Nightmare Range

PAYDAY

The wrinkled sergeant cursed as he held the handkerchief to the knot on his head. Blood seeped through the white linen and trickled down his wrist.

“They were inside the jeep and pounding me before I could pull my weapon.” An army-issue.45 was still holstered and buckled to his canvas web belt. “I don’t know why she stopped. Probably just wanted to give them a ride.”

Ernie and I were standing in the big black-top bus parking area next to the two-story red brick building that housed 8th Army Finance.

Ernie paced back and forth, watching the bleeding staff sergeant, studying him. “Let me get this straight, Holtbaker. You and this second lieutenant Burcshoff pick up the Aviation Detachment payroll here at Finance, you load the briefcase full of money into the jeep, you start to drive off, and she stops to pick up a couple of guys standing on the curb?”

“They waved us down.”

“Then they jump in the jeep,” Ernie continued, “club you on the head, shove you onto the sidewalk, and drive off with the jeep and the money and Second Lieutenant Burcshoff.”

Holtbaker nodded. Blood puddled in the cuff of his green shirt.

“Did she put up any sort of a fight?” I asked.

“Yeah. I think she went for the pearl-handled pistol she carried, something passed down from her old man, she told me, a retired colonel. But these guys were ready. She didn’t have a chance.”

The sergeant described them. One tall and blond, the other average height, brown hair. The blond guy was somewhat thin. The brown-haired guy was average weight. No distinguishing characteristics. They were both wearing sneakers, blue jeans, and nylon jackets-what every off-duty GI in the country wears.

A typically miserable description from a witness.

“When they made their getaway,” Ernie asked, “who drove? Second Lieutenant Burcshoff or one of the hijackers?”

“How the hell should I know? By then I was facedown on the sidewalk.”

“How much money was in that briefcase?”

“The whole monthly payroll for the Aviation Detachment. Over ten thousand bucks.”

Ernie and I canvassed the area for witnesses. At the Moyer Recreation Center, no one had seen anything. These thieves were quick and professional. Get in. Get the money and the jeep. Get out. Not your typical GIs pulling some caper.

“What’s our next step?” Ernie asked.

“They have a jeep, they have a satchel full of money, and they have a female second lieutenant. What we do is put out an allpoints-bulletin and wait for one of those items to turn up.”

Ernie pulled out another stick of ginseng gum, unwrapped it, and popped it into his mouth. “Hopefully, it will be the second lieutenant.”

I nodded in agreement. “And hopefully, she’ll be alive.”

“Always preferable to dead.”

Ernie’s wish came true. A half hour later we received a call from the Korean National Police in the city of Kimpo, about fifteen miles west of Seoul. They had Second Lieutenant Burcshoff. She was alive. She was on the phone. Shouting.

“They took everything! The money, the jeep. I can’t believe it but the sons of bitches even took my goddamned.45!”

I held the phone away from my ear. She didn’t sound frightened, she sounded angry as hell. I told her to remain calm. Ernie and I would be there in a few minutes. We drove to Kimpo.

Second Lieutenant Constance R. Burcshoff held herself as if she were constantly at attention. The Korean cops stared at her surreptitiously, appalled that a woman would be wearing a fatigue uniform and combat boots, but she ignored their amazement.

“The thieves kicked me out of the jeep about two miles from here,” she said. “In the middle of a few acres of rice paddies. I caught a tractor into town.”

“They didn’t try to hide their identity?”

“They made me lie facedown in the back of the jeep. Still, I caught a glimpse of both of them.”

The description she gave didn’t match what Sergeant Holtbaker had told us. This time the blond guy wasn’t as tall and not quite so thin. The brown-haired guy seemed a little chubbier in her description. None of it gave us much to go on.

We drove Lieutenant Burcshoff back to Seoul. She sat ramrod straight in the back seat of the jeep, staring straight ahead, occasionally touching the empty holster at her hip.

Ernie offered her a stick of ginseng gum. She refused. I tried to engage her in conversation, but she didn’t want any part of it. I’d already checked her personnel records. She had earned her reserve commission from a Southern military-agricultural school, and she came from a long line of army officers. Her father had retired as a colonel and her grandfather had been a general in World War II. She even had ancestors who’d fought on both sides of the Civil War.

