Ian Slater - World in Flames

In four of the rooms there were dozens of tightly packed rice bags that had been set on bamboo woven palettes, foot-wide trenches running about them, filled with barbed wire, presumably to dissuade rats and other rodents from getting at the rice. In all, Freeman estimated that the complex of tunnels and rooms held enough ammunition and arms and sundry supplies to equip an attack of at least battalion, possibly regimental, strength — enough for between fifteen hundred and two thousand frontline assault troops.

He was in the fourth big storage room, reached by a thick right-angle bend and over a small pyramid of earthen stairs, more steps on the up than on the down side and leading into a deeper tunnel, the right-angled turn he’d just passed through and the difference in the tunnel levels potential impediments against any attack by enemy troops on the tunnel complex. Only under earth-shattering artillery would these tunnels cave in, and even then it would have to be a pulverizing barrage as otherwise the various levels and cunningly devised exits and entrances would act like watertight bulkheads aboard a ship, preventing any full-scale destruction.

Though he was using the flashlight sparingly, only flicking it on for less than a second at a time to take it all in, his attention was immediately attracted by the large number of binary poison gas shells along with the bugles and whistles. A binary was a “natural” for the Chinese — relatively cheap, using otherwise fairly harmless domestic cleaning chemicals which, when combined, would form the deadly nerve gas.

The bugles and whistles told him the Chinese were massing for a close-quarter attack on the American positions across the Yalu. His greatest wish was to defeat them, but the Chinese and the North Koreans — though the latter’s cruelty was an abomination to him — aroused in him the respect of a professional soldier. He held the Chinese particularly in high regard, for not only were they brave, even if they were brainwashed, but they were extraordinarily adept at combining the old with the new, and if they didn’t have the new, then improvising with what they had. In this case it was the bugles and whistles, the PLA’s answer to the exorbitantly expensive — for them — and often temperamental modern microchip radio backpacks. The battered bugles and whistles not only saved on radio and avoided technical foul-ups so prevalent in frontline fighting, but along with lots of screaming in the last hundred-yard run of a night attack, more often that not, created a dangerous confusion in the opposing ranks. Among fresh American and other Allied troops who had not seen action before, the result was invariably one of panic and on occasion mass retreat.

Entering the sixth of the seven rooms, this one piled high with binary shells, he turned toward a sifting sound and tripped over some kind of wire or cord, the flashlight on, rolling, revealing the room seething with rats, turning in panic in the cul-de-sac formed by the room and trying to race out of it, swarming over him, one attacking his face. There was an enormous crash from a pile of pots and pans, no doubt used for a double purpose: to prepare the rice rolls with which Chinese and North Korean troops could march for days and — again typical of the Chinese — to act as an alarm against any potential pilferer tripping over the cord.

Within seconds, Freeman was on his feet, blood streaming from his face, its warm, metallic taste in his mouth as he moved as quickly as possible out of the room toward the main feeder tunnel of the hub-and-spoke complex, his fingers trailing the double-walled turns toward the well shaft exit. As soon as he reached it, he heard the quick babble of voices, suddenly silenced by the barking of sharply delivered orders — Korean rather than Chinese, he thought — and then shapes appeared, one already on the ladder.

Freeman fired the flare, saw its red light blossom high above the well shaft, then fired the.45, heard the echo of his shot and saw the shape on the ladder fall back without a sound, splashing heavily into the water below, a light hail of dirt and stone splattering after the body.

He heard several shots, and the bullets thudding into the well shaft; then, as suddenly as it had begun, the firing ceased and Freeman knew why. A grenade or any heavy-caliber machine-gun fire could penetrate the earthen wall of the supply rooms and set off the whole complex in a series of gigantic explosions. If he moved fast, he might make it to one of the half dozen or so manhole entrances he’d noticed along the main tunnel about a quarter mile back, where he’d left the patrol.

Gripping the flashlight firmly in his left hand, keeping it low, he used his elbow as a touch guide on his way, the.45 in his right hand. He heard the voices behind him receding, then suddenly, after a turn in the tunnel, they increased, which meant that either they had passed one of the right-angle turns or false earthen walls or were coming in from some smaller tunnel that he wasn’t aware of. His right hand struck cool, damp earth, the butt of the.45 poking him in the chest before he realized he’d come up against another abutment in the tunnel. Quickly feeling his way around it, he stuffed the.45 in his waist belt, pulled the pin from one of the five-second grenades, stepped out from the abutment, and rolled the grenade hard back down the tunnel before jumping back behind the wall.

The roar was deafening, followed by screams and a pattering sound as dirt kept falling in the tunnel, the acrid smell of the explosive causing his eyes to water as he moved farther on, away from his pursuers, hearing an AK-47 rattling in the background, the dull thud of bullets and then the sound of footsteps drowning the groans as others kept coming.

Suddenly up ahead of him, about fifteen yards, he saw a shaft of moonlight. It disappeared, but not before he’d glimpsed two figures dropping down softly from it into the tunnel. Without breaking his stride, Freeman pulled the pin and rolled the grenade forward, going down on one knee like an indoor bowler to keep it as centered as possible, continuing his drop and covering his head. There was an enormous purplish-white flash, a whistling sound, and he felt a sting, or rather several, as if hornets had bitten him in several places along the right arm, which had been protecting his forehead, and he knew he’d been hit by shrapnel. But what the shrapnel had done to the two enemy soldiers, both Chinese, was much worse. One lay dead in the glow of his burning clothing while the other staggered about like a drunk, hand clasped to his face. Freeman went to squeeze off two more shots, but nothing happened. His finger wouldn’t obey his brain. By the time he’d reached the wounded Chinese, he’d transferred the.45 into his left hand. The man ran at him, stumbling. Freeman fired, the man crashing into him, knocking him against the wall before falling dead at Freeman’s feet.

It seemed to take Freeman an eternity to extract his left boot from under the corpse, and finally he was moving again down the tunnel, but something was happening to his vision. He was confused and could hear nothing but the high whistle of the grenade’s explosion still reverberating in his ear, drowning all other noises.

Another shaft of moonlight — blurred — and a sparkler, like the kind he’d waved around as a kid. He stopped, shook his head as if this might clear it, and tried to replace the.45 in the left holster until he realized that it was the right holster he needed. Shoving the flashlight in his left pocket and leaning against the wall of the tunnel, he moved his hands as quickly as he could to put on the gas mask against the spitting phosphorus grenade that was now lighting up the tunnel in the dancing, ghostly light. He felt better, clearer-headed, and pulled the headband tight as he raced on through the white, choking cloud, a red-hot needle sensation in his left leg no doubt a fragment of phosphorus burning its way in. He could smell his flesh. Then the smell was gone and he knew that as long as he kept moving down the tunnel, tossing a few grenades back whenever he made a turn, he might just make it to an exit before they did. He felt the gas mask crumpling, like cellophane, and suddenly his feet were gone from under him, the rifle butt smashing bone. Everything stopped.