Ernie and I pushed through the crowd, occasionally raising our fists and shouting indecipherable remarks that blended in with the periodic shouts from the crowd. This type of activity had ingratiated us to the protestors at the previous demonstration. Many of them had smiled and said “komapta”-thank you-and some of them had patted us on the back. But this group was much larger and much more sure of their power, and, therefore, more surly. For our efforts, Ernie and I received dirty looks and for once I didn’t feel safe amidst a crowd of Koreans. We kept moving. Not only because we were nervous, but because we were looking for a way to slip onto Camp Casey.
All that had happened for the first few minutes were a bunch of monotonous speeches shouted through megaphones. Madame Chon hadn’t spoken yet and I wasn’t sure if she would. Probably not. Maybe the KCIA had arrested her. Jill wasn’t visible either. Were Jill’s assurances that we’d be able to slip onto the compound during the demonstration a diversion to distract us while she looked for an opportunity to slip away herself? I didn’t think so. Something was going to happen soon.
No more vehicles were leaving Camp Casey. The rest of the Division, other than the four or five dozen MPs guarding the main gate, had already moved out.
“This is bull!” Ernie said. “We have to make something happen.”
A roar went up from the crowd. Two, maybe three thousand people were jammed into the road in front of Camp Casey, and it seemed that each and every one of them had riveted their attention on the KNPs lined up along the railroad tracks.
But then I saw that it wasn’t the railroad tracks the crowd was staring at but rather a soldier, in a U.S. Army uniform, who’d just climbed up on a platform. The soldier’s back was to me but I could see the black leather armband and the shining black helmet of an MP. Then one of the students handed the MP a megaphone and the MP turned around to face us. The crowd roared their approval. It was Military Policewoman Corporal Jill Matthewson, in full regalia. Once again, she looked squared away. A real soldier. Then she saluted the crowd, which exploded into applause.
It dawned on me that every action of Jill’s to this point had been done with a purpose in mind. Jill raised the megaphone to her mouth and started to speak. As she did so, a young Korean man climbed onto the platform next to her, and using his own megaphone, repeated what she said in Korean.
Her speech was nothing new to me and Ernie. But coming from a soldier in uniform, its impact was overwhelming. The crowd was energized by her words and as she continued to speak, the level of outrage seemed to grow, swelling each heart with indignation.
Jill Matthewson spoke of arrogance. Of the arrogance of the men running Camp Casey who thought of women as objects for their entertainment. Of the arrogance with which they flouted the laws of the Republic of Korea, selling cheap imported PX goods on the black market, thus stifling the growth of indigenous Korean industry. Of the arrogance of men who allowed American soldiers to operate dangerous vehicles under poor driving conditions and didn’t hold them accountable for their recklessness. Of the arrogance that caused Korean women to be raped behind closed doors. Of the arrogance that caused the bosses on Camp Casey to sneer at the Korean judicial system. Of the arrogance that allowed two GIs-GIs who had admitted killing Chon Un-suk-to return to the United States without facing Korean justice.
The crowd was in a frenzy now, surging toward Jill, reaching out their hands. The Korean student with her was shouting through his megaphone, “Chon Un-suk kiokhei!” Remember Chon Un-suk! “Jil Ma-tyu-son mansei!” Long live Jill Matthewson!
As the crowd reached up to her, Jill touched their hands and then grabbed the rim of her MP helmet and whipped it off. With a sweeping motion, she tossed it into the crowd. The crowd screamed and men jumped to grab the helmet. Then she reached behind her head, unhooked a metal clasp and, shaking it loose, allowed her long, reddish blonde hair to swing free. The crowd roared madly.
She lifted her megaphone to her lips and pointed at the giant MP looming some twenty yards behind the Camp Casey Main Gate.
“He must die!” she shouted.
Then she swiveled and pointed at the KNPs lining the railroad tracks across the MSR from Camp Casey. This time she spoke in Korean.
“Bikyo!” she shouted. Make way. “Bali bikyo.” Make way quickly.
Behind the tracks, from amongst the shops that lined the road that led to the Western Corridor, an engine roared. Almost as loud as a train but not running on rails. From between the shops a wooden prow appeared. Dark green. Massive. Growing larger as its engines groaned. And then the huge moving mass crossed the slight ridge behind the tracks and came fully into view.
“What the hell is it?” Ernie asked.
I’d seen one before. When I was in the artillery and we practiced moving trucks and howitzers across fast-flowing rivers.
“A pontoon,” I shouted. “Mechanized.”
Eighteen wheels below, a boat-shaped body and a folding platform on top. Only just enough space in a carved-out corner for a driver with goggles. The driver stepped on the gas and aimed the enormous river-crossing vehicle directly at the line of Korean policeman.
Jill shouted through her megaphone once again. “Bikyo. Balli Bikyo.” Get out of the way. Quickly get out of the way.
The KNPs turned, staring in amazement at the great vehicle bearing down on them. Some of them broke ranks. The rolling pontoon bounced as it crossed the ridge and roared directly at them.
