Retreat, Hell! Page 11

  “I would suggest, my friend, that McCoy is just the man for that job.”

  “I agree, sir.”

  “My heart goes out to you, Fleming,” MacArthur said.

  “Thank you.”

  MacArthur decided to change the subject.

  “I suppose you’ve read the dossier on Rhee?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. Amazing man, apparently.”

  “Who in his youth fell under the spell of a Viennese . . . lady of the evening . . . and married her.”

  “I saw that,” Pickering said. “I wonder how often a prominent man has done something like that without it becoming a matter of official record?”

  “I would hate to hazard a guess,” MacArthur said.

  There was a discreet knock at the door.

  MacArthur frowned, then said, “Come.”

  Colonel Sidney Huff came into the compartment.

  “General, we just had word that the helicopters have arrived safely at Kimpo.”

  “What helicopters would that be, Huff?”

  “The large-capacity Sikorsky helicopters, sir. Two of them.”

  “Is there some reason, Huff,” MacArthur asked, not pleasantly, “why you felt I had to know that right now?”

  “General, I thought there might be a public relations value in photographs of you with these aircraft.”

  “I would think photographs of me turning his capital back to Rhee would overshadow any photograph of me standing by an airplane.”

  “Yes, sir, of course they would. But I really think it might be valuable in the future. It would take only five minutes or so. May I set it up, sir?”

  MacArthur looked thoughtful, shrugged, and then nodded.

  “Yes, Sid,” he said. “You may.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Huff said, and backed out of the compartment, closing the door after him.

  “Fleming, do you have any idea how much I envy your anonymity?”

  “Douglas, that’s the price of being a living legend,” Pickering said.

  MacArthur considered that, and nodded.

  “Getting back to where we were before Huff,” MacArthur said. “Youthful indiscretions. You know the old Cavalry dine-in toast, don’t you?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “ ‘Here’s to our wives and the women we love,’ ” MacArthur quoted, hoisting an imaginary glass. “Pause. Long pause. ‘May they never meet.’ ”

  Pickering chuckled.

  “Somehow, Douglas, I don’t think my Patricia or your Jean would be amused.”

  “Then we will just have to keep that between us, won’t we?”

  IV

  [ONE]

  THE HOUSE SEOUL, KOREA 0740 29 SEPTEMBER 1950

  Major General Ralph Howe and Master Sergeant Charles A. Rogers walked into the garage behind the house looking considerably neater and cleaner than they had at breakfast. They were showered, shaved, and in starched and pressed U.S. Army fatigues.

  Major Kenneth R. McCoy and Master Gunner Zimmerman were examining the hood of what now had become “McCoy’s Russian jeep.”

  Zimmerman spotted Howe and Rogers, stood erect, and opened his mouth.

  General Howe very quickly raised his hand, palm outward, to silence him. McCoy sensed something unusual and looked over his shoulder. General Howe turned his palm-outward hand toward him. He lowered it only when he was sure McCoy wasn’t going to bellow an automatic “Attention on Deck!”

  “So this is the famous Russian jeep?” Howe said.

  “Yes, sir,” McCoy said.

  “What are you doing to it?”

  McCoy answered by pointing. There was now a large white star on the hood, and on either side the stenciled-in-black legend U S M C.

  “I’m impressed,” Howe said. “Where did you get the stencils?”

  “I cut them,” Zimmerman answered. “I cut one for you, too, Charley.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “For chevrons,” Zimmerman said, pointing at Rogers’s bare sleeve. “You’ll look like a Marine, but I thought you’d like that better than what the general said about you looking like the oldest private in the Army.”

  “He has a point, Charley,” General Howe said.

  “Will the paint dry?” Rogers asked doubtfully. “We’re going to have to get out to the airport.”

  “It’ll dry,” Zimmerman said. “I’m a Marine. You can trust me.”

  Rogers snorted but started to unbutton his fatigue jacket.

  “Ken,” Howe said, gently but as a reprimand, “I thought you understood I wanted to hear what the North Korean colonel had to say.”

