.

He wasn’t impressed. Discounting the squad members, Lieutenant Commander Miller, and Jang-mi and the two villagers, the bulk of the task force was made up of the disgraced platoon of Borinqueneers. Technically, they remained former Borinqueneers, having been stripped of their old sobriquet.

To Cole’s eyes, they looked like men who had lost something — their self-respect. They were all fresh-shaven, having been ordered to shave off their mustaches, but instead of making them look more soldierly, their stark faces added to the overall impression of loss. They looked naked and exposed.

Many of them wore muddy uniforms and a few still sported bandages from the minor wounds they had received during the fight on Outpost Kelly. Cole wondered about that. Typically, even slightly wounded men would not be rotated right back into duty. Maybe they had volunteered? If that was the case, maybe Cole and the others had misjudged these boys.

As part of their assignment to Task Force Ballard, the Puerto Ricans had been reissued weapons.

Cole stopped in front of one soldier holding a rifle.

“When was the last time you cleaned this weapon?” Cole demanded.

The Borinqueneer stared at him blankly. “Que?

Looking more closely at the rifle, Cole could see that part of the stock was caked with dried mud. Spots of rust bloomed on the action. In the wet, humid conditions of the last few days, metal needed to be kept oiled to keep corrosion at bay.

“I said, when was the last time this weapon was cleaned?” In frustration, Cole had repeated his question, much louder this time, as if the problem was that the soldier hadn’t heard him, rather than not being able to understand him.

Again, the soldier replied, also louder this time, “Que?

Cole shook his head in disgust.

One of the Puerto Ricans stepped forward. “He can’t understand you, sir. He speaks no English.”

“Too damn bad for him,” Cole said. “Anyhow, a rusty rifle don’t need no explanation in English or any other language. Any soldier ought to know better.”

The Puerto Rican soldier turned and barked something in Spanish to the men around him. Word spread to those who had been farther away. Within a couple of minutes, the entire platoon was busy cleaning their rifles.

They were doing a lousy job of it, though.

“You’ve got to get some oil on there,” Cole said in irritation, reaching to help a soldier who was just wiping down the outside of the rifle with a dry rag.

The Puerto Rican soldier who had given the original order now repeated what Cole had just said. The men turned to their rifles with fresh attention. “I told them to make sure there was no rust, sir.”

“I ain’t an officer or a sergeant, in case you ain’t noticed.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, to hell with it. You can call me a general as long as these boys clean their rifles.”

Cole and the other man moved among the Borinqueneers, showing them how to clean the worst of the mud and rust off their weapons. There wasn’t time to field strip the rifles and give them a real cleaning, but at least the weapons now had a better chance of functioning if they ran into any Chinese.

“Better,” the Puerto Rican soldier said, looking around at the other troops.

Cole assessed the young man. He wasn’t as old as several of the veterans, who were cleaning their weapons in a more practiced fashion. However, he spoke English and seemed to have enough natural authority that the others listened to him.

“What’s your name?”

“I am Private Vasquez.” He paused. “Mis amigos call me Cisco.”

“Then I reckon we’re amigos now, Cisco. My friends call me Hillbilly.”

Cisco nodded at Cole’s rifle with its telescopic sight. Unlike most of the Borinqueneers’ weapons, Cole had worked so much oil into the dark metal of the Springfield that it had a dull gleam, like a black snake in the sun. “You have shot many of the enemy with that rifle?”

“I suppose I’ve killed more than most and not as many as some,” Cole said matter-of-factly. “But what matters is, how many are you ready to kill? You and the rest of these Borinqueneers, that is?”

Cisco looked grim. “We are not cowards. We will fight, Hillbilly.”

“Cisco, I sure as hell hope so.”

At the end of the line, they heard the growl of big engines and were surprised to see two tanks moving into position. Cole left Cisco and walked down there to see what was going on.

He spotted a lieutenant standing half in, half out of the turret of the lead tank. “Sir, these boys don’t speak English. You want me to have somebody tell them to get out of the road?”

The tank commander shook his head. “Not necessary, soldier. We are coming with you.”

A soldier jumped down from the deck of the tank, where he had been riding. He was a big, rugged guy, but instead of a rifle, he was carrying a camera and a notebook. Something about the soldier looked familiar.

