He lifted his binoculars and scanned the low hills rising at irregular intervals on either side of the road. Every elevation in sight was occupied by camouflaged ZSU-23-4s, 57mm flak batteries, and their associated radars — his backup defenses should enemy aircraft leak through the MiG-29, MiG-23, and MiG-21 interceptors loitering overhead. Heavier antiaircraft guns and SAM sites farther back provided added protection.
Cho knew that some of his units had been hit hard from the air, but his air defense commanders had assured him that the imperialists were paying a high price in planes for every attack. He knew their claims were almost certainly exaggerated, but even so the toll of downed aircraft had to be wearing away the American and South Korean squadrons — loss after loss that would eventually render them ineffective.
Satisfied for the moment with the apparent readiness of his air defenses, he turned on his heel and faced south, studying the heavy black smoke cloud roiling high into the sky on the horizon. A huge cloud formed by burning villages and hundreds of wrecked vehicles. And he could hear a dull, muffled, thumping noise as his artillery continued to pound the retreating enemy, sending still more smoke and dust into the air.
Cho slowly lowered the binoculars to his chest and looked again at the landscape around him. The smoke pall staining the sky had reminded him that war, however successful or necessary, carried a bitter price. He could see that easily enough in the shattered buildings along the roadside and in the twisted corpses and abandoned, burned-out tanks and vehicles, strewn across the countryside. He could read it in the weary, vacant-eyed troops huddled around small fires off the highway — the remnants of his two first-echelon infantry divisions.
According to his reports, both divisions had lost nearly seventy percent of their effective strength in four days of continuous fighting. But they’d inflicted equally heavy losses on the enemy units opposing them.
Cho made a mental note to see that they were refitted and brought back up to strength with reinforcements as soon as possible. He would need every man he could lay his hands on.
“Comrade General! A message from General Chyong at the forward HQ!”
He turned and took the message flimsy from his thin-faced aide-de-camp. He frowned. The young man would simply have to learn to work calmly and more quietly. War was too important for high-pitched voices.
But the frown vanished as he read Chyong’s message. Advance elements of the II Corps were nearing Pyokche — barely fifteen kilometers from the outskirts of Seoul. Soon his troops could begin veering southwest, aiming to cross the Han river at Kimpo. Excellent. In just five days they had breached the puppet government’s fortifications and driven more than twenty-five kilometers against heavy opposition.
His counterpart at V Corps was having a slightly harder time of it as his divisions pushed down the Uijongbu Corridor. But even so, his columns were reported to have captured Chon’gong — a village twenty kilometers south of the DMZ and right at the mouth of a long valley leading right to the heart of Seoul. Soon the V Corps would also begin to swing away from the puppet regime’s capital, moving at an angle to cross the Han to the east.
The offensive was going well. With luck and skill the People’s Army would soon be able to encircle the imperialist forces massing to defend Seoul from the attack they’d dreaded for decades. An attack that would not happen. Cho had no intention of throwing his troops into the kind of meat-grinder house-to-house fighting that would be necessary to take Seoul by direct assault. Instead, the war plan he’d helped develop envisioned using the city as bait to draw the enemy’s armed forces into a trap. They would be pocketed when his II Corps and V Corps arced around Seoul to the east and west and joined hands at Suwon, twenty-seven kilometers south of the enemy capital.
With the bulk of its forces cut off from supply and surrounded by the People’s Army, the Southern regime would have little real choice but surrender.
Cho came out of his reverie and snapped his fingers, summoning his aides and driver. He’d spent enough time playing the wide-eyed tourist. There was work to be done back at the main headquarters — reports to be written for Pyongyang and plans that had to be laid for the next day’s attacks.
Things were going to get more complicated as the follow-on troops of the III Corps moved into the attack in this sector. Once it was committed to battle, Cho would move up to command both the II and III Corps as Colonel General of the newly formed First Shock Army. The First Shock Army, Cho repeated silently to himself. Truly, Kim Il-Sung’s spectacled son had fulfilled his promises.
Now Cho would fulfill his. The South would fall.
The Main Supply Route was jammed bumper-to-bumper with canvas-sided, two-and-a-half-ton trucks, jeeps, fuel tankers, ammo carriers, and military vehicles of every description — all moving south at a snail’s pace intermingled with carloads of frantic civilian refugees.
McLaren looked at the chaos on the road and knew he was looking at a beaten army.
His South Korean and American front-line units weren’t beaten yet. They were still fighting, surrendering ground reluctantly, meter by meter, and making the North Koreans pay in blood for every advance. But they were being worn down, submerged by the North’s superior numbers and massed artillery, and McLaren didn’t have much help he could send them.
The first reinforcements from the States — battalions of the 6th and 7th Light Divisions — were starting to arrive by air, but it would take them at least a day to organize and get up to the front. And McLaren wasn’t even sure how much they could do once they got there. Both the 6th and the 7th were basically light infantry forces; units designed for rapid transport overseas, with few of the heavy antitank weapons or artillery pieces needed to meet the kind of armor-heavy assault the North Koreans were making.
South Korea’s several-million-man reserve force was also mobilizing, but the nationwide mobilization had been slowed by the confusion caused by the North’s surprise attack and by the political disturbances that had preceded it. Many of the already assembled reserve units were tied down chasing North Korean commandos who’d infiltrated by sea and by air to attack U.S. and ROK rear-area installations.
And now this. McLaren clenched the stub of his unlit cigar between his teeth. Things were bad enough up at the front without this rear-echelon bug-out. He wasn’t sure who or what had started it, but it seemed like just about every supply unit, maintenance detail, field hospital, and Army paperchaser within earshot of the war had decided to retreat at the same time. They’d loaded up on anything with wheels and an engine and spilled out onto the MSR in a honking, panicked mass. The South Korean units that were supposed to control the roads had been totally swamped.
And they were blocking the goddamned road! Every friggin’ inch of it. Troops and supplies trying to get forward to where they were most needed were having to detour off onto little, winding country lanes or go off-road through the built-up snow and ice. This traffic jam was costing valuable time — and that cost lives.
“Doug!”
“Yes, General?” Hansen materialized beside him, notepad in hand.
“Get on the horn to Frank Collier and tell him I want this mess straightened out, pronto!” Hansen took rapid notes as McLaren outlined exactly what he expected the Eighth Army’s J-4 to do. “I want at least a company of MPs here to start these people in some kind of order. They won’t be able to stop them short of the bridges over the Han, but they can at least clear some lanes going north. Clear?”