Mortal Allies

CHAPTER 26

You’ll never guess the first face I saw when I regained consciousness. Captain Wilson Bridges, M.D., was standing, head bent at the neck, studying what appeared to be my medical chart. The good news was he was operating in his capacity as a surgeon rather than pathologist. His medical coat had lots of dried blood all over it. The bad news was a fair amount of it was mine.

I said “Hello, Doc,” but that’s not how it came out. I sounded like a bullfrog with laryngitis.

His eyes shifted from the chart to my face, and he moved closer. Holding a finger in front of my eyes, he said, “Follow this.”

I did so as he moved it back and forth.

Then he squeezed my left wrist and looked down at his watch, and I didn’t say a word because I didn’t want to disturb his concentration. It was my body he was scrutinizing. This was no time for him to make mistakes.

He jotted something on that ubiquitous clipboard and placed it back on a hook. I saw two IVs going into my arms.

Captain Bridges smiled. “You’re going to live, Major.”

To which I grumpily replied, “I hurt so damned much, I don’t want to live.”

He chuckled.

“Yeah. Yuck, yuck,” I said.

He chuckled again, which was easy for him, because he hadn’t been shot, knifed by a piece of glass, and had the shit kicked out of him by too many people to count.

“How long have I been here?”

“Since yesterday afternoon. We sent an ambulance to get you after your lawyer called. By the way, you’re a big hero.”

“Yeah? Tell me about that,” I insisted. After all, how often do you go from being a kung-fu punching bag to a hero?

“One of the network news cameras filmed you running through the crowd and chasing off a shooter. It’s been on all the news. Even CNN’s carrying it.”

This, I suppose, explained how Katherine got me released from the Itaewon station.

I said, “How bad was it?”

“You mean the massacre?”

The fact that he chose that particular word to describe what happened was my first indication. I nodded.

He shook his head. “We lost two more this morning. That makes fourteen dead. Ten of the wounded are here; the rest are being treated in Korean hospitals around the city. Our little basement morgue couldn’t handle it. We had to rent a refrigeration van for all the bodies. If you hadn’t chased away one of the shooters there’d probably be two or three more vans parked outside.”

Remember that old saying about how “all politics is local”? Apparently the same applies to hospital departments. The guy was more concerned about morgue space than the pathetic fate of the folks who got in the way of a bullet. Down the hall was probably some little old lady complaining about how many forms she had to type. Three doors away was a supply clerk moaning about… Well, you get the point.

And on that thought, I asked, “And how am I doing?”

“Not bad. You’re probably going to walk with a cane for a few weeks. You’ve got two broken ribs, but from the X rays it seems you’ve broken some ribs before, so you know the drill. I’ve taped them and you’ll have to refrain from exercise or strenuous activity for a while.”

This was no problem as far as I was concerned, because, oddly enough, I’d lost that urge I usually felt to get up and run a marathon.

He reached over and grabbed a hand mirror and placed it in front of my face. I took one look and immediately felt an elephantine wash of pity for the poor ugly bastard staring back at me. You could barely see a single square inch that wasn’t bruised or swollen or scabby. One tooth was missing and another was broken in half. My nose was skewed at an odd angle.

“You were beaten up pretty badly,” Bridges said, in what had to rank as the understatement of the year.

“Oh Jesus,” I murmured, barely able to recognize myself. He quickly yanked the mirror away.

“Hey, you won’t be getting any dates for a while, but it’ll all heal,” he assured. “And you’ll get some shiny enamel teeth that won’t get any cavities.”

Captain Bridges, I was learning, had the bedside manner of a rottweiler puppy.

He grinned and said, “Anyway, there’s a lady waiting outside to see you. She’s been here since you were brought in. In fact, I was instructed to keep you in isolation until she spoke with you. I can throw a towel over your face or put a blindfold on her and lead her in.”

Did I say a rottweiler puppy? I was wrong. A full-grown pit bull.

I was expecting Katherine, but in walked the heartless, bloodthirsty Miss Carol Kim. She stopped at my bedside and looked at my face, then picked up the doctor’s clipboard and studied something. Like I needed this. She was checking the name on the board to make sure the battered wreck on the bed was indeed me.

“Wow, you look awful,” she murmured, studying the clipboard.

I straightened a lock of my hair. “How’s that? Better?”

“Much,” she said with a cold smile, then lowered her tight little butt onto my bed.