“I’ll be damned,” Cole said. “Is that you, Hardy? Since when did you become a tanker?”

“I’m just along for the ride,” Hardy said.

Up in the turret, the lieutenant looked surprised. “You two know each other?”

“I wrote about Cole here back at the Battle of Triangle Hill,” Hardy explained. “It turns out that he has quite a record as a sniper, in this war and the last one.”

The lieutenant squinted at the flag on the front of Cole’s helmet. “That looks like a Confederate flag.”

“Sure, Cole here is a hillbilly,” Hardy explained. “They make the best snipers, don’t you know?”

The lieutenant laughed. “You’re the one digging up the facts, so I’ll take your word for it,” he said. Deep within the tank, the powerful engine revved impatiently. “Let’s get this show on the road. I’d like to get wherever we’re going before dark.”

“Afraid of boogiemen, Lieutenant?”

“Yeah, Chinese ones.”

* * *

The tanks could rev their engines all they wanted, impatient to get rolling, but it was another hour before the task force was ready to move out.

Cole felt heartened by the tanks. What infantryman didn’t? It was the same feeling as walking into a dark alley, knowing that the big guy next to you had your back. Also, to some extent, the tanks made up for the Borinqueneers. They were some of the sorriest soldiers that Cole had seen. He had detected a glimmer of fight in their eyes, however. When push came to shove, could they be counted on? Only time would tell. With any luck, he and Sergeant Weber would have at least a day to try to whip them into shape. Cole knew that there was no hope of training a soldier in a day, but you could teach a man the basics of fighting for his life. You might say that survival was a good motivator.

This fight could very well turn out to be a last stand, even if nobody wanted to call it that yet. Last stand sounded better than suicide mission, he reckoned.

Finally, the order came to move out.

“Let’s go!” Ballard shouted, walking alongside the column. “We’re going to keep up a stiff pace, men. I want us to be at this so-called fort by nightfall.”

“So-called fort, sir?”

“If it was built by a bunch of Korean villagers, I’m expecting to find a pile of rocks.”

“We’d be halfway there if we hadn’t stood around playing grab-ass most of the morning,” Cole muttered.

“Well, I wouldn’t mind playing grab-ass with her,” the kid said quietly, looking in Jang-mi’s direction. She was busy talking with the pilot.

“Looks like that flyboy has the same thing in mind. I’d say you’re out of luck.”

“Not out of luck. Just outranked.”

“That’s life, kid. Get used to it.”

“I guess I’ll just have to wait until my next leave in Japan,” he said. “The last time I was there, there was this girl who—“

Cole had heard it all before, but he let the kid spin out his story once again. Like most young soldiers, his thoughts alternated between food and women, with a few moments of terror thrown in for good measure.

“What about that girl you’ve been writing to back home? Did you put that story in your letter?”

The kid blushed. “No, I guess not.”

Cole laughed. “That’s all right, kid. Hell, there’s plenty of married guys doing the same thing and believe me, they don’t write home about it.”

Cole just hoped that the kid would have a chance to get home again to that girl. He hadn’t wanted the kid to be part of this task force, but he had kept his mouth shut when the kid volunteered. The truth was, Cole was glad to have him along.

Quickly, they left the MLR behind, keeping well to the west of Outpost Kelly and the reach of the Chinese mortars now on that hill. Despite the recent monsoon rains that had turned the supply roads to rivers of mud, the open ground they now crossed was rocky enough to provide good footing. They approached the river and could hear it roaring, still in flood stage. He hoped that there would be no need to cross that swirling brown water.

Before the monsoon and the attack on Outpost Kelly, it hadn’t been unusual for the soldiers to take turns visiting a sandy beach nearby on a quiet bend of the Imjin River. It was what they had instead of a shower.

“Want to go for a swim?” the kid asked.

“No thanks,” Cole said. He didn’t much like the water or swimming — not since he had nearly drowned as a boy while setting beaver traps in a mountain stream. Not much frightened Cole, but he had to admit that he was terrified of water.

Jang-mi led the way, serving as their guide. It was clear that she knew this country like the back of her hand. There was no hesitation as she picked her way through the thickets and jumbled rocky outcroppings. Just when another obstacle loomed in their path, she seemed to know just the way around it.

