Retreat, Hell!

Retreat,

Hell!

THE CORPS is respectfully dedicated to the memory of

Colonel Drew James Barrett, Jr., USMC 19 April 1919-1 May 2003

Second Lieutenant Drew James Barrett 111, USMC

3 April 1945-27 February 1969 Died of wounds, Quang Nam Province, Republic of Vietnam

Major Alfred Lee Butler III, USMC

4 September 1950-8 February 1984

Died as the result of terrorist action, Beirut, Lebanon

Donald L. Schomp A Marine Fighter Pilot

who became a legendary U.S. Army Master Aviator RIP 9 April 1989

^PROLOGUE

Until August 1945, when General Order Number One, the protocol for the surrender—and occupation—of Japan was being somewhat hastily drafted in Wash­ington, the 38th Parallel, which runs across the Korean Peninsula, had been just one line on a map of the globe.

At the time, World War II was just about over. Nagasaki and Hiroshima had been obliterated by atomic bombs, and Japan was willing to surrender. The Soviet Union had just—somewhat belatedly—declared war on the Japanese Empire, and had already started to move troops into the Japanese "Protectorates" of Manchuria and Korea.

President Truman, who had already learned not to trust the Soviet Union, re­alized that to keep the Red Army from occupying all of Korea, a border— "a de­marcation line"—between the northern part of the Korean Peninsula and the southern, where the United States planned to station troops, was needed.

If Korea was divided—about equally—at the 38th Parallel, the United States would control Seoul, the capital, and the major ports of Inchon—near Seoul—and Pusan—at the southern tip of the peninsula.

The division at the 38th Parallel was proposed to the Soviets as the demarca­tion line, and they raised no objections. The seeds for what became the People's De­mocratic Republic of North Korea and the Republic of South Korea were sown.

Four years and eleven months later, the Inmun Gun—the Soviet-trained North Korean Army—invaded South Korea across the 38th Parallel with the announced intention of "unifying" Korea.

The attack officially—and in fact—came as a "complete surprise" to the United States. United States intelligence agencies at all levels had failed to perform their basic duty to warn of an impending attack on the United States or its allies.

It was hard then—and still is, more than half a century later—to understand why we didn't see the attack coming.

Immediately after World War II, Stalin had managed to establish surrogate governments in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia—and North Korea. On 5 March 1946, in a speech at Fulton, Missouri, British Wartime Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill said, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. "

President Harry S Truman had become very suspicious of Soviet intentions even before he ordered the use of atomic weapons against Japan, and he had acted to foil them.

For example, Truman had courageously dispatched American advisers—actu­ally the first special forces/operations soldiers, long before anyone even thought of wearing a green beret—to Greece, where they successfully thwarted Soviet intentions to take over the birthplace of democracy.

And when the Soviets tried to force the Americans, French, and English from Berlin, Truman had ordered the Air Lift, which saw U.S. Air Force transports landing round the clock at sixty-second intervals to keep Berlin fed, and the West­ern Allies in the former German capital.

Many historians now believe that the reason Stalin authorized his surrogate North Korean Army to invade South Korea is that the United States had actually led him to believe we would raise no objections.

On 12 January 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson outlined President Tru­man's Asian policy in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D. C. Ache-son "drew a line" of countries the United States considered "essential to its national interests, "a euphemism everyone understood to mean the United States would go to war to defend.

Acheson placed Japan, Okinawa, and the Philippines within the "American de­fense perimeter. " Taiwan and Korea were not mentioned.

The United States was then "completely surprised" five months later when, in the early morning of 25 June 1950, the North Koreans invaded across the 38th Parallel.

Not that twenty-four hours'—or ten days' or six months'—advance warning of the attack would have been of much real use: The Inmun Gun was well trained, well disciplined, and well armed. The South Korean armed forces were not.

The South Koreans had been denied, for example, heavy artillery because some of Truman's advisers believed they might use it to invade North Korea. South Korea had also been denied modern aircraft, tanks, and other military hardware by the same reasoning. And, of course, for reasons of economy.

There were only several hundred American troops in South Korea on that Sun­day morning, assigned to the Korean Military Advisory Group (KMAG), and they were armed only with their individual weapons.

The Eighth United States Army was scattered among the islands of Japan, but it was not prepared to fight a war.

Blame can fairly be laid for this:

The President of the United States, under the Constitution, is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The authors of the Constitution wanted to make ab­solutely sure that the armed forces were firmly under civilian control, and gave that control to the President.

With that authority, of course, came responsibility. It is the responsibility—the duty—of the President to ensure that the armed forces are prepared to wage war when called upon to do so. In practical terms, this means the President ensures that the uniformed officers in command of the armed forces meet their responsibilities to keep their forces in readiness. In turn, that means that the armed forces are trained and equipped to go to war.

There is little question now that the senior American officer in the Pacific, Gen­eral of the Army Douglas MacArthur, failed in his duty to make sure that the Eighth Army under his command was both trained and equipped to go to war. On 25 June 1950, it was neither.

That it was not adequately trained is entirely MacArthur's fault, but to place blame for the literally disgraceful lack of equipment in the Eighth United States Army, it is necessary to go all the way to the top of the chain of command.

United States Forces, Far East, were under the command of the Joint Chief of Staff. MacArthur repeatedly advised them of the sorry state of his equipment, and requested to be supplied with what he believed he needed.

The Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs—there were several during this period—re­peatedly requested of their superior, the Secretary of Defense, that the U.S. Armed Forces worldwide (not only MacArthur's forces in Japan) be adequately supplied with the necessary equipment.

Truman's Secretary of Defense, Louis Johnson, openly boasted at the time that he had first cut military spending to the bone, and then cut some more.

He had. At Johnson's orders, there were two battalions (instead of the three con­sidered necessary) in most of the U.S. Army's regiments. And there were two regi­ments (instead of three) in all but one of the divisions.

The Secretary of Defense is, with the advice and consent of the Senate, ap­pointed by the President. Once Louis Johnson had been confirmed, President Tru­man was responsible for his actions, good or bad.

The blame for the inadequate equipment in the Eighth U.S. Army—and just about everywhere else—has to be laid on the desk of President Harry S Truman, right beside the small sign reading "The Buck Stops Here" that he kept there. There were, of course, extenuating circumstances.

Congress, for one, was not in the mood to appropriate the billions of dollars it would have cost to bring the armed forces back to the state of preparedness they had been in five years before, when, on 2 September 1945, MacArthur had accepted the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Empire on the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Harbor.

And Korea was almost at the bottom of the list of problems with which Presi­dent Truman had to deal on a daily basis. Most of these problems had to do with thwarting Soviet mischief in Europe, the Near East, and even Africa.

The Soviets hadn't done nearly so well in the Far East, and the credit for that unquestionably belongs to Douglas MacArthur, who had flatly refused to permit the Soviets to participate in the occupation of Japan.

MacArthur had also successfully sown the seed of democratic government in the mind of the Japanese people, and taken wide and generally successful steps to get the war-ravaged Japanese economy moving.

As far as the disgraceful condition of the Eighth United States Army in Japan was concerned, one has to remember that all armies are rank conscious.

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was not only the senior officer on ac­tive duty, but he had been Army Chief of Staff when the general officers in the 1950 Pentagon had been captains and majors. In World War II, MacArthur had been a theater commander, commanding more men of all services than there were now in 1950 in all the armed forces of the United States.

There are annual inspections of every organization in the Army, ending with a conference during which the inspectors point out to the commander where he is doing what he should not be doing, or not doing what he should be doing.

It is very difficult to imagine any officer, even one with a galaxy of stars on his epaulets, pointing out to General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Com­mander, Allied Powers, and Commanding General, United States Far East Com­mand (FECOM), where he was doing something wrong, or where he had failed to do something he should have been doing.

And none did.

Because of the International Date Line, when it is Sunday in Korea it is Saturday in New York City and Washington. The first word of the attack reached the Pen­tagon about eight o'clock Saturday night, and at about the same time, the United Nations Commission in Korea managed to get UN Secretary General Trygve Lie on the telephone at his estate on Long Island.

Lie blurted, "This is war against the United Nations."

President Truman learned of the attack at his home in Independence, Missouri, early Sunday morning and immediately boarded his airplane, the Independence, to fly back to Washington.

Lie convened an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council at two o'clock Sunday afternoon. The Soviet Union, trying to force the UN into seating Red China—and expelling Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalists—was refusing to at­tend Security Council meetings and did not participate.

This was a blunder on their part. Had they attended, the Soviet Union could have vetoed the resolution the UN passed. The resolution stated that the attack con­stituted a breach of the peace, ordered an immediate cessation of hostilities and the immediate withdrawal of North Korean forces from South Korea, and called upon all UN members to "render every assistance to the UN in the execution of this resolution."

At about six o'clock that evening, in Washington, in Blair House—across Penn­sylvania Avenue from the White House, which was being repaired—President Tru­man met with the more important members of his staff.

They quickly and unanimously agreed with Truman that the interests of the United States demanded that immediate action be taken to stop Communist ag­gression in Korea.

A little after ten-thirty Sunday evening, two teletype orders from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were sent to the Far East.

The first, to the Commanding General, FECOM—MacArthur—authorized him to send ammunition and military equipment to Korea, to prevent the loss of Seoul; authorized him to provide ships and aircraft to evacuate American citizens from Korea; and directed him to send a "survey party" to Korea to see what was going on.

It is germane to note that until MacArthur got that teletype order he had no of­ficial role in Korea. The former Japanese Protectorate of Korea, now the Republic of South Korea, was an independent nation.

The second order went to the United States Seventh Fleet. It was to immedi­ately sail from its several major home ports—the largest were in the Philippines and Okinawa—for the U.S. Navy Base at Sasebo, Japan. On arrival, the warships would come under the operational control of the Commander, U.S. Naval Forces, Far East.

Since Commander, Naval Forces, Far East, was under FECOM, that meant they would be under MacArthur's command.

MacArthur immediately ordered the U. S. Far Eastern Air Force—already under his command—to Korea to protect the evacuation of American civilians and de­pendents from Inchon and Pusan.

Over Inchon, the American jets were fired upon by three Russian-made YAK fighters, which the Americans promptly shot down.

It was the first American victory in the Korean War, and much time would pass before there was another.

Outnumbered, outgunned, and in many cases poorly led, most of the South Ko­rean Army simply began to disintegrate in the face of the North Korean attack.

The Survey Party—thirteen officers and two enlisted men under Brigadier General John H. Church—took off from Tokyo as soon as it could be formed. While in the air, they received two messages, the first saying it would probably be wiser not to try to land at Seoul's Kimpo Airfield, and suggested the field at Suwon, thirty miles or so south of Seoul, as an alternate. The second said that the Penta­gon had given MacArthur command of all U.S. Forces in Korea, and the Survey Party had been rather grandly redesignated as "GHQAdvance Command and Li­aison Group in Korea."

ADCOM landed at Suwon about 1900 27 June. Colonel William H. S. Wright, the KMAG Chief of Staff, who met them, suggested that it probably would be better to wait for morning to drive into Seoul than to try to do so in the hours of darkness.

At 0400 the next day, two KMAG officers drove into Suwon and reported to General Church that the bridges across the Han River had been blown and that Seoul was in the hands of the enemy.

Church radioed MacArthur that U.S. ground troops were going to be necessary if the United States intended to push the North Koreans back across the 38th Par­allel. The reply was a query: "Is Suwon safe for a high-ranking officer to land there tomorrow?"

Church replied that it was.

The "high-ranking officer" turned out to be General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, who took a quick look around, then radioed the Pentagon that U.S. troops were going to be necessary.

While this was going on, the United Nations, realizing that the North Koreans had no intention of obeying the UN resolution to cease, desist, and get out of South Korea, issued—on 27 June—another one:

". . . recommends that the members of the UN furnish such assistance to the Republic of Korea as may be necessary to repel the armed attack. ..."

Resisting the Communist attack would be an action of the United Nations, rather than a unilateral action by the United States.

Just before 0500 30 June, President Truman got MacArthur's assessment of the Korean situation and his request for authorization to use American ground troops. Truman immediately authorized the deployment of one regimental combat team, and after thinking it over for two hours, authorized the deployment of two infantry divisions.

At 0800 1 July "Task Force Smith"—400 officers and men from the 21st In­fantry, 24th Infantry Division, under Lieutenant Colonel Charles B. Smith—boarded USAF C-54 transports at Itazuke Air Force Base in Japan and were flown to Korea-It was not the regimental combat team Truman had authorized. It was all the men the 24th Division could muster on short notice.

On the morning of 5 July, "Task Force Smith" was in place on the Suwon—Osan Highway, south of Suwon. The "crew-served" weapons with which it was supposed to halt the North Korean Army consisted of two 75-mm recoilless rifles; two 4.2-inch mortars; six 2.36-inch rocket launchers; and four 60-mm mortars. The 52nd Field Artillery—six light 105-mm howitzers—had been assigned to them.

When the North Koreans' Russian-built T-34 tanks attacked, they were en­gaged by Task Force Smith's 75-mm recoilless rifles. The projectiles bounced off the Russian armor. So did the 2.36-inch rockets. So did the shells from the 105-mm howitzers.

On the morning of 6July, Colonel Smith was able to muster only 248 officers and men of the original 400. The artillery had lost five officers and twenty-six men and most of its cannon.

And they had managed to delay—not stop—the North Koreans for less than seven hours.

More troops were going to be needed, and quickly. The problem was, there were no more troops.

The Marine Corps was ordered to furnish a division. There were two Marine divisions: The First, in California, was at less than half wartime strength, and the Second, on the East Coast, was in even worse shape. At Headquarters, USMC, Major Drew J. Barrett, Jr. (Barrett was an infantryman who began his combat service with the Marines as a lieutenant on the beaches or Guadalcanal. "The Corps" is dedicated to his son, Second Lieutenant Drew J. Barrett III, UoMC, who was fatally wounded in Vietnam while serving with the 26th Marines, then in combat be­side the 9th Marines, which was commanded by his father. While commanding the 9th, Barrett chose a young officer to command one of its companies, making him the first black officer ever to command Marines in combat. In May 2003, as this book was being written, that officer, later Major General and Ambassador Gary Cooper, attended Colonel Barrett's funeral, at which Marines of the 1st Force Recon, m dress blues, rendered full military honors and Barrett's remains were covered with the National Col­ors he had flown at Khe Sanh.) a junior G-l staff officer, marched into the office of the Commandant of the Marine Corps to report that there was no way the Corps could meet the requirements laid on it by the Commander-in-Chief except by mo­bilizing the entire reserve. This was done.

The Eighth Army, under General Walton H. "Johnny" Walker, who had served with distinction under Patton in Europe, began a series of delaying actions—in other words, retreated—down the Korean Peninsula.

On 4 August, the Pusan Perimeter was established. This was a small enclave at the tip of the peninsula. The alternative to the perimeter was being pushed into the sea.

Reinforcements began to arrive from Japan, Hawaii, and the continental United States. By gutting the 2nd Marine Division on the East Coast, the Marine Corps was able to form from the 1st Marine Division the First Marine Brigade (Provi­sional) and send it to Korea.

General Walker immediately made the Marines his "Fire Brigade," moving it around within the perimeter to reinforce whatever Army units seemed most vul­nerable to the continuing North Korean attack.

MacArthur, meanwhile—while there was still genuine doubt that Walker could hold the Pusan Perimeter—was planning a counterattack. He was later to claim he'd first thought of it when he'd made his first quick visit to Korea.

It is a matter of record that MacArthur, in early July, had ordered his chief of staff, Major General Edward M. Almond, to plan for a landing on the west coast of the peninsula.

When he finally revealed his plan—to make an amphibious landing at Inchon, the port near Seoul—it was greeted with reactions ranging from "grave doubts" to mutters of "absolute insanity" from just about every senior officer made privy to it.

It was the worst possible place to stage an amphibious landing. There was a long list of things wrong with the plan, primarily the "landing beach" itself.

To get to the "landing beach" the invasion fleet would have to navigate the nar­row Flying Fish Channel, which was not navigable except at high tide, and then only for two hours. When the thirty-plus-foot tides receded, the landing area was a sea of mud.

There was no beach. Men would have to climb a seawall when they left their landing barges.

Army Chief of Staff Collins sent General Matthew B. Ridgway, recognized as one of the brightest officers in the Army, to Tokyo to "confer" with MacArthur about the Inchon plan. Everyone understood that Ridgway's mission was to talk MacArthur out of his plan.

He failed to do so.

President Truman was faced with the choice of listening to the senior officers in the Pentagon, who wanted him to forbid the operation, or letting MacArthur have his way.

Political considerations certainly influenced Truman to some degree. It was a given that if Truman supported the Pentagon and forbade the invasion, MacArthur would logically conclude that the President had no faith in him, and retire.

If he did so quietly, fine. But that was unlikely. It was more likely that the "firing" ° of the legendary national hero would see MacArthur as the Republican can­didate in the upcoming presidential election.

Whatever the reasons, Truman decided not to interfere with MacArthur's plan to invade at Inchon on 15 September.

MacArthur gave command of the invasion force—X Corps—to Major General Ned Almond. He did not, however, relieve Almond of his assignment as his chief of staff. While this was perfectly legal, and certainly MacArthur's prerogative, the Pentagon establishment was outraged.

Some of their rage, MacArthur's supporters claimed, was because they could not now give MacArthur a chief of staff who could be counted on to provide them a window into MacArthur's thinking.

Eighth Army Commander Walker bitterly protested the loss of the Marines to X Corps. He said he could not guarantee holding the Pusan Perimeter without them. MacArthur was unmoved. The First Marine Brigade (Provisional) came off the lines in Pusan, boarded the ships of the invasion fleet, and en route to Inchon, reinforced at sea by a third regiment, became the 1st Marine Division.

The invasion was a spectacular success.

At 1200 29 September—two weeks after the landing—MacArthur stood in Seoul's National Assembly Hall and told South Korean President Syngman Rhee,

".. . On behalf of the United Nations Command, I am happy to restore to you, Mr. President, the seat of your government. ..."

MacArthur then led the assembled dignitaries in recitation of the Lord's Prayer.

The Eighth Army had broken out of the Pusan Perimeter. The North Korean Army was in full retreat.

It was logical to presume that the Korean War was over.

Chapter One

[ONE]

Near Chongju, South Korea

0815 28 September 195O

Major Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, whose appearance and physical condi­tion reflected that he had not had a change of clothing—much less the oppor­tunity to bathe with soap or shave—since he had been shot down fifty-eight days before sat between two enormous boulders near the crest of a hill.

He thought—but was by no means sure—that he was about twenty miles north of Taejon and about thirty miles south of Suwon. Where he hoped he was, was in a remote area of South Korea where there were few North Ko­rean soldiers, lessening the chance that he would be spotted until he could at­tract the attention of an American airplane, and have someone come and pick him up.

Those hopes were of course, after fifty-eight days, fading. Immediately after he had been shot down, there had been a flurry of search activity, but when they hadn't found him the activity had slowed down, and—logic forced him to ac­knowledge—finally ceased.

He wasn't at all sure that anyone had seen any of the signs he left after the first one, the day after he'd been shot down. What he had done was stamp into the mud of a drained rice paddy with his boots the letters PP and an arrow. No one called him "Malcolm." He was called "Pick" and he knew that all the mem­bers of his squadron—and other Marine pilots—would make the connection.

The arrow's direction was basically meaningless. If the arrow pointed north­ward, sometimes he went that way. More often than not, he went east, west, or south. He knew that he couldn't move far enough so that he wouldn't be able to see an airplane searching low and slow for him in the area of the sign left in the mud.

He had left other markers every other—or every third—day since he'd been ·on the run. The fact that there had been Corsairs flying low over some of the markers—logic forced him to acknowledge—was not proof that they had seen the markers. The Corsairs, when they were not in direct support of the Marines on the ground, went on combined reconnaissance and interdiction flights, which meant that they were flying close to the deck, not that they had seen his markers.

