Red Phoenix

CHAPTER 25 The Big Picture

McLaren walked into the tent almost unannounced. A few people near the door noticed his entry and started to straighten to attention, but he waved them down. Everyone was too tired and too busy to waste time with Regular Army bullshit.

McLaren was tired, too, but not as exhausted as he had been earlier. Once they’d got the Army’s field HQ up and running, he’d bugged out for a four-hour nap in his command trailer. He’d long ago learned the old soldier’s lesson that you should grab sleep whenever and wherever possible. It had been drummed into his head as a company and battalion commander in Nam.

He scanned the worn faces of his staff. It was obvious that he’d have to start enforcing the same kind of sleep discipline on them. He didn’t want men too tired to think straight trying to run his army’s logistics or write operations orders.

McLaren saw Hansen in the far corner and caught his eye. His aide nodded and moved to the front of the large, wood-floored tent that served as the HQ’s Operations Center. Hansen stepped up onto a low platform backed by wall-sized maps.

“Gentlemen, the general would like to get this afternoon’s brief underway.” Officers around the tent looked up at Hansen’s words and moved to find chairs.

McLaren sat in the front row.

Normally briefings were set-piece affairs, the presenters in their best uniforms, following a ritual older than they were. Everyone afraid of making a mistake in front of the big boss, but wanting to do their best, too. The room was always as still as a church, except for the briefer’s voice and the whirr of a projector showing carefully prepared slides.

That kind of protocol had gone right out the window when real bombs started dropping. Now there were people running in and out with printouts and other scraps of paper. Everybody was in cold weather gear and BDUs, mottled baggy uniforms that were worn in combat. Everyone wore a sidearm. And now a chance to sit down meant a chance to eat.

A paper plate materialized in front of McLaren. Corned beef sandwich, chips, and pickles. His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t put anything in it since early last evening. He picked up the sandwich and bit into it, chewing wolfishly. Some of his own fatigue fell away at the first taste.

Still chewing, he glanced up at the short, portly officer waiting to kick the briefing off — Colonel Logan, his J-2.

McLaren didn’t like the expression on Logan’s face. He was worried, a little wide-eyed. Well, let’s see what we’ve got to be worried about, the general thought.

“Good afternoon, sir. I’m going to start with a short rundown on what we now know of the North Korean drives and their order of battle.” Logan looked down at his notes, took a deep breath, and said, “Finally, I’ll try to indicate likely courses of enemy action over the next several days.”

In other words, McLaren thought, he’s gonna try to predict what the bastards will do next. Good luck, Charlie.

Logan walked over to a map that had been taped up on the tent wall. It showed all of the DMZ and the upper third of South Korea. McLaren leaned forward, eager to get the big picture. He had been out of circulation for four hours.

“North Korean forces are making attacks all along the DMZ. They’ve had their greatest success in the west and have gained the most ground there.” Logan tapped the map with a pointer, indicating an area running from roughly Tongjang in the west to Ch’orwon in the east. “This is flattest terrain and the easiest to attack over, especially with the rice paddies frozen. Their assaults along the eastern portion of the DMZ haven’t been backed by the same level of firepower or Special Forces support. We’re evaluating those as holding attacks — intended largely to pin down our troops in the east.”

McLaren nodded to himself. No surprises there. South Korea’s geography closed off a lot of North Korea’s offensive options. The mountains and razor-backed ridges running down the eastern half of the Korean peninsula formed a natural barrier to ward off any would-be attacker.

Logan continued his dry-mouthed recitation of the available facts. “In the west, we face two main attacks. One launched down Highway One by the North Korean Second Corps, and the other moving down Highway Three along the Uijongbu Corridor. That one’s being spearheaded by the enemy’s Fifth Corps. Both corps have been heavily reinforced. We’ve identified elements of at least two armored, four mechanized, and eight infantry divisions in these attacks.”

