Mortal Allies

CHAPTER 24

What Katherine figured was that she would kill two birds with one stone. Colonel Barry Carruthers, the military judge assigned to our case, was set to arrive on a military flight at 7:00 A.M. at Osan Air Base. This much Katherine knew because it was widely reported on the news.

Katherine would have preferred to meet him at the ramp as he walked off the plane, but because he was landing at a military air base, there was no way in hell she’d be able to get her associates through the strictly controlled gates. She therefore calculated the time it would take to get the judge by military convoy up to Yongsan Garrison.

She arranged her welcoming party to meet and greet Barry Carruthers right outside the main gate at exactly 8:10 A.M. And at 8:10 exactly seven buses, two or three dozen taxis, and a few people on bicycles suddenly appeared. Then, after about a minute of people rushing off their conveyances and getting organized, there they were, 620 practitioners of backwards love, most dressed normally, but a select few making a statement with flamboyant outfits.

Right beside them, in front of God and country and some dozen film crews, stood yours truly struggling not to look as uneasy and abashed as I felt. I was in uniform, too. I knew I was going to pay for it, but hey, in for a nickel, in for a dollar.

I was there because Imelda’s sharp criticisms guilted me into it. I was there because I wanted my client to know I was unconditionally committed to his defense. I was there because I wanted Katherine to trust me and let me in on her secrets. I was there because I prayed Katherine was right, that maybe we could gull the Army into cutting a better deal for Tommy Whitehall.

At least she’d done the wise thing and gotten a legal permit. She’d applied through the Seoul mayor’s office using a false name, and under the guise we wanted to publicly welcome the judge. This was technically true, at least depending on your definition of the word “welcome.” Since even the Korean papers had been describing Colonel Barry Carruthers as a Judge Roy Bean kind of guy – the last of the great hanging judges – I think the Koreans were fairly delighted at the idea of an American welcoming party, so they put all the appropriate stamps on Katherine’s request and even promised to provide security.

That’s why there were about two dozen Korean riot police in blue suits, wearing those spiffy shielded helmets and holding black batons behind their body shields. The shields looked badly scratched and dented, because one thing a Korean riot policeman gets plenty of is on-the-job practice.

I could barely imagine what the police were thinking when they spotted us, because there’d sure as hell never been a demonstration like this in the history of the Republic of Korea. The officer in charge of the platoon was on the radio, red-faced and screaming frantically at somebody on the other end, no doubt trying to inform the city officials that this wasn’t a welcoming party after all, but a demonstration, and, hey, you’ll never guess what kind of people are here.

So we locked arms and waited. The camera crewmen were all taking a particular interest in me, since after all, I was the only person in uniform in this crowd. I looked anxiously at my watch. I hoped Carruthers’s convoy didn’t have a radio, or, if it did, that nobody had thought to call and recommend they divert to a different entry point onto post. If that happened, we’d look like a bunch of dopes.

What worried me the most, though, was what would happen when the South Koreans came to a decision about how to handle us. The Koreans, like most Asians, aren’t known for speedy decisions, because they have to go through that mutual consultation crap that’s a cultural imperative for them.

They can surprise you, though. And I wasn’t all that optimistic about how that might turn out. The city of Seoul has something like one hundred thousand riot police, as well as fleets of gray, caged buses parked at strategic locations around the city. And they have radios, and when there’s the first sign of trouble they send up smoke signals and converge with lightning speed on a single point. Katherine had 620 unarmed civilians, about half of whom were women, although some looked fit enough to fend for themselves.

Anyway, I was still calculating the odds of disaster when six of those big caged gray buses came careening down the road from the Itaewon district. And tucked right in the middle of them were two U.S. Army humvees and a black Kia sedan, no doubt containing the hanging judge himself, Barry Carruthers.

The first bus kept moving toward us, although it slowed down considerably, and I could see a Korean in the front hollering something into a radio, no doubt asking for instructions. Apparently he got some, because he turned and yelled at the driver, and the vehicle ground noisily to a halt. Another long minute passed as the guy with the radio kept yipping at somebody.

