"Yes, sir," the lieutenant said.

If either General Howe or Major McCoy expected at least a word of grati­tude from Miss Priestly for having rescued her from the military police, it was not forthcoming.

"Killer, goddamn you," she said. "You promised to let me know what you found, you sonofa—"

McCoy snapped, "Shut up, Jeanette," and then added, evenly: "One more word out of that sewer of a mouth of yours and I'll drive you to the end of the runway and throw you out."

"Oh, sh—" she began, and then fell silent.

Why do I suspect, General Howe thought, that at some time in the past McCoy has threatened her, then made good on the threat?

An MP was directing the parking of senior officers' vehicles to the left of the base operations tents.

He saluted and had just started to say something to General Howe when a four-car convoy of olive-drab 1950 Chevrolet staff cars, preceded by an MP jeep, rolled up. The first car in line had a two-starred major general's license plate on its bumper.

A tall, erect captain in starched fatigues jumped out and trotted around the car to open the rear passenger door.

Major General Edward M. Almond, commanding general of X U.S. Corps, got out. He was in fatigues, but wearing his general officer's dress pistol belt (A calfskin leather belt and holster, fastened with a gold-plated circular buckle.) around his waist.

The tall captain said something to him, and Almond looked over at Howe and McCoy, then walked over to the Russian jeep. Howe and McCoy got out of the jeep. McCoy saluted crisply. Generals Howe and Almond sort of waved their right hands at each other.

"I'm glad you're here, General Howe," Almond said. "I know that's impor­tant to the Supreme Commander."

"Good morning, General," Howe said.

Almond looked at the backseat of the jeep.

"Good morning, Miss Priestly."

"Good morning, sir," Jeanette said with a warm smile, and very politely.

"McCoy," Almond said.

"Good morning, sir."

"I've been informed General Pickering is on the Bataan" Almond said. "Have you got some good news for him?"

"Not good news, but not bad news, either, sir."

Almond looked at his wristwatch.

"I've also been informed the Supreme Commander's ETA is 0950," he went on. "So we have some time. Have you got a few minutes for me, General?"

"Of course," Howe said. "McCoy, why don't you take Miss Priestly aside and tell her what you know about Major Pickering?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where did you get the Russian jeep, McCoy?" Almond asked.

Howe answered for him: "He took it away from a North Korean colonel."

Almond leaned over the vehicle and inspected the interior.

"Interesting," he said, then turned to the tall captain.

"Al, why don't you set up the convoy," he said, "while General Howe and I ride over to the other side of the field."

He gestured for Howe to go to his staff car.

"Yes, sir," the captain replied.

Howe turned to Jeanette Priestly.

"You are going to behave, right, Jeanette?"

"Yes, sir," she said docilely.

Howe walked to Almond's staff car.

They went through a little "After you, Alfonse." / "No, after you, Gaston" routine dance at the door, but eventually Almond got in first, Howe slid in be­hind him, the tall captain closed the door, and the car, preceded by an MP jeep, drove off across the airfield.

'Interesting woman," Almond said. "What's she doing with you?"

She's . . . romantically involved . . . with young Pickering, and she knows McCoy's been looking for him."

Without success, apparently?" Almond said. It was a question.

He thinks he missed him yesterday by no more than a couple of hours," Howe said.

That's a really awkward situation, isn't it? Is there anything I can do to help?"

I asked McCoy. He says he has everything he needs." Almond grunted. Where are we going?" Howe asked. "May I ask?"

"As I understand it, General, you can ask anyone anything you want to," Almond said, chuckling. "We're going to look at something my Army Avia­tion officer enthusiastically assures me will 'usher in a new era of battlefield mobility.' "

"The secret helicopters?" Howe asked.

"You do hear things, don't you, General?" Almond said. "Yeah, the secret helicopters."

"And are they going to 'usher in a new era of battlefield mobility'?" Howe asked.

"Not today or tomorrow, I don't think," Almond said. "Eventually, possi­bly, maybe even probably. Between us?"

"That puts me on a spot, General. I'm supposed to report everything I think will interest my boss."

"So you are. Well, what the hell, you've been around, you'll see this for your­self. What this is, is a dog and pony show, intended to inspire the Supreme Commander to lean on the Joint Chiefs to come up with the necessary fund­ing to buy lots of these machines. Apparently, the Joint Chiefs are first not very impressed with these machines, and even if they do everything the Army Avi­ation people say, the Joint Chiefs will believe that if it flies, it should belong to the Air Force."

"So they're staging a dog and pony show for you? And you're supposed to work on General MacArthur?"

"No. They're working on the Supreme Commander directly," Almond said. "He gets the show. When I got his revised ETA, I was also informed that the Bataan will taxi here after it lands to afford General MacArthur the opportu­nity to see these vehicles, and to have his picture taken with them."

Howe shook his head in amazement.

"Yeah," General Almond said. "Following which General MacArthur will turn over the liberated city of Seoul to President Syngman Rhee."

"I spent last night with Colonel Chesty Puller's Marine regiment," Howe said. It was a question.

"Seoul is liberated enough, General," Almond responded, "to the point where I feel the ceremony can be conducted with little or no risk to the Supreme Commander or President Rhee. I would have called this off if I didn't think so."

"I understand," Howe said.

"With a little luck, the artillery will fall silent long enough so that we can all hear General MacArthur's remarks on this momentous occasion," Almond said evenly.

Howe smiled at him.

"Well, here we are," Almond said as the Chevrolet stopped before the bullet-riddled hangar.

Major Alex Donald, the X Corps' assistant Army Aviation officer, walked briskly up to it, opened the door, and saluted.

General Howe got out first, his presence clearly confusing Major Donald. Then General Almond slid across the seat and got out.

"Good morning, sir," Major Donald said. "Everything is laid on, sir."

"Good," Almond said. "General Howe, this is Major Donald."

They shook hands.

Howe spotted Captain Howard C. Dunwood, USMCR, standing close to the closed hangar doors with eight other Marines.

"Good morning, Captain," Howe said.

"Good morning, sir."

"Baker Company, 5th Marines, right?" Howe asked.

"Yes, sir."

Both Captain Dunwood and General Almond were visibly surprised that General Howe was possessed of that information. Almond admitted as much.

"How did you know that?" he asked.

Howe winked at him.

"Well, Donald, let's have a look at these machines before the Supreme Com­mander gets here," Almond said.

[THREE]

As the staff car carrying Generals Almond and Howe started down the road be­side the runway, McCoy paused long enough to wonder where they were going, then turned and motioned to Jeanette Priestly to get out of the Russian jeep.

He had given a lot of thought to Jeanette and to her relationship with Pickering.

Pick Pickering—a really legendary swordsman, of whom it was more or less honestly said he had two girls and often more in every port—had taken one look at Jeanette Priestly just over two months before and fallen in love with her.

And vice versa. The second time Jeanette—known as the "Ice Princess" among her peers in the press corps because no one, and many had tried, had ever been in her bed or pants—had seen him she had taken him to bed.

Everyone knew that "Love at First Sight" was bullshit, pure and simple, that what it really meant was "Lust at First Sight" and had everything to do with fucking and absolutely nothing to do with love.

Everybody knew that but Major Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR. He knew there was such a thing as love at first sight because it had happened to him.

The first time he had seen Ernestine Sage he had known he would love her forever even though the chances of having her in his bed, without or with the sanction of holy matrimony, had ranged from zero to zilch, and he damned well knew it.

Ernie was from Pick's world. Her mother and Pick's mother had been roommates at college. Her father was chairman of the board of—and majority stockholder in—American Personal Pharmaceuticals. Everyone thought that Pick and Ernie would marry.

There was no room in Ernestine Sage's life for a poor Scotch-Irish kid from Norristown who had enlisted in the Marine Corps at seventeen, been a corpo­ral with the 4th Marines in Shanghai, and was now a second lieutenant pri­marily because he had learned how to read and write two kinds of Chinese, Japanese, and even some Russian and the Marine Corps was short of people like that, and thus willing to commission them, temporarily, for wartime service.

A week after Ernie Sage had seen Second Lieutenant McCoy sitting on the penthouse railing of her parents' Fifth Avenue apartment overlooking Central Park, his feet dangling over the side, she had told her mother that she had met the man whose babies she wanted to bear and intended to marry him just as soon as she could get him to the altar, or some judge's chambers, whichever came first.

Pick, and Pick's father, thought that was a splendid idea. Everybody else, in­cluding Lieutenant McCoy, had thought it was insanity, that their marriage just wouldn't—couldn't—work.

But Ernie had known it was love, and could not be dissuaded, even though Ken had firmly declined the offer of her hand in wedded bliss. She had followed him around, proudly calling herself a camp follower, whenever and wherever he was in the United States during World War II.

She had written him every day, and when, toward the end of the war, he'd come home from a clandestine operation in the Gobi Desert a major on Pres­idential orders to attend the Army's Command and General Staff college, he was denied his final argument against their marriage—the very good chance that he either would not come home at all, or come home in a basket—she'd finally got him to the altar.

With conditions. He was a Marine, and wanted to stay a Marine. He would not take an entry-level executive training position with American Per­sonal Pharmaceuticals—or with the Pacific & Far East Shipping Corpora­tion—and she would not press him to do so. And they would live on his Marine pay, period.

There had been good times and bad in their marriage, but it had worked. The good times had included their year with the Army at C&GSC at Fort Leavenworth and a year at Quantico, which was close to Washington, so Ernie had a chance to see a lot of her parents. The Quantico assignment had ended when he had been reduced to captain, not because he'd done anything wrong, but be­cause the Corps had shrunk and didn't need as many officers.

The Corps had a—maybe unwritten—policy that if you were reduced in grade, you were transferred, and that had seen them sent to Japan, where he had been a junior intelligence officer on the staff of the Commander, Naval Element, Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers.

There, after a year or so, things had really gone wrong. He had come across what he believed to be compelling evidence that the North Koreans were going to invade the south. He'd worked long and hard to put it down on paper, and then turned it in to the Commander, Naval Element, Supreme Headquarters.

First, he got a "well done."

Then the Commander, Naval Element, Supreme Headquarters, called him back in and said, in effect, (1) "McCoy, you have never written an intelligence analysis of any kind regarding North Korean intentions, and certainly not one that had concluded 'war is inevitable,' " and (2) "Start packing. The Marine Corps has no further need of your services as a commissioned officer, and you will be separated from the Naval Service 1 July 1950. It will be determined later at what enlisted grade you may reenlist in the service if you desire to do so."

So far as Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers, was concerned, McCoy's "war is coming" analysis no longer existed. Worse, it never had. All copies, McCoy was informed, had been destroyed.

McCoy found out why:

Major General Charles A. Willoughby, the Supreme Commander's intelli­gence officer, had just informed General MacArthur that there was absolutely no indication that the North Koreans had hostile intentions, and in any event their armed forces were incapable of doing anything more than causing mis­chief along the 38th Parallel. He did not want his judgment questioned by a lowly Marine captain.

When he had told Ernie he was getting the boot, Ernie had told him she wouldn't mind being a sergeant's wife.

He had realized then that it was his turn to make a few sacrifices.

What the hell, I might even like selling toothpaste and deodorant for American Personal Pharmaceuticals.

Once he had made that decision, there was one more decision to make, a big one. The Commander, Naval Element, Supreme Headquarters, Allied Pow­ers, was wrong. All of the copies of McCoy's analysis had not been destroyed. He had his own copy of his analysis, his last draft before he had typed the whole thing over again before turning it in. He could not bring himself to ei­ther forget it or burn it.

After thinking hard and long, and fully aware that doing so could—prob­ably would—see him facing a court-martial, he had given his draft copy of his analysis to Fleming Pickering.

Pickering was no longer a brigadier general and had no security clearance, and the Office of Strategic Services in which they had served in World War II no longer even existed. But he figured that Pickering could probably get the document into the hands of somebody who should have his information.

Whistling in the wind, he had told himself that the Corps might have a hard time court-martialing a civilian for the unlawful disclosure of a Top Secret doc­ument that wasn't supposed to ever have existed.

On his final, delay-en-route leave before reporting to Camp Pendleton for separation, he had been offered a civilian job he thought he might even really like, helping to develop an island off the coast of South Carolina as a retire­ment area.

It was the idea of Colonel Ed Banning, USMC, who was about to retire himself. Zimmerman, then stationed at Parris Island, had been enlisted in the project. He, like McCoy, had worked for Banning throughout World War II. As he and Ernie drove across the country to California, the idea of working with Colonel Banning and Ernie sounded like a hell of a better way than spending his life selling toothpaste and deodorant.

Orders were waiting for him when he reported into Camp Pendleton the night of 1 July 1950, but not the Thank you for your service, and don't let the doorknob hit you in the ass on your way out ones he expected, which would have ordered him to his home of official record.

Eight hours after reporting into Camp Pendleton—early the next morning— he had found himself sitting in the backseat of an Air Force F-94 taking off from Naval Air Station Miramar. He was traveling on orders bearing the code of the highest priority in the Armed Forces: DP. It stood for "By Direction of the President."

In Washington, he found out what had happened to the analysis he couldn't bring himself to burn.

Pickering had taken it to Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillencoetter, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, which had taken the place of the OSS. Hil­lencoetter had told Fleming Pickering that he didn't believe the analysis, but— Pickering had come to his office accompanied by Senator Richardson K. Fowler, and Pickering had been the Assistant Director of the OSS for Asia—he said he would look into it.

Before that could happen, the North Koreans invaded South Korea.

When President Harry S Truman had demanded of Admiral Hillencoetter, in effect, "You mean to tell me you had absolutely no idea the North Koreans were going to do this?" the admiral had replied that there was one thing, and told him that the World War II Director of the OSS for Asia, the shipping mag­nate Fleming Pickering, had come to his office with Senator Fowler carrying an analysis written by a Marine captain predicting the North Korean invasion was inevitable.

The President had had some trouble getting Pickering on the telephone in the penthouse of the Foster San Franciscan Hotel on Nob Hill.

When the operator said, "General Pickering, please, the President is calling," it had been difficult to convince Mrs. Patricia Pickering that it wasn't one of her husband's drinking buddies thinking he was clever.

But eventually the President got through, and shortly thereafter—after a cross-country flight in an F-94—Pickering found himself facing the President of the United States in the Foster Lafayette hotel suite of his friend, and Tru­man's bitter political enemy, Senator Richardson K. Fowler, Republican of California.

After first demanding of the President that he give his word that no harm would come to Captain McCoy for his having turned his analysis over to him, Pickering told the President as much as he knew.

When he had finished, the President said, in effect, "I gave you my word because I wanted to, not because I had to."

Then he picked up the telephone, asked to be connected with the Com­mandant of the Marine Corps, and when, in less than sixty seconds, that offi­cer came on the line, said, "This is the President, General. I understand you're acquainted with Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMC Reserve?"

There was a very short pause while the Commandant said, "Yes, sir."

'Please cause the necessary orders to be issued calling the general to active service for an indefinite period, effective immediately, and further placing him on duty with the Central Intelligence Agency," Truman ordered. "It won't be necessary to notify him; he's with me now."

The President had hung up and then turned to General Pickering.

"So far as this Captain McCoy is concerned, I've ordered that he be brought here as soon as he can be located. I want to see him myself."

Within days, Brigadier General Pickering, Captain McCoy, and Master Gunner Zimmerman were on a plane for Tokyo. The President had told Ad­miral Hillencoetter it was pretty obvious to him that a very good way to find out what had gone wrong with CIA intelligence-gathering procedures in the Far East—and to make sure the situation was corrected—was to send the man who'd run Far Eastern Operations for the OSS during World War II back over there.

General Pickering was named Assistant Director of the CIA for Asia.

This time Ernie had not sat dutifully and docilely at home while her hus­band went to war. They had been in Tokyo only a few days when there was a message saying Mrs. Kenneth McCoy would arrive in Tokyo aboard Trans-Global Airways Flight 4344 at ten the next morning.

She was now residing at No. 7 Saku-Tun, in the Denenchofu section of Tokyo, Japan. And she had told her husband that she had not only deceived him when they had been stationed in Tokyo—she had told him that she had found a very nice house at a rent they could afford that would keep them out of the small quarters they would have been given by the Navy, when the facts were she had bought the house—but also that, since the Marine Corps had al­ready let him know what they really thought of him, she had no intention of pretending any longer that they had only his pay to live on.

"Don't give me any trouble about this, Ken," she'd said firmly. "You're not supposed to upset a pregnant woman."

Ernie was in the sixth month of her pregnancy. Twice before, she had failed to carry to full term.

Major Ken McCoy had thought, as Ernie had stood before him, hands on her hips, her stomach just starting to show, making her declaration, that he loved her even more now than when he had first seen her on the patio of the penthouse, when it had really been Love at First Sight.

McCoy walked away from the base operations tents, and Jeanette Priestly had to trot to catch up with him.

"Where are they going?" she asked, indicating the car with Generals Howe and Almond in it.

"I thought you wanted to hear about Pick," McCoy replied.

She didn't reply, but caught his arm and stopped him.

He looked back at the tent, decided they were out of earshot, and stopped and told her everything he knew.

"So you think he's alive?" she asked when he had finished.

He nodded.

"He was yesterday, I'm sure of it."

"So when are you going to look again?"

"You mean instead of standing around here waiting for El Supremo?"

She nodded.

"Well, for one thing, I was ordered to be here," he said. "And for another, I have no idea where he is. There's no sense going back south until I do."

"And when will that be?"

"Whenever there's another sighting of his arrows," McCoy said. "Billy Dunn was here early this morning, and he said he's going to photograph the hell out of the area where we just missed him. He'll almost certainly come up with something, and when he does, we'll go out again."

"When you go, can I go with you?"

"No, of course not. And if you try something clever, I'll have you on the next plane to Tokyo."

"You'd do that, too, wouldn't you, you sonofabitch?"

"You know I would, and stop calling me a sonofabitch."

She met his eyes.

"It's a term of endearment," she said. "I love you almost as much as I love that stupid bastard who got himself shot down."

She stood on her toes and kissed his cheek.

For a moment—just a moment—McCoy put his arms around her and hugged her.

[FOUR]

The Bataan made its landing approach from the direction of Seoul, passed low over the people gathered around the base operations tents, and touched down.

The military police had permitted a dozen still and motion picture pho­tographers to detach themselves from the press area so that they would be able to photograph the Bataan taxiing up to base operations and the Supreme Com­mander himself getting off the airplane.

When the Bataan, instead of taxiing toward them, turned off the runway and taxied to a hangar on the far side of the field, a chorus of questions and protests rose from the Fourth Estate.

The phrase "Now, what the fuck is going on?" was heard, and several vari­ations thereof.

The X Corps information officer, a bird colonel, who really had no idea what the hell was going on, managed to placate them somewhat by stating that it was "a security precaution" and that the Bataan and General MacArthur would shortly move to base operations.

The press could see the Bataan stop in front of the hangar, and a flight of mobile stairs being rolled up to it.

The first three people to debark from the Bataan were three Army photog­raphers, two still and one motion picture. The photographers took up positions by the mobile stairway. Next off was Colonel Sidney Huff, the Supreme Com­mander's senior aide-de-camp.

He exchanged salutes with Major Alex Donald, USA, and Captain Howard C. Dunwood, USMCR, who were standing on the ground, looked around to see there were enough heavily armed Marines around so there wasn't much immediate danger to General MacArthur, and then raised his eyes to the open door of the Bataan and saluted.

The Supreme Commander somewhat regally descended the stairs and the cameras whirred and clicked. There was another exchange of salutes, then MacArthur was led to the just-open-wide-enough doors and went inside.

As soon as he had gone inside, preceded and trailed by the photographers, Brigadier General Fleming Pickering and Captain George F. Hart came down the stairs and went into the hangar.

Major Generals Ralph Howe and Edward C. Almond were standing inside the hangar. They saluted, then Almond stepped toward MacArthur for the benefit of the photographers. General Howe went to the door to avoid the photogra­phers and also to see if Pickering had gotten off the airplane.

