only trying to do his best to protect his men.

“Message understood.” Rhee signed off, apparently unruffled by his outburst, and Kevin was thankful for that. He had more than enough on his hands without unnecessarily pissing off his best platoon leader.

The wind shifted slightly to the west and Kevin gagged at the smell it carried — a searing mix of charred wood, charred human flesh, and jellied gasoline. The North Koreans had used a flamethrower in a last daylight attack on his 2nd Platoon’s positions. Their wild-eyed charge had been crushed, but not before the burning fuel sprayed by the flamethrower set a whole city block afire. The 2nd Platoon had been forced to flee the flames, retreating to fallback positions in the houses behind Chungang-ro. Several men were still missing, and Kevin hoped with all his heart that they’d been shot to death and not trapped inside the fires.

The flare overhead guttered out and another burst immediately to take its place. Moving slowly in the dangerous light, he handed the radio back to Montoya and followed the RTO downstairs to the CP they’d set up in a windowless, one-room apartment. The previous tenant’s delicate silk wall hangings were gone, replaced by hand- drawn maps of the surrounding area showing kill zones and blind spots. Crumpled ration bags and stacked ammo boxes littered the room’s polished hardwood floor. Rust-brown stains marked where a wounded man had died before the medics could get to him.

Kevin shuffled through the debris and unslung his M16. He laid the rifle carefully against the wall and stretched, feeling knotted muscles unwind ever so slightly. It felt so good that, for a moment, he stood motionless that way, with his arms spread wide and his back arched. His eyes closed and he felt the room melting away.…

“You okay, L-T?”

His eyes snapped open and he saw Montoya standing close to him, a worried look on his face. Christ, he’d heard of people falling asleep on their feet, but he’d never expected to be one of them. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just a little tired, that’s all.”

The RTO guided him over to a thin mattress and helped him sit down. “Hell, L-T. Why don’t you take a rest? Nothing major’s going down right now.”

Kevin resisted the thought. “Can’t. Rhee’s men are in a firefight, and — ”

“Shit!” Montoya sounded disgusted. “Everybody’s been in a frigging firefight all day long. Come on, L-T, you’ve gotta sleep sometime.”

Kevin knew that was true as he leaned back against the wall. Fatigue was turning him into a stumbling, shambling, fuzzy-thinking robot. Into exactly the kind of leader who could make too many mistakes and get his men killed wholesale instead of retail. He kept his eyes open for a moment longer and looked at Montoya. “Okay, I’ll take a short nap. But get a radio watch set up and make sure everybody knows to wake me if anything big happens. All right?”

The RTO nodded happily and went away.

Kevin let his eyes close again and tried to let his mind drift away from images of the bloody day. Echo had been engaged at some point along its line throughout the day and now for most of the night. Counting the flamethrower attack, they’d repulsed at least five full-scale NK attacks and God only knew how many smaller probes. The streets showed the results. They were heaped with North Korean bodies and shattered masonry. And the company’s own losses had been equally appalling. He had scarcely sixty men left standing of the ninety or so he’d started the battle with.

The rest of the battalion wasn’t in much better shape. Bravo Company was still hanging on to what was left of the railway station by its fingernails — pummeled by North Korean mortar barrages that had killed Bravo’s CO and two of its three platoon leaders. On the other side of the Taejonchon River, Alpha had been pushed back about a hundred meters or so by a series of fanatical human-wave attacks, but it still held the burned-out remains of the Dabinchi Night Club. Casualties both there and at the station had been so heavy that Major Donaldson had been forced to feed two of Foxtrot’s platoons into the line as reinforcements — leaving the battalion with a single, understrength platoon as its sole reserve.

Not a very good situation, however you looked at it, Kevin thought. Still, they’d inflicted tremendous losses on the NKs. Maybe they’d fought them to a standstill. There’d certainly been no serious effort lately to pry his company out of its buildings and cellars. Maybe the NKs were just as worn out as he was.

He fell asleep on that thought.

ASSAULT GROUP 2

Sohn’s hand brushed a still-smoldering ember and he bit his lip to stop from crying out in pain. He yanked his hand aside and then froze, fearful that his sudden movement might have alerted American sentries in the darkened building just ahead. He waited for the yell and the shattering burst of machine gun fire that would signal such a disaster. But nothing happened.

The North Korean let his breath out slowly and scanned the ground to either side. From where he lay, the other men of his hand-picked infiltration team seemed scarcely more than shadows. Black camouflage paint covered their hands and faces. They had dulled every shiny surface on their weapons and wrapped the weapons themselves in cloth to help muffle any noise made as the team inched past American outposts and firing positions.

Sohn and his men had started moving shortly after sundown, cloaked by one last diversionary attack and smoke screen. The team’s quick, soundless dash across Chungang-ro had been followed by an agonizingly slow crawl through still-smoking ruins left in the wake of the flamethrower assault. They’d made it safely, though singed and scorched, and now were almost within sight of their goal. Only a single, American-held building blocked their path. If they could slip past it without raising the alarm, making it the rest of the way to the objective — a solidly built apartment building squarely blocking the American lines of communication and resupply — would be easy.

Sohn started crawling again, moving with such infinite patience that an unwary eye might easily pass over him and rove on, unaware that it had missed anything. His men crept behind him, weighed down by packs of extra ammunition.

Five meters to safety.

A sound from the building, murmuring voices. He froze again, this time for several minutes. The voices faded.

Two meters left to go. Slowly, slowly, he told himself. Don’t rush it. This is your chance for revenge on the Yankees, don’t waste it.

Sohn rounded the last corner on his belly, put his back to the wall, and levered himself into a low crouch, stifling a groan as he put more strain on already weary muscles. One by one his soldiers crawled past him and assembled on the pavement. He grinned to himself. They’d done the hard part. All that remained now was to occupy the apartment building he’d chosen and prepare it for an all-around defense.

When the morning came, he’d let the Americans know where he was — and with a vengeance. Then the imperialists would face a difficult choice: to either retreat past his waiting guns or try to dig him out. Either choice would cost many of them their lives. Sohn had few illusions about the odds of his own survival, but he’d seen too many deaths in the past several weeks to let the prospect of his own end deter him from his duty. The stalemate along Chungang-ro had to be broken, and he and his men were the anvil upon which the Americans and their puppets would break.

The North Korean lieutenant stood and used hand signals to gather his troops. They formed on him and the whole column moved off down the street at a fast walk.

ECHO COMPANY

“L-T?”

Kevin looked up from his half-eaten breakfast. “Yeah?”

“India One Two’s on the horn, sir. He wants to talk to you direct.”

“Coming.” Kevin shoved the ration bag off his lap and took the stairs two at a time. Montoya had finally rigged an antenna from the third floor up onto the roof itself so that no one had to risk getting shot just to talk on the radio. He took the handset offered by the RTO. “Echo Five Six here.”

“What’s your situation, Kev?” Donaldson sounded exhausted and a lot older.

Kevin listened carefully to the sounds around him before answering. Desultory firing from the left, over by Rhee’s position. Complete silence in the center. A single rifle cracked nearby, from one of the second-story rooms, answered at once by a heavier-sounding AK burst from across the street. “It’s quiet, Major. Skirmishing only. I think we bloodied ’em pretty bad yesterday and last night.”

“That’s great. Look, Kev, I’ve sent some ammo resupply up to your position, and I want to make sure the

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