CHAPTER 22
Red Phoenix
The North Korean gun crews crouched motionless beside long-barreled artillery pieces and squat, openmouthed mortar tubes. Others stood beside truck-mounted, multiple-barrel rocket launchers. Outside their hardened shelters, they could hear jets roaring overhead on the way south, but the gunners were content to wait. Their moment was coming.
Deep inside a command bunker, the general of artillery studied his watch and then nodded to an aide holding a telephone. “Move into firing positions.”
The aide hooked the phone into the general command circuit and passed the order to the hundreds of battery commanders all along the DMZ who had been waiting on the same circuit.
The order stirred the waiting gun crews into frantic activity. Some men ran to open heavy blast doors that protected their shelters, while others levered the guns forward into their firing positions. The Ural-375 trucks carrying Soviet-designed rocket launchers rolled out into the open and parked with their launch tubes swung off to the side to protect the vehicle itself from blast damage. Mortar crews jumped down into firing pits that held their weapons and stood ready by them.
None of the gunners could see the enemy. The same snow-covered ridges and hillsides that protected them from enemy observation limited their own view of the areas their shells would strike. Once the battle was joined, they would rely on the data gathered by forward observers in the front line and passed back through the artillery chain of command.
Secure in his bunker, forty kilometers behind the DMZ, the general of artillery smiled, imagining the havoc his guns would wreak on the Americans and their Southern puppets. He had organized what would be the heaviest barrage seen since the end of World War II by concentrating more than 6,000 artillery pieces, 1,800 multiple rocket launchers, and 11,000 mortars against the imperialists. With an average of 500 gun tubes per kilometer of breakthrough front, he would overwhelm the enemy fortifications with a shock wave of explosive fire. All told, the first salvo alone would send nearly 2,000 tons of high-explosive smashing into their bunkers, command posts, artillery parks, and supply depots. And his men would be firing four to six salvos a minute. The imperialists would be annihilated.
Annihilated. He savored the thought as the second hand on his watch marked the hour. It was time. The general turned to his aide and barked, “All guns. Open fire!”
With a thunderous, rolling crash, thousands of artillery pieces fired at the same moment. And even as the first wave of shells arced up and over into the predawn night sky, the gunners were already racing forward to reload. Their next rounds would be in the air before the first salvo exploded on the imperialist positions.
Second Lieutenant Kevin Little dreamed of rain. Not a soft, whispering spring rain. A hard, cold winter downpour, with thunder and searing lightning to back it up.
The thunder threw him out of his cot and onto the CP’s dirt floor.
He came awake to find himself scrabbling on his knees and coughing in dust-choked air. The whole dugout seemed to be rocking back and forth, swaying first one way and then the other. A tiny Christmas tree his men had decorated toppled over in a heap of tinfoil and broken ornaments. He grabbed for the table with his maps and phones as a small, battery-operated lamp fell over and smashed. Jesus, what was this? An earthquake?
But the real answer came as his mind sorted out the separate parts of the unearthly din outside the small bunker. Dull, muffled rumbling from the north, high-pitched, whirring screams passing overhead, and a continuous, ear-splitting succession of explosions from the south. It was artillery fire.
Kevin grabbed for his helmet and flak jacket. Got to get out. Get out before this place came down around his ears. He looked around and saw Rhee fumbling into his own gear. The Korean lieutenant had a wild-eyed, disbelieving look on his face — an expression that was probably mirrored on his own. Oh, God, this had to be a nightmare. Please, make it a nightmare.
The door crashed open and Sergeant Pierce burst into the CP followed by Corporal Jones, the platoon’s signalman. Both Pierce and the corporal were in full combat gear, and both were wearing white camouflage snowsuits over their uniforms. Kevin could see the sky paling to a predawn gray through the open door.
Pierce pushed Jones over toward the commo gear and turned to Kevin, “Let’s go, Lieutenant! We’ve got big- time trouble in River City here. Got arty coming down all over the place behind us.”
Kevin stood uncertainly, having reconsidered his earlier decision. Now it seemed incredibly stupid to run out into the middle of an artillery barrage. Better to stay here; the bunkers were designed to protect people from this kind of stuff.
Pierce saw his momentary indecision. “It ain’t landing on us, goddamnit. It’s those poor rear-area slobs who’re getting dumped on. But we got North Koreans pouring around us like fucking ants. If we don’t do something about it, we’re gonna be eating NK kimchee for the rest of this frigging war. Now let’s go!”
The sergeant didn’t wait for a reply. He just turned and headed back up the communications trench toward the forward slope.
Rhee snagged his white camouflage jacket with one hand and lurched out through the door carrying his rifle in the other, heading for his position with 2nd Squad along the rear slope of the hill. Kevin bent and pulled his own jacket out from underneath his cot. Then he followed Rhee out into an icy maelstrom of windblown dust, snow, and smoke.
It was bitterly cold, and Kevin could feel the chill air bite down deep into his lungs as he jogged up the communications trench. The bombardment was even louder outside. A constant pounding that rumbled through every part of his body, not just his eardrums. He could feel his teeth rattling from the concussions. But he knew that was only half-right.
He was scared. Scared worse than he’d ever been before in his life. Something in his brain kept telling him to turn around, to run for cover while there was still time. But another part of him resisted, remembering the look in Pierce’s eyes. He kept stumbling forward.
The main trench was crowded with the other men from his platoon. Pierce moved among them, cajoling them into their gear and pushing them into their assigned positions. But he held them back below the trench’s firing steps.
He saw Kevin and nodded. “Take a look through the scope. You’ll see we’ve got company.” He had to yell to make himself heard through the howling din of the barrage.
Kevin turned the trench periscope into position. My God. The whole northern horizon was a flickering sea of light, an artificial sunrise made by the massed artillery firing from behind ridges and hills.
He swiveled the scope down to look at the ground around the outpost. It took him a moment to comprehend what he saw. Then he understood. He was looking at his worst nightmare come to life.
The rough, broken ground below Malibu’s small hill was crawling with North Korean infantry, tanks, and APCs. A part of him automatically started trying to count them. Fifty, no, sixty tanks at least. He couldn’t make out the exact types through all the dust and smoke, but they all had guns. One lay immobile, spewing a cloud of oily, black smoke. Must’ve hit a mine, thought Kevin. He stared transfixed at the spectacle laid out to either side of the small hill topped by Malibu West. Row after row of infantry, looking like black ants in the distance, marching south in open order, followed by waves of wheeled and tracked personnel carriers. At the very edge of his vision the enemy’s ordered lines were breaking up under what looked like an American artillery fire mission — bright, orange-red flashes opening like short-lived flowers as time-fused shells burst in the air. It gradually dawned on Kevin that he was seeing the forward elements of what could only be an entire North Korean motorized rifle division.
Pierce followed the direction of his scope and tapped him on the shoulder. “We’ve got some troubles a little closer to home, Lieutenant. Down by the wire.”
Kevin adjusted the scope and almost dropped it. North Koreans in snowsuits were worming their way through the barbed wire at the base of the hill. They were less than a hundred and fifty meters away. There were other troops crouched behind them. A company of infantry at least — around a hundred riflemen and machinegunners.
Good Christ. Where was the American artillery? Why weren’t they chopping these bastards down with high