It was too risky to stay in one place, so he had kept moving. He'd gotten his food—and an A-Frame to carry it in—from South Korean peasant farm­ers, who were anxious to help him, but made it clear they didn't want anyone to know—either the North Korean military or a local Communist—that they had done so. In either case, they would have been shot.

He was, of course, discouraged. Logic forced him to acknowledge that sooner or later, he was going to be spotted by North Koreans, or by someone who would report him to the North Koreans. And if they found him, he would be forced to make a decision that was not at all pleasant to think about.

It wasn't simply a question of becoming a prisoner, although that was an un­pleasant prospect in itself. Three times since he had been on the run he had come across bodies—once, more than thirty—of U.S. Army soldiers who, hav­ing been captured and after having their hands tied behind them with commo wire, had been summarily executed and left to rot where they had fallen.

If the North Koreans spotted him, and he could not get away, he was going to die. Not with his hands tied behind his back, but very probably by his own hand, unless he was lucky enough to go down with .45 blazing, a la John Wayne. Logic forced him to acknowledge that was wishful thinking, that he couldn't take the risk of going out in a blaze of glory, that he would have to do it himself.

Major Pickering's father was Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMCR, who was the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency for Asia. For obvious reasons, young Pickering could not allow himself to fall into North Ko­rean hands.

It was sort of a moot question anyway. With only five rounds left for the .45, he couldn't put up much of a fight with two North Koreans, much less a platoon of the bastards, or a company.

The hilltop was bathed in bright morning sunlight, the rays of which had finally warmed Major Pickering—it had been as cold as a witch's teat during the night—but had not yet warmed the ground fog in the valley below enough to burn it off.

That meant that Major Pickering could not see what he was looking for, even through the 8x35 U.S. Navy binoculars he had somewhat whimsically— if, as it turned out, very fortuitously—"borrowed" from the USS Badoeng Strait just before taking off.

The rice paddy in the valley where he had stamped out the last marker in the mud was covered with ground fog.

He set the binoculars down and went into the bag tied to the A-Frame. There was what was left of a roasted chicken carcass and the roasted rib cage of a small pig. Surprising Major Pickering not at all, both were rotten to the point where trying to eat any of it would be gross folly.

After thinking it over carefully, he decided he would bury the rotten meat before breakfast. He dug a small trench with a K-bar knife and did so, and then went back into the A-Frame bag and took from it three balls of cold rice. The smell they gave off was not appealing, but it was not nausea-inducing, and he popped them one at a time into his mouth and forced them down.

That was the end of rations, which meant that he would have to get some food today. That meant tonight. What he would do was come off the hill, very carefully, and look for some Korean farmer's thatch-roofed stone hut. When he found one, he would keep it under surveillance all day and go to it after dark, entering it with .45 drawn and hoping there would be food offered, and that the farmer would not send someone to report the presence of an American the moment he left.

So far, food had been offered and North Korean troops had not come looking for him at first light. So far, he had been lucky. Logic forced him to acknowledge that sooner or later everybody's luck changed, most often for the worse.

When he drank from his canteen—he had two—he drained it, which meant that when he found a Korean farmer's house and more or less threw himself on their mercy, he would have to stick around long enough to boil water to take with him.

He picked up the binoculars and trained them again on the rice paddy below. The fog had burned off somewhat in the area; he could see the dirt path—it didn't deserve to be called a road—leading to it, but not the rice paddy itself.

"Oh, shit," he said aloud.

Two vehicles were just visible on the path.

They had to be North Koreans. It was entirely possible that these were the first two motorized vehicles ever to move down the path used by ox-drawn carts.

"I'm losing my fucking mind," he said softly, but aloud.

The two vehicles were a jeep and a three-quarter-ton weapons carrier. A large American flag was affixed to the tall antenna rising from the rear of the jeep.

He took the binoculars from his eyes, then squinted his eyes and rolled them around, and then raised them again, hooking the eyepieces under the bone at his eye sockets.

The jeep and the flag it had been flying . . .

Jesus Christ, did I really see an American flag?

. . . were no longer in sight in the ground fog, but the rear of the weapons carrier was visible.

There were men holding rifles standing at the back of it, in what looked like U.S. Army uniforms—but he couldn't be sure—

Jesus, they're gooks! What that is, is a captured weapons carrier, with gooks driving it.

And they're right at the paddy when I stomped the signal in the mud!

Jesus Christ, they're looking for me!

How the hell did they know I was here?

Well, if I have trouble seeing them with binoculars, they can't see me, and that s a hell of a distance away.

In what direction did I point the arrow?

South, I pointed it south! I'm north. Maybe they won't even look this way.

And maybe they will.

He took the binoculars from his eyes again and did the eye exercises, and then put the eyepieces back to his eyes.

Another man was now standing at the back of the weapons carrier, a rifle slung from his shoulder. He was at least a foot taller than the others.

Jesus, that's a big gook!

Gook, shit, that's a white man!

Look again. Don't do anything stupid!

He exercised his eyes without removing the binoculars from his face.

When he focused them again there was one more man at the back of the weapons carrier, not quite as tall as the first one but conspicuously larger than the Orientals.

And white. That's a white man.

Those are U.S. Army soldiers.

Or maybe Russians? The Russians would love to grab a downed aviator. And if they are Russians, that would explain the jeep and the weapons carrier.

Shit, those are Americans! I can tell, somehow, by the way they stand.

So what do I do now?

Signal them, obviously. There's no way I can get down this fucking hill in less than thirty minutes. It took me nearly an hour to climb up here.

I could fire the . 45.

If they could hear it, which I don't think very likely, they won't be able to tell from which direction the sound came.

If I fire three shots—supposed to be the distress signal—that'll leave me two rounds. And if they can't hear the three shots, they won't be able to recognize the distress signal, and I'm down to two shots.

The signaling mirror!

Where the hell is that?

Jesus, I didn't toss it, lose it, did I?

A frantic search of the bag on the A-Frame turned up the signaling mirror. It was an oblong of polished metal, maybe three by four inches. There was an X-shaped cut in the center of it, presumably to be used as some sort of aiming device—he had never figured out how that worked—to reflect the rays of the sun, and the dots and dashes of the international Morse code were embossed on one side. He had never figured out how you were supposed to be able to send Morse code with the mirror, either.

But the basic idea of the mirror, reflecting the rays of the sun to attract some­one's attention, seemed simple enough, and he tried to do that. He was quickly able to focus the reflected light on boulders farther down the hill, and, en­couraged by that, tried to direct the light all the way down the hill into the val­ley, to the rear of the weapons carrier.

He couldn't see the light flashing anywhere in the valley.

He put the binoculars to his eyes again with his left hand and tried to aim the mirror with his right.

He couldn't see a flash of light that way either.

But he saw the two tall guys, the two Americans, vanish from sight, and then the gooks with them . . .

Who the hell are they?

. . . crawled into the bed of the weapons carrier.

And then the weapons carrier backed off the ox path into the edge of the rice paddy. The jeep reappeared . . .

That is an American flag, goddamn it!

. . and headed the other way down the ox path. The weapons carrier fol­lowed it.

In a moment, they were out of sight.

Jesus H. Fucking Christ!

Major Pickering, close to tears, in a frustrated rage, threw the signaling mirror down the hill.

He lay on his back between the rocks for a full minute, and then heaved himself erect.

Then he went down the hill and started looking for the mirror.

[TWO]

The jeep—its bumper markings identified it as belonging to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 7th Infantry Division—had a pedestal-mounted .30-caliber Browning air-cooled machine gun, and the backseat had been replaced with a rack of radios.

There were three men in it, two Americans and a South Korean. One of the Americans was Major Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, a lithely muscular, even-featured, fair-skinned thirty-year-old. He was driving. The other American was Master Gunner Ernest W. Zimmerman, USMC—a stocky, round faced, tightly muscled, short, barrel-chested thirty-five-year-old. Zimmerman rode with his right foot resting on the fender extension, the butt of a Thompson .45-ACP-caliber submachine gun resting on his muscular upper leg.

The Korean was a South Korean National Police Sergeant named Kim. He had no place to sit, and had jury-rigged, from web pistol belts, a sort of a har­ness, and rode standing—or half sitting—in a position to train and fire the ma­chine gun. The rig looked both uncomfortable and precarious, but Sergeant Kim had neither complained nor lost his footing.

Following the jeep was a Dodge three-quarter-ton truck, called a "weapons carrier," that also bore bumper markings identifying it as belonging to the 7th Infantry Division, specifically to the 7th Military Police Company.

It was being driven by another National Police Sergeant, also named Kim. Technical Sergeant Richard C. Jennings, USMC—a long and lanky twenty-six-year-old—rode beside him with an M-l Garand rifle in his lap. Three sergeants— one Marine and two National Police—rode on the wood-slat seats in the truck bed. Sergeant Alvin C. Cole, USMC, was armed with a Browning automatic rifle (BAR), and there was a .30-caliber air-cooled Browning on a bipod mount on the floor of the truck. The Koreans were armed with M-2 (fully auto­matic) carbines. Everybody was wearing U.S. Army fatigues without insignia of any kind.

Major McCoy didn't say a word for the next ten minutes, until the ox path came onto a dirt road. He stopped the jeep and took a map from under the cushion.

"Well, at least we know the bastard's still alive," he said. "Your guess is he stamped that out twenty-four hours ago?"

"No more than that. Just before they took the picture," Zimmerman said.

"Well, if he hung around, he would have seen us," McCoy said. "I have no idea where to look for him."

"What do you want to do, Killer?" Zimmerman asked.

Marine master gunners do not ordinarily address Marine majors by anything but their rank—or, of course, as "sir"—but Major McCoy did not seem to ei­ther notice or take offense.

"Well, we can't hang around here, can we, Ernie?" McCoy said. And then he added, bitterly, "If at first you don't succeed, fuck it."

He put the jeep in gear and turned onto the dirt road, heading north.

[THREE]

Thirty-eight Miles South of Suwon, South Korea

1205 28 September 195O

The map showed the unnamed road—which ran north from Pyongtaek toward Suwon along the rail line, paralleling Korean National Route 1—as paved, and surprising both Major McCoy and Gunner Zimmerman, it had been. They had been on it for just over an hour.

There was always the potential threat of mines, but neither the macadam nor the cobblestones with which the road was paved showed signs of having been disturbed. The shoulders, too, had appeared undisturbed, although of course it would have been far easier to conceal the traces of mine-burying in dirt and clay than in macadam or cobblestones.

The thing to do, obviously, was stay off the shoulders, and they had done so. And neither had they driven very fast. They wanted to have plenty of time to stop in case they saw dislodged cobblestones or suspicious-looking disrup­tions in the macadam.

Major McCoy raised his left arm above his head to catch the attention of Sergeant Kim in the weapons carrier following, then braked.

He pointed to a copse of gnarled pine trees a hundred yards or so down the road.

"I don't think anyone'll see us in there," he said, adding, "I'm hungry." He slowed to a crawl as he approached the trees. Zimmerman first leaned out the side of the jeep, studying the shoulder, and then held his hand up in a signal to stop.

Then he got out of the jeep and intently studied the shoulder before mo­tioning to McCoy to come ahead. Then he walked carefully across the shoul­der and down a slope into a wide ditch. McCoy carefully eased the jeep after him, then Sergeant Kim followed with the weapons carrier.

McCoy took a Thompson from a rack below the windshield, got out of the jeep, and walked carefully southward along the ditch, looking for signs of dis­turbance in the mud—and for trip wires, booby traps, anything.

Finally, when he was about one hundred yards from the vehicles, he stopped and turned his attention to the grassy slope up to the road. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he scurried up the slope. From the road, he looked back to the copse of trees. He could not see anything but the top of the jeep's antenna and maybe eight inches of the flag.

He went back into the ditch and returned to the vehicles. When he got there, Sergeant Cole and two of the Koreans were waiting for him.

"See that they're fed," McCoy ordered, "and then post one up there. You can see where I climbed the slope."

"Aye, aye, sir," Cole said.

"And then post another one a hundred yards north. Watch out for mines and wires."

"Mr. Zimmerman's already been down there, sir."

"Then you really better be careful," McCoy said with a smile.

"Aye, aye, sir," Cole said, smiling back.

McCoy walked to the jeep. The hood was up, and Zimmerman was warm­ing cans on the radiator. McCoy grabbed the antenna, bent it nearly horizon­tal, and tied it down.

Without really thinking about it, he made sure that no part of the flag was touching the ground.

"I couldn't see anything from the north," Zimmerman said.

"I could see maybe eight inches of the flag," McCoy replied. "What are we eating?"

"Salisbury Steak and Beans and Franks," Zimmerman said. "Your choice."

McCoy laid the Thompson on the driver's seat, then reached for a ra­tion can.

"I wonder who they think they're fooling when they call hamburger 'Salis­bury Steak'?" he asked, not expecting an answer.

He leaned against the side of the jeep, took a fork from the baggy side pocket of the Army fatigues, and began to saw at the Salisbury Steak in the ra­tion can.

He had just about finished raising the final forkful to his mouth when there was a short, shrill whistle, and then a second. He laid the ration can between the rear of the jeep and the back of the radio as he looked toward the sound of the whistle.

Sergeant Cole, who had posted himself with the Korean to the south, made several hand signals, not all of them official, indicating that something of in­terest was happening and he thought Major McCoy should pay whatever it was his immediate attention.

"Heads up," McCoy ordered as he passed the jeep—picking up the Thomp­son and a pair of U.S. Navy binoculars as he did—and headed for Cole.

Zimmerman, similarly, made several hand signals to Technical Sergeant Jennings—these indicating that appropriate defense measures immediately be taken. Jennings indicated his understanding of his orders with a thumbs-up ges­ture. Zimmerman then trotted after McCoy, toward Sergeant Cole.

There was little -doubt in either McCoy's or Zimmerman's mind that what had caught Sergeant Cole's attention were elements of the army of the People's Democratic Republic of North Korea.

The questions were: How large an element and what were they up to? Had McCoy's two-vehicle convoy been spotted, and were the North Koreans in pur­suit of them? Or was it a unit trying to get away from the Eighth Army, which had broken out of the Pusan Perimeter and was in hot pursuit of the North Ko­reans up the peninsula?

Shattered, demoralized, whatever, if it was a company-strength unit—or a single tank, for that matter—McCoy & Company were going to be seriously outnumbered, or outgunned, or both.

"What have you got, Cole?" McCoy asked, handing him the Thompson.

"Looks like a couple of jeeps, sir," Cole said. "Russian jeeps."

McCoy crawled up the slope to the shoulder of the road and looked down it through the binoculars. He then handed them to Zimmerman, who had crawled beside him, and then slid down the slope. A moment later, Zimmer­man slid down and returned the binoculars to McCoy.

"Two jeeps, and I make it five Slopes," Zimmerman said. "Moving slow; probably looking for mines."

"The passenger in the second jeep has leather boots—shiny leather boots," McCoy said. "I'd really like to talk to him."

"What do we do, Killer?" Zimmerman asked.

"I don't think we could get across the road without being seen," McCoy said. So, Cole, run down there and tell Jennings what's going on, and to make sure if they get past Mr. Zimmerman and me, they don't get past him."

"Aye, aye, sir," Cole said. "You want me to come back here, sir?"

"No. Your BAR will be more useful there, if they get past us."

Cole nodded and took off at a run.

"How do you want to do this?" Zimmerman asked.

"You shoot out the tires of the first vehicle and watch what happens there. I'll deal with the second jeep." He paused. "I really want to talk to that officer, Ernie."

"Okay," Zimmerman said. "You going to call it?"

"I'm going to go another twenty-five yards that way, in case they turn around. When I hear your shots ..."

Zimmerman nodded.

McCoy moved quickly, but carefully, farther down the ditch, then stopped, examined the slope again, and climbed up it.

Four minutes or so later, McCoy could hear the exhaust of the engines of the Russian jeeps, and the whining crunch of their tires on the road. It grew slowly louder.

When the first vehicle passed McCoy, he began to count. When he reached ten, there were two bursts of fire—one of three shots, followed by a second of two. Then there was the squeal of worn-out brakes, and then a loud thump.

McCoy scrambled onto the road, going over the top of slope on his knees and left hand—he had the Thompson in the right—feeling for a moment a chill of helplessness until he gained his feet and could put his hand on the forestock of the Thompson.

He was very much aware that two hands were necessary to fire a Thompson.

It took him a moment to see and understand what had happened.

The Russian jeep with the North Korean officer in it was stopped, stalled sideward across the road, the driver grinding the starter. The front end of the other jeep was off the road, halfway into the ditch on the near side of the road. The frame had caught on the edge of the road, keeping it from going all the way down into the ditch.

McCoy had just time to wonder—in alarm—if by intention or accident the jeep had run over Zimmerman when he heard Zimmerman order, in Korean, "On your belly, you son of a whore."

McCoy ran toward the stalled jeep.

The officer was trying to work the action of a strange-looking subma­chine gun.

"I don't want to kill you, Colonel," McCoy called in Korean. "Just drop that and hold your hands over your head."

The North Korean officer complied.

McCoy saw that the look on his face was as much surprise, even astonish­ment, as fear.

"Yeah, Colonel, I speak Korean," McCoy said.

He walked closer to the-jeep and held the Thompson on both of them until Technical Sergeant Jennings ran up the road to them, followed by three South Korean National Policemen.

"See if Mr. Zimmerman needs any help," McCoy said in English, and then switched to Korean as he spoke to one of the National Policemen: "Take the submachine gun from the colonel's lap. Then lay him on the ground and search him."

Jennings walked to the edge of the road, where the first jeep was hung up, and looked down.

"Well, just don't stand there with your thumb up your ass, for Christ's sake, Jennings," Zimmerman's impatient voice came up. "Get down here and frisk these Slopes."

"I never saw one like this before," Sergeant Alvin Cole said, holding the sub­machine gun taken from the North Korean colonel, who was now lying on his stomach, his hands tied behind him.

The other prisoners—a captain, a lieutenant, a sergeant, and a corporal— were being marched, barefoot, their hands tied behind them, down the road to­ward the copse of trees by Sergeant Jennings and two South Korean National Policemen.

"That's a PPD 1940G," Master Gunner Zimmerman said. "You don't see many of those. Pretty good weapon."

Cole looked at him.

"Proceed, Mr. Zimmerman," McCoy said. "We're fascinated."

Zimmerman looked at McCoy to see if he was serious.

"Okay," he said. "PPD stands for 'Pistolet Pulyemet Degtyarev.' It means machine pistol Degtyarev. Degtyarev being the Russian who stole the idea from the Germans. It's based on the 1928 Bergmann. The Bergmann had a stick mag­azine. Degtyarev stole a drum magazine design from the Finnish Soumi, chrome-plated the inside parts, including the barrel, put it all together, and got it named after him. But the Russians dumped it because it couldn't be made fast enough for War Two, and went to the crude, easy-to-make PPsh you see all the time. That's why you don't see very many of these."

"I hope you were taking notes, Sergeant Cole," McCoy said. "There will be a written exam at the end of the lecture period."

Master Gunner Zimmerman looked at Major McCoy and said, "You asked, Killer," and gave the major the finger. Can I have it?" Sergeant Cole asked.

"You can if you give the pistols you took away from the other officers to the Koreans," McCoy said.

"And the other submachine gun, the PPsh, sir?" Cole asked.

"I think Jennings wants that," McCoy said. "Don't be greedy, Cole."

"Yes, sir."

The weapons carrier crawled back onto the road and headed for them.

McCoy pointed to the half-off-the-road Russian jeep.

"I was thinking about dragging this one down to the trees, but that would tear up the road, and I want to get out of here. Just push it over the side?"