The KNPs dropped their weapons and ran.
Before the crowd had time to cheer at this development, Jill and the student next to her were screaming into their megaphones for them to make way, too. The crowd parted like the Red Sea. Ernie and I jumped, but we were only a few feet from the wheeled pontoon as it chugged past us, heading directly for the main gate of Camp Casey.
Jill Matthewson didn’t order the American MPs to disperse; she didn’t have to. They scattered, clearing a path for the huge vehicle as it headed right at the MP guard shack in front of the gate. At the last second, the pontoon swerved to the right, clipped the guard shack and then plowed into the tall chain link fence that surrounded Camp Casey. The fence buckled, held for a second, and collapsed. The pontoon kept rolling and the wooden arch above the gateway-the one that said 2ND INFANTRY DIVISON, SECOND TO NONE! — folded backwards and then fell onto a growing pile of chain link, concertina wire, and splintered wood.
The crowd roared once again and the student protestors surged through the gate, ripping and tearing as they went.
Ernie and I fought our way through. When we passed the giant MP and neared the front door of the Provost Marshal’s Office, we ripped off our white bandannas of protest. MPs had gathered there, preparing to make a last stand. Because we were Americans, the MPs didn’t take notice of us-the dragnet for two 8th Army CID agents was forgotten. They allowed us to enter the premises of the 2nd Division Provost Marshal’s Office.
The front desk was pandemonium. The on-duty desk sergeant was on the radio, signaling frantically to Division headquarters out in the field and then I Corps headquarters down in Uijongbu. A couple of MP lieutenants ran into one another, shouting orders, but I wasn’t sure what they expected to accomplish. The mob was on compound now, moving wherever it wanted to.
Temporarily, the student demonstrators had become fascinated with tearing down the PX hot dog stand, only ten yards inside the main gate. Sodas and buns were being tossed out to the crowd. The white-smocked Korean girl who ran the hot dog stand fled in terror. The pontoon vehicle was blocked by the debris of the main gate but the driver was backing it up, and some of the students were helping to untangle the chain link and wire knotted beneath the front axle. In a matter of minutes, it would be back in operation.
Had the timing of the Division-wide move-out alert been sheer coincidence? I didn’t think so. Colonel Han Kuk-chei came from a revered yangban family and would have connections throughout the ROK military and the government. Jill might be involved in something bigger than she’d admitted to us. Perhaps Colonel Han’s friends in high places were able to maneuver the United Nations Command in Seoul into ordering an alert just when Colonel Han needed it. This melee might be part of a larger coup against the government.
But what I needed desperately was proof that the Division honchos had been illegally black-marketing, which would be a motive for murdering both Private Marvin Druwood and the entertainment agent, Pak Tong-i. And attempting to murder Corporal Jill Matthewson and Agents George Sueno and Ernie Bascom, because we were on the verge of exposing them. Their careers would be over; they’d be stripped of privilege and rank and, not incidentally, their retirement checks. And very likely they’d do hard time in a federal penitentiary.
So far, the Korean National Police and the American MPs had shown admirable restraint. They had not fired on the crowd. Only a few ineffective tear gas canisters had been launched, but they’d been haphazardly placed and had been disposed of quickly by the braver students.
Ernie and I ignored the pandemonium of the PMO front desk and trotted down the hallway toward Colonel Alcott’s office.
One of the conceits of field-grade officers and high-ranking NCOs when they’re stationed overseas is to have their own customized living quarters. Their wives and children are back stateside so, naturally, a man who’s had a long and illustrious military career believes that he deserves his own bachelor pad. One of the status symbols is to move your quarters out of the staid old BOQ, Bachelor Officers’ Quarters, and have private quarters within walking distance of your workplace. The more rank and influence you have, the more likely you are to be granted this amenity. As Provost Marshal of the 2nd Infantry Division, Lieutenant Colonel Stanley X. Alcott rated nothing but the best.
A middle-aged Korean woman sat at a desk in the reception area of Colonel Alcott’s office. She wore her raincoat and her galoshes and nervously toyed with her umbrella.
“Wei ankayo?” I asked her in Korean. Why haven’t you left?
“Motka,” she answered without thinking. I can’t go. Then she switched to English. “There are too many demonstrators outside. I can’t go now.”
“Where’s the Colonel?”
“Outside,” she answered. “Somewhere. I’m worried for him.”
“I’m glad,” Ernie said. “Where are his quarters?”
“His what?”
“Chimdei,” I said. His bed.
The woman’s eyes widened at the unintended double entendre.
“Na ottokei allayo?” she replied. How would I know?
I slammed my fist on her desk.
“Odi?” I shouted. Where?
I hate to be rude, but I had no time to tiptoe around this woman’s sense of propriety. She stood up as if she’d been given an electric shock.
“I show,” she said.
