Fallen Sniper

Chapter Seventeen

Having reached the fort, there was no time to lose. Without recon, it was hard to know with certainty how far the enemy had progressed. The advancing Chinese army might be two day’s march from the fort, or just a few hours away. Ballard sent a couple of men to watch the road through the gap, with orders to fire a warning shot if the enemy vanguard was sighted.

Their best hope in keeping those fresh troops from joining the enemy forces already at Outpost Kelly and all along the MLR was to stop them at this narrow gap through the hills.

On the far side of the clearing, the fort looked down upon the road through the gap. In many ways, it was like a fort defending the entrance to a harbor. Anything that attempted to cross the road or the clearing would be under the guns of the fort’s defenders.

“How much time do we have?” Ballard asked Jang-mi.

“Maybe one day,” she said. “The enemy should be here tomorrow.”

“Should be here?” Ballard pressed. “We don’t have supplies for more than a few days.”

“Tomorrow if we are lucky,” she replied. “We can make some preparations. If we are not so lucky, the enemy will be here tonight.”

Ballard nodded. “All right, then. I can see we need to get to work. Sergeant, get those Puerto Ricans busy clearing brush from the top of the fort’s walls. I hope they can handle that much, at least. I’ve got to say that I’m surprised they made it here.”

“Yes, sir. Also, I would suggest having a detail build a barricade across the road to the south.”

“Sergeant, isn’t that the wrong direction? The enemy will be coming from the north.”

“Sir, the last thing we want is for them to use the barricade we built as a defensive position. If we block the road on the far side of the clearing, we’ll keep them penned in our field of fire from the fort, just where we want them.”

Ballard nodded at the logic of it. “Good thinking, Sergeant. Get to it!”

The name that Lieutenant Ballard had given the old fort had made the rounds. Some thought Outpost Alamo had a nice ring to it, while others pointed out that things had not ended well for the Alamo’s defenders.

Whatever abilities they may have lacked as soldiers, the Borinqueneers quickly demonstrated that they were not afraid of hard work. Putting their weapons aside, they used everything from bayonets to trenching tools to clear brush from the top of the fortress walls. The debris was tossed to the clearing below. Another detail dragged the brush to build the barricade that the sergeant had suggested. Without any heavy equipment, the men struggled to move logs and even boulders to create a foundation for the barricade.

Cole and the other men of his squad joined the Puerto Ricans in building the barricade. It was back-breaking work and the men were soon soaked with sweat, but the makeshift barricade grew quickly. The barricade did not need to be impregnable. It just needed to slow down the enemy.

Cole saw with satisfaction that this barricade, along with the thick brush ringing the clear, as well as the fortress itself, had the effect of turning the clearing into a corral. If taken by surprise, the lead elements of the Chinese army would be trapped in a killing field. Cole always had liked a good trap, and while this one was bigger than what he had used to snare rabbits and other game back home, he reckoned that it would do nicely.

“I have to say, this is the last thing that I thought I’d be doing in Korea,” said Lieutenant Commander Miller, who had joined in building the barricade. He grunted with the effort of helping to move a log into place. “They don’t exactly prepare you for manual labor in flight school.”

“You could have avoided all this if you hadn’t gone and gotten yourself shot down,” Cole pointed out.

“What, and miss all the fun?”

“That’s not all you would have missed, sir,” the kid said, grinning as he nodded in Jang-mi’s direction. She, too, had joined in the effort to build up the barricade and was some distance away, dragging a load of brush that had been tossed down from high above.

“You’ve got me there, soldier. I didn’t know it was that obvious.”

“Just be sure to invite us to the wedding, sir.”

“All right, all right.” The pilot laughed good-naturedly. “But that’s enough of that. Let’s get this barricade built. Like Jang-mi said, we might have less time than we hoped.”

As soon as he said it, they all glanced nervously at the road, half-expecting to be greeted by the sight of hundreds of enemy troops marching toward them. So far, the road remained empty. But for how long?

Cole paused to take a long drink from his canteen, studying the fortress walls as he did so. Although the Puerto Ricans were clearing brush from the top, most of the foliage had not been growing for long. According to Jang-mi, the villagers gathered here from time to time to tend the ancient stone fortress, and that included clearing the walls of the weeds and small trees that inevitably took root. To the nearby villagers, the fort was sacred in its own way and tending it honored their people’s history and traditions. After all, their ancestors had surely been among those who fought and died on these walls, defending their homeland.

Cole felt reassured that they would be defending the fort; he would not have wanted to attack these walls. The stone walls rose twenty feet from the surrounding landscape, the giant blocks stacked without mortar, but fitting one against the other almost seamlessly to create an intimidating stone face. Time and moss had darkened the walls, giving them a brooding appearance. Short of scaling the walls, the only way in or out was a heavy wooden gate. A square watchtower, no more than twenty feet high, with slits for archers, rose from the center of the fortress walls.

