Ian Slater - WW III

Trainor loved it. It wasn’t a plant, it was a gift from Heaven. He could take the high road. “If Senator Leyland wishes to disparage our allies and use this incident to inflame sword rattling, then, of course, he’s free to do so. This administration, this president, has repeatedly said that the security of the United States has no price. And quite frankly, I’m — er — I’m somewhat taken aback by the senator’s apparent attempt — did he use the word ‘debacle’?”

“Yes,” came a shouted chorus. “No TV at Camp David?” called out another. There was laughter.

Trainor shrugged. “All I can say is that ‘debacle’ is an odd word to be using only hours after some violations of the DMZ have been reported. But if Senator Leyland is so desperate for votes that he wants to characterize—”

“They’re shelling Seoul, aren’t they?”

“That’s not new,” retorted Trainor. They were closing in on him, but he saw a way out. “Gentlemen — and ladies—” He was flushed, but it was anger they were seeing, not embarrassment. “If you people spent as much time in Korea as you did in the—” he almost said, “Tel Aviv Hilton,” but stopped himself in time “—in the Middle East, you’d realize that in Korea, as in the Middle East, incursions take place every week along the Korean DMZ and that there have been several false alarms already. As recently as July we had…”

The hands shot up again. “Are you saying, then, that this is a false alarm?”

“No — I’m not saying that. There are significant numbers of troops moving, but — ah, as yet we don’t know the full extent…”

An aide slipped in from behind the podium, keeping his eyes low out of the glare, deposited a note on the lectern, and was gone. Despite the heat, rhetorical and that coming from klieg lights, Trainor felt his gut go cold. General Cahill, the note informed him, had ordered the three remaining bridges leading south out of Seoul to be blown within the hour.

Trainor didn’t read the rest of the page or notice the fact that Cahill’s decision signified much more than the imminent collapse of Seoul.

Because the subway stations of Hapchong, Yongsan, Ichon, Oksu, and Kangbyon — all on the north side of the river — had been gutted by NKA infiltrators earlier that morning, the three bridges to be blown — Songsan, leading to Kimpo Airport, Tongjak Bridge, seven miles east, leading out of the city from Yongsan and Niblo Barracks, and Chamshil Iron Bridge near the old Olympics site, all packed with high explosives, ready for destruction — were the only escape routes left for millions of civilians still trying to flee the city, and there would be no time to clear the bridges, even if they could be cleared, by the time set for demolition. All Trainor knew was that his and National Security Adviser Schuman’s plan to distance the president in order to underplay the situation was collapsing around him. Mayne had to get back to the White House. And fast. The news conference, amid howls of protest, the scratching of chairs and dousing of lights, was called to an end, Trainor excusing himself, smiling, nodding, saying “No comment,” trying to avoid the snaking TV cables that, despite his strict instructions to have them coiled and bound with fluorescent tape, seemed as disorderly as ever, waiting to trip him up.

If it was a cold-blooded military decision on Cahill’s part to blow the three bridges, it was a hot-blooded affair for the millions of terrified civilians — mostly women and children and elders, their screams heard above the screams of artillery, some stumbling, near death — pressed into three enormous funnel-shaped escape routes converging on the three remaining bridges, many people on the outer edges of the funnels spilling off, others shoved aside down embankments into the now putrid river or trampled to death by those behind in the unstoppable force that was five million trying to flee the razored hail of hot steel.

The NKA’s Fourth Division met its first really sustained resistance around Uijongbu. In doing so, the NKA tied up so many of the rear guard elements that the NKA Special Forces Corps on the western flank driving south from Munsan to reach the Han three miles west of Seoul’s western outskirts easily forded the Han in an armada of lightweight canvas boats under cover of heavy smoke.

Melissa Lange was one of Pacific Northwestern’s brightest and most beautiful, her swept-back ash-blonde hair and wide, sensitive eyes turning heads wherever she went on campus. She didn’t flaunt it, but she knew she had it, which made it doubly hard for her to understand why David Brentwood, down to his candy-cane-striped shorts, was standing in the middle of the room, glued to the TV, its bluish aura intensified by the soft peach lighting of the room and the heavy drapes shutting out the morning sun. “You’ll catch cold,” she said.

“They can fight, the bastards,” he said. “Got to give ‘em that.” Behind ABC’s Sam Donaldson there was a gray high-relief map of South Korea, four wide red arrows curving down from the DMZ converging on Seoul.

“Holy Cow!” said David, shaking his head. “Look at this!” There were pictures, very shaky, bad sound tracks, of the bridges being blown, the air full of black smoke and dirt-cored waterspouts. Then a very wobbly shot, as if the cameraman had stumbled, of the bridges, the Songsan’s span now V-shaped, some of the spans of the Chamshil Iron Bridge still standing, others simply not there, the smoke from it strangely yellow, the explosions having set afire a nearby barge of sulfur. Melissa was out of bed, pulling on her panties. Tongjak Bridge was the next to go, the TV screen going fuzzy, interspersed with thousands of flickering dots. “Jesus!” said David, pointing at the set. “They’re people!” He moved closer.

At first Melissa didn’t answer, her arms reaching behind her and up, clipping her matching black bra against her milk-white skin, but David was now on one knee, fiddling with the controls. “They’re people, Mel.”

“They can’t be,” she said, glancing over. Suddenly her anger at his inattention to her paled against what was happening on the screen. A commercial came on for Australian beer, “the golden throat charmer.” Only now did David see that Melissa was dressing. “Hey, Mel, what’re you doing?”

“What’s it look like?”

“Hey, no, honey. Listen, I just wanted to — my brother’s out there with the Seventh Fleet.”

“Men and war,” she said. “You love it.”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes you do. That’s why you’re in the reserves.”

“Come on, Mel. I’m sorry.” His hands extended, palms up. “Hey, you’re more important to me than any damn war.”

“Hmm—”

He hit the “off” button and went down on his knees.

“You idiot,” she said.

“At your service, ma’am!”

“Well—”

He clapped his hands together, then opened them wide. “Without you I die.”

“Without me you’d watch TV. Lounge lizard!”

He rose and reached over the bed, taking her hand. “Love you, babe.”

“I’ve got geography at one-thirty. Have to prepare for it. Last summer school class.”

“What’s to prepare?”

“Answers. Spot quiz.”

“Ask me. Go on.”

“Hindu Kush?”

“What about it?” He pulled the sheets up about them.

“Where is it?”

“Asia.”

She punched him softly on the arm. “Big help. Where in Asia?”

He slid his hand over her buttocks, reveling in their firmness, and when it happened, he knew they’d be tighter than this, tight as a basketball.

“ Where in Asia?” She pushed his hand away.