Pickering and Hart came into the hangar and stood with Howe as Major Alex Donald showed General MacArthur around the closest of the two heli­copters. General MacArthur declined Major Donald's invitation to climb aboard the helicopter, but obligingly posed for several minutes while the pho­tographers recorded the event for posterity.

Then he shook hands with Major Donald and walked back toward the door.

"General Howe," MacArthur declared, "I'm really glad to see you here."

"Good morning, sir."

"This business out of the way, I presume we can get on with returning Pres­ident Rhee's capital to him," MacArthur said. "How are we going to do that, Sid?"

"Sir, I suggest that you reboard the Bataan," Colonel Huff replied, "which will then taxi to base operations, where the press is waiting."

"What about General Almond?" MacArthur asked.

"I would suggest that General Almond ride back over there in his car, sir. That would eliminate any possible questions about whether he has come to Korea with you."

"All right, Ned?" MacArthur asked.

"Yes, sir."

"I think it would be appropriate," Huff went on, "if General Almond were to greet the general when he descends from the Bataan."

"Yes, so do I," MacArthur said. "He is, after all, the liberator of Seoul." Then he added, jovially, "Well, then, Ned, why don't you saddle up, and hie thee to the other side of the airport?"

"Yes, sir," General Almond said. "You ready, Howe?"

"General," Howe said to MacArthur, "I'd like a moment of your time. Would it be all right if I rode over there with you?"

"I'd be delighted to have your company, General. Of course."

"Fleming," Howe said, "would you mind riding with General Almond?"

"Of course," Pickering said.

He, MacArthur, Almond, and Huff instantly decided that Howe had some­thing to say to MacArthur that he didn't want anyone else to hear.

As Pickering, Hart, and Almond got into Almond's Chevrolet, MacArthur and Howe climbed the stairway to the Bataan. Colonel Huff and then the pho­tographers followed them.

Pickering was a little curious about why Howe wanted a moment of El Supremo's time in private, but not concerned. Their relationship was not only one of mutual respect; they also liked each other. It never entered Pickering's mind that Howe was in any way going behind his back. He never had, and Pick­ering had no reason to suspect he would suddenly start now.

General Pickering was dead wrong. In this instance, Howe had something to say to the Supreme Commander that he absolutely did not want Pickering to know about.

"That will be all, Huff, thank you," MacArthur said, waited until Huff had closed the door, and then looked expectantly at Howe.

"General," Howe began carefully, "I fully understand that my role here is solely that of observer, and that I have neither the authority—and certainly not the expertise—to offer any sort of suggestion. . . ."

The Bataan began to taxi away from the hangar.

"General," MacArthur said, "I decide who has the expertise to offer a sug­gestion to me, and I would welcome any suggestion you might be good enough to offer."

"That's very gracious of you, sir," Howe said. "It's about those helicopters."

"Those helicopters?" MacArthur asked, surprised. "Or helicopters in general?"

"Those two helicopters, sir."

"Okay. Let's have it."

"While we were waiting for you to arrive, sir, Major Donald—the Army pilot in charge of them?"

MacArthur nodded.

"—gave General Almond and myself a well-thought-out briefing about those specific helicopters, and the future role of what he calls 'rotary-wing air­craft' in providing battlefield mobility."

"And you were, or were not, impressed?"

"May I speak frankly, sir?" Howe asked, and when MacArthur nodded, he went on, "Are you familiar with the phrase 'dog and pony show,' General?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if they used it at Valley Forge," MacArthur said.

"There are only five of those machines in the Army, General, according to Major Donald. Two are at the Army Aviation School at Fort Riley being stud­ied, and the Air Force has a third, which they are subjecting to destructive en­gineering tests. In other words, the two here are the only two which are operational. I can't think of a place where they can be used for a really practi­cal purpose, except perhaps to carry senior officers around, and neither can General Almond."

"So this is a dog and pony show?"

"I would suggest that it is, sir."

"In France, I staged more than one dog and pony show myself, to convince my seniors that a new gadget called the tank had a place in ground warfare."

Howe didn't reply directly.

"During Major Donald's enthusiastic presentation," Howe said, "I had two questions about the actual usefulness of these machines. The first thing, I thought, when he was telling us how useful they would be to transport senior officers, was that it would really be pretty stupid to load half a dozen generals or colonels on one of them. They are not immune to ground fire, and I don't know how safe they are, period."

MacArthur grunted.

"Same thing for carrying half a dozen wounded," Howe went on. "You don't often find half a dozen wounded in one place except in some place where what got them would also likely get a large, and fragile, helicopter."

"I hadn't thought about that," MacArthur said softly.

"They're capable of carrying six or seven infantrymen each. Say seven. But I can't think of a situation where fourteen men being flown into it would have much real effect."

"I take your point," MacArthur said. "So what is your suggestion? That I order these machines out of Korea? We can't really use them, and we shouldn't be wasting time and effort on a dog and pony show?"

"We haven't rescued Major Pickering, sir. Major McCoy told me he thinks he missed him on his last attempt by less than a couple of hours. Of course, he was riding in a jeep and weapons carrier convoy, and couldn't make very good time getting where he had to go."

"And McCoy could have flown in these machines to wherever he went in time to establish contact with young Pickering?"

"Possibly, sir. In fact, probably. With a dozen of his men, in case there was resistance when he got there."

MacArthur looked at Howe intently for a moment, and then glanced out the window.

"If those tents are where we're going, we're almost there," he said. Yes, sir.

"You and I are both aware that General Pickering might regard this as spe­cial treatment for his son," MacArthur said, "and not like it at all."

"I also think you and I would agree, General, that keeping the son of the Deputy Director of the CIA out of enemy hands is the first consideration, even at the risk of offending General Pickering's sense of chivalry. Or, for that mat­ter, offending the entire Marine Corps."

"Well, I'd hate to do that," MacArthur said. "I have reason to suspect that I'm not a hallowed figure in the Halls of Montezuma as it is."

Howe chuckled.

"What I'm going to do, General Howe . . ." MacArthur began, then stopped, smiled, and said, " 'Oh what a tangled web we weave when ere we try to deceive,' " and went on: ". . . is wait until we're just about to take off for Tokyo, and then direct that these machines be immediately placed under the control of the CIA here in Korea, and state that my decision is not open for discussion."

He paused again, then explained: "That way, Colonel Huff will not con­nect our little chat with that order. And further, with a little luck, General Pickering will not hear of this until it is a fait accompli."

"Yes, sir," Howe said.

"And when that inevitably happens, and he comes to me, as I strongly sus­pect he will, I will resort to the last defense of the Machiavellians. I will tell the truth. These machines were brought to my attention; I concluded that at the moment I could see no really practical operational use for them, but thought that the CIA might find some use for them."

[FIVE]

The Capitol Building

Seoul, South Korea

12O5 29 September 195O

"Mr. President," General of the Army Douglas MacArthur sonorously intoned, "in God's name, I herewith return the city of Seoul to you as the chief of its lawful government."

There came the shock wave of what most experienced soldiers and Marines in the building recognized as coming from a massive 155-mm cannon "time on target"—that is, the firing of perhaps ten, fifteen, or more heavy cannon nearly simultaneously, so that their projectiles would all land on the target at the same instant.

The shock wave caused plaster and glass to fall from the ceiling and walls of the bullet-pocked building. Many people cringed.

MacArthur did not seem to notice.

"I invite you now to join me in recitation of the Lord's Prayer," he went on. "Our Father which art in heaven ..."

"Am I allowed to ask questions?" Captain George F. Hart, USMCR, asked of Brigadier General Pickering ten minutes later.

"Shoot," Pickering said.

"That was the DSC El Supremo gave Almond and the other guy, Walker, wasn't it? The cross, as opposed to the medal? As in DSM?"

"A little decorum would be in order, Captain Hart. Yes, General MacArthur has just decorated General Almond and General Walker with the Distinguished Service Cross."

"I thought that was like the Navy Cross, that you only got it for courage above and beyond in combat."

"The DSC is the Army version of the Navy Cross. And General MacArthur apparently feels that the service of both general officers was above and beyond the call of the duty in combat. Any further questions, Captain Hart?"

"No, sir."

"Good," Pickering said. "One day, George, your curiosity is going to get us both in trouble." He paused. "Where's McCoy going to meet us?"

"Outside," Hart said. "He sent Zimmerman back out to Kimpo to see if Colonel Dunn had sent any fresh aerials, and wasn't sure they'd let Zimmerman in here without a fuss."

"Let's go. El Supremo told me he wants to get out of here as soon as possible."

Miss Jeanette Priestly was sitting in McCoy's Russian jeep and he and Zim­merman were leaning against it. The men stood erect when they saw Pickering coming.

"You should have come inside, Ken," Pickering greeted him. "That was an historic moment."

"I wanted to see what, if anything, Billy Dunn came up with," McCoy said matter-of-factly, then added: "Nothing, I'm afraid, sir."

"And what do you make of that, Ken?" Pickering asked.

"He's moving again, sir. Probably north. Zimmerman told Colonel Dunn where we think he might be headed. Either almost due east, toward Wonju, or northeast, toward Chunchon. There's not many paved roads in that area, mostly rice paddies. I think he wants to be somewhere where there won't be much movement on the roads. ..."

"Like yours, for instance," Jeanette said.

The men looked at her but said nothing.

". . . and where he can easily find rice paddies to stamp out his arrows," McCoy finished.

"Explain that, please," Pickering said. " 'Easily find rice paddies'?"

"We have to presume, sir, that the NKs have also come across one of Pick's stampings. And that they would be looking for others. The advantage we have is that we've got air superiority, which means they have to look at paddies from the ground. The more paddies there are, the more they have to look at. . . ."

Pickering nodded.

"I take your point. You think Pick has thought of this?"

"I'm sure he has," McCoy replied. "General, there's often been two- and three-day intervals between sightings. There may be another this afternoon; if not, then probably tomorrow. When there is—"

"You'll go out again," Pickering finished the sentence for him.

"Yes, sir. Of course."

"Pick is really putting a lot of lives at risk, isn't he?" Pickering said, and then he heard what he had said and added: "That sounded pretty stupid, didn't it?"

"General," McCoy said, "we're Marines. We go after people who find them­selves in trouble."

"What I meant to say was that the lives we're putting at risk are yours and Zimmerman's, and I can't afford to lose either of you. Isn't there someone else who could go out there and look for him?"

"As of right now, sir, 1st MarDiv hasn't said anything about wanting to get back the people—it's an understrength company—who were on the Flying Fish Channel Islands. If I knew I could keep at least twenty or so of them, Ernie and I could bring them up to speed in three or four days. That would at least allow Ernie to go with one recon patrol, and me with another."

"You're talking about the Marines that are now at that hangar with the helicopters?"

"Yes, sir," McCoy said. "The problems with that are taking rations-and-quarters care of them, getting enough vehicles to carry them, and then de­ciding what, if anything, we tell them about why it's so important we get Pick back—and, for that matter, who Ernie and I work for. They're going to wonder."

Pickering considered that for a moment.

"I'll tell General Smith—he'll be at the airport—that I'd like to keep those Marines for a while. And I'll tell General Almond you're going to need jeeps and so forth."

“Yes, sir.”

"And if General Smith goes along, I'll decide later what they're to be told."

"Yes, sir."

He looked back at the Capitol Building. Officers and other dignitaries were getting into the staff cars to accompany MacArthur back to Kimpo Airfield.

"The Imperial procession is forming," he said. "I've got to go." He put his hand out to Jeanette Priestly. "It was good to see you, Jeanette. Is there anything I can send you from Tokyo?"

"Thank you, but no thank you. I'm going with you."

"On the Bataan?” Pickering asked, surprised.

"I've already asked El Supremo," she said. "I don't know about you guys, but when I smile at him, I get just about anything I want."

She jumped nimbly out of the backseat of the Russian jeep.

[SIX]

Kimpo Airfield

Seoul, South Korea

1425 29 September 195O

The two senior commanders in Korea, Lieutenant General Walton Walker, the Eighth Army commander, and Major General Edward M. Almond, the X Corps commander, accompanied the Supreme Commander to the stairs of the Bataan.

Both were still wearing their newly awarded Distinguished Service Crosses pinned to their fatigue jackets.

Of the two, the shorter, almost rotund Walker presented the most military appearance. His fatigues had obviously been tailored to his body, and they were starched. He wore a varnished helmet with the three silver stars of his rank fas­tened to it, and polished "tanker" boots, as he had while serving under Gen­eral George S. Patton in Europe.

Almond was wearing clean but rumpled fatigues and what the Army called "combat" boots. These looked like rough-side-out work shoes to which had been sewn a band of smooth leather fastened to the lower calf with a double buckle. The only things that distinguished him from any of the soldiers in his command were the stars pinned to his collar points and fatigue cap—which was crumpled and looked too large for him—and the general officer's leather pistol belt around his waist.

"You are both to be congratulated," MacArthur intoned. "And I shall ex­pect equally great things from you in the future."

He first shook Walker's hand, then let go. Walker saluted. MacArthur re­turned it. Then he shook Almond's hand, let it go, and returned his salute.

He then took one step up the stairway and stopped and turned.

"By the way, Ned . . ." he began.

"Yes, sir?" Almond asked.

"This is addressed to you in your capacity as Chief of Staff, Supreme Head­quarters."

"Yes, sir?"

"Those helicopters we saw?"

"Yes, sir."

"Dog and pony shows are sometimes necessary, but under the present cir­cumstances, I can't see that the time and effort are justified. Have them trans­ferred immediately to the CIA here in Seoul."

"Sir?" Almond asked, more than a little surprised by the order.

"Do that today, if you can," MacArthur said. "The helicopters, the pilots, the mechanics, everything, go to the CIA, and I don't want to see photographs of them in the press. Clear?"

"Yes, sir."

MacArthur nodded at Almond, then went up the stairs and, ducking his head and without looking back, passed through the door.

"What the hell was that all about?" General Walker inquired of General Almond.

General Almond shrugged.

"I have no idea," he confessed, "but the Supreme Commander didn't leave any doubt about what he wants done, did he?"

They stood in front of the base operations tents watching as the Bataan tax­ied away, reached the end of the runway, ran up its engines quickly, and then raced down the runway.

The two men then looked at each another. There was no love lost between them, but there was a certain mutual respect.

"Well, Ned," Walker said as he put out his hand, "we'll no doubt be in touch."

Almond shook the hand, then saluted.

"Yes, of course we will," Almond said.

Walker nodded at him, then turned and started to walk to the Air Force C-47 that would carry him to his Eighth Army headquarters in the south.

Almond did not wait for the C-47 to take off. Even before Walker got to it, he walked toward the end of the base operations tents.

The fleet of staff cars that had been used to carry the Supreme Commander and his entourage from the airport to the Capitol Building and back—it had been assembled with no little effort; some cars had come from as far away as Pusan on an LST for the occasion—was no longer needed. Outside Seoul, with few exceptions, the roads were unpaved, in very bad shape, and not usable by passenger cars. The staff cars had been turned over to an X Corps Transporta­tion Corps captain, who had arranged them in neat rows and was waiting for orders on what to do with them.

Where they had once been lined up before the base operations tents, there was now a line of jeeps, the vehicles in which the senior officers had come from their units to participate in the liberation ceremony.

As General Almond walked toward his jeep, his aide-de-camp got out of the front seat and called his name.

"General Almond! Over here, sir."

Almond headed for his jeep. The aide took the canvas cover from the two-starred license plate.

Just as he reached the jeep, he was intercepted by Major Alex Donald.

"General Almond, if I may—"

Almond looked at him curiously, then held up his hand in a gesture telling him to wait.

"Al," he ordered, "see if you find Colonel Scott, or, failing him, Colonel Ray­mond, and bring one or the other here."

Colonel Charles Scott was the X Corps G-2, and Lieutenant Colonel James Raymond his assistant.

"Yes, sir," Haig said, and walked quickly down the line of jeeps.

Almond turned to Major Donald.

"Okay, Major," he said. "Donald, isn't it? What can I do for you?"

"Sir, I wondered what General MacArthur's reaction to the helicopters was," Major Donald said.

"I've been wondering about that myself," Almond said. "Is that why you . . . ?"

"No, sir. Sir, I was going to suggest that rather than returning to the X Corps CP by jeep, you fly there in one of the H-19s."

"I don't think that will be possible," Almond said. "But thank you, Major, for the thought."

Major Donald was surprised and disappointed by the general's refusal, but he was not yet ready to quit. If General MacArthur were to ask General Almond what he thought of the H-19s—as he almost certainly would—Donald wanted to make sure he had kind, even enthusiastic, things to say about them.

"Sir, I can have you there in fifteen minutes, and, sir, I really would like to demonstrate the capabilities of the H-19s to you."

Almond looked at him a moment, then gestured for Donald to follow him. Almond walked far enough away from the line of jeeps so that he was sure no one could overhear the conversation, then stopped and faced Donald.

"Major," he said, "you will consider the following to be classified."

"Yes, sir."

"Top Secret, and to be related to no one without my specific permission in advance."

"Yes, sir."

"As of"—Almond consulted his wristwatch—"1445 hours, the helicopters, their crews and maintenance personnel, everything and everyone connected with them, are transferred to the Central Intelligence Agency."

"Sir?"

"What didn't you understand?" Almond asked.

Major Donald was visibly shaken. It took him a moment to frame his reply.

"I understood that the helicopters and everyone and everything connected with them have been transferred to the Central Intelligence Agency, sir. Sir, does that include me?"

"You are connected with the helicopters, are you not?"

"Yes, sir, but—"

"Then you're included in the package," Almond said, cutting him off. "What you will do now, Major, is go back to the hangar. Someone will shortly contact you with further orders. Any questions?"

"No, sir."

"That will be all, Major," Almond said. "Thank you."

Major Donald saluted and then, after a moment, started to walk to where he had parked his jeep.

Almond looked toward the line of jeeps and saw that Haig had located Lieutenant Colonel James Raymond, the assistant G-2. He gestured for him to come to him. Haig looked dubious, so Almond gestured again, meaning for him to come along.

Lieutenant Colonel Raymond saluted.

"Yes, sir?"

"Raymond, do you know how to find the CIAs—'headquarters,' I suppose is the word—in Seoul?"

Raymond looked slightly uncomfortable.

"Not officially, sir."

"Explain that to me."

"They don't like people to know where they are, sir. But they told Colonel Scott, and he thought I might have a need for the information, and he told me."

"But you know?"

"Yes, sir."

"I want you to go there, right now, and deliver a message for me to the station chief or his deputy. No one else. If necessary, wait there for one or the other to show up."

"Yes, sir."

When Almond did not hand him a sheet of paper or an envelope, Lieu­tenant Colonel Raymond took a small notebook and a pencil from his pocket.

"Don't write this down," Almond said. "Memorize it."

"Yes, sir."

" 'Classification Top Secret,'" Almond began to dictate. " As of 1445 hours this date, by order of the Supreme Commander, Allied Powers, two H-19 he­licopters, together with their crews, maintenance personnel, and all available supporting equipment, have been transferred to you. The officer-in-charge has been notified, and is awaiting your orders in the hangar across from base op­erations at Kimpo Airfield. Signature, Almond, Major General, Chief of Staff, Allied Powers.' Got that?"

"Sir, would you give it to me again?" Lieutenant Colonel Raymond asked. Almond did so.

"Got it, sir."

"When you have delivered the message, report to me at the CP," Almond ordered. "Let's go, Al."


Chapter Five

[ONE]

Near Yoju, South Korea

17O5 29 September 195O

Major Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, was three quarters of the way toward the top of a hill that had been terraced into rice paddies. He had only a vague idea where he was, except. . .

He knew he was somewhere to the east of where he had seen the jeep with the American flag flying from its antenna.

He knew that he had been moving, and making pretty good time, since daylight—that is, for fifteen hours.

He knew that he had crossed a dirt road three hours before and an hour after that a paved road, which in Korea meant a highway, and he suspected that it was the highway connecting Suwon, to his west, with Wonju, to his east.

