Retreat, Hell! tc-10

by W. E. B Griffin

  Mrs. Mitchell took Major Pickering's arm and he led her from the limou­sine to a line of folding chairs set up under a tent.

  The pallbearers carried the casket from the hearse and began to set it down on the casket-lowering machine.

  "Oh, God," Mrs. Babs Mitchell said softly. "I guess this is really it. Oh, Dick!"

  When Pick looked down at her, tears were rolling down her cheeks and she had a handkerchief to her mouth, trying to hold back the sobs.

  Without thinking about it, Pick put his arm around her shoulders.

  Then she gave in to the sobs.

  Pick gave her a comforting squeeze.

  She took a deep breath, exhaled audibly, took the handkerchief from her mouth, and looked up at him.

  "Thank you," she said. "I'll be all right."

  He removed his arm from her shoulders.

  The priest took up his position at the head of the casket and began the graveside service.

  On the curved driveway outside the Ocean View, Major Pickering told Mrs. Babs Mitchell that he was sorry but he was going to have to get back to the hospital.

  "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine. But my pass is about to expire."

  "Thank you for coming," Mrs. Babs Mitchell said.

  "It was an honor."

  "No, I mean it," she said. "Thank you."

  She stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek, and he felt again the pressure of her bosom against him.

  "I'll come to see you," she said. "All right?"

  "That would be very nice."

  Now, why the fuck did I say that?

  You're a highly skilled liar with a good imagination.

  Why couldn't you come up with something clever that would cut this off once and for good right now?

  He shook hands with Mrs. Babs Mitchell's mother and Captain Mitchell's parents, and turned and walked down the curved driveway toward a taxi stand without looking back.

  Chapter Eighteen

  [ONE]

  The President's Office

  Blair House

  Pennsylvania Avenue

  Washington, D.C.

  19OO 2 November 195O

  "Who's this Lieutenant Colonel. . . Vandenburg?" the President of the United States asked after reading McCoy's message.

  "He's the officer the Pentagon sent to see if General Dean could be rescued," Major General Ralph Howe said. "I suggested that he be transferred to the CIA to keep him out of Willoughby's hands."

  "I remember now. It says here he's the Seoul station chief," Truman said.

  "After I got your message about him, Mr. President," Walter Bedell Smith said, "I told General Bradley that was your desire. He placed him on indefinite duty with the CIA, and I so notified General Pickering. I can only suppose Gen­eral Pickering designated him as Seoul station chief."

  "Good man?"

  "General Bradley thought he was the best man for that job," Smith said. "I mean, trying to get General Dean back."

  "Ralph?"

  "First-class man, Mr. President. I understand why he and the Killer get along so well."

  "So well that he'd going along with ... I'm not going to call that young man 'Killer' . . . McCoy because they're pals?"

  "No, sir," Howe said firmly. "He would not."

  "Vandenburg's the fellow who stole General Walker's airplane, right?"

  "Mr. President, I said nothing of the kind," Howe said, smiling. "But I admit that he's probably justifiably high on the list of suspects."

  "Huh," the President snorted. "Well, you say he's a good man, and he goes along with McCoy all the way. Where does that leave us?"

  "I think there is no longer any question that there are substantial numbers of Red Chinese in Korea, Mr. President," Howe said.

  "I never really doubted that. What about this business about the Chinese sending us a message?"

  "I don't know, sir. I'd bet on McCoy."

  "Okay. Let's take that as a given. So what do we do about it?"

  "First thing this morning, Mr. President," Smith said, "I checked with the Pentagon. There was nothing in the overnight messages from the Dai Ichi Building suggesting that the Supreme Command has changed its mind about the Red Chinese coming in."

  "That makes things difficult, doesn't it?" Truman said. "I find myself in the position of agreeing with a major—and a lieutenant colonel—and disagreeing with a five-star general who Ralph, General Pickering, and ninety percent of the American people think is a military genius."

  "Mr. President, may I make a suggestion?"

  "I'm wide open for suggestions."

