“Colonel Laurel makes it his business to hear about everything.”
“Has he decided to cooperate yet,” Ernie asked, “and show us the morning report? Lives are at stake.”
Warnocki’s smile didn’t change. “Your request has already hit Special Ops. They’re taking it under advisement.”
I swiveled on my bar stool and stared Warnocki right in the eye. “So, what do you think, Warnocki? Do you think the Blue Train rapist could be one of your Green Berets?”
“Sure,” he replied, still smiling. “And if it is, you’d better hope you never catch him.”
The flesh on his face didn’t move, but somehow his grin grew even larger.
Ernie stood up. Warnocki leaned back on his bar stool, holding up both hands in mock surrender. Then he grabbed his glass, downed it in two huge gulps, wiped his mouth and, still grinning, slid off his bar stool and sauntered carelessly away, cocking his beret a little farther to the side as he pushed through the padded double doors of the Sea Dragon Nightclub.
Early the next morning, we took a cab away from Nokko-ri and headed toward the ocean. When I told the driver to let us off at the intersection of the main coastal highway, he seemed astonished.
“Wei-yo?” he asked. Why?
There was nothing in any direction except the sandy coastline and rice paddies.
“Don’t worry,” I told him and paid him what I owed him.
After he drove away, Ernie turned to me and said, “What are we doing way the hell out here?”
“Waiting for a bus,” I said.
“What bus?”
“The one that is bringing Bravo Battery, Second of the Seventeenth Field Artillery, from the Cheju Airport to the Mount Halla Training Facility.”
Last night I had persuaded the owner of the Nokko-ri Yoguan to do a little ironing for me. In the morning, the two uniforms I had purchased on the black market were waiting for us, patches sewn on, boots shined, brass belt buckles polished. Ernie put his on, grumbling, but finally acquiesced to what he referred to as one of my “crazy plans.” Then we’d taken the cab out to this intersection to wait. After twenty minutes, three green army buses rolled up. I waved down the first one. The Korean driver stared out at me, smiling. I climbed aboard, Ernie right behind me.
We were wearing pressed fatigue uniforms and matching fatigue caps, and also black leather armbands that said: Cadre, Mount Halla Training Facility. To clinch the illusion, I had stuck a pencil behind my ear and carried a clipboard. The world always welcomes a man with a clipboard.
“Welcome to Mount Halla,” I shouted to the men in the bus and then turned around and told the driver to move out. Nobody questioned us. They figured we were just some sort of advance party escorting them to the compound. Ernie and I found a spot in the back of the bus and sat down. Within ten minutes, the convoy of three buses had stopped at the big chain-link main gate of the Mount Halla Training Facility. The dispatches were checked and, once everything was found to be in order, a Korean guard swung the gate open.
When the buses reached the edge of the central parade field, they stopped. Special Forces trainers wearing blue helmet liners stood outside, shouting.
“Move! I want every swinging dick off that bus and standing in formation. Now! All I want to see is assholes and elbows. Let’s go!”
Within seconds the men had filed off the bus and were standing in formation in the center of the parade field. Before the last G.I. stepped off the bus, Ernie and I crouched behind seats in the back. The driver, thinking the bus was empty, closed the door and slowly started to turn the vehicle around. Before he reached the main gate, I stood up and hurried forward.
“Let us off here, Ajjosi,” I said.
He was startled, but years of aberrant G.I. behavior had prepared him for anything. He stopped the bus and opened the door, and Ernie and I hopped off. We left our armbands on the bus, but I kept my clipboard. After the bus pulled away, we slipped into the shadow of a Quonset hut.
“Where to?” Ernie asked.
I glanced at my clipboard. “Munoz, Sergeant E-five, and Amos, Walker R., SFC. Those are the two guys we have to talk to.”
“So how do we find them?”
“Moolah the hell out of me.” And then I spotted street signs on a pole. White arrows pointed in four directions. One of them said S-3 Training. We followed it and soon found a Quonset hut marked Mount Halla Training Command. In the distance, angry voices shouted and, in unison, dozens of boots pounded on dirt. As best I could tell, the G.I. s were being divided up into smaller groups and marched to the various training stations, rappelling or commando tactics or whatever other edifying courses Colonel Laurel had cooked up for them.
We tried the front door. Locked.
“They’re all out there with the troops,” Ernie said.
“You check on that side,” I said. “I’ll meet you out back.”
Ernie nodded and trotted around the corner.
What we were looking for was an open window, a door, anything so we could gain access. Before I reached the rear, Ernie was already whistling. The back door of the Quonset hut was also locked, but one of the windows was filled with an air-conditioning unit. It wasn’t turned on, and there was enough space between the metal casing and the windowsill to reach inside the building.
“Let me have that clipboard,” Ernie said.
I handed it to him and Ernie used the metal clip to pry a rusty nail that held the overhead sliding window in place. Once the nail started to budge, he pulled on it with his fingers and, after much twisting and rotating, it popped free. I performed a similar operation on the other side of the window and we slid it upward, giving us about two feet of open space above the air conditioner.
I knelt down and Ernie stepped up on my back. As he slid his upper torso above the air conditioner, I braced him and pushed on the bottom of his boots.
“Whoa!” he said. “Not so fast.”
After groping in the dark room, he finally found a handhold atop a filing cabinet and pulled himself inside. About thirty seconds later, he’d opened the back door. It was dark inside, so I turned on the lights.
“Someone will see,” he said.
“They’re busy,” I replied. “Besides, if I find what I’m looking for, this shouldn’t take long.”
In fact, it didn’t take long at all. Military men love wall charts, the bigger and gaudier the better. This one was marked Schedule of Assignments. The name of every Special Forces trainer was listed on the left, including Staff Sergeant Warnocki and even Lieutenant Colonel Laurel. Warnocki, apparently, was the rappelling expert, and Colonel Laurel taught every class concerning diving. Sergeant Munoz, the man Specialist Vance had told us about, was indeed blocked out on leave for the past four weeks, having returned to duty yesterday, Friday. It would be easy enough to find out for sure if he’d actually traveled to Puerto Rico, but for the moment I would assume he had. Sergeant First Class Walker R. Amos, the man who carried the ration-control cards to Seoul, wasn’t blocked out at all on the chart. His specialty was apparently Survival, Escape and Evasion.
“That can come in handy on a train,” Ernie said.
On the opposite wall, we found a map of the compound. The mock prisoner-of-war camp was clearly marked.
Ernie and I did our best to mingle with the trainees. They stood in a loose formation inside the main gate of the “Volcano POW Camp.” It was nothing more than a few wooden shacks surrounded by concertina wire. We didn’t see anyone there other than trainees.
“Where are the Green Berets?” I asked one of the G.I. trainees.
“Inside the biggest shack,” he said. “They’re taking us in there two at a time.”
“For what?”
“Hell if I know. But none of the guys who’ve gone in so far have come out.”
Ernie and I stepped away to talk about it. Neither one of us was armed.
“You have your handcuffs?” I asked.
“I’d feel naked without ’em,” Ernie replied, patting the small of his back.
“So we have to take him down quick and clean, before any of his buddies have time to react.”
