intervals along the perimeter fence.
Anne shook her head slowly, remembering the blackened, torn, and gutted buildings, the debris-strewn streets, and the shattered windows she’d seen on the way from the gate into the Logistics Center. The place looked as if it had been hit dead center by a tornado.
It hadn’t taken long, though, for word of the North Korean commando strike to sweep through the crowds of newly arriving civilian workers. Rumor had magnified both the numbers and the casualties they’d caused.
As if the thought had been a premonition, she heard someone yell, “Commandos! There’s gook commandos outside!”
Oh, God. Anne hit the save button on her computer, jumped out of her chair, and ran to the window, along with the rest of the staff. Ed Cumber, one of her programmers, stood shaking, pointing outside at a truck parked in front of their building. Korean troops in full combat gear were jumping out the back and taking up positions along the street.
Anne started to back away from the window, then stopped and looked closer. There were American soldiers intermingled with the Koreans, talking calmly, sharing cigarettes with them.
She shook her head and looked disgustedly over at Cumber.
The tall, bleary-eyed programmer shrank a little under her gaze and tried to defend himself. “Well, I thought … I mean, they were jumping out of the truck, and they…”
“I don’t want to hear about it, Ed. Just because everybody else is panicking doesn’t mean we should,” she said sternly, aware that she’d jumped the gun just like all the rest.
Phones were ringing in the office while everybody stood and looked at the motionless Korean soldiers.
“Back to work!” They scattered.
Anne moved back to the computer terminal she’d taken over earlier that morning, but she altered course when she saw her secretary waving her over. Gloria was on the phone, listening intently and scribbling notes. “Right, right, uh huh, got it. Okay, I’ll pass the word.”
She hung up as Anne came over.
“It’s official, Anne. We’re supposed to prep for possible evacuation. They’re going to start sending all civilian contract workers to Japan sometime in the next forty-eight hours.”
Anne stood still for several seconds. Japan. She was going to get out of this mess. Then her mind whispered, But what about Tony?
CHAPTER 26
Evasion
Kevin Little had never been so cold.
At first the freezing Korean winter air had been a minor annoyance as he lay motionless, playing dead. But now it had become a sharp, stabbing pain — spreading slowly from the bayonet slash through his parka across his whole body. Each short, controlled breath he took moved the icy air farther up his back, sucking away warmth and leaching away his life.
Kevin had always heard that freezing to death was painless. Now that it was happening to him, he knew that wasn’t true.
He had to get up and move. Movement meant warmth and warmth meant life. But movement could also mean death if the North Koreans had left sentries behind to guard the hill.
Kevin lay still, listening for the slightest sounds around him. He’d heard the North Koreans evacuate their wounded and march south, away from Malibu’s smashed bunkers and trenches. But he hadn’t been able to make up his mind about the answer to the crucial question. Had they all gone?
Kevin wasn’t sure how long he’d been lying there beneath his platoon sergeant’s corpse. Time had stopped meaning very much. How long had it been since his platoon had been wiped out? An hour? Two? Three? He couldn’t read his watch without moving his arm.
A new wave of cold agony swept through him. Kevin clenched his teeth against the pain. He had to get up. Now. Before the cold sapped his strength so much that it began to feel warm. Before he started falling asleep in its chill embrace.
Awkwardly he crawled out from under Pierce’s body, forcing himself first to his hands and knees and then into a crouch, his back against the sandbag-reinforced trench wall. Teeth chattering, he looked at the wreckage of his platoon.
Bodies were heaped down the length of the trench, lying crumpled and twisted wherever the killing bullets had thrown them. White, bloodless, unseeing faces stared at the sky.
Kevin closed his eyes and brushed roughly at the tears frozen to his face, as if he could brush away the images surrounding him. He’d failed his men. He’d led them to disaster. And now he was conscious of a terrible, almost overwhelming sense of shame that he’d survived. It had all happened so quickly. Only a few seconds had elapsed between the moment Pierce was killed and the final collapse of Malibu West’s defense. But during those few chaotic seconds he’d been overpowered by a wave of horrible, mind-numbing fear, caught completely unable to think of what to do next. Playing dead during the massacre had been an instinctive reaction, a last grasp for personal survival.
Kevin clenched his fists and moaned softly. Now he could think again and wished that he couldn’t. His mind kept replaying those last horrible seconds, over and over. Pierce falling in slow motion, bleeding, dead. The grenades going off nearby. Men screaming and dying. Men he’d been responsible for.
He shook his head in despair. He’d panicked and lived while they’d died. Now the most he could do was save himself. And maybe not even that. He bit his lip and levered himself slowly to his feet.
Sounds were starting to make themselves clearer to him, and he realized that he could still hear the thumping roar of North Korean artillery from across the DMZ. It wasn’t a continuous, ear-splitting barrage anymore. Instead, the guns fell silent for moments at a time as new targets were sought, identified, and marked for destruction. Then the guns fired again, sending streams of high-explosive shells screaming across the sky toward the south.
Suddenly Kevin froze. He’d heard footsteps from the communications trench off to his left. The North Koreans had left sentries behind. His left hand fumbled for the 9mm Army-issue pistol holstered at his waist. It wasn’t there. He looked around frantically and saw the Beretta lying in the muck by Pierce’s body. Oh, shit.
He heard the footsteps again, closer this time. Kevin tensed. There wasn’t time to run. He’d have to try taking the North Korean with his bare hands. He felt a wild urge to laugh and suppressed it. He’d barely passed his ROTC Unarmed Combat classes. What chance did he have now?
He pressed back harder against the sandbags, willing himself invisible and knowing it wouldn’t work.
Footsteps again, crunching in the frozen mud at the bottom of the trench. Out of his half-closed eyes, Kevin saw a man step out of the communications trench and start to turn toward him. Now!
He lunged forward with a strangled yell, knowing he wouldn’t make it. The man was already turning, moving fast, bringing a rifle up toward him. Then Kevin saw his face and faltered.
It was Rhee, a battered and bloody Rhee, but Rhee nonetheless. His South Korean liaison officer.
He saw the recognition in the South Korean’s eyes at the same moment. The rifle slid out of Rhee’s hands.
“You’re alive?” Rhee’s voice was hoarse, and Kevin saw the long, jagged cut running down the right side of his head. Dried blood streaked the South Korean lieutenant’s torn snowsuit.
Kevin nodded, not trusting himself to speak for a moment.
Both men stared at each other, panting, waiting for the fear-invoked adrenaline rush to subside.
“What happened?” Kevin jerked his head back the way Rhee had come.
Rhee shook his head and winced. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.” He paused, obviously trying to remember something, and then continued in a hoarse whisper, “I was in my … my bunker. There was a flash. An explosion.”
The South Korean looked around slowly at the bodies heaped around them. “When I came to … everything