And he knew that he had waded and swum across a river, which he was pretty well convinced was the Han.

From where he was sitting, on a dirt footpath, his back resting against the earth-wall dam of a rice paddy, he could see in the valley below him the "high­way" bridge of the paved road across the river. The bridge had been mostly blown into the water, but there were signs that vehicles had forded the river near the shattered bridge.

He had no idea whose vehicles, or when they had crossed.

There were the burned remnants of buildings and stone-walled, thatch-roofed huts on both sides of the river by the bridge. There had been no signs of people or of travel on the dirt road, the highway, or the river when he had crossed them, and there had been no signs of anything human and alive in the thirty minutes he had been watching now.

The only sign of human life he had seen all day had been very early that morning, shortly after he had started moving, when he had come across three rice farmers tending a paddy.

They had had with them their lunch—balls of rice flecked with bits of chicken or pork—and two bottles of water. He had taken half the rice and one of the bottles of water, even though he was almost positive the water wasn't safe to drink, and had vowed he wasn't going to take a sip unless he absolutely had to.

He had paid for the rice and water with a U.S. twenty-dollar bill from a thick wad of currency held together by a gold money clip that had been either a birthday or a Christmas present from either his mother or his father. He couldn't quite remember which.

He wasn't at all sure if the rice farmers knew what the twenty-dollar bill was, and was just about convinced the farmer's pleasure in taking it was because they would have been just as happy to take any colored piece of paper if that meant the large bearded American with the large pistol wasn't going to shoot them to ensure they would not report him to the authorities.

Pick had noticed aerial activity all through the day, from contrails laid al­most certainly by Air Force B-29 bombers, to formations of twin-engine air­craft, either Air Force A-20s or B-26s flying at what was probably eight or ten thousand feet, to low-flying Air Force P-5 Is and even some Marine and Navy Corsairs flying to his west, right down on the deck, probably on interdiction missions.

None had been close enough for them to see him, and certainly not close enough for him to try to signal them with the mirror, even if he knew how to work that goddamn thing, and anyway, the flash of light from the goddamn mirror would almost certainly have been lost in the far brighter flashes of light coming from the sun bouncing off the water in the rice paddies.

He had filled both canteens and the bottle he'd bought from the rice farm­ers with water from what was probably the Han River, and felt marginally safer in drinking some of that now.

The decision he had before him now was when to have supper, before or after going to work.

He had not found a conveniently drained rice paddy, which meant that he was going to have to drain one himself. In two months, he had become rather expert in draining rice paddies, so that he would have a muddy surface into which he could stamp out his arrow and the letters PP.

It wasn't as simple a task as one might assume, not simply a matter of kick­ing a hole in the dirt dams and letting the water flow out.

There was a hell of a lot of water in each rice paddy, he had learned, and if you kicked too large an opening, the water would run out too quickly, taking with it more dirt, so that what had begun as a small trickle of water turned with astonishing speed into a raging torrent.

The torrent would soon overwhelm the capacity of the dirt path between adjacent paddies to carry it away, and flow into the rice paddy below it on the hill, where it would overwhelm that paddy's earth dam, and produce something like a chain reaction.

A line of drained paddies running down a hill was visible for miles, and would attract the kind of attention that would see him captured. He had caused one major chain-reaction draining and two not quite so spectacular—all three of which had seen excited farmers rushing to see what had happened—before he'd given the subject of paddy drainage a great deal of thought and come up with a technique that worked.

The trick was to go to one end of the paddy and scrape a very shallow trench at the top of the dam. The water would flow until it had fallen to the level of the trench and then stop. Then you moved five feet away and dug an­other very shallow trench, and repeated the process until the paddy was dry.

Major Pickering decided he would work and eat. He would dig the first very shallow trench with his boot, eat one of his nine rice balls as the water drained, then, when it had stopped flowing, dig another very shallow trench, eat a sec­ond ball of rice, and so on.

He pushed himself off the earth dam, walked to the end of the paddy, and scraped the first trench.

It was long after dark before the paddy was drained.

He looked down at the valley and saw some lights, but they were dim and not moving along the highway.

He moved uphill from the drained trench, sat down on the dirt path, popped dessert—the last of the nine rice balls—into his mouth, and then lay down.

He had a busy day tomorrow. He had to find food again, and move, and then find another suitable rice paddy.

[TWO]

The House

Seoul, South Korea

1715 29 September 195O

When Colonel Scott, the X Corps G-2, had quietly passed on the location of the CIA station to Lieutenant Colonel Raymond, he of course had not simply given him the address. Neither officer spoke, much less read and wrote, Korean. Instead, he had prepared a rather detailed map, and provided a verbal descrip­tion of how to get there, and of the building itself.

Still, what street signs remained were in Korean, and it took Raymond about two hours to make it to the house from Kimpo. And even when he blew his jeep's horn in front of the massive steel gates, he wasn't sure he was in the right place.

A moment later, an enormous Korean in U.S. Army fatigues came through a door in the gate, holding the butt of a Thompson submachine gun against his hip.

"Do you speak English?" Raymond asked.

There was no sign, verbal or otherwise, that the Korean had under­stood him.

"I'm here to see the station chief," Raymond said.

Again there was no response that Raymond could detect.

"I have orders from General Almond," Raymond said.

That triggered a response. The Korean gestured, and the right half of the gate swung inward. The Korean motioned Raymond to drive through it.

Inside, he saw a large stone European-looking house. There was a jeep and a Russian jeep parked to the left of the porte cochere in the center of the build­ing. He remembered seeing a Russian jeep earlier at both the Capitol Building and Kimpo, and wondered if it was the same one. On the roof of the porte cochere an air-cooled .30-caliber machine gun had been set up behind sand­bags. It was manned, and trained on the gate and the road from the gate. Ray­mond wondered if it was manned all the time, or whether his horn-blowing had been the trigger.

He stopped in front of the porte cochere and looked over his shoulder for the enormous Korean. The Korean, who was right behind him, pulled his fin­ger across his throat, a signal to cut the engine, then pointed at the door of the house.

Then the Korean, the Thompson still resting on his hip, beat him to the door and motioned him through it.

Inside was a large marble-floored foyer. Another Korean, much smaller than the one who had been at the gate, sat at the foot of a wide staircase with an au­tomatic carbine on his lap. The large Korean led Raymond to a door off the foyer, rapped on it with his knuckles, and then pushed it open.

Lieutenant Colonel Raymond was interested—perhaps even excited—to see what was in the room behind the door. The only previous contact he had had with the CIA was on paper. He had seen a number of their intelligence as­sessments, and he had met a number of CIA bureaucrats, some of whom had lectured at the Command & General Staff College when he had been a student there. But he had never before been in a CIA station and met actual CIA field officers.

He walked into the room.

There was a large dining table. On it sat two silver champagne coolers, each holding a liter bottle of Japanese Asahi beer. Two men in clean white T-shirts were sitting at the table, drinking beer, munching on Planters peanuts, and reading Stars and Stripes.

They hurriedly rose to their feet. Those are enlisted men!

"Can I help you, Colonel?" the taller of them asked courteously. "My name is Raymond," he said. "I have a message for the station chief from General Almond."

The taller of them jerked his thumb at the other one, which was apparently a signal for him to get the station chief.

"It'll be a minute, Colonel," the taller one said. "Can I offer you a beer?"

"I'd kill for a cold beer, thank you," Colonel Raymond blurted.

It was not, he instantly realized, what he would have said if he had consid­ered his reply carefully—or, for that matter, at all. He was on duty as the per­sonal messenger of the Corps commander, for one thing, and for another, field-grade officers do not drink with enlisted men.

But it had been a long day, and the beer looked so good.

The tall man found a glass—

That's a highball glass, a crystal highball glass!

Where are they getting all these creature comforts?

—filled it carefully with beer, and handed it to Lieutenant Colonel Raymond.

"There you go, sir."

"Thank you."

Raymond was on his second sip when three other men came into the room. They were also wearing crisp, clean white T-shirts. One was lithe and trim, the second barrel-chested and muscular—Raymond decided he, too, was an enlisted man, probably a senior sergeant—and the third was sort of pudgy and rumpled.

"What can we do for you, Colonel?" the pudgy one asked. He walked to the champagne cooler, poured beer, and handed glasses to the others.

"I have a message for the station chief from General Almond," Raymond said. "Is that you, sir?"

"Who are you, Colonel?" the pudgy one asked.

"Lieutenant Colonel Raymond, sir. I'm the assistant X Corps G-2."

"You work for Colonel Schneider, right?" the pudgy one said.

"No, sir, for Colonel Scott."

The pudgy one nodded at the trim one and confirmed, "That's the name of the X Corps G-2."

"Are you the station chief, sir?" Raymond asked the pudgy one.

The pudgy one pointed at the lithe one, and the lithe one pointed at the pudgy one.

Station Chief William R. Dunston had pointed at Major Kenneth R. McCoy for two reasons. First, he was always reluctant to identify himself to anyone—even an Army G-2 light bird—as the station chief, and second, he considered Ken McCoy to be de facto the senior CIA officer in South Korea.

There was no question in Dunston's mind that if there was an argument be­tween him and McCoy, and General Pickering had to choose between them, McCoy would prevail. He had served under Pickering in the OSS in the Sec­ond World War, and they were personal friends as well.

Major McCoy had pointed at Dunston because Dunston was the station chief, even though both of them knew McCoy was calling the shots.

The chunky, muscular enlisted man chuckled when he saw the exchange.

"Mr. Zimmerman, it is not nice to mock your superiors," the lithe one said, which caused the other two enlisted men to laugh.

"May I presume that one of you is the station chief?" Lieutenant Colonel Raymond said. He realized he was smiling.

What did I expect to find in here? A Humphrey Bogart type in a trench coat?

"You may," the lithe one said, and put out his hand. "My name is McCoy. That's Major Dunston," he added, pointing, "and Master Gunner Zimmerman, Technical Sergeant Jennings, and Sergeant Cole."

"What's your message, Colonel?" Dunston asked.

Raymond ran it through his brain first before reciting, " 'Classification Top Secret. As of 1445 hours this date, by order of the Supreme Commander, Al­lied Powers, two H-19 helicopters, together with their crews, maintenance per­sonnel, and all available supporting equipment, have been transferred to you. The officer-in-charge has been notified and is awaiting your orders in the hangar across from base operations at Kimpo Airfield. Signature, Almond, Major Gen­eral, Chief of Staff, Allied Powers.' "

"Jesus!" Zimmerman said. "Helos? Two helos?"

"Could you do that again, please, Colonel?" McCoy asked.

Raymond did so.

"Did General Almond say what we're supposed to do with these heli­copters?" Dunston asked.

"If these are the two big Sikorskys that flew into Kimpo this morning, I know what we can do with them," McCoy said.

"Yeah," Zimmerman said.

"That's General Almond's entire message, sir," Raymond said.

"Colonel, have you had your supper?" McCoy asked.

"Excuse me?"

"For two reasons, I hope you can have it with us," McCoy said. "The first is to thank you for the helos, and the second is that I think you're just the actor we need for a little amateur theatrical we're staging."

"Yeah," Zimmerman said. "And, Killer, if we can find Howe's stars—and I’ll bet there's a spare set in his luggage—we can pin them on him."

"Even better," McCoy said.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Lieutenant Colonel Raymond confessed.

"Colonel, we have a prisoner in the basement. A North Korean colonel," McCoy explained. "We're just about convinced (a) he's a high-level intelligence officer and (b) that he knows something about either a planned Chinese Communist intervention or the situation which will trigger such an intervention. We've been working on him without much success. The one thing we do know for sure is that he has an ego. He wants us to know how important he is. What we've got set up for tonight is a dinner—"

"A dinner?" Raymond asked in disbelief.

"Roast beef, potatoes, rice, wine—lots of wine—and all served with as much class as we can muster."

Raymond had been eating his meals—prepared from Ten-In-One rations— off of a steel tray. There had been an infrequent beer, but it had been warm and in a can.

"Can I ask where you're getting all ... of this?" he asked.

McCoy looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, then smiled. He said: "Dunston's people managed to hide a lot of the crystal and silver and even some of the wine before the North Koreans took Seoul, and the day before yes­terday Sergeants Jennings and Cole toured Inchon Harbor, swapping North Ko­rean souvenirs—flags, weapons, et cetera—with the crews of the cargo ships. You'd be surprised what a good Marine noncom can get for a Sudarev PPS-43 submachine gun."

Raymond chuckled.

"Jennings and Cole," McCoy went on, "came back with a weapons carrier— and its trailer—full of frozen food and beer. The freezers and the reefers here still work, so we're in pretty good shape for a while."

"So the idea is, you're going to feed this NK colonel and try to get him drunk?"

"I don't think he'll let us get him drunk, but he might take a little more wine than he should,' McCoy said. "Enough to let something slip. Particularly if he thought he was impressing someone important. You're a distinguished-looking man, Colonel. Asiatics—who don't have much facial hair—are impressed with large mustaches. If we pin General Howe's stars on you, I think he'll buy you as a general officer."

"He speaks English?"

"I think he does, but won't admit it. Dunston, Zimmerman, and I speak Korean. I suppose it's too much to hope—"

"Nothing but German—I was there for four years—and not very good German."

In German, McCoy asked, "But if I said 'Look doubtful,' you'd understand?"

"Yes."

"And you could say, in German, 'What did he say?' when I give you the nod?"

"Yes, I guess I could."

"Colonel, I really hope you can stay for supper," McCoy said.

Why not? Raymond thought. As long as I get back to the CP by twenty-four hundred, so I can relieve the colonel. . . .

"If you think it would be useful, I will," Lieutenant Colonel Raymond said.

"You're really going into the general's luggage and borrow his insignia?" Dunston said.

"Unless you've got a better idea where we can get a set of general's stars," McCoy said.

Lieutenant Colonel Raymond decided that the lithe one, McCoy, wais the station chief. He was the one giving the orders.

[THREE]

Haneda Airfield

Tokyo, Japan

18O5 29 September 195O

Fleming Pickering glanced out the window as the Bataan taxied toward the hangar that served as the departure and arrival point for the Supreme Com­mander and his entourage.

He saw the line of staff cars lined up awaiting the Bataan’s passengers. MacArthur's black Cadillac limousine was first, and the cars of the other brass were behind it, strictly according to the rank of their intended passengers. Pick­ering saw his black Buick Roadmaster sitting alone in front of the hangar, fac­ing in the opposite direction from the others.

Pickering knew this would annoy the Palace Guard, who would have greatly preferred to have his car with the others. His single star would have seen his car five or six cars behind MacArthur's limousine, reminding him that he was ac­tually just a minor planet revolving around MacArthur.

MacArthur's staff—and, for that matter, El Supremo himself—really didn't like having anyone in their midst who did not have a precisely defined place in the hierarchy of the Supreme Commander, Allied Powers.

There were two such burrs under the saddles of the Supreme Commander and the Palace Guard, Major General Ralph Howe, NGUS, and Brigadier Gen­eral Fleming Pickering, USMCR. Neither was subordinate to MacArthur, and both reported directly to the President of the United States.

Pickering had not been at all surprised when he came to Tokyo that the Palace Guard had immediately begun to attempt to get some degree of control over him—the more the better, obviously, from their point of view—and had been prepared to fight that battle, confident that he could win it again, as he had in the Second War.

The Buick—and his and George Hart's fur-collared Naval aviators' leather jackets—were more or less subtle statements that he was not subordinate to Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers.

The Buick was his. He owned it.

When he had first come to Japan, he had been provided with an olive-drab Chevrolet staff car and a sergeant to drive it, and asked when it would be con­venient for him to have the housing officer show him what government quar­ters were available for an officer of his rank, so that he could make a choice between them.

There was no question in Pickering's mind that the staff car drivers—three of them, on a rotating basis—were agents of the Counter-intelligence Corps, and thus reporting to Major General Charles A. Willoughby, MacArthur's chief intelligence officer.

He had politely thanked the Headquarters Commandant for the offer of government quarters, but said that would prefer to stay where he was, in a suite in the Imperial Hotel. And he had sent an urgent radio message to Colonel Ed Banning, who was at Camp Pendleton, ordering him to immediately buy a small Buick or Oldsmobile and have it placed aboard the very next P&FE freighter bound for Japan, even if he had to drive to San Francisco to get it on the next ship.

Colonel Banning had, with the word "immediately" in his mind, looked at the small Buicks and Oldsmobiles available in San Diego, decided "The Gen­eral" would really not like any of them—he could not imagine "The General" riding around Tokyo in a bright yellow little Olds, or a two-tone, mostly laven­der little Buick—and instead, eight hours after getting his orders, had stood on a wharf watching the black Buick Roadmaster being lifted aboard the Pacific Clipper, which he had been assured was among the fastest vessels in the P&FE fleet.

As soon as the car arrived, Pickering had told the Headquarters Com­mandant he would no longer need the staff car; he would drive his own car. The Headquarters Commandant told him he'd really be more comfortable if he continued to provide drivers, just in case Pickering might find them useful.

Pickering could not think of a reason to decline the "courteous, innocent" offer, so the "drivers" remained assigned to him. They usually spent their entire tour of duty reading newspapers and magazines while sitting on a couch in the corridor outside his suite. But sometimes he did use them. One of them had driven the Buick to Haneda in the morning, and had brought the car back to carry him to the hotel now.

That had solved the problem of the CIC agent drivers reporting his every move to Willoughby, and McCoy had solved what Pickering knew was a major problem—how to keep the messages he and Howe were sending to Truman re­ally secret.

Despite the TOP SECRET EYES ONLY THE PRESIDENT classifica­tion, eyes other than Truman's would see the messages both in Tokyo, where they would be encrypted and transmitted, and at Camp Pendleton, California, where they would be decrypted, typed, and dispatched by Marine officer courier to the White House.

Pickering was confident that there would be no leaks at Pendleton, where a Marine cryptographer working only for Colonel Ed Banning would handle the decryption, and just about as sure their messages would be read in the Dai Ichi Building communications center by people other than the cryptographers. An army sergeant was unlikely to chase away a colonel with all the security clearances—or, for that matter, Major General Charles Willoughby himself— when he was reading over his shoulder.

In Pusan, McCoy had run across a just-rushed-from-Germany-to-Korea Army Security Agency cryptographer, Master Sergeant Paul T. Keller, who didn't even know any of the Dai Ichi Building cryptographers. A message from Gen­eral Howe to the Army Chief of Staff in Washington had seen Keller the next day transferred to the CIA, with a further assignment to the staff of the Assis­tant Director of the CIA for Asia.

Keller was told—more than likely unnecessarily—that if there were any leaks of EYES ONLY THE PRESIDENT messages they would know who had done the leaking.

Pickering also suspected that Willoughby was entirely capable of both tap­ping the telephones in his hotel suite and bugging the suite itself. Master Sergeant Keller had "swept" the hotel suite and found several microphones, which might, or might not, have been left over from the days of the Kempai-Tai, the Japanese Imperial Secret Police.

There was no way of finding out for sure without tearing walls down to trace the wires, so they had left them in place. When Pickering had something to say he didn't want Willoughby to hear, he held the conversation in the bathroom, with the shower running, the toilet flushing, and a roll of toilet tissue around the microphone in the left of the two lights on either side of the mirror.

Most of the time, however, when there was a meeting they didn't want overheard, they held the meeting in McCoy's house in Denenchofu. Keller swept the house on a regular basis.

The Bataan stopped, and the engines died.

General MacArthur looked at his watch, then stood up and stretched.

"Jean and I would be pleased if you could come for dinner, Fleming. No one else will be there. Would eight be convenient for you?"

"Thank you," Pickering said. "I'd be delighted."

There was a discreet knock at the compartment door, and Huff's voice call­ing, "We're ready for you anytime, General."

MacArthur nodded at Pickering, pushed the door open, and went through it.

Pickering looked out the window again. Master Sergeant Keller was lean­ing on the Buick's fender.