She reached out and lowered the bedsheet to my waist. She clinically examined my body, and I looked down, too; there were more black-and-blue patches fairly regularly spaced. There was a bandage on my shoulder, and white tape running around my ribs.

“Wow, they really kicked the stuffing out of you.”

Like I didn’t know that already.

Then she said, “It was a really wonderful thing you did, by the way. We’re very proud of you.”

And I said the perfunctory, “Yeah, well.”

That out of the way, she pulled out a tape recorder, pushed a button, and laid it on the bed.

In an officious tone, she said, “Major Sean Drummond, the United States Army officer who was present at the massacre. The date/time is 10:15 A.M., May 23. The location is the Eighteenth Military Evacuation Hospital.”

She got a very businesslike frown on her face. “Major Drummond, could you please describe what you saw at the massacre site yesterday morning outside the main gate into Yongsan Compound?”

Now she and I, both trained lawyers, were speaking our own phlegmatic language, so I proceeded to detail everything that occurred as factually as I could recall it, from the moment the protesters arrived at the gate right through the multiple beatings I’d received at the hands of the South Korean police. And the kick from Michael Bales, don’t let me forget that point. In fact, I dwelled on Bales and Choi for quite a while, although she didn’t seem interested, even though I wanted it all on the record, real clear. In fact, what I really wanted was Michael Bales’s scalp hanging off the end of my bed for the rest of my life, where I could wake up every morning, gaze fondly at it, and say, “Take that, you prick.”

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, vengeance is one of my strong suits. Or weak suits. Whatever.

When I finally finished, after nearly thirty minutes, Carol Kim picked up her recorder, withdrew the tape, and inserted a fresh cartridge. She went through the introductory motions again, then set the recorder down and studied my eyes. Or should I say, she studied my one eye, because the other one was still swollen shut.

She said, “You stated you heard a single shot behind you before the automatic fire began. Where did that shot come from?”

“I don’t know. It was just a quick pop. But it was from somewhere in the rear of the protesters… or maybe behind the protesters. It didn’t sound too close.”

“Was it a pistol or a rifle?”

“I couldn’t tell. Why, what’s the point?”

“Please Major, answer my questions. I’ll explain later.”

“Okay, fine.”

“Are you sure the Korean police officer you chased was shooting into the crowd?”

“He had an M16 aimed in our direction, the weapon was bucking, and people were getting hit and falling over. Yeah, I’m sure.”

“But he stopped shooting when he saw you coming? Why?”

“At the moment he saw me, he had just emptied a magazine. I saw him reaching into his vest for a fresh mag, then I guess he made a quick assessment and decided he wouldn’t get it inserted before I got to him.”

“How long does it take to change magazines?”

“A highly trained soldier can accomplish it in maybe ten seconds. Someone less familiar with the weapon might take twenty, thirty seconds. You need to push a button to get the old mag out, then ram in the new mag, then pull back the charging handle to chamber a round.”

“The film we’ve viewed shows you were still twenty to thirty yards from him when he dropped the weapon and ran. Why do you think he ran?”

I thought that was a stupid question and responded accordingly. “How about because he was killing people and didn’t want to get caught.”

“Major, please, this is important. The camera shots we got from the news organization are blurry. The cameraman was under fire and swinging the camera around, so the focus wasn’t good. You had a good look at the shooter. Tell me what you think went through his head.”

“What I think was that he wasn’t going to take any risk of getting caught. I had a riot baton in my hand. I was running fast. He was thirty or so yards away and he was a very fast sprinter. He made a split-second choice and it was the wrong one. He should’ve jammed in that magazine and blown me away. Alternatively, maybe he just figured he’d murdered enough people already.”

She cocked her head. “Jump forward to the point where you had him cornered in the shop in the dead-end alley. He fired some shots, and you went down with a shard of glass in your leg. That’s what you said earlier, right?”

“Right.”

“You went in and his corpse was behind the counter?”

“Correct.”

“You rolled him over and the pistol was in his mouth?”

“Correct. At first I thought I’d hit him with a lucky shot, because he was lying on his stomach and there was a big hole in the back of his head. Then I rolled him over and saw his own pistol stuck inside his mouth.”

“So you believe he committed suicide?”

“Unless someone helped him stuff his pistol inside his mouth, I think that’s a fairly safe conclusion.”

“But you saw no one else inside the shop?”

“No. Nobody. And I checked for a rear entrance, because I wondered why he hadn’t simply fled. There wasn’t one.”