  "You could have the Army urgent-message General MacArthur saying they have intelligence suggesting there has been a substantial movement of ChiCom forces to the border and probably across it. And what does General MacArthur think?"

  "Why not just send him a message saying the CIA has interrogated four se­nior Chinese Communist officers?" Truman asked. Then he added: "Don't bother to answer that. I can't do that, because they know who the CIA people there are, and we're right back to me telling a five-star military genius he's wrong."

  "I think Beetle's idea is a good one, Mr. President," General Howe said.

  Truman looked directly at him for perhaps thirty seconds.

  "Okay," he said finally. "That's what we'll do. But I want you to write the message, Ralph."

  "Why me, Mr. President?"

  "Because, of the three of us, you're the only one who really knows Emperor Douglas the First. I don't think we had an hour together on Wake Island. And God only knows what kind of a message he'd get from the Pentagon if Smith just told them I wanted a message sent. Either it would be mostly an apology for questioning his genius, or it would be designed to get a response they know would make me mad. What I want him to do when he gets the message is per­sonally think it over, and not just buck it down to General Willoughby. You know how to phrase it to make him do that."

  "Okay. Good thinking," Howe said thoughtfully.

  "And when you two have finished writing it, I want you, Smith, to take it to the Pentagon, give it to General Bradley, and tell him I want it sent as-is and right now."

  "He's not going to like that, Harry . . . Mr. President," Howe said.

  "He doesn't have to like it. I'm not sure about some of the others, but I am absolutely sure General Bradley knows who is Commander-in-Chief," Tru­man said.

  "Will there be anything else, Mr. President?" Howe asked.

  "Yes," the President said. "Get me the names of those Marines who are missing, the 'stay-behinds' who got caught. When this is over, I want to write their families."

  "That's very generous of you, Mr. President—" Smith began.

  " 'Generous' is not the word," Truman interrupted him.

  "I was about to say, sir, it is generous of you to find the time."

  "Abraham Lincoln did it when he was living across the street," Truman said. "And as bad as things are, things were worse for him when he did it."

  "Yes, sir," Smith said.

  "I'll get the names and addresses of the next of kin, Mr. President," Smith said.

  "And that reminds me," the President said. "What about the Navy Cross for Pickering's son?"

  "The commandant assures me, Mr. President, that the decoration will be awarded within the next forty-eight hours. And he told me that yesterday. He may have it already."

  "Okay. Thank you."

  [TWO]

  8O23d Transportation Company (Depot, Forward)

  Hamhung, North Korea

  1Z3S 2 November 195O

  The maps Captain Francis P. MacNamara had obtained from the X Corps Engineer—not without difficulty; maps were in short supply—showed that it was approximately sixty miles by highway from Wonsan to Hamhung, and a few miles farther, no highway, to Hungnam, which was on the Sea of Japan.

  The problem was that this was Korea, where a highway was any two-lane paved road, and the definition of "paved" was loose. It often meant that it was paved wi
th a thin layer of gravel. Furthermore, the road—there was only one "highway"—had not been built to withstand the traffic now moving up it, in terms of either weight or numbers.

  The United States X Corps was on the move. The order had been issued to advance to the Chinese border. That meant not only the American 7th In­fantry Division and 1st Marine Division, and the four ROK Divisions, which were "up front," but the mind-boggling support and logistical train needed to support it.

  It wasn't simply a question of supplying the attacking divisions with food, fuel, and ammunition, or even also moving their supporting tactical units, the separate tank and artillery battalions, and so on—and their food, fuel, and am­munition—but the nonfighting units had also been ordered moved out of Wonsan. These ranged from Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals to Quartermas­ter Ration Depots, Ordnance Ammunition Supply Points, down to smaller units such as Water Purification Platoons, Shower Points, and a Mobile Den­tal Surgical Detachment.

  Into this mix, all trying to move up the same winding, crumbling, narrow two-lane "highway," Colonel T. Howard Kennedy, the X Corps Transportation Officer, had added Captain MacNamara's 8023d Transportation Company (Depot, Forward) and the Replacement Company of the 7th United States In­fantry Division.