"Yeah," Zimmerman agreed after a moment's thought. "That'd be better."

When the weapons carrier stopped beside him, McCoy, in Korean, ordered the National Police driver to push the Russian jeep into the ditch.

"And when you've done that," McCoy continued in Korean, "we're going to load the colonel in the back, tie him securely to the back of the seat, and put Sergeant Kim in there with him with a carbine. If the colonel even looks as if he's thinking about causing any trouble, Sergeant Kim will shoot him in both feet." He paused. "Did you hear that, Colonel?"

There was no reply from the colonel.

Zimmerman walked to him and nudged him with his boot.

"The major asked if you understood him, Colonel," he said in Korean.

There was no reply. Zimmerman kicked the colonel in the waist.

"I heard," the colonel said.

[FOUR]

Thirteen Miles South of Suwon, South Korea

17O5 28 September 195O

The sun was low in the sky, and the shadows were long. McCoy, Zimmerman, and Jennings were lying at the crest of a small hill from which they could see a road intersection about five hundred yards away.

Elements—what looked like an infantry platoon reinforced by three tanks— of the United States 7th Infantry Division were manning a hastily erected road­block on the dirt road paralleling Korean National Route 1.

It had to be elements of the 7th Division. There were only two American divisions in the Seoul area, the 7th and the 1st Marine, and the armed Ameri­cans at the roadblock were not Marines.

Gunner Zimmerman took binoculars from his eyes, handed them to Tech­nical Sergeant Jennings, and then turned to Major McCoy.

"Killer," he said conversationally, "if we start down that road, those doggies are going to start shooting at us."

McCoy grunted.

"Especially when they see that Russian jeep," Jennings added.

"Maybe not," McCoy said.

Then he pushed himself backward, sliding on his stomach away from the hilltop until he was far enough down the hill so there was no chance of his being seen. There, he rolled over onto his back and then sat up, holding his Thomp­son erect between his knees.

Zimmerman rolled over on his back, and—holding his Thompson against his chest—slid down after him, and then, when he'd seen all he wanted to, so did Jennings, carrying his Garand.

"I make it three tanks—M4s, Shermans," Jennings said, "plus maybe thirty-five doggies, with two air-cooled .50s, at least that many .30s, and a mortar."

"All of which are going to shoot at whatever they see coming up the road," Zimmerman said. "Like us, for example."

McCoy chuckled.

"What do you suggest we do, Mr. Zimmerman?"

Zimmerman pointed down the slope of the hill toward their small con­voy. The Russian light truck, which McCoy had impulsively decided to drive, was at the head. The weapons carrier came next, and the jeep brought up the rear.

The Russian truck looked vaguely like a jeep. It was, McCoy had finally con­cluded, actually a Chinese-built version of a Russian vehicle, which in turn had been copied from a German vehicle, built on a Volkswagen chassis, which in turn had been inspired by the Truck, General Purpose, 1/4 ton, 4x4 of the U.S. Army, popularly known as the jeep.

McCoy had found the vehicle very interesting, and not just as an example of the enemy's military trucks.

Very few North Korean lieutenant colonels had vehicles permanently as­signed to them. There were signs that this one was—had been—the, colonel's personal vehicle. It was extraordinarily well maintained. The seats, for exam­ple, were thickly padded. There had been personal possessions in both the glove compartment and under the seats, including three packages of Chesterfield cigarettes.

The dashboard instruments were lettered in the Cyrillic alphabet. Either the Russians had provided the instruments or the Chinese had copied the Russian vehicle slavishly. In any event, calligraphed Cantonese translations had been pre­pared and glued to the panel. There were no such Korean calligraphs.

This suggested the possibility that the colonel had acquired the vehicle new from a depot, and had not felt the need for Korean translations from the Russ­ian and Chinese because he spoke one or both of the languages.

Two kinds of North Korean lieutenant colonels would be likely to speak Russian and/or Cantonese: political commissars and intelligence officers.

A political commissar would most likely be at the front, exhorting the troops to give their all, not headed north in an obvious attempt to avoid capture by the now advancing Eighth United States Army. Political commissars are useful even in enemy captivity. Intelligence officers are not. Intelligence officers know a lot of things that should be kept from the enemy. Intelligence officers are taught not to place themselves in positions where they can be captured.

McCoy had a gut feeling their prisoner was an intelligence officer, and probably an important one.

"Untie the skinny Slope, hand him a white flag, and send him over the hill," Zimmerman said.

"That would be a violation of the Geneva Convention," McCoy said. "It's against the rules to endanger a prisoner."

"Shit," Zimmerman said.

"Besides, I really want to talk to him," McCoy said.

"Killer, that Slope sonofabitch isn't going to tell us a goddamn thing," Zim­merman argued.

"I think maybe he will when he sees we're back in Seoul," McCoy said.

Zimmermann snorted.

"Sergeant Jennings, hoist the colors," McCoy said.

"Sir?"

"Unstrap the antenna on the jeep. Let's get the flag out so our friends at the roadblock can see it," McCoy clarified.

"Aye, aye, sir."

"What are you going to do?" Zimmerman asked, as Jennings scurried down the hill.

"Drive the jeep to the crest of the hill, and then—very quickly—get out of it, and the line of fire. Whereupon, the Army will—or will not—fire upon it. If they don't fire on it, I will ask for a volunteer to expose himself. We may get lucky."

"And if we don't?"

"Then I guess you get shot. You were going to volunteer, right?"

"Shit," Zimmerman said, smiling.

"I'll do it, Ernie," Major McCoy said.

Marine majors do not ordinarily address their subordinates by their first names, and certainly not with the affection McCoy had in his voice. But there is always an exception. In this case, the two had been friends since 1940, when both had been in the 4th Marines in Shanghai.

They watched as Jennings untied the whip antenna on the jeep. It sprung erect, but there was no breeze and the flag hung limply.

"We could give Dunston a call in Seoul," Zimmerman said. "He's got some­body sitting on his radio."

"How long would it take, Ernie, for Dunston—even if he was sitting on the radio himself—to get a message to that roadblock?" McCoy asked, patiently. "Hours, anyway."

Zimmerman shrugged, taking McCoy's point.

Jennings got behind the wheel of the jeep, put it in four-wheel drive, and started up the hill.

McCoy got to his feet and waited for him. When he got close, McCoy sig­naled him to stop.

"I'll take it out there, Major," Jennings said.

McCoy jerked his thumb, ordering Jennings out of the jeep, then got be­hind the wheel.

Then he put it in gear and drove it slowly to the crest and over.

"Shit!" Zimmerman said when the jeep was out of sight.

Two minutes—two very long minutes—later, McCoy reappeared on foot at the crest of the hill.

"I waved and some doggie waved back at me," he announced. "I think we're all right. I'm going to drive down there. I'll signal you with a flashlight when it's okay to come."

"Permission to speak freely, sir?" Technical Sergeant Jennings said.

McCoy made a let's have it gesture with both hands. I should drive the jeep, not you."

"He's right," Zimmerman said.

McCoy thought it over, then jerked his thumb for Jennings to come up the hill.

When he came to McCoy, Jennings handed him his rifle. Then he raised his arms over his head and waved to them as he approached the crest, and dis­appeared over it.

McCoy stood on the crest with his hands on his hips and watched as Jennings eased the jeep down the hill, then onto the dirt road. When Jennings got close to the roadblock, he suddenly stopped the jeep and raised his hands over his head.

McCoy raised his binoculars to his eyes to see what was going on.

Jennings got out of the jeep and walked the last fifty yards to the roadblock, then disappeared from view behind one of the Sherman tanks.

He was out of sight for five minutes, then reappeared, making a nonregulation but clearly understandable sign that it was all right for everybody else to come in.

Chapter Two

[ONE]

Thirteen Miles South of Suwon, South Korea

1725 28 September 195O

Captain John C. Allen III, a somewhat plump, pleasant-faced twenty-seven-year-old who was commanding officer of Company C, 1st Battalion, 27th In­fantry, 7th Infantry Division, was hesitantly pleased with his current mission, the establishment and operation of a roadblock on a road south of Suwon.

You never knew what the hell was going to happen next in the Army; dis­appointment, sometimes bitter, was always just around the corner.

He had been told—and he had believed—that it would be days, perhaps weeks, before he actually had to face the enemy. The landing of X Corps (the 1st Marine Division and the 7th Infantry Division) at Inchon had severed the enemy's supply routes to the south. Without supplies, the North Koreans could not maintain their attack on the Pusan Perimeter. The Eighth U.S. Army had already counterattacked, broken out of the perimeter, and was driving the enemy northward.

There was still heavy action around Seoul, but most of that was being fought by the 1st Marine Division. Allen thought that the brass had at least enough sense to realize that the 7th Division really was in no shape to fight anybody.

Any military unit needs training to be effective. It was Captain Allen's professional judgment that none of the platoons in his company had adequate training. Neither had any of the companies in the 1st Battalion, any of the bat­talions in the 27th Infantry, nor any of the regiments in the 7th Division.

It was also Captain Allen's professional opinion that if the 1st Marine Di­vision hadn't performed so superbly—if it had taken a licking—the 7th Divi­sion would have really gotten itself clobbered.

Captain Allen was perfectly happy to form—and to sometimes offer to se­lect individuals, such as First Sergeant Grass—professional opinions about the military, although he was not a career officer, had not graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, nor, for that matter, attended the company-grade officers' course at the Infantry School at Fort Benning. He hadn't even gone to Officer Candidate School.

Drafted at twenty during World War II, "Jack" Allen had joined the 26th Infantry of the 1st Infantry Division in North Africa. By the time The Big Red One was training to land on the beaches of Normandy, it was Staff Sergeant Allen. On D—Plus Three, in Normandy, it was twenty-one-year-old Second Lieutenant Allen, holder of the Silver Star and directly commissioned after tak­ing over the company when the officers had all been either blown away or wounded.

When war in Europe was over, Captain Jack Allen, who had added two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts to his Silver Star, had been one of the very first officers returned to the United States under the Point System for sepa­ration.

At Fort Dix, he had made the mistake of believing the Adjutant General's Corps major, who had told him that if he kept his commission in the reserve, he wouldn't be recalled to active duty unless and until enemy tanks were rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House.

Jack Allen, star salesman and heir apparent to the throne of J. C. Allen & Sons Paper Merchants, Inc., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had received a telegram from the Adjutant General of the United States Army on 9 July 1950, order­ing him to report within seventy-two hours to Camp Indiantown Gap, Penn­sylvania, there to enter upon extended active duty for the duration of the present conflict, plus six months.

At Indiantown Gap, there was just time enough to buy uniforms and have his shot record brought up to date before being loaded on a battered Douglas C-54 and flown to Fort Lewis, Washington. Three days after arriving at Fort Lewis, he boarded a brand-new-looking Lockheed Constellation of Trans-Global Airways and was flown to Tokyo via Honolulu and Wake Island.

At Camp Drake, he was assigned to the 7th Division. When he got there, they didn't seem to know what to do with him. He was given one assignment after another—one of them lasting six hours—but finally he found himself in the 27th Infantry Regiment. There the colonel commanding—who looked smart and competent, if harried—took a sixty-second look at Jack's service record.

Jesus Christ, he thought, they finally sent me a company commander who's been in combat.

Then he said: "Congratulations, Captain Allen, you are now commanding officer of Charley Company."

When Allen found his new command, in a battered frame barracks build­ing, the acting first sergeant—a technical sergeant who a week before had been running an NCO club—told him Charley Company's total strength was two officers and twenty-six enlisted men—plus thirteen enlisted men listed as "ab­sent, in confinement." The other officer was Second Lieutenant C. Danton Fos­ter IV, who looked to be about nineteen but who told Allen he had graduated just over a year before from West Point. When Allen looked at Foster's service record, he saw that he was unmarried and listed his next of kin as Major Gen­eral C. Danton Foster III.

Charley Company's ranks were soon filled out. Among the first "fillers" to arrive the next day was First Sergeant Homer Grass, a beer-bellied regular from West Virginia. It took Captain Allen and Sergeant Grass—who wore the "Bloody Bucket" of the 28th Infantry Division on his right shoulder and the Combat Infantry Badge on his chest—about ninety seconds to judge the other, assess the situation, and conclude that they were both in the deep shit and un­less they could fix things in a hurry, they were liable to get killed.

When the next group of fillers appeared—the thirteen just-pardoned male­factors from the Tokyo stockade still wearing fatigues with a large P painted on the back—resisting despair had been difficult.

Neither did Charley Company have much in the way of equipment to boast of. They had nowhere near the numbers of individual items prescribed by the Table of Organization & Equipment, and what they did have was in lousy shape—in the case of several bundles of blankets, literally lousy.

Second Lieutenant C. Danton Foster IV—who had immediately become dubbed "Foster Four"—proved far more useful than either Jack Allen or Homer Grass expected. The three other officer fillers, all lieutenants, however, ranged from mediocre to awful, and none had ever heard a shot fired in anger.

Surprising Jack Allen, none of the filler officers ran to the Inspector Gen­eral when he announced at Officers' Call that seniority regulations be damned, Foster Four was his Exec, and when Foster Four said something, it was to be treated as if he himself had said it.

As the enlisted fillers dribbled in, Jack Allen adopted, with Grass's and Fos­ter Four's approval, a training philosophy of first things first. Everybody fired both his individual weapon and then the .45 pistol, staying on the firing range until they achieved a basic skill. Then they learned to fire—more important, to service—the Browning automatic rifles, the .30- and .50-caliber machine guns, and the mortars. Soon Grass had them throwing grenades and attacking sandbags with bayonets and entrenching tools.

Some of the fillers were noncoms. Charley Company got a good supply sergeant—a blessing—and an incredibly bad mess sergeant. The company needed three really good platoon sergeants. It got one, with War Two creden­tials on a par with Grass's, and two who had never heard a shot fired in anger.

Charley Company was almost at authorized strength when they boarded the transport at Sasebo, and before they got into the landing barges at Inchon it was actually overstrength.

Allen thought privately, and more than a little bitterly, that someone knew that poorly trained troops were going to take heavy losses, so they were send­ing in replacements early.

But after they got ashore, the 1st Battalion went into Division Reserve. They weren't needed and weren't used. It was either the exigencies of the ser­vice or the kindness of a merciful God, but Charley Company was not thrown into combat.

It had been, however, subject to personnel levies from division headquar­ters, ordered to transfer officers and men elsewhere within the division to fill vacancies created by combat. While he hated to lose the men he had trained— it was possible, if not likely, that the reserve would be called to combat—this did provide Allen with the opportunity to get rid of most of the pardoned pris­oners, the mess sergeant, and all of the lieutenants except Foster Four.

Before long, Charley Company was down to not many more people than it had had when he assumed command.

Then the battalion was given the mission of setting up roadblocks south of Seoul, and Charley Company and its two officers and fifty-two enlisted men were given the mission of establishing one south of Suwon.

Their mission was to prevent North Korean troops being forced back up the peninsula by the advancing Eighth Army from getting any farther north.

As soon as the trucks dropped them off, Allen had let it be known that they could expect to see the enemy any minute. That had the desired result of en­ergetic position building and foxhole digging.

Then Allen sent First Sergeant Grass and the supply sergeant on a scroung­ing mission for ammunition of all kinds. When the enemy finally did appear, he wanted his peacetime soldiers to have as much experience in actually firing their weapons as possible. And the chance to replace what weapons that were going to fail.

Then he went to Regiment himself and begged the S-3 for tanks to rein­force the roadblock. He argued that not only was Charley Company way understrength, but that the Shermans of the Regimental Tank Company weren't being used at the moment. He made it clear that he understood that when the enemy finally showed up and the tanks were needed elsewhere, he would have to give them up.

If the Regimental Three believed that, fine. Allen thought it was highly probable that if the enemy showed up and he was using the tanks, and then came a radio message ordering them elsewhere, that message would be garbled beyond his understanding.

The tankers—under the command of a young second lieutenant, a West Point classmate of Foster Four—surprised Jack Allen. They were well trained and welcomed the chance to practice-fire their tubes at maximum range directly down the road. And one of the tank sergeants was a mortar expert and soon had Allen's mortar crews accurately laying their fire on the reverse sides of the slopes lining both sides of the valley.

After a few days, Captain Allen was confident that his men could deliver fire where it probably would be needed—and, as important, that they had the confidence they could.

Allen, Grass, and Foster Four were feeling pretty smug about what they had accomplished when an asshole from division headquarters showed up. He in­troduced himself as Major Alfred D. Masters and said he was the assistant Di­vision G-2.

He was a natty little Regular Army bastard in shiny boots, a nonregulation zipper jacket, and a scarf made from camouflage parachute silk around his neck. He carried both a .45 in a tanker's shoulder holster and a .45 ACP Grease Gun. If he had earned a Combat Infantry Badge, he hadn't sewn it to his fancy jacket.

He had come, he said, to place Charley Company on the alert for "a re­connaissance patrol possibly operating south of these coordinates."

Allen thought there wasn't much useful information in that . . .

What does "possibly" mean? Is there a patrol or not?

Whose patrol? How big a patrol?

What am I supposed to do if the patrol shows up?

What if the patrol gets in trouble and asks for help?

. . . but when Allen asked those questions of Major Masters, the answers had been something less than completely helpful.

Major Masters said he couldn't get into that, "for security reasons." All Allen had the need to know was that if the patrol showed up, he was to notify him by the most expeditious means. He clarified that somewhat by saying Allen should transmit the code words "Trojan Horse," on receipt of which further or­ders would be issued.

Major Masters had then gotten back in his jeep and driven off.

There were three possible communications links between the Charley Com­pany roadblock and Division Headquarters, none of them direct. There was a radio in Allen's sandbagged command post—the CP—which sometimes could communicate with Battalion and/or Regiment. The Signal Corps equipment available was about as old and unreliable as everything else. Each of the tanks had radios that in theory permitted them to communicate with one another and with the CPs of the Regimental Tank Company and Regiment. Only two of the three tanks were on that "net," and communications with Tank Company and Regiment were the opposite of reliable.

Finally, there was a field telephone system, called a "landline," which con­nected the roadblock CP with the 1st Battalion Command Post by wire. That usually worked during the day, but only after the Signal Corps wire men had laid fresh wire to replace the wire Korean farmers had stolen during the previ­ous hours of darkness.

With these problems in mind, Captain Allen had ordered that one of his three jeeps and a driver always be parked next to the CP, so that if either the enemy or the mysterious patrol showed up, and neither the radios nor the land-line was functioning, he could shag ass—Paul Revere-like—down the road to Battalion, crying, "The gooks are coming! The gooks are coming!"

When word of a jeep flying an American flag on its antenna had appeared at the crest of a hill five hundred yards south of his roadblock, it came from George Patton, as Second Lieutenant George Parsons, USMA '49, of Regi­mental Tank Company had inevitably been dubbed. Captain Allen and Fos­ter Four were in the CP discussing over a mug of coffee whether it would be safe or not to conduct yet another midnight requisition on the regimental ra­tion dump.

The SOP was that one officer (First Sergeant Grass was included) would al­ways be on the line in case something happened. When Allen and Foster Four got to the line, they saw George Patton in the turret of one of the Shermans and Grass in the left .50-caliber machine-gun emplacement, both studying the hill and the jeep through binoculars.

The jeep with the outsized flag hanging from its antenna was an odd sight, and Captain Allen was pleased that his order "No one fires at anything until the word is passed" had been obeyed. He hadn't been at all sure that it would be. When soldiers—even experienced soldiers, and his men were anything but that—are told there is nothing in front of them but the enemy, the natural in­clination is to shoot at anything that comes into sight before it has a chance to shoot first.

The driver of the jeep was standing beside the vehicle, waving his arms over his head.

"First Sergeant, you want to take a chance and go out there and wave back?"

First Sergeant Grass handed his binoculars to Allen and walked in front of the sandbags. Allen then steadied himself on the sandbags and put the binoc­ulars to his eyes.

