Chapter Seven

Hell had paid a visit to this mountain village, Cole thought. One of the huts was in flames, threatening to spread to the other dwellings. Above the harsh crackling of the fire, Cole could hear the sound of crying and weeping.

Cole moved closer, rifle at the ready. He stepped over a dead dog, then passed a dead goat. Who the hell shot a goat?

He supposed that he shouldn’t be surprised. He had seen just as much — and worse — in almost every Korean village touched by war. For that matter, he had seen similar scenes in the last war in Europe.

As if the dead animals weren’t bad enough, he saw several bodies strewn on the ground, the dead surrounded by sobbing relatives. One of the dead was an old man, his wrinkled face and staring eyes serene in death. Nearby lay the body of a teenage boy, no more than fourteen or fifteen. He’d been shot in the chest. The way that his hands clutched his chest showed that he had not gone so peacefully. Cole shook his head at the thought. A woman and several girls who might have been the boy’s mother and sisters knelt beside the body, sobbing. What a waste of life.

None of the dead held any weapons. What possible threat had an old man and an unarmed boy been to the Chinese soldiers? This was a massacre, pure and simple.

“What happened here?” the kid wondered. “This is awful.”

“The Chinese happened, that’s what.”

“If we’d gotten here sooner, maybe we could have stopped them.”

“Maybe, maybe not. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s just two of us, kid. We ain’t the cavalry.”

He supposed that he was trying to make the kid feel better. But deep down, Cole felt a rage begin to burn, every bit as hot as the fire that consumed one of the villagers’ huts.

Not so long ago, this appeared to be a peaceful place. Even as remote and out of the way that the village was, it hadn’t managed to escape the war.

He suspected that this was no random act of violence, however. More than likely, the villagers had brought the wrath of the Chinese soldiers down on their heads by helping the downed American pilot. They had known something or seen something.

The simple fact was that not all North Koreans were communists. The way they saw it, the Chinese were just more invaders, just as the Japanese had been during the last war — and in prior centuries. The North Koreans were just stuck in the middle, on the wrong side of the boundary being drawn up at the negotiating table in Kaesong.

He moved through this scene of brutality, keeping one wary eye out in case the Chinese returned.

Cole didn’t need to ask any questions, not that there was anyone in the village who could have given him answers. He had heard the shooting and put two and two together. The villagers had helped the American pilot and the Chinese had found him — or had they?

The villagers had noticed their arrival and watched them warily, although there seemed to be some relief that he and the kid were not Chinese soldiers. Then again, what would it matter to these people which side he was on? He was another soldier with a gun and they were caught in the middle.

“American,” Cole said. “Which way?”

All that he got was blank stares.

Eodi?” the kid asked.

Some of the villagers pointed nervously toward the trees on the other side of the field beyond the village. Cole had turned his attention on the kid in surprise.

“Since when do you speak Korean?”

“I picked up a little here and there from the KSC,” he said, using the abbreviation for the Korean Service Corps. These unarmed South Koreans provided the labor to support the military by doing everything from hauling supplies to building roads.

Cole could see the tracks where several men had passed. If the Chinese soldiers had captured the pilot, why had they rushed off into the thicket?

“We might still have a chance,” Cole said. “I don’t think they caught him. Not yet, anyhow. Come on.”

The kid turned back to the villagers and said, “Gamsa.

An irate old lady shouted something back and pointed again at the trees.

“What?” Cole asked.

“I have no idea. That’s more Korean than I know.”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea that she just said, ‘What the hell are you waiting for? Go kick their ass.’ ”

“If you say so,” the kid said. “Ready when you are.”

Cole grunted, then headed across the field, following the tracks. The Chinese footprints were easy enough to pick out. He had seen enough of those in Korea. He also recognized a pair of U.S.-issue boots leaving their impression. He also saw two sets of tracks that appeared to have been made by the sandals that the locals wore. One set of these prints was quite small, as if made by a boy.

“I count six Chinese,” Cole said. “They are definitely after our pilot friend. Looks like he has a couple of villagers helping him. They might be helping the Chinese, for that matter, but I doubt they would volunteer after that scene back at the village.”

“Six against two,” the kid muttered.

“With any luck, we’ll catch them by surprise,” Cole said, then plunged ahead into the thicket.

* * *

Deng led the way into the thicket, hard on the trail of the pilot and villagers. His back was bent and scanned the ground as he ran, looking for any clue. Wu was impressed.

They soon came to a path, which Deng ran down.

“They went this way,” Deng said, coming to a halt at a fork in the path through the thicket. “I can see tracks, and look, here’s a broken branch.”

“You had better be right,” Wu said. He had no option but to trust Deng’s judgment. “We must not let them escape!”

