imperialist forces massing to defend Seoul from the attack they’d dreaded for decades. An attack that would not happen. Cho had no intention of throwing his troops into the kind of meat-grinder house-to-house fighting that would be necessary to take Seoul by direct assault. Instead, the war plan he’d helped develop envisioned using the city as bait to draw the enemy’s armed forces into a trap. They would be pocketed when his II Corps and V Corps arced around Seoul to the east and west and joined hands at Suwon, twenty-seven kilometers south of the enemy capital.
With the bulk of its forces cut off from supply and surrounded by the People’s Army, the Southern regime would have little real choice but surrender.
Cho came out of his reverie and snapped his fingers, summoning his aides and driver. He’d spent enough time playing the wide-eyed tourist. There was work to be done back at the main headquarters — reports to be written for Pyongyang and plans that had to be laid for the next day’s attacks.
Things were going to get more complicated as the follow-on troops of the III Corps moved into the attack in this sector. Once it was committed to battle, Cho would move up to command both the II and III Corps as Colonel General of the newly formed First Shock Army. The First Shock Army, Cho repeated silently to himself. Truly, Kim Il-Sung’s spectacled son had fulfilled his promises.
Now Cho would fulfill his. The South would fall.
The Main Supply Route was jammed bumper-to-bumper with canvas-sided, two-and-a-half-ton trucks, jeeps, fuel tankers, ammo carriers, and military vehicles of every description — all moving south at a snail’s pace intermingled with carloads of frantic civilian refugees.
McLaren looked at the chaos on the road and knew he was looking at a beaten army.
His South Korean and American front-line units weren’t beaten yet. They were still fighting, surrendering ground reluctantly, meter by meter, and making the North Koreans pay in blood for every advance. But they were being worn down, submerged by the North’s superior numbers and massed artillery, and McLaren didn’t have much help he could send them.
The first reinforcements from the States — battalions of the 6th and 7th Light Divisions — were starting to arrive by air, but it would take them at least a day to organize and get up to the front. And McLaren wasn’t even sure how much they could do once they got there. Both the 6th and the 7th were basically light infantry forces; units designed for rapid transport overseas, with few of the heavy antitank weapons or artillery pieces needed to meet the kind of armor-heavy assault the North Koreans were making.
South Korea’s several-million-man reserve force was also mobilizing, but the nationwide mobilization had been slowed by the confusion caused by the North’s surprise attack and by the political disturbances that had preceded it. Many of the already assembled reserve units were tied down chasing North Korean commandos who’d infiltrated by sea and by air to attack U.S. and ROK rear-area installations.
And now this. McLaren clenched the stub of his unlit cigar between his teeth. Things were bad enough up at the front without this rear-echelon bug-out. He wasn’t sure who or what had started it, but it seemed like just about every supply unit, maintenance detail, field hospital, and Army paperchaser within earshot of the war had decided to retreat at the same time. They’d loaded up on anything with wheels and an engine and spilled out onto the MSR in a honking, panicked mass. The South Korean units that were supposed to control the roads had been totally swamped.
And they were blocking the goddamned road! Every friggin’ inch of it. Troops and supplies trying to get forward to where they were most needed were having to detour off onto little, winding country lanes or go off-road through the built-up snow and ice. This traffic jam was costing valuable time — and that cost lives.
“Doug!”
“Yes, General?” Hansen materialized beside him, notepad in hand.
“Get on the horn to Frank Collier and tell him I want this mess straightened out, pronto!” Hansen took rapid notes as McLaren outlined exactly what he expected the Eighth Army’s J-4 to do. “I want at least a company of MPs here to start these people in some kind of order. They won’t be able to stop them short of the bridges over the Han, but they can at least clear some lanes going north. Clear?”
Hansen nodded.
“Okay. I want more MPs on the other side of those bridges as a reception committee. They’re to stop these bastards and get ’em back in — ” Someone just up the road leaned on his horn and kept leaning, cutting McLaren off.
His temper snapped.
With Hansen tagging alongside, McLaren stormed up the road toward the offending vehicle — a jeep occupied by a heavy-jowled, sweating American lieutenant colonel and a slim, shaking, freckle-faced PFC driver. The bird colonel stood high on the jeep’s front seat, frantically and futilely trying to wave the stalled traffic ahead out of the way.
The driver saw McLaren coming and guiltily took his hand off the jeep’s horn.
“Damnit, Greene! Keep honking!” Spittle flew out of the lieutenant colonel’s mouth as he turned to yell at his driver.
“He’ll do nothing of the kind, Colonel.”
The man looked up angrily. “And just who the hell do you think…”
He noticed McLaren’s four stars for the first time and paled even further.
McLaren saw the crossed cannons on the man’s uniform collar and pounced. “What’s your unit, Colonel? And why aren’t you with it?”
The lieutenant colonel’s mouth opened and closed without making any sound.
“Son?”
The PFC stammered out his answer, “We’re with the Two Thirty-Sixth Artillery, General, sir.”
McLaren wheeled on the lieutenant colonel, who’d collapsed back onto the seat. “Your guns are back that way, Colonel, firing support for my forward battalions.” McLaren pointed north. “Now suppose you explain just why the fuck you aren’t up there with ’em.”
The man’s lips quivered as he tried to form a coherent reply, “Had to… had to report to HQ. Wanted to arrange more, uh, more ammo…”
“Bullshit! You were running, mister!” McLaren glared him into silence and turned toward his aide. “Captain Hansen!”
“Yes sir.”
“Place this man under arrest for desertion in the face of the enemy. He’s relieved of his command, effective immediately.”
Hansen stepped forward and led the shaking, teary-eyed officer out of the jeep toward McLaren’s waiting command vehicle. McLaren leaned closer to the jeep’s driver. He spoke more softly. “Now, son. What I want you to do is to wheel this jeep out of this mess and make your way back to your unit. Is your battalion’s XO still there?”
The PFC nodded. “Yes, sir. Major Benson’s in charge, sir.”
“Good. Okay, now you tell Major Benson what’s happened. And you tell him from me that he’s got the battalion now. Got it?”
The PFC nodded again, even more vigorously this time.
“Great. Okay, son, get on your way. And good luck.” McLaren stepped away as the driver snapped him a quick salute and started pulling the jeep off the highway onto the shoulder.
He watched the young private disappear north up the side of the road past the stalled traffic toward the battle line. Then he turned and headed back toward his waiting aides. He had a lot more to do to try to unscramble the situation he and his troops faced.
Captain Lee watched Pyokche burn.
An ROK mechanized infantry battalion had held the town for nearly two hours against overwhelming numbers of North Korean tanks and infantry. Dug in among Pyokche’s tile-roofed houses and small shops, they’d tossed back wave after wave of attackers — buying time for Lee’s combat engineers to dig defenses south of the town.
Now, though, the resistance inside Pyokche was collapsing. The surviving North Korean attackers had pulled back from the open fields surrounding the town and called on their artillery to finish the job. The heavy guns had