  “Sir, they were supposed to tell me when you came downstairs.”

  “There was a little confusion in there,” Howe replied. “The rest of your men showed up, hungry and dirty.”

  He took from his pocket a manila envelope, folded over and heavily sealed with Scotch tape, and handed it to McCoy. “Your sergeant said this was for you.”

  “Thank you, sir,” McCoy said, and began to remove the tape as he went on: “Well, sir, Ernie and I talked to both the prisoner and the South Korean colonel. Which puts me in the same spot Bill Dunston’s in. We think we’re onto something, but we don’t want to holler ‘Fire’ just yet, with nothing to back it up.”

  “Neither you nor Ernie could get anything out of this fellow?” Howe sounded both surprised and disappointed.

  “All I can give you, sir,” McCoy said carefully, “is what I think is one possible scenario. I have nothing to back it up but my gut feeling.”

  Howe made a let’s have it gesture.

  “I think this colonel is important. I’m pretty much convinced he’s an intelligence officer. He had his own vehicles, for one thing, and he was obviously trying very hard to not get captured.”

  McCoy realized that he was not going to be able to remove the Scotch tape from the manila envelope with his fingernails. He muttered, “Shit,” slipped his right hand up the sleeve of his utility jacket, and came out with a blue steel dagger, then continued without missing a syllable: “I think he’s one of the NK officers who’ve been trained by the Chinese Communists, or the Russians, or both. . . .” McCoy dug the point into the Scotch tape, gave a little shove, and then almost effortlessly sliced through the layers of tape. “I know he speaks Cantonese, and I think he probably speaks—or at least understands—Russian.” He wiped the blade of the dagger on his utility jacket, then replaced it in whatever held it to his left wrist. “If that’s true—and that’s a big ‘if’—”

  General Pickering had told General Howe about the knife McCoy carried on his left wrist. It was a Fairbairn, designed by the legendary Captain Bruce Fairbairn of the pre-World War II British-officered Shanghai Police. Fairbairn had taken a liking to a cocky young corporal of the 4th Marines, whom he had met at high-stakes poker games, had run him through his police knife-fighting course, and then given him one of his carefully guarded knives. Howe had never seen it before, although Pickering had told him McCoy was never without it.

  McCoy took two leather wallets from the now-sliced-open envelope, put them in his hip pocket, then tossed the third wallet the envelope had held to Zimmerman.

  “—then it’s possible, I think likely—” McCoy went on.

  “What’s that, your wallets?” Howe interrupted.

  His curiosity had gotten the best of him.

  “Yes, sir. And the CIA credentials. We left them with the 25th Division G-2 when we went south,” McCoy said.

  Howe thought: Which suggests, of course, that you thought there was a very good chance you would have been captured—or killed—yourselves. In either event, you didn’t want them to find the CIA identification.

  “Go on, Ken,” Howe said.

  “If all three things are true, sir, then possibly he’s had access to contingency plans which said the Chinese will intervene under such and such circumstances. . . .”

  “For example?”

  “Maybe something vague, like we get too c
lose to the Yalu River, and they feel we’re not going to stop on the south riverbank there. There’s a big electric-generating plant, the Suiho, on the Yalu. If we interrupted service from there, it would cause the Chinese a lot of trouble. Or maybe, for example, something specific, like we look like we’re about to take Pyongyang. I don’t know, sir.”

  “But you think this fellow has seen this, knows the trigger?”

  “I think he’s cocky because he believes the Chinese will come in, sir. But this is another of those cases, sir, where I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. He may not know any more about Chinese intentions than I do.”

  “If you were a betting man, Ken, what would the odds of Chinese intervention be?” Howe asked.

  “Seven-three,” McCoy said, “that they will.”

  “Can you think of anything that would increase the odds that they won’t?”

  “If we destroy the NK Army, maybe by chasing it halfway to the Yalu, then stop, they may not—may not— feel threatened.”