We followed her into Colonel Alcott’s office. A mahogany desk, leather chairs, the flags of the Republic of Korea, the United States, and the United Nations hanging from poles behind the desk. The walls were lined with bookshelves packed with bound copies of Army Regulations and volumes concerning the Uniform Code of Military Justice. There was a back door. We walked out into a grassy area behind the PMO complex. The woman followed a cement walk and stopped at a door leading into an unmarked Quonset hut.
“I don’t have the key,” she told us.
Ernie eased her out of the way, took a step back, and then lunged forward with all his strength. The sole of his low quarters hit the front of the door near the knob and the door groaned but didn’t break.
The secretary stepped back farther, holding both hands over her mouth.
I took the next try. A side kick. It landed flush in the center of the door, which crashed open and slammed into the wall behind it. Ernie and I walked in. The secretary scurried back to her office.
When Colonel Alcott stepped through the broken front door of his quarters, he was flanked by two MP escorts. Ernie and I sat in comfortable lounge chairs, our. 45s out, both of them aimed at the colonel and his bodyguards.
“Take your weapons out of their holsters, slow and easy, and place them on the floor in front of you,” Ernie said.
The MPs did as they were told.
“Now,” Ernie said. “Step into that closet over there and close the door behind you.”
Outside, we heard shouting, screaming, and the occasional teargas canister being popped into the air. Apparently, the KNPs had regrouped and charged the protestors who had broken through the main gate. However, there were fewer than a hundred KNPs and only four or five dozen MPs versus maybe two thousand protestors. The battle raged on.
“Over here,” Ernie told Colonel Alcott. He motioned with his. 45. Colonel Alcott, his face red with rage, did as he was told. He stepped past his bed into the lounge area, past a color television set and stereo equipment on specially made shelves and past a stand-up bar with two stools. When he reached the safe, Ernie told him to stop.
Ernie slipped Colonel Alcott’s. 45 from its holster and handed it to me. I took out the magazine, dropped it into my pocket, and placed the weapon atop the safe. I also picked up the weapons of the two MPs and performed the same ritual.
Then Ernie pulled back the slide on his own. 45 and stuck the muzzle into Lieutenant Colonel Stanley X. Alcott’s ear.
“Open it,” Ernie growled.
Colonel Alcott dropped to his knees and started fiddling with the combination.
We weren’t worried about a search warrant.
If we’d gone back to 8th Army and asked for one, the provost marshal would’ve either denied the request immediately or he would’ve passed it to the 8th Army chief of staff and, if the request wasn’t killed there, it would be passed on to the 8th Army JAG, where the entire idea of searching the quarters of a field-grade officer would be endlessly debated. Even if the request was finally approved, there would so much gossip around headquarters that the division commander and members of his staff would hear about it. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say, and Colonel Alcott would have plenty of time to destroy, or hide, any incriminating information he might have in his safe. This is the way the game is played in the military. If you’re a peon, you never hear what headquarters is planning. You’re squashed before you know what hit you. If you’re a field grade officer and a player, someone will spill the information to someone at happy hour at the 8th Army Officers’ Club and the word will get back to you. You’ll have time to take steps to ensure nothing untoward is revealed. Why does the 8th Army commander put up with this? He doesn’t always. Sometime he wants everything kept secret, and he makes damn sure that it stays secret. But other times it’s much less embarrassing to his command if the alleged evildoers are warned in advance. The bad behavior stops, and the command’s reputation remains unsullied.
It was true that anything Ernie and I found in the safe would be unusable in a formal prosecution but we knew there was no way we’d ever be able to obtain anything from that safe that would be so usable. Certainly not by requesting a search warrant.
But we were forcing Colonel Alcott at gunpoint to open his own safe, to protect ourselves, mainly, but also to protect Corporal Jill Matthewson.
If Ernie and I couldn’t prove that we had a good reason for everything we’d done, we’d be court-martialed. And Jill’s fate hardly beared thinking of. So the suspense was killing me. If there was no evidence of black-marketing in that safe, then there’d have been no motive for murder and attemped murder and Ernie and I could say goodbye to freedom.
When the safe popped open, Ernie grabbed Colonel Alcott roughly by the arm and waltzed him over to the bed against the far wall and told him to sit down and not to move. I reached into the safe.
Letters from home. From his wife back at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Photos of his kids in high-school graduation garb. Pornography. Magazines of the raunchiest kind. Personnel files of fellow field-grade officers. Apparently, Alcott fancied himself a later-day J. Edgar Hoover: Collect dirt on everyone; use it to protect yourself. And then I found it. A ledger. Dates, dollar signs, a description of the type of property: television sets, tape recorders, stereo amps, wristwatches, cameras. All prime black market material. And then an amount in won, usually two or three times the original value. And a section for expenditures: hall rental, catered food, musicians, dancers, occasionally even hired transportation. They’d held mafia meetings not only at the WVOW Hall but also at kisaeng houses here in the Eastern Corridor.
