spumes of water over a hundred feet into the air.
With the two opposing forces heading for one another along the levy, Murphy suddenly decided to change tactics. “C’mon, Trang,” he shouted. “Let’s get down the bank into the water, quick. Grab the gun from the other truck!”
And it was in that position, from the marsh, that Trang and Murphy let rip with the two 7.62mm machine guns. Soon both lead trucks on either side of the two abandoned POW trucks were afire, Trang yelling out, “Kill! Kill!” in Chinese. Further confusing the issue, the trucks behind the lead truck from Ningming field were unable to fire for fear of hitting their comrades in the front trucks.
NCOs were screaming at enlisted men to get off the trucks and engage the enemy in the POW trucks because of the direction of fire coming from Trang and Murphy. Murphy fired a long burst, killing the driver of the first Ningming truck and setting its gas drum afire. The truck blew up, hurling bodies every which way, the PLA troops in the trucks behind now spewing out to run alongside the levy.
“Let’s get out of here,” Murphy yelled at Trang, and after firing the last magazine into the two camp trucks that had come up behind them, with both sets of PLA firing away at one another, Murphy and Trang dropped the LMGs into the waist-deep marsh water and, tearing out reeds for snorkels, began swimming away from a situation of utter confusion, of Chinese firing upon Chinese in the raging storm, and of escaping POWs who by now, thanks to Murphy and Trang’s delaying action, had had a good twenty- to twenty-five-minute start toward the border.
But if the Chinese were confused by that night’s debacle, by the following morning, though the rain was still falling in sheets, they were much better organized for the hunt. They’d already caught several of the escapees who had become disoriented and headed east in the storm instead of south. Upshut had them garroted, following strict orders not to waste valuable ammunition, particularly the expensive Black Rhino rounds, on prisoners.
Some of General Wei’s staff officers initially thought that Wei was making a meal out of the escape, until Wei — and this, he informed them, was why he was being paid 675 yuan, $144, a month instead of the 21 yuan of a private — drew his staff officer’s attention to the fact that most of the escapees, if they had any brains at all, would stay in sight of the Ningming-Dong Dang rail line, traveling parallel with it until they reached the border and the country around Disney Hill. Wei also advised his subordinates that if any of the escapees, most of them technicians from oil rigs, decided to try to sabotage the line and were successful, even in delaying the heavy artillery-mounted supply train to the front for a few hours, it could prove decisive in the battle against Freeman’s mounting thrust against Disney Hill and environs.
“But Comrade General,” an eager young division commander pointed out, “we — you have already posted a man along every fifty yards of track.”
“Yes, yes, I know this, but anyone who is innovative enough to mix his rice with brick mortar — to engineer such an escape out of practically nothing — he is a dangerous man, comrades, and so we must not only try to capture as many of the escapees as possible, but we must be particularly vigilant along the thirty miles of rail from here to the border. I want all rail-section commanders to emphasize this to their troops.”
Among themselves, Wei’s senior officers were convinced that Wei was overreacting. In their view — and they were correct — most of the escapees from the POW camp would have only one thing on their mind: to get back through enemy lines to safety, and to hell with messing around with Wei’s railway. Oh yes, there might be the odd fanatic who would try something like the genius who pulled the rice trick, but with a PLA soldier every fifty yards — what chance did he have?
Nevertheless, Wei was not to be dissuaded from taking extra precautions, and so onlookers saw the strange sight of a regiment of mounted Chinese troops — an anachronism in modern war — heading out in marshland south of the Ningming-Pingxiang line, able to go where armor or any other vehicle could not. And they were protected from U.S. TACAIR by both the foul weather — God’s response to Freeman’s prayer— and by the President of the United States, who, like Truman forbidding MacArthur to take action beyond the Chinese-Korean border, had ordered Freeman not to launch air strikes over the Sino-Vietnamese border.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
Shortly before Pierre LaSalle returned to her tent, Marte Price had found her asbestos-lined film box had been opened. She’d put a hair between the lid and sides before closing it, and now the hair wasn’t there. While she was no military strategist, she believed that in matters of sex and blackmail, a good defense was the best offense. In this instance, her offense took the form of insisting that Pierre wear a condom.
“You’re the only one,
“And I’m Marilyn Monroe.”
“No, truly,” he told her. “You are the only one.”
“Not counting your wife, you mean.”
“Of course. But this is the
“It’s good sex,” she said. “If that’s what you mean.”
“Surely it’s more than that.”
“If you say so.”
“You are a hard woman.”
“You’re the one that’s hard. I still have some illusions.”
“About what?’
“Oh, I don’t know — about honesty among friends, loyalty.”
“I hope you are not talking about me!” He sounded offended.
“No,” she lied. “Just in general.”
He slid his hand between her thighs. “I love the smell of you….”
She said nothing for a moment, then suddenly mellowing from her public persona of tough, hard-bitten war correspondent, having shown she could mix it with the boys, she was now the vulnerable, soft lover Pierre wanted her to be. She gently stroked him, and as he grew hard, she touched a freckle near the base of his penis, all but hidden by his pubic hair. “You always had that?”
“Yes,” he said. “A little birthmark, I guess.”
“It’s cute,” she said, stroking him. “Pierre?”
“Do you love your wife?”
He shrugged. “You know how it is. We’ve been married—”
“You don’t love her?”
“No, not really. She’s more of a — how do you say, friend, confidante.”
“Then she wouldn’t mind you making love to me.”
He gently pushed her down on the army cot. “I think she would mind,” he said with studied understatement. He laughed. “She would mind it very much,
She moaned softly as he entered her.
After, when they had parted, Marte went to the media pool office and told the officer in charge that if they were ever asked to send a pix of General Freeman “in action,” she hesitated, “with the wounded,” she would appreciate them telling her.
“May I ask why, miss?”
“Yes,” she said bluntly. “It’s my fucking picture and anyone who tries to send it is stealing it. And rest assured I’ll have the general on my side.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She put a hundred-dollar bill on the table. “So you won’t forget.”
“Yes,
