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

"But you know?"

"Yes, sir."

"I want you to go there, right now, and deliver a message for me to the station chief or his deputy. No one else. If necessary, wait there for one or the other to show up."

"Yes, sir."

When Almond did not hand him a sheet of paper or an envelope, Lieu­tenant Colonel Raymond took a small notebook and a pencil from his pocket.

"Don't write this down," Almond said. "Memorize it."

"Yes, sir."

" 'Classification Top Secret,'" Almond began to dictate. " As of 1445 hours this date, by order of the Supreme Commander, Allied Powers, two H-19 he­licopters, together with their crews, maintenance personnel, and all available supporting equipment, have been transferred to you. The officer-in-charge has been notified, and is awaiting your orders in the hangar across from base op­erations at Kimpo Airfield. Signature, Almond, Major General, Chief of Staff, Allied Powers.' Got that?"

"Sir, would you give it to me again?" Lieutenant Colonel Raymond asked. Almond did so.

"Got it, sir."

"When you have delivered the message, report to me at the CP," Almond ordered. "Let's go, Al."

Chapter Five

[ONE]

Near Yoju, South Korea

17O5 29 September 195O

Major Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, was three quarters of the way toward the top of a hill that had been terraced into rice paddies. He had only a vague idea where he was, except. . .

He knew he was somewhere to the east of where he had seen the jeep with the American flag flying from its antenna.

He knew that he had been moving, and making pretty good time, since daylight—that is, for fifteen hours.

He knew that he had crossed a dirt road three hours before and an hour after that a paved road, which in Korea meant a highway, and he suspected that it was the highway connecting Suwon, to his west, with Wonju, to his east.

And he knew that he had waded and swum across a river, which he was pretty well convinced was the Han.

From where he was sitting, on a dirt footpath, his back resting against the earth-wall dam of a rice paddy, he could see in the valley below him the "high­way" bridge of the paved road across the river. The bridge had been mostly blown into the water, but there were signs that vehicles had forded the river near the shattered bridge.

He had no idea whose vehicles, or when they had crossed.

There were the burned remnants of buildings and stone-walled, thatch-roofed huts on both sides of the river by the bridge. There had been no signs of people or of travel on the dirt road, the highway, or the river when he had crossed them, and there had been no signs of anything human and alive in the thirty minutes he had been watching now.

The only sign of human life he had seen all day had been very early that morning, shortly after he had started moving, when he had come across three rice farmers tending a paddy.

They had had with them their lunch—balls of rice flecked with bits of chicken or pork—and two bottles of water. He had taken half the rice and one of the bottles of water, even though he was almost positive the water wasn't safe to drink, and had vowed he wasn't going to take a sip unless he absolutely had to.

He had paid for the rice and water with a U.S. twenty-dollar bill from a thick wad of currency held together by a gold money clip that had been either a birthday or a Christmas present from either his mother or his father. He couldn't quite remember which.

He wasn't at all sure if the rice farmers knew what the twenty-dollar bill was, and was just about convinced the farmer's pleasure in taking it was because they would have been just as happy to take any colored piece of paper if that meant the large bearded American with the large pistol wasn't going to shoot them to ensure they would not report him to the authorities.

Pick had noticed aerial activity all through the day, from contrails laid al­most certainly by Air Force B-29 bombers, to formations of twin-engine air­craft, either Air Force A-20s or B-26s flying at what was probably eight or ten thousand feet, to low-flying Air Force P-5 Is and even some Marine and Navy Corsairs flying to his west, right down on the deck, probably on interdiction missions.

None had been close enough for them to see him, and certainly not close enough for him to try to signal them with the mirror, even if he knew how to work that goddamn thing, and anyway, the flash of light from the goddamn mirror would almost certainly have been lost in the far brighter flashes of light coming from the sun bouncing off the water in the rice paddies.

He had filled both canteens and the bottle he'd bought from the rice farm­ers with water from what was probably the Han River, and felt marginally safer in drinking some of that now.

The decision he had before him now was when to have supper, before or after going to work.

He had not found a conveniently drained rice paddy, which meant that he was going to have to drain one himself. In two months, he had become rather expert in draining rice paddies, so that he would have a muddy surface into which he could stamp out his arrow and the letters PP.

It wasn't as simple a task as one might assume, not simply a matter of kick­ing a hole in the dirt dams and letting the water flow out.

There was a hell of a lot of water in each rice paddy, he had learned, and if you kicked too large an opening, the water would run out too quickly, taking with it more dirt, so that what had begun as a small trickle of water turned with astonishing speed into a raging torrent.

The torrent would soon overwhelm the capacity of the dirt path between adjacent paddies to carry it away, and flow into the rice paddy below it on the hill, where it would overwhelm that paddy's earth dam, and produce something like a chain reaction.

A line of drained paddies running down a hill was visible for miles, and would attract the kind of attention that would see him captured. He had caused one major chain-reaction draining and two not quite so spectacular—all three of which had seen excited farmers rushing to see what had happened—before he'd given the subject of paddy drainage a great deal of thought and come up with a technique that worked.

The trick was to go to one end of the paddy and scrape a very shallow trench at the top of the dam. The water would flow until it had fallen to the level of the trench and then stop. Then you moved five feet away and dug an­other very shallow trench, and repeated the process until the paddy was dry.

Major Pickering decided he would work and eat . He would dig the first very shallow trench with his boot, eat one of his nine rice balls as the water drained, then, when it had stopped flowing, dig another very shallow trench, eat a sec­ond ball of rice, and so on.

He pushed himself off the earth dam, walked to the end of the paddy, and scraped the first trench.

It was long after dark before the paddy was drained.

He looked down at the valley and saw some lights, but they were dim and not moving along the highway.

He moved uphill from the drained trench, sat down on the dirt path, popped dessert—the last of the nine rice balls—into his mouth, and then lay down.

He had a busy day tomorrow. He had to find food again, and move, and then find another suitable rice paddy.

[TWO]

The House

Seoul, South Korea

1715 29 September 195O

When Colonel Scott, the X Corps G-2, had quietly passed on the location of the CIA station to Lieutenant Colonel Raymond, he of course had not simply given him the address. Neither officer spoke, much less read and wrote, Korean. Instead, he had prepared a rather detailed map, and provided a verbal descrip­tion of how to get there, and of the building itself.