Red Phoenix

CHAPTER 2 Opening Round

General Jack McLaren leaned forward and rapped sharply on the divider. “Stop the car right here, Harmon. I want to see what the hell’s going on up ahead.”

His driver grinned back over his shoulder. “Anything you say, General. This is about the end of the line anyways. Looks like a doggone parking lot up there.”

McLaren snorted and popped the car door open — and started to sweat as Seoul’s hot, sticky summer air rolled into the air-conditioned limo. It was worse out on the pavement. Heat waves shimmered and danced along the mass of stalled cars now backed up all along Sejong-Ro — Sejong Street — the wide, multilane boulevard cutting north to south through Seoul.

McLaren shoved his heavy uniform cap squarely on his head and leaned back in through the open door. “Doug, you’d better get on the horn to their high-and-mightinesses and tell ’em I’ll be late … but do it diplomatically, of course.”

His aide nodded and reached for the command phone on the seat beside him.

McLaren turned away and began working his way up the street through the crowds. He frowned. Street vendors along the sidewalks were hastily packing away their goods, and department store clerks swarmed alongside them hurriedly unrolling steel mesh screens to cover display windows showing the latest Western fashions. Other drivers had gotten out of their cars and stood trying to see what had caused the tie-up.

By the time he’d gone just a couple of hundred yards, the reason for the traffic jam was obvious. Several hundred helmeted South Korean riot police had blocked off the whole multilane boulevard. Some were putting up crowd control barricades while others started waving cars off onto some of the smaller east-west roads feeding into Sejong-Ro. Bulky armored cars mounting water cannon and tear gas grenade launchers were parked behind the police line. McLaren could see the walled U.S. embassy compound several hundred feet past the barricades.

It’s like damned clockwork, he thought. It’s September in Seoul, so it must be time for another friggin’ student demonstration. Another few months of tear gas, rocks, and a bunch of puppydog kids yelling their heads off for “democracy” and “economic rights” — things they had heard about but didn’t really understand. There had been three already, all in the week since classes started. Each had been large and well organized, and each had been bigger than the one before.

He squinted up into the dazzling noontime sky. Seoul’s skyscrapers cast giant, gloomy shadows across Sejong Street, but wherever they left an opening, the sun seemed murderously hot. Bad time for a demonstration — “mob weather” they called it. The time when hot, muggy weather and harsh sunlight could drive people crazy, could make them snap without the slightest warning.

McLaren kept walking toward the police line. An officer — a lieutenant by his bars — braced and saluted him. McLaren returned the salute. The officer, of course, knew him on sight.

The lieutenant smiled. “Good morning, General McLaren. How can I be of service?” His English was pretty good, almost accentless.

“Well, for one thing, I’d appreciate it if some of your men here could get my staff car out of that mess back there and through your barricades. I’ve got a meeting with your President and Joint Chiefs up at the Blue House in just a few minutes.”

The lieutenant snapped to attention. “At once, sir.” He turned and snapped a string of orders in Korean that sent two of his troopers jog-trotting down the street toward McLaren’s car. Then he turned back to McLaren. “We will have your vehicle through this obstruction shortly. And, if I might suggest, sir, it would be a good thing to leave this place as soon as possible. We are expecting a… how do you say… a ‘spot of trouble’ presently.”

McLaren looked up the street. “Yeah. I heard there was supposed to be a demonstration today, but my liaison officer told me it was expected further southeast, near the cathedral.”

“It did start there, sir, but the rioters have broken past our barriers and they are marching in this direction. We are most concerned about this disturbance. Several Combat Police have already been injured. One group was isolated, surrounded, stripped of their equipment, and badly beaten.”

McLaren frowned. And how many kids have you guys put in hospitals, today? But it wouldn’t be a good idea to ask that question aloud. Instead he just nodded. “Sounds bad, all right.”

The South Korean officer kept smiling, but his smile seemed a little too fixed, and he kept swallowing. McLaren couldn’t figure out if the officer was more rattled by the presence of Commander Combined Forces-Korea so near a demonstration, or by the demonstration itself.