  It was worse than anything MacNamara had seen in France in World War II, and when he first got into the line of moving vehicles, he had used his experience in France to predict that it would take six hours to move the sixty miles. It took eighteen.

  Not all of that time—in fact very little—was spent on the move. Most of it was spent stopped, as units, or individual vehicles, with a higher priority passed them on the left lane. The basic rule of thumb was that medical sup­plies went first, then ammunition, then food.

  Overworked, and thus sometimes snarling, military policemen guided high-priority convoys onto the left lane, past stopped convoys with lesser priorities.

  The first military police officer Captain MacNamara encountered had asked him for his movement priority, which would then be painted on the lead ve­hicle for the edification of military police along the route.

  "Verbal orders of the X Corps Transportation Officer," MacNamara had replied, with as much assurance as he could muster. "The colonel said, 'Time is of the essence.' "

  The MP officer, also a captain, had smiled at him.

  "Good try, Captain," he said, and dabbed a blue paint circle on the wind­shield of MacNamara's jeep. Within an hour or so, MacNamara understood that the blue circle indicated a priority way down on the list.

  Several times MacNamara seriously considered replacing the blue circle with a yellow one. Yellow seemed to represent the priority immediately after ra­tion trucks, and there was an assortment of paint in one of the mobile work­shops he had included in the first convoy, but he decided against it. For one thing, it didn't seem right, and for another, he didn't want another letter of rep­rimand in his service record, which he would get, sure as Christ made little green apples, if he was caught.

  He wondered how long it was going to take him to return from wherever he was going in the Hamhung-Hungnam area to Wonsan. The southbound lane, so to speak, of the highway was usually crowded with northbound vehi­cles with a priority. Only a few vehicles were passing him going south.

  He wondered if maybe he could somehow get a message to the officers he had left behind, telling them to saddle up and get moving as soon as they could because he would not be returning. In the end, he decided against this, too. It was his responsibility to go back and set things up, and he would.

  Sixteen and a half hours after MacNamara had left Wonsan, he was again stopped in the right lane as priority convoys passed him in the left. Another MP officer, this one a lieutenant, came southward down the shoulder of the road in a jeep.

  "Where are you headed, Captain?"

  "Hamhung, Hungnam," MacNamara replied.

  "Which?"

  "I don't know. I have to find somewhere to set up—on the highway, prefer­ably. I'm a vehicle replacement outfit. And I've got the advance party of the 7th Repple-Depple with me. They need a place too."

  "When I come back, say, in thirty minutes or so, you—just you—follow me. The turn off to Hamhung's about five miles up the road. You can find a place, or places, to set up while the rest of your convoy is still on the highway."

  MacNamara had little trouble finding a suitable area for the 8023d. It was about half a mile in on the turnoff to Hamhung. The only thing wrong with it was that it was terraced, which would seem to indicate that it had once been a rice paddy, or paddies.

  It was dry now, and obviously hadn't been a rice paddy for some years. That left the question in his mind: How long would human shit contaminate a rice paddy?

  He had no idea. But it didn't matter. He had seen enough of the area to know that the terrain was either rocky hills or flat areas that either were or once had been a rice paddy. He thought the one he had chosen didn't smell all that rotten, but on the other hand, he had smelled so many rotten things since ar­riving in the Land of the Morning Calm that he suspected his sniffer had been overwhelmed.

  He consoled himself with the thought that it was now getting chilly—it had been as cold as a witch's teat in the jeep overnight—and one of the prerogatives of being a Transportation Depot commander was being able to tell your non-com in charge of the Radiator Repair Section to rig a heater for your jeep, and that would keep the smell down.

  He set up a temporary headquarters in one of the mobile service vans he had thoughtfully included in the convoy. Nature called, and he didn't think it would wait until the men dug a quick latrine, so he went up the hill a little and dropped his trousers behind a large boulder.