The driver, leaving the jeep on the hill, walked back over the crest and dis­appeared.

A minute or so later, another soldier appeared . . . That's not the same guy. . . waving his arms over his head, got in the jeep, and started easing it down the hill.

Sometimes you can't see diddly-shit through binoculars, and sometimes there is extraordinary clarity and detail. This time—even though it was rapidly getting dark—it luckily was the latter. Allen could even read the front bumper markings on the jeep: HH7DIV on the right, 36 on the left. The jeep was Ve­hicle #36 of those assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 7th Infantry Division.

The somewhat less than deep and confidence-inspiring voice of George Patton called from the turret of the Sherman to his right.

"Vehicle on the road, Captain!"

"I wonder who the hell that is?" Allen asked aloud, and then called back, "Americans?"

"An officer and somebody else in a jeep," the voice called back.

Allen pushed himself off the sandbags and climbed up on the tank to see for himself.

In a moment, he was able to identify the officer in the jeep. It was the as­sistant Division G-2, Major Masters.

Well, he probably had word that this mysterious patrol of his was coming in.

Allen climbed off the tank, and a minute or so later the jeep slid to a halt beside the tank and Major Masters jumped out.

Allen saluted. Masters returned it crisply.

"You were told to be on the alert for a patrol. . . ."

"Yes, sir," Allen said. "I think that's what's coming in now."

He pointed down the road.

"Did I or did I not, Captain, tell you to notify me by the most expeditious means when that happened?"

"Yes, sir, you did," Allen said. "This just happened, sir. Just a couple of min­utes ago. I don't know if it's your patrol or not."

Major Masters peered carefully around the skirts over the tank's tracks.

"That's one man in a jeep," he declared, "not a patrol."

"The jeep came over the hill a couple of minutes ago, sir. The driver waved, we waved back, and now somebody else is driving the jeep."

Major Masters either grunted or snorted.

There was the sound of a carbine firing. One round.

The jeep skidded to a stop, and the driver got out and held both arms over his head.

"I think that was an accidental discharge, sir," Captain Allen said.

And if Sergeant Grass saw who fired it, he'll kick his ass all the way back to Japan.

"Unfortunate," Major Masters said.

"Only a few of my men have ever been in a situation like this, sir."

"Tell me about it," Major Masters said, then added: "Well, he's coming in. Let's see what he has to say."

They walked to the .50-caliber air-cooled Browning position on the left, arranged themselves behind its sandbags, and watched as the tall soldier, his arms still over his head, walked toward them.

The soldier was no boy, but there were no chevrons visible on the sleeves of his fatigue shirt.

When he was twenty yards away, Captain Allen stood up.

"Over here, soldier," he called.

The soldier trotted to the machine-gun emplacement, dropped his arms, and saluted.

"Who are you?" Major Masters demanded.

"Technical Sergeant Jennings, sir."

"Are you in charge of this . . . patrol?"

"No, sir. Sir, with respect, may I go wave the others in?"

"Go ahead, Sergeant," Allen said.

Masters gave him a dirty look, and when Jennings was just possibly out of hearing range, said, "I was talking to that man, Allen. You should not have interfered."

"Sorry, sir."

Fuck you! Until someone relieves me, I'm in command here, and you're just a goddamn visiting brass hat. A minor-league brass hat.

Jennings trotted halfway toward where he had stopped the jeep and gestured toward the hill that it was all right to come in. Then he trotted back to the machine-gun emplacement.

"Just who is in charge of your patrol, Sergeant?" Major Masters asked.

"Sir, with respect, if I don't find a slit trench in the next sixty seconds, I am going to have a personal catastrophe."

"Over there, Sergeant," Captain Allen said, chuckling as he pointed.

"Thank you, sir."

Masters gave him another dirty look.

"Vehicles coming down the hill, Captain!" the sergeant in the turret of one of the Shermans called.

Allen and Masters looked.

"What the hell is that?" Masters asked.

"Jesus, I don't know," Captain Allen said.

The vehicle leading the weapons carrier toward them was jeeplike but not a jeep. After a moment Allen remembered seeing pictures of a Russian vehicle like it in a magazine. Or was it during one of those endless goddamn Know Your Enemy! briefings?

"It looks like a Russian jeep," Allen said.

Major Masters snorted or grunted again; Captain Allen wasn't sure.

The Russian, if that's what it was, jeep stopped behind the jeep the sergeant had left out there, and a man . . .

How do I know that guy is an old-time noncom? Allen thought.

... climbed out of it, got in the jeep, and led the Russian jeep and a weapons carrier into the roadblock.

When the jeep got close and he could see its stocky, barrel-chested driver, Captain Allen was even more sure he was a longtime noncom. He said so, call­ing out, "Sergeant, park your jeep behind the Sherman on the left."

The driver nodded his understanding.

The Russian vehicle—That's what it is, I'm sure—immediately followed.

With its headlights on, for Christ's sake! Doesn't this guy know that turns him into a bull's-eye?

"Turn those headlights off!" Captain Allen ordered firmly, even a little an­grily, then impatiently signaled the Russian vehicle to move past him and get behind the closest of the three tanks.

As the weapons carrier rolled up to him, Allen ordered, "Put that behind that tank," and pointed to the third Sherman.

As the truck passed him, Allen saw that the truck bed was just about full of people. It was now dark, so he couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw at least two, maybe three, Orientals.

Major Masters marched purposefully toward the Russian vehicle, with Allen following.

The driver . . .

Who's not wearing a helmet. . .

Goddamn it, none of these people are!!!

. . . who looked a little old to be a private—there was no rank insignia in sight—was already out of the Russian vehicle, leaning against it, lighting a cigar with a wooden match.

"Are you in charge of this . . . operation?" Major Masters demanded.

"Yes, I am," the driver said, taking a deep, satisfied puff on his cigar, then examining the coal.

"And don't you salute officers, soldier?" Major Masters demanded icily.

"Sorry," the driver said, straightened, and saluted. Masters returned it im­patiently. After a moment, Allen did so too.

"What's your name, soldier? Your outfit?" Major Masters demanded.

"My name is McCoy, Major," the driver said. "And I'm a Marine. Actually, I'm a Marine major."

Captain Allen accepted this immediately. There was something about this guy's voice, the smile on his face, that made the announcement credible. Major Masters had trouble with it.

"Is there some reason you're not wearing the insignia of your rank, Major!"

"Who are you?" McCoy asked.

"My name is Masters. I'm the assistant G-2 of the 7th Division."

"You work for Colonel Lemuleson?" McCoy asked.

"As a matter of fact, I do," Masters admitted. The question had sur­prised him.

Zimmerman walked up to them. He saluted.

"Thanks for not shooting first and then asking questions," Zimmer­man said.

"This is Master Gunner Zimmerman," McCoy said.

"Master Gunner?" Captain Allen asked as he offered his hand. "The Ma­rine equivalent of our master sergeant?"

"Mr. Zimmerman is what the Army would call a chief warrant officer," McCoy corrected him.

"Neither of you is wearing any insignia—" Major Masters began.

"I know," McCoy interrupted, smiling.

Masters glowered at him.

"If you work for Colonel Lemuleson, you're just the man I want to see," McCoy went on.

"Is that so?"

"I need two things, Major," McCoy said. "I need to get a message to Colonel Lemuleson, and—"

"Before we go any further, Major," Masters interrupted, "I'd like to see some identification and your orders. Who the hell are you?"

"If you work for Colonel Lemuleson, and he didn't tell you, then I guess he decided you don't have the need to know," McCoy said.

He turned to Allen.

"Have you got a landline I can use to call 7th Division, Captain?" McCoy asked.

"It was working fifteen minutes ago, sir," Allen said. He pointed toward his command post.

"I demand to see your identification, Major!" Masters said loudly.

His face was red. McCoy seemed amused rather than cowed.

"Colonel Lemuleson's holding all that for us, sorry. Why don't we see if we can get him on the horn?"

He started to walk toward the CP. Masters, red-faced, stood with his hands on his hips, watching McCoy walk away.

Allen started to follow him, saw Foster Four with a May I go too? Look on his face, and nodded permission.

Allen caught up with McCoy.

"Somehow, sir, I get the feeling Major Masters is annoyed with you," he said.

McCoy chuckled.

"I ... uh ... didn't know what to think when I saw your jeep," Captain Allen said. "The first one, I mean. Or this thing . . ."

He stopped when he became aware that Major Masters was trotting after them.

"We've been doing a reconnaissance," McCoy said. "No big deal, but it's none of that guy's business."

"I thought the Marines were operating in Seoul, north of it," Allen said.

"They are," McCoy said.

"Where'd you get the Russian jeep?"

Major Masters was now walking beside them. He announced: "We'll see what Colonel Lemuleson has to say about all this."

McCoy acted as if he hadn't heard him. He turned to Allen. "We bagged some Inmun Gun. They were driving this thing. I figured, what the hell, why not take it with us?"

Major Masters picked up on that.

"Can I take that to mean you have engaged the enemy?"

"It wasn't much of an 'engagement.' They were coming up the road, Mr. Zimmerman shot the tires out on the first vehicle, and we bagged them."

"You have prisoners?" Masters demanded.

"Uh-huh," McCoy said. "That's the second thing I need from you, Major. Somebody to take four of the five off our hands. One of them is a lieutenant colonel. He's a keeper."

"By which you mean?"

"That I'm going to take him to Seoul with me."

"I'll want to interrogate him, of course."

"You speak Korean?" McCoy asked.

"No, of course I don't speak Korean. There's Korean-speaking interrogators at Division. We'll take him—all of the prisoners—there."

They were down at the doorway to the CP.

McCoy stopped and looked at Major Masters.

"Sorry, the colonel goes with me," he said. "And if I can get Colonel Lemule­son on the phone, I'm not going anywhere near your headquarters."

"Let's clear the air here, Major," Major Masters said. "I'm the assistant G-2—"

"So you said," McCoy interrupted.

Major Masters glowered at him, then picked up:

"—of the 7th Division. Interrogation of prisoners is my responsibility. You do understand that?"

"None of these people will tell any of your interrogators anything," McCoy said. "I think maybe, once he sees we're back in Seoul, the colonel may be more cooperative."

"We won't know what any of the prisoners will say, will we, Major, until we sit them down before an interrogator who speaks Korean?"

"Mr. Zimmerman and I both speak Korean, Major, and we've already talked to these people. And to clear the air, these are our prisoners, not yours."

"That brings us back to Question One, doesn't it?" Major Masters asked icily. "Just who the hell are you, Major? And what are you doing in the 7th Di­vision's area?"

McCoy looked at him for a moment, then ducked through the narrow sandbagged opening into the CP without replying.

A slight, very young corporal was sitting on a folding metal chair by the radio and an EE-8 field telephone.

"Corporal," McCoy said, "see if you get through to G-2 at Division on the landline."

The corporal looked to Captain Allen for guidance. Allen nodded. The corporal cranked the generator handle on the side of the leather-cased EE-8.

"Patch me through to Regiment," he ordered after a moment, and then, a moment after that, he ordered, "Patch me through to Division."

McCoy walked to him and took the handset from him.

"Wolf Two, please," he said.

Twenty miles away, in a small village called Anyang, seven miles or so south of Seoul, in what had been built to be the waiting room of the railway station, Technical Sergeant Richard Ward picked up the handset of one of three EE-8 field telephones on the shelf of his small, folding wooden field desk.

"Wolf Two, Sergeant Ward, sir."

"Trojan Horse Six for the colonel, Sergeant," McCoy said.

"Hold one," Ward said, and extended the handset to Lieutenant Colonel Charles Lemuleson, a short, thin forty-year-old in too large fatigues, who was the intelligence officer of the 7th Division.

"For you, Colonel," Ward said, and added, "Trojan Horse Six."

Colonel Lemuleson turned from the map board leaning against the wall.

"Good!" he said. "I was getting worried."

He took the handset, pressed the butterfly switch, and said, "Wolf Two."

"Trojan Horse Six, sir. Good evening, sir."

Captain Allen handed Major McCoy a china mug of steaming coffee. McCoy smiled his thanks.

"Welcome home," Colonel Lemuleson's voice came somewhat metallically over the landline. "You're all right? Where are you?"

"At a roadblock south of Suwon, sir. We just came through."

"And apparently nobody shot at you. I was concerned about that."

"Yes, sir, that was a concern."

"I've got a message for you. Ready?"

"Yes, sir."

" 'Kimpo oh nine hundred twenty-nine September. Acknowledge. Con­firm. Signature Hart, Capt., USMCR, for Admiral Dewey' Got it?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you."

"Got that just after you left," Colonel Lemuleson said. "It was in the clear. Couldn't get you on the radio."

"It was in the clear" meant that the message had not been encrypted, which meant further that someone had decided there wasn't time to go through the encryption process. And that it wasn't encrypted explained "Admiral Dewey." Captain George S. Hart, USMCR, aide-de-camp (and bodyguard) to Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMCR, Assistant Director for Asia of the Cen­tral Intelligence Agency, did not want to use Pickering's name in a non-encrypted message.

"The radio in the jeep went out before we were out of Seoul, sir," McCoy said. "Can you take a reply, sir?"

"Shoot."

"Acknowledge and confirm Kimpo oh nine hundred twenty-nine Septem­ber. All well. Fresh eggs but no ham. Signature, McCoy."

Lieutenant Colonel Lemuleson said, "Got it," read it back for confirmation, and then asked, "Are you going to explain the ham and eggs business, McCoy? And who the hell is Admiral Dewey?"

"I better not, sir. But if memory serves, Admiral Dewey won the battle of Manila Bay in the Spanish-American War."

Lemuleson chuckled. "I knew I'd heard the name someplace. Anything else I can do for you, McCoy?"

"Yes, sir, there is. Sir, if I'm to be at Kimpo at 0900, I'd like to go there tonight—"

"That may be risky, McCoy," Lemuleson said. "I don't want to get a report in the morning that somebody shot first before asking any questions."

"Yes, sir. But I don't think I have much choice. Making things more diffi­cult is that we picked up some prisoners. What I'd like to do is send four of them to you with one of my sergeants. You could give him that envelope—"

"It's under a thermite grenade in my safe," Lemuleson interrupted.

"—and he could bring it to us in Seoul at first light."

"And if you need some identification tonight?"

"I'll have to take that chance, sir."

"Your call, McCoy," Lemuleson said. "Done."

"May I have that phone, please, Major?" Major Masters asked. It was more of an order.

McCoy considered the request for a moment, then said, "Hold one, sir, please. Major Masters wants to talk to you."

"What the hell is he doing there?" Lemuleson said.

McCoy handed the handset to Masters.

"Masters, sir. These people have five prisoners, one of them a lieutenant colonel, and Major McCoy refuses to turn them over to me."

He looked triumphantly at McCoy.

McCoy and the others could hear one side of the ensuing conver­sation.

"Trying to stay on the top of the situation sir," Major Masters said, and then, "Yes, sir."

And then, "Yes, sir."

And then, "Yes, sir."

And then, "Yes, sir, I'll do that, sir."

Then he handed the handset back to McCoy.

"The colonel wants to speak to you, Major," he said.

"Yes, sir?" McCoy said.

"Sorry about that, McCoy. He doesn't know what's going on, and for ob­vious reasons—God save us all from well-meaning idiots—I didn't want to tell him."

"I understand, sir. No problem."

"I told him to do whatever you tell him to do, and to ask no questions."

"Thank you, sir."

"If you need anything else, give a call.”

"Thank you very much, sir," McCoy said, and handed the handset to the corporal.

"Major, would you be willing to lead my Marines—the jeep and the weapons carrier—to Division?" McCoy asked.

"Certainly," Major Masters said. "Anything I can do to be of service. . . ."

[TWO]

Seoul, South Korea

1935 28 September 195O

Staff Sergeant John J. Doheny, USMC, thought it highly unlikely that "fleeing remnants" of the North Korean Army would drive boldly up Korean National Route 1 with their headlights blazing, but it never hurt to be careful.

"Heads up!" Doheny ordered when the headlights first illuminated, then stopped at the wrecked and burned General motors 6x6 truck he had ordered dragged into the middle of the road as sort of a prebarrier to his roadblock fifty yards up the road.

"Halt, who goes there?" a voice in the darkness called to the lights.

That was Corporal Daniel Meredith, USMCR, whom Doheny had sta­tioned with three other Marines, one of them armed with a BAR, in the ditches on either side of the burned truck barrier.

On one hand, Doheny thought, that sounded a little silly, as if they were at Parris Island or someplace, waiting for a drill instructor to inspect the guard post and demand a recitation of the Ten General Orders, instead of here, in the middle of a war.

On the other hand, he couldn't think of any other challenge that could be made that did the job as well. What else could Meredith shout? "Hi, there! Mind stopping there a moment, and telling me who you are?" or maybe, "Pardon me, sir, are you a friendly or a fucking gook Communist?"

"Marines!" a deep voice called back.

The beam of one flashlight and then another appeared, one from each side of the road. If his orders had been followed—and Sergeant Doheny had no rea­son to think they hadn't—PFC Miller, the big hillbilly with the BAR, now had it trained on the vehicle on the road from his position nowhere near the flash­lights, waiting for orders to fire from Meredith.

Sergeant Doheny could now see enough to know there was something re­ally strange down there. There were three men in a strange-looking jeep. The two in the front had their hands over their heads. The one in the back just sat there.

There was an American flag draped over the hood of the vehicle.

As Doheny got to his feet, he saw Meredith come onto the road from be­hind the vehicle, holding his carbine at the ready.

A moment later, Corporal Meredith bellowed, "Sergeant Doheny, I think you better come down here!"

Doheny ran quickly down the ditch, pushing the safety off on his M-1 Garand as he did. When he was beside the funny-looking vehicle, he came out of the ditch, holding the Garand like a hunter expecting to flush a bird.

A not-at-all-friendly voice called to him from the vehicle.

"Doheny, tell that moron to get that fucking light out of my eyes, or I'll stick it up his ass!"

"Who is that?" Doheny called back.

"Gunner Zimmerman! Are you blind as well as deaf?"

I knew I knew that fucking voice!

Staff Sergeant Doheny and Master Gunner Zimmerman had been profes­sionally associated at one time or another at the USMC Recruit Training Fa­cility, Parris Island; Camp Lejeune; and Camp Pendleton.

Doheny was more than a little in awe of Master Gunner Zimmerman. He was a Marine's Marine: tough, competent, and fair. And—although Zimmerman had never said anything about it himself—Doheny knew that during War Two Zimmerman had been a Marine Raider.

"Turn those fucking flashlights off," Sergeant Doheny ordered. They were out immediately.

"Jesus, Mr. Zimmerman, what the fuck are you doing out here?" Doheny inquired.

"Major McCoy," Gunner Zimmerman said, "this is Staff Sergeant Doheny. He's not too bad a Marine—when he's sober."

Sergeant Doheny saluted.

"Sorry, sir," he said. "I didn't see any insignia. . . ."

"How are you tonight, Sergeant?" McCoy replied, returning the salute.

"Can't complain, sir. Sir, with respect, what the fuck is this vehicle?"

"We took it away from the prisoner in the backseat, Sergeant," McCoy said. "As best as I can tell, it's a Chinese copy of a Russian vehicle the Russians copied after a German jeep."

"I'll be damned," Doheny said, and then stepped close to the vehicle and looked in the backseat. There was enough reflected light from the headlights for him to be able to see a hatless North Korean officer tightly trussed up and then tied to the backseat.

"What happened to the truck?" Zimmerman asked.

"No fucking idea. I had it drug into the road so anyone coming down the road would have to stop.'

"Good thinking, Sergeant," McCoy said. "How do we get around it?"

"Sir, if you're careful, you can get around it in a jeep," Doheny said. "I done that. I don't know about in this."

