WW III

NKA assault troops, green-mustard-splotched figures fanning out a hundred yards off, encircling the hut. He cocked the M-60 and opened the canvas bag of grenades, motioning to the lieutenant to help himself. The lieutenant, a much younger man in his early thirties, was drained of color, a mere ghost in khaki, trying to talk, his throat dry as leather with fear. Tae adjusted the sights, knowing this was it — as ready as he ever would be. All the names of the ROK’s informers were in Seoul headquarters, Tae keeping only situation reports from the forward OPs in his sector. The names of the ROK’s top five counterinsurgency agents, two each for Pusan in the southeast and Kwangju in the southwest, one for Taegu, were in his head — too important to put on any piece of paper. Not that they’d seemed to do much to thwart NKA sabotage. So intense was his calm that Tae felt as if he would momentarily nod off even as the lieutenant, almost apoplectic with fear, continued racing from window to window as if a different view would present a more comforting reality. The thing that kept Tae from total surrender to the impending catastrophe was the thought of his family.

There was a crash of glass. The lieutenant spun around and fired a long burst at the far window, the hut ringing with the sound of the bullets piercing the corrugated metal. It hadn’t been the NKA at all but a piece of loose guttering giving way. The lieutenant, sweating profusely, tried to stuff more grenades into his pockets, fumbling, dropping two, scrabbling frantically for them under the desk as if they were gold. Tae felt sorry for him, but it was the detached feeling of an observer, as one felt for a trapped fish, that is, until the major thought once more how neither of them would see family again, of how none of those trapped would ever see loved ones again — unless they could somehow hold. Hold until the U.S. Air Force out of Japan two hundred miles to the east, out of the Yellow Sea to the west, out of anywhere, could launch air strikes on either side of the DMZ and drop ammunition and supplies to the beleaguered troops until ground relief was possible. It was a fantasy for his sector and he knew it, but any delay he and the lieutenant could inflict on the NKA might save someone further down the line.

Outside there was an increase in the din of the battle all through the joint security area, clouds of dust from grenades exploding — whose, he couldn’t tell. He caught a glimpse of a mortar being set up two hundred yards off, opened up with his M-60, and saw the bullets kicking up dirt about the mortar crew. The NKA soldiers disappeared in a small depression. For a second or two all Tae could hear was the steady thumping of artillery. Then came the high-pitched rattle of AK-74s, their rounds going too high to do any damage, only raking the hut’s eaves but frightening the lieutenant very badly. The next bursts were lower but still too high to be dangerous. Next Tae could hear the pomp… pomp… pomp of either T-55s’ or lighter PT-76s’ multiple grenade ejectors spitting out smoke bombs that quickly covered the entire joint security area with a dense white cloud. The NKA platoon nearest the hut was obviously waiting for one of the tanks to save them the bother and simply roll through the Quonset — probably not even bothering to waste a shell.

For some inexplicable reason, Tae found himself noting the time, seven minutes to ten, and it struck him how it was an illusion that such situations as he was now in take a long time to resolve, that, in fact, most of the firefights over the relatively open ground would be over quickly — it was only in the hills and mountains, where the terrain lent itself naturally to defense, that a single engagement could stretch into hours, days, and even months. He heard a flapping noise, then more thunder in the distance — artillery or real, he couldn’t tell. It began raining heavily and the flapping noise ceased. It had been the huge 100:2 scale map of Korea in the hut’s briefing room, shredded by the wind but now sodden with rain and flattened against the wall, a large strip, where the Yalu River had marked the border between China and North Korea, missing.

“They’re gone!” said the colleague in astonishment. “I don’t see anything mov—”

“Soryong?”

It was coming from where die NKA had set up the mortar, but like the lieutenant, Tae couldn’t see anything, and there was something odd about the voice. For a moment Tae’s ears, ringing from the sounds of battle, couldn’t tell what it was.

“Tae Soryong! Major Tae!”

