Red Phoenix

by Bond , Larry

  He shook off the thought. This wasn’t the time or place. Maybe later. Maybe after the war, always assuming he lived that long.

  His 1st and 2nd Platoon leaders—Corporal McIntyre and Sergeant Geary—just nodded when he stopped by their foxholes to go over the battle plan. They looked haggard, dog-tired and hollow-eyed. But then, hell, so did everyone else in the company. Five days and four nights out in the open under extreme stress and in arctic temperatures had pushed the troops to the edge of their endurance. Many were coming down with bronchitis, severe chest colds, or pneumonia. Kevin knew that, by rights, fully a third of his men should have been in the hospital for treatment. The trouble was, he couldn’t spare them—any more than he could spare himself.

  He kept going, half-walking, half-sliding downhill through the snow toward the weakest point in his line—a brush-choked ravine that cut between the hill held by his company and the one occupied by Matuchek’s Alpha Company. A frozen, narrow stream turned and twisted its way south at the bottom of the ravine, and the tangle of small trees, shrubs, and tall grass its waters had fed made movement difficult and observation next to impossible. It was the perfect place for a North Korean infiltration through his position.

  Knowing that and knowing what exactly to do about it were two very different things, but Kevin had done his best. He’d scraped together a blocking force by stripping the 2nd Platoon of a machine gun team and four precious riflemen. These six men now held positions along either edge of the ravine, ready to pour a vicious crossfire into any NK troops moving up through the dense underbrush.

  He’d done more. He’d had the blocking force emplace no fewer than six claymore mines along the gully—ready to shred the vegetation and anyone in it with a total of 3,600 plastic-explosive-driven steel balls. It would be enough to give the first North Korean attack down the ravine a very bloody nose indeed. It wouldn’t be enough if there were a second or third assault.

  Well, he’d have to worry about that later. Kevin moved back up the slope toward the two-man foxhole that served as his CP. Montoya was already there, helmet pulled low over a green scarf wrapped around to cover his ears. The RTO just shook his head when Kevin asked if there were any new orders from Battalion.

  “What about Rhee? Any word on him?”

  “Not a peep, L-T. Maybe he’s wangled himself a cushy staff job.”

  Kevin grinned at Montoya’s stab at humor, but he didn’t really find it too funny. Rhee had been summoned earlier in the morning to the temporary Brigade HQ at Yongju-sa—Dragon Jewel Temple—a Buddhist temple complex several miles south of Suwon. The orders hadn’t explained why and they hadn’t given Kevin any indication of when he could expect Rhee back. Goddamned rear-area dips, Kevin thought savagely. They probably wanted the Korean lieutenant to fill out some pointless requisition. And now he was short his second-in-command just before going into battle.

  He felt uneasy at the prospect. This would be the first time he’d gone into action without Rhee at his side, and Kevin knew how much he’d come to rely on the South Korean’s calm, good humor and guts. Damn it.

  “L-T. Hey, L-T.” Montoya laid a gloved hand on his shoulder. “The OP’s coming in.”

  He took the handset. “Echo Five Six to Echo Eyes. Give me a sitrep. Over.”

  “Echo Five Six, this is Eyes.” Kevin could hear the man panting into his mike as he and the other sentry jogged back to the company. “We’re coming in. First November Kilos are just about four hundred meters from our position. Strength estimated at one, repeat, one battalion. No tanks or PCs.”

  “Acknowledged. Five Six out.” Kevin handed the mike back to Montoya. “Pass the word to all posts that we’ve got bad guys on the way with friendlies in front of ’em. Tell everybody to hold their fire until I give the word.”

  WHOOOOSH. WHAMMM. WHAMMM. WHAMMM. The howling din of artillery landing somewhere to their front drove Montoya and Kevin to the bottom of their foxhole—an action duplicated by everybody else in Echo Company. It took several seconds to realize that the shells weren’t exploding around them, and several more before anybody cared to raise his head above ground level.

  Kevin wriggled out of the foxhole and bellycrawled up to the crestline of the hill. Forty-year-old pines, oaks, and willow trees blocked much of his view, but he could see well enough to realize that the North Korean shells were tearing up the whole northern edge of the forest. He almost smiled. Major Donaldson had been right. Trying to defend from there would have been tantamount to committing suicide. It was too bloody obvious a target for enemy artillery.