There was also money in the safe. Stacks of greenback twenties. Fifties and hundreds were monitored by 8th Army Finance, so twenties were safer. And stacks of ten thousand won notes. With the exchange rate at about five hundred won per dollar, each note was worth about the same as a U.S. twenty. I counted the bills, even wrote down some of the serial numbers in my notebook. I left everything in the safe as I’d found it, except the ledger, which I kept. For leverage. With the ledger, we could embarrass 2nd Division-and therefore 8th Army-if we had to. Maybe send it to a newspaper reporter, or maybe a congressman. Maybe the same congressman who’d made the original inquiry about Jill Matthewson.
I tucked the black market ledger under my arm.
“Thank you, Colonel,” I told Alcott. “We’d appreciate it if you’d remain here a few minutes. My partner and I are going to escort Corporal Matthewson back to Seoul. We don’t expect to be harassed. And we don’t expect our progress to be impeded in any way. Otherwise this information will be made public rather than being handled through internal channels. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” Alcott said. “I understand that Fred Bufford was right. You’re up here to smear the Division. To make us look bad.”
“You did a pretty good job of that,” Ernie replied, “all by yourself.”
Alcott’s red face seemed to flush even redder.
“You don’t understand the pressures I’ve been under,” he told us. “You do your jobs and take your piddly promotions, but you don’t know what it is to go for serious rank in this man’s army.”
Colonel Alcott started to rise from the bed but Ernie shoved him back down.
“You don’t understand,” Alcott continued, “what it is to have a full-bird colonel or a general officer tell you ‘I don’t care how you do it, just do it.’ And to know that everything you’ve worked for, everything you’ve hoped to provide for your family, rides on whether or not you’re able to give him what he wants. You can sit back and sneer and pass judgment on me because you’re not in competition for the big promotions. You don’t know what it is to have some pervert base your efficiency report on whether or not he has four girls or five girls at some kisaeng house. About him telling you what some air force colonel bragged about at the Officers’ Club in Seoul, and how he works hard and he should rate at least as much as some zoomie. You don’t know what it’s like to do your job day in and day out without a flaw and still be expected to cater to the whims of every officer appointed above you. You can act superior but you’re not serious players. In fact, you two are nothing.”
“Maybe,” Ernie replied. “But we’ll be something as long as we have this ledger.” He held his. 45 pointed at Alcott’s forehead. “Anyonghikeiseiyo.” Stay in peace.
We stalked out the broken front door.
The pontoon vehicle was still being untangled from the concertina wire and chain link barriers that had been created when it knocked down the main gate leading to Camp Casey. Ernie and I retied our white bandannas with Chon Un-suk’s name printed in red and were accepted again by the rioters. The hot dog stand had been completely demolished and the mob had turned its attention to a PX bakery that was similarly being systematically torn apart. The KNPs, meanwhile, retreated across the MSR. Two or three hundred protestors had set up a makeshift barrier of overturned military vehicles and lumber from the old MP shack in front of what had been the Camp Casey main gate. I spotted the KCIA man who called himself Agent Sohn, standing across the street behind the KNP ranks, conferring with KNP brass. They were on the radio, almost certainly requesting reinforcements.
The MPs in front of the Provost Marshal’s Office, like the 7th Cavalry at the Little Big Horn, were bracing themselves for an assault. Probably they’d notified the Division headquarters-on the move-out alert somewhere north of here-by field radio. Almost certainly some units had been ordered to return to Camp Casey to protect the base camp. These protestors were having a jolly old time, but both Ernie and I knew that as soon as reinforcements arrived, they’d be hammered.
I climbed atop the cab of a quarter-ton truck, searching for Jill Matthewson, but I couldn’t spot her. A large crowd of protestors still held vigil outside the main gate and many of them had cameras. Both film and still shots were being taken of virtually everything that happened. But this incident would only make the evening news if the Korean government allowed it to make the evening news. You could bet they wouldn’t.
The pontoon boat rolled right at me.
I jumped off the truck. Ernie and I ran off to the side, to the shade beneath a clump of pine trees. Then we realized where the ponderous vehicle was headed.
Ernie said it. “PMO!”
The whale-like vehicle was rumbling toward the MPs preparing to make their last stand in front of the 2nd Infantry Division Provost Marshall’s Office. As it rolled, the pontoon picked up speed. Five, then ten, then fifteen miles per hour. That much weight moving at that much speed represented an enormous force. The amphibious pontoon vehicle rounded a little stand of pine trees and turned right, into the PMO parking lot. From behind their makeshift barricades, the MPs opened fire. Rounds spattered off the wooden sides of the oncoming vehicle; some
pinged off the edge of the cabin where the driver crouched. The pontoon veered left and headed straight toward the giant MP.
The big pink face of the MP statue with its wide blue eyes seemed momentarily shocked, even offended. I knew it was my imagination, but I could have sworn that the fatigue-clad statue puffed out its giant chest, as if to say How dare you? and then held its outraged stance until the prow of the huge pontoon slammed into its web-belted gut. Then it bent forward at the waist. The pontoon vehicle kept rolling inexorably forward and the giant U.S. Army MP cracked and tumbled backward under the onslaught, its big helmeted skull crashing onto the ground, almost reaching the MPs behind sandbags who ran screaming from the flying splinters. Still, the pontoon vehicle kept rolling. It smashed through the barricade, MPs scattered every which way, and finally it crashed into the front Quonset hut of the Provost Marshal’s Office. With dust and debris flying everywhere the big vehicle ground to a halt. Some MPs kept firing. Some of them cried out, trapped beneath the rubble.
