Red Phoenix (22 page)

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CHAPTER
16

Tremors

NOVEMBER 10—NEAR THE DMZ, SOUTH KOREA

High on a hill above the full-scale mock-up of a Korean town, General Chang watched the afternoon’s scheduled urban-assault exercise move toward its planned climax.

The sharp rattle of automatic weapons fire mixed with the hollow crump of exploding grenades reached General Chang’s ears as he lay watching the assault blast its way into the village. He kept his binoculars focused on the lead platoon as it advanced up a narrow street.

Yes, that was the way to do it. One squad back shooting the hell out of likely enemy firing positions while another group dashed forward to close with the next house. The troops flattened against its walls while two men lobbed grenades in through doors and windows. Chang smiled as he saw the soldiers go in firing before the smoke from the grenades had even stopped billowing out of the building. Damn right. Charge in before the bastards inside had time to clear their heads.

Without lowering the binoculars he said, “Make a note. Commend the first platoon. Give them a two-day pass.”

His aide, crouching beside him with a pad and pencil, scribbled frantically, adding a new line to his tenth page of notes from this exercise alone. The general must be in a generous mood, he decided. For the conscript soldiers of South Korea’s army, a two-day pass was an almost unheard-of luxury. There’d be a lot of celebrating in the barracks tonight, and General Chang, the soldier’s soldier, would see his popularity soar even higher.

Chang swung his binoculars over to follow the other part of the assault force. They were also making good progress, grenading their way deeper into the village. He watched and listened as the firing rose to an echoing crescendo and died away into a spatter of individual rifle shots. Then the firing stopped.

“Tango One Five, this is Tango One One,” the radio crackled.

Chang took the microphone held out by his radioman. “Go ahead, Tango One One. This is Tango One Five.”

“The objective is secure. Repeat, the objective is secure.”

Chang thumbed the mike switch. “Acknowledged. Assemble your troops in the town square. I’m coming down. Out.”

The colonel tossed the mike back to his radioman, stood up brushing the dirt off his uniform, and headed toward his jeep. He was pleased. The exercise had gone like clockwork, with the village cleared of its hypothetical North Korean or subversive defenders in less than forty-five minutes.

Chang clambered aboard his jeep and settled back as it tore off down the winding, dirt road toward the small group of houses that marked Exercise Area Five. He threw his head back and let the cold air rush over him. Winter was coming on fast and they would have snow soon. He smiled. Many in the cities hated the winter, the icy north winds, the shorter days. But for farmers, the winter was a welcome time—a chance to rest from endless days spent laboring in fields and rice paddies. Chang had always liked the winter.

His jeep, radio aerial whipping in the breeze, slewed around a street corner and braked in front of the infantry company assembled in the village square.

“Attention!” D company of his 1st Battalion straightened in a single fluid motion.

Chang stood in his seat and returned their salute before jumping down out of the jeep. He strode over to the captain commanding D Company. “Fine work, Captain. Your boys looked very good.”

“Thank you, sir. We’ve been working them hard these past few weeks.”

Chang knew that was true. Every unit in his division had been given an accelerated training schedule. That wasn’t surprising, given the chaos sweeping through the country. And if anyone had noticed that most of the extra combat training centered on urban fighting, well, they’d kept their thoughts to themselves.

He looked the company over carefully. Every man’s gear looked in good order and ready for use. These men looked tough and they’d acted tough. He made a snap decision. D Company would lead the column into Seoul.

He studied the captain, too. The man had a good record. His men obviously liked and trusted him. And he was known around the 1st Battalion officers’ mess as a rabid political hard-liner. He was just the kind of officer Chang was looking for.

“Very well, Captain. You can dismiss your company now.” Then Chang held up a hand. “But before you do, you should let them know that they’ve just won themselves a two-day pass.”

He could see the front ranks smiling proudly, and he knew he’d just won another group of men who would fight for him when the time came.

“Company! Form in a column of twos and head for the barracks!”

The captain’s command roar cut through Chang’s thoughts. He turned back to the man. “Oh, and Captain?”

“Sir?”

