Red Phoenix

by Larry Bond

  “We can have diesel fuel here in about forty-five minutes,” Lee said. “Don’t worry, Captain. It will take us several hours to drill and blast a ramp.”

  Chadwick was climbing all over one of the tanks, opening its hatches and peering inside, when two colonels — one an American and the other South Korean — arrived, followed by a panting squad of heavily laden riflemen. The opportunity was just too good to pass up, so he stood at attention on the deck, saluted, and grinned at the two senior officers. “It followed me home, sir. Can I keep it?”

  The senior American liaison officer with the South Korean combat engineers, Colonel Miller, just shook his head. “Report, Captain.” But Chadwick could see the ghost of a smile flit across Miller’s face.

  Chadwick jumped down and saluted again. “Sir, there’s at least a battalion of armor parked in the tunnel. All T-62 tanks, parked three abreast. Standing up on the deck there, you can see them going back until the light runs out. They aren’t fueled, but they do have main gun ammunition.”

  “All right. Get the men checking out the vehicles for documents and other portable intelligence. Don’t forget external markings. I understand we may be able to recover some of these?”

  “The engineers think so, sir,” Chadwick said, nodding to Lee. The Korean was heavily engaged with his colonel, who was nodding and smiling.

  “Then let’s get on with it. You and Captain Lee take your party down the tunnel and see what else is there. Take lots of pictures. Proceed no further than one-half klick, starting from this point. Consider this the line of departure, but don’t start a war, Captain.” The warning in the colonel’s voice was real.

  “Yessir.” Chadwick waved over to Lee, who had just saluted his own departing colonel. It was the first time he’d ever seen a Korean field-grade officer move at anything except a dignified walk.

  They moved forward slowly, an officer in front on each side, followed by three heavily armed enlisted men.

  Chadwick looked at his watch. It was just two-thirty in the afternoon. Topside it was ninety-five degrees and climbing, but the tunnel was as cool as his basement back home. Their handheld flashlights provided the only source of light. The tunnel had taken many slight bends since they had entered, and more since the start of the equipment. Probably done to avoid difficult rock formations and to confuse anyone trying to plot the progress of the tunnel from above. In any event, no light would reach from either end, so he got into the habit of calling out “Photo” before he took a picture. That gave everyone a chance to cover their eyes and avoid the painful flash.

  Lee concentrated on the tunnel itself, doing a hasty survey of distances and directions.

  Chadwick counted tanks. There were thirty-one, the book strength of an armored battalion. Behind were trucks, jeeps, and all the other hardware. Someone with an orderly mind had put this stuff in here. He could almost predict what would come next.

  What the hell was all this stuff doing down here in the first place? There’d always been speculation that the North Koreans intended some of their tunnels as more than just infiltration routes into the South. But this kind of confirmation was spectacular and completely unexpected. It did make a twisted kind of military sense, though. Stockpiling gear like this in advance would cut down the preparation time needed to launch a major attack across, or under, the DMZ, and it would lower the warning time available to U.S. and South Korean forces along the line. But how could the North Koreans have possibly thought this kind of gear could just lie here undetected, year in and year out, until it was needed? He filed the question away for further consideration later. There was just too much to do right now.

  After the tanks the vehicles were only parked two abreast, leaving one lane open. Chadwick guessed that the fueling trucks were next, and he was rewarded by the sight of large, fat-bodied tankers designed to carry the diesel that T-62 tanks guzzled by the gallon. They marched along through the trucks, passed a row of towed 122mm field guns, and suddenly came out into just empty blackness. They stood facing north, looking into the tunnel, regarding the dark and wondering what else was there.

  Lee spoke first. “I think we should continue on, Captain. We should find out what else is down here.”

  “How far have we come so far?”

  “Only about five hundred meters more. It is at least another five hundred meters until we are under the border.”

  Chadwick felt his excitement fading a bit, allowing a dose of reality to creep back in. “Yeah, but we’re under the DMZ now. Come on, Captain, we’ve captured a communist armored battalion without a shot being fired. Let’s quit while we’re ahead.”

