shoulder and friendly insults. Tony was introduced, with Chips saluting smartly. When Chips heard Hooter say “fourteen kills,” he was ready to do the favor for free.
“But since you went to all that trouble, I wouldn’t want to seem ungrateful. Hop in.” He collected the bottles and stowed them in a safe place.
John took the copilot’s seat and Tony the crew chief’s jump seat in the main cabin. The lieutenant started the turbines and they quickly spun up to full power. The UH-1 “Huey” usually transported twelve troops, in addition to the crew, so with only three men aboard, it leapt into the air.
Tony could see Hooter pointing out the route to the pilot, and he put on the intercom headset. “Hooter, there must be more than one convoy between here and Onyang. How will we spot hers from the air?”
“How many will have trucks full of American civilians?” John answered. “Don’t sweat it, Saint.”
The weather was clear, and with the doors closed the temperature was comfortable inside the chopper. The engine noise was another story, though, and Tony kept the headset on to block out some of it. They quickly passed over the airbase, the city itself, and then the Kum river just to the north.
The traffic into the city was heavy, but a convoy of military vehicles would be easily spotted among the civilian passenger cars and trucks. They flew north.
Anne hated the sunlight. They were late, and their progress now was so slow they would be lucky to reach Kunsan at all. Bell was driving again, and cursing every time he had to shift gears.
They were driving through a narrow cut, with the road narrowing from two lanes to one. The road was a downgrade, which kept Bell very busy trying to manage the balky transmission.
As they listened to the driver’s profane monotone, loud honking started coming from the back of the column. Hutchins quickly halted the convoy, sure that some disaster had struck.
They piled out of the cab and ran toward the back. The honking continued for a few moments, then stopped as they reached the end.
Surrounded by a small crowd of soldiers and passengers was a jeep, occupied by one man. A lieutenant colonel climbed out from behind the wheel and he did not look happy. “Who’s in charge of this mob?”
Hutchins saluted. “Captain J. F. Hutchins, sir, Provisional Transport Detail.”
The colonel’s laundered, sharply creased battle dress and cold-weather gear contrasted with Hutchins’s rumpled uniform. His combat boots were the old-style leather kind and were finely polished. The name AYERS was stenciled over the breast pocket. While Hutchins’s captain’s bars were embroidered in black thread on his collar tabs, Ayers’s rank insignia were polished silver metal, oversize, and shone from not only his collar tabs but from his helmet as well.
“Captain, your lack of intelligence is only matched by your lack of military bearing and your obvious inability to maintain discipline. I am enroute to a vitally important conference, and your slow-moving circus has slowed from a crawl to a stop.”
Hutchins started to open his mouth to answer, but the colonel was just drawing a breath. “Since you decided to stop and delay me even further, all I can do is report your performance to your superiors and hope that they aren’t as incompetent as you are.”
He took Hutchins’s name, rank, serial number, and parent unit, then climbed back in his jeep. “Captain, I want you to get these junk heaps moving at top speed. If I miss that meeting, it may adversely affect the course of the war, and it will be your fault. Now move!”
They started the convoy up and pulled out of the cut as fast as the transmission would allow. Occasionally a honk or two from the back would exhort them on. They reached the end about five minutes later, and they heard a roar as the jeep’s motor passed the convoy.
Colonel Ayers was sitting straight upright, at attention in the seat. He ignored the column and roared off to the south.
Hutchins had returned wordlessly to the cab, and Anne and Bell had followed suit, unsure of what to say as the officer sat expressionless. Finally, just after the colonel drove out of sight, Hutchins said, “You know, it’s hard to think of that man as the end result of millions of years of evolution.”
Colonel Ayers roared ahead, mentally ticking off a list of charges to bring against that dim-witted officer. Obvious lack of discipline. Ever since the war started, everyone had been getting sloppy. Uniforms, procedures, and especially courtesy toward senior officers such as himself had been given short shrift.
Well, he wasn’t going to let things go to pot. If he had to remind every man he saw about military courtesy, and take down every name between here and Chonju…
His musings, combined with a high speed, managed to carry him through Taech’on and the smaller village of Taech’ang. He was rehearsing the presentation to the morale board when he came to a checkpoint at one end of a bridge.
He beeped his horn and waved for them to open the gate, but the barrier stayed down and a Korean soldier came up and saluted.
Ayers didn’t bother returning the gesture. “Let me pass, man. I have to attend an important conference in Chonju!”
The soldier was unimpressed. “Certainly, sir, but I must see your orders and identification card, please.”
“My ID card?” He fumbled for the papers and identification. “Isn’t it obvious that I’m an American senior officer?”
The man reached for his papers. “Sir, you might be a North Korean saboteur. They are extremely clever and often disguise themselves as our soldiers.”
He examined the papers. “You are Colonel Ayers? We have a message for you, sir. Could you please follow me? It’s in the guard shack.”
“Of course, Private. Lead on.” He followed the Korean into a small building set off the road.
Inside, an officer was sitting behind a desk. The name on his uniform was YI.
The soldier looked at Yi and spoke in English. “Sir, this is Colonel Ayers. I believe there is a message for him?”
Yi stood and saluted. Ayers, glad to see the formalities being observed, returned the salute, but he was baffled by a sudden sharp pain in his right side. He turned his head and looked down, just in time to see a knife sink into his ribs up to the hilt.
His last thought was an amazed protest: “But they had been so polite!”
Yi looked down at the body and smiled. A lieutenant colonel. “Sergeant, get him out of here.”
Sergeant Yong knew what to do. He called to the “off-duty” commandos in the building and started giving orders. The corpse was carried out by a back door and the small bloodstain wiped up. Yi himself started the jeep and drove it off the road to a small stand of trees.
A small vehicle park was growing there, out of sight of the road. He pulled up alongside a row of trucks. Some were empty, but most had carried cargoes of food, spare parts, or ammunition. One bloodstained vehicle had been filled with men, but Yi’s commandos had gunned them down as they sat in the back. Fifteen replacements would never arrive at the front.
The North Korean was pleased with his work. It had been a productive night and morning. They would continue to ambush military vehicles for as long as they could.
They had not molested civilian traffic. It was not their job to create terror, and it would also speed their discovery. They had even let a few trucks go through because civilian cars had been lined up behind them waiting.
Eventually a convoy too big or too well armed would survive their attack, but until then this road was no help to the South, or their imperialist backers. He especially hated Americans, because without their help they could have liberated the southern half of the peninsula years ago.
That reminded him to look at the dead American colonel. Grabbing a small bag that had belonged to the officer, he hiked over to a spot under the trees. They had dumped all the bodies there, covering successive layers with snow. As he approached his bloody handiwork, Yi was glad that this was not a summer offensive.
Yong had just finished searching the dead officer. “Nothing, sir. He was a minor staff officer for American Second Infantry Division. All he had were these travel orders, and an agenda for a ‘Morale Conference’ tomorrow at Chonju.”
Yi tossed him the bag. “Search this, too.” But he didn’t expect to find anything. His disappointment showed in