Lieutenant Burcshoff was the only female assigned to payroll officer duty and she was the only payroll officer who’d been robbed. I couldn’t tell which was worse for her, the humiliation of being robbed or the humiliation of losing her grandfather’s pearl-handled.45.

All the way back to Seoul she sat with her face set in stone.

That afternoon the stolen jeep turned up at the Seoul train station. Ernie and I hustled over there.

It was parked in front of the main red brick building next to other military vehicles belonging to the 8th Army Rail Transportation Office. There were many ways to leave the train station: by train, bus, subway, or taxi. Ernie and I interviewed a few of the ticket sellers and the security officers who controlled the taxi queue, but no one remembered two Americans in civilian clothes parking a jeep and walking away.

There were plenty of fingerprints on the jeep, none of which were likely to do us much good without the perpetrators.

Back at the CID office we were told that General Skulgrin, the commanding general of 8th Army, was hopping mad that someone would steal an army payroll. He wanted the thieves caught and he wanted them caught immediately, if not sooner.

Overseas, GIs are paid not in greenbacks but in Military Payment certificates. The theory is that Communist agents won’t be able to hoard a bunch of US dollars and buy arms on the international market. Also, government officials fear that a few tons of US green in the local economy could lessen the value of the won, the Korean currency. Eighth Army has a press in Japan that prints up the MPC and each bill is assigned a serial number. Since GIs generally aren’t big spenders, there are no denominations larger than a twenty.

At 8th Army Finance, Ernie and I obtained a list of the serial numbers issued to Lieutenant Burcshoff. We passed it up the chain of command to the provost marshal, who showed the 8th Army CG. The next thing we knew, 8th Army Finance had a task force formed to search all incoming MPC and report the appearance of any of the stolen bills.

We heard a lot of grumbling from the finance clerks. It was going to mean a lot of extra work for them.

Ernie and I had the easy job, waiting for one of the stolen bills to turn up.

About three days later, one did. Turned in at the bank on Yongsan, the headquarters compound for 8th Army. The problem was that it was part of the main PX cash deposit. No telling who had spent it there. Maybe one of the thieves. Maybe somebody they’d passed the bill off to. We were no closer than we had been.

It was a little disheartening, but Ernie and I took it philosophically. There was no way the crooks could leave the country with that much MPC. Every bag on every flight leaving Korea, whether military or civilian, is searched by a customs agent-one of the benefits of investigative work in a country that lives in constant fear of terrorism.

On the fourth morning after the robbery we caught a break.

The alert siren sounded, vehicles were prohibited from entering or leaving the compound, and the commanding general declared all Military Payment Certificates null and void. Everyone in 8th Army was instructed to turn in their old MPC to their unit commander in exchange for the new Military Payment Certificates. They were bright orange. The old bills had been blue.

At 5 P.M., close of duty day, all the old blue MPC would become worthless.

The change in MPC made the finance clerk’s search a lot easier. Everyone who turned in the blue MPC had to produce military identification and sign a register that said how much they were exchanging and, if it was over a hundred dollars’ worth, declare the source of the money.

A lot of lightbulbs burned at 8th Army Finance that night. Ernie and I paced the reception room, sipping coffee, waiting for something to break. Nothing did.

At about oh-dark-thirty, one of the clerks tapped my arm. “You Agent Sueño?”

I rubbed my eyes. “That’s me.”

“Here’s the register with the stolen bills. A whole stack of them.”

Ernie rose from a vinyl-cushioned couch, stretched, and leaned over me and the clerk as we studied the register. “MED-DAC,” I said. The 8th Army Medical Command. “Six hundred bucks. Turned in by Specialist Four Crossnut, Reginald R.”

A Spec 4 pulls down about two hundred and fifty dollars a month.

The clerk pointed to the remarks section of the register. “Claimed he made the money gambling.”

“The old standby,” Ernie said.

In the latrine, we splashed water on our faces and then ran outside. The first fingers of dawn crept over distant hills. On the wide cement porch we almost bowled over Lieutenant Burcshoff. She wore an immaculately pressed dress green uniform that clung to the curves of her lean body.