There were gasps around the room. Neither enemy force had been listed on the Eighth Army’s prior OB charts as containing more than half that strength. Somehow the North Koreans had been able to double the number of their troops along selected portions of the DMZ without alerting either American or South Korean intelligence.

“The enemy’s Fifth Corps drive has already captured Yonch’on. In the west, they’ve pushed up to the outskirts of Munsan.” Logan looked soberly at the assembled officers. “In other words, the North Koreans are already across the Imjin River.”

McLaren scowled. That was bad. The Imjin had always been viewed as a principal backstop for the allied forces deployed along the DMZ. Prewar staff studies had estimated it would take the North Koreans a minimum of two days to push that far south. They’d done it in less than sixteen hours.

And Munsan was a quarter of the way to Seoul. Seoul was the center of it all. It had a population of eleven million in a country of forty million people. Damn the geography that placed the political, cultural, and economic center of the country within forty kilometers of a hostile border.

Logan finished describing the known positions and strengths of the attacking forces. They were pushing hard, using Soviet steamroller tactics — attacking everywhere until they found a weakness, then concentrating everything at that point. McLaren listened to his J-2 with half his mind. The other half was busy considering options. The North Koreans were showing they could play the Soviet ball game well, demonstrating a dangerous grasp of speed and offensive firepower. But there were weaknesses, too. Weaknesses he and his troops would have to be ready to exploit. Soviet tactics weren’t too flexible. If they could find ways to seize the initiative, to disrupt the smooth unfolding of the North Korean plan, they should be able to throw the enemy commanders off balance.

McLaren filed the thought away for future consideration and turned his full attention back to the briefing. The J-2 had moved on to a discussion of the new North Korean equipment they’d identified so far. One of Logan’s assistants came up front with a slide screen and another turned on a slide projector. The first image was a fuzzy black-and-white shot, so blurred it was only a collection of angular shapes. It was an airplane.

“This was taken from the videotape of a fighter that fought last night. This is a MiG-29 Fulcrum, a Soviet design that has been recently added to the enemy inventory. It’s a very advanced aircraft, a match for our F-16s. But that’s not all. The Soviets have provided the North Koreans with other weapons.”

He put up another slide. In color, it showed several tanks against a typical Korean winter landscape. “These are T-72 tanks, one generation advanced over the T-62s that we thought were their newest models. It has a bigger gun, better armor, and is much faster than the T-62. This is a complete surprise to us.”

A buzz of conversation swept through the crowded Operations tent, and Logan waited for it to die away before continuing, reacting to the irritated disbelief he’d heard from his fellow staff officers: “Yeah, I know.” He looked at the general.

“Sir, I am very embarrassed that we didn’t know about this new equipment in the enemy’s inventory. We had some information from ROK Army Intelligence that the stuff was present, but it was disregarded because we couldn’t confirm it by our own sources. We’re reevaluating our data, but we don’t know what other surprises we may have overlooked.

“On the bright side, they can’t have too much of this new equipment. Therefore, we can expect that it will be reserved for important attacks, and its appearance may signal enemy intentions.” McLaren saw several of his officers making a note of Logan’s observation.

The lights came back up.

“Okay, Charlie, whip out your crystal ball.” McLaren tried to make his voice lighter than he felt. He’d always disliked senior officers who let their pessimism infect those around them. He was determined not to make that same mistake.

“General, there can’t be much doubt that the North Koreans intend to carry this thing through all the way. They’ve committed an enormous percentage of their available military resources to this operation — their whole Special Forces outfit, and a sizable chunk of the regular Army, Navy, and Air Forces. And satellite data shows heavy rail traffic heading south from the second echelon encampments around Pyongyang, Wonsan, and Hamhung. Clearly, they’re trying for a knockout punch before our reinforcements from the States arrive and before our reserves here complete their mobilization.”