"Well, we'll try. What's between here and Seoul, Sergeant?"

"There's a checkpoint at the pontoon bridge over the Han River, sir. And that's about it. So far as action is concerned, we've got it pretty well cleaned out, but there's action north and east."

He pointed. There were flashes of dull light, and booming noises. It could have been a distant thunderstorm. It was, in fact, artillery.

"You got a landline to the checkpoint?" Zimmerman said. "I would really hate to get this close only to get blown away because somebody thought if it's riding around in a gook vehicle, it's probably a gook."

Sergeant Doheny sensed that the explanation was a shot at the major.

"No problem, sir," he said. "Anything else I can do for you?"

The major turned around and said something to the North Korean offi­cer, who, after a moment, responded. Then the major turned to Sergeant Doheny.

"The colonel needs to relieve himself, and so do I. Can your people untie him, and watch him?"

"Yes, sir. We're about fifty yards the other side of the truck."

"Okay. We'll do that next. And then . . . have you got any sandbags?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'll need a couple of them, please."

"Yes, sir. Sandbags?"

"Empty ones."

"1 got stacks of them, sir."

"I think two will be enough, thank you."

[THREE]

The House

Seoul, South Korea

2O45 28 September 195O

The sound of the cannon fire and the muzzle flashes lighting the sky had grown progressively louder and brighter as they approached the center of Seoul. There was obviously fighting, heavy fighting, on the outskirts of the city.

They were stopped three times inside the city, twice by Army military po­licemen and once by a Marine patrol, but the American flag on the hood and Zimmerman's gruff declaration that they were "transporting a prisoner"—and, of course, the prisoner himself, with two sandbags over his head—was enough to satisfy the MPs and a Marine sergeant. They were not asked for either or­ders or identification.

The city was in ruins. The North Koreans had defended it block by block, and there was smell of burned wood and rotting flesh. The streets were full of debris, and their progress was slow.

But finally McCoy turned the Russian jeep off a narrow street, stopped be­fore a wrought-iron fence in a brick wall, and blew the horn.

Immediately—startling them—floodlights mounted on the brick wall glowed red for an instant, then bathed them in a harsh white light.

Master Gunner Zimmerman bellowed the Korean equivalent of "Turn those fucking lights off!"

The lights died and the gate swung open. As McCoy drove though it, he saw that an air-cooled .30-caliber Browning machine gun was trained on them.

The building inside the wall looked European rather than Asiatic. It was of brick-and-stone construction, three stories tall. It had been built in 1925 for Hamburg Shipping, G.m.b.H., which had used it to house their man in Seoul. It was purchased from them in 1946 by Korean Textile Services, Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Far East Fur & Textiles, Ltd., of Hong Kong, which, it was alleged, was owned several steps distant by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. It was known as "The House."

A Korean in U.S. Army fatigues came out of the front door as McCoy pulled the Russian jeep up in front of the veranda beside three jeeps and a three-quarter-ton ambulance. The overpainted Red Cross markings on the sides of the ambulance body were still visible.

The Korean—he was at least six feet tall and weighed about 200 pounds, enormous for a Korean—came down the stairs, slinging his Thompson sub­machine gun over his shoulder as he did.

He said nothing.

In Korean, McCoy ordered, "Take the colonel in the house. Put him in one of the basement rooms. Once he's there, put a guard on him, untie him, take the sandbags off his head, and give him something to eat. I want him alive and unhurt."

The enormous Korean nodded his understanding. "The others?" he asked in English.

"They'll be here early tomorrow morning, all of them," McCoy said. Then he asked, "Is he here?"

"In the library," the Korean replied, again in English.

McCoy nodded, and he and Zimmerman got out of the Russian jeep and walked into the house.

The library was the first door on the right off the foyer. McCoy pushed open the door and walked in.

The first time McCoy had been in the room, the bookshelves lining three walls had been full. Now they were bare. The Inmun Gun had stripped the house of everything reasonably portable as soon as they had taken over the building.

"It's not amazing how little is left," Dunston had philosophized, "but how much."

Dunston, a plump, comfortable-appearing thirty-year-old whose Army identification card said that William R. Dunston was a major of the Army's Transportation Corps, sat at a heavy carved wooden table. A Coleman gasoline lantern on the table glowed white, and Dunston was using it to read Stars and Stripes, the Army newspaper.

Dunston was not actually a major, or even in the Army, despite his uniform and identity card. He was in fact a civilian employed by the Central Intelligence Agency, and before having been run out of Seoul by the advancing North Ko­rean Army had been the Seoul CIA station chief. After the landings at Inchon, Dunston had flown back into the city as soon as enough of the runway at Kimpo Airfield had been cleared to take an Army observation aircraft.

McCoy and Zimmerman pulled chairs—one heavy and of carved wood matching the table, the other a GI folding metal chair—to the table and sat down.

"What's with the Coleman lantern?" McCoy asked by way of greeting. "I heard the generator. . . . The perimeter floodlights are working."

"No lightbulbs," Dunston replied. "I'm working on it. Probably tomorrow." He paused, then went on: "I was getting a little worried about you, Ken."

"We're all right," McCoy said. "But I'm hungry and thirsty."

"Hard or soft? There is also a case of Asahi cooling in the fridge."

"I think one medicinal belt, and then beer," McCoy said. "Food?"

"There's steaks and potatoes, no vegetables."

"Hot water?" Zimmerman asked.

Dunston nodded. "And your laundry awaits," he said.

"I'm going to have a beer, a shower, a drink, and a steak, in that order," Zim­merman said.

A door opened, and a middle-aged Korean woman stood in it waiting for orders.

Dunston, in Korean, told her to bring beer and whiskey and to prepare steaks.

"I think if you had found him, you'd have said something," Dunston said.

"Close, goddamn close, but no brass ring," McCoy said. "I wouldn't be sur­prised if he saw us looking for him."

"But you think he's alive?"

"I'm pretty sure he was alive six, eight, maybe twelve hours before we found his arrow."

"Did you tell the general?"

McCoy nodded.

"I sent a message through the 7th Division G-2," he said, "and sometime tonight, I want to get a message out to the Badoeng Strait."

The USS Badoeng Strait (CVE 116) was the aircraft carrier—a small one, dubbed a "Jeep Carrier"—from which Major Malcolm Pickering had taken off on his last flight. His wing commander, Lieutenant Colonel William "Billy" Dunn, USMC, was doing all he could to locate and rescue Pickering; McCoy wanted him to know what had happened on this last ground search mission.

"No problem," Dunston said.

"What's going on here?" McCoy asked.

"It says in here," Dunston said, dryly, tapping Stars and Stripes, "that Seoul has been liberated. I guess nobody told the artillery."

"I wondered what all that noise is," McCoy said. "But that's not what I meant. I got a message from Hart saying to be at Kimpo at 0900. What's that all about?"

"El Supremo's flying in. He's going to turn Seoul over to Syngman Rhee. I guess the general's coming with him."

El Supremo was General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Com­mander, Allied Powers, and, since shortly after the Korean War began, Commander, United Nations Forces in Korea.

"They sent you a message?"

Dunston shook his head no.

"I'm a spy, Ken. I thought I told you. I've got a guy at Haneda. The Bataan’s being readied as we speak."

McCoy chuckled. Haneda was the airbase outside Tokyo where the Bataan, MacArthur's personal Douglas C-54 transport, was kept.

"I wish I had better news for the boss."

"That he's alive is good news."

"Yeah, and six hours after I tell him that, we'll find his body."

"The bastard walks through raindrops, Killer," Zimmerman said. "You know that."

"Where's General Howe? And did you tell him that MacArthur and the boss are coming?" McCoy asked.

Major General Ralph Howe, a World War I crony of then-Captain Harry S Truman, was in the Far East as the personal representative of the President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of its Armed Forces.

"I got a message from him about six o'clock, saying he's with Chesty Puller's Marine regiment," Dunston said. "And no, I didn't tell him. (a) I figured they'd get word to him, and (b) I didn't want him to ask how come I knew."

The Korean woman came into the room carrying a tray. It held quart bot­tles of Asahi beer, a quart bottle of Famous Grouse scotch, and ice and glasses.

"Where'd you get all the booze?" Zimmerman asked.

"I paid a courtesy call on General Almond," Dunston said. "That general knows how to go to war. With a trailerload of hootch and cocktail snacks, and clean white sheets. Almond told his aide—Haig?—to take care of me."

"Why did Almond tell El Supremo Seoul's been liberated?" McCoy asked, indicating the pounding rumble of the heavy artillery with a finger pointed at the ceiling.

He reached for the bottle of whiskey and poured two inches in one of the glasses. Zimmerman picked up one of the beer bottles. Dunston slid him a bot­tle opener.

"I think it was the other way around," Dunston said. "And Almond is too smart to disagree with El Supremo. MacArthur said he wanted Seoul liberated within two weeks of the landing at Inchon, and by God, it has been liberated."

"We bagged a North Korean lieutenant colonel—" McCoy began.

"And his Russian jeep," Zimmerman interjected.

"And his jeep?" Dunston asked, smiling. "What are you going to do with that?"

Zimmerman opened the bottle, and then left the room, drinking from the bottle as he walked.

"—who I turned over to Paik Su," McCoy went on, "with instructions to put him in the basement, feed him, and make him comfortable. I think he's im­portant. Probably an intelligence officer, maybe a political commissar, but some­body important. I think he should be interrogated by somebody besides Zimmerman and me—or, for that matter, you. This guy is not impressed by a couple of clowns riding around the boondocks in a jeep. But I think he might respond to somebody he thinks is important."

"Paik is very good at getting people to tell him things," Dunston said.

"And there is always thiopental sodium, but that also requires that the in­terrogator know what questions to ask. What we may get from this guy will be something—and I have a gut feeling there will be something—that he lets slip, not something Paik, or a needle in his arm, 'persuades' him to tell us."

"I know just the guy, an ROK bird colonel," Dunston said. "I'll handle it. Go get a shower and something to eat, Ken. You look beat."

"After I get a message off to the Badoeng Strait."

"I can do that, too, if you'd like," Dunston said.

"Thanks, Bill, but I'd rather do it myself," McCoy said.

He stood up and held the whiskey glass out. "And before I have another of these and go to sleep. I'm beat."

"You've been up since four, and I don't think you got much sleep last night,"

Dunston said. "Ken, if all you've got to tell Colonel Dunn is where Pickering was—or wasn't—I can use that overlay and send the message."

"I'd rather do it myself," McCoy said. "But for the second time, thanks, Bill."

He walked out of the library and climbed the stairs to the radio room on the third floor. Coleman lanterns were on each landing. The radio operator on duty was a not-unattractive Korean woman in her thirties. She sat at a table on which was an aluminum teapot on an electric stove, an ashtray, a typewriter, and a fully automatic M-2 .30-caliber carbine. The radio room had a lightbulb dangling naked from the ceiling.

McCoy nodded his head and said, "Di-San."

Possibly to restrain the romantic tendencies of McCoy's Marines, Dunston had told them that Di and her husband had been prewar employees, and that after torturing the husband for several hours, the North Koreans had finally killed him, then, after subjecting the woman to multiple rape, had for some rea­son let her go.

Her head barely moved in a nod acknowledging McCoy.

"I'll have a short message for the Badoeng Strait," McCoy said.

Her head bobbed almost imperceptibly again, and she turned to one of the radio sets and began to make the necessary adjustments.

McCoy took a map of Korea and a translucent overlay from a table drawer, put the overlay on the map, and made a pencil note of the coordinates on the overlay. Lieutenant Colonel Billy Dunn, on the aircraft carrier, had an identi­cal overlay. Without the overlay, the coordinate keys would be useless.

Then he sat down at an old Underwood typewriter, which already—in an­ticipation of incoming messages—had paper in it. He paused thoughtfully for a moment, and then began to type.

SECRET

2125 28SEP50

FOR MOTHERHEN

FROM TROJANHORSE

POSITIVE INDICATIONS HOTSHOT AT COORDINATES CHARLEY SEVEN SEVEN TWO, MIKE ZERO FOUR

ZERO TWO TO TWELVE HOURS PRIOR TO 0900 28SEP50.

NO CONTACT.

TROJANHORSE AT MONACO 0900 29SEP50. END.

He unrolled the sheet of paper from the typewriter and handed it to the Ko­rean woman. She read it, looked at him, then said, "I will encrypt it if you like."

He nodded.

"I'm going to get something to eat, and then go to bed," he said in Korean. "If I don't hear from you, I will presume Badoeng Strait acknowledges."

She nodded.

"Thank you, Di-San," he said.

She nodded again.

McCoy left the radio room and walked back down the stairs to the ground floor. There was the glaring white light and hissing of a Coleman lantern com­ing from the dining room, and he went in there.

"I didn't wait," Zimmerman said, unnecessarily, as he mopped the last meat juices from his plate with a piece of bread. "I was starved."

"I got a message off to Billy Dunn," McCoy said.

Zimmerman grunted, and then got up.

"Make sure they wake me for breakfast," he said, and walked out.

McCoy nodded and sat down at the table. The older Korean woman came in almost immediately with a steak and french fried potatoes on a plate. She left and returned in a moment with a bottle of red wine.

The steak was enormous, and he couldn't eat all of it. He drained the wine­glass, stood up, and left. He climbed the stairs to the second floor and walked down a dark corridor to and through a heavy door into a large, sparsely fur­nished room. There was a double bed, neatly made up with sheets and Army blankets. Beside it was a chair. There was a large wooden desk with a Coleman lantern glowing white on it.

Neatly folded on the bed were freshly washed linen, a freshly washed and starched set of Marine utilities, two towels, a facecloth, and a bar of Pond's soap. McCoy wondered where Dunston had found that. Next to the bed was a pair of Army combat boots. Shined Army combat boots.

McCoy sat on the bed and took off the Marine boots he was wearing. Then he took off the fatigue jacket, held it for a moment, and dropped it onto the floor. He stood up, took a Model 1911A1 Colt .45 ACP pistol from the small of his back, and put it on the chair beside the bed. Then he stripped off the rest of his clothes, leaving everything in a pile on the floor.

He took the freshly pressed and starched uniform from the bed and laid it over the pistol on the chair. Then he picked up the clean linen and the towels from the bed and walked to the bathroom door, returning in a moment for the Coleman lantern.

It took a long time for the hot water to work its way up from the boiler in the basement, but finally there was a steady, heavy stream of hot water. He stood under it a long time after he was clean.

Then he put on the underwear, carried the Coleman lantern back into the bedroom, sat on the bed, turned the lantern off, and got between the sheets.

In thirty seconds, he was asleep.

Chapter Three

[ONE]

Hangar 13

Kimpo Airfield (K-16)

Seoul, South Korea

22O5 28 September 195O

As Major McCoy slipped between the clean white sheets of his bed, Captain Howard C. Dunwood, USMCR—who, three months before, had been named "Salesman of the Month" at Mike O'Brien's DeSoto-Plymouth Agency in East Orange, New Jersey—sat in his underwear on the edge of his cot in a shrapnel-riddled hangar forking cold ham chunks and baked beans from an olive-drab Army ration can by the light of a small candle.

And like Major McCoy, Dunwood was fresh from his personal toilette: He had just shaved, then washed his face and crotch and his armpits with water held in a steel helmet. He had then used the same water to wash his change of socks and underwear, using a tiny chunk of soap that had come with a package of Chesterfield cigarettes, a small pack of toilet paper, and some other "comforts" with the field rations.

He actually felt a little guilty about the cot, having been taught, and be­lieving, that officers should enjoy no creature comforts not available to their men. There were only ten folding wooden cots available to the men of Baker Company, 5th Marines.

His supply sergeant—Staff Sergeant Al Preston, USMC, who three months before had been on recruiting duty in Montgomery, Alabama—had "borrowed" them that morning from an Army ration dump in Ascom City, near the port of Inchon, while collecting their daily rations and the mail. There had not been very many rations, and almost no mail.

Preston had passed seven of the ten cots out to the senior noncoms of the company, then carried the remaining three into the officers' quarters—what had apparently been small offices off the hangar floor—and started setting them up.

"Can you go back and get some more cots for the men?" Dunwood had asked.

"Ten's all they had, sir," Preston had replied, then had taken the meaning of the question and added: "R.H.I.P., Skipper."

Dunwood doubted that "Rank Hath Its Privileges" justified his other two officers and himself, and the seven noncoms, having cots when none of the other men of Baker Company would, but he let it go.

The floor of the officers' quarters was concrete, and he wasn't as young as he had been when he had made the Tarawa and Okinawa landings in War Two.

He decided that there was nothing wrong with being as comfortable as he could for as long as he could. Their current status was bound to change, sooner or later and probably sooner than later, and when it changed, things would al­most certainly be worse.

Right now, despite the spartan and miserable living conditions in the shrapnel-holed hangar and the lousy rations, things were pretty good, consid­ering the alternative, which was doing what they were supposed to be doing, fighting as a Marine infantry company on the line.

The lines of ambulances and the sound of the firing had made it obvious that taking Seoul back from the North Koreans had been a nasty job. To judge by the sound of artillery, it still was a nasty job.

Baker Company hadn't been involved. They were officially in what some G-3 major had told him was "Division Special Reserve." Exactly what that meant Dunwood didn't know, but he knew the result.

Since Baker Company had landed at Inchon eleven days before, with the exception of some minor harassing and intermittent fire, they had not been in­volved in any combat at all, and that meant there had been zero KIA, zero WIA, and zero MIA.

It hadn't been that way in the Pusan Perimeter, where the Army general, Walker, admitted publicly that he had used the 5th Marines as his "Fire Brigade," rushing its men in all over to save the Army's ass when it looked as if the North Koreans were about to break through.

There had been a lot of Killed in Action and Wounded in Action in Baker Company in the Pusan Perimeter. When they were pulled off the line so they could board ships and make the Inchon Landing, Baker Company had been down to three officers and ninety-eight men. They were supposed to have five officers and two hundred four men. Dunwood had been able to report zero Missing in Action in the perimeter; he took a little quiet pride in knowing he hadn't left any of his Marines behind.

When they got to the piers in Pusan, expecting to board the USS Clymer or the USS Pickaway, or another of the attack transports that would carry them to Yokohama, where the 1st Marine Division was being assembled, Baker Com­pany had been loaded instead aboard LST-450. And they were the only Marines loaded, although she was big enough to carry a hell of a lot more people.

Just about as soon as they were out of the harbor and the LST's skipper, Lieutenant John X. McNear, USNR, had time for a little chat, he told Dun-wood three things.

First, that he was, like Dunwood, a reserve officer involuntarily called up for Korea (he had been the golf professional at Happy Hollow Country Club, Phoenix, Arizona). Second, that he had just now sailed LST-450 from Bre­merton, Washington, where she had been mothballed. And third, that they were now headed for Sasebo, not Yokohama. He said he had learned that only when he opened a sealed envelope on which was typed "OPEN ONLY WHEN AT SEA," and he hadn't any idea what was going on.

Dunwood had searched his mind for a possible explanation and had come up with very little, except the possibility that Baker Company would be reequipped and brought up to authorized strength at Sasebo.

When they got to Sasebo, Dunwood quickly learned that was not to be the case.- Baker Company, the lieutenant colonel in charge of a team from 1st Ma­rine Division Headquarters told him, had been selected for a "special mission of crucial importance to the landing at Inchon."

The lieutenant colonel made it sound like an honor. Dunwood's experience as a Marine made him suspect it was a euphemistic description of a mission that would get a lot of Marines—probably including him—killed.

Baker Company was shortly thereafter assembled in the gymnasium of the U.S. Naval Base, Sasebo, where, after the windows were covered and guards posted at the doors, the colonel described their mission to them.

