Hansen nodded.
“Okay. I want more MPs on the other side of those bridges as a reception committee. They’re to stop these bastards and get ’em back in — ” Someone just up the road leaned on his horn and kept leaning, cutting McLaren off.
His temper snapped.
With Hansen tagging alongside, McLaren stormed up the road toward the offending vehicle — a jeep occupied by a heavy-jowled, sweating American lieutenant colonel and a slim, shaking, freckle-faced PFC driver. The bird colonel stood high on the jeep’s front seat, frantically and futilely trying to wave the stalled traffic ahead out of the way.
The driver saw McLaren coming and guiltily took his hand off the jeep’s horn.
“Damnit, Greene! Keep honking!” Spittle flew out of the lieutenant colonel’s mouth as he turned to yell at his driver.
“He’ll do nothing of the kind, Colonel.”
The man looked up angrily. “And just who the hell do you think…”
He noticed McLaren’s four stars for the first time and paled even further.
McLaren saw the crossed cannons on the man’s uniform collar and pounced. “What’s your unit, Colonel? And why aren’t you with it?”
The lieutenant colonel’s mouth opened and closed without making any sound.
“Son?”
The PFC stammered out his answer, “We’re with the Two Thirty-Sixth Artillery, General, sir.”
McLaren wheeled on the lieutenant colonel, who’d collapsed back onto the seat. “Your guns are back that way, Colonel, firing support for my forward battalions.” McLaren pointed north. “Now suppose you explain just why the fuck you aren’t up there with ’em.”
The man’s lips quivered as he tried to form a coherent reply, “Had to… had to report to HQ. Wanted to arrange more, uh, more ammo…”
“Bullshit! You were running, mister!” McLaren glared him into silence and turned toward his aide. “Captain Hansen!”
“Yes sir.”
“Place this man under arrest for desertion in the face of the enemy. He’s relieved of his command, effective immediately.”
Hansen stepped forward and led the shaking, teary-eyed officer out of the jeep toward McLaren’s waiting command vehicle. McLaren leaned closer to the jeep’s driver. He spoke more softly. “Now, son. What I want you to do is to wheel this jeep out of this mess and make your way back to your unit. Is your battalion’s XO still there?”
The PFC nodded. “Yes, sir. Major Benson’s in charge, sir.”
“Good. Okay, now you tell Major Benson what’s happened. And you tell him from me that he’s got the battalion now. Got it?”
The PFC nodded again, even more vigorously this time.
“Great. Okay, son, get on your way. And good luck.” McLaren stepped away as the driver snapped him a quick salute and started pulling the jeep off the highway onto the shoulder.
He watched the young private disappear north up the side of the road past the stalled traffic toward the battle line. Then he turned and headed back toward his waiting aides. He had a lot more to do to try to unscramble the situation he and his troops faced.
Captain Lee watched Pyokche burn.
An ROK mechanized infantry battalion had held the town for nearly two hours against overwhelming numbers of North Korean tanks and infantry. Dug in among Pyokche’s tile-roofed houses and small shops, they’d tossed back wave after wave of attackers — buying time for Lee’s combat engineers to dig defenses south of the town.
Now, though, the resistance inside Pyokche was collapsing. The surviving North Korean attackers had pulled back from the open fields surrounding the town and called on their artillery to finish the job. The heavy guns had responded, and after a brief, blessed lull, shell after shell had screamed down into the town — smashing houses, collapsing trenches, churning even the rubble into a sea of unrecognizable debris.
Lee had listened to the frantic screams of the defenders over the radio, and he’d known that they couldn’t hold much longer. No one could be expected to last long in the inferno the communist barrage had created. So he’d left the radio to spur his engineers on.
Some were using the bulldozer blades on their mammoth CEVs — combat engineering vehicles — to scrape out firing positions for the mixed bag of South Korean and American tanks left to block the North Korean advance. Others were scattered across the open ground behind the town, laying a thin screen of antitank and antipersonnel mines.
Satisfied that they were working as fast as was humanly possible — and perhaps a bit faster — Lee had come back to the M-113 armored personnel carrier that served as his command vehicle. Infantry squads were desperately digging in on either side of his APC. Dig fast, he thought, you haven’t much time left.
A voice on the main tactical net confirmed his unspoken thought. It was the battalion commander inside the town calling his brigade commander farther back along the highway. In the background Lee could hear shells crashing on Pyokche, an uncanny echo of the same explosions he could hear with his own ears. “Alpha Foxtrot Four Four, this is Alpha Charlie Two Three. Enemy columns forming up for attack. My strength at thirty percent. Repeat, three zero percent. Request permission to withdraw. Over.”
Lee waited while the brigade commander acknowledged the message and gave his permission. It wasn’t long in coming. No battalion that had lost more than half its strength in such a short time could possibly fend off another determined attack.
He switched to the frequency assigned to his own engineering company. “Bravo Four One to all Bravo Four units. Withdraw to main position. Repeat. Withdraw to main position. Acknowledge.” He wasn’t going to leave his men out in the open.
The South Korean combat engineer listened to his platoon leaders confirm his order and then switched back to the main net.
“Alpha Foxtrot Four Four, this is Charlie Two Three. Request smoke to cover our withdrawal. Over.” Lee nodded to himself. A sage request. Even a thin artillery-laid smoke screen would make it safer for Pyokche’s surviving defenders to evacuate their positions.
“Charlie Two Three, this is Alpha Foxtrot Four Four. Negative your smoke request. Say again, smoke is unavailable. Over.” Listening, Lee swore to himself. Nothing was working right. Ammunition expenditures for all weapons had been far above prewar estimates, and he knew that supplies weren’t getting forward the way they were supposed to. Now the remnants of the mechanized infantry battalion in Pyokche faced a kilometer-long retreat across open ground without cover.
Minutes later, Lee stood high in the M-113’s commander’s cupola watching his engineers filter back through the thinly held foxholes and firing positions that marked the new front line. He shook his head wearily. There weren’t enough infantry, tanks, or heavy weapons here to hold a determined North Korean attack for more than half an hour. It hardly seemed worth the sacrifices Pyokche’s defenders had made and were still making.
Lee lifted his binoculars and focused on the town, watching through the smoke and dust as rubble fountained skyward under the enemy’s barrage. Suddenly the barrage stopped. An eerie silence descended across the landscape as the smoke and dust drifted away from the ruined town.
The radio crackled. “Charlie Two Three to all Charlie units. Execute withdrawal now!”
Lee’s grip on his binoculars tightened as he saw scattered figures emerging from the rubble, running for the safe lanes through the minefield his engineers had laid. Others clung to a handful of battle-scarred M-113s racing at high speed to cross the open ground.
One of the APCs suddenly lurched to a halt and burst into flames. Lee spun round and saw the snout of a T-62 poking through the smoking rubble of a wrecked house on the outskirts of Pyokche. The North Koreans had arrived.