Martin Limon: Ping-Pong Heart

“You get it now, Sueno? That’s why I brought you up here. So you could escort me across Liberty Bridge and up north with your emergency dispatch and Criminal Investigation ID.”

“We’d never make it across,” I said. “We’d be shot dead or blown to pieces by a land mine.”

“Better than rotting in Leavenworth.”

I had to think fast, stall him.

“Look, Blood,” I said, “your situation’s not hopeless. Turn Miss Kim over to us. That’ll show your goodwill. Then hire a Stateside lawyer, keep your mouth shut, and once the JAG people take over the case, cut a deal.”

There was a long pause.

“You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?” I asked.

“Nam didn’t spill.”

Then there was another pause, a long one this time. In the background I heard Miss Kim say, “I’m here, Geogie.” Then a loud slap, sounding almost like a crack.

“Shut up !” Blood told her. “Keep your trap shut.”

“ Dalun salam do issoyo? ” I asked. Are there other people there?

“ Aniyo ,” she replied. No.

A loud crash rang through the receiver, so loud I instinctively moved it away from my ear. Then another. “I told you to keep your trap shut !”

Miss Kim shuffled away from the radio.

“Hurting her isn’t going to do any damn good, Blood.”

He picked up the mic and growled, “Don’t tell me what to do.” He inhaled to calm himself, and then continued. “The KNPs will keep after Nam. He’ll spill eventually.”

“Spill what?”

“My deal with Ku.”

“Which was?”

“Maybe too rich for my own good. But this was my last chance at that promotion to Major. If I didn’t make it, I was out on my ass. I couldn’t walk back out into civilian life with nothing . After all that hard work, all these years of sacrifice. It’s wrong to put a person in that position. Whatever happens, it’s the Army’s fault. They forced me to do this.”

“Do what?”

“What the hell do you think ? What would the North Koreans pay anything for? What’s the most important information they could want?”

I tried to figure it out, but I was too worried about how to save Miss Kim and stop Blood from carrying out his insane plan. “I don’t know,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me.”

“Fine,” he said. “I will. Hold on a minute.”

He set the mic down and lowered the receiver volume, and then I heard a vague rustling in the background. Miss Kim said a couple of words. I couldn’t make out what they were, but she was clearly being compliant. She was trying not to make him angry.

What followed was silence. I started to fiddle with the knobs, wondering if the radio had gone on the blink. Just as I was about to give up, cement scraped loudly on cement.

I leapt to my feet and looked down. Someone was opening the door to the command bunker. I quickly began climbing down the ladder. Ernie, who’d had two years of combat experience in Vietnam, had done the right thing. He’d grabbed Fenton’s rifle and made his way to the opposite side of the bunker. That way, once I reached the ground, we would have whoever was emerging in a crossfire.

Before I was halfway to the ground, red tracers lit the night and a line of bullets stitched the dirt below me.

From a prone position, Ernie fired.

Whoever had let loose the first burst ceased their assault. I reached the bottom and lay flat on the ground in the open, aiming my rifle at the dark opening. And then something emerged, low and dark, running to my right away from the command center. I followed it with the crosshairs of the M-16, but realized that Blood’s bulk was accompanied by someone else’s small frame. Ernie held his fire because he was afraid of the same thing, that the second person was Miss Kim.

The dark figures ran to a large Quonset hut near the main entranceway and disappeared around the corner. Both Ernie and I sprinted after them, but before we reached the domed building on the far side, an engine coughed to life.

“The three-quarter-ton!” Ernie shouted.

The Quonset hut was twenty yards long, and we reached the end just as a pair of headlights burst to life around the corner. We were temporarily blinded. The engine roared and the truck careened toward us. Neither of us fired, again for fear of hitting Miss Kim. The truck scraped the tin edge of the Quonset and would’ve hit us if we hadn’t tumbled backward. Then it sped off. We stood by helplessly as the taillights swerved in a semicircle, heading for the main gate of Camp Arrow and the road that led downhill to Tuam-dong. We ran to the gate, but before we could get there, the bumper of the three-quarter-ton smashed into the wood-frame and barbed-wire construction and burst it open. The big doors were still rebounding as we ran through them. We stopped at the cliff overlooking the winding mountain road, watching red taillights swerve down the sinuous path. In the distance, a string of bright lights shone across the expanse of Liberty Bridge.

“There’s movement down there,” Ernie said.

He was right. Tons of it. At least a dozen vehicles. “KNPs,” I replied.

“Will Kill know to stop him?”

I raised my M-16 and pointed it toward North Korea. I fired off three quick shots, then three slower shots, and three quick shots again. Then I changed the clip and repeated the process, signaling SOS.

Now all we could do was stand and watch. A line of police vehicles moved toward the intersection between the road from Camp Arrow and the Main Supply Route.

“He’s not gonna stop. They’ll blast him with everything they’ve got,” Ernie said.

If the KNPs ordered Captain Blood to halt and he didn’t, they would almost certainly open fire. And if he shot at them first, which I believed he would, the Korean National Police would unleash every ounce of artillery they possessed.

“We have to stop him,” I said. We couldn’t live with ourselves if Miss Kim got caught in the crossfire. We had promised to protect her and we had failed.

Ernie raised his rifle. “I can hit his gas tank,” he said. “That’ll force him to stop.”

“If you manage to aim that well,” I said, “it’ll explode.”

Ernie lowered his rifle. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, maybe the KNPs will use caution.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

It was a bet against the odds. But all we could do was watch. And hope.

“Look!” Ernie said. I squinted but couldn’t see anything. “In front. They’re fighting.”

And then I spotted it in the weak moonlight. The truck was slowing and occasionally veering away from the road, then back onto it. On the left side of the cab, the burly figure of Captain Blood, nothing more than a shadow from this distance, seemed to be swaying from side to side. But in the right side of the cab I couldn’t see anything.

“She must be lying down on the seat,” Ernie said, “kicking him.”

It was the smartest thing she could do. Captain Blood’s upper body strength was clearly much greater than Miss Kim’s, but her legs were almost as strong as his arms. And if she braced herself against the door and kicked with all her might while Blood was trying to navigate down a steep mountain road, he’d more than have his hands full.

The three-quarter-ton truck reached level ground, but there was a deep depression before the road rose again and hooked up with the main highway. The truck slowed. Probably because of Miss Kim’s assault, Blood seemed to be having trouble shifting into a lower gear. Before he could pick up speed again, a dark figure rolled out of the side of the cab.

“It’s her!” Ernie shouted. “She jumped out of the damn truck.”

But Blood didn’t stop the three-quarter-ton. On the contrary, he seemed relieved to be rid of his troublesome hostage. He revved the engine so loudly we could hear it all the way from the edge of the cliff, and the truck picked up speed as it breached the rise, the back wheels sliding until it straightened up and sped directly toward the center of the line of KNP vehicles. Gunfire erupted. The truck rammed into a blue patrol car and plowed to its right, then more gunfire rang out and the three-quarter-ton swiveled almost completely around, its engine whining as if in anguish. Just as it was about to regain traction, more bullets whistled through the night, and the front of the three-quarter-ton burst into flame. Still trying to escape, the burning truck left the KNP vehicles behind, but as its distance from the broken line of cars increased, the flames leapt higher, fanned by the air. For a moment, it seemed as if Captain Blood might get away. Until the explosion.