“Join me in my quarters this evening for a drink. We’ve much to discuss, you and I. Be there at nineteen hundred hours sharp.”

The man beamed. “Yes, sir! I’m honored, General.”

Chang returned his salute and wheeled toward his jeep. He had other units to visit before this day was through.

NOVEMBER 14—YONGSAN ARMY BASE, SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA

McLaren stood at his window watching the tear gas rise above the city to the north. If Seoul’s politicians had thought the cold weather would end the rioting, they’d been damned overoptimistic, he thought sourly. Instead of tapering off, the disturbances were spreading over all of South Korea. From the reports he’d seen, most of the major industrial cities—Pusan, Taegu, and Taejon—were at a standstill.

Of course a lot of that could be blamed on the American and European trade sanctions. Overseas buyers had started breaking their contracts even before the sanctions went into effect, not wanting to get stuck with lot of overtaxed, unprofitable merchandise when they did. As far as McLaren could tell, the only people who were going to benefit from this whole mess were the international trade lawyers who were being called in left and right.

Certainly the sanctions weren’t helping South Korea’s workers. Large-scale unemployment had been a thing of the past for Korea, but now more than ten percent of the work force had been thrown out on the streets. And the numbers were rising fast. Government projections showed a twenty percent unemployment rate by early December.

The results were predictable, but McLaren didn’t find any pleasure in having predicted them. The workers who’d been tossed out on their ears, courtesy of the U.S. Congress, were siding with the radical students. And their protests were taking on an increasingly anti-American tone. In the past two weeks McLaren had seen sixteen of his men hospitalized with injuries after they’d been caught up in riots, and he’d been forced to curtail most leaves. As a result, morale in his command was starting to sag. Korea was already a strange place for most of the American soldiers stationed there, and being kept cooped up in their compounds wasn’t helping things any.

McLaren swore to himself. About the only thing that was going according to plan was his effort to bollix up the troop withdrawal planning process.
He’d started by letting the routine paperwork pile up on his desk before sending it back down with requests for minor and meaningless changes. And his staff, surprised as all hell at first, had caught on fast. He hadn’t had to say a word, but they were now actively doing their best to screw things up along with him. It was too goddamned ironic, he thought. Here he’d worked hard for months to organize a smoothly operating staff, and now they were showing just how good they were by turning a difficult administrative task into an impossible one. Admiral Simpson had joined in as well. Whatever paperwork did get through the maze here in Korea usually came back from Washington stamped
UNSAT.

Jesus, George Patton was probably rolling over in his grave. McLaren smiled slightly at that thought. Hell, if Patton had faced the same kind of situation, he’d probably be down sitting in the clerk’s filing room with a flamethrower right now—burning paperwork as fast as he could.

He turned away from the window and moved back to his desk. Normally kept bare, it was now covered with a mass of spilled papers and manila folders. He controlled the urge to sweep it all off onto the floor. Instead he picked up the latest set of draft equipment transfer orders for the 2nd Division’s tank battalion. He started reading, making marginal notes to himself from time to time. This was good stuff. The battalion’s S-4 had found a way to cut two weeks off the time it would normally take to ship his unit’s tanks back to the States. McLaren scribbled a reminder to himself to commend the officer’s ingenuity and then scrawled “Disapproved—try again” across the draft. He tossed it back on the stack.

There was one thing about this paper chase that he’d already decided. Officers who’d submitted grade-A plans wouldn’t suffer for it. He’d continue to give them high marks for efficiency even while ripping their work to shreds. Of course, that would create a clear paper trail pointing directly at him if Congress started getting suspicious about the slow troop withdrawal and sent its GAO snoopers sniffing around. But McLaren would be damned if he’d screw up the careers of a dozen promising young officers just to protect himself.

If there was going to be any heat from this thing, he’d take it himself. After all, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been under fire before for not playing the game the way the Army or congressional bureaucrats wanted it played. McLaren smiled to himself, remembering.