“How…” began the astonished lieutenant. “How do they know your name?”

“Everyone knows my name,” said Tae.

The lieutenant wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to be more terrified than he was, for it suddenly dawned on him that in the battle swirling about them, presumably all along the DMZ, this brief pause about the lone Quonset hut might have been a conscious decision by the NKA. They wanted Tae. Tae admitted it was possible. It would explain the poor shooting, the AK-74s going high into the hut — merely to keep heads down until the political officer reached their position. But how about the roof? the lieutenant asked Tae. “The mortar shell?”

“A lucky shot,” said Tae. “Or unlucky. Depends on your point of view.”

The NKA officer’s voice was starting up again, and Tae realized what was strange about it — it was coming over a battery-operated megaphone, or some kind of loudspeaker mounted on a vehicle. The voice was explaining in English to any U.S. or ROK soldier within or without the hut that the Army of the Democratic People’s Republic had no wish to hurt Major Tae. They simply wanted to talk to him. “Comrade to comrade.” And if his friends cared about him, and themselves, they would stop “all resistance.” It was all quite hopeless anyway, the voice told them — the entire sector was surrounded.

“Give us the major, Comrades! There will be a big reward. The major will be safe. Otherwise…”the voice warned, it would be “very bad” for everyone.

Inside the Quonset the lieutenant laughed nervously. “I could earn a few won,” he said, adding just as quickly that, of course, he didn’t mean it — it was only a joke. Tae nodded understandingly. He knew it was a joke.

Tae heard something clattering above them on the roof and lifted the M-60, ready to fire.

“Loose guttering!” the lieutenant said hurriedly.

Tae was watching the jagged circle of steel-gray sky. Why would they want him? Surely the names of the ROK’s top counterinsurgency agents in Pusan, Taegu — wherever — wouldn’t be any use to them now. Unless, like a long line of conquerors before them, they wanted to teach a quick lesson to the occupied population — to show unequivocally that whoever opposes the Party in thought, word, or deed, whoever dared oppose the beloved leader, would be publicly denounced and executed. To demonstrate conclusively that underground resistance was futile. Tae vividly recalled old villagers telling him how the British and American soldiers had feared the North Korean guards more than the Japanese, the cruelty of the North Koreans so infamous that the mere threat of handing prisoners over to the NKA had been enough for the NKA’s allies at the time, the Chinese, to quiet their most intransigent American and British POWs.

“They’re waiting,” said the lieutenant, sweat trickling down his neck.

“I know.”

“Tae Soryong! Major Tae!” came the tinny voice. “You have five minutes to surrender — or your comrades will die.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

In a revetement area six miles south of Uijongbu, tank troup commander Lt. George Clemens, field glasses scanning the luxuriant green of paddies and blue mountains beyond, felt his skin itching, an infallible sign, as if he needed to be reminded, that he was in an acute stage of excitement. After all, this moment was what he had been trained for, dreamed of, and wanted all his adult life. Since he was a boy, the behemoths of the battlefield, from the huge, cumbersome monster pillboxes on tracks that were the first tanks in World War I, lumbering across the fields of France, to the blitzkrieg Panzers of Rommel’s North Africa Corps churning up the sand in the Western Desert, had awed him. They were for him like a ship, self-contained, an island of war — above all, free to move. And everyone knew the tanks would decide the ground battles, despite what all the air boys said about the deadly saturation fire they could unleash from choppers and ground support fighters. He was sure that once the battle was joined, the confusion of smoke and dust cloud would mean, particularly at night, that for all the fancy arsenal of the air-to- ground missiles, the fight would end up like that of a dogfight in the air, tank against tank, the very kind of dogfights the experts said would never happen again after World War II because the planes were so fast, so modern. Until it happened all over again in the skies over Vietnam. One on one.

His M-1 tank, the Abrams, was the best main battle tank in the world. The Brits had tried to better it with the Challenger, the West Germans with the Leopard, but in the last five years it had been the M-1 that had consistently