He eyed the men along the police line carefully. Christ, what a bunch of green kids. They all had their helmet visors up, but their uniforms were soaking up the heat. They hadn’t formed ranks yet. They were just standing around in small groups, talking, and although he couldn’t understand much Korean, their voices made one thing damned clear. These kids were as nervous as a preacher waiting in line at a cathouse.

Then he saw the kicker. The thing he should have seen right away. Half these Combat Police conscripts weren’t carrying their usual riot shields, nightsticks, and tear gas guns. They had very real M16s slung over their shoulders. And friggin’ bayonets, too.

McLaren’s face tightened and he leaned forward to stare right into the police officer’s eyes. He kept his voice low and hard. “Jesus Christ, Lieutenant. Just what the hell is going on here?” He stabbed a finger toward the fully armed troopers. “Riot troops with rifles? What stupid bastard ordered that?”

The Korean stared at McLaren. At an inch over six feet, the broad-shouldered, barrel-chested American general towered over him. Ice-cold gray eyes glared down above a bent, often-broken nose and below the close-cropped white bristles of a regulation military crew cut. The general’s face was the face of a man who’d soldiered in half a dozen of the world’s most godforsaken climates — sun-browned, leathery, square-jawed, and lean. It was the face of a man born to command.

Nervously, the lieutenant licked his lips. “I have my orders, sir. Radicals and communists are marching here from the Myongdong Cathedral. They have declared their intent to assault the Blue House and depose our president.”

“Hell,” said McLaren, “they always say that.”

“Sir, we cannot take such threats lightly. The disturbances have grown more violent each day, and this one has been most difficult to control. These criminals may think they can actually reach the palace. But they will not get through this line. It is all planned, sir. My men will fire a volley over their heads to force them back — if the tear gas doesn’t work.”

The lieutenant straightened up. “Those are my instructions, sir. And my men and I will carry them out. We cannot allow these terrorists to cause trouble this close to the Blue House — or this close to your embassy for that matter.

“In any event, General, this is an internal matter. And I am not under your command.” The Combat Police lieutenant seemed slightly more at ease now that he had remembered that. He saluted sharply and moved back to his men.

McLaren stared after him — working hard not to explode in rage. The trouble was, the little son of a bitch was right. As the overall commander of all the regular military forces in South Korea, McLaren could control the movements of more than six hundred thousand South Korean and American troops. But he didn’t have any authority over the country’s internal security and paramilitary units, and so he could not issue orders to this one half-assed Combat Police junior officer. There wasn’t any way around that — not in time for it to matter anyway.

His long, black staff car, paced by two sweating policemen, pulled up beside him, and Corporal Harmon stuck his head out the window. “Hey, General, sir. We’re out and ready to roll.”

McLaren climbed into the backseat and slammed the car door shut. “Did you get through to the Blue House, Doug?”

“They’ve canceled today’s meeting, sir. Something about this upcoming demonstration ‘requiring immediate attention.’ ” His aide laughed. “Whatever that means.”

McLaren jerked a thumb out the window as they passed through the rifle-armed Combat Police. “Well, I’ll tell you. It sure as hell doesn’t mean anything good. Let’s head up to the embassy to check in.”

They sat back in silence as the car moved toward the gates of the American embassy compound. But as the Marine sentries at the entrance came to attention, McLaren leaned forward again. “Hold it, Harmon. I’m getting out here.”

He turned to his aide. “Doug, you go on into the embassy and report in to HQ. Get a status report on the demonstration and try to find out if the CIA has any idea why the South Koreans are so goddamned spooked. Meantime, I’m going to go back and eyeball this one — I don’t like the feeling I’m getting about all of this.”

McLaren noticed his aide and driver exchanging rueful looks as he got out of the car. Well, let them. He knew they didn’t approve of his gallivanting off into a “situation,” but they’d also learned the hard way not to try to stop him. He just didn’t see the point in holing up with the ambassador while something explosive was happening just outside the embassy’s gates.

