by Martin Limon
Mr. Won had both feet pressed on the brake pedal, but it wasn’t doing much good. The momentum of the cab was now carrying us downhill at about fifty miles per hour. Around the sharp curves, he was barely maintaining control, drifting toward the left edge of the lane, and the G.I. driver of the truck below seemed to have no idea that he was only a few seconds from impact.
I reached forward across Mr. Won and once again sounded the horn. Beyond a boulder, the truck loomed into view. We went screaming around a curve.
I crouched behind the front seat, covering my head. As I did so, Mr. Won screamed. He veered to the extreme left, trying to avoid a head-on with the truck. The wheels spun on gravel and the cab started tipping to the left. Out of the side window, I glanced down into the abyss. The wheels still had traction and we were moving forward—but two or three more inches to the left and we’d plummet to our deaths. I glanced forward just in time to see the quarter-ton truck barreling toward us. Ernie cursed, grabbed the steering wheel, and shoved it hard to the right. Won let go of the wheel and covered his eyes. Green iron grating flashed in front of me and then something slammed into the rear of the cab. We spun, three, four, five times; and finally, with a jarring thump, came to a shuddering halt in the ditch on the right side of the road.
I sat up. Dust rose around us in an enveloping cloud.
“You all right?” I asked.
“All right,” Ernie replied. He reached for Mr. Won.
“How about you, Baba Louie?”
Won uncovered his eyes, looked around, and started to moan. Ernie and I both climbed out of the cab and pulled him out of the driver’s-side door. We laid him on the edge of the road, searching as we did so for wounds. He didn’t have any.
“He’s just shaken up,” Ernie said.
“He deserves it,” I replied, “for having such lousy brakes.”
On the road above us, the quarter-ton truck continued to churn its way up Mount Halla, oblivious, apparently, to our plight below.
The back of the cab was smashed in.
“You think it’ll still run?” I asked Ernie.
“Won’t know until we try. Give me a shove.”
He climbed into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and thrust the shift into a low gear. On three, he stepped on the gas and I stood behind the cab, pushing it forward. After rocking it three times, the back wheels caught and it climbed out of the ditch. Deftly, Ernie turned the cab around. I helped Mr. Won to his feet, led him to the cab, opened the door, and allowed him to lie down on the back seat. I sat up front with Ernie.
Using the lowest gear possible, bumping against earthen berms when possible, Ernie churned slowly down Mount Halla.
“Shopping?” Ernie asked, incredulous.
“Yeah,” I replied. “We have to go shopping.”
The cannon fired at the Mount Halla Training Facility and the retreat bugle sounded. Up and down the main drag of Nokko-ri, lights were beginning to switch on. In front of the Sea Dragon Nightclub, a red and gold serpent sparkled to life, a lewd tongue flicking out flames.
“It’s time for a wet,” Ernie said. “We’ve done enough work for today. Nearly got ourselves killed, and now you want to go shopping?”
“On the black market.”
“I don’t care what freaking market it is, I’m gonna get a cold one.”
“Where?”
Ernie pointed across the street from the Sea Dragon to the Volcano Bar.
“Okay. I’ll meet you there in a half hour or so.”
Ernie shrugged, thrust his hands in his pockets, and stalked off across the street. He gets like this sometimes, pissed that he doesn’t have an eight-to-five job—especially when happy hour hits.
The woman who ran the Nokko-ri Yoguan told me where to go. Down the street behind a fruit stand in the open-air Nokko-ri Market, everything was on display: web gear, ponchos, rubber overshoes, steel pots, ammo pouches, metal space heaters, canvas tent halves with poles. About the only type of military equipment you couldn’t buy there was weaponry.
I rummaged through the parkas and the heavy overcoats and the gloves and the fur-flapped headgear and the insignia and the badges until I found what I wanted. One set for Ernie. One set for me.
Ernie was drunk.
It wasn’t like him to get blasted so early, but the reason was clear. Next to his frothing brown bottle of OB beer sat a thick glass tumbler, half full of a clear brown liquid. I watched him raise it to his lips, where it was—once again—emptied.
