W.E.B. Griffin: Retreat, Hell!

"Verbal orders of the X Corps Transportation Officer," MacNamara had replied, with as much assurance as he could muster. "The colonel said, 'Time is of the essence.' "

The MP officer, also a captain, had smiled at him.

"Good try, Captain," he said, and dabbed a blue paint circle on the wind­shield of MacNamara's jeep. Within an hour or so, MacNamara understood that the blue circle indicated a priority way down on the list.

Several times MacNamara seriously considered replacing the blue circle with a yellow one. Yellow seemed to represent the priority immediately after ra­tion trucks, and there was an assortment of paint in one of the mobile work­shops he had included in the first convoy, but he decided against it. For one thing, it didn't seem right, and for another, he didn't want another letter of rep­rimand in his service record, which he would get, sure as Christ made little green apples, if he was caught.

He wondered how long it was going to take him to return from wherever he was going in the Hamhung-Hungnam area to Wonsan. The southbound lane, so to speak, of the highway was usually crowded with northbound vehi­cles with a priority. Only a few vehicles were passing him going south.

He wondered if maybe he could somehow get a message to the officers he had left behind, telling them to saddle up and get moving as soon as they could because he would not be returning. In the end, he decided against this, too. It was his responsibility to go back and set things up, and he would.

Sixteen and a half hours after MacNamara had left Wonsan, he was again stopped in the right lane as priority convoys passed him in the left. Another MP officer, this one a lieutenant, came southward down the shoulder of the road in a jeep.

"Where are you headed, Captain?"

"Hamhung, Hungnam," MacNamara replied.

"Which?"

"I don't know. I have to find somewhere to set up—on the highway, prefer­ably. I'm a vehicle replacement outfit. And I've got the advance party of the 7th Repple-Depple with me. They need a place too."

"When I come back, say, in thirty minutes or so, you—just you—follow me. The turn off to Hamhung's about five miles up the road. You can find a place, or places, to set up while the rest of your convoy is still on the highway."

MacNamara had little trouble finding a suitable area for the 8023d. It was about half a mile in on the turnoff to Hamhung. The only thing wrong with it was that it was terraced, which would seem to indicate that it had once been a rice paddy, or paddies.

It was dry now, and obviously hadn't been a rice paddy for some years. That left the question in his mind: How long would human shit contaminate a rice paddy?

He had no idea. But it didn't matter. He had seen enough of the area to know that the terrain was either rocky hills or flat areas that either were or once had been a rice paddy. He thought the one he had chosen didn't smell all that rotten, but on the other hand, he had smelled so many rotten things since ar­riving in the Land of the Morning Calm that he suspected his sniffer had been overwhelmed.

He consoled himself with the thought that it was now getting chilly—it had been as cold as a witch's teat in the jeep overnight—and one of the prerogatives of being a Transportation Depot commander was being able to tell your non-com in charge of the Radiator Repair Section to rig a heater for your jeep, and that would keep the smell down.

He set up a temporary headquarters in one of the mobile service vans he had thoughtfully included in the convoy. Nature called, and he didn't think it would wait until the men dug a quick latrine, so he went up the hill a little and dropped his trousers behind a large boulder.

The wind coming off the hill was surprisingly unpleasant on the cheeks of his ass, and he thought that about the first thing the men were going to do when they finished laying the perimeter barbed wire was build another latrine like the one he had just finished building in Wonsan.

Jesus! If I can get through to Wonsan on a landline, I can tell Lieutenant Wright to just put the sonofabitch on the back of a tank retriever. I'll have to tell Wright to cover it with a tarpaulin so people won't know what it is. But that would save a lot of work.

As soon as I finish my dump, I'm going to see if 1 can find a phone. There's no telling how long it'll take to get the X Corps Signal Company to lay a couple of lines in here.

He heard a sound he hadn't heard since those CIA guys dropped in on the 8023d in Inchon. Fluckata-fluckata-fluckata.

He looked up and around and, as the fluckata-fluckata-fluckata fluckata-fluckata-fluckata sound grew louder, located it in the sky.

It was flying over the road in the direction of Hungnam.

It was painted black. He wondered if it was one of the two he had seen at Inchon. He wondered what the hell it was doing.

Jesus, if I could get my hands on one of those, I'd have that goddamn latrine up here tonight!

[THREE]

Office of the Commanding General

Headquarters X United States Corps (Forward)

Wonsan, North Korea

1245 2 November 195O

The black H-19A fluttered to the ground fifty yards from a collection of vehi­cles of all descriptions parked in a somewhat random pattern outside a two-story brick building that had, before the war, housed a regional secondary school. The downwash from the rotor blades blew leaves all over the area as the helicopter touched down.

There was much activity as Engineers, Signal Corps personnel, and other technicians set up the X Corps headquarters. As Major Alex Donald, USA— very carefully, to make sure he didn't run into cables strung between telephone poles— set the H-19A down, Major K. R. McCoy, USMCR, saw two flags, their poles set in what looked like artillery shell casings, in front of a van, a 6 X 6 truck onto which was mounted a square boxlike structure.

Such vehicles usually housed either communications gear or the machines required for some sort of maintenance function, but were sometimes used as mobile offices. That was obviously the case here. The flags hung limply on their staffs, but McCoy could see that one of them was the blue and white X Corps flag, and the other was solid red with white stars. That meant the van was oc­cupied for the moment by the X Corps Commander, until the support troops working frantically in and around the school building could get his office and command post set up there.

The moment the H-19A touched down, McCoy unstrapped himself and climbed down from the cockpit. The Big Black Bird had attracted the atten­tion of a lot of people in the area, more than a few of whom noticed that the guy getting out of the helicopter—a Marine officer—seemed to be in some dis­comfort. A few even wondered why, but their primary interest was in the heli­copter itself.

How come the goddamn jarheads have a big machine like that, and The Gen­eral himself has only a couple of lousy H-13s?

There were two MPs, armed with Thompson submachine guns, guarding access to the general's van, and McCoy had to wait until they verified his story that he was Major McCoy, and General Almond expected him. But finally he was passed, and walked to the van, stood on the lower step of the folding steps to the van, and rapped on the door with his knuckles.

After a moment, Captain Al Haig pushed the door outward, saw McCoy, and waved him inside. McCoy carefully hoisted himself into the van.

It was simply furnished. There were three identical desks. A master sergeant sat at one of the desks along the wall, using a typewriter. An identical desk sit­ting next to the master sergeant's desk—it had four field telephones on it—was obviously Captain Haig's. Major General Edward M. Almond sat at the third desk, all the way inside the van and facing the door. It held two field tele­phones and the leather map case Almond always carried with him.