With a good commander directing the KPA forces, the fight to take the rest of Pyongyang would be much more costly. Especially as it looked like the last bridge across the Taedong River had just been destroyed.
Rhee and Little were both hunched over the UAV monitor, trying to see just how badly the Yanggak Bridge was damaged. The two colonels feared the worst as they studied the display, desperately wishing for a clearer picture. But there was so much smoke and dust in the air it was impossible to make anything out. Frustrated, Rhee went back to using his night vision binoculars. They weren’t any better. Suddenly, an annoying buzz sounded from the comms tent.
“Colonel,” shouted Guk. “It’s General Kwon on the secure line, sir.”
Rhee hurried back over to the tent and grabbed the encrypted satellite phone. “Colonel Rhee here, sir.”
“Colonel, I want you to head down to the Taedong River and survey the bridges. I need to know if any have even a remote chance of being usable. The UAVs aren’t good enough for a detailed damage assessment. I need close visual inspection, from the ground… tonight.”
“Of course, General. We’ll leave immediately.”
“Excellent. And keep your eyes open for potential locations that can support pontoon bridges. We may have to use them if the bridge isn’t an option.” Kwon didn’t sound happy at the idea. The Taedong was a big river. Laying a pontoon bridge under fire from a hostile shore would be slow and costly.
“Yes, sir,” Rhee replied. Then after a short pause he added, “General, if I may ask, how did the other corps do?”
The gruff sigh told Rhee all he needed to know. “Not as well as we had hoped, Colonel. The First Army’s Seventh Corps barely got into the city proper before being bogged down; the same for the Third Army’s Fifth Corps. Your sector is the only one that made its planned goals, but you and I both know why.”
“The river,” answered Rhee, nodding. The KPA troops had evacuated the area just before they blew up the bridges. The ROK troops had gained ground quickly, but, with further progress blocked by the river, it had no value.
“Exactly. We need to get across the Taedong, and quickly.”
“I’m not looking forward to what happens when we do.”
“Yes, Colonel, I know bypassing the city makes more military sense, but there are the political aspects. Taking the city will break the back of the KPA resistance. So find me a way across that river! Kwon out.”
Rhee put the phone down, turned back to Kevin, and queried, “Colonel Little, would you care to join me and my team for a stroll along the Taedong?”
“Sounds like fun,” Kevin answered, straightening up from the UAV station. “When do we leave?”
“Now.”
It had taken the evening and most of the night to reach the riverbank. Now Kevin ran, stooped over, to the remains of a burnt-out building and threw his back up against the charred brickwork. Everywhere he looked, he saw the signs of a pitched battle. The blackened hulks of KPA tanks and shattered bunkers lined the shores of the Taedong River. Unmoving figures in both sides’ uniforms lay in close proximity to the still-smoldering ruins. The wounded had been recovered soon after the fighting had stopped, but they hadn’t had the opportunity to remove the dead.
He saw Rhee hold up his hand, signaling the four men behind him to stop. The South Korean colonel scanned the area ahead with his night vision goggles and then waved them forward. The observation site was less than a hundred meters away. The Yanggak Bridge was the second structure Rhee’s recon team had been assigned to inspect; the first, the Chungsong Bridge to the west, was a total loss. Kevin had little hope this next one would be any better, but they still had to get close enough to assess the damage with their own eyes. Other teams from the Ninth Special Forces Brigade were surveying the four remaining bridges to the northeast. Listening in on their reports to Kwon wasn’t encouraging. Most of the bridges across the Taedong River were unserviceable, wrecked beyond repair. They’d have to be completely rebuilt.
The five men stayed low as they scurried toward their first planned survey site, a small peninsula a couple hundred meters from the bridge. Actually, there were two bridges. The first was a steel-framed railroad bridge, and the second a reinforced concrete, multilane highway span beside it. Either would meet the army’s needs. The railroad bridge was in front, from the team’s viewpoint. Rhee stayed low as he ran along the rocky shoreline. His chosen path kept them close to the water’s edge; he didn’t want to be seen by either friend or foe.
From everything Rhee could see, there wasn’t a hostile soldier in sight. The UAV above them hadn’t seen anyone on or near the shore on Yanggak Island, nearly four hundred meters away. Their portable UAV monitor showed only hotspots from the fires still burning in the destroyed stadium.
But even if there were no enemy soldiers in sight, Rhee was equally concerned about the friendly units nearby. Even though the ROK 25th Infantry Division had been informed his team would be in the area, the colonel suspected the troops would be more than a little trigger-happy after the battle. And there were always a few who never got the word. As the division’s defensive perimeter was just a mere eighty meters away, he felt it prudent to stay out of sight. He didn’t want to risk being fired at by friendly units.
As the group approached the peninsula, Kevin saw the mound they had spotted in the satellite imagery rising up out of the water. It was actually a pile of gravel, stored there temporarily for the concrete plant a couple hundred meters to the west. The gravel was dumped in a loose “L” shape, giving them cover from the friendly forces to the south. They had also chosen the mound because it was a few meters taller than either bridge’s deck. Crawling up the nine-meter rise of loose aggregate proved to be a bit of a workout, but once at the crest, they had a good view of both bridges — well, at least the southern part.
The Yanggak Bridge had two separate sections. They could see the spans that reached from the southern shore to the island. A second set of bridges linked the island to the rest of Pyongyang, but they were hidden behind the island itself.
Rhee pulled out his night vision binoculars and began a sweep, while Kevin and the other team members assembled a laser rangefinder with an integral GPS receiver. The equipment would take the exact measurements needed to construct a detailed computer rendering of the railroad and highway portions of the bridge.
“No contacts,” Rhee reported.
Kevin was already scanning the closest structure. He sighed heavily; the railroad bridge was not an option. “Rhee, the four center spans on the railroad bridge are completely destroyed — gone. We can cross that one off our list.”
“What about the highway bridge?” asked the Korean colonel, a note of irritation in his voice.
“Looking now,” Kevin replied. From this vantage point, they had a decent, but not unobstructed view of the highway bridge. Fortunately, it was just a little taller, allowing Kevin to see the spans through the railroad bridge’s steel framework. What he saw was more encouraging. “It looks like they concentrated their explosives on the center two spans. The other four look untouched.”
“What’s their condition?” requested Rhee as he continued his safety scan.
“I can’t tell for certain, but they’re not completely dropped. I can still see some intact pavement. They’re definitely damaged; I just can’t say how badly from here. We should be able to get a better view from the second survey site.”
“Understood,” said Rhee, then briefly turning his head toward his team demanded, “Corporal, status on the measurements.”