The little driver’s cab popped open and two people climbed out: One of them was a Korean officer. A colonel. The other was Corporal Jill Matthewson.
They hopped onto the blacktop and ran back toward the front gate. Once there, the ROK colonel tried to rally the rioters. He climbed up on the same quarter-ton truck I’d stood on briefly and shouted at them to listen. The looters stopped and gathered round. Jill stood next to him atop the truck, breathing heavily, her right hand resting on the butt of her. 45.
This had to be Colonel Han Kuk-chei, the one she’d met at the Forest of Seven Clouds. The one who’d helped her escape from Bufford and Weatherwax.
Colonel Han continued shouting orders. He wanted the barricades facing the KNPs reinforced and he wanted a new barricade set up between the protestors and the American MPs back at the now half-demolished Provost Marshal’s Office. His plan was to claim a section of Camp Casey as sovereign Korean territory, and to set up a court and to retry-in absentia-the two men who’d run down Chon Un-suk. The crowd, both inside and outside the compound, cheered at the proposal and dozens if not hundreds of the peaceful protestors still waiting patiently outside the walls of Camp Casey started to raise their banners and march through the smashed main gate onto the camp proper.
Ernie and I stood amongst the pine trees, partially hidden from the main action by a clump of greenery.
“They’re nuts,” Ernie said.
“Absolutely. But how are we going to bust through all these people and try to talk some sense to Jill?”
“You can forget it. Whatever’s between her and that Colonel Han, she’s hooked. She ain’t going nowhere.”
“It’ll be a lot more dangerous here in a few minutes.”
“You and I know it,” Ernie replied. “Colonel Han knows it, maybe Jill knows it, but I don’t think most of these protestors know it.”
I was still perspiring, breathing hard, trying to remain calm, trying to think of what to do next. And then I felt it. Cold steel on the back of my neck.
“Freeze, soldier,” a voice said. Low, husky, a voice I recognized.
Ernie started to move but the same voice told him if he tried anything funny, his partner’s head would be blown off. Both of us raised our hands. Then the man slipped Colonel Alcott’s ledger out of my grip, tucked it under his own arm, and told me to turn around.
I did.
Sergeant First Class Otis glared at us, his. 45 aimed right at the center of my chest.
“I don’t want to kill you,” he said, “but I will if I have to.”
Then from behind him, the slide of a. 45 clanged, metal on metal.
“No, you won’t, Otis,” someone said. “Not if you want to live through this mess.”
Jill Matthewson crouched behind a broken forearm of the giant MP, her. 45 pointed directly at the back of Otis’s head. Perspiration poured off his forehead.
“You killed him,” Jill said, still crouched behind the forearm of the giant MP.
“I didn’t,” Otis protested. Most of his attention was on her but the barrel of his. 45 was still aimed at my chest. I wished he’d turn that thing away. Standing next to me, Ernie’s eyes were darting to and fro. He was about to do something. I prayed that he wouldn’t. Even a reflexive twitch on Sergeant Otis’s part would mean that a. 45 slug moving at a jillion miles per hour would crack through my sternum and slam into my heart.
“Weatherwax told me what happened,” Jill said. “You were the one who threw Marv Druwood off that building.”
“Weatherwax wasn’t even there,” Otis replied. “He doesn’t know shit. Druwood was angry, that was true. He knew why you left. He knew most of it. Because you were pissed about the black-marketing and you were pissed about what the asshole officers did to your friend, that stripper. And so he was mad at the world. And drunk. And taking swings at everyone. Even me. I backed away from him, toward the edge of the roof, but only because I had nowhere else to go. It was either that or let him bust me in the chops. I should’ve been more careful, I admit that. I should’ve punched his lights out and then he would’ve had a headache the next morning, but he’d still be alive. But I felt sorry for him. I didn’t want to hurt him.”
Jill snorted.
“It’s true,” Otis continued. “He had a thing for you and he never liked the army much and he didn’t like the black-marketing any more than you did. So he was drunk and angry at the world and I kept backing away from him and his punches kept missing. He tossed a big roundhouse windmill punch at my head but by the time it reached where I’d been, I’d already moved. He lost his balance. But he regained it and he would’ve been all right. Then Warrant Officer One Mr. Fred Bufford showed up.”
Sergeant First Class Otis, like a true seasoned NCO, was still using Bufford’s proper title.
“Bufford was furious,” Otis continued. “He knew that Druwood was going to be a hardhead and snitch on the entire black-market operation. Bufford told him just that, then Druwood swung on him and they started to fight. Mr. Bufford did all right at first, with that long straight jab he has, but Druwood wouldn’t give up no matter how much punishment he was taking and somehow he got Mr. Bufford into a headlock. Weatherwax showed up and he jumped in and other MPs were helping.”