It seemed that to reach the landing beaches at Inchon, the invasion fleet would have to traverse the thirty-odd-mile-long Flying Fish Channel. In the channel were a number of islands, two of which, Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do, had to be invested and neutralized twenty-four hours before the invasion fleet arrived, otherwise the enemy could blow large holes in the sides of the transports with ordinary field artillery.

Baker Company had been given the mission, the honor, of investing Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do. Before they landed on the islands from Higgins boats, the islands would of course be subject to an enormous barrage of naval gunfire, which would effectively reduce to minimal the enemy's ability to resist Baker Company's invasion.

Actually, from that perspective, the colonel said, the real mission of Baker Company would be to occupy the two islands and prevent the enemy from coming back and bringing more artillery with them.

Captain Dunwood had gone ashore at Tarawa and Iwo Jima, on each oc­casion having been assured that following the massive preinvasion barrages of naval artillery to be laid on those islands, resistance would be minimal. That assurance had turned out to be bullshit, and he had therefore concluded that it was logical to presume this one was, too, and that Baker Company had just been handed the short end of the stick.

But he was a Marine, and Marines go where they are ordered to go, and he was a Marine officer, and Marine officers do whatever is humanly possible to reduce Marine losses by the only means that has ever looked like it works— training and more training.

By the time Baker Company reboarded LST-450, Captain Dunwood was sure that ninety-five percent of his Marines hated him for the regimen of training they had gone through under his command. And he was also sure that he had trained them as well and as thoroughly as he knew how, and that would probably result in fewer KIA and WIA than otherwise would have occurred.

At 0415 14 September, as the schedule called for, LST-450 was at the mouth of the Flying Fish Channel, preparing to load the men of Baker Com­pany aboard the Higgins boats for their assault on Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do islands.

Every ear, of course, was listening for the thunder, and every eye the flash, of the massive naval gunfire bombardment that was going to reduce the po­tential of the North Koreans to repel their assault to minimal. That was sched­uled to begin at 0415 and last for a half hour.

At 0445, when Baker Company's Higgins boats were scheduled to depart LST-450 for the beaches of the islands, they were still listening, in vain. There had been some kind of a fuckup, obviously, and there wasn't going to be any massive barrage of naval gunfire.

Or, possibly, Captain Dunwood had thought privately, some candy-ass chair-warming swabbie clerk-typist had made a little mistake typing the order—hitting the "5" instead of the "4"—and there would be a massive barrage of naval gun­fire landing on Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do starting at 0515, five minutes after the first Higgins boat touched the shore, and Baker Company would be up to its ass in angry North Koreans.

Marines go where they are ordered to go, with or without massive barrages of naval gunfire to reduce opposition to the minimum.

At 0510, on schedule, the first Higgins boat transporting Baker Company to the Flying Fish Channel Islands touched ashore and dropped its ramp.

Marines ran down the ramp and turned right and left, spreading out, weapons at the ready. Captain Dunwood was in the center of what ultimately was a formation in the shape of a V, holding his carbine in one hand.

"Hold your fire! Hold your fire!" a voice shouted, an obviously American voice.

A figure appeared. He was in black cotton pajamas and had a band of the same material around his forehead. He held his hands over his head in a ges­ture of surrender.

It soon became apparent that the Marines Had Landed and the situation was well in hand. The first landing had occurred before—long before, weeks before—Baker Company of the 5th Marines had arrived.

The character in the black pajamas was a technical sergeant named Jennings. The second character to appear in black pajamas had identified himself as Cap­tain K. R. McCoy, USMCR, and he said he was "in charge of the operation."

At about that moment—just as Dunwood was trying to reconcile McCoy with some candy-ass Marine he'd clashed with on a plane—the skies lit up and the earth trembled as a massive barrage of naval gunfire began. It flew overhead to land on Wolmi-do Island, miles farther down the Flying Fish Channel.

Captain McCoy explained to Captain Dunwood that the real role of Baker Company in the Inchon Invasion was to retake Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do islands in case something happened to him and his men.

Captain McCoy and his handful of men—some of them Korean—had then gotten into Baker Company's Higgins boats and left. Dunwood never had time to ask Captain McCoy what he was supposed to do next, or even to which Ma­rine unit he belonged, or what was the reason for the black pajamas.

Two days later, other Higgins boats appeared at the island, under a Navy chief bosun's mate who knew only that he had been ordered to the island to pick up Baker Company and transport them to Inchon.

At Inchon, which had just been taken, Baker Company was placed in Di­vision Special Reserve and Dunwood was shown where to bivouac and told to be prepared to move out on twenty minutes' notice.

No such notice ever came, and it had not been necessary for Baker Com­pany to fire a shot. Or, for that matter, to dodge any.

After five days in Division Special Reserve, half a company of amphibious trucks had come to their bivouac area under an old gunnery sergeant who re­ported that all Captain Strauley had told him was that he was to haul Baker Company to Kimpo Airfield.

By the time they reached Kimpo, the war had moved past the airfield. It was already in use.

Sergeant Preston had come to him within an hour, saying that he'd reconnoitered the field and found a hangar at the far end that was neither in use nor too badly shot up, and why didn't they take it over?

"At least, sir, until the fucking crotch gets its head out of its ass and decides what the fuck to do with us."

Under the circumstances, Captain Dunwood had decided that pending or­ders, moving into the hangar was the prudent thing to do.

A captain from G-3, Headquarters, 1st Marine Division, had shown up the next day and announced that Baker Company was still in Division Special Re­serve and further orders would be forthcoming. He didn't say when, but warned Dunwood to be prepared to move out on four hours' notice, maximum.

Captain Dunwood's plan of action remained the same. Have Baker Com­pany prepared to move out on command, and in the meantime to make his men as comfortable as possible, at the same time making no waves that would call attention to his command.

With a little bit of luck, they might be forgotten again.

When he finished his ham chunks and baked beans, he took a bite of the chocolate bar that came with the rations, spit it out, and decided it had prob­ably already been bad when packaged just before the Civil War.

He slipped his feet into his boondockers, then sort of slid across the con­crete floor to the door and went outside the hangar. He put a cigarette in his mouth and reached for his Zippo. Then he went back inside the building and, with his back to the door, lit the cigarette.

He thought it was highly unlikely that a North Korean sniper was lying in the mud out there somewhere, waiting to take a shot at some Marine careless enough to light a cigarette in the open and make a target of himself, but it never hurt to be careful.

Besides, he had warned his men of snipers lying in the mud waiting for a chance to shoot a careless Marine so often that he felt he should practice what he preached.

Holding the cigarette with the coal in his cupped hand, he went outside again, thinking that for the evening's amusement he would watch the red glow of the artillery bounce off the clouds to the northeast of Seoul.

What he saw was the headlights—not the blackout lights—of two jeeps coming down the runway at high speed, and he wondered if no one had ever told them about North Korean snipers lying in the mud, hoping for an oppor­tunity to shoot people foolish enough to run around at night with their head­lights blazing.

Surprising him, the jeeps turned off the runway and onto the service road leading to his hangar.

A hundred yards from the hangar, they were stopped by one of Dunwood's perimeter guards. In the headlights, he could see the sentry gesturing toward him. Or, he thought, more accurately, the hangar, as there probably was not enough light to make him visible.

And then the jeeps were on him. There were two. In the first were three of­ficers. The second was an MP jeep with a pedestal-mounted .30-caliber air-cooled Browning machine gun.

The driver of the jeep got out of it quickly and walked up to Dunwood. Dunwood saw that he was an Army officer, a major, wearing a classy fur-collar zipper jacket with the blue-and-white X Corps patch sewn to it. He was armed with a .45 in a tanker's shoulder holster.

Dunwood saluted.

The major returned the salute and inquired, not unpleasantly, "Who are you?"

"Captain Dunwood, sir. Commanding Baker Company, 5th Marines."

"When we couldn't find you, we thought you'd moved out."

“Sir?”

"You're 1st Marine Division Special Reserve, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, you've been assigned to us for this mission," the major said.

"What mission is that, sir?"

The major didn't reply directly.

"We looked for you back there," the major said, indicating the main area of the airfield. "And when we couldn't find you, we thought you'd moved out. And we didn't expect to find anyone in this hangar."

"Yes, sir," Dunwood said.

"But all's well that ends well, right?" the major said, and turned to one of the officers with him, a young lieutenant. "Better get on the horn, Dick, and tell the colonel we've found the Marines, are now at the hangar, and we'll get back to them when we know more."

"Yes, sir," the young lieutenant said. He got into the backseat of the jeep, picked up a microphone, and called, "Jade Bird, this is Jade Bird Three."

"I'm the assistant Army Aviation officer for X Corps," the major said. "My name is Alex Donald." He put out his hand.

"How do you do, sir?"

"What's your strength, Captain? Nobody seemed to know."

"Three officers and ninety-eight men, sir."

"That ought to be enough. We can always get more if needed."

"Yes, sir. May I ask, enough for what?"

"To protect the aircraft," Major Donald said.

"What aircraft, sir?"

"This is to go no further than here, you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"At first light, Captain, two aircraft are going to land here, and immediately be placed inside this hangar. . . . The doors do function, don't they?"

"I'm afraid I have no idea, sir," Dunwood said. He saw that Staff Sergeant Al Preston had come around the corner of the hangar.

"Why not?" Major Donald asked.

"Sir, I had no reason to open them."

"Jesus Christ, Captain!" Major Donald exclaimed. "What good is a hangar if you can't get the doors open?"

"Yes, sir," Dunwood said. "Sergeant Preston, do you know if the doors of the hangar work?"

"Don't have a clue, sir."

"Get a couple of men and try to open them," Dunwood ordered.

"Aye, aye, sir," Sergeant Preston said.

Major Donald gave Captain Dunwood a thumbs-up.

"That's the spirit!" Major Donald said, and then explained, "It's very im­portant that the enemy . . . and I think it's reasonable to assume they left spies behind when we ran them out of Seoul, don't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"It's important that the enemy not see these aircraft before we're ready for them to see them, you understand?"

"I think so. What kind of aircraft are these, Major?"

"I'm afraid you don't have the need to know that, Captain," Major Donald said. "And the problem is compounded because we think a senior officer, a very senior officer, is probably going to want to have a look at these aircraft—you take my meaning, Captain?"

“I'm afraid not, sir."

"Well, then, I'd better not get into that, either. It will all become clear at first light when these aircraft arrive."

"Yes, sir."

"I can tell you this, Captain," Major Donald said. "You are going to be present to personally witness the beginning of a new era in battlefield mobility."

"I don't know what that means, I'm afraid, sir."

"You'll see in the morning, Captain. But right now, I suggest you establish a really secure perimeter around this hangar."

"Yes, sir," Captain Dunwood said, and thought, This is fucking surreal. "With your permission, sir, I'll get dressed and see about setting up a perime­ter guard."

Major Donald gave Captain Dunwood another thumbs-up signal and said, "That's the spirit!" Then he raised his voice. "Dick!"

"Yes, sir?"

"Get on the horn again and tell the colonel that everything's set up. And then bring in the sandwiches and coffee."

"Yes, sir," the young lieutenant replied.

"It's going to be a long night, but it's always better to be early than late."

"Yes, sir."

[TWO]

Hangar 13

Kimpo Airfield (K-16)

Seoul, South Korea

O5IO 29 September 195O

Major Alex Donald, USA, and Captain Howard Dunwood, USMCR, stood on the tarmac before the open doors of Hangar 13. It had grown light enough in the last few minutes for Dunwood to see the perimeter guard he had established in the dark around the hangar.

The Marines of Baker Company were set up in and around foxholes, cul­verts, wrecked vehicles, crashed aircraft fuselages, and in a really shot-up little building painted in a black-and-white checkerboard pattern, their weapons forming fields of fire that would keep the enemy away from the hangar that was to house the aircraft soon to arrive.

Dunwood wondered about the purpose of the checkerboard building. Every airport seemed to have one, but he had no idea of what they were for.

Probably because he didn't really give much of a damn about either the Air Force or the Army, neither did he have any idea what the relationship between the two was with respect to airplanes. Now he was wondering about that, too. When, during the night, Major Alex Donald had taken off his spiffy fur-collared zipper jacket—which Dunwood had belatedly recognized to be a pilot's jacket— there were silver pilot's wings pinned to his chest. There were also metallic rep­resentations of the old-time wigwag signal flags on his collar point. Dunwood recognized that as the insignia of the Army Signal Corps.

Putting that all together, Major Donald was an Army Signal Corps officer— in other words, an officer whose specialty was communications—who was also a pilot, presumably of these secret aircraft about to arrive to usher in a new era of battlefield mobility.

Where did the Air Force fit into this? Weren't airplanes the province of the Air Force? Until just now, Dunwood thought the only airplanes the Army had were little Piper Cub-like two-seaters used for artillery spotting, and a hand­ful of helicopters, tiny little flying machines in which the pilot sat in a huge plastic bubble and whose only purpose Dunwood could see was to haul either the brass from point to point or to haul the wounded in a side-mounted stretcher rack.

Dunwood knew that his success as a DeSoto-Plymouth salesman had been in large part due to his ability to get people to tell him just about anything he wanted them to. Knowing your customer was the first, and most important, step in making a sale, and he had been damned good at finding out whatever he had wanted to know.

That skill had failed him in the long hours of the night. Major Alex Don­ald had told him no more than what he'd told him when he had first appeared at the hangar, and finally had made it very clear that Dunwood's persistent cu­riosity was very unwelcome.

There came the sound of multiple aircraft engines.

Dunwood looked into the sky toward Inchon. There were three Corsairs slowly approaching the airfield. They were flying one above the other, separated by two hundred feet or so. The lowest was maybe 1,500 feet above the ground.

"There they are," Major Donald cried, excitement in his voice.

"Major," Dunwood said, "those are Corsairs. Marine Corsairs."

"Not there, Captain," Major Donald said, as if speaking to a retarded child. "There!"

Dunwood looked at him. The major had his arm extended toward the hori­zon in the direction of Inchon.

Dunwood looked where Donald was pointing.

There were two objects in the air, perhaps two hundred feet off the deck, approaching the airfield from the direction of Inchon. They looked not unlike olive-drab dragonflies, a large body supported by a lot of flapping wings, or whatever.

In a moment, Dunwood realized they were helicopters, the largest he had ever seen.

"Well, Captain," Major Donald said. "What do you think about that?"

Dunwood, who didn't know what to think, said nothing.

It was maybe sixty seconds before the first of the helicopters reached the hangar, flared, and then settled to the ground. By then, Dunwood saw, perhaps half of his men had climbed out of their foxholes and other emplacements to get a better look. Two Marines were standing on top of the checkerboard-painted building.

As they had rehearsed during the night, eight Marines under Sergeant Al Preston trotted up to push the aircraft into the hangar.

As it was pushed past him, Dunwood saw a legend painted in yellow on the fuselage just behind the side door of the cockpit: US ARMY MODEL H-19A.

The second helicopter settled to the ground.

"Shake a leg, men!" Major Alex Donald shouted. "We've got to get these aircraft out of sight before anyone sees them."

[THREE]

The House

Seoul, Korea

O55O 29 September 195O

Major Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, now wearing crisply starched Marine utilities, with the gold oak leaves of his rank pinned in the prescribed place on the collar points, and even wearing aftershave lotion, walked into the din­ing room.

Master Gunner Ernest W. Zimmerman, USMC, similarly attired and ship­shape, was sitting at one side of the heavy carved wooden table, spreading but­ter on a piece of toast.

The two men nodded at each other. Zimmerman opened his mouth as if to say something, but stopped when the middle-aged Korean woman entered from the kitchen carrying a silver coffeepot.

She bowed to McCoy, he bowed back, and she poured a cup of coffee for him. She asked him what he wanted for breakfast, and he asked what was available, and she told him, and he ordered what Gunner Zimmerman had had— ham, eggs up, home-fried potatoes, and toast.

When she passed through the door to the kitchen, McCoy sat down across the table from Zimmerman.

"I wonder what the other Marines in Korea are having for breakfast this morning," he said, helping himself to a piece of Zimmerman's toast.

"My mother used to try to make me eat oatmeal by telling me about the starving kids in India," Zimmerman said. "Same answer. I don't give a damn what's on anyone else's plate." He pointed at his plate. "This is the only one that counts."

"I'm shocked at your cruel selfishness," McCoy said in mock indignation.

"Neither do you, Killer," Zimmerman said, chuckling. "Be honest."

McCoy smiled.

"You know what I was thinking, though?" Zimmerman asked.

"No."

"What did finding your next day's uniform sitting all pressed and ship­shape on your bed last night remind you of?"

"Shanghai, 4th Marines, houseboys?" McCoy responded. "Sergeant Zim­merman and Corporal McCoy?"

"Yeah."

"Hard whiskey and wild, wild women, before we became respectable, mar­ried, officers and gentlemen?"

"What I was thinking was we haven't come that far in ten years," Zimmer­man said.

"Then, ten years ago, I would have been happy to think I could make staff sergeant in ten years," McCoy said.

So now you're a field-grade officer, and I make as much money as a captain—"

"And own half of Beaufort, South Carolina. . . ."

"—and people are still shooting at us."

“Nobody shot at us yesterday, Ernie."

"With you and that goddamn Russian jeep, we almost got blown away by our own side," Zimmerman said.

The door from the foyer opened and two middle-aged men in mussed and soiled Army fatigues walked in. One of them had a Garand rifle slung over his shoulder; there were two eight-round clips of ammunition on the strap. The other carried a U.S. Submachine Gun, Caliber .45 ACP M-3, in his hand. The weapon, made of mostly stamped parts, was called a Grease Gun because it looked like a grease gun.

Zimmerman glanced up at them, and then in a Pavlovian reflex jumped to his feet and barked, "'Ten'hut on deck!"

McCoy, in another Pavlovian reflex, stood to attention.

"As you were," one of the two newcomers said, then added, "Good morning."

"Good morning, sir," McCoy and Zimmerman said, almost in unison.

Major General Ralph Howe, NGUS, walked to the table and hung his Grease Gun over the back of one of the heavy chairs and sat down. He looked at Zimmerman.

"Ernie," he said. "I thought I told you I'd rather you didn't do that every time I walk into a room."

"Force of habit, sir," Zimmerman said. "Sorry, sir."

The other man, whose sleeves carried the stencil-painted chevrons of a mas­ter sergeant, shook his head in resignation, then hung his rifle over the back of another chair and sat down.

General Howe gestured with his hand for McCoy and Zimmerman to sit down.

"To judge by your spiffy appearance, I guess you heard who's due at Kimpo at 0900?" he said.

"I got a message from Hart, sir, to be at Kimpo at 0900," McCoy said. "No names were mentioned."

"El Supremo is going to turn Liberated Seoul back over to Syngman Rhee at about eleven," Howe said. "Maybe it'll really be liberated by then. Some of the North Koreans apparently didn't get the word."

McCoy chuckled.

"And Charley said that if anyone could get us a bath, a shave, and clean uni­forms, it would be you two," Howe said.

"And maybe something besides powdered eggs for breakfast?" Master Sergeant Charley Rogers said.

He, too, was a National Guardsman. He had been Captain Howe's first sergeant and had been with him ever since. That meant when President Harry S Truman had ordered—actually asked, "Ralph, I need you"—General Howe to active duty, the first thing General Howe had done was ask just about the same question of Charley Rogers.

Zimmerman got up and went through the door to the kitchen.

"Are you going to have good news for your boss, Ken?" General Howe asked. "I am presuming he will be with the imperial entourage."

"I sent General Pickering a message last night, sir. Pick . . . Major Pickering ... is out there somewhere, within a fifty-mile radius of Suwon. I don't think we missed him by more than a couple of hours, and I don't have any reason to believe he's in trouble."

"He's in trouble—we're all in trouble—until we get him back, Ken."

"Yes, sir."

"What's the problem, Ken? And how do we get around it?"