Logan laid his map pointer dead center on the large, orange blotch that marked South Korea’s capital city. “Now. Seoul is the first big prize, and the NKs have two choices — either head directly for the city or use their two assault columns to envelop and surround it.” McLaren agreed with his assessment. It wasn’t brilliant military insight, but he was probably correct. The North Koreans weren’t going to be subtle. They didn’t need to be. They had numbers and momentum on their side.

Brigadier General Shin, deputy J-3 for the Combined Forces Command, took Logan’s place on the platform. His chief, Brigadier General Barret Smith, was still enroute back to the ROK from a Christmas leave in Japan. Shin’s precise, cultured, perfect English painted a bleak picture of the situation the American and South Korean troops faced.

Casualties in first-line units had been heavy — more than thirty percent in some battalions. And North Korean commandos had inflicted significant losses on a number of extremely important rear-area units. The troops facing the enemy thrusts down Highway 1 and Highway 3 urgently needed reinforcements, replacements, and resupply.

For example, the South Korean brigade holding Munsan, a strategic road junction, was under attack by at least two enemy divisions with heavy air and artillery support. After nearly a day of continuous fighting, its three infantry battalions were down to half strength. The brigade’s commander and most of his senior staff officers were dead. Antitank and small arms ammunition were running low. Without immediate assistance, the senior battalion commander reported that Munsan would fall within four to six hours.

“Unfortunately, gentlemen” — Shin’s face was impassive — ”we don’t have any help to send. Not that can get there in time to matter. All our available forces are fully committed.”

Similar situations were being duplicated all up and down the line. No out-and-out North Korean breakthroughs had been reported so far, but it could only be a matter of time before their tanks started tearing holes in an ever thinner allied defense.

Additional American ground troops were on the way, but they couldn’t possibly begin arriving in significant numbers for several days. The same thing went for South Korea’s hastily mobilizing reserves.

McLaren shifted in his chair, pushing his empty paper plate off to one side. “What about the air situation? We need replacement aircraft and pilots almost as much as we need troops.”

“F-15s from Kadena, Japan, will be arriving shortly, General. We’ve been notified by Washington that other U.S.-based squadrons will be airborne later today. They should be available for combat missions within twenty-four hours. Your Navy also reports that two carriers, Constellation and Nimitz, are on the way. Nimitz is the closest, but her attack squadrons and fighters won’t be in range until the day after tomorrow.”

McLaren sat back, pondering. Not a pretty picture, but not Fort Apache, either. “Okay, we’ve got a lot of help coming, but we’re on our own for at least the next few days. We’ve got to slow down the North Korean push with what’s on hand.”

He got up and strode to the front of the tent, getting a closer look at the map. “General Shin, I want you to assume that Munsan will fall to the enemy. Start preparing the next main line of resistance here.” His finger stabbed the small town of Pyokche, just fifteen kilometers north of Seoul. “Reinforce it with whatever odds and ends you can scrape together.”

McLaren turned to face his officers. “That road junction is the key, gentlemen. If the enemy’s assault column presses its drive past Pyokche down the MSR, we’re looking at a direct push to grab Seoul. If it swings southeast, toward Wondang or thereabouts, we’re in for an envelopment and we’ll plan accordingly.”

He folded his hands behind his back. “All right then. We’ve already ordered the evacuation of American noncombatants and unattached civilians. It’s time for the next logical step. Put out the word to all U.S. installations in Seoul to prepare for evacuation. Headquarters and command functions will go to Taegu, all the support stuff to Japan.”

He looked over at the Air Force liaison officer. “Jim, your boys have done well so far, but I’m gonna need everything they’ve got.”

The colonel nodded. “Yes, sir. We have thirty aircraft shuttling between Kimpo and Japan now. There’ll be twice that many in eight hours, and we’ll double that again in sixteen. We’re even calling up Reserve C-130 units.”

“Good, but see if you can even push that. Given the current pace of the NK advance, I can’t guarantee the safety of the airfield for more than two or three days, and there’s a lot of people to move.”