As they ran, the brush of the thicket seemed to press in on them from all sides. At least they were going downhill, which made the going easier. Instead of moving higher into the hills, their quarry seemed to be headed for the river. After another minute, he could hear the sound of the Imjin rushing over rocks below. He smiled. Where did the pilot think he was going? Unless they had a boat hidden somewhere, the Imjin was much too wide and swift to swim across. Then again, their quarry might be desperate enough to try. In that case, the pilot might be drowned in the currents, which was the last thing that Wu wanted.

“Faster!” he urged. It was all that he had breath to shout.

For Wu, the pilot would be an incredibly valuable prize, but the man must be taken alive. Dead, the American was of no use to Wu and this whole chase would have been pointless. The capture of the pilot would win Wu accolades, and also much valuable intelligence about the operations of the enemy aircraft.

The thicket ended at a rocky beach that marked the edge of the Imjin. Roughly one hundred meters ahead, he could see their quarry running along the shore.

Wu watched as the fleeing group splashed into the water. They did not attempt to cross the river, but ran parallel to the shore in the shallows.

“They are hoping to hide their tracks,” Deng said. “But we have caught them.”

“Get closer,” Wu ordered. “Then shoot the others, but not the pilot. No harm must come to him!”

“Yes, sir.”

The soldiers ran out onto the rocky beach and opened fire.

* * *

“Do not shoot the pilot!” Wu had ordered. “Kill the traitors!”

With the exception of Deng, the men in his patrol were not careful shots. Bullets sprayed the surface of the river and he feared that his prize would be lost.

“If anyone shoots the pilot, I will shoot him!” Wu shouted.

He saw one of the traitors, an older man, grab his arm and fall into the water. Smiling in satisfaction, he drew his pistol and began firing at the Korean who stopped to help him. To his surprise, Wu saw that it was a woman, and an attractive one at that. It seemed a shame to kill her, but a traitor was a traitor. Wu raised his pistol and fired, but his shot went wide.

No matter. There was nowhere for their quarry to escape, now that they were caught in the open. The jolt of the pistol had thrown off his aim, so he settled the sights on the woman again and held steady. He began to squeeze the trigger.

“I have you now,” he said aloud, chuckling.

That’s when they were attacked from the rear, well-placed shots tearing into his men. The man next to him threw his arms wide and collapsed face-first into the water’s edge. Dead as a stone.

Within moments, two more of Wu’s men fell. He swung his pistol to face the attackers.

* * *

Cole and the kid had arrived moments before, just in time to see the four figures struggling in the shallows of the river. Just as he had suspected from the footprints, he saw three Korean villagers and the American pilot wading through the current.

The edges of the river had wide sandbars that made the Imjin a favorite for cooling off. The Imjin was too wide and deep to cross easily, and the current was powerful in the middle of the river, but maybe crossing the river hadn’t been their plan. Maybe they had simply been trying to throw the pursuers off their trail by wading in the river and emerging downstream, making their tracks hard to find.

At any rate, now they were caught out in the open. Their only choice was to try to swim the river and float downstream. There was no going back, because the Chinese pursuers stood on the riverbank, firing at them.

Bullets plucked at the surface of the water. One of the villagers suddenly clutched at his shoulder and went down, sinking beneath the surface. Another villager stopped to help him.

They were sitting ducks out in the open.

“Take the man on the left,” Cole said to the kid. “After that, pick your targets and aim. Take your time. We won’t have the element of surprise after the first couple of shots.”

“If you say so.”

Cole raised his rifle. Normally, he would have targeted the officer first, but the man appeared to be armed with only a pistol. Considering the range to the fleeing group in the river, it was an ineffectual weapon. Cole ignored the officer and aimed for one of the soldiers instead. He had a rifle against his shoulder and was banging away at the group in the water.

Cole put his crosshairs on the enemy soldier’s mid-section. Nothing fancy at this range, he told himself, and not without any good rest for his rifle. His bullet might not kill the enemy soldier, but it would put him down.

He squeezed the trigger, and an instant later, the soldier fell down. Cole ran the bolt and fired again.

Beside him, the kid had followed Cole’s instructions and taken his time with the first shot. Another enemy soldier fell.

“Got him!” the kid shouted.

That’s two down, Cole thought, not looking up from his own rifle.

However, the kid hurried his next couple of shots, which did at least confuse the Chinese, who ran for cover.

Cole wasn’t as hurried as the kid. He breathed in, breathed out, taking his time. When he finally fired, another one of the enemy fell.

Given a respite from the enemy attack, the pilot and his small band escaped the water and ran for the brush at the river’s edge, where they scrambled out of sight.

The attack by Cole and the kid had managed to surprise and scatter the Chinese. They didn’t seem to know that it was just two soldiers attacking them. For all they knew, it could have been a regiment.

* * *

With his men dropping like flies, Wu had expected to find a squad of enemy soldiers at their backs. Instead, he saw just two men, crouched behind the driftwood debris on the riverbank. For a moment, he was so taken aback that he didn’t even manage to fire his pistol at them.