  Torn between his orders, common sense, and curiosity, Lee stood still for a moment and then shrugged in resignation, “All right. Should we survey this equipment then?”

  “Yeah. I’d like to have Corporal Rhee assign men to copying license plates and markings and stuff. You and I can start looking for the command tank. It’s probably back toward the — ”

  A tremendous BOOM rolled down the tunnel followed by a CLANG from one of the nearby vehicles. For one microsecond Chadwick thought they had started blasting up the tunnel, but the clang didn’t fit. Then the pieces fell together: a shot echoing from ahead of them and a bullet ricocheting off metal.

  His hindbrain had his body moving even while he shouted, “Hostiles! Cover!” He dropped back behind the bulky tires of one of the towed artillery pieces. Without thinking, one hand switched the flashlight off, and the other drew his pistol. He didn’t even know it was out until he tried to work the slide while still holding the flashlight.

  Stay cool. Chadwick took a short breath, held it, and crouched back farther behind the tire. All the lights were out, except for one that had been dropped and had rolled into the open center of the tunnel, throwing strange, distorted shadows onto the smooth rock walls. Chadwick could still hear the echoes of that first shot bouncing down the tunnel.

  Before it faded away entirely, a new burst of fire struck around the dropped flashlight. Bullets spanged off the floor and ricocheted into vehicles and the walls. One slammed a South Korean private onto his back in a widening pool of red-black blood. Another threw a man forward, his hands clutching vainly at a face that wasn’t there anymore. The sixth or seventh shot hit the light and shattered it.

  The tunnel plunged suddenly into an eerie, half-lit darkness. And in the silence Chadwick heard voices echoing from ahead. North Korean voices.

  Flames stabbed out of the darkness, muzzle flashes growing larger as the North Koreans charged forward. They were firing from the hip, spraying rounds across the tunnel. Lee’s men shot back, aiming at the flashes, and Chadwick saw bodies tossed crumpled to the rock floor as bullets caught them. But the attackers were still coming.

  He flattened as a point-blank burst tore rubber fragments off the tire above him and whipcracked overhead. Jesus! The North Koreans were too damned close, and there were too damned many of them. He felt the fear clutching his guts, urging him to stand up and run. He fought the temptation. Running was the quickest way to get killed.

  Something heavy thumped against the tire and Chadwick rolled away to the side. Still rolling, he saw a strange combat boot and looked up. A North Korean crouched there, bringing his AK-47 assault rifle up and around to fire. Oh, God. Chadwick’s finger tightened convulsively on the trigger of his pistol. It roared once and then again and again as he squeezed off rounds without thinking.

  Four. Five. No more, his brain screamed. Chadwick took his finger off the trigger and he looked at the twitching ruin his bullets had made. Two rounds had ripped into the North Korean’s stomach, eviscerating him. The third and fourth, climbing higher as the pistol bucked upward, had torn through the man’s chest. The fifth and final round had blown a gaping hole in the North Korean’s throat.

  Chadwick felt his own stomach lurch and he swallowed hard against the sour taste of vomit. He’d never killed a man before and didn’t like the feeling. He wormed backward behind another t
ire, away from the corpse.

  Safe in cover again, he stared wide-eyed at the scene around him. Bodies littered the tunnel floor, some lying in twisted, bloodied heaps, others splayed against vehicles. None were moving. Chadwick felt his self-control returning.

  His hearing was coming back, too. It was hard to tell, but the gunfire seemed quieter somehow. He shook his head, trying to clear the ringing in his ears, and listened more carefully. Then he risked a quick look around the tire and saw Lee on the other side of the tunnel, backlit by the muzzle flashes from his submachine gun. Nobody was shooting back.

  Chadwick waited for a few seconds more to make sure and then bellycrawled over to where Lee crouched, staying low and hoping that the surviving South Koreans weren’t firing completely blind.

  He tugged on Lee’s belt and pointed down the tunnel, yelling, “That’s it! They’re all dead or bugged out!” He had to repeat it twice to make himself understood above the din.