"The scenario is this, sir. Whenever they can, Colonel Dunn's pilots look for the messages he leaves, ones he stamps out in rice paddy mud. Sometimes they eyeball them, sometimes the photo interpreters pick them out from aerial photographs. So we've had a rough idea where he is ever since he was shot down. Locating him precisely is part of the problem. And then, even if we do that, picking him up will then be the problem. The ideal way to do that is with a helicopter. The problem there—"

"—is that there aren't very many helicopters," General Howe picked up. "And those that exist are being used to haul wounded—"

"—or brass," McCoy began, and corrected himself: "—senior officers— where they have to go. And General Pickering doesn't want to take a chopper away from hauling the wounded to look for Pick or pick him up."

Zimmerman came back into the dining room, followed by the Korean housekeeper, who carried a tray with a silver coffee service on it.

"You were right, Charley," General Howe said. "While we're drinking three-day-old coffee from canteen cups, these two—"

"I told her to make ham and eggs, sir," Zimmerman said. "Will that be all right?"

If that's the best you can do, Mr. Zimmerman, I guess it will have to do," Master Sergeant Rogers said.

Howe chuckled, then said: "We can't afford to have Major Pickering captured, Ken. We may have to borrow a helicopter for a while, General Picker­ing's feelings aside."

It was an observation more in the nature of a decision, and thus an order. While legally Major General Howe had no authority to order anyone to do any­thing, he was in Korea bearing orders signed by Harry S Truman, as President and Commander-in-Chief, which ordered that "all U.S. military and govern­mental agencies provide General Howe with whatever assistance of whatever kind he deems necessary for the accomplishment of his mission."

Howe, who had been a captain with Captain Harry S Truman in France in World War I, and who had risen to Major General in World War II, was in Korea as Truman's eyes.

No one from MacArthur down was going to refuse him anything he asked for.

McCoy didn't reply.

The door opened again, and "Major" William R. Dunston walked in.

"I just heard you were here, sir—" he began.

"Mooching breakfast," Howe interrupted him. "And, I hope, a shower, shave, and some clean fatigues."

"Not a problem, sir," Dunston said.

"If you didn't know that General MacArthur's due at Kimpo sometime around nine, Bill, I'd be very surprised."

"I heard, sir," Dunston said. "Good morning, Charley."

Master Sergeant Rogers nodded and smiled.

"Did your guy get anything out of my guy, Bill?" McCoy asked.

"I was going to ask you to sit in on that," Dunston said. "You and Ernie. They're still in the basement."

"I'm in the dark," General Howe said simply.

"We took some prisoners yesterday, sir, " McCoy began. "We were on our way here, and they just came barreling up the highway. The senior one's a lieu­tenant colonel. Arrogant sonofabitch. I've got a gut feeling he's somebody im­portant. Ernie and I couldn't get anything out of him. The other four I turned over to 7th Division."

Howe nodded.

"I thought he might react to a senior officer, and Bill has had an ROK colonel interrogating him," McCoy went on.

"I can't believe anyone could get more out of a prisoner than you two can," Howe said.

"I don't think he knows anything about troop dispositions, that sort of thing," McCoy replied. "And if he does, he won't tell us. But I thought he might let something slip when trying to impress a senior officer with his own importance."

"And has he, Bill?" Howe asked.

Dunston looked uncomfortable.

"What does your man say he got from this fellow, Bill?" Howe persisted.

"I'm afraid Colonel Lee thinks he got more out of the prisoner than is the case, General," Dunston said.

"What?" Howe asked. There was now a hint of impatience in his voice.

"Something I would much rather not pass on, especially to someone as se­nior as you, until I had a hell of a lot to back it up," Dunston said.

"Specifically, what?" Howe demanded.

"Colonel Lee thinks this guy has information that the Chinese are coming in," Dunston said. "He didn't say that, in so many words. It's more of a gut feel­ing on Lee's part.

"Interesting," Master Sergeant Rogers said.

"General," Dunston said, "the first thing I was going to do—did—was ask Major McCoy and Mr. Zimmerman to talk first with Colonel Lee, and then the prisoner, and see what they think. And even—no offense—if they thought there was something to it, think long and hard before passing it on."

Howe grunted.

"Afraid of calling, 'Wolf, wolf?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," Dunston said, and added, "General, you've got me on a spot, sir—"

He was interrupted in midsentence by the Korean housekeeper, who entered the room with Howe's and Rogers's breakfasts.

No one spoke until she had laid the plates before them, poured coffee, and left the room.

"I understand, Bill," Howe resumed.

"General, I think the Chinese will come in," Dunston said. "But I don't want to be—you said it, sir—crying wolf until I have a lot more than this to back it up."

"I understand," Howe repeated, and started to say something else when the door from the foyer opened and another man came in.

This one was wearing a USMC flight suit, to the breast of which was fixed a leather patch bearing stamped-in-gold-leaf Naval aviator's wings, and the leg­end W.C. Dunn, LtCol USMC.

Lieutenant Colonel William C. Dunn, who was five feet six inches tall and weighed not quite one hundred forty pounds, was visibly surprised and dis­comfited when he saw the two silver stars of each collar point of General Howe's soiled and rumpled Army fatigues.

"I beg the general's pardon, sir," he said, coming almost to attention. "I didn't know the general was in here."

"Colonel Dunn, right?" Howe asked.

"Yes, sir."

"Your reputation precedes you, Colonel," General Howe said. "Please sit down. Have you had your breakfast?"

General Howe thought: With that pink skin and blond crew cut, he really does look like "an overage cheerleader, " which is how Ernie Zimmerman described him.

"That's very kind, sir, but I fear I'm intruding."

"Not at all," Howe said. "And I was hoping for a chance to talk to you in the next day or so. My name is Howe."

He put out his hand.

"Yes, sir. I thought that's who you probably were," Dunn said.

"The old man in need of a shave and a bath is Master Sergeant Charley Rogers," Howe said. "I guess you know everybody else."

"Yes, sir, I do," Dunn said, and then rose out of his chair to offer his hand to Rogers. Zimmerman got up and went into the kitchen.

"I didn't expect to see you here, Colonel," Howe said.

"I happened to be in Seoul, sir, and I wanted to talk to Major McCoy," Dunn said.

"You 'happened to be' in Seoul?" Howe asked, smiling.

"Yes, sir, I had an early-morning mission—flying cover for a pair of enor­mous Army helicopters they flew off a transport into Kimpo—and I thought I'd take advantage of the opportunity."

McCoy's curiosity got the best of him.

"Enormous helicopters?" he blurted.

Dunn nodded.

"Sikorskys, I think. I saw a photo of them a while back."

"Why were you flying cover for them?" Howe asked.

"I guess they didn't want them shot down before they even got here, sir."

"How's the Army going to use them?" Howe asked. "You have any idea?"

"Not a clue, sir."

"You get my message last night, Colonel?" McCoy asked.

"I got it. One of the things I wanted to tell you was that both of the Cor­sairs with me—there were three of us—are going to take a lot of aerials over those coordinates you gave me—"

"Which were the coordinates for?" Howe interrupted.

"The last place we know Pick was for sure, General," McCoy said.

"—on the way back to the Badoeng Strait" Dunn finished his sentence.

Zimmerman came back into the room.

"Chow's on the way, Colonel," he announced.

"Colonel, what I wanted to talk to you about is Major Pickering," Howe said.

"Yes, sir."

"How do we get him back, Colonel?"

Lieutenant Colonel Dunn was respectful of, but not cowed by, Major Gen­eral Howe.

"With respect, sir, I'm an airplane driver. The Killer and Zimmerman are the experts in that sort of thing."

Howe chuckled. "You must really be old and good friends. I understand that's the only way you can get away with calling him that."

"Yes, sir. We are. We go back a long way."

"Let me rephrase, Colonel: If you were, say, the commanding general of the 1st Marine Division, and you were ordered to return Major Pickering to U.S. control, how would you do that?"

Dunn thought his answer over a moment before speaking.

"General, just about what's happening now. Giving Major McCoy what­ever—"

"Much better. Thank you, sir," McCoy said.

"Ken, I'm sorry, it just slips out," Dunn said.

"You were saying, Colonel?" Howe said.

"The best way I can think of to get Major Pickering back, sir, is just what's happening now. Giving Major McCoy whatever he thinks he needs to do it."

"Is that happening, Ken?" Howe asked. "You have everything you need?"

"Yes, sir. It is. And I can't think of anything else I need. I've even managed to borrow an infantry company—actually about two platoons—from 1st Mar-Div, in case we need them."

"The backup people for the Flying Fish Channel operation?" Howe asked.

"Yes, sir. They're at Kimpo."

"Probably wondering what the hell is going on," Zimmerman offered.

"In case you need them how, Ken?" Howe asked.

"Nothing specific, sir. But if we have to go any farther from our lines to grab Pick than we have so far, I'd rather have more people along."

"When you say you have everything you need, you mean, 'except of course for the helicopters that we don't want to take from hauling the wounded,' right?" Howe went on, looked at McCoy for a moment, and then turned to Dunn.

"Okay, Colonel," Howe said. "You say you're an airplane driver. So, for the sake of argument, let's assume you have a helicopter—hell, say four helicopters—at your disposal. How would you, as an airplane driver, use them to get Major Pickering back?"

Dunn, visibly in deep thought, did not immediately reply.

"Add this unpleasant reality to your equation, Colonel," General Howe went on. "Stop thinking of Major Pickering as a Marine pilot. Start thinking of him as someone we simply cannot afford to have fall into the enemy's hands."

Dunn met his eyes but still did not instantly reply.

Finally, he exhaled audibly.

"The one sure way to keep Major Pickering out of the enemy's hands is to locate him positively within a one-hundred-yard circle and then napalm the hell out of the circle," he said.

"Jesus Christ, Billy!" McCoy exploded.

"General, I want you to understand that I understand what's at play here," Dunn said. "Pick Pickering was my wingman at Guadalcanal. I love the bas­tard. But I also understand he's General Pickering's son."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to napalm," Howe said. "And let's get back to your having four helicopters at your disposal."

"Sir, with respect, I drive airplanes. Other people—in this case, that would be Major McCoy—tell me what they would like me to do with them."

"Okay," Howe said. "Okay, Ken. You have four helicopters at your dis­posal. How are you going to use them?"

McCoy didn't immediately reply.

"Certainly, Ken," Howe said, not unkindly, "you've thought about it."

"If we can find him, precisely locate him—which, so far, we haven't been able to do—then the standard Marine Corps procedure would almost certainly work. We arrange for fighter cover, send in one helicopter, and pick him up. I've already got that set up."

"What do you mean, you've already got it set up?" Howe asked.

"I've talked to the helicopter pilots. If we locate him, they'll go after him."

"I thought the decision has been made that helicopters will not be diverted for that purpose."

"If we can locate him," McCoy repeated, "a helicopter will be available to pick him up."

"Against orders?"

"We'll have to worry about that later."

"You took it upon yourself to order the pilots to disobey their orders?"

"I asked a couple of them, 'What if I find Pickering? Could you help?' And the answer was very simple: 'Give us thirty minutes' notice, and precise coor­dinates, and we'll go snatch him.' "

"So you don't need more than one helicopter?"

"I'd like to have eight, ten of them," McCoy said. "But since that's out of the question—there aren't that many—all I can use is one."

"And if you had eight or ten of them, Ken?" Dunn asked.

"I'd take that many Marines to the last marker he left. They'd drop us off and leave us. Then we'd follow his tracks. I think we could find him. If so, then we could call the helicopters back and have everybody picked up. But that's wishful thinking. Six or eight helicopters aren't available."

Howe grunted thoughtfully.

"And even if they were, General, that probably wouldn't work."

"Why not?"

"There are North Korean soldiers all over this area. And North Korean spies. Six or eight helicopters landing someplace all at once would attract a lot of attention."

"One helo taking in six or eight people one at a time?" Dunn asked.

"I thought about that, too," McCoy said. "Same answer—it would attract too much attention. And then if the NKs saw how few people there were, and went after us ..."

"You could not be evacuated," Howe said.

"No, sir," McCoy said. "Not with one helo."

"General," Master Sergeant Rogers said. Howe looked at him. Rogers tapped his wristwatch. Howe nodded, then stood up.

"Shower time," he said. "You said you have some clean fatigues for us, Bill?"

"Yes, sir, clean and starched, but I don't know what we'll do for chevrons for Charley."

"Well, then I guess he'll just have to look like the oldest private in the Army," General Howe said, then turned to McCoy. "Ken, I want to hear what you and Ernie think of what this North Korean colonel has to say about the prospects of Chinese intervention."

"I'll go down there right now, sir," McCoy said.

Everyone rose from the table as General Howe and Master Sergeant Rogers walked out of the room.

[FOUR]

Haneda Airfield

Tokyo, Japan

O62O 29 September 195O

One hundred yards away from the Bataan, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur's personal Douglas C-54, a very large MP sergeant, whose impeccable uniform included a chrome-plated steel helmet, a glistening leather Sam Browne belt, and paratrooper boots with white nylon laces, held up his hand to stop the 1950 black Buick Roadmaster.

The Buick had an oblong red plate with a silver star mounted to the bumper, identifying it as a car occupied by a brigadier general of the United States Ma­rine Corps.

The MP bent over to look into the rear seat as the window rolled down.

There were two men in the rear seat, both of them wearing fur-collared zippered leather jackets officially known as Jacket, Flyers, Intermediate Type G-l. The driver was a U.S. Army sergeant.

"General Pickering," the younger of the two men in the backseat said.

There was no insignia on the leather jacket, but the silver railroad tracks of a captain were visible on the collar points of his shirt. The captain, in his early thirties, was built like a circus strong man.

"Good morning, sir," the MP said, courteously, then added, a little uneasily, "Sir, the general is not on my list."

"Then your list is wrong, Sergeant," the captain said reasonably.

"Yes, sir," the MP said, straightened, came to attention, raised his hand in a crisp salute, and said, "Pass."

Both men in the back of the Buick returned the salute.

The Buick drove up to the mobile stairway to the glistening C-54, around which were gathered half a dozen officers and men, including two impeccably and ornately uniformed military policemen, one standing at parade rest at each side the ladder.

The driver of the Buick got out and hurriedly opened the rear door.

Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, a silver-haired man of six feet one, 190 pounds, who thought of himself as being one year past The Big Five Zero, got out of the car. The captain followed a moment later.

Colonel Sidney Huff, a large, somewhat plump fifty-year-old wearing the insignia of an aide-de-camp to a General of the Army, walked up and saluted.

"Good morning, General," he said. "I wasn't aware you were coming along."

Pickering and the captain returned the colonel's salute.

"Good morning, Sid," Pickering said, and added, "Neither was the MP back there."

"May I suggest you board, sir?" Colonel Huff said. "The Supreme Com­mander's due any moment, and you know he doesn't like to wait to board the Bataan.”

Pickering nodded.

"See you on board, Sid," Pickering said, and started for the ladder, trailed by the captain, who now had a web pistol belt with a holstered Colt Model 1911A1 pistol in his hand.

The MPs at the foot of the stairway saluted as the two Marines climbed the ladder.

There was an Air Force master sergeant standing inside the aircraft at the door.

"Captain Hart will be sitting with me," Pickering said.

The sergeant obviously didn't like to hear that, but sergeants do not argue with brigadier generals.

"Yes, sir," he said. "How about the fourth row back on the left of the air­craft, sir?"

Pickering found the row, slid in, and took the window seat. The captain opened the overhead bin, put the pistol belt in it, then sat down beside Pickering.

Pickering pointed out the window.

An olive-drab 1950 Chevrolet staff car had stopped at the foot of the stair­way. One of the Army officers hurried to open the rear door, as Colonel Huff stood by.

A slight, elderly, gray-haired Oriental in a business suit somewhat awk­wardly extricated himself from the car, then turned to offer his hand to the other passenger. This was a Caucasian woman in a black dress.

"Rhee?" Captain Hart asked softly.

Pickering nodded.

Colonel Huff saluted, then waved the couple to the stairway.

A moment later they appeared inside the aircraft. The Air Force master sergeant led them to one of the two VIP suites, the one on the right.

"So where does the Palace Guard get to sit?" Hart whispered.

Pickering smiled at him but held his finger in front of his lips, suggesting that further observations of that nature would be inappropriate. Then he pointed out the window again.

The Chevrolet staff car was gone, replaced by a black 1942 Cadillac lim­ousine, which had a small American flag mounted on the right front fender and a small flag with five stars in a circle mounted on the left fender.

Colonel Huff personally opened the passenger door.

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Allied Powers and United Nations Forces, got out.

MacArthur was wearing well-washed khakis, his famous battered, gold-encrusted uniform cap, and an Air Force A-2 leather flight jacket, not unlike the fur-collared Naval aviator's jackets Pickering and Hart were wearing.

Pickering was reasonably sure that his Naval aviator's jacket was not an authorized item of uniform for Marine officers, but he was equally sure that no one was going to call him on it. So far as he was concerned, his—and El Supremo's—leather jackets were a comfortable, practical garment for senior of­ficers, who were not likely to find themselves rolling around in the dirt. Fur­thermore, he had heard somewhere that as a privilege of rank, general officers were permitted to select their own uniforms. He thought that if this were true, it probably applied only to Army officers, but had decided on the jacket anyway.

And had extended the privilege to his aide-de-camp (and bodyguard), Cap­tain George F. Hart, as well.

"General, would it be all right if I got one of those leather jackets?" Hart had asked. "It would make hiding these a lot easier."

Hart had shown what he meant by first pulling up his trousers' leg and re­vealing a Smith & Wesson snub-nosed .38 Special five-shot revolver—his "backup" gun—in an ankle holster, then showing General Pickering his back and the Colt Model 1911-Al semiautomatic .45-ACP-caliber pistol he carried in a skeleton holster in the small thereof.

Captain Hart, who as a civilian commanded the Homicide Bureau of the Saint Louis, Missouri, Police Department, had brought the weapons with him when recalled to the Corps for the Korean Conflict. He was never either with­out the pistols or very far from Brigadier General Pickering.

It makes sense, and if the Palace Guard doesn't like it, sorry about that.

"Sure, George. Why not?" Pickering had replied.

Hart now carried the .45 in a shoulder holster and the snub-nose in the right side pocket of the leather jacket.

And, predictably, the Palace Guard hadn't liked the sight of Captain Hart in a Naval aviator's leather jacket identical to that of General Pickering's, and had used it to take a shot at what really bothered them—Marine General Pick­ering wearing a leather jacket much like the one worn by the Supreme Com­mander, Allied Powers and United Nations Forces.

"General," Colonel Sidney Huff had said, "I'm sure you won't take offense where none is intended, but do you think your aide's leather jacket is appro­priate?"

The translation of that, of course, was: "Do you think your leather jacket is appropriate when (a) General MacArthur's leather jacket has become his trademark and (b) General MacArthur has made it plain he would prefer that his staff offi­cers do not wear leather jackets or battered gold-bedecked uniform caps?"

General Pickering had smiled at Colonel Huff.

"Let me think about that, Sid. Thank you for bringing the subject up."

After that, George's leather jacket—and of course his—were set in con­crete. Brigadier General Pickering, the Assistant Director of the CIA for the Far East, was not a lowly brigadier on the staff of the Supreme Commander, as much as the staff—and probably El Supremo himself—would like it so. He was, de jure, subordinate only to the Director of the CIA, Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, USN, but, de facto, only to President Harry S Truman.

MacArthur's people had to be reminded of that every once in a while. If the petty nonsense about who could wear leather jackets and who couldn't served to accomplish this, so much the better.

General MacArthur somewhat impatiently returned the salutes being of­fered and hurried up the stairway into the aircraft, trailed by Colonel Huff and some of the others.

Air Force ground crewmen hurried to move the stairway away from the air­craft, and there immediately came the whine of an aircraft engine being started.

MacArthur entered the cabin, knocked politely at the door of the VIP suite on the right, entered, and a moment later reappeared in the aisle.