Despite the fairly solid ground, it was slow going, mainly because of the tanks. In point of fact, the massive tanks were intended for mobility across level ground such as the terrain of Europe. The tanks were much less useful in the hills of Korea. Lieutenant Dunbar’s command vehicle was designated “Twenty-one” and the second tank was “Twenty-two.” Despite the numbering system, Dunbar did not have another twenty tanks at his disposal; it just sounded better than calling them “Tank One” and “Tank Two.”

Jang-mi was finding a path that allowed for passage of these steel behemoths. The tank commander had gotten out and was keeping pace with Jang-mi. From time to time, they stopped and conferred about the best way forward. Cole felt reassured that the tank commander knew his business.

Too often, the tanks had no choice but to crash through the thickets of underbrush. It made an awful racket, so Cole prayed that there were no Chinese scouts about. However, the tanks cleared the trail for the men on foot behind them.

Meanwhile, the Borinqueneers lagged behind. Some stumbled and had to be helped by their comrades. In fairness to them, many of these men had light wounds. None of them had eaten a decent meal in two days, which left some of them light-headed on the march. The Borinqueneers did not complain.

Sergeant Weber moved up and down the column, prodding the Borinqueneers to keep moving.

The irony of it all wasn’t lost on the kid. “Isn’t that something,” he said. “We’ve got an old German sergeant yelling at a bunch of Puerto Ricans, with some help from a hillbilly who talks like he’s got a mouthful of cornpone.”

“Yeah? You know what we don’t need on top of all that? A smartass.”

The kid took the hint, zipping his mouth shut as Weber approached.

“They are sorry looking bastards,” Weber confided to Cole, pausing to take a long drink from his canteen. “Do you think they will fight or run?”

“For all our sakes, I hope they fight,” Cole said.

“One thing for sure, they’ll have nowhere to run. There is nothing around here but mountains.”

“They may have some gumption in them,” Cole said. “When we get to this fort, you and me will have to whip them into shape.”

“Can we do it?”

“Sergeant, we ain’t got much choice.”

“This is true.”

Cole and his squad brought up the rear. With the tanks in front and the veterans in the rear, it created a good bookend for the moving column. Also, the squad kept any stragglers from the Borinqueneers from falling behind.

As they pressed deeper into the hills and thickets, Cole grew quieter. He turned his attention to the surrounding landscape, alert for the slightest movement. His eyes tracked swift birds darting through the underbrush and the occasional leaf dancing in the breeze, but he saw no sign of the enemy.

Cole liked just about any landscape in its own way, but he had to admit that there was not much to redeem the endless scrub and hills of their surroundings. While there were patches of mature trees, they were nothing like the soaring stands of oak and maple and hickory in the mountains back home. The scenery was neither welcoming nor majestic. It was just more of the same.

Gradually, they left the Imjin behind and began to climb. The hills pressed closer, steep cliff faces rising nearby and hemming them in.

Jang-mi brought them onto a narrow mountain road that appeared to be the only way through these rough hills. He caught glimpses of her from time to time, leading the column fearlessly, but with her weapon off her shoulder, out in front of her, ready for anything. If they encountered any advance units of the enemy, the Chinese would likely be forced to use this same road, but from the opposite direction.

The shadows grew longer as the daylight faded and the deep hills cut off the lowering sun. Down along the river, the air had still been warm and humid, but now an autumnal chill hung in the air.

After one last, steep push up the road, the troops entered a clearing. Looming over them, Cole had his first glimpse of the massive stone walls of the ancient fort. He could see at once why Jang-mi had chosen this location in hopes of stopping the Chinese advance. Any force using this road to traverse the rough hills would have to pass beneath the walls of the fort. It was a perfect position, both imposing and defensible.

“Butter my backside and call me a biscuit,” Cole said, a little awestruck by the fortress walls. “It looks like the Alamo.”

Nearby, Lieutenant Ballard appeared just as impressed. He had been expecting a jumble of rocks, but the stone fort looked sturdy, if somewhat weedy and overgrown. “The Koreans call this place Lǒngmo Sanseong, which doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. Cole, you’ve got the right idea. From now on, we’re calling it Outpost Alamo.”

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