Then he sat down at an old Underwood typewriter, which already—in anticipation of incoming messages—had paper in it. He paused thoughtfully for a moment, and then began to type.
SECRET
2125 28SEP50
FOR MOTHERHEN
FROM TROJANHORSE
POSITIVE INDICATIONS HOTSHOT AT COORDINATES CHARLEY SEVEN SEVEN TWO, MIKE ZERO FOUR
ZERO TWO TO TWELVE HOURS PRIOR TO 0900 28SEP50.
NO CONTACT.
TROJANHORSE AT MONACO 0900 29SEP50. END.
He unrolled the sheet of paper from the typewriter and handed it to the Korean woman. She read it, looked at him, then said, "I will encrypt it if you like."
He nodded.
"I'm going to get something to eat, and then go to bed," he said in Korean. "If I don't hear from you, I will presume Badoeng Strait acknowledges."
She nodded.
"Thank you, Di-San," he said.
She nodded again.
McCoy left the radio room and walked back down the stairs to the ground floor. There was the glaring white light and hissing of a Coleman lantern coming from the dining room, and he went in there.
"I didn't wait," Zimmerman said, unnecessarily, as he mopped the last meat juices from his plate with a piece of bread. "I was starved."
"I got a message off to Billy Dunn," McCoy said.
Zimmerman grunted, and then got up.
"Make sure they wake me for breakfast," he said, and walked out.
McCoy nodded and sat down at the table. The older Korean woman came in almost immediately with a steak and french fried potatoes on a plate. She left and returned in a moment with a bottle of red wine.
The steak was enormous, and he couldn't eat all of it. He drained the wineglass, stood up, and left. He climbed the stairs to the second floor and walked down a dark corridor to and through a heavy door into a large, sparsely furnished room. There was a double bed, neatly made up with sheets and Army blankets. Beside it was a chair. There was a large wooden desk with a Coleman lantern glowing white on it.
Neatly folded on the bed were freshly washed linen, a freshly washed and starched set of Marine utilities, two towels, a facecloth, and a bar of Pond's soap. McCoy wondered where Dunston had found that. Next to the bed was a pair of Army combat boots. Shined Army combat boots.
McCoy sat on the bed and took off the Marine boots he was wearing. Then he took off the fatigue jacket, held it for a moment, and dropped it onto the floor. He stood up, took a Model 1911A1 Colt .45 ACP pistol from the small of his back, and put it on the chair beside the bed. Then he stripped off the rest of his clothes, leaving everything in a pile on the floor.
He took the freshly pressed and starched uniform from the bed and laid it over the pistol on the chair. Then he picked up the clean linen and the towels from the bed and walked to the bathroom door, returning in a moment for the Coleman lantern.
It took a long time for the hot water to work its way up from the boiler in the basement, but finally there was a steady, heavy stream of hot water. He stood under it a long time after he was clean.
Then he put on the underwear, carried the Coleman lantern back into the bedroom, sat on the bed, turned the lantern off, and got between the sheets.
In thirty seconds, he was asleep.
Chapter Three
[ONE]
Hangar 13
Kimpo Airfield (K-16)
Seoul, South Korea
22O5 28 September 195O
As Major McCoy slipped between the clean white sheets of his bed, Captain Howard C. Dunwood, USMCR—who, three months before, had been named "Salesman of the Month" at Mike O'Brien's DeSoto-Plymouth Agency in East Orange, New Jersey—sat in his underwear on the edge of his cot in a shrapnel-riddled hangar forking cold ham chunks and baked beans from an olive-drab Army ration can by the light of a small candle.
And like Major McCoy, Dunwood was fresh from his personal toilette: He had just shaved, then washed his face and crotch and his armpits with water held in a steel helmet. He had then used the same water to wash his change of socks and underwear, using a tiny chunk of soap that had come with a package of Chesterfield cigarettes, a small pack of toilet paper, and some other "comforts" with the field rations.