That means he either has a message for me, or that he got a little bored in the hotel and decided to drive the Buick out here himself.

Pickering waited until all the brass had deplaned and gotten into their cars, then stood up and went into the aisle. Captain George F. Hart and Miss Jeanette Priestly were waiting for him.

"Keller's driving the car," Hart said.

"I saw," Pickering said.

"George said you were going to see Ernie," Jeanette said. "Can I bum a ride?"

"Your wish is my command, Fair Lady," Pickering said.

"Despite what people say about you, I think you'll be a fine father-in-law," she said.

If we get him back, Pickering thought, but said, "Was there ever any doubt about that in your mind?"

Hart chuckled.

They went down the staircase and walked to the Buick. Hart got in the front beside Keller. Keller started the engine, then turned and handed Pickering a sheet of paper, folded in thirds.

"Came in an hour ago, General," Keller said.

Pickering shifted in the seat so that Jeanette could not see what it was when he unfolded it.

TOP SECRET PRESIDENTIAL

SPECIAL CHANNEL

ONE COPY ONLY

EYES ONLY BRIG GEN FLEMING PICKERING USMCR

BLAIR HOUSE 0235 28 SEPTEMBER 1950

IN THE ABSENCE OF A REALLY COMPELLING REASON PRECLUDING YOUR TRAVEL, I WOULD LIKE TO SEE

YOU HERE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. BEST PERSONAL REGARDS HARRY S TRUMAN

TOP SECRET PRESIDENTIAL

Pickering refolded the message and handed it to Hart.

"Read that, don't comment," he ordered, "and then do the magic trick for Jeanette."

"Magic trick?" Jeanette asked. "What was that? Am I allowed to ask?"

"No, you're not. Show her, George."

Hart turned to the backseat. He waved the sheet of paper in his hand.

"Now you see it, Jeanette . . ." he said.

He produced a Zippo lighter, flicked it open and touched the flame to the sheet of paper. There was a sudden white flash and a small cloud of smoke.

The sheet of paper disappeared.

". . . and now you don't," Hart finished unnecessarily.

"Jesus Christ, what was that?" Jeanette asked.

"That would be telling, Jeanette," Pickering said. "When we get to McCoy's house, set that up, please, George, including the appropriate reply."

"Yes, sir. When do we go?"

"I thought it said, 'as soon as possible,' " Pickering said. Yes, sir.

[FOUR]

Mo. 7 Saku-Tun Denenchofu,

Tokyo, Japan

1915 29 September 195O

A middle-aged Japanese woman in a black kimono came through the steel gate in the wall around McCoy's house, bowed to the black Buick, then went back inside the wall. A moment later, the double gates farther down the wall opened, and Keller drove the car inside.

Mrs. Ernestine Sage McCoy, who was standing outside the door of the sprawling, one-floor Japanese house, was also wearing a black kimono.

Pickering decided she was wearing it as a maternity dress rather than a cul­tural statement of some kind. He also thought that it was true that being in the family way did indeed give women sort of a glow. Ernie looked radiant.

She came down the shallow flight of stairs as Fleming, Jeanette, Hart, and Keller got out of the Buick.

As Ernie hugged Fleming, he could feel the swelling of her belly against him.

"How are you, sweetheart?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she said. "The question seems to be, How are the men in our extended little family?"

"Ken's fine," Jeanette answered for him. "He looked like a recruiting poster when I saw him. Pick is still among the missing."

"Ken told me they had missed him by no more than a couple of hours yes­terday," Pickering said. "They'll find him, I'm sure."

"Well, come on in the house, all of you, and have a drink. I didn't know how many of you were coming, or when, so dinner will have to be started from scratch."

"Then I'll have time to take a shower?" Jeanette asked. "Shower, hell, a long hot bath?"

"Come on with me," Ernie said. "Uncle Flem, you know where the bar is."

She put her arm around Jeanette and started to lead her into the interior of the house.

"Wow," Ernie said, first sniffing and then wrinkling her nose. "You really do need a bath, don't you?"

"You can go to hell," Jeanette said.

The middle-aged Japanese woman and a younger Japanese woman were al­ready in the living room when Pickering led the others in. There were four bot­tles on the bar: bourbon, scotch, vodka, and beer.

The men indicated their choices—two scotches and a bourbon—by point­ing. The young woman made the drinks, and the older woman put them on a tray and served them. The younger woman left the room, returning in a mo­ment with a tray of bacon-wrapped smoked oysters.

Ernie came in as the oysters were being served.

"I would really like a very stiff one of those," she said. "But I am being the perfect pregnant woman."

"Good for you, sweetheart," Pickering said. "How about an oyster and a glass of soda?"

"Take what you can, when you can get it," Ernie said, and said something in Japanese to the younger woman, who started to fill a glass with soda water.

She turned to Pickering.

"Was Ken telling Jeanette the truth about Pick? Or whistling in the wind to make her feel good?"

"The truth, I'm sure," Pickering said.

"I really feel sorry for her," Ernie said.

"Ernie, two things. Thank you for dinner, but no thank you. MacArthur has invited me for dinner, and George and Paul have got things to do."

"Things that won't wait until they can eat?"

"That's the second thing. No, they can't wait. Don't tell Jeanette, but there's been a message from the President; he wants me in Washington as soon as I can get there."

"What's that all about?"

"I really don't know. But he's the President, Ernie. I do what he tells me to do."

"Don't tell Jeanette?"

"She's a reporter."

"She's Pick's ... I was about to say girlfriend, but she's much more than that."

"I know," he said. "But I still don't want you to tell her."

"About you going to Washington, or about anything?"

"This will sound cruel, perhaps, but the less Jeanette knows about any­thing, the better. Let me, or Ken, decide what she can know."

"You're going to Washington, and Ken's in Korea," Ernie replied.

"Come to Washington with me," Pickering said.

"No."

"You could see your parents for at least a couple of days."

"No."

"And then come back here, if you'd like."

"No, Uncle Flem. Thank you, but no."

"You want to tell me why?"

"Ken's here. This is our home."

"A couple of days with your parents would be good for all concerned," Pickering argued.

"They would spend all their time arguing that I should stay with them, and then be really hurt when I wouldn't. It's better the way it is."

"You don't want your mother here when the time comes?"

"Not unless Ken's here, too. Then, sure."

"If she decides to come, you can't stop her, Ernie."

"She knows how I feel. Can we get off this subject?"

"Got your Minox, George?" Pickering asked. Yes, sir.

"Then take a couple of pictures of me and the hardheaded pregnant lady in the kimono."

"Okay," Ernie said, and smiled.

"And then we have to get out of here, sweetheart," Pickering said. "If you need anything, tell Paul. And if he can't get what you need, he knows how to contact General Howe, and Howe will get it for you."

"Thanks, Paul."

"Anything you need, Ernie," Paul Keller said. "Anything."

Pickering stood up and put his arm around Ernie's shoulders, and George Hart took three shots of them with the tiny Minox.

[FIVE]

Hangar 13 Kimpo Airfield

Seoul, South Korea

O815 3O September 19SO

Captain Howard C. Dunwood, USMCR, was having breakfast—ham chunks with raisin sauce, out of a can—with Major Alex Donald, U.S. Army, when the small door in the left hangar door opened and a Marine corporal, a very large fair-skinned man in his early twenties, his field cap perched precariously on his head, came through, followed by four other men.

"Heads up!" Major Donald whispered. "That must be the people I was told to expect."

Captain Dunwood said nothing.

After a moment, he recognized two of the men. He had seen them before, the last time when Baker Company had landed on Tokchok-Kundo Island in the Flying Fish Channel leading to Pusan. At that time, both had been wear­ing black cotton pajamas, with bands of the same material wrapped around their foreheads. The tall and lanky one was now dressed in crisply starched utilities, with the chevrons of a technical sergeant painted on the sleeves. The other character who had been wearing black pajamas on the island was now in crisp utilities, with the gold leaves of a major pinned to his collar points.

Dunwood had seen that one once before Tokchok-Kundo.

At Haneda. On 15 August, the day I arrived in Japan from the States. Six weeks ago. It seems like a hell of a lot longer.

At Haneda the major had been wearing a tropical worsted uniform and the insignia of a captain. A Marine brigadier general and a strikingly beautiful woman had put him and a Navy lieutenant on a C-54 bound for Sasebo.

And I was half in the bag, and pegged him as a candy-ass chair warmer and made an ass of myself on the airplane, for which I paid with a dislocated thumb that still hurts sometimes. I suppose it's too much to hope he doesn't remember that incident.

Dunwood had no idea who the other two were—a Marine master gunner and an Army Transportation Corps major in a rumpled uniform—and ab­solutely no idea what was going on.

Major Donald—subtly making it clear that he was privy to highly classi­fied information that he could, of course, not share with a lowly Marine cap­tain—had told him only that "there had been a change of plans" and that "sometime in the immediate future, I will be contacted with further orders re­flecting that change."

Major Donald put down his can of ham chunks in raisin sauce and marched to meet the newcomers. The crews of the two helicopters, who were also having their breakfast, sitting on the floor of their aircraft, watched with interest.

Dunwood shrugged, put his can of ham chunks in raisin sauce down, and walked after Major Donald. When Donald became aware he was being trailed, he turned to look at Dunwood.

And here's where the sonofabitch tells me to butt out.

"Hello, Dunwood. How are you?" McCoy said.

Dunwood saluted.

"Good morning, sir."

"You know Sergeant Jennings," McCoy said. "That's Gunner Zimmerman and that's Major Dunston."

"My name is Donald, Major."

"You're in charge of these aircraft?" McCoy asked.

“Yes, I am.”

"And I understand you were told you'd be contacted about them?"

"Yes, I have."

"Well, here we are," McCoy said. "My name is McCoy."

"I wonder if I might see some identification?" Donald said.

"Ernie," McCoy said.

Zimmerman took a small leather wallet from his breast pocket, opened it, and held it so Donald could see it.

"Thank you," Donald said, then looked at McCoy. "I'm at your orders, sir."

"How much have you told anybody about any of this?" McCoy asked.

"Not a word to anyone, Major."

"I'd like to speak to the aircraft people right now," McCoy said. "Dunwood, you listen, and you decide which of your Marines you can tell, and what."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Donald walked to the closest of the H-19s and gestured for the men gath­ered around the second helicopter to come over.

When they were finally assembled, McCoy saw there were four pilots, two enlisted men also wearing flight suits, and half a dozen maintenance person­nel, all noncoms but one, who was a warrant officer.

Donald barked "Atten-hut" and, when everybody was at attention, said, "This is Major McCoy."

"Stand at ease," McCoy ordered. "I'm sure you're all wondering what's going on. I'll tell you what I know, which frankly isn't much. What follows is classi­fied Top Secret, and I don't know how many of you have that security clear­ance. For the time being, it should be enough to tell you that nothing about this operation is to be told to anyone. As I'm sure you all know, divulging Top Secret information will see you standing before a General Court-Martial. I'm dead serious about that. You don't tell your pals about this, and you don't write home telling your mother, your wife, or anyone else. If you do, we'll find out about it and you'll find yourself in front of a General Court. No second chances. We cannot afford to have loose mouths. Pay attention. The lives you'll save by keeping your mouths shut will be your own." He paused. "Any questions?"

He took the time to make eye contact with everyone, including Major Donald, and then went on.

"These aircraft, and all of you, have been assigned to the Central Intelligence Agency. You will continue to receive your orders from Major Donald, who will get his from the CIA station chief. Any questions?"

One of the pilots raised his hand.

"Okay," McCoy said.

"Sir, I always thought you had to volunteer for something like this."

"If you always thought that, Captain, you were always wrong," McCoy said.

There were chuckles from most of them.

Another hand went up.

"Sir, can I ask what we'll be doing?"

"Aside from flying those helicopters, no."

More chuckles.

A voice from somewhere called, jokingly, "How do we get out of this chickenshit outfit?"

"In handcuffs, a coffin, or when you retire," McCoy said, smiling. Now there was laughter. "I'll tell you what I can when I can. But for the time being, that's it."

"I'd like to see you alone, please, Major," McCoy said to Donald, and started walking toward the rear of the hangar. Dunston, Zimmerman, and Jennings fol­lowed him, and in a moment, so did Donald and Dunwood.

"Major," Donald said when they were out of earshot of the others, "if I'm . . . You can't tell me what we'll be doing, either?"

"Because that hasn't been decided," McCoy said. "We didn't know we were getting you and these aircraft until seventeen thirty yesterday. I don't think you should share that information."

"I understand."

"We have some ideas, but we won't know if they're any good until we know what these machines can and can't do. I never saw one of them until I walked into the hangar. Can we start with that?"

"Yes, sir. What would you like to know?"

"Everything," McCoy said.

Donald looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, then began what McCoy quickly decided was a recitation he had given before.

"These are Sikorsky H-19A helicopters," Donald recited. "They are pow­ered by a Wright R 1340-57 550-horsepower engine, which gives them a max­imum speed of 98 mph, a cruising speed of 80 mph, and a range of about 410 miles. The helicopter itself is 42 feet long and has a wingspan of 53 feet. The empty weight is 5,250 pounds and the maximum takeoff weight 7,500 pounds. There is a three-man crew, pilot, copilot, and crew chief. It can carry ten men, in addition to the crew."

McCoy smiled.

"I think you and Mr. Zimmerman will get along, Major. He, too, is a walk­ing encyclopedia of technical information." He paused and then went on. "On the other hand, I have to have things explained to me."

"Ask away."

"You said the empty weight was ..."

"Fifty-two hundred and fifty pounds," Donald furnished.

"And the maximum takeoff weight 7,500 pounds. Does that mean these things will carry—what is that?—2,250 pounds?"

"You have to deduct the weight of the fuel," Donald explained. "AvGas weighs about seven pounds a gallon."

"Okay. You said it will carry ten men. Riflemen? With their weapons? Ammo? Rations?"

"That figure is based on an average weight, man and equipment, of 180 pounds."

"But these things will carry 1,800 pounds of whatever 180 miles someplace, and then be able to return?"

"'That would be pushing the envelope a little," Donald said.

"The what?" Zimmerman asked.

"They call the capabilities of aircraft 'the envelope,' " Donald explained. "Just about everything affects everything else. The more you exceed the cruising speed, for example, the more fuel you burn and the less range you get."

"What about carrying 1,500 pounds 150 miles and back?" McCoy asked.

"That could usually be done," Donald said.

"Do you need the crew chief?" McCoy asked. "If he weighs 180, that's twenty-five gallons of gas."

"Crew chiefs are handy if the bird breaks," Donald said. "And they have other in-flight duties."

"Essential, yes or no?" McCoy pressed.

"Desirable, not absolutely essential."

“And the second pilot? That's another twenty-five gallons of gas."

"Same answer. There is also the possibility that pilots take hits, and a spare pilot is a nice thing to have."

“Desirable, but not absolutely essential?" McCoy pressed again.

"Right."

"You can fly one of these?" McCoy asked.

"Yes. I was the assistant project officer on this aircraft."

"Can you fly it without help?"

"If necessary. Why do you ask? If I can ask that."

"I'd like to see what you can see from the pilot's seat. I don't think anybody can see very much looking out the side door."

Donald nodded but didn't say anything.

"Do you have another pilot who can fly one of these things by himself?"

"They all can."

"Are these things fueled up and ready to go?"

"I had them topped off yesterday afternoon."

"When you flew them here, did you fly over Inchon?"

"I really don't know what route they took. I'll have to ask one of the pilots who did fly in here."

"What's going on, Kil—Major?" Zimmerman asked.

"I just had one of my famous inspirations," McCoy said. "Major, would you ask one of the pilots who flew over Inchon if he would join us?"

"Sure," Donald said, walked to the nearest H-19, and returned with a young-looking captain.

"This is Captain Schneider, Major," Donald said.

McCoy shook his hand, then asked, "When you flew here yesterday, Cap­tain, did you fly over Inchon?"

"Yes, sir."

"There's supposed to be an Army vehicle depot there. Did you see it?"

"I saw a motor park of all kinds of vehicles, sir."

"Was there someplace in this motor park where you could land one of these aircraft?"

"I'd have to make a couple of passes over it to make sure there's no telephone or power lines, but yes, sir, there was plenty of room to land the H-19s."

"Okay. This is what I'm thinking. We need vehicles. We need them," he said, pointing to Dunston, Zimmerman, Jennings, and then himself. "And you need them. And the Marines need them. The original plan was to go there and dazzle whoever's in charge with our CIA identification and orders. We're authorized vehicles, but we get hung up in the bureaucracy. It just oc­curred to me that if we flew in there in these helos, showed them our or­ders, and said we needed the vehicles right now, they'd be double dazzled and we'd be out the gate before they had time to think things over—and try to get permission from somebody who would need three days to make a decision."

Major Donald and Captain Schneider smiled.

"How many vehicles are you going to need to support the helicopters and your men?" McCoy said. "Make a list right now. You, too, Dunwood."

"Aye, aye, sir," Dunwood said.

"If you had a tank truck, or tank trailers, could you get AvGas somewhere?" McCoy asked.

"From the Air Force," Donald said. "I don't know if there's a tank park at Inchon or not."

"Make sure you have tank trucks, or plenty of trailers, on your list," Mc­Coy said.

"Yes, sir," Major Donald said.

"On the helos, I want enough men to drive what vehicles we're going to take, plus enough to manhandle the food and whatever else we're going to draw from the Quartermaster Depot," McCoy said.

[SIX]

After the H-19s were pushed outside the hangar, Major McCoy managed with some difficulty to climb into the cockpit of one, and then—with some assis­tance from Major Donald—to strap himself into the copilot's seat.

Donald then handed him a headset and a microphone, and showed him how to press the microphone button to talk, and the switch that allowed se­lection of TRANSMIT and INTERCOM.

"Got it?" Donald's voice came through the earphones.

McCoy checked to make sure the switch was set on INTERCOM and then pressed the microphone button.

"Got it," he said.

Donald put his face to the open cockpit window.

"Wind it up, Schneider," he called to the other H-19.

A moment later, there came the whine of the engine cranking, a cloud of blue smoke, and a lot of vibration.

For the first time, McCoy realized that he and Donald were practically sit­ting on the engine.

The rotor blades began to turn very slowly, and then ever faster, over them. And produced more vibration.

He looked around Donald at the other helicopter and saw Zimmerman, who looked as uncomfortable as he felt, sitting beside Captain Schneider.

Donald checked a baffling array of instruments on the control panel and exercised the controls. McCoy had no idea what Donald was doing.

After about a minute, Donald's voice came over the earphones.

"You about ready, Schneider?"

"Anytime, sir," Schneider's metallic voice replied.

"K-16, Army 4003," Donald's voice said.

"Go ahead, Army 4003,' a new voice responded.

"Army 4003, a flight of two H-19 helicopters, on the tarmac in front of the hangar across from base ops. Request takeoff permission for a low-level flight on a departure heading of 250 degrees."

"4003, where are you going?"

"K-16, Inchon. We will not exceed 1,000 feet en route."

"4003, understand departure heading 250 degrees, destination Inchon, flight level under 1,000. Be advised that there are multiengine aircraft in the pattern making an approach to runway 27. The altimeter is two niner niner. The winds are negligible. K-16 clears 4003 for immediate takeoff on a depar­ture heading of 250 degrees. Advise when clear of the field."

"Roger, K-16. Army 4003 lifting off at this time."

Donald did something to the controls. The sound of the engine changed. There was more vibration. The tail of the helicopter seemed to rise, and then they were moving very slowly across the tarmac, just a few feet off the ground. The helicopter turned at the edge of the hangar, seemed to both accelerate and rise a few more feet off the ground.

Then, when it had passed over the airport boundary, it turned and climbed to about 500 feet.

Jesus Christ, Major Kenneth R. McCoy thought, you can see just about every­thing from up here! This noisy goddamn machine is really going to be useful!

