Ian Slater - World in Flames

After Pyongyang, Freeman figured he understood something of Kim’s strategy, telling Jim Norton once that Kim was a “Korean Montgomery”—wouldn’t move until he had a “four-to-one advantage in toilet rolls.” It wasn’t his — Freeman’s— way, but he knew that it, too, won battles.

Ironically, he felt safe the farther the patrol penetrated the hillocks on the northern side. Providing they didn’t find any evidence of Chinese or NKA presence following the last attack on Outpost Delta, his patrol would be left alone. And if there were troops in the area, they would only attack if discovered, unlikely to reveal themselves — saving everything for a surprise attack.

He motioned the squad to stop, waited, and listened some more. He’d known of more than one patrol who, in their eagerness to get the nail biting over with, had kept moving forward without pausing long enough each time. And when you didn’t rest, the sound of your breathing, your heart thumping, drowned all other noise — including the enemy’s.

Freeman could smell both his and his men’s sweat and thanked God the wind was blowing against them from the north.

It was a small thing in the moonglow, a depression no more than a few feet wide and an inch or so deep, but with the intuitive sense of the experienced soldier, Freeman was already leery of it. Cradling his SAW in his left arm, he lay down and crawled within a foot of the depression, its outline like that of a big serving dish. Drawing the knife from his calf scabbard, he gently probed the edges of the depression, the blade sounding as if it were passing through coarse sugar. He waited for the click of metal on metal that would signify a mine. There was none. Instead, the knife was stuck. He waved the patrol back several yards and signaled for them to cover up, helmets down tight, but no chin strap. If it was a mine, nonmetallic or not, and went off, the concussion beneath the helmets would lift the chin straps so hard, it’d snap their jawbones. He tried pulling the knife again, and this time it came out. It was a circular cane-woven dish that the blade had sunk into — the kind he’d seen villagers using, tossing up the rice grain during the harvest, but much firmer than the grain platter he had at first thought it was. As he drew it closer to himself, he saw the black hole that it had been covering and knew he was looking at a tunnel entrance.

Slowly he replaced the cover, then eased his way back through the snow to the squad. Now he knew why the trail wasn’t mined — it was a pathway from the tunnel to the river. His whisper was soft, distinct, and as Wezlinski, first rifleman in the patrol, noticed, Freeman’s instructions were remarkably unhurried.

“It’s a tunnel entrance,” he told Wezlinski. “If it’s active, we know my hunch is right and we can call down artillery on these gooks.” Quietly he turned his arm to see his watch.

“Give me twenty minutes,” he told Wezlinski. “If I don’t pop back up — or you hear one hell of a racket — then you’ll know I’ve found the bastards. Then you get the hell out of here and zero in the artillery.”

He took a handful of snow to moisten his mouth in the cold, dry wind. Next he took out a plastic muzzle protector, slipped it over the end of the SAW’s barrel so as to keep out the snow, laid it down by the path, then drew both.45 pistols, checking the magazines. “When I come out,” he whispered softly, “I’ll stick a glove on one of these.45s. You see it sticking up, hold your fire. If I don’t find my way back here or have to come out somewhere else, I’ll fire a red flare. That’ll give your buddies up in Delta a position for artillery fire. You’ll have to move fast back across the river. Understand? Now, synchronize your watch.”

“But—” said Wezlinski in amazement. “You aren’t going down there, General?”

Freeman tapped him, fatherly, on the shoulder. “Our boys did it all the time in ‘Nam. Only way to find out whether it’s an old tunnel — or if it’s loaded to the gills.”

“But, General—” said Wezlinski, his voice tight with fear. “Why don’t we just throw in a bunch of grenades, General?”

“Won’t tell us a damn thing, son. Way they make these rat-holes, they twist and turn — got vents in them, blind corners, the whole shebang. Even use bamboo screens across to deflect shrapnel. Like goin’ down a mine, son. Got to see it for yourself.”

Freeman pushed the SAW back to Wezlinski — the big weapon too unwieldy in a tunnel. He checked the six grenades he had clipped to his belt, took off his helmet, put on the tear gas mask from his pack, and moved toward the hole, a 7-shaped flashlight in his left hand, the.45 from his right holster in the other hand. Wezlinski heard a shuffle of ice as the general slid down into the hole.

When Wezlinski passed the word back, the tail-end Charlie, facing the river, shook his head. “No way you’d get me down there, man,” he whispered. “He’s nuts!”

Slowly extending his arms out in the pitch darkness, the first thing Freeman noticed was that the tunnel was no more than four feet wide and about six feet high, though now and then he felt his hair brush the ice-cold dirt of the roof so that he was forced to stoop. After five yards — he was careful to keep count — he felt the tunnel veering sharply to the left, then going straight for another two yards before it swung hard left again, then right. He thought he heard something up ahead, stopped, but if it had been something moving, it was gone now.

Then he heard it again. At first it seemed to be going away from him, but then was coming toward him — a faint scrambling. He resisted the temptation to use the flashlight. Then there was a fast rushing movement, a furry rat racing over his feet. He could smell them now — a stream of them.

The fact that the rats had apparently turned back toward him indicated he was coming to a cul-de-sac. He heard another sound: a tinkling. He brought his wrist up close to his eyes so he could read the watch face. He’d been down only three minutes. It had seemed like an eternity. The thought of rats gnawing his face if he should fall turned his stomach.

He waited for ten seconds or so, hoping that his eyes might adjust to any faint moonlight that might be penetrating a vent— if there were any — but if anything, it was blacker than before. He heard the tinkling again.

Up above the tunnel, in the world of moonlight and fresh air, Wezlinski cursed silently to himself. Someone in the squad had broken wind and the odor of putrefied baked beans engulfed him, and he thanked God for the breeze that whipped it downwind toward the river.

“Officer on parade!” called the SAS sergeant major. “Atten-shun!” There was a crash of rubberized Vibram boots from the eighty-man squadron that shook the hall.

“At ease, gentlemen,” said Major Rye. “Gather ‘round.” As they all crowded in about the twelve-foot-square table, Cheek-Dawson at the adjacent corner, ready, upon Major Rye’s word, to take off the cover, Rye announced, “Another HALO jump, gentlemen. That’s why we’ve been giving you lots of practice up in Scotland. This, however, is not an exercise. Gentlemen, you have been requested!. Code name for the operation is ‘Merlin.’ “

There was silence following a few joking comments such as “ ‘Bout time…”—comments that would immediately have been withdrawn had they foreseen what now lay before them as, with a flick of the wrist, Rye and Cheek-Dawson removed the green cloth cover from the model of the mission’s target. The scale on the accompanying map Cheek-Dawson was pinning on the wall showed the target was no more than an hour’s flight from the Allies’ most forward airfields — no farther than the Wales-to-Scotland exercises. But even David Brentwood, who, in the Australian’s consistently gregarious presence, had adopted a self-protective nonchalance, could not suppress his surprise. The very air seemed to quiver as the new “Sabre” squadron crowded around the model.