"Yeah, well, if we don't get out," Bailey said grimly, "some of these men aren't going to make it." His hands clenched in front of him, the gesture revealing the man's anger and frustration. "The antibiotics are gone and we're down to dirty T-shirts for dressings. And those bastards won't give me anything better to work with."
A first class radarman named Zabelsky shook his head. "Look, even if we could get out, what would we do? Where would we go? God… a hundred an seventy men, a third of them wounded. Wanderin' around in slope city. What're we s'posed to do?"
"How far is it to the DMZ?" Lieutenant Commander Coleridge asked.
"Maybe sixty miles," Commander Wilkinson replied. "That's straight south, which means climbing the Taebaek Mountains. Follow the coast southeast and it's more like seventy-five miles. Either way, we'd have to walk past half the damned NK Army."
"Shit," someone said. "I read once they've got the fifth largest army in the world."
"Sixth," Wilkinson muttered. "But who's counting?"
"If we could get a radio," Coyote suggested, "we could call for a rescue. Jefferson must still be offshore somewhere. If they've moved in closer in the last couple of days, they could pick us up off the beach."
"Fine," a lieutenant said. He had a savage bruise across his forehead, and his eyes were puffy and blackened. "All we need is a radio, the right frequency, a lot of luck, and some way to break out of this hole."
The chief, a machinist's mate named Bronkowicz, looked across the room to where one of Chimera's officers, another lieutenant, sat alone in a far corner. "Hell, I vote we send ol' Grape 'n' Guts over there out to get a radio. I'll bet his slant buddies-"
"Belay that, Chief." Gilmore's voice was weak but held an edge to it which still carried the authority of command. "Lieutenant Novak did what he thought was right."
None of Chimera's people had been willing to talk much about the capture of their ship, but Coyote had gathered that at some point Gilmore had been wounded badly enough that he'd passed command to the only available line officer, a young lieutenant on his first tour of sea duty. Apparently, Novak had surrendered the ship, even ordered the crew not to resist, as North Korean troops had poured aboard.
It seemed the others had already judged him, finding him guilty of cowardice.
Coyote looked away from the solitary figure. He could imagine what it was like, alone on a shattered bridge, the noise, the agony as shipmates died. He remembered his own loneliness when he'd been adrift in the ocean, his horror at Mardi Gras's death.
He tried to imagine what he would have done in Novak's place. Probably pretty much the same thing.
"The way I see it," Commander Wilkinson said, "we're a lot better off here."
Bronkowicz nodded. "That's what I was wondering', sir. We don't stand a virgin's chance in a Marine barracks out there. They'd run us down before we got two miles."
"It's more than that, Chief," Wilkinson said. "The way I see it, we have two good chances to get out of here. Either Washington'll negotiate for our release, or they'll send in Delta Force and rescue us. Either way, we'll do a lot better if we stay put."
"Shee-it!" Zabelsky said with some passion. "We're supposed to wait for Washington to move its ass for us?"
"They'll probably disavow all knowledge of our actions," someone said.
"Hell, they forgot all about us already," another said.
"I don't think so," Coyote said. "Someone in Washington had us deploy to look for you guys, and it's hard to disavow a dogfight."
"So where's that leave us?" Bailey asked. His eyes were bleak. "Sit around and watch our people kick off, one by one?"
"Y'know, they negotiated with the gooks for almost a year for the Pueblo crew," Bronkowicz said. He rubbed his chin, making a sandpapery sound. None of them had shaved for three days.
"You mean we could be stuck in this hole for a year?"
"Easy, men," Gilmore said. His breath rasped. "You idiots start panicking and we'll do the Koreans' work for them!"
"The Captain's right," Coleridge said. "We've got to be patient, watch for our chance."
"And don't sign their damned confessions," Gilmore said.
"Yeah. Article Five of the Code," Bronkowicz added. He was referring to the U.S. Fighting Man's Code, a list of six articles learned by every American serviceman since the Korean War. Article Five included the statement "I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause." Many of the men in the Wonsan Waldorf had already, like Coyote, been threatened or beaten and ordered to sign unspecified papers or confessions for their captors.
So far, no one had given in, but Coyote had the distinct impression that the North Koreans were going to bear down hard on them. The gomers were impatient, even frantic to win their prisoners cooperation within the shortest time possible.
Coyote wondered why that was so.
"We still oughta start working on weapons for ourselves," Chief Bronkowicz said. "Just in case. I mean, if we see an opportunity-"
"sssst!" one of the lookouts warned, dropping down off his bucket and righting it. "Company!"
"… an' there I was, see?" Bronkowicz bellowed, slapping his ample belly. "Right there in the room with both these chicks stark naked, see? An' me with my-"
Keys rattled at the lock across the room, and the door banged open. Two soldiers in mustard-colored uniforms stepped inside, threatening the prisoners with their AK rifles. An officer, a squat, stocky little man, strode between the guards and stopped, hands on hips, surveying the room.
"I Major Po, Nyongch'on-kiji." The voice was flat, nasal, and so heavily accented Coyote had to concentrate hard to follow the words. "You sonabichi spies! Imperialist provocateurs! You admit! Tell world, sign paper! Now!" He gestured, pointing at a sailor near the wall. One of the guards strode forward, jabbing the seaman with his AK barrel and motioning the man toward the door. The major pointed to another. "An' that sonabichi." He strode down the length of the room, his boots clumping hollowly on the wooden floor. "An' that! An' that!" He reached the escape committee's circle, reached out, and grabbed Zabelsky by the collar of his dungaree shirt. "You, sonabichi! You too!"
"Don't start any good escapes without me, fellas," Zabelsky muttered as the major yanked him out of the circle. Coyote counted eight of Chimera's enlisted men being lined up.
Then they were gone, marched away at gunpoint. The door slammed shut behind them.
The latest set of photographs from the KH-12 were on display on the rear projection screen at one end of the room.
These were taken where?" the Chief of Naval Operations asked.
"Shithole called Nyongch'on," Marlowe replied. "Five miles south of Wonsan." He looked up from the brief prepared by the analysts at the NPIC minutes before. "There's a pass through the mountains there and the main road south to Anbyon. There's a village, Nyongch'on-ni, and a military base, or kiji. It's one of several in the area. Barracks, motor pool, a small airstrip."
"Damn," the President said. The poster-sized photograph showed part of a quonset-hut-type building of sheet tin, and another which looked like a concrete block warehouse, photographed from an oblique angle as though from an aircraft passing overhead. A line of eight men stood halfway between the two buildings, shepherded by other men holding weapons. While the features of individual faces hovered just beyond the tantalizing edge of visibility, there was no mistaking the uniforms: blue dungarees on the POWs, mustard brown NKPA uniforms on the guards. "Damn," the President said again. "The advances in the intelligence field, just in the last few years…"