Katherine breathlessly asked me what was going on. Like I should know. Face it, she had a great deal more experience on this end of protests than I did. She’d probably been in dozens of them, whereas I was a stone-cold virgin.

Then the door of the first bus swung open and riot policemen poured out. A few seconds later the other five buses emptied, until there were what seemed to be two hundred or so blue-uniformed troops, pulling down their riot visors, forming into lines, stretching their muscles, and moving toward us.

As this was occurring a number of blue-and-white Korean police cars began arriving at the scene. Within two minutes, there were about fifteen or twenty cars skewed at various angles across the road. Several dozen policemen were milling around, scratching their heads and wondering what to do.

Katherine had to find the scene unnerving, but she coolly lifted up her megaphone and yelled, “This is a peaceful gathering. We have the authorization of your city mayor to be here. We want no trouble.”

I turned and said, “Think they speak English?”

She chuckled and lifted up her megaphone again. “I repeat, this is a peaceful demonstration.”

I examined the riot police, and it seemed they either didn’t hear her, or comprehend her, or care. They were in a rough semblance of ranks. They began moving steadily toward us, taking two measured steps at a time, straightening their lines, and getting their riot shields positioned into a straight wall. I could hear their officers yelling instructions. I wished I could understand Korean and knew what they were saying.

I looked at Katherine, and she was staring straight at them, but she calmly said, “It’s okay. It’s a standard technique. They’ll keep moving toward us until they get a few feet away. It’s called the bluff and run. They bluff, we run.”

I glanced behind me at the other protesters. Nobody seemed alarmed. Most of these folks were veterans, I guessed. They knew the game. But what if they were wrong? What if the name of this tactic was run and crunch? After all, this was a different country. Maybe American riot-control tactics hadn’t traveled this far.

As for me, I was scared as hell. I’m a soldier and I’ve been in battle a few times, but in battle I was always at least as well armed as the guy I was fighting, so the odds were squared up. Besides, there’s something grim and terrifying in watching all these highly disciplined, robotic-looking creatures moving relentlessly toward you. You can see their batons peeking over their shields, and you get this ugly mental picture of one of those things cracking the top of your skull a few times.

Soon the line was twenty yards ahead of us, then fifteen, then ten, and still they kept right on coming, inexorably – two steps, stop; two steps, stop. When they were only about five feet away, just as Katherine predicted, they halted.

A few newspeople dashed into the narrow space between us and began lying on the ground, taking their camera and film shots from horizontal positions, I guess thinking they could win an Oscar, or a Tony, or a Nobel, or a Pulitzer, or whatever asinine award you get for doing something spectacularly stupid and having visual evidence to prove it.

Katherine stood steady, but I could hear her drawing deep breaths to control her nerves. I could also hear my own heart beating furiously.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, there was a dull pop behind me. Almost immediately, I heard a bunch more shots, the sounds of a weapon shooting quickly, only this racket was coming from somewhere in front of me. And all hell broke loose. People were diving for the ground and screaming, and it wasn’t just the protesters, either, but the riot policemen as well.

I suddenly got knocked forward, right into the ranks of the riot police. I stuck my head up and looked around to see who was shooting. I spotted one man on the hill pointing a weapon – it looked like an M16 – but I heard shots coming from somewhere else, too; somewhere off to my left, I was pretty sure.

The man I’d seen was a South Korean policeman.

I started shoving aside everybody in my path and working my way to the edge of the crowd. Two protesters right in front of me went down with sprays of blood flying from their chests and heads. I saw a riot baton on the ground, bent over, picked it up, then used it to bash my way through the crowd.

Ten feet in front of me, I saw another South Korean policeman lying flat on the ground. I swung my baton and gently whacked him on the back of the head, enough to stun him, then I stooped over and pulled his pistol out of his holster. His hands had automatically reached up to protect his head, so he didn’t put up a fight.