  The South Korean engineer nodded, pulled a whistle out from around his neck, and blew three short blasts. Cease fire. Cease fire. The shooting died away and their hand-held flashlights came back on.

  Lee shouted orders in Korean and walked warily with his men out into the open. M16s at the ready, they moved among the motionless bodies, checking for wounded. There weren’t any. Four South Koreans were dead and nine North Koreans lay sprawled beside them. Blood trails showed where others had been dragged back into the pitch-dark tunnel.

  Chadwick moved over to Lee, his pistol still in hand. He felt oddly calm, as if the firefight had happened to an entirely different person. “Captain, you and I both know that was just a patrol. But you can bet they’ll be back any minute with the whole goddamned army.”

  “I agree. We must mine this equipment in place and destroy it. I’ll send for thermite and explosives. We can wire everything in five minutes once it arrives.”

  Chadwick looked at the bullet holes ripped through one of the fuel trucks and then shook his head wearily. “Shit, I hope we’ve got that long.”

  Men started to pour down the sides of the tunnel from behind them. Three troopers came clattering up carrying a machine gun and ammunition. They flopped down to the floor about ten meters past the vehicles and started setting up. The machine gun had a large tube on top that Chadwick suddenly realized must be a night-sight. Jim-dandy. If the North Koreans came back, at least the MG would get the first shot.

  He watched the engineers at work, marveling at the way they disregarded safety instructions and normal procedures. Cases of C4 were placed on the back of each vehicle and simultaneously wired. Thermite charges were scattered around, and a large number of cases were simply piled on the floor.

  They worked as quietly as they could, but they had to use lights, and Chadwick knew what kind of target they must make.

  They were still working when a sound like tearing canvas echoed down the tunnel. The machine gun team had opened up. Lee shouted something and the men started working even faster, not placing any new charges but wiring all the existing stuff to a single cord and running down the tunnel with it, back toward the opening. The machine gun’s fire was being answered now, with single shots and short bursts of automatic fire.

  Chadwick saw a round shape roll out of the blackness and dove for cover behind an empty, bullet-shredded fuel truck.

  WHUMMP. The floor rocked as the North Korean grenade exploded, spraying fragments through the machine gun crew. The gunner screamed once and fell back dead. His two loaders lay badly wounded beside him, and the machine gun itself was a twisted wreck.

  Then the carnage disappeared from view, cloaked by a wall of acrid, lung-searing smoke that now filled the tunnel — cutting visibility to just a few meters. Hundreds of rounds buzzed past and tumbled bouncing off the walls. It seemed impossible to move without being shot. Both sides were firing blind as fast as they could reload.

  More South Korean troops arrived, hurdling the prone combat engineers still frantically placing and wiring charges. Several were hit in midstride and collapsed in a tangle of equipment. The rest flopped down behind whatever cover they could find — truck tires, empty explosives crates, or bodies — and opened up.

  Chadwick stayed where he was and looked for Lee. The engineer squatted nearby, his face a mask of concentration as he wrapped wire around a lead. Lee finished tightening it and glanced up. He flashed a thumbs-up signal in Chadwick’s direction and reached for another charge.

  Something blared sharp above the gunfire, and Chadwick’s mind rocked. A bugle. My God, he thought, the North Koreans are still using bugles. Suddenly he felt very close to his father, who’d told him about the human-wave attacks launched during the Korean War.

  He clutched his pistol tighter.

  WHUMMP! WHUMMP! WHUMMP! More grenades went off in rapid succession, thundering down the tunnel, showering the defenders with deadly fragments. More dust and smoke followed, turning everything into a hazy nightmare.

  A squad of North Korean soldiers charged out of the smoke, urged on by their bugler. They were cut down by concentrated rifle fire, but there were others close behind them and the bugle kept blaring.

  Chadwick heard screams and yells of defiance rising from the men around him. A burly South Korean sergeant rose from behind a truck, stood braced against the recoil, and emptied his M16’s magazine into the oncoming North Koreans. Four of them were knocked backward, their bodies, faces, and limbs disintegrating as the bullets slammed home. But then the sergeant was down, chopped nearly in half by an AK burst.