He actually felt a little guilty about the cot, having been taught, and believing, that officers should enjoy no creature comforts not available to their men. There were only ten folding wooden cots available to the men of Baker Company, 5th Marines.
His supply sergeant—Staff Sergeant Al Preston, USMC, who three months before had been on recruiting duty in Montgomery, Alabama—had "borrowed" them that morning from an Army ration dump in Ascom City, near the port of Inchon, while collecting their daily rations and the mail. There had not been very many rations, and almost no mail.
Preston had passed seven of the ten cots out to the senior noncoms of the company, then carried the remaining three into the officers' quarters—what had apparently been small offices off the hangar floor—and started setting them up.
"Can you go back and get some more cots for the men?" Dunwood had asked.
"Ten's all they had, sir," Preston had replied, then had taken the meaning of the question and added: "R.H.I.P., Skipper."
Dunwood doubted that "Rank Hath Its Privileges" justified his other two officers and himself, and the seven noncoms, having cots when none of the other men of Baker Company would, but he let it go.
The floor of the officers' quarters was concrete, and he wasn't as young as he had been when he had made the Tarawa and Okinawa landings in War Two.
He decided that there was nothing wrong with being as comfortable as he could for as long as he could. Their current status was bound to change, sooner or later and probably sooner than later, and when it changed, things would almost certainly be worse.
Right now, despite the spartan and miserable living conditions in the shrapnel-holed hangar and the lousy rations, things were pretty good, considering the alternative, which was doing what they were supposed to be doing, fighting as a Marine infantry company on the line.
The lines of ambulances and the sound of the firing had made it obvious that taking Seoul back from the North Koreans had been a nasty job. To judge by the sound of artillery, it still was a nasty job.
Baker Company hadn't been involved. They were officially in what some G-3 major had told him was "Division Special Reserve." Exactly what that meant Dunwood didn't know, but he knew the result.
Since Baker Company had landed at Inchon eleven days before, with the exception of some minor harassing and intermittent fire, they had not been involved in any combat at all, and that meant there had been zero KIA, zero WIA, and zero MIA.
It hadn't been that way in the Pusan Perimeter, where the Army general, Walker, admitted publicly that he had used the 5th Marines as his "Fire Brigade," rushing its men in all over to save the Army's ass when it looked as if the North Koreans were about to break through.
There had been a lot of Killed in Action and Wounded in Action in Baker Company in the Pusan Perimeter. When they were pulled off the line so they could board ships and make the Inchon Landing, Baker Company had been down to three officers and ninety-eight men. They were supposed to have five officers and two hundred four men. Dunwood had been able to report zero Missing in Action in the perimeter; he took a little quiet pride in knowing he hadn't left any of his Marines behind.
When they got to the piers in Pusan, expecting to board the USS Clymer or the USS Pickaway, or another of the attack transports that would carry them to Yokohama, where the 1st Marine Division was being assembled, Baker Company had been loaded instead aboard LST-450. And they were the only Marines loaded, although she was big enough to carry a hell of a lot more people.
Just about as soon as they were out of the harbor and the LST's skipper, Lieutenant John X. McNear, USNR, had time for a little chat, he told Dun-wood three things.
First, that he was, like Dunwood, a reserve officer involunta
rily called up for Korea (he had been the golf professional at Happy Hollow Country Club, Phoenix, Arizona). Second, that he had just now sailed LST-450 from Bremerton, Washington, where she had been mothballed. And third, that they were now headed for Sasebo, not Yokohama. He said he had learned that only when he opened a sealed envelope on which was typed "OPEN ONLY WHEN AT SEA," and he hadn't any idea what was going on.
Dunwood had searched his mind for a possible explanation and had come up with very little, except the possibility that Baker Company would be reequipped and brought up to authorized strength at Sasebo.
When they got to Sasebo, Dunwood quickly learned that was not to be the case.- Baker Company, the lieutenant colonel in charge of a team from 1st Marine Division Headquarters told him, had been selected for a "special mission of crucial importance to the landing at Inchon."