  “Two days ago, the Joint Chiefs authorized MacArthur to conduct military operations leading to the destruction of the North Korean armed forces north of the 38th Parallel,” Howe said. “Did you hear that?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Two caveats. Only South Korean troops can approach the Yalu, and our aircraft cannot fly over China or Russia.”

  “The Chinese won’t care if our troops on their border are South Korean or American,” McCoy said.

  “You think that would change the odds?” Howe asked. “How bad?”

  McCoy didn’t reply directly.

  “ROK troops on the Yalu would make it even worse,” he said. “The Chinese would believe us, probably, if we said we weren’t going across the river. But they don’t know how much control we have of the ROKs, and would act accordingly.”

  “Changing the odds to?”

  “Eight-two,” McCoy said. “Maybe nine-one.”

  Howe exhaled audibly.

  He looked at Charley Rogers, who was very carefully putting his arms into the sleeves of his fatigue jacket, on which the chevrons of a master sergeant had been stenciled in black paint that still looked wet.

  “Much better, Charley,” Howe said. “I would have hated to see you hauled off to wash pots in a field mess somewhere.”

  Then he turned back to McCoy.

  “Forewarned is forearmed, Ken. There’s a very determined-looking second lieutenant from the 25th Division outside the gate who wants his vehicles back. You need some help with that?”

  “No, sir. Thank you. I saw that coming. That’s one of the reasons I liberated the Russian jeep.”

  He turned to Zimmerman.

  “Ernie, let them have the jeep and the weapons carrier. We’ll see what we can scrounge from Tenth Corps or the division.”

  Zimmerman nodded and walked out of the garage.

  “You about ready to head for Kimpo, Ken?” General Howe asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I was thinking I could ride with you in this magnificent vehicle of yours, and Zimmerman could ride in my jeep with Charley.”

  “Whatever you want to do, sir,” McCoy said.

  [TWO]

  KIMPO AIRFIELD (K-14) SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA 0835 29 SEPTEMBER 1950

  The terminal building at Kimpo had been in the line of fire of both sides since the war began, and was in pretty bad shape. Army engineer troops were already at work trying to make it functional, but at the moment base operations was two squad tents set up end to end and the tower was mounted on the back of an Air Force General Motors 6 × 6 truck.

  Two platoons of military police from the 4th Military Police Company, whose usual mission was the protection of the X Corps Headquarters, had been sent to the airport to provide the necessary security for the arrival of General MacArthur.

  They had quickly established three areas, informally known as (1) For The Brass; (2) For The Press; and (3) For Everybody Else.

  The area for (1) The Brass was immediately adjacent to the squad tents serving as base operations. Cotton tape usually used to show safe lanes through minefields had been strung in two lines, ten yards apart, from iron stakes intended to support barbed-wire entanglements.

  (2) The Press was thus ten yards from The Brass, and kept from joining them by large MPs stationed at three-yard intervals. Still farther away from base operations, behind The Press, was another double row of minefield tape strung through the loops on top of the barbed-wire rods. Behind this was sequestered (3) Everybody Else.

  Everybody Else included everyone with some reason, however questionable, to be in the area. There were perhaps two hundred people in this category, officers and enlisted, Marines and soldiers.

  The entire area was surrounded by still more tape on rods to keep the rest of the world away. This was guarded by MPs, and the outer of the two MP checkpoints was located here.

  Under the supervision of a military police second lieutenant, who was sitting with his driver in a jeep equipped with a pedestal-mounted .30-caliber air-cooled machine gun, a sergeant and three other MPs stopped every approaching vehicle to determine in which area the passengers belonged, if any, and to show them where to park their vehicles.

  Getting a glimpse of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur in the flesh was right up there with, say, getting a look at Marilyn Monroe or Bob Hope.

  No one really knew how the word of his pending arrival had gotten out, but no one was surprised that it had.

  “Lieutenant!” the MP sergeant called when he saw the funny-looking vehicle fourth in line, and thought, but could not be sure, that he saw silver stars gleaming on the collar points of the passenger.