[SEVEN]

Haneda Airfield

Tokyo, Japan

O9OS 3O September 195O

Captain Paul R. Jernigan, who would command Trans-Global Airways Flight 908—City of Los Angeles—Lockheed Constellation Service from Tokyo to San Francisco with fuel stops at Wake Island and Honolulu, had no idea at all that he would be carrying Fleming Pickering until he looked out the window and saw him approaching the aircraft.

He pushed himself out of the seat, told his copilot and the flight engi­neer that "Jesus Christ, Pickering himself is getting on!" and then left the cockpit so that he could personally welcome aboard the man who owned the airline.

"Welcome aboard, sir," he said. "My name is Jernigan."

"Thank you, Captain," Pickering said, offering his hand. "This is another kind of captain, George Hart. My name is Pickering."

"Yes, sir. I know. It's a pleasure to have you aboard, gentlemen."

The senior stewardess who had been counting heads in the rear of the air­plane saw the captain standing by the door and came quickly forward and saw who it was.

"We heard you were coming with us, Commodore," she said. "Welcome aboard. We have you in 1A, the window seat, and 1B."

Never thought to tell me, huh, you airhead! Captain Jernigan thought rather unkindly. He had been known to comment that if he had his choice between flying B-17s over Berlin, which he had done, or flying Connies with six stew­ardesses aboard, as he was doing now, he would take Berlin anytime.

"Thank you," Pickering said, and found his seat.

"You want the window, George?" he asked.

"Up to you, Boss. I don't care either way."

Pickering slid into the window seat.

"Once we're in the air, please feel free to come to the cockpit, Commodore," Captain Jernigan said. He had picked up on the title, and heard it was what they called the senior of a group of ship captains.

"Thank you," Pickering said.

"Commodore," the senior stewardess asked, "can I get you anything? Cof­fee? Something stronger? While we're waiting for our clearance?"

"No. Thank you very much," Pickering said, and then, a moment later: "Hold on. Bring me a Bloody Mary, please. Better make it a double."

George Hart looked at him in surprise. Pickering rarely drank at this time of day. Then he saw the silvered cast-aluminum plaque attached to the bulk­head before them, where they would see it all the way across the Pacific.

THIS TRANS-GLOBAL LOCKHEED CONSTELLATION "THE CITY OF LOS ANGELES"

ON JUNE 1, 1950

SET THE CURRENT SPEED RECORD FOR COMMERCIAL AIR TRAVEL BETWEEN SAN FRANCISCO AND TOKYO

CAPTAIN MALCOLM S. PICKERING

CHIEF PILOT OF TRANS-GLOBAL AIRWAYS WAS IN COMMAND

Pickering saw Hart looking at him. Hart turned to the stewardess. "Make it two of those, please," he said.


Chapter Six

[ONE]

8O23 Transportation Company (Depot, Forward)

Inchon, South Korea

0935 3O September 195O

Captain Francis P. MacNamara, Transportation Corps, his attention caught by the fluckata-fluckata-fluckata sound of rotor blades, stepped outside his office— a canvas fly—and looked skyward.

MacNamara, a stocky, redheaded thirty-five-year-old Irishman from South Boston, had earned a commission in World War II, risen to captain, decided he liked the Army, and elected to remain in service when the war was over. In 1946, while assigned to the Army of Occupation in Germany, he had been told that he was about to be RIF'd.

RIF'd was an unofficial but universally understood and used acronym. The Army didn't need as many Transportation Corps officers as it had during the war, and there was consequently a Reduction In Force program involuntarily releasing from active duty those officers it no longer needed. Those selected to be released were said to be RIF'd.

He had also been told that he could enlist as a master sergeant. He had been a PFC when he had gone to OCS. There was a lot to be said for being a mas­ter sergeant, and he had also learned that he could retire from the service after twenty years of service at fifty percent of his basic pay, and further that he could retire at the highest grade held in wartime—in other words, as a captain. He reenlisted.

First Sergeant Francis P. MacNamara, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, the Transportation Corps School, Fort Eustis, Virginia (Captain, TC, Reserve), had been recalled to active duty five days after the North Kore­ans crossed the 38th Parallel.

His first assignment had been at the Anniston, Alabama, Ordnance Depot, where he had been responsible for the acceptance by the Transportation Corps of wheeled vehicles stored by the Ordnance Corps, and then seeing them moved to the port of Mobile, Alabama, for shipment to the Far East. During this pe­riod, the 9th Transportation Company (Provisional) was activated, and he was given command.

The five officers and 145 enlisted men of the 9th Transportation Company, and 608 wheeled vehicles ranging from jeeps to tank transporters, sailed from Mobile to Yokohama, Japan, aboard the Captain J. C. Buffett, a Waterman Steamship Line freighter pressed into service. On arrival in Yokohama, the 9th Transportation Company (Provisional) was redesignated the 8023d Trans­portation Company (Depot, Forward) and Captain MacNamara was told that it would shortly sail aboard the Captain J. C Buffett for Pusan for service with the Eighth U.S. Army.

That didn't happen. The Captain J.C Buffett lay anchored in Yokohama Harbor until 10 September, when it weighed anchor and joined the fleet of ves­sels bound for the Inchon Invasion.

On 14 September, the Captain J. C. Buffett dropped anchor just outside the Flying Fish Channel leading to Inchon, from which position the next morning they could see the warships and attack transports sail into the channel for the invasion.

Commencing 20 September—once Inchon was secure—the 8023d and its 608 vehicles began to debark. This took some time, because of the tides at In­chon, which saw the Captain J. C. Buffett forced to hoist anchor, sail into Inchon, and off-load as many vehicles as possible before the receding tides made it necessary for her to go back down the Flying Fish Channel, drop anchor again, and wait for the next high tide. The off-loading procedure was further hampered by the shortage of equipment in Inchon capable of lifting the tank transporters, heavy wreckers, and other outsized wheeled vehicles.

But finally everything and everybody was off-loaded, and Captain Mac­Namara set about setting up the company. Its purpose was to exchange new ve­hicles for vehicles that had either been damaged in combat or had otherwise failed, and then to make an effort to repair the damaged vehicles that had been turned in, so they could be reissued.

MacNamara had done much the same sort of thing in France during World War II, and most of his men were skilled in performing "third-echelon main­tenance" on wheeled vehicles. All he had had to do was get everything running. He felt that he was ahead of schedule. He had found a building in which, once the Engineers got him some decent electrical power, he could perform the duty assigned to the 8023d.

The first thing to do was get what he thought of as "the pool"—the vehi­cles he had shepherded all the way from Anniston, Alabama—up and running. Actually, that was the second thing he had to do. The first was to lay barbed wire around the pool and set up guard shacks.

There were two things Captain MacNamara had learned in France. One was that an unguarded pool of vehicles would disappear overnight, and the other was that if you listened to some bullshit pull-at-your-heartstrings story of why some guy really needed a vehicle, and why he didn't have a vehicle to exchange for one from the pool, the pool would disappear almost as quickly.

MacNamara believed—after some painful experiences in France—that the Army knew what it was doing when it set the policy, the very simple policy, of "something happens to the vehicle you've been issued, take it to an Ordnance or Transportation Depot, turn it in, and they'll issue you a serviceable one."

Unspoken was: "No vehicle to turn in, no new vehicle."

The reason for that was pretty obvious. If you didn't have to turn a vehicle in, every sonofabitch and his brother would show up and take a vehicle. And the problem with that was that some colonel would show up with a half-dozen wrecked or shot-up jeeps and expect to get half a dozen replacements, and when you didn't have half a dozen jeeps to give him—you'd given every vehi­cle to every sonofabitch who'd shown up with a hard-luck story—he would ask, "What the hell happened to your pool?"

That had happened to MacNamara in France. They'd as much as accused him of selling vehicles on the black market, and he'd had the MPs' Criminal Investigation Division following him around for months, and he'd gotten a let­ter of reprimand.

He often thought that letter of reprimand was the reason he had been RIF'd. Now that he was a captain again, because they needed him, he was determined not to fuck up again. Being a captain was better than being a master sergeant, and maybe, if he didn't fuck up again by passing out the Army's vehicles to peo­ple who weren't supposed to have them, they'd let him stay on as a captain when this war was over. He might even make major if he didn't fuck up.

Captain MacNamara had spent a good deal of time on the way from the States writing a Standing Operating Procedure for the company that would make it absolutely impossible for anyone who didn't have a busted-up vehicle to turn in to get one from his pool.

He was looking over the SOP when he heard the fluckata-fluckata-fluckata of rotor blades.

He had heard the fluckata-fluckata-fluckata the day before, and had gone outside and seen two enormous helicopters—he didn't know they made them that big—flying over Inchon headed for Seoul.

He had wondered what the hell they were yesterday, and he wondered what the hell they were now.

And then he was more than a little surprised to see first that they seemed to be heading for the 8023d, and then even more surprised when the first of them, and the second, stopped fifty feet over the open area where he was going to store the turned-in vehicles, and then fluttered to the ground.

The sound of their engines died, and the rotors seemed to be slowing.

Captain MacNamara marched toward the machines, his experience telling him that the passengers on something like this were almost certainly going to be heavy brass.

He got, instead, a somewhat rumpled-looking major of the Transporta­tion Corps.

"Good morning, sir," MacNamara said as he saluted.

"Good morning, Captain."

Then he got two more majors, who climbed down from the cockpit— one of them an Army major and the other a Marine. MacNamara saluted again.

"Captain MacNamara," he reported. "Commanding 8023d TC Company."

"You're the senior officer?" the Marine asked him.

"Yes, sir."

The major took a leather wallet from his pocket, unfolded it, and ex­tended it for MacNamara to read. It identified the major as a field officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. It was Captain MacNamara's first contact with the CIA.

"Yes, sir?" he asked.

"Read this, please, Captain," Major McCoy said, extending a business-size envelope to him.

"Yes, sir," MacNamara said, opened the envelope, and took out a single sheet of paper. He read it.

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON, D.C.

JULY 8TH, 1950

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

BRIGADIER GENERAL FLEMING PICKERING, USMCR, IN CONNECTION WITH HIS MISSION FOR ME, WILL

TRAVEL TO SUCH PLACES AT SUCH TIMES AS HE FEELS APPROPRIATE, ACCOMPANIED BY SUCH STAFF AS

HE DESIRES.

GENERAL PICKERING IS GRANTED HEREWITH A TOP-SECRET/WHITE HOUSE CLEARANCE, AND MAY, AT HIS

OPTION, GRANT SUCH CLEARANCE TO HIS STAFF.

U.S. MILITARY AND GOVERNMENTAL AGENCIES ARE DIRECTED TO PROVIDE GENERAL PICKERING AND HIS

STAFF WITH WHATEVER SUPPORT THEY MAY REQUIRE.

HARRY S TRUMAN PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES


1st INDORSEMENT 1 SEPTEMBER 1950

THE UNDERSIGNED DESIGNATES THE FOLLOWING MEMBERS OF MY STAFF AS FOLLOWS, WITH THE ATTENDANT

SECURITY CLEARANCES AND AUTHORITY TO ACT IN MY BEHALF.

KENNETH R. MCCOY: EXECUTIVE OFFICER

ERNEST W. ZIMMERMAN: DEPUTY EXECUTIVE OFFICER

GEORGE F. HART, CAPT, USMCR: ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER

Fleming Pickering

FLEMING PICKERING BRIGADIER GENERAL, USMCR

"Jesus H. Christ!" Captain MacNamara said.

"We're going to need some vehicles," McCoy said. "And right now. Is that going to cause any problems?"

Captain MacNamara looked at the lines of vehicles in his pool, then at the signature of the President of the United States, then back at the lines of vehi­cles in his pool, and then at Major McCoy.

He came to attention, licked his lips, and said, "Not with orders like those. No, sir."

"Good. May I have the orders back, please? And I won't have to tell you, will I, that you are not to reveal anything connected with this?"

"No, sir," MacNamara said, and then had a second thought. "But, sir, some­body will have to sign for the vehicles."

"That's what I'm here for, Captain," Dunston said.

"Sir, could I ask you for some identification?"

"Sure," Dunston said, and handed him an Army Adjutant General's Office photo identifying him as a major, Transportation Corps.

"Thank you, sir."

[TWO]

Detachment A

8119 Quartermaster Company (Forward)

Inchon, South Korea

1O2O 3O September 19SO

Major Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, who was sitting beside Major Alex Don­ald, USA, and Major William Dunston, USA, on the floor of the cargo com­partment of one of the H-19s watching Master Gunner Zimmerman supervise the loading of rations, and other items, into a GMC 6x6, turned to Major Dunston and asked, "Do you think we'd be pushing our luck to try to get something from over there?"

He pointed across the Quartermaster Supply Point to an eight-man squad tent, before which was a corporal with a rifle sitting on a folding chair and a small wooden sign reading, "Class VI."

Class VI supplies are supposed to have—but usually don't have—the low­est priority for shipment to a combat area. The highest priority goes to med­ical supplies, followed by ammunition, rations, and so on, based on the military's best judgment of what is most essential.

Class VI supplies are bottled intoxicants, such as whiskey, gin, and rum. They are not issued, but purchased with "nonappropriated funds" intended for resale to officer and noncommissioned officer clubs. They are not subject to al­cohol taxes of any kind. Their sale is rigidly controlled and only to "authorized entities."

"Why not?" Major Dunston replied. "We seem to be on a roll." Captain MacNamara had given them every vehicle they had asked for, in­cluding a tanker truck and five tank trailers, as well as enough trucks, weapons carriers, and jeeps to make both Baker Company, 5th Marines, "the aviation de­tachment," and the station fully mobile on the ground.

The officer in charge of the Quartermaster Supply Point had been even more dazzled than Captain MacNamara when three field-grade officers bear­ing orders personally signed by the President of the United States descended upon his unit in machines he had never heard of.

The men—the Marines and the Army Aviation people—in the bullet- and shrapnel-riddled hangar would that night have a hot meal prepared on field stoves, and everyone would sleep that night on a cot in a sleeping bag. The only thing they would not have was cold beer—a means of refrigeration was not available—but as Mr. Zimmerman pointed out, warm beer was far better than no beer at all.

"Mr. Zimmerman!" McCoy called out, and Zimmerman marched over to them. "Yes, sir?"

"I'm going to need some of our discretionary funds," McCoy said. "I saw the sign," Zimmerman said, taking an oilcloth wallet from his rear pocket. "How much do you want?"

"We don't want to be greedy," McCoy said. "Give Major Dunston two— better make it three—hundred dollars."

Zimmerman opened the wallet, took from it a packet of money labeled "$500—Twenty-Dollar Notes," and counted off two hundred dollars. He handed what was left to Dunston. "That should be three hundred," he said. "I guess I'm going to try to buy the booze?" Dunston said. "Uh-huh," McCoy said. "And into your capable hands, Major Dunston, I entrust the entire wagon train."

"Where are you going?"

"Major Donald is going to take Mr. Zimmerman and me on a reconnais­sance mission."

"I'd like to go along," Dunston said.

"I don't think all three of us should go at the same time," McCoy said. "If this flying egg beater should crash and burn with all of us on it, the entire war could well be lost."

"Indeed it could," Dunston said.

"Where are we going?" Major Donald asked.

"Not far from Suwon," McCoy said. "How well do you know the area?"

"I've flown over it. Not a hell of a lot."

"One of the things we hope to do with your aircraft, Major, is locate and pick up a shot-down Marine pilot who's down there somewhere."

"I thought the Marines did that sort of thing themselves," Donald said. "Yes, they do," McCoy said. "But this is sort of a special case. I'll tell you about it at The House."

"The House?"

"Where we stay in Seoul," McCoy explained.

"Do you have any idea where this pilot is?" Donald asked.

"We know where he was thirty-six hours ago."

He took a map from his pocket, opened it, and pointed out the rice paddy where Pickering had last stamped out his arrow and his initials.

"Can you find that?"

Donald glanced at the map and nodded. "No problem." Then he looked at McCoy. "You think he's there?"

"He was there. He's not now."

"How do you know?"

"Because we were there," McCoy said.

"That area's not secure," Donald blurted. "The whole NK army is trying to escape through there."

"So Zimmerman told me," McCoy said.

Donald digested that a moment, then asked, "Where do you think this pilot is now?"

"I have no idea. Maybe he's heading east. Maybe we'll get lucky."

"Whatever you say," Donald said.

"Send the other helo back to Kimpo and have it put in the hangar," McCoy ordered.

"Right."

"We'll see you at the hangar, Bill," McCoy said. "And I think I should tell you this: I don't know how it is in the Army, but in the Marine Corps, officers who fail to adequately protect their Class VI supplies are castrated."

"I'll keep that in mind," Dunston said.

[TWO]

Two Miles NNE of Hoengsong, South Korea

1115 3O September 195O

Major Malcolm S. Pickering's efforts to drain the rice paddy near Yoju the previous evening so that he could stamp out his initials and the arrow had failed.

It would have been a waste of effort to try to stamp the Here I am, for Christ's sake, come and get me message in the dark, so he had waited until morning, hoping that the ground would still be wet and soft enough for the stamping.

The reverse proved to be true. When it grew light enough for him for see, he saw that the rice paddy was covered with water, only an inch or two deep, but covered with water.

He thought at first that he hadn't kicked away enough of the earthen dam to completely drain the water. But a quick investigation of the site showed that the paddy was a natural depression in the hillside, and the only way it could possibly be drained would be to dig a trench and empty it across the dirt path into the next-lower rice paddy.

To dig a trench like that, he quickly saw, would require a pick and shovel, and he had neither tool.

This was not the first time he'd had trouble draining a paddy. Very much the same thing had happened to him three times before. This knowledge of it­self was not very comforting.

He had put the A-Frame over his shoulders and climbed up and over the crest of that hill, then worked his way eastward.

He had risen at first light, and left the undrained paddy forty minutes later. By eleven-fifteen, he had moved, in his best guess, about ten or eleven miles. As the crow flies, about four.

He was at the crest of another hill—he hadn't counted, but he thought it was probably the fourth crest—when he heard the fluckata-fluckata-fluckata of a helicopter.

His first reaction was fear. It was not the fluckata-fluckata-fluckata of any of the three helicopters he knew—the Bell, Hiller, and Sikorsky aircraft—all small two-man machines. This fluckata-fluckata-fluckata was louder, heavier, and different.

Since so far as he knew the only U.S. helicopters in Korea were those as­signed to the 1st Marine Air Wing, and they were Bells, logic dictated that the aircraft making this fluckata-fluckata-fluckata were not American. It was entirely possible, he thought after a minute, that in the nine thousand years since he had been shot down, the Army or the Air Force had finally gotten its act in gear and gotten some of their own helicopters to Korea, and this was what he was hearing.

But then he thought that the only place the Army could get helicopters was from Bell or Hiller . . .

He recalled then that the Navy had some helos to pick aviators from the drink if they missed a carrier landing or takeoff—he'd actually seen them while practicing carrier takeoffs and recovery off San Diego—but when he thought about that, he remembered the fluckata-fluckata-fluckata they'd made, and it wasn't the fluckata-fluckata-fluckata he was hearing now.

. . . and he knew the fluckata-fluckata-fluckata he was hearing now wasn't coming from a Bell or a Hiller, so it had to be made by something else. Like a Russian helicopter. The Russians had helicopters. Hell, the Russians had in­vented helicopters. Both Sikorsky and Piasecki were Russians before they came to the States.

What he needed was a cave to hide in.

There being no convenient caves, he did the next best thing. He put his back against the earthen wall of a rice paddy, then held the A-Frame over him. It would, he believed, break his human figure outline, shade his face from the sun, and make him difficult to see from the air.

The fluckata-fluckata-fluckata grew louder. Pickering pushed the A-Frame away from his head and glanced skyward, trying to get a look at it. Where the hell is it? Jesus Christ, it sounds like it's right here! He leaned his neck back as far as it would go, just in time to see the shiny olive-drab fuselage of an enormous helicopter—the largest he had ever seen— hanging beneath an enormous rotor cone flash—fluckata-fluckata-fluckata-fluckata-fluckata-fluckata—not more than 100 feet over him. It headed down the hill, then turned to the left.