The clever builders of the fort had incorporated the landscape itself as part of the defenses. The high fortress wall linked two adjoining cliff faces, curving slightly like a grim smile. One of the cliff faces rose much higher than the fortress wall, like an impregnable citadel. It was easy to imagine that more than one last stand had taken place on that cliff. A lower wall encircled the rest of the hilltop, but the back part of the hill was so steep that it was hard to imagine an enemy even attempting that approach.

From the fortress walls, defenders in ancient times could pelt the road with arrows or stones. They could rush out to attack an enemy attempting passage through the gap.

The current defenders could do a lot more than shoot arrows at the enemy. In addition to their rifles, mortars, and machine guns, Task Force Ballard had two tanks.

Of course, it was impossible to get the tanks through the fort’s gate or to place them on the walls. Instead, the tank commander placed them at the base of the exterior wall, giving the tanks a clear field of fire across the clearing and down the road flowing toward them from the north. When they arrived, the enemy would be met by shells and even machine gun fire from the two tanks.

On the march, Jang-mi had shared some of the history of the fort. As it turned out, the Korean hills were dotted with similar forts. Some were now little more than ruins, but some of the more elaborate fortresses closer to Seoul and other cities had been well-tended and were now tourist attractions during peacetime.

It was hard to know it now, with the Korean people so divided and beleaguered, but they had a proud history. Jang-mi had told them about Jumong, the great warrior king who had founded a kingdom that extended not only across the Korean peninsula, but also deep into China. The nation itself had taken its name from the kingdom of Goguryeo, the dynasty founded by Jumong that had proudly endured for centuries.

However, the growing wealth and influence of the Koreans in ancient times had attracted enemies and sparked rivalries. From time to time, the Chinese emperors had raised armies and invaded. Then came the Japanese. Ever a warlike people bent on conquest, the Japanese had repeatedly attacked the Koreans.

In times of war, the local villagers had for centuries retreated to fortresses like this. It was a place to halt the enemy or to shelter in place while a more powerful army ransacked the country, and then moved on. The Japanese Empire had finally occupied Korea as a colony in 1900. With the defeat of the Japanese, the influence of China spawned the growth of communism.

Through it all, despite the ravages of armies, and sometimes in victory and sometimes in suffering, the people had endured.

“If these walls could talk, huh?” Miller commented, reaching for Cole’s canteen to take a drink. “Do you think this place will do the job?”

“Oh, I reckon it will,” Cole drawled. “That fort is solid. I’m more worried about how solid we are.”

Miller handed back Cole’s canteen and clapped him on the shoulder. “No worries there, Hillbilly. From what I understand, that’s going to be your job once we get this barricade built. It’s up to you to make sure the Puerto Ricans know how to stand and fight.”

“Where the hell is Sergeant Weber when you need him?”

“He’s finishing up the barricade and setting up the defenses. That leaves you.”

Cole grunted, wishing he felt more confident about whipping these former Borinqueneers into shape. He just hoped that he had not been imagining the determination he seen earlier burning in the Borinqueneers’ eyes.

He stood up and walked toward them. They were all tired; hell, Cole was tired, but there was precious little time to lose. “Cisco!” he called. “Gather them boys over here. We’re gonna learn you all to fight.”

Sullenly, the Puerto Rican soldiers assembled in the clearing. They stood quietly, watching Cole expectantly. Some simply glared at him with open hostility. As far as they were concerned, he was just another soldier insulting them and keeping them down. That was fine by Cole — he wanted these men to feel riled up. He wanted them full of piss and vinegar. How else would they ever defeat the enemy?

Cole glared back, taking their measure. One by one, even the angriest of the Borinqueneers looked away. They weren’t the first to find his intense, cut-glass eyes to be unsettling.

Meanwhile, Cole considered what to say. He never had been in charge of more than a handful of men in a squad, and even then, he hadn’t much liked it. Cole felt content being a lone wolf. It went against his nature to give speeches. But when he finally spoke, his voice rang high and clear in the mountain air.

“Everyone says you’re cowards,” Cole began. Standing off to one side, Cisco translated like a Spanish echo. When he got to the word cobardes, Cole could see the Borinqueneers bristle angrily. He paused, letting that cobardes insult sink in. “Here’s your chance to prove everybody wrong. You can be brave instead. So what is it gonna be? Are the Borinqueneers cowards or are they brave?”

Cisco posed the question in Spanish. It hung there for a moment, and then the men shouted their reply. “Valiente!”

“Bueno,” Cole said. “Let’s get to work.”

The first thing that they did was to make sure their weapons were thoroughly cleaned. The cursory cleaning they had done earlier — simply to make sure the rifles were not so caked with mud that they wouldn’t function — had not been enough. Again with Cisco translating, he ordered the men to spread out blankets and clean their weapons. Some of the men didn’t even know how to dismantle their rifles for cleaning, which showed an utter lack of training. Cole began to appreciate that these men had been tossed into the lion’s den without any preparation. There was no way that he could teach them to be soldiers in a few hours, but he would do his best.

He went from man to man, inspecting their work.

The kid came over to help. “If you ask me, what you ought to do is teach them to shoot.”

“The first thing to do is get to know all the parts,” Cole said. He added with a grin, “Ain’t that what you’d do with your girlfriend?”