“You have a lead?” she asked.

Ernie grinned. “We got ’em nailed. Just a matter of time now. When you see those two thieves again, they’ll be standing in a lineup.”

A shadow of concern crossed the even features of her face.

We didn’t have time to chat. Ernie and I ran to the jeep and drove to the barracks of the 8th Army Medical Command.

Specialist Four Reginald R. Crossnut wasn’t tall and blond, and he wasn’t short with brown hair. He was black. And pissed off when Ernie yanked on his mattress and rolled him out of his bunk. He hopped to his feet, swinging bony fists, cursing.

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

Ernie shoved him up against a wall locker.

“We’re CID agents,” Ernie told him. “And we’ve been up all night and we’re pissed off and we don’t like thieves. Where’d you get the six hundred dollars in MPC?”

Crossnut’s eyes widened, realizing the trouble he was in. He glanced back and forth between us. Ernie and I looked as if we hadn’t shaved in a week.

“The money is mine!” Crossnut said. He tried to wriggle out of Ernie’s grasp, but it didn’t work. “I won it in a poker game.”

Ernie clicked steadily on his ginseng gum, breathing into Crossnut’s face. “Gambling isn’t legal in Korea, Crossnut. Not on compound. Not off compound.”

Apparently Crossnut hadn’t considered that. His brow wrinkled.

“You can tell us the story of where the six hundred bucks came from,” Ernie continued, “and be on your way. Or we can arrest you right now for illegal gambling. Self-confessed.”

He shoved Crossnut higher up against the wall locker. I stepped in closer. “Who’s your black market mama-san, Crossnut?” I asked.

“Ain’t got no mama-san,” he replied. Ernie knotted his fist and cocked it. He wasn’t acting. I’d seen him rough up suspects before. Crossnut studied Ernie’s face and apparently lost all doubts about his intentions. “I got a papa-san,” Crossnut said.

“Out in Itaewon?” I said.

Crossnut nodded slowly. “You going to bust me?”

“Only if you lie to us.”

He studied our faces: tired, grim ready to punch out his lights if he didn’t open up. “His name’s Mr. Kang. Works out of the back of the Black Widow Club. He’s a good dude. Knows how to treat the brothers. You mess with him, you’ll have a lot of dudes down on you.”

Kang wasn’t much of a papa-san. Still in his twenties, he was too young for the role, as skinny as a broom handle, and wearing a red silk shirt and three gold chains around his neck. We were in the empty bar of the Black Widow Club. The place reeked of barf, beer, and disinfectant. All the chairs were turned up atop the cocktail tables, and an old woman sloshed suds on the floor with a dirty mop.

Kang chain-smoked between lips that were too thin. “Where I get MPC not your business,” he said.

Ernie grabbed a handful of red silk and leaned into his face. “If you want, Kang, we’ll call the Korean National Police. The commanding general of Eighth Army is pissed to the max about this stolen payroll. All it takes is one phone call from him to the KNP honcho and they’ll have you locked in the monkey house for twenty years.”

Ernie shoved him back. The cigarette flopped out of Kang’s mouth and sizzled in the slick suds. His eyes narrowed as he straightened his shirt.

“A lot of GIs change money in Black Widow Club,” Kang said. “How I know which one?”

“Six hundred dollars,” I said. “You remember.”

Kang shrugged, thinking it over. His black market and illicit currency exchange operation depended on the cooperation of the Korean National Police. He probably paid them a stipend each month to look the other way. But if a lot of grief rolled downhill from the 8th Army commander and the chief of police of the Yongsan precinct, the local KNPs would be embarrassed. And when corrupt cops get embarrassed, they also get angry. And they take it out on the crook who embarrassed them.

All these thoughts played themselves out on the features of Kang’s shifty face. Finally, muscles stopped twitching. He’d made his decision.

“Maybe you no believe,” Kang told us. “The guy with the six hundred, he not soul brother.”

“Who was he?”

“Everybody surprise. Tall white dude walk in Black Widow Club, ask for me, want to do business. Later I check. He do business with a lot of black market mama-san. Change MPC in Itaewon.”