The lieutenant colonel made it sound like an honor. Dunwood's experience as a Marine made him suspect it was a euphemistic description of a mission that would get a lot of Marines—probably including him—killed.
Baker Company was shortly thereafter assembled in the gymnasium of the U.S. Naval Base, Sasebo, where, after the windows were covered and guards posted at the doors, the colonel described their mission to them.
It seemed that to reach the landing beaches at Inchon, the invasion fleet would have to traverse the thirty-odd-mile-long Flying Fish Channel. In the channel were a number of islands, two of which, Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do, had to be invested and neutralized twenty-four hours before the invasion fleet arrived, otherwise the enemy could blow large holes in the sides of the transports with ordinary field artillery.
Baker Company had been given the mission, the honor, of investing Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do. Before they landed on the islands from Higgins boats, the islands would of course be subject to an enormous barrage of naval gunfire, which would effectively reduce to minimal the enemy's ability to resist Baker Company's invasion.
Actually, from that perspective, the colonel said, the real mission of Baker Company would be to occupy the two islands and prevent the enemy from coming back and bringing more artillery with them.
Captain Dunwood had gone ashore at Tarawa and Iwo Jima, on each occasion having been assured that following the massive preinvasion barrages of naval artillery to be laid on those islands, resistance would be minimal. That assurance had turned out to be bullshit, and he had therefore concluded that it was logical to presume this one was, too, and that Baker Company had just been handed the short end of the stick.
But he was a Marine, and Marines go where they are ordered to go, and he was a Marine officer, and Marine officers do whatever is humanly possible to reduce Marine losses by the only means that has ever looked like it works— training and more training.
By the time Baker Company reboarded LST-450, Captain Dunwood was sure that ninety-five percent of his Marines hated him for the regimen of training they had gone through under his command. And he was also sure that he had trained them as well and as thoroughly as he knew how, and that would probably result in fewer KIA and WIA than otherwise would have occurred.
At 0415 14 September, as the schedule called for, LST-450 was at the mouth of the Flying Fish Channel, preparing to load the men of Baker Company aboard the Higgins boats for their assault on Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do islands.
Every ear, of course, was listening for the thunder, and every eye the flash, of the massive naval gunfire bombardment that was going to reduce the potential of the North Koreans to repel their assault to minimal. That was scheduled to begin at 0415 and last for a half hour.
At 0445, when Baker Company's Higgins boats were scheduled to depart LST-450 for the beaches of the islands, they were still listening, in vain. There had been some kind of a fuckup, obviously, and there wasn't going to be any massive barrage of naval gunfire.
Or, possibly, Captain Dunwood had thought privately, some candy-ass chair-warming swabbie clerk-typist had made a little mistake typing the order—hitting the "5" instead of the "4"—and there would be a massive barrage of naval gunfire landing on Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do starting at 0515, five minutes after the first Higgins boat touched the shore, and Baker Company would be up to its ass in angry North Koreans.
Marines go where they are ordered to go, with or without massive barrages of naval gunfire to reduce opposition to the minimum.
At 0510, on schedule, the first Higgins boat transporting Baker Company to the Flying Fish Channel Islands touched ashore and dropped its ramp.
Marines ran down the ramp and turned right and left, spreading out, weapons at the ready. Captain Dunwood was in the center of what ultimately was a formation in the shape of a V, holding his carbine in one hand.
"Hold your fire! Hold your fire!" a voice shouted, an obviously American voice.
A figure appeared. He was in black cotton pajamas and had a band of the same material around his forehead. He held his hands over his head in a gesture of surrender.
It soon became apparent that the Marines Had Landed and the situation was well in hand. The first landing had occurred before—long before, weeks before—Baker Company of the 5th Marines had arrived.
The character in the black pajamas was a technical sergeant named Jennings. The second character to appear in black pajamas had identified himself as Captain K. R. McCoy, USMCR, and he said he was "in charge of the operation."