It really was none of his business. After all, student protests often seemed like a national sport in South Korea. The season ran from the time school opened in September until winter set in during November — and then it reopened in the spring until the summer monsoon closed it down in June. At times the protestors and the Combat Police — the ROK’s internal security force — acted as though they were simply carrying out some age-old ritual. But then somebody would get killed — hit in the head by a tear gas grenade, torched by a homemade, paint-spray flamethrower, or beaten to death in a wild street melee. When that happened, it wasn’t a game, and everybody damned well knew it.

Combat police did not carry rifles. Whoever gave that order was scared of something. He wanted to find out what, before the kimchee really hit the fan.

He moved back down Sejong-Ro and stood on the sidewalk watching as the streets emptied of civilian traffic and filled up with truckload after truckload of green-jacketed riot police. It was very quiet now and growing hotter as the sun climbed directly overhead.

Then he heard it. Softly at first, but growing louder with every passing second. A rhythmic sound that seemed to echo off the tall buildings around him. Then he recognized it. It was the sound of thousands of voices chanting, yelling the same phrase over and over: “Tokchae Tado! Tokchae Tado! Down with the dictatorship! Down with the dictatorship!”

The Combat Police at the barricades heard it too. McLaren saw their officers — including that s.o.b. lieutenant — cursing and kicking them into formed ranks. The engines of the armored cars behind them caught and roared into life. The turrets with the water cannon and tear gas launchers turned to point down the empty street.

McLaren was tall enough to see over most of the riot police, and he could just begin to catch glimpses of the front rank of the crowd marching up the boulevard. He whistled softly to himself. There were a damned lot of them — thousands at least. And their shouts were even louder now that they’d seen the police line.

Most of them didn’t look like the longhairs who’d taken to the streets in the States while he was in Nam. They wore clean clothes and neatly cropped hair. But they were also wearing handkerchiefs and surgical masks over their faces to block out tear gas. And there was something unnerving about their relentless approach.

Despite the heat McLaren felt a chill run up his spine. This felt a lot like combat, but it was too mechanical, too predictable. It was like watching some kind of animated physics diagram — high-velocity mass meets immovable object. McLaren knew what bothered him most about it all. He wasn’t in charge and he couldn’t do a single thing to change the outcome.

Suddenly he tensed. Someone was behind him. It was the same feeling he’d had just before that damned Cong sniper put an AK round into his right leg back in Nam. Without turning around, McLaren stepped into the shelter of a store doorway and chanced a look back down the street. He started and had to stop himself from laughing out loud. It wasn’t a rifle scope that he’d sensed. It was the big lens on a TV camera.

But he ducked back into the doorway all the same as the CNN cameraman and his assistant jogged past toward the barricade line. It wouldn’t do at all for the folks back home to see an American officer in full uniform standing around in the middle of a South Korean protest. That’d be just the sort of thing that would give the nervous Nellies in the Pentagon PR office the fits.

Twenty yards down the street the cameraman clambered onto the hood of a parked car to get a better shot of the demonstrators surging toward the police barricades.

“Tokchae Tado! Tokchae Tado! Tokchae Tado!” The chant was even louder now, and growing more guttural, more threatening. McLaren couldn’t hear the orders being yelled to the Combat Police, but suddenly the front two ranks brought their Plexiglas shields up and drew their nightsticks.

The demonstrators closed to within fifty yards, then forty, thirty, twenty. Bricks and bottles started clattering off the riot troopers’ raised shields. McLaren snarled. What the hell were they waiting for?

Now. A grenade launcher on one of the armored cars coughed. Others followed suit, and McLaren saw a white mist of tear gas billowing above the crowd, drifting downwind south along the street. He waited for the water cannon to open up. But the damned idiots had parked them too far back. The armored cars were rolling forward, but it was too late. The protestors were too close.

They smashed into the front ranks of the riot police — shoving barricades aside, wrenching at plastic shields or kicking under them, and still screaming, “Tokchae Tado!” The police fought back, clubbing students with their nightsticks and slamming shields into their faces. McLaren saw demonstrators going down with blood streaming from cut foreheads or broken noses. It wasn’t enough.