He heard helicopters clattering overhead, growing louder, and saw Hansen signaling him from the back of the tent. His “guest” was arriving. Time to wrap the brief up with a quick pep talk. “Okay, gentlemen. That’s it for now. But I want you to keep this in mind. They got the drop on us, but we can hold these bastards. Every hour we can delay the enemy buys time for our reinforcements to arrive. And when we get enough troops on hand we’re gonna kick these s.o.b.’s back across the Z with their tails between their legs.”

McLaren looked around the tent. Everyone was writing, looking at the map, or looking at him. They looked slightly less unsettled, and that was about all he could expect right now.”Anybody got anything else?”

Nobody spoke.

“All right then. Let’s get down to it.”

The assembled officers scattered back to their duties. McLaren pushed through the crowd toward Hansen.

“General Park and his entourage are here, sir.”

“Great. Okay, Doug, separate out all the ass-kissers and bring ’em here for a mini-brief on the overall situation. Make ’em feel like they’re doing something.”

Hansen grinned and asked. “What about the general?”

“Get him up to my command trailer. Park and I have a few things to go over in private. Mano-a-mano.”

Hansen grinned wider, sketched a quick salute, and left. McLaren followed him out the tent and then headed for his trailer. This was going to be touchy.

The Chairman of the South Korean Joint Chiefs showed up on his doorstep a few minutes later. Park wore impeccably tailored combat fatigues, a cold weather parka, holstered.45, and a helmet he took off as soon as he stepped inside the narrow-bodied trailer.

McLaren met him with a firm handshake and led the Korean over to a canvas-seat director’s chair. He settled into a similar chair and willed himself to be patient through the next several minutes of meaningless pleasantries as Park conveyed his government’s gratitude for the aid being sent by the United States and repeated the ROK’s firm commitment to the unified command structure.

That was what McLaren had been waiting to hear, and he used it to raise a crucial issue: the release of the South Korean officers being held in detention camps for their part in General Chang’s abortive coup. He wanted them back in the field, commanding their units.

Park was outraged. “What you ask is impossible! These men are traitors, conspirators.”

McLaren kept his tone level, but he spaced his words out enough to let Park hear the determination behind them. “I’m not — asking — anything, General. The situation we face is critical. Meeting it is going to take a one-hundred-percent effort from every man in this country — Korean and American alike. And without the officers you’ve got rotting in those camps, a lot of my ROK units aren’t operating up to par. I don’t want any more fiascos like the one up at Kangso this morning.”

The word on that had come through just before the staff briefing. A South Korean infantry battalion commanded by a major whose only obvious military credential was unquestioning loyalty to the Seoul government had been ambushed enroute to the front. The major had panicked and fled — leaving his troops to try to fight their way out of the trap without any command coordination or support. Three hundred of them had been killed by a force of North Korean commandos probably mustering less than half of that number. A total of twenty-three NK bodies had been recovered from the ambush site.

“We can’t afford that kind of exchange ratio, General Park. Hell, we just plain can’t afford to let a bunch of political amateurs try to play combat soldier while there’s real shooting going on.

“Now I’m not talking about the officers that were actually conspiring with Chang. They can hang. They should hang.” McLaren leaned forward. “But we both know that DSC cast its net pretty wide after the coup attempt. You know many of the men being held. A careful reevaluation of the information that led to their arrest should show that most of them are loyal to the government.”

Park frowned. He’d been around long enough to know that what McLaren saidmadesense. He had fought inVietnamand knew how valuable experienced leaders were. He sat quietly for a moment, obviously considering his response. McLaren waited, knowing he held the upper hand on this one.

A minute passed in uneasy silence until Park said, “Very well, General McLaren. I’ll speak to the President and present your case to him. I think I can get them released.”

The Korean looked up from his folded hands. “But I must warn you, General, that my government will hold you responsible for their actions should they betray us again.”