“So you weren’t his only stop?”

Kang shook his head.

It figured. With ten thousand dollars to exchange for Korean currency, the thief would have to use more than one fence. Later, he could take the won to a Korean bank and use them to buy international money orders in US dollars. Mail them home. Stuff them in a bank account somewhere.

“What was this dude’s name?” Ernie asked.

“I don’t know. Tall. White hair. That’s all I know.”

“You must know something more about him.” Kang didn’t answer. “Think hard, Kang, or your next interrogation will be conducted by the KNPs.”

Ernie smiled. Civil liberties were about the last thing the local Korean cops were worried about.

Kang took his time lighting another cigarette. “He have black stuff on his fingers,” he said. “Like maybe he work on car. Later I see him with other GIs.”

“You know these GIs?”

Kang nodded.

“And they’re all in the same unit?”

Kang nodded again.

“Which is?”

“Twenty-one T Car.”

The 21st Transportation Company (Car). The main motor pool for 8th Army headquarters.

When Captain Turntwist, the commander of 21 T Car, saw two CID agents stride into his office, his narrow forehead crinkled like an accordion.

“What have they done this time?” he asked.

The troops of the motor pool weren’t known for being sedate during their off-duty hours. They ran a neck-and-neck contest with the 8th Army Honor Guard for the number of times one of their members appeared on the MP blotter report.

I ignored his question. “I’d like to see a roster of duty assignments for your drivers.”

Ernie pulled out another stick of gum and looked at me curiously. He had expected us to look through the personnel folders, searching the official photographs for two GIs who matched the descriptions give by Sergeant Holtbaker and Lieutenant Burcshoff. I had another idea.

Without argument, Captain Turntwist instructed his company clerk to provide me with the information. After ten minutes I came up with a list of names. I showed them to the captain. “Is one of these men tall, blond, and thin?” I asked.

Turntwist took the list out of my hands and studied it. “Yeah. Three of them,” he said.

“Does one of those three have a best buddy who is average height with brown hair?

He stabbed his finger at a name. “Dartworth, Private First Class.”

I found his name on the assignment list. “He’s been driving a sedan for the Protocol Office.”

“Right,” Captain Turntwist said. “Shuttling officers to and from Eighth Army social functions.”

“You need a personable guy for that.”

“That’s why we selected him.”

“And his buddy’s name?”

“Frankton.”

“Where are they now?”

“The entire unit’s in the auditorium. Mandatory winter driving class.”

“We need to talk to both of them.”

Captain Turntwist told the clerk to pull them out of training. While we waited, Ernie and I walked out onto the big cement entranceway.

“What made you look at their assignments?” Ernie asked.

“Something about this case has been bugging me. A few things.”

“But Protocol,” Ernie said. “Why would a couple of payroll thieves have anything to do with the Eighth Army Protocol Office?”

We heard the heavy tromp of combat boots down the hallway. “No time now,” I said.

Dartworth was indeed tall and blond, and good looking enough to have a shot at doing Hollywood hair oil commercials. His short buddy, on the other hand, would’ve looked more at home modeling leopard skins. The tight muscles of Frankton’s wide shoulders were knotted, as were his fists.

I decided to start with the formalities.

I pulled a copy of the Uniform Code of Military Justice from a bookshelf behind the clerk’s desk and handed it to the commander of the 21st Transportation Company (Car). “Captain Turntwist,” I said. “Would you do me a favor and read these two gentlemen their rights?”

We questioned them in separate rooms and it took only a few minutes for Frankton to confess. It was all his tall, good-looking buddy’s idea, he said.

“Dartworth knew what time they’d be picking up the payroll, how much it would be, even the name of the sergeant who would accompany the payroll officer.”

“How’d he know all this?” Ernie asked.

Frankton shrugged. “A friend told him.”

“A friend?”

“For the last couple of months my good buddy Dartworth has been popping an officer and a lady.”

We waited. I almost whispered the question. “Lieutenant Burcshoff?”

Frankton nodded. “That’s right. Lieutenant Burcshoff.”

While we searched their rooms, I explained to Ernie what had made me decide to look for a driver who might’ve had some chance of meeting Lieutenant Burcshoff prior to the robbery.