  He slid back down to the CP and started issuing orders to his platoon leaders. Once the NK heavy guns were done shooting up the forest, their infantry would be coming through the fallen and splintered trees—straight toward his positions. The North Koreans would have scouts out in front, and Kevin wanted to make sure they got a warm reception. He had McIntyre and Geary deploy a fire team each along the crest, ready to hose down the first NKs to show themselves on the ground below the hill.

  That done, he settled back inside his foxhole to wait. There wasn’t anything else he could do.

  1ST COMPANY, 2ND BATTALION

  Chae scrambled over a massive tree trunk blown down by the artillery barrage and waited for the rest of his headquarters group to catch up. The three infantry platoons of his company were already a hundred meters ahead, pushing deeper into the forest. Everything was quiet, except for the crackle of a dozen small fires set by bursting shells, and Chae didn’t like it.

  He motioned his second-in-command over for a hasty conference in the shadow of a pine tree whose branches had been stripped off by a near-miss. Senior Lieutenant Koh didn’t like the situation any better than he did. He thought they were walking face forward into a trap.

  “Agreed. So I want you to take a squad and scout ahead. Don’t try to engage the fascists closely. Just find out where they are and we’ll let the mortars and artillery deal with them.”

  Koh nodded sharply and jogged on ahead through the trees to catch up with the lead platoon. Chae followed at a more moderate pace with his staff sergeant and runners tagging along beside him. He didn’t see any point in rushing in to get his head blown off—major or no major.

  ECHO COMPANY

  Kevin went from man to man along the crest with the same warning. “Three-round bursts tops. Make every shot count. No rock-and-roll. What you’ve got in your ammo pouches is all you’ll get. Shoot it all off and you’ll have to throw snowballs at the bastards. Understood?” He’d wait for the nod and then move on to say it all over again.

  He came to the end of the line, gave his speech to the wide-eyed private there, and started to scuttle away. Suddenly the PFC grabbed the lieutenant’s boot and pointed downslope toward a clump of bushes that had started waggling. Kevin dropped flat and twisted around to get his M16 lined up on the spot.

  A Russian-style pot helmet emerged from the bushes, followed by the rest of an AK-armed soldier. Kevin squinted right and left and saw more North Koreans strung out in a skirmish line at the base of the hill. He counted at least ten—a squad then, with more somewhere behind.

  He tried to stop breathing, willing the North Koreans farther up the slope. Please God, don’t let anybody open up until they’re a little closer, a little more out in the open, he prayed silently. He heard the PFC beside him swallow convulsively and resisted an impulse to hit him. Sounds carried too far here under the trees. Come on closer, you bastards.

  Now. Kevin yelled, “Fire! Fire! Fire!”

  The eight other men along the crest started shooting, and he squeezed off a three-round burst at the same moment. His target, the first North Korean he’d spotted, tumbled backward down the hill. The man’s helmet fell off and rolled away to rest beneath a bare-branched willow tree.

  Others were down as well, thrown off their feet by the first salvo of American rifle fire. A few survivors had burrowed into the snow, firing blindly back up at the top of the hill.

  Kevin felt
snow spray across his face from a near-miss and took careful aim at one of the prone NKs. He pulled the trigger once and felt the M16 jump in his hands. A hit! Blood spurted from the North Korean’s shoulder, and the man rose involuntarily to his knees clutching at the wound. Another bullet from someone else along the crestline threw the wounded man back dead.

  He looked to either side, hunting for new targets. Nothing. Just six or seven crumpled bodies bleeding into the snow. The surviving North Koreans had pulled back into cover. He took his finger off the trigger and laid waiting.

  An M16 cracked off to his left. Then another. Firing at nothing. Kevin put his energy into a single, harsh, penetrating whisper. “Cease fire! Stop wasting your ammo, goddamnit!”

  The shooting stopped, replaced by an eerie silence broken only by low moans from somewhere out in the forest to their front. Kevin waited for his hearing to come back to normal and for his heart to stop pounding so loudly.