  The MP lieutenant got out of his jeep in time to be at the sergeant’s side when the funny-looking vehicle rolled up. His attention on the vehicle, he did not at first see the stars on General Howe’s fatigues.

  Then he did, jerked to attention, and saluted.

  “Sorry, sir,” he said. “The General’s star is not mounted on the bumper, and I didn’t—”

  “It’s not my vehicle,” Howe said reasonably. “No problem. ”

  “Sir, VIP parking is right beside the tent,” the lieutenant said, pointing.

  “Thank you,” Howe said. “The two in the jeep behind us are with us.”

  The lieutenant had seen the people in the jeep were a Marine master sergeant—he could tell because his chevrons were painted—and a warrant officer, and thus falling into Category (3), Everybody Else, but the lieutenant had been in the service long enough to know that it is far wiser to go along with general officers than to argue with them.

  “Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said, and raised his hand to salute again.

  When both vehicles were out of earshot, the sergeant asked the lieutenant, “Sir, what the hell was that?”

  “Damned if I know,” the lieutenant confessed. “What was that, a Russian jeep?”

  A high-pitched voice from The Press caught their attention.

  The voice had screamed, “McCoy, you sonofabitch!”

  The lieutenant and the sergeant looked. One of the members of The Press had ducked under the minefield tape and was running toward the Russian jeep, which slowed and then stopped.

  Two MPs rushed toward the member of The Press to keep the Fourth Estate where it belonged. The lieutenant and the sergeant rushed to join them.

  The journalist, who had two 35-mm cameras hanging from the neck, nimbly dodged the two MPs intent on maintaining the established order, by force if necessary, reached the Russian jeep, and quickly scrambled into the backseat.

  The lieutenant now could identify the errant member of the Fourth Estate as Miss Jeanette Priestly of the Chicago Tribune, primarily because as she climbed into the Russian jeep she dislodged her brimmed fatigue cap and long blond hair cascaded to her shoulders.

  The lieutenant reached the Russian jeep.

  “Sorry about this, General,” he said, and added, sternly, to Miss Priestly, “Miss Priestly, you
know the rules. You’ll have to get behind the tape.”

  Miss Priestly smiled, revealing an attractive mouthful of white teeth, and said, “Fuck you!”

  “Please don’t cause a scene, Miss Priestly,” the lieutenant implored.

  “It’s all right, Lieutenant,” General Howe said. “Miss Priestly is also with us.”

  “General, she’s supposed to . . .”

  “If anyone gives you any trouble about this, Lieutenant, ” Howe said, motioning for McCoy to drive on, “refer them to me.”

  How the hell am I supposed to refer anybody to you if I don’t know who the hell you are?

  “Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said.

  If either General Howe or Major McCoy expected at least a word of gratitude from Miss Priestly for having rescued her from the military police, it was not forthcoming.

  “Killer, goddamn you,” she said. “You promised to let me know what you found, you sonofa—”

  McCoy snapped, “Shut up, Jeanette,” and then added, evenly: “One more word out of that sewer of a mouth of yours and I’ll drive you to the end of the runway and throw you out.”

  “Oh, sh—” she began, and then fell silent.

  Why do I suspect, General Howe thought, that at some time in the past McCoy has threatened her, then made good on the threat?

  An MP was directing the parking of senior officers’ vehicles to the left of the base operations tents.

  He saluted and had just started to say something to General Howe when a four-car convoy of olive-drab 1950 Chevrolet staff cars, preceded by an MP jeep, rolled up. The first car in line had a two-starred major general’s license plate on its bumper.

  A tall, erect captain in starched fatigues jumped out and trotted around the car to open the rear passenger door.

  Major General Edward M. Almond, commanding general of X U.S. Corps, got out. He was in fatigues, but wearing his general officer’s dress pistol belt2around his waist.

  The tall captain said something to him, and Almond looked over at Howe and McCoy, then walked over to the Russian jeep. Howe and McCoy got out of the jeep. McCoy saluted crisply. Generals Howe and Almond sort of waved their right hands at each other.