He and Jill Matthewson leaped off the truck, strode past the destroyed Camp Casey main gate, and marched across the open pavement toward the advancing ROK Army troops. The crowd was silent. Jill Matthewson pulled her. 45.
“No!” I shouted. Frantically, I lunged forward. Both Ernie and the men assigned to us by Colonel Han held me back.
“No!” I shouted again, because what they were about to do seemed perfectly obvious to me.
Jill held her. 45 aloft and then aimed it at the KCIA man standing behind the row of KNPs. She popped off a round. At that range, twenty or thirty yards, the round flew high but the reaction of the KNP brass was immediate. They fell to the ground. Now Colonel Han stepped in front of Jill. He pulled his pistol and aimed it at the advancing ROK troops. They didn’t wait for an order. A fusillade of M-16 rounds slammed into Colonel Han’s body. He didn’t twirl in the air as he would’ve done if this had been a movie. His body slammed to the pavement as if he’d been sucker-punched in the chest by a twenty-foot-tall giant.
Jill stepped over Colonel Han’s body until she was straddling it, kneeled down in his spreading blood, and kissed him on the forehead. When she stood again, she started to raise the. 45 in her hand.
That’s when I broke free of Ernie’s grip and charged at the ROK soldiers in front of me. “Sagyok chungji!” I shouted. Hold your fire!
Jill looked back.
It was just that one or two seconds of hesitation that allowed me to sprint across the road. I slammed into her and executed a tackle that would’ve made my old coach at Lincoln High proud. Jill fell, Ernie arrived, and soon we three were stumbling away from the line of ROK soldiers. Jill struggled but Ernie punched her and I slipped handcuffs on her.
We were in a Hyundai sedan, heading south, Ernie driving. The vehicle had been loaned to us by Madame Chon. While we were still in Tongduchon, Jill had changed into civilian clothes and since none of us were now in uniform-and we were riding in a civilian vehicle-we hoped that we could slip past the southernmost 2nd Infantry Division checkpoint on the MSR. They had no jurisdiction over civilians. With any luck, we could make our way back to Seoul.
“Back there,” Ernie said, “you told us that you all but killed Pak Tong-i.”
“He died the same night. So I’ve felt responsible for his death. His heart must’ve been weak.”
“You weren’t the one who killed him, Jill,” I said.
“Then who did?
“Bufford. And maybe Weatherwax. They interrogated him after you left. That’s how they obtained the information that led them to the Forest of Seven Clouds.”
Jill sat in silence, thinking about that.
“Did you use a rope on him?” Ernie asked.
“A rope?”
“To strangle Pak Tong-i. To scare him into talking.”
Jill shook her head.
“Then it wasn’t you who killed him. It had to be Bufford and Weatherwax.”
“I hope you’re right,” she said finally.
“I’m right,” Ernie replied.
Stanchions blocked the road ahead. Ernie slowed.
“Easy now,” I told him. “These civilian license plates should ward them off. Of course, they’ll see we’re Miguks, and Ernie and I have short hair and look like GIs, so they might try to talk to us anyway. But what we do is we ignore them and keep rolling slowly through the checkpoint. They have no authority to stop us.”
“Seems like up here at Division,” Ernie said, “people don’t worry much about the legal extent of their authority.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But these MPs have no reason to stop us.”
“Unless they figure that you’re those Eighth Army CID agents they’ve been looking for,” Jill said.
“Or that you’re an AWOL MP,” Ernie shot back.
“Not AWOL any longer.”
We’d taken the handcuffs off of Jill and she’d voluntarily submitted to our instructions to return with us to Seoul. So she was once again under military jurisdiction and-technically-no longer absent without leave. And since she’d returned to military jurisdiction prior to thirty days after leaving her unit, she couldn’t be charged with desertion.
We passed the reinforced concrete bunker with the M-60 machine gun. Beyond that stood an armed ROK soldier. He peered into the car, saw our civilian license plates, and waved us on. The last obstacle was the American MP. He was tall and skinny and held his M-16 rifle at port arms, his back toward us.
“He isn’t even paying attention,” Ernie said.
We were about to cruise past him when suddenly he turned, lowered his rifle, and stepped in front of us. Ernie slammed on the brakes. From beneath the MP’s helmet, a long skinny nose pointed out.
Jill screamed.
Ernie shouted a curse but it was too late for him to step on the gas. The MP had leveled his weapon and was pointing it right at Ernie’s face. Warrant Officer Fred Bufford. In the flesh. I popped open the passenger door and rolled onto the blacktop. Ernie sat frozen behind the wheel. Jill ducked but it was too late, Bufford had spotted her. He started shouting for us to get out of the car, hands up. Shielded by the side of the vehicle, I pulled my. 45.
Boots clomped behind me. I turned. The ROK Army soldier’s rifle was pointed directly at my face. I lowered my. 45, dropped it to the ground, and raised my hands in surrender.
At the point of a gun, Bufford marched Jill Matthewson into the bushes.
Ernie and I stood at the side of the road, our hands up, guarded by the ROK Army MP. Another ROK Army MP had taken over at the checkpoint, glancing into vehicles, waving them through. What had happened to the American MP who normally worked here? Probably, Bufford had sent him back to his unit, with a bullshit story about the move-out alert. Ernie and I were both worried about the same thing. What was he going to do to Jill?
I started speaking Korean to the ROK soldier. His name tag, hand embroidered, revealed that he was Private Yun. I told him that I was an agent for 8th Army Criminal Investigation Division and that my credentials were in my inside coat pocket. At first he ignored me. I kept at him. I told him that Warrant Officer Bufford was a fugitive from justice and Yun was now taking orders from the wrong man. I warned him about how much trouble he would be in if he didn’t listen to me. Finally, Private Yun, still holding his rifle on us, reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out my CID badge. I warned him that he now had thirty seconds to lower his rifle and return our weapons.
The young man’s face flushed with indecision. He shouted at the other ROK Army MP. They conferred in rapid Korean. Finally, they decided that one of them would cover for the other while they used the radio to call the sergeant of the guard. That wasn’t quick enough for us. By the time they ran the information up the chain of command and a decision came back down, Corporal Jill Matthewson might be dead.
From the north, from the 2nd Division area, a car screeched up to the checkpoint. A long sedan. Black. A driver in a dark suit popped out of the front door and another dark-suited man emerged from the passenger’s side. The driver opened the back door and a man climbed out. Agent Sohn, the KCIA man. When he held up his badge, the ROK Army MP nearest him shouted a martial greeting. Private Yun, still standing in front of us, glanced back. That’s all Ernie needed. He charged low, diving for Yun’s ankles. I stepped to my left and then threw myself at the ROK MP. A shot rang out. Apparently, it didn’t hit me because I was able to thrust my shoulder full force into Private Yun. He went down. Ernie scrambled for the rifle, seized it, and pointed it at the KCIA men. They backed off. While Ernie held them at bay, I retrieved our. 45s.
Ernie shot out the tires of the KCIA sedan. We ran into the woods, following a trail of broken branches and trodden grass left by Bufford as he’d forced Jill at gunpoint into the forest. Through the tree line and beyond, ten-foot-high cement megaliths stretched in a double row. Dragon’s teeth. As far as the eye could see.