McLaren nodded calmly. “I wouldn’t expect anything else.” He stood abruptly. “Now that’s settled, let me show you what we’re up against.”

He led the way back to the Operations Center.

Anne Larson looked at chaos. The systems programming division could be a little crazy, especially if the computer went down, but this went beyond all reason.

First there were the phones. North Korean commando targets in the Seoul area had included communications centers and automated switchboards, and now the phone service was all snarled up. Her people were spending five minutes just trying to get through to someone on the other side of town. And a lot of the phone numbers for supply and combat units were unusable, because the troops were in the field and there was no way to reach them.

On top of that, and despite the lousy communications, it seemed like every logistics officer in the ROK was determined to get a complete list of everything in his inventory. She scowled. If they’d been doing their jobs, they wouldn’t have to ask her. One low-level idiot had even called demanding a data dump of everything stockpiled in Korea! She’d hung up on him, hard.

Anne punched a button on her terminal, sending a main-gun-barrel spares list for the 1st of 72nd Armored into the already overloaded print queue. She rolled her desk chair back and stretched, wincing slightly at the pain in her lower back.

It had been a long night and an even longer day. Tony hadn’t been able to get leave from Kunsan so she’d had to make an appearance at the office Christmas party by herself. An hour surrounded by buzzed, hard-up, and horny junior staff officers had seemed like an eternity. She’d stuck it out long enough to avoid being talked about and then left — half-angry with Tony for not being able to be there and half-angry with herself for feeling lonely. Three months before she would have taken the whole thing in stride.

It had taken her a long time to go to sleep. She was deeply disappointed in not spending the evening with Tony. She missed him and missed sharing the holiday with him. She hadn’t even been able to give him his present. As she tossed and turned her last thoughts were of him.

The alert sirens had woken her an hour later.

At first she’d thought the high-pitched wail rising and falling above Seoul was something to do with Christmas, some Korean custom she had never heard of. But the sirens kept on and on — ending in a tremendous, rattling explosion that had knocked books off her shelves and lit up her bedroom window for an instant with an eerie, orangish light. Then she’d heard jets loud and close overhead. Tony had told her that aircraft were never allowed to fly over Seoul.

She’d still been sitting upright in bed half-asleep when the jet engine noises roaring all over the city were suddenly mingled with sharper cracking sounds. Shrapnel from antiaircraft shells bursting overhead had started pattering down on the street outside, sounding a lot like a hard, metallic rainstorm. And while her conscious mind sorted out all the obvious clues, Anne’s subconscious had already had her moving. Out of bed and into her clothes. She’d been fully dressed by the time she allowed herself to think the answer. They were at war.

Just thinking the word “war” made Anne’s stomach turn over. She shook off a mental picture of herself ripped apart by bombs. She thought about Tony trapped in a flaming cockpit, trying to get out … stop it. That wasn’t getting her anywhere. Anne rolled back to her keyboard, fingers punching up a new menu without conscious thought. Her mind drifted back again to the events of last night.

At least she hadn’t gone running out into the street in panic like a lot of her neighbors. Instead she’d sat by the telephone, trying to get through to the base general information number. Nothing. Every time she tried calling, the line was either dead or busy.

After nearly an hour of frantic dialing, Anne had given up and retreated to the apartment’s tiny kitchenette to consider her next move. The U.S. Armed Forces — Korea radio station was silent, off the air, and she couldn’t make out any details in the Korean language broadcasts spewing out of the government-owned stations. Without any solid information, one side of her mind had wanted very much to stay hidden in the apartment. But another side had argued that she would be needed at the Logistics Center and should report in for work.

She’d been right in the middle of this internal debate when the phone started ringing. Anne had grabbed for the receiver, started to speak, and then stopped in midword as she realized it was a computer-generated call relaying a taped message.