Pickering could see U.S. ARMY painted in large letters on the fuselage. The helicopter turned right, rose above the crest of the next hill, and then dropped out of sight below it.

He waited for a long time to see—Please, God!-—if it would reappear again, and maybe turn around and come back. It didn't.

[THREE]

Headquarters, First Marine Division

Seoul, South Korea

1225 3O September 195O

Master Gunnery Sergeant Allan J. Macey, USMC, who looked very much like Master Gunner Ernest W. Zimmerman, backed through the canvas flap that served as the door to the office of Major General Oliver P. Smith, Command­ing 1st MarDiv. He held a stainless-steel food tray and a mess kit set of spoon, knife, and fork in each hand.

"Chow, sir," he announced. "Salisbury steak, for a real treat." He laid the trays on a simple wooden picnic-type table. "I'll get the coffee, sir," Gunny Macey said, and looked at General Smith's luncheon guest. "Canned cow and sugar, General?"

"No, thanks," Major General Ralph Howe, NGUS, said. "Black's fine. You'll take care of Sergeant Rogers, right?"

"We old men have to stick together, General," Macey said.

"I apologize for the scarcity of the fare, General," Smith said.

"I'm an old infantryman General," Howe said. "If it's warm and served in­side, that's all I ask, and I'm grateful to get it."

Smith smiled and grunted. He waved Howe to a seat at the table.

"So what can I do for you today, General?" Smith asked.

"General Almond told me an hour ago about MacArthur's plan to move the division by sea to Wonsan as soon as Eighth Army cleans up the peninsula as far as Seoul," Howe said.

Smith grunted again and said nothing.

"That was in the nature of a question, General," Howe pursued.

Gunny Lacey came back through the flap with a white china mug of cof­fee in one hand and a canteen cup of coffee in the other. He set the mug be­fore Howe and the canteen cup before Smith and then left.

"Why do I think he gave me your mug?" Howe asked, and reached for the canteen cup.

"That's his mug," Smith said. "I broke mine. I guess he likes you."

"I've got a couple of spares in the jeep," Howe said. "You can have them."

"Thanks, but no thanks. I would be very surprised if Macey didn't have me one by supper. Probably before."

"You're welcome to them," Howe said, shrugging.

"What you're asking, General, is what do I think of the idea."

"That's what I'm here for."

"I'm a Marine. Marines go where they're ordered, and fight whomever they're ordered to fight," Smith said.

"In other words, you think it's a dumb idea," Howe said.

"Your words, General, not mine."

"Whatever you tell me will go to no one but the President," Howe said. "No. The President and General Pickering. We have an arrangement to share infor­mation."

"Did they find his boy?"

"They think he's still alive, somewhere around Suwon," Howe said.

"That has to be tough for him."

"It is."

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

"If there were, I'd ask. You know Major McCoy?"

"Killer McCoy? I've met him a couple of times. Is he in charge of finding Pickering's son?"

Howe nodded. "And I think if anybody can get young Pickering back, McCoy can," he said.

Smith grunted.

"In terrain like that of northeast Korea, General," Smith said, "cohesion of your forces is critical. You can't string them out, and, worse, you can't outrun your logistics."

"I know. I had a division in Italy. It's hard to get ammunition—not to men­tion hot rations—up the side of a mountain in a snowstorm."

"So, I understand General Almond had a division in Italy," Smith said. "And in the presumption that General Almond learned what you did there, and will not issue orders requiring me to separate elements of the division, or order me to move so far or so fast that my ration and ammo trains will be strained, I have no objection to the Marines going ashore at Wonsan. Or anywhere else they think we can do the job."

"Thank you," Howe said. "That will not go further than Pickering and the President."

"God, I hate canned peaches," Smith said, holding a peach half aloft on his fork.

"I hate to admit this, but I'm getting to like the Salisbury steak," Howe said.

"You've been here too long, General," Smith said, chuckling.

"You ever see McCoy?" Smith asked.

"Frequently."

"When you see him, ask him, please—tell him I told you to ask—what, if anything, I can do to help him."

"I will, of course, but he will say, 'Thank you, sir, I have everything I need.' "

Smith looked at him for a moment. "Why do I think something went un­said, General?" he asked.

"General, does Baker Company, 5th Marines, ring a bell?" Howe asked.

"Yes. They're the people who were the reserve for the clandestine operation on the Flying Fish Channel Islands."

"They're now at K-16, guarding a couple of secret Army helicopters."

"Secret Army helicopters?" Smith parroted incredulously. "Almond asked me if he could have them for a couple of days. I said, 'Yes, sir.' I didn't know what they would be doing."

"McCoy doesn't have enough people," Howe said.

"Is that what he's doing now, guarding secret Army helicopters?"

"I meant for his intelligence activities, and looking for Major Pickering."

"He tell you that?"

"That's my opinion."

"And he asked for these people?"

"No."

Smith grunted, then raised his voice. "Gunny!"

Master Gunnery Sergeant Macey came through the canvas flap.

"Sir?"

"Baker Company, 5th Marines," Smith said.

"They're in Division Special Reserve, sir. They're the people who were de­tached when we left the Perimeter—"

"I know," Smith cut him off. "Tell the G-3 they are to remain in Special Reserve until released by me, personally."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"And send a messenger to the company commander. . . Where did you say they were, General Howe?'

"In a hangar across from base operations at K-16," Howe furnished.

"... that, until further orders from me to the contrary, he will take his or­ders from Major McCoy. He knows who he is."

"Aye, aye, sir."

[FOUR]

The House

Seoul, South Korea

1625 3O September 19SO

Major Alex Donald, who was in the act of extending his hand to take a crys­tal whiskey glass full of beer from a tray extended to him by a middle-aged Korean woman, was surprised when Majors McCoy and Dunston, Master Gunner Zimmerman, and Technical Sergeant Jennings suddenly rose to their feet and stood to attention as military men do when a senior officer suddenly appears.

This—"mansion" was the only word that fit—did not seem to be a bastion of the fine points of military courtesy and the customs of the service. And nei­ther did its inhabitants. Technical sergeants do not normally sit around drink­ing with officers.

He took the glass of beer, then glanced at the door. A graying master sergeant in fatigues was coming through it. Then another man in fatigues came through, and there were two silver stars on each of his collar points.

Donald popped somewhat awkwardly to attention, the glass of beer in his hand.

"Stand at ease, gentlemen," General Ralph Howe said. He smiled and added: "We'd hoped to arrive at the cocktail hour."

"Or at least before you drank everything," Master Sergeant Charley Rogers said.

He smiled at the Korean woman and held up two fingers. She bowed and left the room.

Howe looked curiously at Major Donald.

"General, this is Major Donald," McCoy said.

"I think we've met, haven't we, Major?" Howe asked.

"Yes, sir," Donald said. "Yesterday, at Kimpo."

"Right," Howe said, as if remembering. "You're the man with the new helicopters."

"Yes, sir."

Howe looked at McCoy for an explanation.

"General," McCoy said, "those helicopters—and Major Donald and his people—have been assigned to us."

Howe pursed his lips thoughtfully.

"Interesting," he said. He looked at Donald. "How did that happen?"

Donald looked at McCoy, remembering what McCoy had said about telling anyone anything.

"You can tell General Howe, Donald. You can—and you'd better—answer anything and everything he asks."

"Sir, at Kimpo, General Almond told me that, at the direction of General MacArthur, the helicopters and everyone associated with them were transferred to Major McCoy."

"He said, 'Transferred to Major McCoy'?"

"No, sir," Donald said. "He said the CIA. And that someone would con­tact me with further orders. And then Major McCoy, and these other officers, came to Kimpo."

"But he didn't say 'to Major McCoy'?"

"No, sir. I misspoke. General Almond said 'to the CIA.' "

"Interesting," Howe said. "I wonder what General MacArthur had in mind. You know anything about this, Ken? Dunston?"

Dunston said, "No, sir."

McCoy said, "Not a hint, sir."

"I presume by now, Major," Howe said to Donald, "that you have received from Major McCoy, or Major Dunston, the speech about what happens to peo­ple who talk too much?"

"Yes, sir, I have."

The Korean woman came back into the room with two crystal whiskey glasses of beer. Howe took one and raised it to Donald.

"Well, in that case, Major, welcome to the CIA and McCoy's private army."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

Howe and Master Sergeant Charley Rogers exchanged glances, and both thought just about the same thing: Good. McCoy has no idea that it was arranged by Major General Ralph Howe, NGUS.

"Can you use these aircraft, Ken?" Howe asked. "Have you given that any thought?"

"We already have, General," Zimmerman said happily. "We made a very successful raid on supply depots at Inchon in them."

McCoy flashed him a dirty look.

"And then we went looking for Pickering," McCoy said.

"Oh? How did that go?"

"We didn't find him, or any sign of him, but if we had had these helos just a week ago, I think we'd have him back. They're going to be very useful. I've already got some other ideas. Actually, sir, that's what we were about to get into when you came in. We just got back."

"I'd like to sit in on that," Howe said. "But before you get started, two im­portant things. I've got to get a message off. General Almond told me MacArthur ordered him to reembark X Corps 'as soon as possible after Eighth Army makes it up the peninsula to Seoul.' He wants to land them on the East Coast, probably at Wonsan, and cut off the North Korean retreat northward." He paused. "I want to make sure the President knows about that."

"Sir, wouldn't General Pickering have heard about that, and sent that intel?"

"I don't know if he knows, Ken, and it's better not to assume that he does. I presume you know he's on his way to Washington?"

"No, sir, I didn't," McCoy said, and looked at Dunston, who shook his head no.

"Give Charley time to get that message off, and for the both of us to have a shower, and then we can talk about how you're planning to use the heli­copters."

"Yes, sir," McCoy said.

Everyone was sitting around the table waiting for Master Sergeant Rogers to fin­ish his shower when the Korean woman who was in charge of the radio room came in and handed McCoy a sheet of typewriter paper. He read it, then slid it across the table to General Howe.

"From Billy Dunn," he explained to the others. "No sign, either visual or from aerial photographs, of our wanderer."

"Which does not mean he's not out there, right?" Howe said.

"No, sir, it doesn't."

"And, from what you've seen, these helicopters MacArthur gave you are going to be useful in getting him back?"

"Absolutely, sir."

Master Sergeant Rogers came into the room.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, but I thought that was important enough to wait for an acknowledgment."

"And you got one?" Howe asked.

"Keller must have been sitting on his radio," Rogers said. "He acknowl­edged, told us to Hold One, and then sent, 'I have acknowledgment from Camp Pendleton.' "

"Good man, Charley," Howe said. "And I'm sure Colonel Banning will make sure General Pickering sees it before he leaves the coast for Washington." He turned to McCoy.

"Okay, Ken, tell us how you're going to use General MacArthur's heli­copters."

"Aside from looking for Pickering, the first thing that comes to mind is using them to insert and extract people behind the NK lines. Maybe even other places, too. ..."

When he sensed Howe was about to say something, McCoy stopped. Howe paused, his mouth open, and then said nothing.

"... But before I can start seriously thinking about any of this, there's a lot I have to know."

"For example?" Howe asked.

McCoy looked at Donald.

"What should I call you? Donald or Alex?"

"Either's fine."

"My name is Ken," McCoy said. "Dunston's is Bill."

"Okay," Donald said.

"Let me give you the problem, and then you give me the solution."

"Okay."

"When the helos first came to K-16,1 presume they went through the same kind of radio chatter—'Kimpo, this is Army six six six or whatever, request land­ing instructions,' et cetera—that you went through when you brought us back?"

"Yes, they did."

"We have to presume NK agents saw the helos flying over Inchon to come here. And it's a given that somewhere within range of the Kimpo tower is an NK agent with a radio. So they heard that radio chatter. So they now know there are two H-19s in Korea. And didn't you give them a number?"

"What they call the 'tail number,' " Donald said. "You use that to identify yourself when you call the tower."

"And when the other chopper went back to Kimpo, alone, he used his tail number?"

Donald nodded.

"So now they know we have two helos, and even know their tail numbers." He paused, smiled, and went on: "What all the secrecy, all the Marines guard­ing the hangar, has done is keep the H-19s a secret from everybody but the enemy."

"That's a problem, Ken?" Howe asked. "What's the difference? The enemy will see them eventually."

"Yes, sir. But if we're going to use the helos to insert and extract agents across the line, I don't want to telegraph our intentions. They now know we have helos. They'll figure out in a hurry that we're using them to do the insertions and ex­tractions. That's not a problem. The problem is if we have to go on the radio every time we take off, that's when they'll start looking for helicopters."

"I get it."

"Another thing I don't know is when General Pickering is coming back here," McCoy said. "Can you tell me, sir?"

"All I know is that he was sent for," Howe said. "What do you need from him?"

"I was going to ask him to ask General Smith if we could keep at least some of the Flying Fish Marines," McCoy said. "They're at the hangar with the helos. General Almond had them guarding them."

"I saw them," General Howe said.

He exchanged glances with Master Sergeant Rogers, who knew about his luncheon conversation with General Smith.

"Would you like me to ask General Smith for those men, Ken? To at least loan them to you for a while?"

"I hate to ask you to do that, sir. And for all I know, the 1st MarDiv may need them."

"All he can say is no," Howe said. "I'll ask him when I see him in the morning."

"If you think it would be all right, sir."

"I have a feeling it will be," Howe said. "Okay, Ken. Presuming you can keep the Flying Fish Channel Marines for a while, what are you going to do with them?"

"These helos are supposed to be able to carry ten men. That would be twelve, if we got rid of the copilot and the crew chief. I figure that's about the same weight as a pretty heavily armed eight-man fire team. I'd like to train maybe six or eight teams to get carried somewhere—for example, if we find Pick, or to pick up an agent the NKs have discovered on their side of the line."

"You think that can be done?"

"We won't know until we try it, sir."

"It sounds like a pretty good idea to me."

"That still leaves us with the problem of how to get the helos into the air without going on the radio and announcing, 'Here we come.' "

"Is there any way, Major," Howe asked Donald, "not to use the radios?"

"Not on an airfield, sir. It's a question of being clear to land or take off—I mean, so there's no midair collisions."

"You'd need, in other words, your own airfield?" Howe asked.

"Where would we get our own airfield?" McCoy asked.

"Killer," Zimmerman said. "You don't need an airfield for these things. You saw where we landed at Inchon. All we need is a good-sized parking lot, far enough away from an airfield so airplanes don't run into them."

"He's right, McCoy," Donald said.

"Okay. Shoot this down, please," McCoy said. "We find a large enough parking lot someplace, preferably with a building we can hide the helos in in the daytime—"

"You get me some canvas and some camouflage netting, and I'll hide them," Zimmerman said.

"—Okay. And we paint them black, so they can't be seen at night."

"Black or not, they make a hell of a racket," Zimmerman said.

"But they would be harder to see," McCoy said.

It was not an argument, Major Donald understood. The almost new, very expensive, glossy olive-drab paint scheme on the H-19s was about to be cov­ered with flat black paint.

"What do we do now?" Zimmerman asked. "Start looking for a park­ing lot?"

"That would seem logical, Mr. Zimmerman," McCoy said, lightly sar­castic.

"It would be easier if we knew where to look for a parking lot."

"Ken, do you know Socho-Ri?" Dunston asked.

McCoy shook his head no.

"It's on the east coast, close to the 38th Parallel," Dunston went on.

"And?" McCoy asked.

Dunston looked at Donald. It was obvious that he was deciding whether to go on in the presence of someone who was not in the CIA.

McCoy picked up on this.

"He has to know, Bill," he said.

"Before the war, I used it as a base for the Wind of Good Fortune" Dun­ston said. "There is—was—a dozen or so thatch-roofed hootches and sort of a wharf, and a—"

"I don't understand," Donald said, and parroted, "Wind of good fortune?"

"You don't know what's there now?" McCoy asked, ignoring Donald's ques­tion, and then, before Dunston could reply, asked, "Is there room for the helos?"

"I had them clear a landing strip for an L-19," Dunston said, "to take the wounded out if necessary. I never had to use it. And when the war started, the NKs were there before I could get an L-19 or anything else over there to try to evacuate them. I lost some good men there."

"And you don't know what's there now?"

"I'm not even sure the ROKs have gone that far north yet," Dunston said.

"But there was a landing strip?" Zimmerman said, and went on without waiting for a response. "If there was a landing strip, there's room to oper­ate helos."

"I think we should have a look at this place as soon as we can," McCoy said. He turned to Donald. "Two questions. I don't want to use helos if I don't re­ally have to. So, Question One: What's the chances—without calling a lot of attention to it—of getting an L-l9 from the X Corps Air Section long enough for us to fly over there? Question Two: If you had an L-19, could you find Socho-Ri if Dunston marked it on a map?"

"I think we could get an L-19 without any trouble, particularly if you showed Colonel Jamison, the X Corps Army Aviation officer, your creden­tials," Donald said. "And sure, I could find it using a map."

"I noticed, Major," General Howe said, "that you said, ' We could get an L-19.' That's the attitude Major McCoy needs from you. Whether you like it or not, you're part of this now." "Yes, sir," Donald said.

"Maybe, with a little bit of luck, we could do that at first light," McCoy said. "And maybe we can get around flashing credentials at this colonel."

"Maybe we can," Donald said.

"Where's the X Corps airstrip?" McCoy asked.

"At what used to be the Seoul racetrack," Donald said.

"Jennings, how are we fixed for black paint?" McCoy said.

"There must be fifty gallons of it, sir, over the garage. There's also some white, and some red. I guess the NKs missed it when they were here."

"Or booby-trapped it," McCoy said. "After supper, I want you to load twenty gallons of paint, a generator, and the spray gun in a weapons carrier. Take it to the hangar. What I'm going to do is drive Major Donald over there so that he can tell them the helos will be painted, and then bring him back here so that we can get an early start in the morning. Any problem with that, Donald?"

"None," Donald said.

"I wonder, Bill," McCoy said, "how much the X Corps G-2 and/or G-3 would know about how far the South Koreans have moved up the east coast?"

"Probably very little," Dunston said. "The impression I get is that Eighth Army doesn't talk to X Corps unless absolutely necessary, and vice versa."

"Well, give it a shot anyway, will you? Maybe we'll get lucky. We really need to know where they are."

"I'll go to the X Corps CP after supper," Dunston said.

[FIVE]

The House

Seoul, South Korea

21O5 3O September 195O

"Dunston's back from the X Corps CP," Major Kenneth R. McCoy announced unnecessarily to Major Alex Donald as they pulled up to the front of the house in the Russian jeep.

They found him and Zimmerman sitting at the dining room table. Dun­ston was bent over a stereoptical viewing device looking at an aerial photograph. Zimmerman was flipping through a three-inch-high stack of ten-by-ten-inch aerials on the table.

Dunston raised his eyes from the device as McCoy and Donald came into the room.

"These are yesterday's Air Force aerials," he said. "I got them just before the X Corps G-2 was going to burn them."

"They wouldn't give you today's?" McCoy asked.

"No. And they have no idea what, if any, South Korean troops are in this area. The last word—yesterday—was that 'lead elements' of I ROK (Republic of (South) Korea—ROK—Corps were numbered, like U.S. Army Corps, with Roman numerals.) Corps— probably the Capital ROK Division—were about ten miles south. They may have moved that far today, but even if they have, I don't think they went into Socho-Ri."

"Why not?" McCoy asked.

Dunston got out of his chair and waved McCoy into it.

McCoy sat down and bent over the device, which functioned on the same principle as the disposable glasses given to 3-D motion picture patrons. There were two lenses mounted on a wire frame. They provided a three-dimensional view of a photograph placed under it.

McCoy saw what looked like eighteen or twenty burned-out stone Korean houses, their thatch roofs gone.

"What am I looking at?" he asked, raising his head.