“You being one of them,” Jill said.
“No. I tried to stop them. I told them all they were making a big mistake. But there was no stopping Mr. Fred Bufford. He and the other MPs beat on Druwood unmercifully and then they started dragging him to the edge of the building. Druwood realized what was coming and he fought like a madman. Grabbing for handholds, screaming, cursing, his clothes being shredded, until finally four or five of them including Bufford and Weatherwax dragged him to the edge. Bufford managed to break Druwood’s grip on the cement and he shoved him off the ledge and tossed him over.” Otis paused, breathing heavily, the. 45 still aimed at my chest. Then he continued. “A couple of the guys, including me, tried to grab for him but we were too slow. Druwood went over. Head first. And slammed into that Korean statue down below, that lion or monster or whatever it is. And we heard a crunch like you couldn’t believe. A crunch that would break your heart.”
Jill Mathewson’s fist quivered. I thought for sure she was going to pull the trigger. Then she said, “So, according to you, you’re innocent.”
“Yes.”
“But you let them lie about it. You let them take Marv Druwood’s body over to the obstacle course and pretend he had fallen there.”
“Bufford did that. They wanted to divert attention away from the grain warehouse. Away from the Turkey Farm.”
“Because of the black-marketing.”
“You know it.”
“And what about the Thousand Crane Vase, Otis? You and your girlfriend, Brandy set it aside for yourselves.”
Otis didn’t deny Jill’s accusation. “A man has to make some money in this world. The honchos here are stashing away fortunes. Where are they at oh-dark-thirty when I’m wrestling with a drunken GI or having my eyes scratched out by his pill-crazed business girl yobo? I’ll tell you where they are. Back in their hooches snoring and dreaming about the money that we make for them. That’s where. I’ve slept out in the rain and the snow and the mud for almost twenty years and I deserve something.”
“How many other vases have you moved?” Ernie asked. “How many antiques?”
Otis shrugged.
“And my partner and I,” Ernie continued, “were about to bust everything wide open. Even after we returned to Seoul you knew we could cause trouble. Which is why you sent Brandy to bring us back to Division, bring us back to Tongduchon, and send us to mulkogi chonguk, to fish heaven, so you could take a bead on us and blow our brains out.”
The barrel of Otis’s. 45 veered toward Ernie.
“I was just trying to scare you off.”
“Bull,” Ernie said. “If I hadn’t bent down to retrieve that rubber ball, the top half of my skull would’ve been history.”
“Drop it, Otis,” Jill growled.
Indecision flashed in Otis’s eyes. A group of demonstrators, carrying torches and clubs headed toward the Provost Marshal’s Office. The MPs in front had fled. Nothing stood between the enraged Koreans and what was left of the 2nd Infantry Division Provost Marshal’s Office.
Sergeant Otis must’ve realized that he couldn’t take down all three of us. There was no way out for him. His crimes would be exposed.
“Hold steady, Matthewson,” Otis said. “Hold your fire. I’m moving away. I’m moving slow and steady. Hold your fire and I’m no threat to you or your friends here.”
He dropped Colonel Alcott’s ledger to the ground.
“I’m a noncommissioned officer,” Otis continued, “and a good one. As an NCO, whether I been black-marketing or not, I have a job to do. I have my duty to attend to. You understand that? There’s a good girl. Slow and easy.”
Otis backed away from us, keeping his. 45 aimed at my chest. When he was about twenty feet away he turned and stood still for a second, as if expecting a round from Jill Matthewson’s. 45 to smash into his back. When it didn’t, he lowered his. 45 to his side and started sprinting toward the Provost Marshal’s Office. He arrived before the demonstrators did and ordered them to halt. When they kept coming he raised his. 45 and fired over their heads. The demonstrators screamed and dropped to the ground. Some of them fled. But about a dozen of them got up and threw stones at Sergeant Otis. Most of them missed. But a couple hit their mark. Otis flinched and then the demonstrators hurled more stones at him. He tried to fire while covering his eyes with his free arm but the round went high, and then some of them reached him. I heard his. 45 clang to the blacktop and skitter away, and now Jill was running toward the demonstrators, firing her pistol into the air, shouting at them to stop. As if smelling blood, dozens more of them emerged around the cor- ner of the clump of pine trees and charged toward the Provost Marshal’s Office. Ernie and I ran after Jill, caught up with her, and dragged her back to the safety of the tree line.
As we did so, from where Sergeant Otis lay we heard the heavy thump of wood on bone. A final scream and then silence.
