In the predawn darkness off Korea’s east coast a hundred and eighty-five miles south of the DMZ, six bombers were coming in low. Their undersides white, the remainder of the fuselage a navy blue, the Russian-made TU-22M Backfires were traveling at Mach.9, the sea a leaden blur beneath them, their wings fully extended rather than in the swept-back position, sacrificing speed for greater maneuverability. Each bomber, its nine-ton load the equivalent of several World War II squadrons, carried two seven-hundred-pound CBU cluster bombs, each of these containing 150 smaller three-pound bombs, set for a DP, or dispersal pattern, saturation bombing; three one-thousand-pound “iron” or high-explosive bombs; and ten one-thousand-pound concrete-piercing bombs — the remainder of each bomber’s load, around eleven thousand pounds, made up of fifty two-hundred-pound FAEs (fuel air explosive), a close relative of napalm. All six planes in tandem V-formation were under strict orders not to activate either their “Bee Hind” gun-control radar in the rear barbette of each aircraft or the “Down Beat” attack-and-navigation radar situated in the nose. Both sets involved using active signals, and any emissions from them could bounce high enough off the water to be picked up by low-horizon scanners, some of them on the coast about Pohang’s seven-mile-wide harbor, and one at Cape Libby, near the eastern terminal of the trans-Korea oil pipeline, another near the barracks of the U.S. Marine Corps Advisory Group south of the bay.
An ROK destroyer in Pohang Harbor managed to get off several bursts from its quad radar-controlled 127-millimeter cannon before its radar was jammed. The Backfires made only one pass over the harbor, airfield, and environs, thus denying ROK ground control a second chance to lock on to any of the planes’ infrared signatures on a second run. One pass was all the Backfires required, their cluster bombs splitting open, releasing eighteen hundred three-pound high explosive minibombs and incendiaries and six FAE pods. The pilots, now miles beyond the crater-pocked airport, could see the FAEs’ thickened-gasoline canisters bursting on impact, filling the air with a fine aerosol, covering Camp Libby and the entire dockside area. Then, in the few additional seconds it took for the silvery gasoline mist to ignite over the big oil tank farm at Camp Libby, creating a raging inferno covering several square miles, the six Backfires, one losing speed because of a hung bomb, banked in thunderous unison, streaking inland toward the big air base at Taegu forty-two miles, three and a half minutes, away. Behind them the entire city of Pohang and the storage dumps were afire, flames leaping madly hundreds of feet into the air, fanned to firestorms by the stiff east breeze that had assisted the bombers on their run in.
Of the five thousand casualties in the first ten minutes of the raid, the lucky ones were the twenty-three-hundred-odd who died outright from suffocation due to the sudden loss of oxygen as the fuel bombs exploded. For the remaining victims, flesh melting like plastic, their agony overwhelming any emergency services that were still operating, the final hours were a horror of bloodied screaming shapes, once human, stumbling grotesquely through the ruins, many of them begging the few soldiers who had survived the holocaust to end their agony with a bullet.
Still flying low, the Backfires, lighter now, came in faster over Taegu, each aircraft releasing its twelve one-thousand-pound concrete piercers, the pilots all the time half expecting to be attacked by Phantoms. But there were no American F-4s in sight — or rather none that could fly after the meticulously coordinated early morning sabotage attacks by NKA infiltrator cells all across the South, some of whom had been waiting years to hear the last two lines in Pyongyang Polly’s rendition of “Pine Trees on Namsan.”
The Backfires’ three-man crews, pilot, copilot, and electronics warfare officer, could hear nothing but the panicking radio traffic of the ROK’s Taegu ground control and the comforting scream of their bombers’ twin Kuznetsov afterburners, speed indicators moving steadily from Mach.9 to 1.8 as the planes gained speed and height over the mangled airstrip that had been Taegu base, the soot-colored spars and ashes of the gutted F-4s receding far below like spilt campfires.