"That's Socho-Ri," Dunston said. "It's obviously been torched. We don't know when or by whom. My people could have torched it right after the in­vasion. Or the NKs may have torched it then, or two days ago."

McCoy got out of the chair and motioned Donald into it.

"Okay," McCoy said. "Tell me about this place."

"In the first part of 1949, I realized I needed a base for the Wind of Good Fortune. . ." Dunston began.

Without raising his eyes from the viewing device, Donald asked, "Can I ask what that is?"

"It's our navy, Major," Zimmerman said.

McCoy chuckled, then explained: "It looks like your typical, ordinary junk. You know. High prow and stern, one mast, with a square sail that's raised and lowered like a Venetian blind."

"Okay," Donald said. "What do you use it for? Can I ask?"

"To insert and extract agents in North Korea," Dunston said.

"You did that with a junk?” Donald asked incredulously.

"I said the Wind of Good Fortune looks like a typical junk," McCoy said. "But she was prepared for the smuggling trade by some very good shipwrights in Macao. You know, near Hong Kong?"

Donald nodded.

"How prepared?" he asked.

"Wind of Good Fortune has a two-hundred-horse Caterpillar diesel, and fuel tanks therefore in her holds," McCoy said. "And some basic, but pretty re­liable, radio direction finder equipment. She'll make thirteen, fourteen knots, even with her sail acting as a windbreak."

"Sound like something out of Terry and the Pirates" Donald said, referring to Milton Caniff's popular comic strip.

"Why Socho-Ri?" McCoy asked. "Why there?"

Dunston went to the stack of aerials, searched through them, and slipped one under the viewing device.

"For several reasons," he said. "For one thing, it's tiny. For another, it's about fifteen miles south of the 38th Parallel. Highway Five runs up to the border, but—since it had nowhere to go beyond the border—the closer it got to the bor­der it was less traveled and not maintained. And even better, between the high­way and the shoreline"—he took a pencil and used it as a pointer on the aerial—"there's this line of hills. You can't tell from the aerial, but they're (a) too steep-sided to build rice paddies on them and (b) from 100 to 200 feet high, so that you can't see the village from Highway 5."

McCoy touched Donald's shoulder. Donald moved his head out of the way, and McCoy studied the aerial.

"I'm surprised I don't see much of a road," he said.

"We didn't use the road—actually just a path—unless we had to. We sup­plied the place using the Wind of Good Fortune"

"Okay," McCoy said.

"When I found Socho-Ri," Dunston went on, "there were about a dozen fishermen and their families in the village. They (a) not only hated the North Koreans but (b) were delighted to find someone willing to buy their dried fish from them, and at a better price than they had been able to get after having to take it by oxcart south to Kangnung, the closest 'city,' thirty miles to the south. "So I hired the fishermen to build four more stone, thatch-roofed houses, and to repair the existing, fallen-into-repair-because-their-small-boats-didn't-need-it wharf so the Wind of Good Fortune could tie up to it," Dunston went on. "And then went to work."

"How did it work?" McCoy asked.

"The Wind of Good Fortune called on Socho-Ri on an irregular basis. Some­times once a week, sometimes twice, sometimes not for two weeks. She sailed into Socho-Ri late in the afternoon, unloaded rice, live chickens, the occasional porker, and started taking aboard dried fish. And, at first light the next morn­ing, sailed away."

"And during the night..." McCoy began admiringly.

Dunston smiled.

"We fired up her diesels and did our business up north. Always being care­ful to be back at Socho-Ri before dawn."

"And you never got caught?" Zimmerman asked.

"Honestly, Zimmerman, I don't think they suspected a thing," Dunston said. "Not even when we built the new buildings. They were visible from the sea."

"And used for what?" Donald asked.

"They housed a diesel generator, radios, weapons, and a detachment of from four to six agents."

"And what do you see when you look at these aerials?' McCoy asked.

"Twenty burned-out hootches, and no people," Dunston said.

"Alex," McCoy asked. "Are these aerials going to help you find this place?"

“Oh, sure.”

"Well, then, I guess we'll find out what happened at Socho-Ri in the morn­ing, won't we?" McCoy said.

[SIX]

Near Socho-Ri, South Korea

O8O5 1 October 195O

The view afforded the observer—Major Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR—in the backseat of the high-winged, two-place, single-engine L-19 was all that could be asked for. But despite looking very carefully, and twice making the pilot— Major Alex Donald, USA—turn around for a better, lower-level look, McCoy didn't see any sign of Major Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, in the one hour and twenty minutes it took them to fly from the Municipal Race Track in Seoul to the east coast just above Kangnung.

There, north of the city on Highway 5, they could look down on what were apparently elements of the South Korean army, but attempts to make radio con­tact with what they saw failed, and there didn't seem to be a place where Don­ald could safely land the airplane.

They flew north.

"There it is," Donald said, pointing.

"Can you land there?" McCoy asked.

"I'll make a couple of passes and see," Donald said. "But I have to tell you, when we leave, we're going to have to fly straight back to Seoul. We have less than half fuel."

"Okay."

Alex made two low-level passes over the tiny village, then turned a final time and touched down smoothly on a narrow, half-sand, half-grassed field.

McCoy raised the side window of the L-19, then opened the door, got out, and reached back inside and came out with a Thompson submachine gun. Then he waited for Donald to get out. Donald nodded at the Thompson.

"If we're going to be doing more of this sort of thing, I'd be more com­fortable if I had one of those."

"Can you shoot one?"

"I had, you know, familiarization."

"I'll have Jennings get you an automatic carbine," McCoy said. "Thomp­sons are a lot harder to shoot than it seems in the movies." He started walking toward the burned-out hootches. Before they reached it, there was the smell of putrefying flesh, and then they came across the first, near-skeletal body.

"Jesus Christ!" Donald exclaimed, fighting back nausea. McCoy didn't reply.

He walked into the village, where there were more bodies, including three with their hands tied behind them.

"Jesus, what happened here?" Donald asked.

"If I had to guess, I would guess that a North Korean patrol, covering the flanks, or maybe just coming down the coastline, came here, found something— the generator, the radios, anything—that suggested these people had some gov­ernment connection."

"You mean, they knew what this place was used for?"

"No. I mean they thought it was a government outpost of some sort. So, to make everybody understand the rules of the liberation, they shot everybody they could find, then burned the place down."

"And didn't bury the bodies."

"They may not have had the time," McCoy said, "or there may have been a political officer who decided that rotting bodies would really send the mes­sage he wanted to send."

Donald blurted what he was thinking. "You don't seem overly upset about this."

"Alex, you have no idea how close I am to tossing my cookies," McCoy said. "Let's get the fuck out of here!" They trotted back to the L-19.

[SEVEN]

Near Seoul, South Korea

O93S 1 October 195O

McCoy pressed the black button on his microphone and asked Donald, "Is there some reason we can't land at Kimpo, K-16?"

"No. You want to go to the hangar?"

"I've just decided I'm going to use some of the Marines there before they take them away from me," McCoy said.

"I thought the general said he was going to speak to the CG of the Marine Division about them."

"He did. And the 1st MarDiv CG may say, 'Not only no, but hell no.' Take us to the hangar."

"Captain," Major McCoy said to Captain Howard C. Dunwood, USMCR, as they stood outside the hangar, "I don't know what, if any, authority I have over you and your Marines, but—"

"Sir, I can answer that question."

"Okay, Captain, answer it."

"There was a captain from 1st MarDiv G-3 here yesterday, sir. He said my orders, until I hear to the contrary, are to take my orders from you."

"Yesterday, you said? Not today?"

"Late yesterday afternoon, sir."

"Never look a gift horse in the mouth, Captain. Write that down."

Dunwood smiled.

"Aye, aye, sir."

"There's a tiny fishing village on the east coast called Socho-Ri. I want you to leave enough men here to keep the curious away from the helos, and make for this village with the rest. Take everything with you we got from the dumps. Don't take any chances. If you run into North Koreans, turn around and run. Getting to this village is the priority. By the time you're loaded up, Master Gunner Zimmerman will be here. He'll have maps, radios, et cetera."

"Yes, sir."

"When you get to the village, clean it up—there's bodies all over it. Find someplace to bury them, and do what you can to collect identification, et cetera."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Then set up a perimeter guard, and stay there. I'll be in touch. "Can I ask what this is all about, Major?" "Not yet. I'll tell you when I can."

"Aye, aye, sir."


Chapter Seven


[ONE]

San Francisco International Airport

San Francisco, California

1145 3 October 195O

Two cars, a black Chevrolet with the insignia of the U.S. Immigration and Nat­uralization Service painted on its doors and a black Lincoln limousine bearing the California license plate US SEN 1, followed a Ford truck with stairs mounted in back toward the City of Los Angeles as the aircraft shut down its engines.

An INS officer and an officer from the Bureau of Customs got out of the Chevrolet, and a Marine colonel got out of the limousine. As soon as the stairs had been put in place against the Constellation and the rear door had been opened, they all went up the stairs.

They found Brigadier General Fleming Pickering in seat 1 -A.

"That's all the hell I need," Pickering said to the Marine colonel as he put out his hand, "a full bull colonel of the Regular Marine Corps to look askance at my appearance."

Two hours into the final Honolulu—San Francisco leg of his flight, as he was having his breakfast, there was unexpected turbulence, and the front of his uniform jacket still showed—despite the frenzied, even valiant efforts of two stewardi—the remnants of most of a cup of coffee, a half-glass of tomato juice, and two poached eggs.

"You look shipshape to me, General," Colonel Edward J. Banning, an erect, stocky, six-foot-tall, 200-pound forty-five-year-old, said with a straight face.

Pickering snorted, then asked, "What's going on here, Ed? Isn't that Sena­tor Fowler's car?" "Yes, sir, it is."

"Fowler's car? Or Fowler himself?" Pickering asked.

"Senator Fowler himself, General."

"What the hell does he want?" Pickering asked rhetorically.

"General," the customs officer said, extending a printed form to him. "If you'll just sign this, sir, it will complete the Customs and Immigration pro­cedure."

Pickering scrawled his signature on the form and handed it and the pen back to the customs officer.

"What about our luggage?" Pickering asked, looking at Banning.

"It'll be off-loaded first, sir. While you're still on the tarmac."

"Well, at least that will limit the number of people who'll get a look at this," Pickering said, gesturing with both hands toward the mess on his tunic. "Let's go, George."

"Had a little accident, did you, sir?" the INS officer asked sympathetically.

" 'Little' isn't the word," Pickering said sharply, and then added: "But it cer­tainly wasn't your fault. I didn't mean to snap at you."

The INS officer raised both hands, palms outward, indicating the apology wasn't necessary, then stepped out of the way so Hart and Pickering could pre­cede him off the airplane.

Fred Delmore, a tall, gray-haired black man who had been Senator Fowler's chauffeur for twenty years, had the rear door of the limousine open before Pickering reached it. Pickering motioned for Banning to get in first, then fol­lowed him. Hart ran around and got in the front passenger seat.

Senator Richardson K. Fowler, a tall, silver-haired, regal-looking sixty-seven-year-old, was sitting on the right side. He and Pickering looked at each other but didn't speak for a moment.

"I was just wondering, Flem," the senator said finally, "if you'd had your breakfast. I suppose I have the answer before me."

"Fuck you, Dick," General Pickering said.

"My, we are back in the Marines, aren't we?" Fowler said. "Such language!"

"Fuck you twice, Dick," Pickering said.

"Is he always this way, George?" Fowler asked innocently. "Or has he been at the booze?"

"Not yet," Pickering replied. "To what do I owe this dubious honor, Dick?"

Fowler shook his head in resignation and smiled.

"As a courtesy, one of Truman's people called to tell me you were on your way, and when, but that they doubted there would be time to meet, as you were to be immediately transferred to Travis Air Force Base for your trip to Wash­ington. An Air Force plane—"

"Not that again," Pickering interrupted.

"Not what again?"

"The last time he sent for me, I flew across the country in the backseat of an Air Force jet."

"Oh, yes, I remember. Today, I understand, we will travel in a backup airplane—one of the big Douglases—to the Independence."

" We will travel?"

" We. I invited myself to go with you. I thought you might need some moral support. As I was saying, your aircraft awaits at Travis."

"Sir," Colonel Banning said, "if I may interrupt, I think you'd better take a look at this."

He handed Pickering a sealed, business-size envelope.

Pickering opened the envelope, read the message it contained, and then handed it to Hart.

"That's already in Washington, sir," Banning said.

Hart put the message back in the envelope and handed it back to Banning, who put it carefully into his hip pocket.

"I suppose what that is is none of my business," Senator Fowler said.

"Dick, you're putting me on a spot," Pickering said.

"And what the hell, I'm only a United States Senator, right?"

"Let him see it, Ed," Pickering ordered.

Banning handed Fowler the envelope.

"That's from General Howe to Truman," Pickering said. "MacArthur plans to reembark X Corps and reland it far up the east coast."

"I know you won't believe this, Fleming, but I do know how to read," Fowler said as he took the message from the envelope.

He read it, put in back in the envelope, and handed it to Banning.

"Thank you, Colonel," Fowler said, then turned to Pickering. "What's the significance of that?"

"I think Howe wants the President to know MacArthur may take his time 'advising' the Joint Chiefs of his intentions," Pickering said. "They have a ten­dency to want to take time to consider things carefully, and MacArthur (a) likes to strike when the iron is hot and (b) does not like the idea of having to ask permission to do something in 'his' war."

"And whose side are you on?"

"The Joint Chiefs were the opposite of enthusiastic about the landing at In­chon. MacArthur is difficult, but he's one hell of a general."

There was the sound of the trunk slamming.

"That's the luggage, sir," Hart said.

"Okay, Fred," Senator Fowler said. "Travis Air Force Base."

"No, Fred," Pickering said. "Take us to the San Franciscan."

He turned to Fowler. "That'll just have to wait. I need a bath, George needs a bath, and, as you were so kind to point out, I need a clean uniform."

"You don't think it behooves you to instantly comply with an order from your Commander-in-Chief?"

"Fuck you yet again, Dick," Pickering said. "A whole cup of coffee went down my front. ..."

"And some tomato juice," Hart offered helpfully from the front seat.

Pickering pointed a threatening finger at Hart.

"The San Franciscan, please, Fred," Pickering ordered.

Fowler nodded. The limousine started to move.

"What's the President want from me, anyway, Dick?" Pickering asked. "What's this all about?"

"I think he's going to offer you the CIA," Fowler said. "Actually, I'm pretty positive he will."

"Well, we can handle that with a telephone call," Pickering said. "I don't want the CIA."

"I don't think 'No, thank you' is one of your options," Fowler said. "What I can probably help you to do is get some concessions vis-a-vis what you'll do with it, what your authority will be, when you get it."

Pickering looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, then said, "That's an­other reason I'm not going to jump on another airplane right now. We're going to have to talk about this, Dick."

Fowler nodded.

"Thank you," Pickering said.

Fowler nodded again.

[TWO]

The Penthouse

The Foster San Franciscan Hotel

Nob Hill, San Francisco, California

125O 3 October 195O

The husband of the chairwoman of the board of the Foster Hotel Corporation entered the Foster San Franciscan Hotel through the rear basement door nor­mally used to remove garbage from the kitchen, and rode to what for tax purposes was known as "The Foster Hotel Corporation Executive Conference Cen­ter" in the service elevator.

There was a large conference room in what everyone called "The Pent­house," and two or three times a year it was actually used for that purpose. With that exception, however, The Penthouse was de facto the Pickering's San Fran­cisco apartment.

Pickering started to get out of his soiled uniform the moment he stepped off the service elevator into the kitchen. He was trailed by Hart—carrying their two Valv-Paks—and Fowler and Banning.

Pickering laid his tunic on the kitchen table and started to untie his necktie.

"George," he said, turning to Hart, "in this order. Get on the horn and call Travis Air Force Base and tell them we'll be delayed, probably overnight."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Then get on the house phone and tell the manager we have urgent need of the valet, coffee, and some lunch. . . ."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"And then get on the horn to P&FE, ask for Mr. Kensington—he handles transportation—and tell him I said to get you on the next plane to Saint Louis. Call me at the Lafayette in Washington tomorrow night, and I'll let you know how long you can stay."

"No, sir," Hart said. "Thank you, sir, but no thank you."

"Excuse me?"

"I don't want to go home, sir. I can't."

"Why the hell not?"

"I wouldn't be able to look any of the families of my Marines in the face," Hart said.

"What the hell is he talking about, Ed?" Pickering demanded of Colonel Banning.

"I think I know, sir. This has to do with disestablishment of your company, right, George?"

"Yes, sir," Hart said.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Pickering demanded. "What company?"

"George had a company, an infantry company, in the Marine Corps re­serve," Banning explained. "It was activated, and ordered to Camp Pendleton. As soon as they got there, it was disestablished—broken up—and the men sent as fillers to the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade."

"I trained those Marines, General," Hart said. "And I told their families I'd take care of them."

"Why did they do that?" Pickering asked. "Break up his company?"

"I have no goddamn idea," Hart said bitterly. "They just did it. The fuck­ing Marine Corps!"

"Hey!" Banning said warningly, holding up his hand.

Captain Hart was silent, but he did not seem repentant.

"It was a cold-blooded, necessary decision," Banning explained. "The pri­ority was finding bodies to fill up the Provisional Brigade, find them anywhere, and George showed up with two hundred bodies. It was as simple as that."

"I should have been with them in the Pusan Perimeter, and I should have been with them at Inchon," Hart said. "They were my Marines!"

"George," Senator Fowler said, "in the big picture, you're making a greater contribution, meeting a greater responsibility, in taking care of General Pick­ering than you would have been able to do—"

"Sir," Banning turned on him. "With respect—"

"Dick," Pickering interrupted, "you don't understand. George is a Marine officer. There is no greater responsibility, no greater privilege, than leading Marines in combat. I know exactly how George feels."

Fowler shrugged as if to say, I was only trying to help.

Pickering turned to Hart.

"You didn't mention any of this to me, George."

"You said it, General, I'm a Marine officer. Marine officers go where they're sent and do what they're told to do. But I am not going to go home to Saint Louis so long as my Marines are in Korea."

Pickering looked at him for a long moment.

"Okay, Captain," he said finally, "change of orders. After you call Travis and tell them we'll be delayed—"

"I'll take care of that, Fleming," Senator Fowler interrupted.

"Okay. Then—and this is an order, Captain—you will get on the horn and tell your wife to pack her bags because in the next hour or two a man named Kensington is going to call her and tell her on which flight she and your kids are booked for Washington."

"General—" Hart said, almost visibly trying to frame his objections.

"Captain Hart," Pickering interrupted him, "the proper response from a Marine officer who has been given an order is Aye, aye, sir,' which translates to mean 'I understand the order and will comply.' "

"Aye, aye, sir," Hart said.

"Good," Pickering said. "And just for the record, George, Fowler's right. What you do for me is important. I don't know what the hell I would do with­out you."

Hart nodded.

"General," Banning said, "have you got anything for General Howe? Or McCoy? I've got to get back to Pendleton."

Pickering thought it over.

"Message them Hart and I made it this far and will be in Washington to­morrow," he said. "But that's about it."

"Aye, aye, sir."

[THREE]

Fleming Pickering marched into the kitchen of The Penthouse, freshly bathed, shaven, and attired in a fresh white T-shirt, boxer shorts, and stockings held up with garters.

"I still don't have a uniform?" he demanded of Captain Hart. "For Christ's sake, all they had to do was press the spare in the suitcase."

"And I'm sure they're working on doing just that," Senator Fowler said. "Have a cup of coffee and calm down."

He pointed to a coffee service on the kitchen table.

"You've got a clean uniform," Pickering said accusingly, to Hart.

"I didn't have mine pressed," Hart said. "You said you wanted yours pressed."

"And he didn't spill his breakfast on his," Fowler offered helpfully.

Pickering glared at him.

"I've got to call Patricia," he said.