Reinforcements arrived. I climbed up on a low branch of one of the trees. Two-and-a-half ton trucks, maybe a dozen, pulled up behind the railroad tracks to the rear of the frightened KNPs. A ROK Army officer leaped out of the cab of the first truck and saluted Agent Sohn. After a short conference, with Sohn gesturing toward Camp Casey, the ROK Army officer nodded. He shouted orders and men started jumping out of the backs of the trucks. They fell into unit formations. ROK Army infantry, the White Horse Division, the best of the best. Vietnam veterans. Each soldier armed with an M-16 rifle. While standing at attention, they were ordered to don their protective masks. They looked like a hive of lethal insects. Within seconds, they marched past the grateful KNPs and formed themselves into one massive V-shaped formation. They fixed bayonets with a clang of metal on metal. Then the officer shouted an order and, pounding one foot in front of the other, the V-shaped formation started shuffling toward the main gate of Camp Casey.
I jumped down to brief Ernie and Jill on what I’d seen.
“Colonel Han,” she said. She ran through the crowd. Ernie and I followed.
As we approached Colonel Han near the quarter-ton truck, a few protestors hassled us. One of them blocked my way. I tried to push past and he shoved me. I shoved back. Just as his buddies were about to jump in, Ernie pulled his. 45. He fired into the air. Startled, the men dropped back.
For just a moment, after the gunshot, the advancing hive of ROK soldiers halted. Warily, they searched the crowd. When they realized no gunfire was directed their way, they resumed their advance.
Colonel Han shouted at his followers to let us through.
When we reached him, Jill stood at his side.
I shouted at both of them. “It’s over. Those ROK Army soldiers are going to use whatever force is necessary to quell this demonstration. Blood will be shed. People will be hurt. Time to call it off, Colonel.”
“No,” Jill shouted.
“No?” Ernie mimicked. “What are you? Out of your mind? Those ROK soldiers mean business.”
“We’ve worked too hard,” Jill said, “and planned too long. The world has to know what’s happened here, that innocent children are being killed and women raped, and something has to be done about it.”
“Done? Like what?”
“Like what we planned.” She turned back to Colonel Han. Smiling beatifically, he patted her on the shoulder.
It was then that it hit me. I’m not sure why. It had nothing to do with what we were facing at the moment but maybe it was the depth of Jill Matthewson’s emotion that triggered all the contradictory information I’d gathered in the last few days to suddenly fall into place. Maybe her reaction was the last clue I needed. But I knew now and so I said it.
“You were there,” I told Jill. “The night Pak Tong-i died.”
She looked at me, so did Colonel Han, so did Ernie, all of them waiting for me to continue. I did.
“You slipped back into Tongduchon and maybe you had a key but somehow you gained entrance to his office.” I was staring directly at Jill now, daring her to deny my words. “When you found him there you tried to force a full confession out of him. About how he’d provided women to the Second Division honchos for years, about how he’d set the women up, letting them think they’d be dancing or performing, although Pak knew they’d be raped by whichever officer took a fancy to them. And you wanted his records, to document the years of black-marketing that had gone into paying for all these mafia meetings and other boys-will-be-boys excursions. You were too close to Kim Yong-ai to let it go. You wanted to prove it all to the world. But there wasn’t enough there. Pak was cagey. He kept few records. But he was so frightened that he told you about Colonel Alcott being deathly afraid of being cheated by Koreans, or by Bufford or Weatherwax so that he kept meticulous records of all black market transactions. When you questioned Pak Tong-i, you had to threaten him with your. 45. He was a weak man, a man who never exercised and ate too much and smoked too much and drank too much, and suddenly something inside of him went bust. His face flushed red, he couldn’t breathe and you knew the symptoms meant heart attack. When he died, you shoved him into the closet, closed it, and exited Kimchee Entertainment without being seen. That’s what happened, Jill, isn’t it?”
The ROK Army suddenly halted. The commanding officer shouted more orders and repositioned his forces. They broke into smaller groups, then reformed again. Now five V-shaped formations were pointing right at us. Then they started, once again, their slow forward shuffle.
“He deserved it,” Jill snarled.
Even Colonel Han flinched at the sound of her voice.
“They all deserve it,” she continued. “Paying for sex with girls who are just out of middle school. Girls who still have their hair bobbed, for Christ’s sake, because they finished the ninth grade only weeks ago. Now those same girls are made-up like whores and dancing in sequined outfits and these middle aged men with wives and children in quarters back on army bases in the States grab them and paw them and make them giggle and then stick their tired old pricks inside that soft virgin flesh. And the men laugh about it. And boast. And don’t even seem to care that I’m a woman and despise every one of them, and then they have the nerve to make comments about me. About my butt. About why a woman would be an MP. And they ask me dumb questions, like if I’ve ever burned my bra, and there were so many times”-Her fist tightened into knots-”so many times when I came that close to pulling out my. 45 and blowing their fuck-ing brains out.”
“Jill,” Colonel Han said. He placed his hand gently on her shoulder. Her face relaxed and she turned to him and smiled.
“It’s time, Jill,” he said. “Time for us to do what we planned.”
“Yes,” she said.