He looked around, spotted what he was looking for, and gestured for Brigadier General Pickering to join him.

"I guess you get to sit on the right hand of God," Captain Hart said.

"George, you're going to get us both in trouble," Pickering said, but he was smiling.

Hart got out of the way, and Pickering made his way to the VIP cabin on the right.

There were six leather-upholstered seats in the compartment, two double sets facing forward, and two against a bulkhead that faced to the rear. A table, on which sat a coffee thermos, cups and saucers, and a map case, was between the forward- and rear-facing seats.

MacArthur was in the window seat of the first forward-facing row, in the process of fastening his seat belt. He waved Pickering into one of the seats op­posite him.

Colonel Huff stepped into the compartment.

"That will be all, Huff. Thank you," MacArthur said, dismissing him.

There was the sound of a second engine starting, and the aircraft began to move.

"Good morning, General," Pickering said.

"Good morning, Fleming," MacArthur replied. "I'm pleased you could come with me."

There was a discreet knock at the door, and then, without waiting for per­mission, an Air Force colonel entered.

"Good morning, General," he said.

"Storms, turbulence, and a bad headwind all the way, right?" MacArthur greeted him.

"Quite the contrary, sir. Weather's fine en route and there."

He laid a sheet of paper on the table and went on: "I think we'll be wheels-up at six thirty-five, which should put us in Seoul a few minutes before ten."

"Splendid! Thank you, Colonel."

The colonel left, and a white-jacketed airman came in with a plate of pastry.

The Bataan taxied to the end of the runway, ran the engines up quickly, and then began to race down the runway.

When the rumble of the wheels stopped and the whining of the gear being retracted ended, MacArthur said: "I think dignity and simplicity should be the style for this business in Seoul, Fleming. Do you agree?"

"I would trust your judgment about that above anyone else's," Picker­ing said.

I meant that, even if it made me sound like a member of the Palace Guard.

"Let me make a note or two," MacArthur said. He reached for a lined tablet on the table, then changed his mind and instead picked up the coffeepot.

He held it over a cup, then asked with a raised eyebrow if Pickering wanted some, and when Pickering said, "Please," poured coffee for him.

He poured a second cup for himself, then picked up a pencil and slid the tablet to him.

Pickering pulled the sheet of paper the pilot had left on the table to him.

It was their routing. There was a simple but adequate map, and the data:

Direct Haneda-Kimpo.

Ground Miles: 739

Estimated Air Speed en route 227 mph

Estimated Flight Time 3 hours 16 min

Rendezvous with fighter escort over Fukui (before reaching Sea of Japan)

No Adverse Weather Expected.

Presuming Haneda Take-Off 0635

ETA Kimpo 0951

Pickering thought: The Constellations cruise at 323; that's almost 100 knots faster than this. No wonder El Supremo wants one.

General Pickering knew more about aircraft than he ever thought he would. In another life, he was chairman of the board of the Pacific and Far East Ship­ping Corporation. Among the wholly owned subsidiaries of P&FE was Trans-Global Airways.

The first president of Trans-Global—Pickering's only child, Malcolm, then just out of Marine Corps service as a fighter pilot—had argued long, passion­ately, and in the end successfully that Trans-Global should start up with Lock­heed L-049 aircraft, rather than with surplus (and thus incredibly cheap) military aircraft.

Pick's argument had been threefold:

First, the maiden flight of the DC-4—Air Force designation C-54—had been in 1938, and the first Constellation flight in 1943, five years later. It had, thus, five years' design experience on the Douglas, longer really if you consid­ered the development money thrown at the aviation industry with war on the horizon.

Second, Pick argued, the Connie had a range of 5,400 miles, more than twice the 2,500-mile range of the Douglas, which would permit them to open routes in the Pacific that the Douglas simply couldn't handle.

And third, Pick had argued, if the fledgling Trans-Global acquired, as it could with the 323-knot Constellation, a reputation for providing the fastest transoceanic service, it would keep that reputation even after the other airlines smartened up and got Connies themselves.

"Nobody, Pop, has ever accused Howard Hughes of being stupid." The legendary Howard Hughes was known to have had a heavy hand in the design of the Constellation, and Trans-World Airlines, in which he held a ma­jority interest, was equipping itself with Constellations as quickly as they could come off the Lockheed production line.

Fleming Pickering had given in to his son's recommendations, in part be­cause he thought Pick was right and in part because he was—P&FE was—cash heavy from the sale of all but two of P&FE's passenger liners to the Navy dur­ing World War II.

Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Flem Pickering had flown over the Boeing plant in Seattle and seen long lines of B-17 aircraft, each plane capable of flying across any ocean in the world. He had known that day that the era of the lux­urious passenger ship was over. Time was money.

He had willingly sold seventeen of his passenger ships to the Navy, but flatly refused to sell them one P&FE merchantman. Airplanes were not about to haul heavy materials.

When MacArthur ordered/invited Pickering to ride in his private compart­ment, Pickering had assumed MacArthur wanted to chat, either about military matters or the Good Old Days in Manila or Australia, or to perhaps deliver one of his lectures on strategy.

But, surprising Pickering, he busied himself with his lined pad until, forty-five minutes later, Pickering said, "General," and pointed out the window.

A Chance Vought Corsair fighter plane, with MARINES lettered large on its fuselage behind the cockpit, was on their wingtip. Others were visible else­where in the sky.

"Our fighter escort," MacArthur said needlessly.

The cockpit of the Corsair was open, and they could clearly see the pilot, a young redhead with earphones cocked on one ear. He saluted crisply, held his position a moment, then shoved the throttle to the firewall. The Corsair then pulled very rapidly ahead and upward, then turned and began to assume a po­sition above and just ahead of the Bataan.

Major Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, had flown such an airplane in the Pacific, becoming an ace in the process, and had been flying such an airplane when he was shot down.

Brigadier General Pickering vainly hoped that General of the Army MacArthur would not see the tears that came to his eyes.

"Has there been any further word, Fleming?" MacArthur asked gently.

Pickering waited until he was sure he had control of his voice before replying.

"There was a message last night from Major McCoy, sir. He seems to feel that Pick is all right, and that he missed making contact with him by just a mat­ter of hours."

"I would suggest, my friend, that McCoy is just the man for that job."

"I agree, sir."

"My heart goes out to you, Fleming," MacArthur said.

"Thank you."

MacArthur decided to change the subject.

"I suppose you've read the dossier on Rhee?" he asked.

"Yes, sir. Amazing man, apparently."

"Who in his youth fell under the spell of a Viennese . . . lady of the evening . . . and married her."

"I saw that," Pickering said. "I wonder how often a prominent man has done something like that without it becoming a matter of official record?"

"I would hate to hazard a guess," MacArthur said.

There was a discreet knock at the door.

MacArthur frowned, then said, "Come."

Colonel Sidney Huff came into the compartment.

"General, we just had word that the helicopters have arrived safely at Kimpo."

"What helicopters would that be, Huff?"

"The large-capacity Sikorsky helicopters, sir. Two of them."

"Is there some reason, Huff," MacArthur asked, not pleasantly, "why you felt I had to know that right now?"

"General, I thought there might be a public relations value in photographs of you with these aircraft."

"I would think photographs of me turning his capital back to Rhee would overshadow any photograph of me standing by an airplane."

"Yes, sir, of course they would. But I really think it might be valuable in the future. It would take only five minutes or so. May I set it up, sir?"

MacArthur looked thoughtful, shrugged, and then nodded.

"Yes, Sid," he said. "You may."

"Thank you, sir," Huff said, and backed out of the compartment, closing the door after him.

"Fleming, do you have any idea how much I envy your anonymity?"

"Douglas, that's the price of being a living legend," Pickering said.

MacArthur considered that, and nodded.

"Getting back to where we were before Huff," MacArthur said. "Youthful indiscretions. You know the old Cavalry dine-in toast, don't you?"

"No, I'm afraid I don't."

" 'Here's to our wives and the women we love,' " MacArthur quoted, hoist­ing an imaginary glass. "Pause. Long pause. 'May they never meet.' "

Pickering chuckled.

"Somehow, Douglas, I don't think my Patricia or your Jean would be amused."

"Then we will just have to keep that between us, won't we?"

Chapter Four

[ONE]

The House

Seoul, Korea

O74O 29 September 195O

Major General Ralph Howe and Master Sergeant Charles A. Rogers walked into the garage behind the house looking considerably neater and cleaner than they had at breakfast. They were showered, shaved, and in starched and pressed U.S. Army fatigues.

Major Kenneth R. McCoy and Master Gunner Zimmerman were examin­ing the hood of what now had become "McCoy's Russian jeep."

Zimmerman spotted Howe and Rogers, stood erect, and opened his mouth.

General Howe very quickly raised his hand, palm outward, to silence him. McCoy sensed something unusual and looked over his shoulder. General Howe turned his palm-outward hand toward him. He lowered it only when he was sure McCoy wasn't going to bellow an automatic "Attention on Deck!"

"So this is the famous Russian jeep?" Howe said.

"Yes, sir," McCoy said.

"What are you doing to it?"

McCoy answered by pointing. There was now a large white star on the hood, and on either side the stenciled-in-black legend usmc.

"I'm impressed," Howe said. "Where did you get the stencils?"

"I cut them," Zimmerman answered. "I cut one for you, too, Charley."

"Excuse me?"

"For chevrons," Zimmerman said, pointing at Rogers's bare sleeve. "You'll look like a Marine, but I thought you'd like that better than what the general said about you looking like the oldest private in the army."

"He has a point, Charley," General Howe said.

"Will the paint dry?" Rogers asked doubtfully. "We're going to have to get out to the airport."

"It'll dry," Zimmerman said. "I'm a Marine. You can trust me."

Rogers snorted but started to unbutton his fatigue jacket.

"Ken," Howe said, gently but as a reprimand, "I thought you understood I wanted to hear what the North Korean colonel had to say."

"Sir, they were supposed to tell me when you came downstairs."

"There was a little confusion in there," Howe replied. "The rest of your men showed up, hungry and dirty."

He took from his pocket a manila envelope, folded over and heavily sealed with Scotch tape, and handed it to McCoy. "Your sergeant said this was for you."

"Thank you, sir," McCoy said, and began to remove the tape as he went on: "Well, sir, Ernie and I talked to both the prisoner and the South Korean colonel. Which puts me in the same spot Bill Dunston's in. We think we're onto some­thing, but we don't want to holler 'Fire' just yet, with nothing to back it up."

"Neither you nor Ernie could get anything out of this fellow?" Howe sounded both surprised and disappointed.

"All I can give you, sir," McCoy said carefully, "is what I think is one pos­sible scenario. I have nothing to back it up but my gut feeling."

Howe made a let's have it gesture.

"I think this colonel is important. I'm pretty much convinced he's an in­telligence officer. He had his own vehicles, for one thing, and he was obviously trying very hard to not get captured."

McCoy realized that he was not going to be able to remove the Scotch tape from the manila envelope with his fingernails. He muttered, "Shit," slipped his right hand up the sleeve of his utility jacket, and came out with a blue steel dag­ger, then continued without missing a syllable: "I think he's one of the NK officers who've been trained by the Chinese Communists, or the Russians, or both. . . ." McCoy dug the point into the Scotch tape, gave a little shove, and then almost effortlessly sliced through the layers of tape. "I know he speaks Can­tonese, and I think he probably speaks—or at least understands—Russian." He wiped the blade of the dagger on his utility jacket, then replaced it in whatever held it to his left wrist. "If that's true—and that's a big 'if—"

General Pickering had told General Howe about the knife McCoy carried on his left wrist. It was a Fairbairn, designed by the legendary Captain Bruce Fairbairn of the pre-World War II British-officered Shanghai Police. Fairbairn had taken a liking to a cocky young corporal of the 4th Marines, whom he had met at high-stakes poker games, had run him through his police knife-fighting course, and then given him one of his carefully guarded knives. Howe had never seen it before, although Pickering had told him McCoy was never without it.

McCoy took two leather wallets from the now-sliced-open envelope, put them in his hip pocket, then tossed the third wallet the envelope had held to Zimmerman.

"—then it's possible, I think likely—" McCoy went on.

"What's that, your wallets?" Howe interrupted.

His curiosity had gotten the best of him.

"Yes, sir. And the CIA credentials. We left them with the 7th Division G-2 when we went south," McCoy said.

Howe thought: Which suggests, of course, that you thought there was a very good chance you would have been captured—or killed—yourselves. In either event, you didn't want them to find the CIA identification.

"Go on, Ken," Howe said.

"If all three things are true, sir, then possibly he's had access to contingency plans which said the Chinese will intervene under such and such circum­stances. ..."

"For example?"

"Maybe something vague, like we get too close to the Yalu River, and they feel we're not going to stop on the south riverbank there. There's a big electric-generating plant, the Suiho, on the Yalu. If we interrupted service from there, it would cause the Chinese a lot of trouble. Or maybe, for example, something specific, like we look like we're about to take Pyongyang. I don't know, sir."

"But you think this fellow has seen this, knows the trigger?"

"I think he's cocky because he believes the Chinese will come in, sir. But this is another of those cases, sir, where I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. He may not know any more about Chinese intentions than I do."

"If you were a betting man, Ken, what would the odds of Chinese inter­vention be?" Howe asked.

"Seven-three," McCoy said, "that they will."

"Can you think of anything that would increase the odds that they won't?"

"If we destroy the NK Army, maybe by chasing it halfway to the Yalu, then stop, they may not—may not—feel threatened."

"Two days ago, the Joint Chiefs authorized MacArthur to conduct military operations leading to the destruction of the North Korean armed forces north of the 38th Parallel," Howe said. "Did you hear that?"

"No, sir."

"Two caveats. Only South Korean troops can approach the Yalu, and our aircraft cannot fly over China or Russia."

"The Chinese won't care if our troops on their border are South Korean or American," McCoy said.

"You think that would change the odds?" Howe asked. "How bad?"

McCoy didn't reply directly.

"ROK troops on the Yalu would make it even worse," he said. "The Chi­nese would believe us, probably, if we said we weren't going across the river. But they don't know how much control we have of the ROKs, and would act accordingly."

"Changing the odds to?"

"Eight-two," McCoy said. "Maybe nine-one."

Howe exhaled audibly.

He looked at Charley Rogers, who was very carefully putting his arms into the sleeves of his fatigue jacket, on which the chevrons of a master sergeant had been stenciled in black paint that still looked wet.

"Much better, Charley," Howe said. "I would have hated to see you hauled off to wash pots in a field mess somewhere."

Then he turned back to McCoy.

"Forewarned is forearmed, Ken. There's a very determined-looking second lieutenant from the 7th Division outside the gate who wants his vehicles back. You need some help with that?"

"No, sir. Thank you. I saw that coming. That's one of the reasons I liber­ated the Russian jeep."

He turned to Zimmerman.

"Ernie, let them have the jeep and the weapons carrier. We'll see what we can scrounge from Tenth Corps or the division."

Zimmerman nodded and walked out of the garage.

"You about ready to head for Kimpo, Ken?" General Howe asked.

"Yes, sir."

"I was thinking I could ride with you in this magnificent vehicle of yours, and Zimmerman could ride in my jeep with Charley."

"Whatever you want to do, sir," McCoy said.

[TWO]

Kimpo Airfield

Seoul, South Korea

083S 29 September 195O

The terminal building at Kimpo had been in the line of fire of both sides since the war began, and was in pretty bad shape. Army engineer troops were already at work trying to make it functional, but at the moment base operations was two squad tents set up end to end and the tower was mounted on the back of an Air Force General Motors 6x6 truck.

Two platoons of military police from the 4th Military Police Company, whose usual mission was the protection of the X Corps Headquarters, had been sent to the airport to provide the necessary security for the arrival of General MacArthur.

They had quickly established three areas, informally known as (1) For The Brass; (2) For The Press; and (3) For Everybody Else.

The area for (1) The Brass was immediately adjacent to the squad tents serv­ing as base operations. Cotton tape usually used to show safe lanes through minefields had been strung in two lines, ten yards apart, from iron stakes in­tended to support barbed-wire entanglements.

(2) The Press was thus ten yards from The Brass, and kept from joining them by large MPs stationed at three-yard intervals. Still farther away from base operations, behind The Press, was another double row of minefield tape strung through the loops on top of the barbed-wire rods. Behind this was sequestered (3) Everybody Else.

Everybody Else included everyone with some reason, however question­able, to be in the area. There were perhaps two hundred people in this category, officers and enlisted, Marines and soldiers.

The entire area was surrounded by still more tape on rods to keep the rest of the world away. This was guarded by MPs, and the outer of the two MP checkpoints was located here.

Under the supervision of a military police second lieutenant, who was sit­ting with his driver in a jeep equipped with a pedestal-mounted .30-caliber air-cooled machine gun, a sergeant and three other MPs stopped every approaching vehicle to determine in which area the passengers belonged, if any, and to show them where to park their vehicles.

Getting a glimpse of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur in the flesh was right up there with, say, getting a look at Marilyn Monroe or Bob Hope.

No one really knew how the word of his pending arrival had gotten out, but no one was surprised that it had.

"Lieutenant!" the MP sergeant called when he saw the funny-looking ve­hicle fourth in line, and thought, but could not be sure, that he saw silver stars gleaming on the collar points of the passenger.

The MP lieutenant got out of his jeep in time to be at the sergeant's side when the funny-looking vehicle rolled up. His attention on the vehicle, he did not at first see the stars on General Howe's fatigues.

Then he did, jerked to attention, and saluted.

"Sorry, sir," he said. "The General's star is not mounted on the bumper, and I didn't—"

"It's not my vehicle," Howe said reasonably. "No problem."

"Sir, VIP parking is right beside the tent," the lieutenant said, pointing.

"Thank you," Howe said. "The two in the jeep behind us are with us."

The lieutenant had seen the people in the jeep were a Marine master sergeant—he could tell because his chevrons were painted—and a warrant of­ficer, and thus falling into Category (3), Everybody Else, but the lieutenant had been in the service long enough to know that it is far wiser to go along with general officers than to argue with them.

"Yes, sir," the lieutenant said, and raised his hand to salute again.

When both vehicles were out of earshot, the sergeant asked the lieutenant, "Sir, what the hell was that?"

"Damned if I know," the lieutenant confessed. "What was that, a Russian jeep?"

A high-pitched voice from The Press caught their attention.

The voice had screamed, "McCoy, you sonofabitch!"

The lieutenant and the sergeant looked. One of the members of The Press had ducked under the minefield tape and was running toward the Russian jeep, which slowed and then stopped.

Two MPs rushed toward the member of The Press to keep the Fourth Es­tate where it belonged. The lieutenant and the sergeant rushed to join them.

The journalist, who had two 35-mm cameras hanging from the neck, nim­bly dodged the two MPs intent on maintaining the established order, by force if necessary, reached the Russian jeep, and quickly scrambled into the backseat.

The lieutenant now could identify the errant member of the Fourth Estate as Miss Jeanette Priestly of the Chicago Tribune, primarily because as she climbed into the Russian jeep she dislodged her brimmed fatigue cap and long blond hair cascaded to her shoulders.

The lieutenant reached the Russian jeep.

"Sorry about this, General," he said, and added, sternly, to Miss Priestly, "Miss Priestly, you know the rules. You'll have to get behind the tape."

Miss Priestly smiled, revealing an attractive mouthful of white teeth, and said, "Fuck you!"

"Please don't cause a scene, Miss Priestly," the lieutenant implored.

"It's all right, Lieutenant," General Howe said. "Miss Priestly is also with us."

"General, she's supposed to ..."

"If anyone gives you any trouble about this, Lieutenant," Howe said, mo­tioning for McCoy to drive on, "refer them to me."

How the hell am I supposed to refer anybody to you if I don't know who the hell you are?