  Time blurred as the fighting moved to close quarters.

  Chadwick saw a North Korean run past, helmeted head down, pounding straight toward the engineers still working. He aimed quickly and fired twice. The soldier staggered and then slid dead to the tunnel floor.

  He spun round as another came from the side, assault rifle swinging high to smash his skull. Chadwick dodged right and felt the rifle butt hammer his left arm. He gasped at the pain and fired once into the man’s stomach. The North Korean folded in on himself in agony and collapsed.

  Chadwick sank to his knees cradling his left arm. It felt on fire.

  “Captain Chadwick!”

  He looked up in a daze. There were bodies everywhere in sight, sprawled like torn rag dolls across the tunnel. Lee motioned to him again. They were leaving. Several soldiers were still firing into the haze, trying to pin the North Koreans down, but the others were backing away — hauling their wounded with them and staying low.

  Chadwick scuttled over to the South Korean engineer. “You done?” The smoke hanging in the air burned his throat.

  Lee nodded vigorously. “Everything is wired.” He jerked a thumb south toward the exit. “I suggest that we get out of here while we still can!”

  The bugle shrilled again from down the tunnel.

  Shit. The harsh rattle of AK-47 fire grew louder, and new shapes appeared out of the haze. Another North Korean attack. One of Lee’s men turned to yell a warning and pitched backward, shot directly between the eyes.

  Chadwick grabbed the dead man’s M16 and fired a burst down the tunnel, wincing as the recoil jarred his left arm. One of the North Koreans dropped in a spray of blood. The others scattered, seeking cover.

  “Come on, Captain! This is no time for heroics!” Lee put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him away. A bullet cracked past his face, bringing him back to his senses. The engineer was right. It was past time to leave.

  Together with the other rearguard troops, they turned and headed down the tunnel — moving as fast as they could without unnecessarily exposing themselves to enemy fire. The bugle continued to sound behind them.

  They reached the first row of T-62s before the North Koreans realized they were going. Rounds started to slam into the vehicles and the rock around them. Jesus. Chadwick and the others all broke into a flat-out run. Something tugged at his sleeve and he saw the man running in front of him fall, a stain spreading across his battle dress.

  He reac
hed down and grabbed the South Korean’s arm, trying to drag him to his feet. He couldn’t do it.

  “Leave him! He’s finished!” Lee screamed in his ear over the gunfire and pulled him onward. Chadwick obeyed.

  They ran on, letting the fear they were feeling flow into their legs.

  Harsh cries and the slap of running feet echoed down the tunnel from behind them.

  Panting, they rounded the last bend and saw sunlight from the opening in the roof along with something even more welcome — two rope ladders dangling, waiting for them. Chadwick didn’t even break stride. He hit the ladder four feet up and started climbing. The pain in his arm suddenly didn’t matter at all. The troops waiting above exhorted them on, while Lee’s sergeant marked their progress from a detonator box.

  As soon as their shoulders cleared the opening, they were grabbed by a man on each side and half-dragged away from the hole. When they were well away, the sergeant screamed a warning in Korean and pressed the plunger.

  It wasn’t a very neat explosion. First, only a small, muffled boom, then a thundering roar, then a series of several teeth-rattling THUDS. The rippling lasted for a few seconds, and then a shock wave too loud to be called a sound slammed them into the ground. Flame, smoke, and shattered rock toppled away from the hole in slow motion as the ground subsided into a shallow, crooked gully leading north. The tunnel had collapsed.

  Chadwick decided he really didn’t need to get up right away, and he looked over at the rest of the men, who were in various stages of befuddlement. Lee shook his head like a punch-drunk prizefighter and lay panting on the ground.

  After a while Chadwick levered himself to his feet and walked over to stare at the man-made gully that had become the graveyard of an entire North Korean armored battalion and its security detachment. He stayed motionless for several minutes and only gradually became aware that Captain Lee had joined him.

  Lee smiled wanly through the dust that caked his face and uniform. “You see, we were able to catch those communists after all.”