The first thing that seemed screwy was her stopping for a couple of GIs in civvies who stood on the curb and waved her down. Sharing rides is common in 8th Army but not when you have ten thousand dollars in military payroll in the back seat.

And the fact that she’d been vague in her description of the two thieves although she was a top graduate of her reserve officer class. Sergeant Holtbaker, who’d been bopped over the head, had noticed more detail than she had.

Also, when Ernie and I picked her up in Kimpo, she couldn’t believe that the thieves had stolen her treasured family heirloom, the pearl-handled.45.

What had she expected from a couple of payroll hijackers? Normally they’ll take anything of value. Her shock didn’t make sense unless she knew more about these two particular thieves than she was willing to tell us.

And outside 8th Army Finance this morning, when Ernie told her that the arrest of the culprits was imminent, she seemed sad. Not elated.

In Dartworth’s locker we found eight thousand dollars’ worth of the old blue Military Payment Certificates.

An MP patrol arrived. They handcuffed Dartworth and Frankton and took them to the MP station to be booked.

It was then that something dawned on me.

“We’ve got trouble, Ernie.”

“What trouble? We wrapped up the case.”

“Not completely. What about her pearl-handled pistol?”

“You worry too much, George. Those two jerks probably sold it on the black market.”

“Not a gun they didn’t.”

Korea has total gun control. Only the military and the police are allowed to possess firearms. Because of the threat of North Korean Communist spies, trafficking in guns has only one penalty: death. And it is enforced. Absolutely. Even the people who run the black market wouldn’t be foolish enough to buy firearms.

Ernie nodded, seeing my point. “So what did Dartworth do with it?”

“Only one place that makes any sense.”

“What’s that?”

“He gave it back to Lieutenant Burcshoff.”

“Good. She owns it. So what’s the problem?”

“She’s the problem.”

I made a call to the Aviation Detachment headquarters and spoke to the commanding officer.

“Lieutenant Burcshoff? No. We’ve been looking for her, too. She disappeared about an hour ago. Not like her. Not like her at all.”

I slammed down the phone. Ernie and I ran to the jeep.

We found her in the Women Officers’ Quarters. Sitting in the recreation room, television off, small refrigerator humming in the corner. She seemed calm. Wearing cutoff blue jeans and a loose sweatshirt with the name of her alma mater blazoned across the front. She looked exactly like a hardworking young woman relaxing on her day off except for one thing. She pointed the barrel of her pearl-handled.45 right between my eyes.

Ernie lifted his hands slowly out to his sides. “It won’t do any good, Lieutenant Burcshoff. Just tell the truth, and it will all be over soon. Maybe you were in on it with them, maybe you weren’t.”

She barked at him. “I wasn’t in on it with them. It was the sonofabitch Dartworth.” Her eyes started to glisten with tears. “I know it was wrong, an officer fraternizing with an enlisted man. But I met him while he was driving us to the Officers’ club. He seemed so cheerful. So full of life.”

With the back of her hand she wiped away the tears, still keeping the pistol trained on us.

“So it wasn’t your fault,” Ernie said. “You didn’t know that Dartworth and his buddy were going to hit Sergeant Holtbaker over the head. You didn’t know they were going to steal the payroll. All you did was stop when he waved you down.”

She shook her head. “I did more than that.”

Ernie and I waited. The silence grew long. Finally her eyes blazed with fury. “I didn’t shoot the sonofabitch!”

Ernie and I flinched. I started to edge my way along the wall. If she had to swivel to take aim, she might not be able to plug both of us.

As quickly as it had come, the fury subsided. “It’s a matter of honor,” she said. “The money in that satchel was the hard-earned pay of soldiers in the Aviation Detachment. Soldiers under my command. Not receiving it when they were supposed to receive it caused a lot of hardship. Rents they couldn’t pay, groceries they couldn’t buy, money they couldn’t send home to their families.”

And booze they couldn’t buy down in the red light district, I thought, but I didn’t say anything.

She gazed at us, eyes wide, as if wondering if we’d understand. “It was my duty as an officer, as one sworn to obey the orders of those appointed above me, to protect that payroll. With my life, if need be. I should’ve pulled out this pistol and aimed it at Dartworth’s blond head and blown his damn brains out!”