  The wind coming off the hill was surprisingly unpleasant on the cheeks of his ass, and he thought that about the first thing the men were going to do when they finished laying the perimeter barbed wire was build another latrine like the one he had just finished building in Wonsan.

  Jesus! If I can get through to Wonsan on a landline, I can tell Lieutenant Wright to just put the sonofabitch on the back of a tank retriever. I'll have to tell Wright to cover it with a tarpaulin so people won't know what it is. But that would save a lot of work.

  As soon as I finish my dump, I'm going to see if 1 can find a phone. There's no telling how long it'll take to get the X Corps Signal Company to lay a couple of lines in here.

  He heard a sound he hadn't heard since those CIA guys dropped in on the 8023d in Inchon. Fluckata-fluckata-fluckata.

  He looked up and around and, as the fluckata-fluckata-fluckata fluckata-fluckata-fluckata sound grew louder, located it in the sky.

  It was flying over the road in the direction of Hungnam.

  It was painted black. He wondered if it was one of the two he had seen at Inchon. He wondered what the hell it was doing.

  Jesus, if I could get my hands on one of those, I'd have that goddamn latrine up here tonight!

  [THREE]

  Office of the Commanding General

  Headquarters X United States Corps (Forward)

  Wonsan, North Korea

  1245 2 November 195O

  The black H-19A fluttered to the ground fifty yards from a collection of vehi­cles of all descriptions parked in a somewhat random pattern outside a two-story brick building that had, before the war, housed a regional secondary school. The downwash from the rotor blades blew leaves all over the area as the helicopter touched down.

  There was much activity as Engineers, Signal Corps personnel, and other technicians set up the X Corps headquarters. As Major Alex Donald, USA— very carefully, to make sure he didn't run into cables strung between telephone poles— set the H-19A down, Major K. R. McCoy, USMCR, saw two flags, their poles set in what looked like artillery shell casings, in front of a van, a 6 X 6 truck onto which was mounted a square boxlike structure.

  Such vehicles usually housed either communications gear or the machines required for some sort of maintenance function, but were sometimes use
d as mobile offices. That was obviously the case here. The flags hung limply on their staffs, but McCoy could see that one of them was the blue and white X Corps flag, and the other was solid red with white stars. That meant the van was oc­cupied for the moment by the X Corps Commander, until the support troops working frantically in and around the school building could get his office and command post set up there.

  The moment the H-19A touched down, McCoy unstrapped himself and climbed down from the cockpit. The Big Black Bird had attracted the atten­tion of a lot of people in the area, more than a few of whom noticed that the guy getting out of the helicopter—a Marine officer—seemed to be in some dis­comfort. A few even wondered why, but their primary interest was in the heli­copter itself.

  How come the goddamn jarheads have a big machine like that, and The Gen­eral himself has only a couple of lousy H-13s?

  There were two MPs, armed with Thompson submachine guns, guarding access to the general's van, and McCoy had to wait until they verified his story that he was Major McCoy, and General Almond expected him. But finally he was passed, and walked to the van, stood on the lower step of the folding steps to the van, and rapped on the door with his knuckles.

  After a moment, Captain Al Haig pushed the door outward, saw McCoy, and waved him inside. McCoy carefully hoisted himself into the van.

  It was simply furnished. There were three identical desks. A master sergeant sat at one of the desks along the wall, using a typewriter. An identical desk sit­ting next to the master sergeant's desk—it had four field telephones on it—was obviously Captain Haig's. Major General Edward M. Almond sat at the third desk, all the way inside the van and facing the door. It held two field tele­phones and the leather map case Almond always carried with him.

  "Major McCoy, sir," Haig said.

  McCoy saluted.

  "You wanted to see me, sir?" he asked.

  "What happened to your pajamas?" Almond asked.

  "I've been interrogating prisoners, sir," McCoy said. "They seem to be more impressed with a Marine than by someone in pajamas."

  Almond chuckled, and shook his head as he opened the long flap of his leather map case, came out with a sheet of paper, and handed it wordlessly to McCoy.