“Why would he have killed himself?”

“I don’t know. However, I’d like to go on record as saying I’m damn glad he did. It’s probably the only reason I’m alive.”

She was starting to reach down and shut off the recorder when I reached over and grabbed her hand.

“There’s another thing,” I said. “He was wearing gloves. A pair of white cloth gloves, like you see taxi drivers over here wear. They were soaked with blood.”

“Gloves?”

“Yeah, white ones. I mean, it’s May, so it’s damned hot, and I thought that was odd. What I think is, he was wearing the gloves so there wouldn’t be any fingerprints on the M16. Maybe he and the other shooter planned all along to just drop their weapons and run.”

“You’re sure about the gloves?”

“Of course I’m sure. Check with the Korean police.”

“We’ve talked with the Korean police. They haven’t mentioned anything about it.”

“Well, he was,” I insisted. I mean, it wasn’t a big point, and it certainly wasn’t conclusive, except it implied a degree of premeditation on the shooter’s part.

She shut off the recorder.

“Okay,” I said. “What’s this about?”

A big gush of air came out of her lungs, like someone who’s under a great strain.

“While you’ve been in this hospital a very ugly dispute has erupted between our government and the Republic of Korea. The slaughter, it’s all that’s been on the news. The problem is nobody knows what happened, or why. There’s a war of finger-pointing going back and forth.”

I sat up. “Finger-pointing over what?”

“The protest, or demonstration, was approved by the city of Seoul and was under South Korean civil protection. That much is indisputable. The South Koreans, of course, don’t want to be blamed for the massacre of fourteen American citizens and the wounding of seventeen others. They’re claiming an American protester fired the first shot, then one or two ROK policemen returned fire in self-defense. You yourself admit you heard the first shot fired somewhere behind you. Other eyewitnesses corroborated the same thing.”

I thought about this. It met with the facts. It made sense out of a chaotic event. But it didn’t make complete sense.

“Then why did my shooter run? If he was simply returning fire, why’d he flee? And what about the other one, the second shooter?”

“Nobody’s sure. It’s believed the second shooter was an ROK police officer as well. He was wearing a police uniform and he dropped his weapon and ran. It was an M16 with all the serial numbers filed off. Nobody has any idea who he was.”

“He was an ROK police officer? And they don’t know who he was? How can that be?”

“That’s the question of the hour, isn’t it? There was a lot of confusion at the massacre site. A number of ROK police cars were dispatched to the scene, but nobody was taking a roll call as they arrived. He made his getaway in a police car. That proved to be a very clever move, because the ROK police dispatchers immediately put out a net call for every unit to look for a ROK police car and… well, you can imagine how chaotic that became.”

“And you believe they honestly don’t know who he was?”

“Who can tell? Maybe they’re just covering up. Or maybe they really don’t know. It’s terribly convenient for their side of the story not to have him around for questioning… but it’s also inconvenient, isn’t it?”

“And the shooter I chased, he’s dead, so there’s nobody to say why they opened fire.”

She stood up and straightened her dress. “That’s the gist of it.”

“And it’s their country.”

“Basically, yes,” she replied, picking up the recorder and placing it in her purse. “I’ve got to hurry and get this transcribed and sent back to Washington. For obvious reasons, your testimony is considered crucial.”

Before she could walk out on me, I said, “Hold on. What’s my position in this thing? I mean, if the two police officers were merely responding in self-defense, where do I stand? And what about the fact that the guy I was chasing popped a South Korean in the head?”

“That’s all under continuing investigation. The ROKs admit that you were very brave for chasing him off that hillside. It saved lives. They also think it’s possible he committed suicide. They’re doing an autopsy on his body now. But you’re still being charged with assaulting a police officer, and for stealing his weapon. As for the other body that was found in the alley, there’s still questions about who popped him in the head, as you put it. The bullet that killed him passed through his cranium and hasn’t been found. The poor guy was a mentally handicapped adult.”

Her eyes suddenly narrowed. “I don’t mean to imply that you murdered him in cold blood, but you were involved in a gunfight. You were tense and under great strain, probably on a hair trigger. You didn’t shoot him, did you, Drummond?”

Which I guess was a fairly good indication of what she thought of me.

My response was fairly short of being politically correct. But then, I’m a lawyer. If she tried to slap me with one of those gender crime suits, well, I was drugged and delirious with pain, and therefore wasn’t responsible for my filthy tongue.