“Yoboseiyo,” Ernie called to the young man behind the bar. “Yogi,” he said, pointing to the empty glass. Dutifully, the young man grabbed a quart of booze from behind the bar, scurried over, and refilled Ernie’s glass. The bottle was labeled Christian Brothers Brandy. What was actually in the bottle was another story; once the import tax is paid and a bottle is revenue-stamped, it is refilled and reused—sometimes for years.
I sat on the bar stool next to Ernie and ordered a beer. He swiveled his head slowly and stared at me.
“You finish your shopping?”
“Yeah,” I said, taking the proffered beer and slapping some money on the bar.
“Find any bargains?” he asked.
I didn’t bother to answer. Ernie was in a surly mood, and I thought I knew why. This was the first time in a while that we’d been away from Marnie Orville and the Country Western All Stars. Maybe he was thinking about her. Maybe he was thinking of her close proximity to her ex, Freddy Ray Embry. Whatever Ernie was thinking, I knew better than to ask. Instead, I surveyed the club.
There was a rock band tuning up, hipless young men with straight hair just covering their ears. Business girls filtered in, chattering about their hairdos and their clothes and occasionally mentioning the American unit that was scheduled to arrive tomorrow. Ernie and I were an anomaly here. Most of the tables were filled with young Korean couples who thought it daring to enter G.I. nightclubs. After the band tortured a couple of numbers, Ernie and I wandered across the street to the Sea Dragon Nightclub. It was quieter there, and darker. Round cocktail tables were lit dimly by lamps covered with red shades. On stage, velvet curtains were drawn shut. Business girls sat alone or in pairs. The bar was empty. We filled it. As if on cue, somebody started up a sound system; some American vocal group singing about the sea.
Instead of a young man behind the bar, a tall Korean woman was wearing a white tuxedo shirt with cummerbund, bow tie, and high collar. Almond eyes shaded in purple stared at us quizzically. Somehow, in the opulence of this joint, beer didn’t seem appropriate. I ordered bourbon on the rocks. Ernie had the same. Within an hour, the joint was packed with young Korean people, well dressed and trendy. Too trendy. I felt as out of place as a tarantula in a kimchee jar. Once again, we were about to leave when a familiar face appeared in the seat next to us.
Warnocki.
He was still wearing his fatigues, and his green beret was still cocked to the side of his round head. He smiled. Without asking, the slender barkeep brought him a beer. With narrow fingers she poured it for him into a glass, white foam bubbling up to the edge. Warnocki laid money down, thanked her, and delicately took a sip. When he set the glass down, he turned to me and said, “You almost bought it on the mountain.”
“You heard about that?”
“Colonel Laurel makes it his business to hear about everything.”
“Has he decided to cooperate yet,” Ernie asked, “and show us the morning report? Lives are at stake.”
Warnocki’s smile didn’t change. “Your request has already hit Special Ops. They’re taking it under advisement.”
I swiveled on my bar stool and stared Warnocki right in the eye. “So, what do you think, Warnocki? Do you think the Blue Train rapist could be one of your Green Berets?”
“Sure,” he replied, still smiling. “And if it is, you’d better hope you never catch him.”
The flesh on his face didn’t move, but somehow his grin grew even larger.
Ernie stood up. W
arnocki leaned back on his bar stool, holding up both hands in mock surrender. Then he grabbed his glass, downed it in two huge gulps, wiped his mouth and, still grinning, slid off his bar stool and sauntered carelessly away, cocking his beret a little farther to the side as he pushed through the padded double doors of the Sea Dragon Nightclub.
Early the next morning, we took a cab away from Nokko-ri and headed toward the ocean. When I told the driver to let us off at the intersection of the main coastal highway, he seemed astonished.
“Wei-yo?” he asked. Why?
There was nothing in any direction except the sandy coastline and rice paddies.
“Don’t worry,” I told him and paid him what I owed him.
After he drove away, Ernie turned to me and said, “What are we doing way the hell out here?”
“Waiting for a bus,” I said.
“What bus?”
