“For the time being,” I said.
He backed out, spinning gravel as he did so.
Ernie’s left foot worked the clutch as his right hand fondled the crystal skull that topped the four-on-the-floor gear shift. He loved this jeep and had put a lot of work into it. Well, not work, exactly. What he did was, at every end-of-month payday, he gave a gift of one quart of Johnny Walker Black to the head honcho dispatcher at the 21st Transportation Car Company, or “21 T Car,” the main motor pool for 8th Army headquarters. As a result of this highly prized gift, what Ernie received was his personal jeep that was always dispatched to him and him only, topped off with gasoline, with maintenance thrown in and new tires every six months. In addition, Ernie popped for the tuck-and-roll black leather upholstery that puffed up proudly in the backseat.
“Never know when some dolly might want to crawl back there with me,” Ernie’d told me.
We sped out of the front gate of meikju changgo and turned right, heading for Sonyu-ri. The MPs approaching The Black Star Club had been on foot, and when we’d passed the intersection minutes ago there’d been no activity. So when we saw two MP jeeps lurking behind a brick wall on the near side of the Camp Pelham main gate, Ernie and I were both taken by surprise. As we passed, the MPs started their engines, turned on their overhead emergency lights, and gave chase.
“Aren’t they ever going to stop messing with us?” Ernie asked.
“This is Division,” I replied.
As if that explained everything, Ernie stepped on the gas. It was mid-afternoon, so the denizens of the Sonyu-ri nightlife were up and about and the roads teemed with pedestrians. Ernie swerved past kimchi cabs parked on the side of the road, avoiding an old man pushing a cart filled with yontan charcoal and rushing past scantily clad business girls carrying pans filled with soap and shampoo on their way to the public bathhouse. We must’ve been doing forty by the time we passed the front gate of RC-4. A half-mile later, we sped past the spot, off to our left, where the corpse of the woman in red had been found. We raced past the Country Health Clinic, still leaving the MP jeeps in the dust, when five hundred yards ahead a quarter-ton truck nosed out onto the road.
“Damn.” Ernie swerved to his left, but the truck kept coming. To avoid it, he swerved back to his right, but the driver of the military vehicle seemed to have anticipated Ernie’s move and quickly backed up. Ernie slammed on the brakes. Behind us, the two MP jeeps kept coming. Ernie glanced back, shifted the jeep into reverse, but it was too late. The MP jeeps nudged up to our rear bumper and cut off all means of escape. Armed MPs hopped out of the rear of the quarter-ton truck.
A half-dozen MPs surrounded us. Slowly, Ernie and I clambered out of the jeep.
“You’re interfering with a freaking investigation!” Ernie shouted.
Ignoring him, the MPs closed in. One of them I recognized: Specialist Austin, the gate guard who hadn’t given us the time of day. The ranking man appeared to be a buck sergeant. Four of them pulled their batons and the other two stepped toward us.
“Assume the position,” the buck sergeant said.
Ernie replied with his usual brilliant retort: “Get bent.”
The four MPs hopped forward. I grabbed one of them, shoved him away, and Ernie popped another in the jaw. After that, confusion reigned, and after much jostling, Ernie and I ended up in the backseat of an MP jeep, hands cuffed behind our backs. An MP driver started the engine and, after another MP hopped in the passenger seat, he sped back toward Camp Pelham, Ernie and I bouncing in the backseat. But much to my surprise, when we reached Camp Pelham, the driver kept going past the main gate, continuing east, toward the hills that rose inland from the Western Corridor.
“You guys are fucked,” Ernie shouted at the driver. “We had authorization to be up here!”
He kept at it, screaming at the top of his lungs, calling the two MPs three kinds of asshole when finally the one riding shotgun cracked. “You had authorization,” he shouted back, “until you interviewed Groverly!”
Ernie looked surprised and turned to me. I grimaced and then shrugged. Either Groverly had admitted that he’d talked to me or someone in the MP barracks had spotted us talking. Either way, Division was apparently using that as an excuse to take us into custody and ship us back south. At least, that’s what I thought was happening, especially when we turned right at one of the country roads and wound our way through hills and cabbage fields that led to the city of Popwon-ni. I figured we’d keep moving south from there, running parallel to the MSR on a road that would eventually reach the mountains just north of Seoul. But I was wrong. Four or five miles on, we turned into the back gate of Camp Howze.
“Why are we going here?” I asked.
The 2nd Infantry Division MP headquarters was at Camp Casey in the Eastern Corridor. The Western Corridor and the Eastern Corridor were both traditional invasion routes that stretched from China, through Manchuria, through North Korea, and finally ended at the capital city of Seoul. In ancient times they’d been used by Chinese legions, Manchurian raiders, and Mongol hordes. During the early 20th Century, the Japanese Imperial Army had used them to go north toward Siberia. Most recently, they were guarded by the GIs of the US 2nd Infantry Division. We were still deep in Division territory, more than ten miles north of the outskirts of Seoul.
Neither MP answered. But I believed there was a certain smug satisfaction in their silence, a satisfaction that grew as we wound through the rows of olive-drab Quonset huts perched on the hilly ridges that comprised Camp Howze. It seemed like an awkward place for a military compound, surrounded by hills, until you realized that those same hills would probably provide excellent protection from North Korean artillery.
We stopped at the back door of one of the larger Quonset huts. The quarter-ton truck pulled up behind us, and MPs hopped out and took up positions with nightsticks drawn. Like a couple of Brahma bulls, Ernie and I were pulled out of the jeep and herded through a door that said: no admittance. authorized personnel only.
Amongst the US Army’s favorite directives.
I expected an ass chewing. None came. Ernie and I sat in an interrogation room that was locked from the outside. Our handcuffs had been removed, but we hadn’t been provided chow, and from the growing darkness outside the painted window I could tell that night had fallen.
Impatient, Ernie rose and pounded on the door. No one answered. He kept pounding. Finally, he shouted, “Goddamn it! I have to take a leak.”
Five minutes later, the door creaked open. Before Ernie could pounce, a metal bucket was shoved in and the door slammed shut. Ernie carried the bucket to the far corner of the room and took his leak. Later, I took mine.
We were dozing on a wooden bench and I wasn’t sure how many hours we’d been cooling our heels when there was a quick knock on the door and it swung open. My eyes opened at the same time. A man walked into the room; he wore baggy fatigues. He stopped in front of us and jammed both fists into his narrow hips.
“What the hell is wrong with you two?” It was Staff Sergeant Riley.
“Up yours,” Ernie replied, lazily rubbing his eyes.
“I had to drive all the way up to Camp Howze to bail your sorry asses out!”