Turning hard right, the Backfires climbed northwest up over the black bulk of the five-thousand-foot Sobaek range, its peaks hidden by the monsoon into which the bombers now sped. Finally the hung bomb on one of the Backfires released, disappearing into the wilderness as the bombers dropped low again over Ulchin, tandem V intact, wings swept back for maximum speed, heading fast and low over the Sea of Japan.
As dawn broke on the DMZ, Sergeant Franks could see the dead deer’s leg still trapped in the barbed wire. By the time it occurred to him to ask himself why the animal would have suddenly jumped the series of cow fences between the North Koreans and their carefully plowed minefields, it was too late.
Several miles to the west, driving wildlife frantic before them, ninety-five of General Kim’s I Corps dark green tanks, “up-gunned” Chinese versions of the Russian T-55s, were racing toward Kumchon seven miles south of the DMZ, preceded by the turretless, ungainly-looking, but highly efficient plow-and-roller T-54 mine clearers that had startled the deer and other wildlife. The deep tank traps in which ROK-U.S. command had placed so much faith were easily forded by T-54 bridge-laying tanks, their unfolding steel lattice spanning sixty-nine feet across the traps — eight feet more than ROK-U.S. intelligence had thought possible.
Behind Kim’s armor came support battalions of motorized infantry, their 120-millimeter heavy mortars already putting down deadly fire on the flanks of the roads that the tanks used to breach the DMZ on a five-mile front. But this attack, for all its shock, was only a feint, Kim unleashing the main NKA thrust a quarter hour later farther east down the western prong of the wishbone whose junction was Uijongbu, only twelve miles north of Seoul. From here the NKA’s “historic” Fourth Division, in recognition of its blitzkrieg attack of 1950 that had so astonished the world, was assigned the task of quickly smashing its way down the Uijongbu corridor to Seoul.
And so while all U.S.-ROK attention was being focused on the smaller and totally unexpected breakthrough around Kumchon in the west, Kim’s Fourth Armored Division of 12,400 men, with the First, Second, and Third Motorized Rifle Divisions in support, half choking from the subterranean dust, streamed out of five undetected fume-laden tunnels six miles south of Fort Dyer and three other U.S.-ROK forward observation posts, overrunning the eastern road of the Uijongbu “wishbone.”
Major Tae’s sector didn’t come under attack until after the first exchange of fire three miles south of the DMZ around Munsan, at the bottom of the big “U” formed by the Imjin River before it flows into the Han estuary and then to the Yellow Sea. With the exception of a lieutenant who stayed behind to help him destroy classified files, Tae ordered his staff to head for the big shelter near the Swiss/Swede (UN observers) hut three-quarters of a mile away only minutes before a mortar shell hit the Quonset hut, ripping open its roof, leaving an enormous hole at least twenty feet across through which Tae and the lieutenant could see bruise-colored storm clouds passing swiftly overhead. In the distance they could hear the rolling thunder of the NKA artillery, Seoul’s position to the south behind them clearly indicated by towering columns of black and gray smoke rising to join the rain-laden stratus that had come streaming out of the north.
“They’ve even got the weather on the run,” said the lieutenant bitterly.
Tae didn’t respond; he was still gazing up through the hole that had once been the roof of his briefing room, where only a day or so ago he had told a contingent of visiting American officers of his fear that the NKA might invade, that in an age when nuclear war was so feared by both sides, conventional war would, ironically, be the only alternative. The one kind of war for which the democracies, particularly America, were least ready to fight. The lieutenant kept feeding the fire they’d made for the classified documents, but his attention, like Tae’s, kept wandering skyward as they waited anxiously for the reassuring “chuffing” sound of “Gnats,” the Cobra choppers on twenty-four-hour alert which should soon appear, squadron after squadron of them filling the sky, cannons spitting, their wing pods winking.