“The one that is bringing Bravo Battery, Second of the Seventeenth Field Artillery, from the Cheju Airport to the Mount Halla Training Facility.”
Last night I had persuaded the owner of the Nokko-ri Yoguan to do a little ironing for me. In the morning, the two uniforms I had purchased on the black market were waiting for us, patches sewn on, boots shined, brass belt buckles polished. Ernie put his on, grumbling, but finally acquiesced to what he referred to as one of my “crazy plans.” Then we’d taken the cab out to this intersection to wait. After twenty minutes, three green army buses rolled up. I waved down the first one. The Korean driver stared out at me, smiling. I climbed aboard, Ernie right behind me.
We were wearing pressed fatigue uniforms and matching fatigue caps, and also black leather armbands that said: Cadre, Mount Halla Training Facility. To clinch the illusion, I had stuck a pencil behind my ear and carried a clipboard. The world always welcomes a man with a clipboard.
“Welcome to Mount Halla,” I shouted to the men in the bus and then turned around and told the driver to move out. Nobody questioned us. They figured we were just some sort of advance party escorting them to the compound. Ernie and I found a spot in the back of the bus and sat down. Within ten minutes, the convoy of three buses had stopped at the big chain-link main gate of the Mount Halla Training Facility. The dispatches were checked and, once everything was found to be in order, a Korean guard swung the gate open.
When the buses reached the edge of the central parade field, they stopped. Special Forces trainers wearing blue helmet liners stood outside, shouting.
“Move! I want every swinging dick off that bus and standing in formation. Now! All I want to see is assholes and elbows. Let’s go!”
Within seconds the men had filed off the bus and were standing in formation in the center of the parade field. Before the last G.I. stepped off the bus, Ernie and I crouched behind seats in the back. The driver, thinking the bus was empty, closed the door and slowly started to turn the vehicle around. Before he reached the main gate, I stood up and hurried forward.
“Let us off here, Ajjosi,” I said.
He was startled, but years of aberrant G.I. behavior had prepared him for anything. He stopped the bus and opened the door, and Ernie and I hopped off. We left our armbands on the bus, but I kept my clipboard. After the bus pulled away, we slipped into the shadow of a Quonset hut.
“Where to?” Ernie asked.
I glanced at my clipboard. “Munoz, Sergeant E-five, and Amos, Walker R., SFC. Those are the two guys we have to talk to.”
“So how do we find them?”
“Moolah the hell out of me.” And then I spotted street signs on a pole. White arrows pointed in four directions. One of them said S-3 Training. We followed it and soon found a Quonset hut marked Mount Halla Training Command. In the distance, angry voices shouted and, in unison, dozens of boots pounded on dirt. As best I could tell, the G.I.s were being divided up into smaller groups and marched to the various training stations, rappelling or commando tactics or whatever other edifying courses Colonel Laurel had cooked up for them.
We tried the front door. Locked.
“They’re all out there with the troops,” Ernie said.
“You check on that side,” I said. “I’ll meet you out back.”
Ernie nodded and trotted around the corner.
What we were looking for was an open window, a door, anything so we could gain access. Before I reached the rear, Ernie was already whistling. The back door of the Quonset hut was also locked, but one of the windows was filled with an air-conditioning unit. It wasn’t turned on, and there was enough space between the metal casing and the windowsill to reach inside the building.
“Let me have that clipboard,” Ernie said.
I handed it to him and Ernie used the metal clip to pry a rusty nail that held the overhead sliding window in place. Once the nail started to budge, he pulled on it with his fingers and, after much twisting and rotating, it popped free. I performed a similar operation on the other side of the window and we slid it upward, giving us about two feet of open space above the air conditioner.
I knelt down and Ernie stepped up on my back. As he slid his upper torso above the air conditioner, I braced him and pushed on the bottom of his boots.
“Whoa!” he said. “Not so fast.”
After groping in the dark room, he finally found a handhold atop a filing cabinet and pulled himself inside. About thirty seconds later, he’d opened the back door. It was dark inside, so I turned on the lights.
“Someone will see,” he said.
“They’re busy,” I replied. “Besides, if I find what I’m looking for, this shouldn’t take long.”