It took only seconds before I was at the edge of the throng and running toward the gunman on the hill. He was still up there, about forty yards from me, and a voice inside my head was saying, Don’t be stupid, Drummond, don’t be stupid, don’t do this, but my legs weren’t listening to my brain, and they kept pumping of their own volition.

Then I got lucky. He’d emptied his clip and was drawing another from a pocket in his vest. He looked down and saw me swinging that baton, sprinting toward him. He made a quick judgment, threw the weapon on the ground, spun around, and fled.

I could still hear someone firing shots from off to my left, but I kept running. The Korean policeman I was chasing was one of those guys with short, squatty legs that pump a hundred times a second. I was taller and my legs were longer, and in a distance race I could take him hands down, but he was a faster sprinter. He was heading straight up a gently sloped hill for the Itaewon shopping district with its thousands of back alleys and shops – a perfect place to get lost and hide.

I looked back up and my target was nearly to Itaewon, about sixty yards ahead of me. I knew this because he was shoving people aside – old ladies, a few young kids, anybody in his path.

I tried to put everything out of my mind. I pumped my legs. My lungs were burning but I struggled to ignore them. I got to a corner street that formed the edge of the shopping district, and I went left. Korean pedestrians were diving out of my path, and for the first time I realized what this must look like to them. First they see a South Korean policeman running fearfully from something; next they see a pursuing American soldier carrying a pistol.

I looked around and couldn’t see the Korean policeman anywhere. He hadn’t crossed the street or I would’ve spotted him. He must’ve disappeared into one of the shops or alleyways on my side of the street. I’d only been to Itaewon two or three times before, so I didn’t know it well.

Then, suddenly, luck again fell into my lap. I saw two women who looked like American housewives toting huge shopping bags loaded with goodies.

I rushed toward them; they both stared at the pistol in my hand.

“Hi,” I puffed out. “Did you” – puff, puff – “did you see a Korean cop?”

One had her eyes frozen on my pistol. She nodded.

“Where” – puff, puff – “where’d he go?”

Her head swiveled toward an alleyway about thirty feet away.

I left them standing there. I came around the corner and Bang! The bullet took about an inch of skin and muscle off my left shoulder. The thing that saved my life was those years of shooter training in the outfit. My response was instinctive. I dove through the air, pistol pointed forward, searching for a target. I heard two more shots as I landed hard on my stomach without acquiring my quarry. The blow knocked the air out of my lungs, but I somehow rolled up to my knees, still sweeping the pistol in a semicircle. Aside from a few mamasans and papasans who were frantically scooted up against the sides of the alley, I didn’t see the shooter.

I tried to draw some air, but it took a few precious seconds to get my lungs inflated again. I stood and moved down the alley, this time more slowly. I kept my pistol up and ready, moving it back and forth in a steady sweeping motion.

I heard a shot down to the left, and I ran. The alley split into two tiny, cramped side streets, and I wouldn’t have known which way to go if it hadn’t been for the Korean civilian lying in the middle of the street. There was a big dark hole in the middle of his forehead and blood was puddling on the cement. His eyes were open and glassy. I knew the look. He was dead.

I sprinted past him, noticing that the street ended abruptly at a big concrete wall. It was a dead end. Now, this is where these things always get tricky, because we all know the warning about the cornered rat, and that’s apparently what I had on my hands.

I slowed to a walk. Staying up against the left wall, I edged along, my pistol raised, ready to shoot the next thing that moved. Something suddenly lunged out of a doorway right in front of me, and I lowered my pistol and nearly pulled the trigger. Thank God I didn’t. It was a small Korean kid who stared up at me with a blank expression. I guess he thought the pistol in my hand was a toy gun, or that I was a movie star and his street was being used as a set, because he then started looking around, like, Hey, where’s the camera?

