Ernie's. 45 fired twice.
The sound of gunfire close at hand is enough to uncoil the innards of most mortals. Criminals usually scatter at the unholy sound of it. They like it when they're the ones wielding the firepower, but when the hot lead is directed at them, they turn into jackrabbits fast enough.
All hell broke loose in the building. A couple of rifle shots blasted straight into the sky, women screamed, children began to wail. The whole wooden framework seemed to shake, and the footsteps from within reverberated like a herd of panicked musk-oxen.
Before I could reach the rear alley, something slammed against wood. Rounding the corner, I saw short legs and PX-bought brown oxfords disappearing over the back wall. Herman!
I shouted and took a step forward but as I did, a gaggle of men exploded out the door. One wore a turban. Ragyapa. He saw me and hollered something that I couldn't understand. Next to him a man swiveled, and a flash erupted from the barrel of an M-l rifle.
Something bit through the air above me. An angry bee moving at the speed of light.
I dived behind wooden crates stuffed with filth. Another bee bit into rotten lumber. Splinters erupted like a hive of tiny rockets.
My hand was shaking so badly, I could barely hold the. 38. Somehow I pointed it forward, not having any idea where I was aiming, and pulled the trigger.
The recoil sobered me somewhat. I could hurt someone with this thing!
After that, all I heard were footsteps and shouts. A few seconds later, when I worked up the nerve to peer around a box of trash, Ragyapa's men were gone. In the distance, more KNP whistles shrilled.
Ernie erupted out the back door. Sweating. His head swiveling back and forth so fast I thought he was going to unscrew his skull.
He pointed the pistol at me.
'Don't shoot!' I said. 'It's me.'
Ernie took a deep breath and lowered the. 45. 'Where'd they go?'
'Down the alley. But don't worry about them now. The KNPs will be here any second. It's Herman we have to find.'
Herman must still have the jade skull. If he didn't, Ragyapa wouldn't be chasing him.
'The bastards shot at me!' Ernie said.
I stood up, dusting off my trousers. 'You shot at them, too.'
'But I'm a good guy.'
'Sure you are, Ernie.' I glanced at the damage the M-l had done to the wood-slat wall and the crates. 'I don't think that guy's zeroed his weapon.'
Ernie examined the trajectory. 'No. If he had, Uncle Snaps would've had to cough up all thirty thousand bucks of your Serviceman's Group Life Insurance.'
The whistles of the KNPs grew louder. We didn't have time to spend all morning explaining to them what had happened.
Ernie helped me over the wall Herman had climbed. From the top, I pulled him over.
With the KNPS alerted and swarming around the village, Ragyapa would be cautious. If Ragyapa got locked up for possession of an illegal rifle, Herman would be sure to make good his escape with the skull.
But that didn't mean Ragyapa would give up. His boys were out there somewhere, searching for Herman.
After climbing the wall, we checked with the owner of the hooch in front. He pointed us away from the market. As we moved down the cobbled lanes, I stopped and asked every pedestrian and shop owner and street vendor I saw if they'd seen Herman. I used the description Ernie had given me. A human bowling ball, probably sweating by now and breathing hard.
It wasn't as if Herman the German was easy to miss. Almost everyone noticed him. They kept pointing us north, away from the market, away from the main gate of Osan Air Force Base.
Finally, we emerged from the alleys onto a main road. Across the street was the Songtan bus station. Nothing more than a half-acre blacktop area with a tin shack on the side for selling tickets.
As we darted across the street, dodging honking kimchi cabs, we scanned the crowd awaiting transportation.
I pushed my way to the front of the line. The ticket office wasn't much larger than a coffin. I leaned over and spoke through the little glass window to the sales clerk. She was surly and didn't remember anything about a foreigner buying a ticket. When I flashed my badge and pressed her, she told me she never looked at faces, only hands and change. Did you see any fat, pale hands with tufts of brown hair on them? No.
A dirty-faced girl with long black braids stood next to Ernie, holding a box of chewing gum and candy in her soiled fingers. They were haggling over the price of a double pack of ginseng gum.
The girl turned to me, probably hoping for another sale. I asked her about Herman. When I called him a bowling ball, she covered white teeth with dirty fingers.
'Oh, yes,' she said, 'the bowling ball man just got on a bus.'
'Which bus?'
'Number nine. Already go.'
'Where does number nine go?'
'I don't know. I never ride bus.'
Ernie pulled a wad of gum out of his mouth. 'Hey, this stuff is stale.'
'No,' the girl said, bowing. 'It is very good gum. Number one.'
'Shit.' Ernie tossed the pack back to her, his face sour. The girl snatched the gum and slipped it carefully into her pocket.
We started to walk away. I had to find out more about bus number nine. The girl ran after us and tugged on my sleeve.
'Hey, I talk to you, you supposed to buy gum!'
I handed her a hundred won coin-about twenty cents-and shrugged her off.
A brown-skinned man in a gray coat and a gray cap stood near the street waving a red banner, guiding the buses in and out of the lot.
I asked him about bus number nine.
'Yes. It goes to Chon-an.'
'Express?'
'No. Many stops.'
'How many?'
'Three. Maybe four.'
'Did you see a foreigner get on?'
'Yes. Bus driver laugh. Say he take two seats.'
THE ROAD FROM OSAN TO CHON-AN IS PEACEFUL, A SPARSELY traveled two-lane highway frequented only by buses or open-topped tractors or the occasional country kimchi cab. Green rice fields spread out on either side of us, and the ribbon of blacktop was lined with quivering juniper trees. Villages appeared intermittently: straw- thatched roofs, women pounding laundry by a stream, farmers threshing grain in the open air.
None of this idyllic setting cut much ice with Ernie.
'I'm gonna pound that fucking Herman.'
'Easy, Ernie.'
'He did it to his own little girl. He let them take Mi-ja. Just so he could wrap his grubby paws around that damn skull.'
'We don't know that for sure yet.'
Ernie swerved the jeep around a slow-moving bus. 'Now you're sounding like one of those lawyers over at JAG.'
I checked the number of the bus. Not number nine. We'd be lucky if we caught up with it before it reached Chon-an. But Ernie was trying like hell. He held the speedometer at a steady eighty kilometers.
'Watch out!'
