his tone. Their first lieutenant colonel, and he had been a nobody.
They had been aloft for about twenty minutes, flying north at sixty miles an hour, two hundred feet off the ground. Tony was torn between professional interest and personal frustration. He normally didn’t fly this low or this slow, except when he was landing. It was easy to search at this speed.
This hadn’t let him find Anne, though. They had seen almost no military vehicles, and the few they had seen were clearly not the group of trucks they were looking for.
Both John and Tony were looking while Chips piloted, following the two-lane road. Up ahead in the distance they could see the highway narrow to one lane as it crossed a bridge. Tony half-expected to see the convoy pulled up, waiting for its turn to cross. It wasn’t. He was looking farther up the road when Hooter called him.
“Hey, Saint, there’s a bunch of trucks pulled up off the road to the right. Looks like we found them.”
Chips heard Hooter’s comments and immediately swung over to take a closer look at the vehicles. Tony had swung his binoculars over at once to look for Anne, but he could see no movement near them. He saw two covered cargo trucks, but also an open flat-bed, a tanker truck of some sort, a jeep …
“Hooter, this isn’t Anne’s convoy. They aren’t the right vehicles, and there aren’t any people around.”
“Picky, picky. I don’t know, Saint, this is the closest thing to a convoy we’ve seen. Do you want to set down and check it out?”
Tony wanted to be sure this wasn’t their convoy. “Chips, can you take us down for a closer look?”
The craft slowed and circled, approaching the vehicle park at a slow walk. Tony scanned the collection. Maybe it was Anne’s convoy and some other trucks mixed together. Some sort of rest stop?
One vehicle caught his attention. Its top was ragged and looked as if it had been camouflaged.
Hooter was scanning the rest of the area, already convinced that this was a waste of time. He was about to tell Tony that when he spotted a dark patch, growing as the snow covering it was blown off.
“Saint, look over to the right.” His tone was confused, and concerned. Tony moved across the cabin and focused on the area. The patch quickly resolved into shapes, but he kept on looking at them, hoping he was wrong.
Yi and his men watched from the road as the helicopter circled, then descended out of sight. It was obviously the enemy. Running ahead, he waved his men into the trees. They heard the craft and saw it again, lower, almost stationary over the abandoned vehicles.
Quickly he dashed from tree to tree, keeping the trunks between himself and the aircraft. His men followed his movements, stalking the helicopter as if it were a living thing. The snow it blew around helped hide them, but that was also his downfall.
They saw the aircraft hover, then pivot to face the spot where they had dumped the bodies. There could be no doubt.
He called out “Fire!” and raised his own rifle, aiming for the cabin.
Chips, Tony and Hooter all stared at the bodies. They were piled on top of one another, rather neatly, Tony thought absentmindedly. The longer they hovered there, the more snow was blown away and the more corpses became visible.
Hooter had been counting out loud, punctuating the litany with exclamations: “… thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, Jesus, sixteen…”
There was a
Chips didn’t wait for an analysis. He pulled hard on the collective and pushed the nose over, not waiting to climb. As soon as the Huey was moving forward, he started to slew the tail left and right, steering as evasive a course as his speed and height allowed.
Tony was not buckled in and found himself hanging on to a bracket. Reaching for one of the seat belts, he was knocked loose from his hold by a sudden shock. The helicopter shuddered, and there was a screeching sound. The floor under him was canted to the left, and he finally had to pull himself hand over hand to his seat.
His headset had ripped off when he fell across the cabin. As he strapped in, he looked forward to see John motioning for him to put it on.
As soon as he complied, he heard Chips’s voice. “The left engine is out!”
Hooter broke in, “We’re clear. No more firing.”
Chips was a busy man. The helicopter was lightly loaded, so the remaining engine could provide enough power to keep them airborne. Barely. The question was, what else had been shot off?
Tony was in the unusual position of being in a broken aircraft but not at the controls. All he could do was trust Chips and hang on. The Army pilot quickly scanned the controls and tried to listen to the remaining engine. “We’re airworthy, but I’ve got to set it down soon. Temperature on number two is a little high.”
Tony was more worried about what they had seen. “Those have to be North Koreans back at the bridge. Call on the guard frequency and put out a warning.”
They continued north while Hooter used the radio.
It was just a small village on a two-lane road. Since the principal industry was farming, it looked asleep in winter, even during the day. Surrounded by now-frozen rice paddies, they were through it in a few minutes.
Anne welcomed it, seeing it as another milestone. Each landmark passed meant that they were that much closer to Kunsan. It was ten-thirty. If there were no more interruptions, they would be in Kunsan by lunchtime.
Yi tried to be fatalistic, but he couldn’t. Curse whatever luck had let the helicopter see the bodies. They had emptied their rifles at it, but M16 rifles just didn’t have the range or hitting power to bring down an aircraft. Still, they had crippled it, which wouldn’t prevent it from sending out a warning.
The helicopter would radio a warning, and enemy troops would show up. They would attack his position, and he would kill as many fascists as he could, and then he and all his men would be killed. There had never been any question of how the mission would end, just how long it would take. And they weren’t the only special forces unit in the North Korean Army.
Their mission had already succeeded. Because they had interdicted this bridge for a while, the guards on all the bridges would have to be increased, and also on tunnels, junctions, any choke point. Any South Korean soldier would be suspected of being a North Korean saboteur, and no truck driver would be certain of reaching his destination.
“Sergeant!” Yong came running up. “Are the charges to the bridge wired?”
“Yes, sir. And the vehicles and bodies are both booby-trapped.”
“How about the rest of the explosives?”
“Being wired now, sir. Another five minutes at the most.”
Yi looked grim. “We are ready. Tell Corporal Soo to watch the bridge and to blow it if he sees anything approach from the south. Who were you going to put in the outpost?”
“Private Suh, sir. He’s very reliable.”
“I know. Get him up there. Everybody not on ‘sentry duty’ should be watching for the enemy. Otherwise, let’s continue as before. We’ll kill as many of the enemy as we can.”
Chips stomped around on the frozen ground. “How long before those troops get here?”
Hooter answered. “Half an hour, tops. They have to come from Taech’on. Counting time to saddle up, that’s pretty quick.
“Yeah, well, it’s damn cold, there’s enemy commandos in the area, and I’ve got a busted helo to explain.”
Hooter was unconcerned. “When they hear how you detected that North Korean outpost while flying an emergency medical mission, you’ll probably get a medal.”
Tony had to ask, “ ‘Medical mission?’ ”
“Sure, Saint. If you had missed your girl, you would have had a broken heart.” He turned to Chips. “They’ll believe anything. Don’t worry.”
All they could do was wait. They passed the time checking the damage to the helicopter, trying to stay warm, and waiting to see who came down the road first.