The two men had been more than effective in rattling Wu’s squad.

Caught by surprise, the others scrambled for the safety of the nearby thicket. Even Deng ran, leading the way to cover. Deng was fearless, but he wasn’t a fool.

At the moment, the same could not be said of Wu. He stood alone like a deer frozen in the headlights, surprised by how close the Americans were. From this distance, he could even see their grimy faces under the brim of their GI helmets. The helmets made the men instantly recognizable as the enemy because Chinese and North Korean troops did not wear such cowardly headgear.

One of the men had something painted on his helmet. With a shock, Wu realized it as what the Americans called a Confederate flag. It seemed impossible, but this appeared to be the same sniper who had tangled with Wu’s prize protege, Li Chen — and ultimately defeated Chen.

Angry now, Wu squeezed off several shots in the enemy sniper’s direction. When the magazine was empty, it was all that he could do not to reach down and hurl rocks at the sniper. Instead, he started running after his men sheltering in the thicket.

* * *

Cole watched the soldiers run off, leaving only one enemy officer by the river’s edge. The officer seemed reluctant to abandon the chase. He stood for a moment, searching for his attackers. He refused to cut and run like the others.

Cole had to admire the man for having brass balls, or the Chinese equivalent. Jade balls? He lined up the crosshairs on the Chinaman.

Through the scope, he could see that the officer had spotted Cole and the kid, then seemed to stare at Cole. Does the son of a bitch recognize me? The officer shouted something and raised his pistol in Cole’s direction. Cole was well out of accurate pistol range, but that didn’t stop the Chinese officer from firing several shots in their direction.

Cole heard the pop, pop, pop of the pistol. Bullets whined around them and Cole hit the dirt.

When he raised the rifle again, the Chinese soldier was disappearing into the brush, following the lead of his men.

Three of the Chinese wouldn’t be going anywhere. Their bodies lay on the sandy riverbank.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Chinaman knew me.”

“Well, did you know him?”

“Can’t say that we’re on a first-name basis,” Cole replied.

The only time when he had been up close and personal with any Chinese soldier had been during the Chosin Reservoir campaign, when he had briefly been captured. That officer hadn’t been there, although the Chinese sniper that Cole had clashed with at Sniper Ridge had been. Things hadn’t turned out so well for the enemy sniper.

“You know, that Confederate flag painted on your helmet kind of gives you away.”

“Huh. I reckon I didn’t think about that.”

“Word gets around, Hillbilly,” the kid said. “They must have figured out by now that there’s an American sniper with a Confederate flag painted on his helmet. I’ll bet those Chinese have a bounty on your head.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll bet you’re worth up to three, maybe four eggrolls by now.”

“In that case, I’m glad that fella missed. Come on, let’s go down and collect our pilot and his friends before them Chinese fellers regroup. That officer looks like he could be ornery.”

As it turned out, the pilot hadn’t gone far. Cole quickly tracked him down in the brush, hiding with the others. They were bunched together, their weapons ready for a last stand.

“Don’t go shootin’ us now,” Cole said.

“You’re Americans?” The pilot lowered his pistol. “Boy, am I glad to see you. The name’s Jake Miller. My plane got shot down.”

“I’m Cole and that there is the Kid. We saw the dogfight, Lieutenant,” Cole said. “When we saw your parachute, we reckoned you might need a little help getting back to our lines.”

Lieutenant Commander Miller’s eyes quickly looked past Cole and the kid to the surrounding brush. “Where’s the rest of your squad?”

“It’s just us. I figured the two of us could move faster and have a better chance of finding you.”

“I won’t complain. Those Chinese had us cornered, that’s for sure. They were following our tracks, so Jang-mi thought we could confuse them along the river, and then circle back. The villagers have a place where they hide in times of trouble, and they even have supplies there. Anyhow, those guys were regular bloodhounds. We couldn’t shake them.”

Cole looked around at the others. He saw an older Korean man and a Korean teenager, who was staring at Cole, wide-eyed. The third Korean was a woman, who was working to bandage the older man’s arm, where one of the Chinese bullets had caught him. Cole took this woman to be Jang-mi. All in all, Cole thought that they had gotten off easy. Another half a minute and the Chinese would have chewed them to pieces.

The young woman met his eyes and said, “You are brave … or a fool.”

Cole raised his eyebrows. “Nice to meet you, too.”

“She’s direct like that,” the Lieutenant said with a grin. “But I’ve got to say, I owe her my life.”

“What happened at the village?” Jang-mi asked.

Cole shook his head.

“Sons of bitches,” the young woman hissed.

“I like this one,” Cole said. “Now let’s get a move on and get back to the line before sunset. Trying to come back through our own lines after dark would be just as bad as having the Chinese after us.”

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