to insert a new one. Five left. Something round flicked through his line of sight and thumped into a tree just beyond his foxhole. He ignored it and took quick aim at an NK standing full upright, arm extended from the throw.
“Grenade!” Montoya screamed, and dragged Kevin to the bottom of the hole.
“Asshole!” Kevin reared up and pumped three shots at close range into the North Korean preparing a second grenade. The man died with a look of absolute surprise frozen on his face.
Another grenade exploded farther down the line, and Kevin heard men screaming in agony. His men. Kevin cursed and kept firing. Empty. Eject. Reload. Four magazines left now.
The North Korean fire didn’t seem so loud now. Visibility was down to just a few meters, but it seemed that there were fewer muzzle flashes up along the crest. Bodies sprawled everywhere along the slope.
He saw a North Korean trying to roll back over the top of the hill and fired again — kicking up a miniature snowstorm all around the man. He couldn’t tell if he’d hit him. Another NK tried to run. Four rounds hit the man at the same instant and threw him bodily against a bullet-pocked oak tree.
He ripped another empty magazine out of the rifle and reloaded again. Three left in the pouch.
Kevin scanned a sixty-degree arc around his hole, looking for new targets. He waited for the smoke and dust to thin. There were’t any new targets. The bugle had stopped sounding. The North Koreans were gone.
“Cease fire! Hold it! Hold it!” His hearing was coming back, but slowly, too slowly. He could just make out McIntyre and Geary screaming at their men to call them off. They sounded as if they were a thousand miles away.
Kevin shook his head from side to side, trying to clear the last of the ringing out of his ears. He eased his finger off the M16’s trigger and leaned heavily against the foxhole’s dirt wall, breathing hard. Echo Company and its rookie commander had won another skirmish. He felt a surge of triumph and elation and almost laughed out loud for the sheer joy of it. Then he suppressed the feelings as quickly as they had come.
The trouble was the North Koreans would be back for more soon enough, and his troops had already shot off half their ready ammunition. One more attack would burn up the rest. And then what would he do? Kevin didn’t have the answer to that one, but he knew that he’d have to think of one pretty damned quickly. There was an enemy commander out there somewhere in the forest already planning his next move.
Chae stared at the shattered fragments of his 1st and 2nd platoons in rage. Nearly seventy men had been thrown away to no useful end, slaughtered because the battalion commander was a fool of the first magnitude. The Americans over the hill were too well dug-in to be dislodged by a frontal attack. He would have to find another way to get at them.
He frowned. The moans from the wounded were distracting. He turned to his staff sergeant and snapped an order. “Get the wounded on their way back to the aid station and rejoin me here after that’s done.”
“You” — he pointed to the corporal now leading what was left of the 1st Platoon — ”take your able-bodied men up to the base of the hill and keep the Yankees occupied. Don’t expose yourselves, but don’t let them see how few of you there really are. Understand?”
The corporal saluted and wheeled to gather his troops and go forward again. Chae felt his anger grow again. These soldiers were too good to be led by an incompetent like the major, a puffed-up idiot with his pretty binoculars. He growled at an orderly and took his AK assault rifle from the man. The Makarov pistol holstered at his side marked him as an officer, but it wasn’t the proper weapon for this kind of fight.
He waited until the skirmishers he’d sent ahead to pin down the enemy started firing. Then he turned to the lieutenant commanding the 3rd Platoon. “Follow me. And keep silent. The first man to make a sound will spend what’s left of his miserable life breaking rocks in a work camp.”
Without waiting for a reply, Chae moved off through the trees, angling left toward the ravine he’d spotted earlier and marked as a possible way through the American defenses. If he could get in behind the Yankees, he could repay them for the massacre of his men in their own coin. The 3rd Platoon followed him in a column of twos.
The isolated spatters of rifle fire made it difficult to hear.
“Say again your last, India One Two. Over.”
The shooting died away for a moment, allowing Kevin to make out Donaldson’s voice through a thin wash of static. “I need a sitrep, Five Six. Over.”
“Understood, Two. Attack was by a company-size formation. We’re still getting sniper fire, but no heavy weapons stuff. I have two Kilo India Alphas and four Whiskey India Alphas who need evac. Over.”
“Okay, Kev. We’ll get a jeep on the way. The air boys tell me we can’t get a dust-off in through those trees so it’ll be a few minutes.”
Kevin swore under his breath at that. One of his wounded men could die before a jeep pushed its way over the rutted, narrow tracks they called roads in this part of South Korea. He clicked the transmit button. “Roger, Two. Tell ’em to make it fast. What about my request for ammo resupply?”
“Understand your situation, but I have nothing to give you at this time. We’re hunting for some more, Kev, but I can’t make any promises.” Donaldson sounded harried. He’d probably been getting the same urgent request from each of his other line units.
Kevin clenched the handset tighter. He needed ammo to hold this position. Didn’t any of the higher-ups give a damn about that? “Two, I can hold through one more attack like that last one, but that’s it.”
“Understood. Do what you can. Two out.”
Kevin tossed the handset back to Montoya and slung his M16. He’d been jawing with the useless high command long enough. He’d better inspect his line for new weak spots before the North Koreans tried their next move. And the ravine was the most likely place they’d try it. He set off at a fast, angry walk with Montoya in tow.
Chae crawled carefully through the narrow gap, moving cautiously to avoid rustling the snow-covered bushes on either side. Sweat trickled into his eyes and he stopped to wipe it away, conscious of the small sounds of movement from all sides as his troops continued their painstaking progress down the ravine past the enemy-held hill. Gunfire rattled in the near distance where his other platoons were still skirmishing with the Yankees, and Chae allowed himself a short, breathless prayer that his ploy would work. Then he put his hands back down in the snow and slid forward again. Soon they would be able to strike the Americans from the rear and send them running.
Kevin heard it first, a soft, whispering hiss as something knocked the snow off an overhanging limb. He glanced quickly around; there wasn’t any wind, though from the look of the sky there soon would be. And every animal for miles around must have already been frightened away by the noise of the fighting. That left only one other possibility.
He flattened himself and motioned for Montoya to do the same. One hand tapped the shoulder of the corporal in charge of the ravine detail, the other pulled his M16 closer.
The corporal, a tall black man named Reese, nodded his understanding and waved slowly to attract the attention of the sentries stationed above the other side of the ravine. They waved back and slid down deeper into their camouflaged foxholes.
Kevin waited.
Ten meters below and to the front, something moved. It changed shape and then grew clearer — a single North Korean soldier bellycrawling through the tangle of brush and tall grass with serpentlike care. Reese laid his thumb on the switch that would trigger the claymores, but Kevin quickly shook his head. This was just a scout. There would be others behind him, and he wanted to catch the whole group in the ambush if possible.
The North Korean came closer, and now Kevin could see and hear a dozen other signs of movement in the ravine just below his vantage point — a rustling bush, a metallic clank, a moving shadow among others motionless. He held his breath and let it out slowly, stealthily. Closer. Closer. More North Koreans were visible now, crawling quietly into range.
One of the machine gunners posted behind a fallen tree coughed — a light sound loud in the still air. Kevin saw the North Korean scout’s eyes widen and his mouth open to shout a warning.