In fact, it didn’t take long at all. Military men love wall charts, the bigger and gaudier the better. This one was marked Schedule of Assignments. The name of every Special Forces trainer was listed on the left, including Staff Sergeant Warnocki and even Lieutenant Colonel Laurel. Warnocki, apparently, was the rappelling expert, and Colonel Laurel taught every class concerning diving. Sergeant Munoz, the man Specialist Vance had told us about, was indeed blocked out on leave for the past four weeks, having returned to duty yesterday, Friday. It would be easy enough to find out for sure if he’d actually traveled to Puerto Rico, but for the moment I would assume he had. Sergeant First Class Walker R. Amos, the man who carried the ration-control cards to Seoul, wasn’t blocked out at all on the chart. His specialty was apparently Survival, Escape and Evasion.
“That can come in handy on a train,” Ernie said.
On the opposite wall, we found a map of the compound. The mock prisoner-of-war camp was clearly marked.
Ernie and I did our best to mingle with the trainees. They stood in a loose formation inside the main gate of the “Volcano POW Camp.” It was nothing more than a few wooden shacks surrounded by concertina wire. We didn’t see anyone there other than trainees.
“Where are the Green Berets?” I asked one of the G.I. trainees.
“Inside the biggest shack,” he said. “They’re taking us in there two at a time.”
“For what?”
“Hell if I know. But none of the guys who’ve gone in so far have come out.”
Ernie and I stepped away to talk about it. Neither one of us was armed.
“You have your handcuffs?” I asked.
“I’d feel naked without ’em,” Ernie replied, patting the small of his back.
“So we have to take him down quick and clean, before any of his buddies have time to react.”
“Okay. So, how do we do that?”
“Pretend we’re a couple of trainees, to put him off guard.”
We stepped toward the front of the formation. Nobody complained. None of the G.I.s were anxious to go in first anyway. In about five minutes, two men stepped out of the shack. They were probably Special Forces trainers, but you couldn’t tell by their uniforms. They were wearing the dark green-and-red epaulette combat gear of the Warsaw Pact. One of the men was white, the other black. They pointed at Ernie and me and said, “Move it.”
Ernie and I trotted forward
.
“On the ground!” one of them shouted.
We both dropped to the low crawl position and then they started kicking us—not hard, but firmly enough to get us moving. Eating dust, we crawled into the shack. So far, we couldn’t be sure how many trainers there were or which one was SFC Amos. On their mock Communist uniforms, they didn’t wear name tags. Ernie and I continued to play along. The shack was dark, illuminated by only one yellow light.
“All right,” one of our captors said. “If you’re dumb enough to be captured and locked up by the enemy, then you’re going to be treated like the complete idiots you are. And often, the only means of escape is through tunneling. Like rats.”
One of the captors kicked me. “You know how to dig holes?”
I shook my head.
He kicked me again. “Speak up!”
“No!” I shouted.
“I didn’t think so. So we’ve already dug a hole for you. Check under that bunk over there. You have ten seconds to find it.”
Ernie and I crawled forward and beneath a rickety wooden bunk there was flooring made of the same splintery planks. Ernie clawed at them and within seconds managed to pull one of the planks up. I pulled another and soon we had revealed a dark pit that dropped into the ground.
Behind us, automatic fire. Blanks, I knew, but the sound reverberated like thunder and the air filled with acrid smoke.
“Beat it!” one of the captors shouted. “Get out! Through the tunnel!”
Ernie slid down first. I followed.
It was completely dark down here and so narrow that my shoulders dragged against dirt. The air was tight. Occasionally Ernie’s boots kicked mud back into my face.
What were we doing down here? We should’ve arrested those guys up in the shack, but if they resisted we probably wouldn’t have been able to take them both down. Besides, we weren’t even sure yet which one was Sergeant Amos. If it was the black guy, I was toast. I was betting it was the white guy. He was about the right height and he was certainly strong enough to overpower the women and make his escape over the high fences at Anyang. But so far, because of his cap, I hadn’t even seen the color of his hair.