His lips tightened. Quite an honor. The government considered him so dangerous that it made him the personal target of more than a hundred riflemen and machine gunners. A thought crept into his head through the shock. Perhaps they were right to fear him. After all, these men were also soldiers. They could not be happy with the chaos they saw around them. Why should they be his enemies and his undoing?
He straightened up and slowly brought his hands down toward his sides. He turned his head away from the searchlight’s glare, seeking out the line of troops ahead of him.
“Soldiers of Korea!” Chang’s voice carried easily through the night air. “Fellow soldiers.”
He paused, searching for the right words. “Do not let yourselves be turned into unthinking pawns for these corrupt politicians! Don’t help these ink-stained bureaucrats use you as a shield while they destroy our country!”
He took a step closer to the barricades. No one fired. He wished he could see their faces, could see the effect his words were having.
“Join us!” Chang waved an arm back toward the silent column of vehicles massed behind him. He saw movement out of the corner of an eye. There were government troops in position along the sides of the highway as well. It had been a thoroughly planned ambush.
“Join us to oust these fat ones who sit idle while you are beaten by communist mobs. Join us to restore order in the streets and prosperity to our nation.” He was within a few yards of the barricades now. It was working. He could see rifles beginning to waver, and he could hear muttering from the men ahead of him.
Chang took another step forward and started to smile. He was going to do it. He was going to bring these men over to his side. All it would take were a few more carefully chosen words. He opened his mouth to speak.
Two hundred yards away, Colonel Lee brought his night-vision glasses down slowly. He’d set up his CP on a flat-roofed warehouse to get a better view of the action. That had been a mistake. Now he was too far away to counteract the man’s oratory. The Special Forces officer shook his head. Chang was good. He’d hit just the right note, and Lee could see his men wavering, starting to turn toward rebellion.
Now there was only one way left to stop that. He looked at the sergeant lying prone on the roof next to him. “Do it.”
The sergeant nodded and lifted the sniper rifle to his shoulder. He squinted through the scope for a moment and squeezed the trigger.
The bullet caught Chang in the throat, tore through, and exploded out the back of his neck.
There was no pain, but Chang found himself falling backward onto the pavement. He couldn’t feel his arms or legs, and when he opened his mouth to cry out, he couldn’t get any air into his lungs.
Oh. Chang knew he’d been shot, knew he was dying. Time seemed to slow; he could see the stars overhead spiraling down to earth. Sons of bitches. They’d never given him a chance. It was over.
Chang was dead before the gunner aboard his APC came out of shock long enough to trigger his.50-caliber machine gun. But he avenged his general twenty times over as the burst caught men at the barricade and threw them back in a spray of blood and shattered bone.
A Special Forces heavy weapons team on the left flank saw the carnage and slammed a Dragon missile into the APC’s side. It exploded, ripping through the PC’s thin aluminum armor and hurling it over onto the pavement upside down and on fire.
Then the other Black Berets opened up, flaying the trapped column with antitank missiles, grenades, and machine guns. It was a slaughter. Chang’s men were in a tightly packed march formation with their vehicles spaced just far enough apart for safety during the drive south. It was a formation that guaranteed disaster under fire.
Drivers who tried to wheel out of the column to escape the crossfires laid down by the Black Berets either collided with the vehicles in front or back or were shot dead. Canvas-sided trucks were shredded by machine-gun fire that butchered the soldiers trapped inside. Men who’d dropped onto the pavement were cut down before they could lift their rifles. High-pitched screams from the wounded echoed above the gunfire. A tank, trying to escape, ground its way over a loaded truck, crushing it into a crumpled mass of blood-soaked steel. Seconds later, a Dragon missile caught the tank and blew its turret off, sending flames roaring into the night sky. Trucks and APCs exploded, throwing flaming gasoline high into the air. Smoke from burning vehicles billowed above the highway, blotting out the setting moon.
By the time Colonel Lee got his men back under control, Chang’s column was a tangled mass of wrecked and burning vehicles and dead and dying men.
Chang’s coup attempt was over. But the retribution had just begun.
CHAPTER 18
Reactions
“Attention!” The sergeant major’s roar echoed over the snow-covered parade ground. One thousand men snapped to attention, their shoulders thrown back and posture ramrod straight. For a moment the sergeant major studied them, his narrowed eyes looking for any weakness or imperfection.
Satisfied, he wheeled and threw a rigid salute to the group of officers facing the assembled troops. “Battalion present and ready for inspection, sir!”
General Bae returned his salute casually. “Very good, Sergeant Major. We’ll begin now.”
The man dropped his salute and fell in behind Bae as he walked along the ranks, checking uniforms and weapons at random. Occasionally he stopped to have a name taken either for commendation or for punishment. But only occasionally.
Bae smiled thinly to himself. The battalion was in good fighting trim. Ready for anything. The phrase echoed in his mind:
The general continued his inspection but his mind was far away, concentrating on a more urgent problem. What had gone wrong with Chang’s plan?
Chang was dead. That was certain. Bae had heard the news from a friend in the Defense Ministry. But there’d been a complete security clampdown on exactly what had happened along the MSR north of Seoul. All Bae knew for sure was that a five-kilometer stretch of the highway was still closed — forcing supply convoys coming north to detour around it. And the 4th Infantry Division’s camp was quarantined, surrounded by a thick cordon of heavily armed Black Berets.
The general had avoided making any contact with the other plotters since the abortive coup, feeling certain that the DSC’s spies would be watching combat officers even more closely now. In a few days, perhaps, it might be safe to arrange a meeting to try to pick up the pieces. Bae shook his head slowly. Chang had been their inspiration. He wasn’t sure how many of the others would have the stomach to try again now that the Iron Man was gone.
Behind him, the sergeant major frowned as Bae walked right by a private with traces of weapons lubrication oil staining his tunic. He stopped, gave the man a ferocious glare, and then hurried on after his general. Something was bothering the Old Man all right.
Bae finished his walk-around and started moving toward the small cluster of officers nervously waiting for his verdict on their troops. Then he stopped.
Two black staff cars had just driven through the main gate. They were followed by three canvas-sided trucks. The car lurched off the camp’s main road and turned toward the parade ground. The rest followed it, their tires crunching over the compacted surface of snow and ice.
Bae started moving again but one hand dropped, almost unconsciously, to rest on the pistol holster at his right side. The sergeant major followed suit.
He rejoined his officers as the staff car pulled up and slid to a stop in a spray of snow and gravel. The trucks stopped right behind it, and Black Berets carrying submachine guns jumped down off them, fanning out to cover the little group of officers.
Once they were in position, the staff car’s doors popped open. Bae’s eyes narrowed. There could only be one reason for all of this, but surely they were making an unnecessarily large production out of what should be a simple