The barricades were down, and the police line was beginning to give. There were Combat Police on the ground now, lying curled up as demonstrators kicked them savagely. Others were being pulled into the crowd or shoved sprawling back into their ranks. The students sensed victory, and more and more of them fought their way forward through the press to get at the police. McLaren saw an officer stagger back, his face smashed by a thrown brick. The stupid bastard hadn’t had his visor down.

McLaren stepped out of the doorway. It was just about time to go. When the police broke and ran, it was going to be every uniform for itself.

But he stopped. The rear ranks of the Combat Police had unslung their rifles and were stepping forward — bringing them up and aiming over the crowd. And there was that damned lieutenant, getting ready to drop his hand to signal a volley like he was on some parade ground.

Then it happened. McLaren couldn’t see what caused it — a thrown rock or bottle, an accidental elbow in the side, or just plain gutless stupidity — but somebody’s M16 went off on full automatic, spraying twenty high-velocity rounds into the struggling crowd of protestors and Combat Policemen.

Everything seemed to slide into slow motion for a moment. Bodies were thrown everywhere inside the deadly arc described by the assault rifle’s bullets. A spectacled student’s face exploded as a round caught him in the right eye. A Combat Policeman fell to his knees and then onto his face — a widening, red stain welling from the bullet holes in his back. A pretty girl stared in horror at the place where her hand had been. Others staggered back or fell over to lie crumpled on the pavement.

Then things snapped back into focus. The people in the front of the crowd were screaming and trying to run — trying to force their way away from the carnage around them. But the thousands of protestors pouring north along Sejong Street couldn’t see or hear what had happened ahead, and they kept pressing forward — shoving the screaming men and women in front ahead of them.

Oh, shit, McLaren thought. That did it. The other young policemen had been staring in shock at the bloody tangle of bodies at their feet. But now, as the mob surged closer, they panicked. First one, and then the rest, started firing into the crowd at point-blank range.

Dozens of protestors were cut down in a matter of seconds — smashed to the pavement in a hail of automatic weapons fire. As they fell in writhing, blood-soaked heaps, the crowd finally began breaking, with hundreds, then thousands, of people screaming, turning, and trying to run.

But the Combat Police were now completely out of control. They began moving forward, still firing. And McLaren could see some of them fumbling for new magazines. Goddamnit, some of those bastards were even reloading!

Without thinking about it he left the doorway and started to run toward them. Maybe he could kick some sense into those frigging morons. But it was probably too late for that.

They were already chasing after the screaming crowds scattering back down Sejong Street. Some were still shooting, firing from the hip as they ran. Others contented themselves with clubbing any student within reach.

McLaren saw one trooper pause, aim, and send a long burst into a small group of pleading men and women cowering in front of a department store display window. They were thrown back in among the bullet-riddled mannequins.

He kept running down the street, but a muffled cry following a sharp groan brought him skidding to a stop. He turned. There, not ten feet away, was a crazy-eyed Combat Policeman trying to tear the TV camera out of the hands of the CNN cameraman he’d seen earlier. The soundman sat slumped against a car door, hands pressed to his face with blood running out between them.

That, by God, was too damned much. McLaren didn’t much care for most reporters, but these guys were Americans, after all. He charged in, pulled the riot trooper around by his combat webbing, and sent a right cross smashing into the man’s face. The Korean staggered back, and McLaren followed up with a left into his stomach. The trooper grunted and fell over gasping for air. McLaren felt himself grinning despite himself. Not bad for a man in his fifties.

He turned to the cameraman kneeling by his partner. “Can he walk?”

The reporter nodded. “Yeah. I think so. But we’re gonna have to help him along.” He slung his equipment across his back. Then, for the first time, he took a close look at McLaren. “Jesus, man. I don’t think I’ve ever been rescued by a real, live U.S. cavalryman before.” He stuck a hand out. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

McLaren shook hands. “No problem.” He bent down to take one of the dazed soundman’s arms. “Right now, though, I think it’s time to get the hell out of Dodge.”

With the wounded man stumbling between them, they lurched up the street toward the American embassy. Behind them, McLaren could hear the rattle of automatic weapons still echoing throughout Seoul’s city center. It sounded like all hell was breaking loose back there. It might spread across all of South Korea. And if it did, he and his troops were going to get caught right in the middle.