Kevin had always heard that freezing to death was painless. Now that it was happening to him, he knew that wasn’t true.
He had to get up and move. Movement meant warmth and warmth meant life. But movement could also mean death if the North Koreans had left sentries behind to guard the hill.
Kevin lay still, listening for the slightest sounds around him. He’d heard the North Koreans evacuate their wounded and march south, away from Malibu’s smashed bunkers and trenches. But he hadn’t been able to make up his mind about the answer to the crucial question. Had they all gone?
Kevin wasn’t sure how long he’d been lying there beneath his platoon sergeant’s corpse. Time had stopped meaning very much. How long had it been since his platoon had been wiped out? An hour? Two? Three? He couldn’t read his watch without moving his arm.
A new wave of cold agony swept through him. Kevin clenched his teeth against the pain. He had to get up. Now. Before the cold sapped his strength so much that it began to feel warm. Before he started falling asleep in its chill embrace.
Awkwardly he crawled out from under Pierce’s body, forcing himself first to his hands and knees and then into a crouch, his back against the sandbag-reinforced trench wall. Teeth chattering, he looked at the wreckage of his platoon.
Bodies were heaped down the length of the trench, lying crumpled and twisted wherever the killing bullets had thrown them. White, bloodless, unseeing faces stared at the sky.
Kevin closed his eyes and brushed roughly at the tears frozen to his face, as if he could brush away the images surrounding him. He’d failed his men. He’d led them to disaster. And now he was conscious of a terrible, almost overwhelming sense of shame that he’d survived. It had all happened so quickly. Only a few seconds had elapsed between the moment Pierce was killed and the final collapse of Malibu West’s defense. But during those few chaotic seconds he’d been overpowered by a wave of horrible, mind-numbing fear, caught completely unable to think of what to do next. Playing dead during the massacre had been an instinctive reaction, a last grasp for personal survival.
Kevin clenched his fists and moaned softly. Now he could think again and wished that he couldn’t. His mind kept replaying those last horrible seconds, over and over. Pierce falling in slow motion, bleeding, dead. The grenades going off nearby. Men screaming and dying. Men he’d been responsible for.
He shook his head in despair. He’d panicked and lived while they’d died. Now the most he could do was save himself. And maybe not even that. He bit his lip and levered himself slowly to his feet.
Sounds were starting to make themselves clearer to him, and he realized that he could still hear the thumping roar of North Korean artillery from across the DMZ. It wasn’t a continuous, ear-splitting barrage anymore. Instead, the guns fell silent for moments at a time as new targets were sought, identified, and marked for destruction. Then the guns fired again, sending streams of high-explosive shells screaming across the sky toward the south.
Suddenly Kevin froze. He’d heard footsteps from the communications trench off to his left. The North Koreans had left sentries behind. His left hand fumbled for the 9mm Army-issue pistol holstered at his waist. It wasn’t there. He looked around frantically and saw the Beretta lying in the muck by Pierce’s body. Oh, shit.
He heard the footsteps again, closer this time. Kevin tensed. There wasn’t time to run. He’d have to try taking the North Korean with his bare hands. He felt a wild urge to laugh and suppressed it. He’d barely passed his ROTC Unarmed Combat classes. What chance did he have now?
He pressed back harder against the sandbags, willing himself invisible and knowing it wouldn’t work.
Footsteps again, crunching in the frozen mud at the bottom of the trench. Out of his half-closed eyes, Kevin saw a man step out of the communications trench and start to turn toward him. Now!
He lunged forward with a strangled yell, knowing he wouldn’t make it. The man was already turning, moving fast, bringing a rifle up toward him. Then Kevin saw his face and faltered.
It was Rhee, a battered and bloody Rhee, but Rhee nonetheless. His South Korean liaison officer.
He saw the recognition in the South Korean’s eyes at the same moment. The rifle slid out of Rhee’s hands.
“You’re alive?” Rhee’s voice was hoarse, and Kevin saw the long, jagged cut running down the right side of his head. Dried blood streaked the South Korean lieutenant’s torn snowsuit.
Kevin nodded, not trusting himself to speak for a moment.
Both men stared at each other, panting, waiting for the fear-invoked adrenaline rush to subside.
“What happened?” Kevin jerked his head back the way Rhee had come.
Rhee shook his head and winced. “I’m sorry. I don’t know.” He paused, obviously trying to remember something, and then continued in a hoarse whisper, “I was in my … my bunker. There was a flash. An explosion.”
The South Korean looked around slowly at the bodies heaped around them. “When I came to … everything was like this … everyone dead.”
He stared back at Kevin. “How did you survive?”
Kevin laughed, a bitter, coughing laugh that turned into a choked-back sob. “Me? I chickened out. I played dead while they killed my men.”
Rhee shook his head. “You must not blame yourself, Lieutenant. We were overwhelmed by vastly superior numbers in a lightning attack. No one else could have done any better against such odds.”
“I should have done something.” Kevin heard his voice break. “God, there must have been something I could have done.”
“There was nothing to be done,” Rhee said flatly. “The communists outnumbered us by more than ten to one. They had absolute artillery superiority. We were short of ammunition and completely surrounded. The result was preordained. Victory was beyond our grasp.”
Kevin turned away, feeling irrationally stubborn and oddly irritated by Rhee’s attempts to find excuses for him. “Nice try, Lieutenant Rhee, but I screwed up. End of story, okay? Forty men are dead because of me. Because I panicked.”
The South Korean moved in front of him again. “You cannot dwell on it, Lieutenant. Your reaction was normal. Anybody else would have done the same.” He tapped his chest. “I would have done the same.”
He leaned closer. “Come, Lieutenant Little. There is much that we must do if we are to get out of this. We may have been defeated, but we are both still able to fight on. And we shall avenge our men a hundred times over.”
Kevin closed his eyes again and sank back against the sandbags. Avenge their men? They’d be lucky to survive the next couple of hours. Right now, he just wanted to sleep. Funny, the air felt warmer somehow.
Hands grabbed him and shook him. Kevin opened his eyes to find Rhee’s face inches away. “Come on, Lieutenant! There is no time for self-pity. You’re alive. Now stay that way!”
The South Korean’s voice hardened. “It’s going to take both of us to get out of this. If you want to fall apart, do it later, after we’re back in our own lines.”
Kevin felt anger surge through him, driving back both the cold and sorrow. “Goddamn you, Rhee. Let go of me!” He pushed the South Korean’s hands away and straightened up.
Still angry, he turned away and grabbed an M16 off the trench floor. He didn’t see the wan, sorrowing smile cross Rhee’s face and vanish.
He turned back to the South Korean. “Okay, Mr. Rhee. Just what the fuck do you suggest we do to get out of this mess?”
Rhee kept his face expressionless. “First, I think we must get off this hill. The communists have gone for now, but they’ll be back. You can be sure of that.”
Kevin nodded, grudgingly accepting the sense of Rhee’s argument. “Okay. But we can’t move very far in daylight. We’d be spotted in minutes.”