The lieutenant looked up and spat out a mouthful of snow. “I sure can try, Colonel.”
“Then you do that, son. We ain’t getting out of this field any other way.”
Both men flattened as a mortar round burst nearby, spattering them with dirt. Others were less lucky. Kruger saw one of his staff sergeants splayed up against a paddy dike. The man’s right leg was missing.
“Top Dog One, this is Papa Fox Three One, over. Top Dog One, this is Papa Fox Three One, over.”
Kruger bellycrawled back to his radioman. “Fox Four Five to Alpha Five Two. I have a fire mission, over.”
The officer commanding 2nd Battalion’s eight 81-millimeter mortars responded immediately. “Ready to shoot, Fox Four Five.”
“Okay.” Kruger flinched as NK machine gun fire cracked over his head. “I need an incendiary smoke mission. Coordinates yankee delta eight four five one two two. Fire that in” — he glanced toward the FAC and saw him holding up two fingers — ”two minutes.”
He crawled back to the small cluster of men around the air controller. Marines on either side were starting to return the enemy fire. One minute left. He took a deep breath and then bellowed, “Okay, boys. We’ve got fast movers coming in! Mark your positions! Use purple smoke!”
Seconds later, canisters tossed by men in each of the battalion’s platoons started spewing bright purple tendrils of smoke. They rose and mingled in the wind to form a single line of purple clearly marking the battalion’s location from the air.
With a sudden roar, four snub-winged Harriers flashed overhead toward the North Korean positions, flying in pairs. As each jet pulled up sharply and to the right, it threw sixteen small, finned objects tumbling into the village: five-hundred-pound Mark 82 general purpose bombs. They went off in an endless, teeth-rattling series of sun-white explosions.
Other explosions flashed amid the shattered houses. The battalion’s mortars were joining in — tossing white phosphorus rounds that had a dual purpose. Burn and maim the enemy while building a blinding curtain of smoke.
“Marines!” Kruger bounced to his feet, M16 in hand. Helmeted heads all across the field turned to watch him. He climbed high onto a paddy dike and waved his hand toward the gray-cloaked, burning village. “Advance!”
“UURRAH!” Guttural voices rose in the rhythmic battle cry as the marines surged forward toward the North Korean positions, firing on the move. Kruger ran among them.
It took fifteen minutes of bloody, close-in fighting to clear the town. But at the end of it the road lay open and undefended.
Major Park Dae-Hwan stared approvingly at the carnage around him. The attack had been sudden, unexpected, and savage — perfect in fact. Bodies littered the camouflaged camp, some in full uniform, others entangled in sleeping bags or naked in the snow. Most of the North Koreans had been cut down in the first minute. Few had even had time to grab their personal weapons.
He smiled thinly. The communists had concealed their headquarters well, hiding its tents, armored vehicles, and radio gear in among the towering trees of a small pine forest. It would have been almost impossible to spot from the air. Of course, that same abundant cover had made it possible for this South Korean Special Forces team to sneak right up to the camp perimeter without being spotted.
Park snapped a new magazine into his CAR-15 carbine and slung it across his shoulder. Then he whistled sharply, summoning his Black Berets to the rally point. They’d idled here long enough. He and his team had been inserted by helicopter behind enemy lines two days before and held in readiness for just such a mission. Now they had other work to do. The communists had a whole network of supply dumps, communications facilities, and security detachments posted along this highway. Park intended to destroy them.
“Sir!” Sergeant Kwon came toward him with something clutched in his hand. Park remembered seeing the burly sergeant sawing away at the uniform of one of the North Korean officers.
Kwon stopped in front of him, saluted, and held out a strip of cloth. “A trophy for your collection, Major.” The sergeant grinned broadly at his own joke.
Park took the rigid piece of cloth and stared at it. A shoulder board with a single star. The insignia of a People’s Army major general. He nodded in satisfaction. One of the six North Korean divisions trying to stem General McLaren’s attack had just lost its commander and its entire staff.
He slipped the dead general’s shoulder board into his tunic and turned to leave. His men followed in single file. They had a long march ahead to reach the next objective.
“Gunner! Sabot! Tank at ten o’clock!” The South Korean captain felt his M-48’s turret swing left and waited.
“Up!”
“Fire!” The tank bucked as its 105-millimeter main gun went off with a loud roar. Acrid fumes filled the turret as it recoiled and spit out a used shell casing. The gunner hurriedly loaded another armor-piercing shell. It wasn’t necessary.
Their target, a T-55, sat burning on the raised shoulder of the highway. Fifteen others were scattered across the iced-over rice paddies, wrecked and on fire. It was over. The counterattacking North Korean armored battalion had been slaughtered — caught charging across open ground by twenty South Korean tanks waiting hull-down behind the highway embankment. A single M-48 sat mangled, its turret ripped open by a communist shell.
The captain undogged his hatch and stood high in the turret, gulping down deep breaths of fresh air. Although the entire engagement had taken just five frantic minutes, he was exhausted, worn ragged by the extraordinary combination of extreme physical exertion, fear, and intense concentration needed in battle.
The brigade commander’s voice crackled through his headphones. “All units. Continue the advance in echelon. Division objective is now Uch’on.”
The M-48’s commander squinted into the setting sun and nodded to himself. The village of Uch’on lay eleven kilometers ahead. They just might be able to make it before nightfall. And that would put the division’s lead elements more than thirty kilometers past what had once been the thinly held North Korean main line of resistance.
Thunderbolt had broken through.
The two generals stood together in the shadow thrown by a tall tree. Both were bundled against the cold.
Off to the south Taejon’s battered skyline glowed faintly with the light of a hundred fires, and smoke rising from the city stained the sky a dull, barren black. At this distance the sounds of the fighting were muted, reduced to little more than the quiet crackling of small-arms fire interspersed with the heavier thumping noises made by artillery and mortar rounds.
Colonel General Cho Hyun-Jae grimaced. “I fear, Chyong, that we stand on the edge of disaster. You’ve heard the reports?”
Lieutenant General Chyong nodded. They’d begun picking up the scattered transmissions earlier in the morning. First, news of a possible amphibious invasion on the coast near Seoul. Then, fragmentary reports of a massive assault force rolling out of the eastern mountains. Every signal had been garbled — a victim of imperialist radio jamming. Nothing was certain.