Tae told the lieutenant that coming in at over six hundred miles per hour, the effect of a ninety-five-pound Hellfire antitank missile against the armor of the older Russian- and Chinese-made T-55s and lighter PT-76s would be like watching a tin can hit with an ax. But when Tae saw only a few of the helicopters silhouetted against the rain-curtained sky to the south, he feared the worst — that the networks of infiltrators all over the south had struck in deadly unison. Though he tried not to show it, the shock was such that he did not hear the lieutenant, who was now crouching by the radio, telling him that forward American observation posts were reporting more Chinese-made T-55s crossing the DMZ in force, the U.S.-ROK minefields “unzipped” by the NKA’s “creeping” artillery barrages. As the Americans’ voices faded, radios transmitting only static, until this, too, ceased, Pyongyang’s radio signals grew in strength. Giving horrifying descriptions of the riots in the South, Pyongyang Polly repeatedly referred to the deaths of several monks and of Lee Sok Jo as “undeniable evidence” of the “unprovoked violence against our brothers and sisters in the South, who, no longer able to tolerate the oppression of the American warmongers, have called for us to come to their aid in their hour of need under the leadership of our great and respected leader, Kim Jong…”
Amid deafening, earth-shattering noise, dust, and screams that signaled the NKA’s advance on his sector, a strange calm visited Tae. It was as if now that the worst, certainly his worst, prediction had come true, a great weight was slipping from him. Now, whatever the danger, the terrible, nerve-eating suspense of all his years on the DMZ was finally over. His persistent requests that U.S. radar stations not be lit up at night against the American assertion that the whole point was to let the North see what they were up against, his part in the long, hard battle, almost lost, against Carter’s intention to pull out altogether from Korea — all had been to no avail. It was the end.
“Sir!” The lieutenant was pointing outside.
Tae turned his hopeless gaze from the turbulent sky to the brown, dusty window of his office. Across the white cement strip that marked the old demarcation line and where several U.S. marine guards lay dead, he saw NKA assault troops, green-mustard-splotched figures fanning out a hundred yards off, encircling the hut. He cocked the M-60 and opened the canvas bag of grenades, motioning to the lieutenant to help himself. The lieutenant, a much younger man in his early thirties, was drained of color, a mere ghost in khaki, trying to talk, his throat dry as leather with fear. Tae adjusted the sights, knowing this was it — as ready as he ever would be. All the names of the ROK’s informers were in Seoul headquarters, Tae keeping only situation reports from the forward OPs in his sector. The names of the ROK’s top five counterinsurgency agents, two each for Pusan in the southeast and Kwangju in the southwest, one for Taegu, were in his head — too important to put on any piece of paper. Not that they’d seemed to do much to thwart NKA sabotage. So intense was his calm that Tae felt as if he would momentarily nod off even as the lieutenant, almost apoplectic with fear, continued racing from window to window as if a different view would present a more comforting reality. The thing that kept Tae from total surrender to the impending catastrophe was the thought of his family.
There was a crash of glass. The lieutenant spun around and fired a long burst at the far window, the hut ringing with the sound of the bullets piercing the corrugated metal. It hadn’t been the NKA at all but a piece of loose guttering giving way. The lieutenant, sweating profusely, tried to stuff more grenades into his pockets, fumbling, dropping two, scrabbling frantically for them under the desk as if they were gold. Tae felt sorry for him, but it was the detached feeling of an observer, as one felt for a trapped fish, that is, until the major thought once more how neither of them would see family again, of how none of those trapped would ever see loved ones again — unless they could somehow hold. Hold until the U.S. Air Force out of Japan two hundred miles to the east, out of the Yellow Sea to the west, out of anywhere, could launch air strikes on either side of the DMZ and drop ammunition and supplies to the beleaguered troops until ground relief was possible. It was a fantasy for his sector and he knew it, but any delay he and the lieutenant could inflict on the NKA might save someone further down the line.
Outside there was an increase in the din of the battle all through the joint security area, clouds of dust from grenades exploding — whose, he couldn’t tell. He caught a glimpse of a mortar being set up two hundred yards off, opened up with his M-60, and saw the bullets kicking up dirt about the mortar crew. The NKA soldiers disappeared in a small depression. For a second or two all Tae could hear was the steady thumping of artillery. Then came the high-pitched rattle of AK-74s, their rounds going too high to do any damage, only raking the hut’s eaves but frightening the lieutenant very badly. The next bursts were lower but still too high to be dangerous. Next Tae could hear the pomp… pomp… pomp of either T-55s’ or lighter PT-76s’ multiple grenade ejectors spitting out smoke bombs that quickly covered the entire joint security area with a dense white cloud. The NKA platoon nearest the hut was obviously waiting for one of the tanks to save them the bother and simply roll through the Quonset — probably not even bothering to waste a shell.