The kid blushed. “I guess so.”

“There you go, then. Getting to know all the parts and how they work is half the fun. A rifle ain’t that much different from a woman.”

Cole’s approach quickly showed its effectiveness as men who had not previously been familiar with their rifles began to handle them with greater ease. He knew that to be good shots, they would need to know their rifles inside and out. That was at least as important as knowing how to aim.

Soon, the cleaning kits were put away and the blankets were stowed. The men waited expectantly, their eyes on Cole.

He was getting ready to teach them how to shoot those rifles when a commotion interrupted them. There had been a warning shout, and someone was pointing toward the forest edge. Cole reached for his rifle, fearing that the enemy had outsmarted them and somehow circled around to attack from an unexpected direction. His heart sank; they were in no way ready for an attack.

“Hold your fire!” Lieutenant Ballard shouted. Jang-mi had appeared at his side, resting her hand on his carbine as if to keep it from being aimed at whoever was lurking in the forest.

“What the hell?” Cole wondered, keeping his rifle ready.

The kid seemed just as puzzled. “Who are they?” he asked.

Cole watched, amazed, as figures began to emerge silently from the forest. They materialized from the shadows as silently as ghosts and entered the clearing at the base of the fortress walls. They carried weapons, but they didn’t seem to be attacking.

One thing for sure was that these were not Chinese troops. These were civilians, mostly men and a few women, old and young. None of them wore uniforms.

Jang-mi stepped forward to meet these people and Cole realized that these must be more villagers — if not from her own battered village, then from other settlements dotted across the hills. They had come as allies to help fight the Communist invaders.

“I’ll be damned,” Cole said.

From across the clearing, he saw Lieutenant Ballard point in his direction as Jang-mi nodded, seemingly in agreement. Soon, Jang-mi gathered the newcomers and led them toward Cole. “Teach them, too,” she said.

“They can’t understand me.”

“I will translate.”

Cole nodded. “Join the party,” he said.

He looked around at the motley force, Borinqueneers on one side and Korean villagers on the other. The Borinqueneers looked like soldiers, at least. The same could not be said for the villagers, who looked exactly like the peasants they were, right down to their ragged clothing. Some wore only sandals, despite the increasingly cool temperatures in the mountains. But as with the Borinqueneers, Cole saw determination in their faces. These were people who would fight.

“All right,” he announced. “Here is what we are gonna do. Kid, you and Cisco run down to the other end of the clearing and set up some targets. Just set up some chunks of wood on rocks and stumps. That’ll work just fine.”

“You got it,” said the kid. He and Cisco trotted off.

When they returned, Cole had his motley assortment of troops line up, facing the targets. At first, he had them go through dry firing, practicing their breathe, aim, fire technique. This was the most basic foundation of marksmanship. Sure, it could be learned in an afternoon — but marksmanship often took months or years to perfect. Once again, he relayed the orders through Cisco and Jang-mi. Along the line, firing pins clicked on empty chambers.

“Make each shot count,” he said. “Nothing fancy. Aim dead center.”

As the sun began to dip behind the mountain peaks, reminding them all that time was limited, they moved on to live firing. Sergeant Weber came to join them. Walking behind the shooters, he and Cole gave as much instruction to each shooter as they could, having each of their new soldiers fire three rounds each. It was all the ammunition they could spare. In a fight with the Chinese, they would need every round.

Some of the chunks of wood flew off the rocks and stumps at the first shots, while others stubbornly refused to be hit no matter how many rounds the Borinqueneers and villagers fired. Cole went around snugging shoulders to rifle butts, raising elbows, and otherwise doing whatever he could to help this motley crew improve their aim. A few more chunks fell.

Weber shook his head. “This is not good.”

“Sarge, we both know the enemy will be closer and bigger.”

“Chunks of wood do not shoot back.”

Cole couldn’t argue with that. He would have liked to see the soldiers get more target practice, but they were losing daylight fast. He called an end to the gunfire.

The final lesson needed no explanation. Their shooting lesson over, Cole stood before these makeshift fighters and drew his Bowie knife, raising it high overhead. The cold blade of Damascus steel caught the light of the setting sun. One by one, the fighters drew their own knives and bayonets, holding them high. Cole was letting them know that when the bullets ran out, they would resort to their blades. This would be a fight to the end.

The sun finally slid behind a hill, leaving the clearing and fortress in deep shadow as if a shade had been drawn.

Cisco and Jang-mi shouted orders in their respective languages, dismissing the fighters to find what rest and shelter they could for the night.

Lieutenant Ballard came over. “Are they ready to fight?”

“To be fair, sir, I can’t make soldiers out of these people in a few hours,” Cole replied. However, Cole had to admit that the Borinqueneers and villagers were far from timid. They had plenty of spirit. He had seen the determination in their faces and in their willingness to learn as much as they could in so short a time. “But maybe that don’t matter. They may not be soldiers, but by God, they will fight.”

“Let’s hope you’re right,” Ballard said. “We’ll find out soon enough.”