Keeping my gun up with my right hand, I reached down with my left and grabbed the kid by his collar and tugged him back behind me. He seemed to think this was great fun, because he giggled a lot, and hung right on my tail.

I continued inching forward, when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of movement. I grabbed the kid and fell backward just as three shots struck the window next to where I’d been standing. On the way down I let loose three quick, wild shots at the spot where I’d seen something move, knowing I had no chance of hitting him, but trying desperately to drive him back behind cover.

A few seconds passed. I heard another shot, then nothing. I slowly got up. The kid had realized my gun wasn’t a toy and this wasn’t a Hollywood extravaganza, because there was this stunned look on his face, and his lips were wide open, and he was getting ready to wail. He was staring at my leg, which hurt like hell. I glanced down and saw it was bleeding. Not from a bullet, though. When the shots struck the window, the glass had shattered and a big angular chunk had fallen down and was now protruding in an ugly way from my left thigh.

I have to confess that I’m not the kind of tough guy who can glibly wrench a big splinter of glass out of my leg and just grin and bear it. But I had to do something, so I reached down and tugged on that big splinter of glass and screamed a scattershot of words that thankfully the kid couldn’t understand because his mother would’ve been seriously unhappy with me.

I sat for a stunned moment, trying to make the pain stop, before I realized that no matter how much it hurt I couldn’t stay where I was. So I got up and limped in the direction of the shooter. I kept my pistol pointed ahead. Reaching the corner that led into the shop he’d fired from, I put my back against the wall and edged forward. A few seconds later I was at the doorway.

Most trained police officers will tell you, this is what’s called a truth-or-consequences moment. So let’s start with truth. The only way to get into that shop was through that doorway. Although you see guys do that in the movies all the time, it’s suicide. Doorways are very narrow things, and the shooter’s expecting you to come through, and he’s stationary, and he’s got his gun poised and ready, and he’s going to get you. It doesn’t matter if you go in flying, or rolling, or doing backward somersaults. He’s going to shoot you and then it’s over.

That’s why policemen carry stun grenades and soldiers carry hand grenades, so they can fling them through doorways, wait till they go boom, then rush through.

Only I didn’t have any grenades.

So I stood there for a long difficult moment and contemplated my options. Up against the wall a few feet down there was a big basket filled with clothes. I limped over and retrieved it. I stuffed my pistol in my belt, lifted that basket, and threw it through the doorway.

Nothing. Not a shot, not a sound. Either the shooter had sharp eyes and recognized it was a basket of clothes, or he was simply too smart for me and was holding his fire. Maybe he’d already fled through a back entrance to the shop. If that was the case, with all this warm blood spilling out of the wound in my leg, this game was over.

So here’s where we get to that consequences part. I held my breath, dove through the doorway, and wildly fired my pistol until there were no rounds left. I lay perfectly still on the ground, my ears ringing, paralyzed as I waited for the shooter to peek up from behind a counter and pop me in the forehead.

It didn’t happen. I waited a long time, helplessly sweeping my empty gun through the air. I won’t say I was disappointed, although it looked like my shooter had gotten away. So I got up and looked around, until I eventually peeked over the far side of the counter. And voila! There was my shooter. He was lying on his stomach, facedown, and there was a big chunk blown out of the back of his head.

Now it’s time for a little secret. Among my many shortcomings is a complete inability to fire a pistol with any accuracy. It’s true. I almost didn’t get into the outfit because of it, and over the next five years they brought in all kinds of weapons experts to coach me. All of them gave up in frustration.

I looked at that hole in the back of the cop’s head and said a silent prayer. I mumbled again and again, Thank you, God, for doing this thing for me. When did I get him, God? Was it when I went down back in the street? Did one of those wild shots catch him in the forehead and send him flying backward over the counter? Or was it when I came diving into the shop, guns blazing?

I bent down and turned him over. The first thing I noticed was the barrel of his own pistol stuck inside his mouth. The second thing I noticed was that he was wearing white cloth gloves that were soaked in blood.