  He cocked his head, listening. There. Muttered voices. Feet crunching in the snow. Equipment rattling. There were more North Koreans among the trees, moving up to the attack. A lot more. They’d make a rush soon.

  Kevin made an instant decision. He didn’t have enough men to hold the crest against a concerted attack. “Back! Get back to your holes. Move it.”

  The two American fire teams slid downhill into their foxholes, joining up with the rest of Echo Company. They’d meet the next North Korean assault when it came over the top of the hill.

  1ST COMPANY, 2ND BATTALION

  Senior Lieutenant Koh lay ashen-faced while the medic worked on him, trying to stem the loss of blood from his wounds. “As you suspected, they were waiting for us. At least a platoon, perhaps more.” He gasped as the medic pulled a bandage tighter.

  “Lie still, comrade.” Chae put a hand on his second-in-command’s shoulder. “You did well. Now we’ll smoke the bastards out with a few rounds of artillery fire, eh?”

  Koh nodded weakly and closed his eyes. Chae looked sharply at the medic, who simply shrugged. The lieutenant’s wounds were beyond his ability to treat, and the nearest aid station was more than an hour’s march away. It was all in the hands of chance—Koh would live or die as fate dictated.

  Chae stood up and stared around the small hollow that held his command group and the battered remnants of his scouting force. His first two platoons were already deployed in a skirmish line about two hundred meters below the top of the American-held hill. The men of the 3rd Platoon, his reserves, squatted on their haunches just outside the hollow.

  He snapped an order to his sergeant and headed back the way they’d come. He needed artillery support to press the attack and only the battalion commander could make the necessary arrangements.

  2ND BATTALION HQ

  “Absolutely not! There’s no time for such foolishness. It would be a waste of valuable ammunition and time. Drive them off that hill with a lightning attack.”

  Chae was astonished. He’d known his commander was overconfident, but until that very moment he hadn’t been sure that the man was a simpleton as well. “Comrade Major, the enemy position is a strong one. An unsupported infantry attack will only fail. We must have artillery support.”

  The major’s eyes narrowed. “Comrade Captain. My orders to you were explicit, were they not? Are you disobeying a direct command?”

  Chae knew he was within moments of being placed under arrest—an arrest that could only have one result: his execution. And that left him with a choice of two equally unpleasant alternatives. He shook his head slowly. “No, Comrade Major. Your orders will be carried out.”

  The major smiled. “Excellent, Captain. Excellent.” He patted Chae’s shoulder. “I’m sure there’s nothing there but a small delaying force. One sharp attack by your company will overwhelm them and clear the way for our continued advance.”

  Chae could only nod.

  “Very well, Chae.” The major glanced at his watch. “I’ll expect your assault to get under way in twenty minutes. We’ve still got a lot of ground to cover today. Division expects us to reach the fascist government’s Agricultural Experiment Station by nightfall. And I don’t intend to disappoint them. Is that clear?”

  “Extremely so, Comrade Major.” Chae saluted and wheeled away sharply, seething internally. He and his troops would just have to do their best and hope for the best. He’d send his 1st and 2nd platoons in on a wild rush. Perhaps they’d be able to get in among the Americans holding the hill without suffering crippling casualties. And if that failed, at least he’d still have the 3rd Platoon on hand with which to try something else.

  ECHO COMPANY

  The bugle’s high-pitched, discordant shriek echoed eerily off the surrounding tree trunks and branches.

  “Here they come, you bastards! Get set for it!” Kevin flicked the M16’s safety off and made sure it was set for semiautomatic fire. He crouched lower in the foxhole.

  WHUMMMP! Dirt and snow thrown by an NK grenade sprayed up along the crest of the hill. More grenades burst in quick succession, flashing brightly in the half-light under the overhanging trees. A fragment whined over his head. Above it all, the bugle continued to sound.

  There they were. Kevin saw the first figures silhouetted against the skyline, bayonet-tipped assault rifles in their hands. M16s and M60 light machine guns crashed repeatedly along the row of American foxholes, and North Koreans fell or were tossed backward. Others dropped flat and tried to return fire.