Jill stepped away from Colonel Han and stared at me once again. She pointed at the ledger in my hand. “You have the proof now. I know you two guys. I respect you. You’ll make sure that the truth comes out. And one other thing. It’s true that I roughed Pak Tong-i up a bit. But when I left him he was still breathing. Maybe later, God forgive me, he died of a heart attack. I’m not proud of that.”
Colonel Han shouted something to a group of men who’d been hovering nearby. They stepped between me and Ernie and the quarter-ton truck. Colonel Han climbed back on top and helped Jill up. Then he started to address the crowd.
Exactly what he said, word for word, has been transcribed from tape recordings made by protestors who were there. The transcribed speech has been passed around Korea and has now, in translation, been passed around the world. What he said, in effect, was that Korea must control its own destiny. It was time for Koreans, both in the North and the South, to reject foreign influence, to expel all foreigners, and to reunite. The first step was to take back Korean sovereignty, both on the land and in the courts. Once he’d made these points he said that Koreans were strong enough to defend themselves and, once the Americans were expelled, if the northern communists refused to reunite, then the soldiers of the Republic of Korea should march north and force reunification. Blood would be shed, people would die, but to prove his sincerity he was going to do more than just talk. He was going to act.
Most of the speech was in language too sophisticated for me to follow. But the last part, when he said he was going to act, I understood.
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.
Ernie and I stopped when we saw them. They lay between two dragon’s teeth, near a creek in a grass-covered meadow, perhaps twenty yards away. It was clear what was happening.
He was naked. Bony knees, pale flesh, elbows rubbed raw and red. He held Jill’s. 45 in his hand, finger on the trigger, the barrel propped beneath her jaw. Her pants were pulled low but her legs were still locked, and she lay back with her butt pressed against mud. Her eyes were clenched tightly and she was crying. Not tears of helplessness but tears of rage.
Ernie pointed the rifle and fired. A round caromed madly off one of the dragon’s teeth. Bufford looked at us but he didn’t climb off of Jill. He shouted that he’d pull the trigger if we didn’t back off.
“You’re finished, Bufford,” Ernie shouted. “Even if you kill her, there’s no way out.”
“I’ll kill her now!” Bufford said.
As he shouted at Ernie, the barrel of his. 45 shifted, just slight- ly. But it was enough. Enough for Jill Matthewson to know that this was her chance.
She brought a fist up in a looping left cross and at the same time propelled her knee up right between Bufford’s legs. He screamed. The gun went off. Ernie and I sprinted forward. Through the smoke and confusion I couldn’t tell what had happened to Jill. We stumbled and clawed our way through the mud and as the smoke cleared I realized that she was still alive. I’ve never seen anyone in such a rage. By the time Ernie and I approached she was on top of Fred Bufford. His pistol lay uselessly in the mud and Jill Matthewson was pulverizing him and had started to gouge out his eyeballs. It took Ernie and me two minutes to pull her off of him. We handcuffed her because it was the only way we could stop her from killing Bufford with her bare hands. Our mistake was that we handcuffed her with her hands in front rather than behind her back.
Bufford lay unconscious next to the creek. Blood trickled from his eyes, nose, and mouth.
I policed up the. 45 and found Jill Matthewson’s wallet lying next to her torn blue jeans. A couple of photographs had fallen out. I picked them up and held them up to the light. A rape scene. I saw three men: Lieutenant Colonel Alcott; a man I recognized as H.K. Pacquet, the Chief of Staff of the 2nd Division; and Warrant Officer Fred Bufford. All naked. All working on some poor young woman who’d been bound and gagged. The lighting was dim. I studied the woman. I expected her to be the stripper, Jill’s friend, Kim Yong-ai. But then I realized that she wasn’t Kim. She wasn’t even Korean. She was American. And then I realized who she was. The impetus for Jill Matthewson’s rage became clear to me.
Ernie was too busy to look at the photos, what with handcuffing Bufford and helping Jill climb out of the mudhole she was lying in. When the KCIA men appeared at the edge of the clearing, Ernie warned them back with the M16 rifle. They stood and observed, as Jill pulled up her pants and adjusted what was left of her torn shirt and blouse.
Before Ernie could notice, I stuffed the photographs into my pocket. I didn’t want Ernie, or anyone other than Jill, to see them. I handed her the wallet. Automatically, she searched for the photos. When she didn’t find them, she looked up at me. I pulled them out of my pocket and handed them to her. She refused to take them.
“It’s over now,” she told me.
“Okay,” I answered. “What should I do with them?”
“Destroy them.”
“We might need them to get you out of this mess.”
“I don’t care. Destroy them.”
I did. I borrowed a lighter from one of the KCIA men and set them on fire.
While Ernie talked to the KCIA men and the photographs burned, Jill dragged the now conscious Fred Bufford near the creek behind one of the dragon’s teeth. We weren’t paying attention, all of us still in shock. Warrant Officer Fred Bufford didn’t shout for help. Maybe he couldn’t. Jill, her wrists still handcuffed in front of her, shoved Bufford’s head face-first into the mud. She held him there. By the time we realized what she was doing, Warrant Officer Fred Bufford was dead.