At about that moment—just as Dunwood was trying to reconcile McCoy with some candy-ass Marine he'd clashed with on a plane—the skies lit up and the earth trembled as a massive barrage of naval gunfire began. It flew overhead to land on Wolmi-do Island, miles farther down the Flying Fish Channel.
Captain McCoy explained to Captain Dunwood that the real role of Baker Company in the Inchon Invasion was to retake Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do islands in case something happened to him and his men.
Captain McCoy and his handful of men—some of them Korean—had then gotten into Baker Company's Higgins boats and left. Dunwood never had time to ask Captain McCoy what he was supposed to do next, or even to which Marine unit he belonged, or what was the reason for the black pajamas.
Two days later, other Higgins boats appeared at the island, under a Navy chief bosun's mate who knew only that he had been ordered to the island to pick up Baker Company and transport them to Inchon.
At Inchon, which had just been taken, Baker Company was placed in Division Special Reserve and Dunwood was shown where to bivouac and told to be prepared to move out on twenty minutes' notice.
No such notice ever came, and it had not been necessary for Baker Company to fire a shot. Or, for that matter, to dodge any.
After five days in Division Special Reserve, half a company of amphibious trucks had come to their bivouac area under an old gunnery sergeant who reported that all Captain Strauley had told him was that he was to haul Baker Company to Kimpo Airfield.
By the time they reached Kimpo, the war had moved past the airfield. It was already in use.
Sergeant Preston had come to him within an hour, saying that he'd reconnoitered the field and found a hangar at the far end that was neither in use nor too badly shot up, and why didn't they take it over?
"At least, sir, until the fucking crotch gets its head out of its ass and decides what the fuck to do with us."
Under the circumstances, Captain Dunwood had decided that pending orders, moving into the hangar was the prudent thing to do.
A captain from G-3, Headquarters, 1st Marine Division, had shown up the next day and announced that Baker Company was still in Division Special Reserve and further orders would be forthcoming. He didn't say when, but warned Dunwood to be prepared to move out on four hours' notice, maximum.
Captain Dunwood's plan of action remained the same. Have Baker Company prepared to move out on command, and in the meantime to make his men as comfortable as possible, at the same time making no waves that would call attention to his command.
With a little bit of lu
ck, they might be forgotten again.
When he finished his ham chunks and baked beans, he took a bite of the chocolate bar that came with the rations, spit it out, and decided it had probably already been bad when packaged just before the Civil War.
He slipped his feet into his boondockers, then sort of slid across the concrete floor to the door and went outside the hangar. He put a cigarette in his mouth and reached for his Zippo. Then he went back inside the building and, with his back to the door, lit the cigarette.
He thought it was highly unlikely that a North Korean sniper was lying in the mud out there somewhere, waiting to take a shot at some Marine careless enough to light a cigarette in the open and make a target of himself, but it never hurt to be careful.
Besides, he had warned his men of snipers lying in the mud waiting for a chance to shoot a careless Marine so often that he felt he should practice what he preached.
Holding the cigarette with the coal in his cupped hand, he went outside again, thinking that for the evening's amusement he would watch the red glow of the artillery bounce off the clouds to the northeast of Seoul.
What he saw was the headlights—not the blackout lights—of two jeeps coming down the runway at high speed, and he wondered if no one had ever told them about North Korean snipers lying in the mud, hoping for an opportunity to shoot people foolish enough to run around at night with their headlights blazing.
Surprising him, the jeeps turned off the runway and onto the service road leading to his hangar.
A hundred yards from the hangar, they were stopped by one of Dunwood's perimeter guards. In the headlights, he could see the sentry gesturing toward him. Or, he thought, more accurately, the hangar, as there probably was not enough light to make him visible.
And then the jeeps were on him. There were two. In the first were three officers. The second was an MP jeep with a pedestal-mounted .30-caliber air-cooled Browning machine gun.
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