“This is the Eighth Army Information Center with an urgent message for all civilian contract personnel employed at the Yongsan base. At oh two hundred hours this A.M., North Korean forces commenced open hostilities with U.S. and South Korean troops stationed along the Demilitarized Zone.” Well, it’s official, she thought. The recording continued, “Accordingly, the base commander has declared a general alert and ordered all base employees to report to their respective work stations.

“However, civilian employees are cautioned to avoid using personal or public transportation. Special buses are being dispatched to pick you up at your place of residence. Wait for the bus dispatched to your location. All employees with dependents should bring those dependents with them. Make sure that you have the following items: your military ID card, passport, special medical information and prescriptions, and a minimum kit with spare clothing and portable personal valuables. Each person boarding a bus will be limited to one, repeat, one suitcase.” Anne had sat still while the taped message recycled and repeated.

For a moment after hanging up, she hadn’t known whether to be relieved now that she knew for sure what was going on or even more frightened. She’d finally shelved the question and started packing, figuring there’d be time enough later to sort out her feelings.

Beep. Anne pulled out of her reverie and glanced at the screen. Damn, she’d misentered a whole field of data. Start thinking, woman. She shook her head and started over again.

Now the bus ride, she thought, that had been frightening. She’d been picked up just before dawn by a green-painted Army bus escorted by a street sweeper to push shrapnel fragments aside and a jeep filled with M16-toting MPs. The trek to Yongsan had been an hour-long, circuitous crawl through Seoul’s streets. They’d stopped every so often to load on more of her coworkers and their families.

The capital’s boulevards had been strangely empty of the normal, morning rush-hour traffic. And Anne had seen fully equipped South Korean soldiers posted at every major intersection. Storefronts all along their route were still covered by roll-down metal shutters.

Their arrival at Yongsan’s main gate had only reinforced her uneasiness. MPs in bulky flak jackets had boarded the bus and scrutinized every passenger’s identification. Others stood on guard on the pavement outside, weapons at the ready. And she’d glimpsed still more troops hurriedly building sandbagged machine gun nests at intervals along the perimeter fence.

Anne shook her head slowly, remembering the blackened, torn, and gutted buildings, the debris-strewn streets, and the shattered windows she’d seen on the way from the gate into the Logistics Center. The place looked as if it had been hit dead center by a tornado.

It hadn’t taken long, though, for word of the North Korean commando strike to sweep through the crowds of newly arriving civilian workers. Rumor had magnified both the numbers and the casualties they’d caused.

As if the thought had been a premonition, she heard someone yell, “Commandos! There’s gook commandos outside!”

Oh, God. Anne hit the save button on her computer, jumped out of her chair, and ran to the window, along with the rest of the staff. Ed Cumber, one of her programmers, stood shaking, pointing outside at a truck parked in front of their building. Korean troops in full combat gear were jumping out the back and taking up positions along the street.

Anne started to back away from the window, then stopped and looked closer. There were American soldiers intermingled with the Koreans, talking calmly, sharing cigarettes with them.

She shook her head and looked disgustedly over at Cumber.

The tall, bleary-eyed programmer shrank a little under her gaze and tried to defend himself. “Well, I thought … I mean, they were jumping out of the truck, and they…”

“I don’t want to hear about it, Ed. Just because everybody else is panicking doesn’t mean we should,” she said sternly, aware that she’d jumped the gun just like all the rest.

Phones were ringing in the office while everybody stood and looked at the motionless Korean soldiers.

“Back to work!” They scattered.

Anne moved back to the computer terminal she’d taken over earlier that morning, but she altered course when she saw her secretary waving her over. Gloria was on the phone, listening intently and scribbling notes. “Right, right, uh huh, got it. Okay, I’ll pass the word.”

She hung up as Anne came over.

“It’s official, Anne. We’re supposed to prep for possible evacuation. They’re going to start sending all civilian contract workers to Japan sometime in the next forty-eight hours.”

Anne stood still for several seconds. Japan. She was going to get out of this mess. Then her mind whispered, But what about Tony?