"I did that for you. She'll be at the Lafayette when you get there," Fowler said. And then he giggled as much as a dignified U.S. Senator can giggle. "I told her about. . . your uniform difficulties, and that you were in the shower."

That earned Senator Fowler another dirty look.

"Jesus, I've got to call Ernie Sage. I promised Ernie I would as soon as I got here."

He went to the wall-mounted telephone and connected with the long­ distance operator, who said she was required to ask, because of the increased telephone traffic caused by the war, if the call was necessary.

"Trust me, Operator, I know there's a war, and this call is necessary."

He then informed her that he wished to be connected, person-to-person, with Mr. Ernest Sage at the corporate headquarters of American Personal Phar­maceuticals in New York City.

The call to Mr. Sage's office went through quickly enough, but Mr. Sage's secretary, he was told, "was away from her desk" and her telephone was being answered by someone else, who, to the scarcely concealed amusement of Sen­ator Fowler and Captain Hart, had never heard of Fleming Pickering, and more or less politely demanded to know what it was that he wished to speak to Mr. Sage about.

"I brushed my teeth with your lousy toothpaste and my teeth fell out," Gen­eral Pickering replied. "Now, get him on the phone!"

The someone else answering the telephone decided that she had best at least relay the information that some furiously angry man was on the phone to Mr. Sage's secretary, who had accompanied her boss to an important staff meeting, and did so.

That lady came next on the line, and asked Pickering if he could possibly call back later, as Mr. Sage was conducting a very important meeting and she hated to disturb him.

"I don't give a damn if he's conducting the New York Philharmonic," Pick­ering replied. "Get him on the phone now!"

Mr. Sage then came on the line.

"Is something wrong, Fleming?"

"Not at all. I just thought you would be interested in a report about your daughter."

"Flem, could I ask you to call Elaine?"

"And report to her, you mean?"

"Yeah. I'm really up to my ears in this meeting, Flem."

"Ernie, I will not call Elaine and tell her myself," Pickering said, "because I can tell you what I have to say in two seconds, and it would take twenty min­utes to tell Elaine, and I don't have any more time to waste."

"Well, Jesus, Flem, don't take my head off."

"That's not what I would like to cut off, Ernie," Pickering said. "Now, lis­ten carefully. Write this down. Ernie is fine. She sends her love. Got it?"

"You did try, right, Flem, to get her to come home?"

"Yes, I did. And she said no. I have to go, Ernie. Go back to your meeting."

Pickering hung up the telephone.

"You were a little rough on Sage, Flem," Fowler said.

"If I had a six-months-pregnant daughter halfway around the world and someone called me to report on her, any goddamned meeting I was having would have to wait." Fowler shrugged.

The service elevator door opened and two bellmen carrying freshly pressed uniforms came in.

"Finally," Pickering said.

He took the uniforms from them and walked out of the kitchen.

Senator Fowler waited until Pickering was out of earshot, then asked, "Is he all right, George?"

"He's fine, sir."

"How the hell can he be fine when no one knows where Pick is? Or even if he's alive."

"McCoy and Zimmerman think he's alive," Hart said. "On the run, but alive."

"So Banning told me," Fowler said. "What do you think his chances are?"

"If he's made it this far, pretty good. That war's just about over."

"I devoutly pray you're right, George."

The telephone on a side table in the living room rang several minutes later as two bellmen were laying out their lunch.

Fowler was closest to it, so he answered it.

"Just a moment, please," he said, and then, to Hart: "Go tell him he's got a phone call."

Pickering, now wearing trousers and a shirt, came into the living room.

"That goddamn well better not be Elaine Sage," he said, taking the tele­phone from Fowler.

"It's not," Fowler said.

"Pickering," he snarled into the telephone, then: "Yes, Brigadier General Pickering."

Then he said quietly in an aside to Hart and Fowler, "Jesus Christ, it's Truman."

Then he said into the phone, "Good afternoon, Mr. President. I'm very sorry, sir, about the delay in getting to the airport. I was just about to resched­ule. We can be in the air in no more than two ..."

There was a short pause as Fleming listened to the President.

"It's not?"

A pause.

"The last sighting of the signs he's leaving was several days ago, Mr. Presi­dent, so we know he was alive then. Major McCoy seems to feel there's a good chance of getting him back."

A very long pause, followed by a barely audible sigh from Fleming.

"That's very kind of you, Mr. President. I'm convinced that everything that can be done is being done. I'm deeply touched by your interest."

Brief pause.

"Yes, sir, Mr. President, I look forward to seeing you soon, too. Good af­ternoon, Mr. President."

He put the telephone in its cradle.

"I was rough on Ernie Sage, was I? That sonofabitch didn't even ask about Pick. The President of the United States just did."

Fowler looked at Pickering, then turned to Hart.

"George, unless I'm mistaken, there's a two-year supply of Famous Grouse in the last cabinet on the left of the sink. Why don't you make us all a little nip?"

"Aye, aye, sir," Hart said.

[FOUR]

Base Operations

Kimpo Airfield (K-16)

Seoul, South Korea

O4O5 4 October 195O

Lieutenant Colonel Allan C. Lowman, USAF, a tall, good-looking thirty-five-year-old, who would have much preferred to be flying Sabrejets but who the powers that be had decided could make a greater contribution to the Air Force and the war as Commander, K-16 USAF Base, had elected to set up his cot in an unused-at-the moment radio van mounted on a GMC 6x6 truck.

There were several advantages to this. The van had its own electrical gen­erator, driven by a gasoline engine. The generator was primarily intended to power the radio equipment, but it also provided electric lights and the current necessary to operate his electric razor, an electric hot plate, and his Zenith Transoceanic portable radio, on which it was possible to listen—usually—to the Armed Forces Network Radio Station in Tokyo, and even—sometimes—civilian radio stations as far away as Hawaii and the West Coast.

When someone knocked at the rear door of the van, waking him, the lu­minescent hands of his Rolex—a gift from his wife—told him it was a little after 0400.

He had left orders with the duty NCO to wake him at 0500, so this was obviously a problem of some sort. The question was what kind of a problem.

Feeling a little foolish—it was probably the duty NCO bearing an early-morning teletype message that required his attention—he felt around on the floor until he found his .45, took it from the holster, pulled the slide back, chambered a cartridge, and only then got off the cot and walked barefoot in his underwear to the door.

"Who is it?"

"Sergeant Alvarez, Colonel."

Colonel Lowman put his right arm—and the .45—behind his back and then opened the door.

It was Sergeant Alvarez, all right, but with him were three officers, all ma­jors. Two of them were Army—a plump, rumpled Army major and an Army aviator. The third was a Marine who had a Thompson submachine gun slung from his shoulder.

"These officers insisted on seeing you, Colonel," Sergeant Alvarez said.

"What can I do for you?" Colonel Lowman asked, aware that he felt a little foolish standing there in his underwear with his pistol hidden behind his back.

"May we come in, please, sir?" the Marine asked.

Colonel Lowman could not think of an excuse not to let them into the van. He backed up and gestured for them to climb up the short flight of stairs.

"Thank you, Sergeant," the Marine said.

"If you'll pull that door closed, we can turn the lights on," Lowman said.

The Marine pulled the door closed and latched it. Lowman switched the lights on.

The rumpled, stout major held out a small leather wallet to Lowman.

Lowman saw the credentials of a Special Agent of the United States Cen­tral Intelligence Agency. It was his first contact of any kind with the CIA.

"How can I help the CIA?" Lowman asked.

"In that hangar across the field, Colonel, as I'm sure you know, are two Si­korsky helicopters," the Marine said.

"Yeah, I know. This has to do with them?"

"What we want to do, in the next few minutes, is get them out of here with as few people as possible knowing about it," the Marine said.

"I'm not sure I understand," Lowman confessed.

"We don't want to talk to the tower, sir," the Army aviator said.

"Why not?"

"We have to presume the NKs have people monitoring your tower traffic," the rumpled major said.

"What we hope to do, sir," the Marine said, "by taking off in the dark, and not talking to the tower, is get those machines out of here without letting the NKs know."

"You really think they're listening to the tower traffic?" Lowman asked.

That possibility had never occurred to him.

"I'm sure they are," the Marine said. "And since they were listening when the helos first arrived, and when the helos made their only flight out of here and back, they know about the helos. What we hope to do now is get the helos out of here without them knowing—with a little luck, thinking they're still in that hangar."

"How do you propose to do that?" Lowman asked.

"Sir, we'll fire them up, warm them up, inside the hangar," the Army avia­tor said. "Then shut them down and roll them out of the hangar. Then we'll call the tower—'K-16, this is Air Force two oh seven, radio check.' If there's no reason we can't take off, the tower will give the radio check. We'll then reply, 'K-16, thank you,' fire them up again, and take off immediately. If you have incoming or departing traffic, just ignore our call, and we'll wait five minutes and call again."

Colonel Lowman considered that a moment.

"That should work. You want me to be in the tower, right?"

"If you would, please, sir," the Marine said. "And if you would, sir, make the point to your tower people that they didn't hear or see anything at all."

"Got it," Colonel Lowman said. "At this hour, there's only one—well, maybe two—guys in there anyway. Give me a minute to get my clothes on."

There were two NCOs, a staff sergeant and a buck sergeant, in the control tower—which was also mounted on a GMC 6x6 truck—when Colonel Lowman climbed up on the truck and went into the small, green, glass-walled, boxlike structure. Both, visibly surprised to see The Colonel, came to attention.

"Good morning," Lowman said. "What's going on?"

"Quiet as a tomb, sir," the staff sergeant said. "It won't be light for another thirty minutes or so."

"We heard some engines starting, sir," the buck sergeant said. "Over there."

He pointed across the field.

"You're sure?" Colonel Lowman said doubtfully.

"Well, sir, it sounded as if it was coming from over there." "As far as I know, there's nothing over there but a shot-up hangar," Colonel Lowman said.

The ground-to-air radio came to life. "K-16, Air Force two oh seven, radio check."

"We don't have anything coming in or going out right now, do we?" Colonel Lowman asked.

"No, sir," the staff sergeant said.

Colonel Lowman took the microphone the buck sergeant held in his hand. Into it he said, "Air Force two oh seven, read you five by five. Niner, eight, seven, six, fiver, four, three, two, one."

"K-16, thank you," the radio said.

Colonel Lowman handed the microphone back to the staff sergeant. Across the field, there were suddenly two spots of orange light, as if com­ing from the exhaust of an engine. And a moment later, there was the rumble of an engine and a fluckatafluckata-fluckata.

"There it is again," the buck sergeant said. "I knew damned well I heard something."

"I don't hear anything," Colonel Lowman said. "From over there, Colonel!" the buck sergeant insisted. "Sounds like a helicopter to me, sir. Helicopters," the staff sergeant said. The fluckata-fluckata-fluckata fluckata-fluckata-fluckata fluckatafluckata-fluckata sound grew louder.

Lowman thought he could just faintly see one of the H-19s moving rapidly across the field, then taking off into the darkness.

"Goddammit," the staff sergeant said. "That was two helicopters, and not a goddamn navigation light on either of them. What the fuck?"

"I want you two to listen to me carefully," Colonel Lowman said. "I have been here all the time with you. I neither heard or saw anything that sounded remotely like a helicopter."

"But, sir—" the staff sergeant said.

"And neither did you," Colonel Lowman said. "Do we understand each other?"

"Yes, sir," they said, almost in unison.

"And I don't want it to get back to me that whatever you thought you saw or heard, but didn't, is the subject of any conversation anywhere. Clear?" "Yes, sir," they said.

"Keep up the good work, men," Colonel Lowman said, smiled at them, and left the control tower.

Outside, he could hear the fluckata-fluckata-fluckata of rotor blades di­minishing to the southeast.

Colonel Lowman wondered where the hell they were going with the H-19s and what they were going to do with them.

But there had been something in the eyes of the Marine major that had told him that his curiosity would have been not only highly unwelcome but maybe even a little dangerous, and he hadn't asked.

[FIVE]

Socho-Ri, South Korea

O54S 4 October 195O

Major Donald had told McCoy there were three ways to get to Socho-Ri, one flying at an altitude that would permit them to look for an arrow stamped out in a rice paddy. The trouble with that option was, Donald said, that if they could see a sign like that, people on the ground could see them.

The second option was to fly what he called "nap of the earth," which meant flying just a few feet off the ground. That would expose them to eyes on the ground for only a fleeting moment, but flying at ninety knots, that wouldn't be much different from driving over the ground at that speed; the chances of spotting a stamped-out arrow would be slim, unless they just happened to fly right over it and were paying close enough attention not to miss it.

The third option—which Donald recommended—would be to ascend quickly to, say, 9,000 feet, which would for all practical purposes make them invisible to eyes on the ground, and incidentally keep them safely above any rock-filled clouds they might encounter en route. There was a line of moun­tains running down the peninsula, Donald said, and he did not have a deep and abiding faith in the navigation charts he had been given.

McCoy opted for the high altitude. The priority was to get the helos to Socho-Ri intact and undetected. Even if they were spotted by only friendly forces—I ROK Corps—the sudden appearance of two black helicopters would very likely cause some South Korean commander to make a report of "unidentified, black, type previously not seen, rotary-wing aircraft" flying over his position.

There was also a chance that the two helos would be spotted by Air Force, Navy, or Marine fighters making an early-morning reconnaissance. Their pilots would more than likely—out of curiosity, if nothing else—make a pass at them before shooting them down. In that case, Donald said, he would get on the emergency radio frequency and try to contact them.

"You could enthusiastically sing 'The Marines' Hymn,'" Donald said.

Pick would just have to wait. There had been no word from the Badoeng Strait that any signs of Pick had been found, anyway.

But as it had grown light, turned into day, as they had flown eastward across the peninsula, McCoy rarely took his eyes from the ground far below them.

When the coastline appeared and Donald flew over it and above the Sea of Japan, McCoy wondered what was happening and looked at Donald, who read his mind.

"I'm going to fly a couple of miles out to sea before I make the descent," Donald explained. "And then approach Socho-Ri with our wheels just far enough above the water to keep them from getting wet."

McCoy gave him a thumbs-up.

"You're pretty good at this, Alex. A quick learner."

"I had another thought," Alex said. "Just now. How are you and Dunston going to get back to Seoul?"

"I thought we'd get in a jeep. Maybe we could talk somebody in I ROK Corps into giving us a ride. Dunston and I talked about it. He said they have a few L-4s and L-19s."

"And if they won't, it's a long ride back to Seoul," Donald said. "We need our own fixed-wing airplane," Donald said. "What we really need is an L-20, a Beaver, but I think we'd have a better chance of getting an L-19."

"What's a Beaver?"

"Single-engine, six-place DeHavilland. Canadian. Designed for use in the Alaskan bush. The Army bought a dozen—and ordered a hell of a lot more— off the shelf when this started. There were six of them on the baby aircraft car­rier with the H-19s. The brass will be fighting over them like a nymphomaniac at a high school dance."

"I think you had better get in the jeep with me, and see about getting us one or the other," McCoy said.

His stomach then rose in his chest as Donald put the H-19 into a steep de­scending turn.

As they approached the coastline, not fifty feet off the water, they came across a junk plodding slowly southward, maybe a mile and a half offshore and half a mile away from them.

"That has to be the Wind of Good Fortune," McCoy said.

"You want me to take a closer look?"

"God, no! There's an air-cooled .50 on the prow, and another on the stern.

By now—they've seen us—they've taken the covers off and fed ammo belts into both."

"Why is it leaving Socho-Ri?"

"She dropped off a generator, a good base station radio, and some other sup­plies," McCoy replied. "Chow, a couple of rubber boats, sandbags, stuff—I guess you call it 'thatch'—to put the roofs back on the hootches. And some of Dunston's Koreans. And then she got out of there before anyone could draw the right conclusion."

Donald took his hand off the cyclic control long enough to point. They were approaching Socho-Ri. As McCoy followed Donald's pointing, Donald put the H-19 into a steep turn to the left, then to the right, and then as suddenly straightened up. They were now lined up with the dirt strip.

McCoy could see enough of the activity on the ground to know that Zimmerman—and Dunwood's Marines—had done a lot of work even before the Wind of Good Fortune had brought them the supplies they needed.

He saw what had to be Marines in two emplacements overlooking the path from Route 5, and another emplacement facing out to the Sea of Japan.

And a patch of recently turned earth twenty-five feet by eight. Burying the bodies had obviously been a priority.

Jesus, that's a hell of a big hole to have to dig by hand!

The H-19 stopped forward movement, and a moment later its wheels touched the ground.

McCoy saw the second helo flutter to the ground to their right, and then Dunwood and Zimmerman walking out to them.

Donald began to shut the machine down. McCoy unfastened his seat and shoulder belts but made no move to get out until the rotor blades stopped turning.

He had just jumped to the ground from the wheel when the smell of pu­trefying flesh hit him.

Dunston and the pilot of the other helicopter started to walk over to them. The pilot didn't make it. He suddenly bent over and threw up.

Dunston ignored him and joined the others in time to hear McCoy snap at Zimmerman: "Jesus! When did you finally get around to burying the bodies?"

"We waited until this morning, of course, Killer, knowing you were com­ing," Zimmerman answered, not daunted by McCoy's anger.

"Jesus! It was the first thing we did. We could smell this place a mile off."

"How do we get rid of the smell?" McCoy asked.

"Sir," Dunwood said, "we don't think it's coming from the bodies, from the grave, but from the ground where they were lying. I was thinking maybe if we soaked the ground with gas, and then—"

"Do it," McCoy said.

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Some of the bodies were in the hootches, Killer. And they stink too."

"Well, use gas on them before we put the roofs back on," McCoy said. "That smell's got to go."

Zimmerman nodded.

He looked at Major Donald.

"I don't suppose we could just drape fishnet over those propellers, could we, Major?"

He made a swirling motion with his index finger, pointing at the helicopter.

"Rotors," Donald corrected him. "No. I don't think that would be smart."

"I was afraid of that," Zimmerman said, and pointed toward the side of the landward hill, one hundred yards from where they stood. "That's what I came up with."

Against two very steep parts of the slope, two enormous flies of fishnet had been erected. Their outer edges were supported by flimsy "poles" made of short, nailed, and tied-together pieces of wood. Vegetation of all sorts had been laced into the net.

McCoy thought: Boy, that's really a jury-rig!

"And they won't stay up long," Zimmerman said, reading McCoy's mind, "if you get close to them with the rotors turning."

"Collect some men and push them over and get them out of sight," McCoy ordered.

Zimmerman nodded.

Dunston walked away from them, toward the mass grave.

"You want some breakfast, Killer?" Zimmerman asked innocently. "Couple of fresh eggs, maybe? The Wind of Good Fortune brought some. And a couple of fresh suckling pigs, too, come to thing of it."

McCoy glowered at him.

"You want me to throw up, too, right?" he said, pointing toward the heli­copter pilot, who was now sitting, pale-faced, on the ground, trying to regain control of himself.

Zimmerman smiled at him.

McCoy, Dunston, Zimmerman, Dunwood, and Donald were sitting on the stone wharf, where the smell didn't seem as bad. There was a breeze from the sea, and the smoke of the fires built over where the dead had been left to rot had sort of diluted the smell of the bodies. "Then we're agreed?" Dunston asked.

McCoy looked at him and made a little come on gesture with his hand. Dunston began to lay out the plan of action. "The priority is to get some agents up north as quickly as possible, the more the better, but for right now, three teams is all that seems feasible.

"We call the Wind of Good Fortune back, to dock here an hour after dark. She picks up the agents and goes north. Using just one of the rubber boats— keeping the other in reserve; the Wind of Good Fortune can bring more boats on her next trip—she puts them ashore and then heads for Pusan. She has enough fuel aboard to run the diesel, balls to the wall, all night.

"Unless they come across something really interesting, the agents will not get on the radio for twenty-four hours, or forty-eight. If they get in trouble, they will yell for help. If they do—Donald makes the decision whether or not the risk is manageable—we'll send one of the helicopters after them and see what happens.

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