He listened to the GQ klaxon echoing through the carrier and watched as MANNED AND READY appeared by every weapons mount and sensor system in the task force. The Soviets wanted to practice? Fine. Brown and his ships would get some more practice in, too. He moved to the anti-air plot and started snapping out orders.
CHAPTER 32
Roads South
“Miss Larson?”
Anne looked up, startled by the Army officer’s question. She was still sitting on the floor in the main terminal, in the same spot where she’d tried to sleep all night. After the airfield had been shut down, she hadn’t been able to find anyone with new orders for her group, and there’d been no way to get anywhere. She’d tried butting her head against obstinate officialdom for many hours before giving up and storming back to her people where they sprawled on the floor. It had been a long night for all of them. Sleep hadn’t been easy to come by with the muffled thumping of heavy artillery growing ever louder to the north. But now maybe somebody had remembered where they were.
The Army officer standing above her wore black “railroad tracks,” or captain’s bars, on the collar of his camouflaged uniform. The name sewn over his tunic pocket read HUTCHINS. He was a little shorter than Tony but looked personable enough.
“Miss Larson?” he asked again.
“That’s right,” she said, and stood up, feeling every aching muscle. “Are you from the base? My people and I need transport back to…”
Hutchins held up a hand to stop her. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we’re not going to be able to get you back to the base. The Army’s orders were to evacuate you, and that’s exactly what I’m supposed to do. I’ve got a cobbled-together platoon and enough trucks to carry you all waiting outside. The new evacuation airfield is Kunsan, and my orders are to get your group there.”
Anne shook her head. That couldn’t be right. Kunsan was over two hundred kilometers south of Seoul. There had to be closer airfields. She dug into her memory. “Can’t you get us out at Ch’unch’on or Suwon? It’ll take hours to get to Kunsan.”
“My orders say Kunsan, Miss Larson,” Hutchins’s tone was apologetic, but firm. “Both those other fields are getting too close to the front lines. Besides, Kunsan’s supposed to be pretty heavily defended. It’s the safest place in South Korea right now.”
Anne stopped herself from arguing. What the captain was saying made sense. She didn’t know what had made the upper-ups choose Kunsan as the primary air logistics point, but at least they had sense enough to defend it. Not like here. There were pillars of smoke still visible around Kimpo’s runways if you wanted to look for them. She didn’t.
She glanced down at her watch and then at the hollow-eyed people sprawled across their luggage all around her. “Okay. When do we leave?”
Hutchins smiled ruefully. “Right now, I’m afraid. The NKs are still moving south, and the Army wants your group and a lot of other people out of Seoul immediately.”
Everyone around had heard their conversation, and with a soft groan her people got up and arranged themselves. Carrying the precious computer tapes, now more out of date than Anne liked to think about, they followed Hutchins through the crowded terminal.
The airport’s normal office arrangements and passenger procedures had been completely superseded by preset wartime plans, and now last night’s air raid had confused things even more. They walked by offices set up on makeshift desks in the concourse and past crates packed with military gear and documents stacked all along the walls. Civilian evacuees like themselves clustered in every spot of open floor space.
Hutchins led the party down a motionless escalator, through an unlit corridor, and suddenly into the open through an unused loading dock. They gasped as they came out into a howling wind that cut right to the bone, and they hastily buttoned up against the unexpected cold. A half dozen trucks sat idling by the roadside, a much more beat-up group than the ones they’d ridden in out to Kimpo.
The soldiers who were supposed to serve as their escort matched the appearance of the trucks. In fact, if anything, they looked even more ragged. Anne could see two wearing bloodstained bandages, and the tall, black sergeant bellowing orders was in civilian clothes. The only sign of his rank was an armband with three stripes taped to it. The weapons the soldiers carried were even more varied, a mix of M16s, old M14 rifles, and even a few riot guns.
The dismay she felt must have been mirrored on her face, because Hutchins answered her unspoken question. “No, ma’am, they aren’t regular infantry. If they were, they’d be up on the line.”
He kept his voice low. “About half of them are from an artillery battery that was wiped out the first day. The rest are from supply or administrative units, and two of them that I know of were in the stockade for a little excessive celebrating on Christmas Eve.” He smiled crookedly.
She didn’t smile back. “And just what did you do before the war started, Captain Hutchins?”
Hutchins looked her in the eye and said, “I was administrative assistant to the Second Infantry Division’s civil affairs officer.” He saw her lips tighten and shook his head. “Look, Miss Larson, I know what you’re thinking, but don’t try read a book by its cover. I’ve been through the Infantry School, and I speak passable Korean. That’s one reason I got this job. Trust me.”
He turned away to face the others in her group. He raised his voice to make sure they could all hear him. “Look, we don’t plan on doing any fighting. All we’ve got to do is load you people onto the trucks and see you safely to Kunsan. My men and I will do our best to make the trip as fast and safe as we can.”
Hutchins smiled thinly as they started grumbling. “Count your blessings, people. My men and I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours.”
Turning his head back over his shoulder, he called, “Sergeant Evans! Load ’em up!”
The grumbling didn’t stop, but the civilians moved to obey. They’d had enough of being this close to the war. Evans chivied them into six different groups and assigned each to a different truck. Their complaints got even sharper when they climbed into the backs of the frigid, canvas-sided vehicles. The cold morning sun hadn’t done anything to warm the trucks up. And just like those on the trip out to the airport, they’d have to be warmed by human body heat. Veterans now, Anne’s logistics staffers made sure the flaps on the backs of their trucks were securely tied down.
This time Anne didn’t have to ride in the back. Hutchins asked her to sit with him in the cab of the lead five-ton truck. She squeezed in beside the captain and his driver, a cheerful-looking PFC named Bell, gratefully. It might be cramped and uncomfortable, but at least the truck cab had a heater.
Hutchins was the last one in, and as soon as the door slammed behind him, they roared off, bumping over a half-plowed access road littered with debris.
As they drove away from the airport, Hutchins explained their route on a marked-up map. They wouldn’t be allowed to use Highway 1, the main north-south artery between Seoul and Taejon. Instead the convoy would have to parallel it on smaller roads, first to a town called Anyang, then to the walled city of Suwon, and south from there.
“With luck, we’ll be past Anyang by early afternoon, and Suwon by nightfall.”
Anne looked at her watch, then at the map Hutchins had unfolded across his lap. Anyang was only about twenty kilometers away, and it was just after nine in the morning. “Why so long to get to Anyang?’
Hutchins corrected her. “Oh, we’ll get to Anyang in about an hour, but it’s one of the major traffic control points. After that, it’ll probably take us a couple of hours to reach the checkpoints and then get passed through. After that, our main problem should be traffic.” He shrugged. “I really don’t know much about what the roads are like outside the city.”