For some inexplicable reason, Tae found himself noting the time, seven minutes to ten, and it struck him how it was an illusion that such situations as he was now in take a long time to resolve, that, in fact, most of the firefights over the relatively open ground would be over quickly — it was only in the hills and mountains, where the terrain lent itself naturally to defense, that a single engagement could stretch into hours, days, and even months. He heard a flapping noise, then more thunder in the distance — artillery or real, he couldn’t tell. It began raining heavily and the flapping noise ceased. It had been the huge 100:2 scale map of Korea in the hut’s briefing room, shredded by the wind but now sodden with rain and flattened against the wall, a large strip, where the Yalu River had marked the border between China and North Korea, missing.
“They’re gone!” said the colleague in astonishment. “I don’t see anything mov—”
“Soryong?”
It was coming from where die NKA had set up the mortar, but like the lieutenant, Tae couldn’t see anything, and there was something odd about the voice. For a moment Tae’s ears, ringing from the sounds of battle, couldn’t tell what it was.
“Tae Soryong! Major Tae!”
“How…” began the astonished lieutenant. “How do they know your name?”
“Everyone knows my name,” said Tae.
The lieutenant wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to be more terrified than he was, for it suddenly dawned on him that in the battle swirling about them, presumably all along the DMZ, this brief pause about the lone Quonset hut might have been a conscious decision by the NKA. They wanted Tae. Tae admitted it was possible. It would explain the poor shooting, the AK-74s going high into the hut — merely to keep heads down until the political officer reached their position. But how about the roof? the lieutenant asked Tae. “The mortar shell?”
“A lucky shot,” said Tae. “Or unlucky. Depends on your point of view.”
The NKA officer’s voice was starting up again, and Tae realized what was strange about it — it was coming over a battery-operated megaphone, or some kind of loudspeaker mounted on a vehicle. The voice was explaining in English to any U.S. or ROK soldier within or without the hut that the Army of the Democratic People’s Republic had no wish to hurt Major Tae. They simply wanted to talk to him. “Comrade to comrade.” And if his friends cared about him, and themselves, they would stop “all resistance.” It was all quite hopeless anyway, the voice told them — the entire sector was surrounded.
“Give us the major, Comrades! There will be a big reward. The major will be safe. Otherwise…”the voice warned, it would be “very bad” for everyone.
Inside the Quonset the lieutenant laughed nervously. “I could earn a few won,” he said, adding just as quickly that, of course, he didn’t mean it — it was only a joke. Tae nodded understandingly. He knew it was a joke.
Tae heard something clattering above them on the roof and lifted the M-60, ready to fire.
“Loose guttering!” the lieutenant said hurriedly.
Tae was watching the jagged circle of steel-gray sky. Why would they want him? Surely the names of the ROK’s top counterinsurgency agents in Pusan, Taegu — wherever — wouldn’t be any use to them now. Unless, like a long line of conquerors before them, they wanted to teach a quick lesson to the occupied population — to show unequivocally that whoever opposes the Party in thought, word, or deed, whoever dared oppose the beloved leader, would be publicly denounced and executed. To demonstrate conclusively that underground resistance was futile. Tae vividly recalled old villagers telling him how the British and American soldiers had feared the North Korean guards more than the Japanese, the cruelty of the North Koreans so infamous that the mere threat of handing prisoners over to the NKA had been enough for the NKA’s allies at the time, the Chinese, to quiet their most intransigent American and British POWs.
“They’re waiting,” said the lieutenant, sweat trickling down his neck.
“I know.”
“Tae Soryong! Major Tae!” came the tinny voice. “You have five minutes to surrender — or your comrades will die.”