First there’d been that Tactics Review Board they’d stuck him with while he’d been recovering from wounds suffered in the Tet offensive back in ’68. He’d issued a minority report criticizing the tendency to rely on firepower to make up for inadequate patrolling and small-unit action. He’d also fired a verbal blast at Washington’s interference in field operations. That had earned him—what?—four years in a backwater training unit? Then there’d been his critical review of the Carter administration’s first try at building
Rapid Deployment Force—a hodgepodge of units that hadn’t been very rapid, very deployable, or much of a force. He’d spent the next year in the Pentagon’s Manpower and Recruiting doghouse before a new administration had given him another field command.

McLaren grinned. He’d been a good little boy for too long this time. It was time to raise a little hell. His career was at its peak anyway. No one was going to make him SACEUR—Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. He didn’t have the diplomatic skills you needed for that job. And no Washington brass hat in his right mind was going to put him on the Joint Chiefs. Nope. Korea was it and it was enough. While wearing his many hats as Eighth Army CO, Commander U.S. Forces, Korea, Combined Forces chief, and others, McLaren commanded nearly 700,000 troops—a force just about the size of the entire regular U.S. Army. Now Congress wanted to end all that, to pull out of the Korean peninsula? Well, they’d just have to wait longer than they’d thought.

McLaren got back to work throwing sand into the gears.

NOVEMBER 17—SOUTHEAST OF SEOUL

Tony Christopher knocked on Anne’s apartment door precisely on time. That had been easy to arrange, since he’d already been waiting anxiously in the car for fifteen minutes.

Anne Larson opened the door and stepped out, wearing a stylish fur-trimmed coat with a high collar that elegantly framed her curly mane of copper-colored hair and her fair complexion.

“Hi there.” He smiled. “Ready to go?”

She made a quick half-twirl as though modeling her winter coat and smiled back at him. “Definitely. Is this place a long drive?”

“Nah, just twenty or so klicks. I mean, kilometers.” Tony stepped aside to let her go first and then followed her downstairs to the front door. As Anne reached for the knob, he reached around her and opened the door, pushing it open a little awkwardly in the close quarters.

She looked slightly surprised but said “Thank you” anyway.

The steps outside were slick following a late-night rainstorm, and Tony offered her his arm. Anne didn’t seem to see his gesture and reached instead for the railing. Should have known better, he thought. You’ll have to watch showing your semi-chauvinist streak, old son.

He pointed out his car, parked half a block down. A battered old four-door Hyundai, it had been passed from pilot to pilot as they rotated through his squadron. And despite Tony’s best attempts the day before, it was less than sleek.

They walked up to the passenger side and Tony reached for the door handle. This time, Anne protested, “Hey, c’mon, I’m a big girl now. I’m
strong enough to open car doors.” She smiled as she said it, but she still grabbed the handle before he could.

Mentally kicking himself, Tony looked crestfallen. “Sorry, Anne. I didn’t mean to imply that you couldn’t …”

Now she looked a little sheepish herself and tried to pass her reaction off with a joke. “It’s okay, Tony, I’m just not used to such correct behavior from a fighter pilot.” She bent down and climbed in the Hyundai.

Tony shut the door after and moved, frowning, around to the driver’s side. Then he shrugged. Can’t let it shake you, he decided. Redheads are touchy, right?

Anne leaned across and opened his door from the inside.

The business of pulling out into traffic gave him a few moments to consider his next move. Anne’s gentle rebuff had made him realize he was acting like a kid on his first date. Not good.

Trouble was, he wanted to make a good impression. He couldn’t use his normal style on Anne. Momentary memories of his “normal” style and Maria filled his thoughts, but he quickly suppressed them.

Okay, Tony, just relax, he thought. He looked over at Anne, who was sitting quietly. When she saw his glance, she smiled quickly but said nothing. He decided to try again.

“I hope you like this place, Anne. The view is nice, and the history’s sure interesting.”

“I’m sure I will,” she said with warmth in her voice. It sounded a little forced, but the feeling was there.

He chattered on, relieved to find a topic he could discuss without anchoring his foot solidly in his mouth. “I read up on Namhan Mountain last night. It hasn’t really been used for over two hundred years, but the Koreans first built on the site two thousand years ago.”