  Heavier-sounding AK shots mingled with the lighter-pitched cracks made by M16s.

  An American private gurgled and suddenly clutched with bloody hands at a throat that wasn’t there anymore. Another screamed in anguish and fell back holding a shattered forearm. But the North Koreans were caught in the open without good cover and they were dying faster.

  Kevin shot a man trying to crawl behind a tree and yanked the now-empty magazine out of his rifle, fumbling to insert a new one. Five left. Something round flicked through his line of sight and thumped into a tree just beyond his foxhole. He ignored it and took quick aim at an NK standing full upright, arm extended from the throw.

  “Grenade!” Montoya screamed, and dragged Kevin to the bottom of the hole.

  WHUUMMMP! The ground shook and both men felt the blast punch the air out of their foxhole. Fragments gouged dirt out of the sides and sprayed overhead. Their ears rang.

  “Asshole!” Kevin reared up and pumped three shots at close range into the North Korean preparing a second grenade. The man died with a look of absolute surprise frozen on his face.

  Another grenade exploded farther down the line, and Kevin heard men screaming in agony. His men. Kevin cursed and kept firing. Empty. Eject. Reload. Four magazines left now.

  The North Korean fire didn’t seem so loud now. Visibility was down to just a few meters, but it seemed that there were fewer muzzle flashes up along the crest. Bodies sprawled everywhere along the slope.

  He saw a North Korean trying to roll back over the top of the hill and fired again—kicking up a miniature snowstorm all around the man. He couldn’t tell if he’d hit him. Another NK tried to run. Four rounds hit the man at the same instant and threw him bodily against a bullet-pocked oak tree.

  He ripped another empty magazine out of the rifle and reloaded again. Three left in the pouch.

  Kevin scanned a sixty-degree arc around his hole, looking for new targets. He waited for the smoke and dust to thin. There were’t any new targets. The bugle had stopped sounding. The North Koreans were gone.

  “Cease fire! Hold it! Hold it!” His hearing was coming back, but slowly, too slowly. He could just make out McIntyre and Geary screaming at their men to call them off. They sounded as if they were a thousand miles away.

  Kevin shook his head from side to side, trying to clear the last of the ringing out of his ears. He eased his finger off the M16’s trigger and leaned heavily against the foxhole’s dirt wall, breathing hard. Echo Company and its rookie commander had won another skirmish. He felt a sur
ge of triumph and elation and almost laughed out loud for the sheer joy of it. Then he suppressed the feelings as quickly as they had come.

  The trouble was the North Koreans would be back for more soon enough, and his troops had already shot off half their ready ammunition. One more attack would burn up the rest. And then what would he do? Kevin didn’t have the answer to that one, but he knew that he’d have to think of one pretty damned quickly. There was an enemy commander out there somewhere in the forest already planning his next move.

  1ST COMPANY, 2ND BATTALION

  Chae stared at the shattered fragments of his 1st and 2nd platoons in rage. Nearly seventy men had been thrown away to no useful end, slaughtered because the battalion commander was a fool of the first magnitude. The Americans over the hill were too well dug-in to be dislodged by a frontal attack. He would have to find another way to get at them.

  He frowned. The moans from the wounded were distracting. He turned to his staff sergeant and snapped an order. “Get the wounded on their way back to the aid station and rejoin me here after that’s done.”

  “You”—he pointed to the corporal now leading what was left of the 1st Platoon—”take your able-bodied men up to the base of the hill and keep the Yankees occupied. Don’t expose yourselves, but don’t let them see how few of you there really are. Understand?”

  The corporal saluted and wheeled to gather his troops and go forward again. Chae felt his anger grow again. These soldiers were too good to be led by an incompetent like the major, a puffed-up idiot with his pretty binoculars. He growled at an orderly and took his AK assault rifle from the man. The Makarov pistol holstered at his side marked him as an officer, but it wasn’t the proper weapon for this kind of fight.

  He waited until the skirmishers he’d sent ahead to pin down the enemy started firing. Then he turned to the lieutenant commanding the 3rd Platoon. “Follow me. And keep silent. The first man to make a sound will spend what’s left of his miserable life breaking rocks in a work camp.”