Ernie held out his hand, expecting the gun to go off. It didn’t. She paid no attention to our discomfort but seemed wrapped in a world of her own misery. Ernie took a step to his left.

“Instead, what did I do?” she asked. “I took the soft way out. I thought of my own feelings, of my own failure to live as an officer first and as a woman second. I didn’t live up to my responsibilities.”

“Hey,” Ernie said. “You liked the guy. Of course you didn’t want to kill him. You’re only human.”

Coming from Ernie, the biggest woman-chasing, booze-guzzling ville rat in 8th Army, I almost laughed out loud at the remark. Lieutenant Burcshoff shook her head vehemently.

“My dad told me becoming an officer would be tough. My grandfather told me it would be tough. They told me if I couldn’t handle the job, if my personal life was more important to me than doing my duty, then I should never put on the uniform of an officer of the United States Army.”

Most of the officers I knew only talked a good game. The truth was that they always put their careers and their personal goals above their duty to God and country. I was about to tell Lieutenant Burcshoff this when a red light flashed outside the window. Ernie glanced over. “The commanding general,” he said.

A line of staff cars led by an MP jeep pulled up in front of the Women Officers’ Quarters. A blue flag spangled with four stars fluttered in front of the longest sedan. Someone at the MP station must’ve notified the CG, General Skulgrin, that we were on our way to arrest one of his officers.

When Lieutenant Burcshoff glanced outside, Ernie stole another step toward the humming refrigerator. “The CG is here for you,” I told her. “Because he respects you and doesn’t want anything to happen to you.”

“You’re lying,” she said. “It’s just more MPs come to arrest me.”

The commanding general of 8th Army, tall and lean and craggy-faced, climbed out of the back seat of his sedan. “I’m not lying,” I said. “He’s come to help you.”

“It’s too late, she said. “I’ve humiliated my family. I’ve dishonored the officer corps.”

With his back against the refrigerator Ernie could reach one of the plateglass windows. He rapped his fingers lightly and caught the attention of one of the MPs outside. As he turned and looked, Ernie flipped him the bird.

The MPs face crinkled in rage. “Screw you too, Bascom,” he shouted.

That was enough for Lieutenant Burcshoff to swivel her head and the barrel of the pistol along with it. I took two running steps and leapt across the couch. Ernie charged at the same time.

Lieutenant Burcshoff, with the reflexes of a tennis pro, backed off at the last moment. Ernie and I crashed into one another. Still, I was able to fling out my right hand and grab hold of one of her wrists. With all my strength I wrenched her arm toward the ground. She screamed, jerked her arm away, and twisted the barrel of the.45 toward her mouth.

Ernie kicked and flailed beneath me. A shot rang out. The smell of gunpowder exploded up my nostrils.

Heavy boots pounded down the hallway, and a herd of elephants crashed through the door.

I kept grabbing and turning and twisting, hoping to keep her from firing again. Finally a pair of knees ground into my back. MPs knelt above me and handcuffed my hands. In the confusion no one knew who was friend or foe. They sat me up against a bookcase.

They dragged Ernie, kicking and screaming, behind the safety of the couch.

General Skulgrin, the 8th Army commander, marched into the room. He knelt next to Lieutenant Burcshoff, one khaki-covered knee sopping up a puddle of blood. He turned his head and bellowed an order. “Get an ambulance! Now!”

Ernie was till wrestling with the MP he’d given the finger to. I heard knuckles crack on bone, and then reinforcement held Ernie to the ground until he finally stopped struggling.

General Skulgrin stuck gnarled fingers into the base of Burcshoff’s neck, feeling for a pulse. There wasn’t much left of the top of her skull. Finally he spoke to the MP officer hovering nearby. “Cancel the ambulance. She’s dead.”

He started to reach for the pearl-handled.45. A voice erupted in the room. To my surprise I realized it was mine.

“Don’t touch it! That pistol belongs to her! Not to her father. Not to her grandfather. Not to anyone else. It belongs to her!”

All eyes in the room stared at me, figuring I’d gone mad.