With a roar, the second medevac chopper lifted from the tarmac in a swirl of dust and wind. A pair of SeaCobras raced after it, passing low overhead.
"I guess it's all going pretty well," Morgan said as the noise faded. "Like clockwork, huh?"
Walters looked at him with a curious expression. "Ain't you heard, Lieutenant? Jefferson's flight deck is shut down."
"What? When?"
He shrugged. "I just heard a few minutes ago. An hour, mebee."
"Is that going to slow things down here?"
"It sure as hell will make them more interesting. Way I heard it, they need lots more fighters flying cover for the hostage choppers. Now…" He shrugged eloquently. "There just ain't enough Hornets and Tomcats to go around, know what I mean?"
The revelation sent a cold chill down Morgan's spine. Withdrawal from this LZ was going to be damned touchy, no matter how they went about it. As soon as the Marines started pulling out, there would be fewer and fewer defenders to hold a shrinking perimeter against enemy forces.
If the task force's air ops were restricted by damage to the Jefferson's flight deck, things could get very bad indeed. Without fighter cover and bombing runs by the Intruders, the Marines could find themselves overwhelmed by North Korean forces.
"Like I say, Lieutenant," Walters added. "It's not the men who let you down."
Morgan gripped his M-16 a little tighter and stared out beyond the perimeter. Behind him, a third helicopter lifted into the sky.
Private Benjamin D. Ross crouched behind the wall as rifle fire gouged chips from the top. "Sniper!" he yelled, and the other men in his squad fanned out, crawling on their bellies as they closed in on the buildings.
Fox Company had been among the first on the beach that morning, coming ashore by LCAC, then pushing southeast along the coast to establish the Marine perimeter three miles south of the Kolmo airport. They'd held that line for an hour until Bravo had relieved them, then pulled back to the complex of buildings on the coast just south of Blue Beach, which was identified on the maps as a resort.
The Marines had been amused by the relative luxury of the complex, which apparently had been reserved for party leaders and visitors from other Socialist workers' paradises. There was a large swimming pool, game courts, and more trees and shrubs ― all carefully manicured ― than there were growing on the whole of the Kolmo Peninsula. The buildings themselves were of immaculate white stone, quite different from the ramshackle huts of clapboard and pine which clustered along the coast farther south. Like the airport, the resort was deserted when the Marines first entered it; any occupants had fled during the night bombing raids or else later when the Marines started coming ashore.
At least, it had seemed deserted. Another shot rang out, burying itself with a thud in the trunk of a tree nearby. The enemy appeared to be holed up in a two-story building perched on an overhang above the sea, a clubhouse or restaurant of some sort. A railed, wooden deck extended from the east side of the house over the side of the cliff.
"Ross! Aguilar!" Sergeant Nelson snapped from a spot farther along the wall. "Make smoke! The rest of you, give 'em cover!"
"Right, Sarge!"
The two Marines loaded the M-203s slung beneath the forward grips of their M-16s with 40-mm smoke grenades. With a silent exchange of nods, they rose together above the wall as the rest of the company opened up with a devastating fire. The double thump of the grenade launchers was drowned by the gunfire, but there was a splintering crash from downrange, and seconds later, clouds of white smoke began billowing from the clubhouse.
"Hold tight!" Nelson bellowed. "We got help on the way!"
Seconds later that help arrived in the form of a sleek-looking Marine SuperCobra rising above the trees which lined the resort's western boundary. The roar of the 20-mm cannon in its chin turret drowned out even the crack and thump of the infantry battle. The face of the clubhouse seemed to dissolve in smoke and hurtling chunks of stone and glass. Round after round slammed into and through the structure.
The cannon fire let up and the SuperCobra turned away. "Okay, Marines!" Nelson yelled. "Let's mop up!"
Ross rolled over the top of the bullet-chipped wall and ran toward the still-smoking building. He could see several bodies sprawled in the wreckage where the front wall had caved in. Apparently, this small detachment had remained hidden earlier as the Marines moved through the area, with the idea of emerging later in the American rear.
Which was precisely what detachments such as Fox Company were to watch for. There apparently wasn't much mopping up to do; nothing was moving in the smoking, broken shell of the building.
What happened next passed too quickly for Ross to be sure of the order of events.
The sky had been filled with helicopters all morning ― mostly the big, double-ended Sea Knights ferrying Marines in from the ships to the airport ― but two caught Ross's attention now. Huey UH-1s, the ubiquitous "Slicks" of Vietnam, were rare over a Marine beachhead. There were only a handful in Chosin's Marine air wing, reserved for command and utility service ― or special missions where their small size and maneuverability in tight corners were assets. These were flying rapidly toward the beach, two miles to the north.
At the same instant, two men appeared ahead, bursting from the side of the ruined building and running onto the wooden deck. One was armed with an AKM; the other carried a heavy-looking tube which he balanced on his shoulder like a bazooka. They must have stayed hidden in a basement inside the house, out of reach of the SuperCobra's fire.
The man with the AKM opened fire at the advancing Marines before they had a chance to hit the ground, his weapon chattering on full auto, spent casings spraying into the air. Aguilar jerked, as though yanked back by an invisible line, then collapsed screaming. The second Korean ignored the Marines; he seemed to be concentrating on the distant Hueys, tracking them with the device on his shoulder.
Ross recognized the weapon at once: an SA-7 Grail, what its Russian designers called Strela, or arrow. A man-portable, heat-seeking SAM, it was often derided as a poor copy of the obsolete American Redeye, but it was effective enough to bring down a helicopter at a range of two miles.
A second Marine was hit. Ross opened fire with his M-16, three closely spaced single shots aimed at the man with the Grail, but the soldier with the AKM stepped to the left at the wrong moment. He took the rounds in his chest and fell, his rifle spitting out the last rounds in the curved, banana-clip magazine. Behind him, the man with the Grail had already locked onto his target and was completing the double squeeze on the trigger.
An explosive charge thumped, kicking the missile clear of the tube. Ross kept firing and the other Marines joined in. Bullets splintered the wooden deck railing, then cut the soldier down in a bloody spray as the rocket's motor fired out over the surf, sending the warhead arrowing into the distance at the tip of a cottony white contrail of smoke.
Ross watched with horrified fascination as the contrail merged with one of the distant Hueys. There was a flash… a puff of smoke… and then the helo was spinning wildly in a fiery plunge into the ocean.
The sound of the explosion reached the Marines almost fifteen seconds later.
Colonel Caruso had arrived by helicopter, flying out from the Chosin as soon as he could convince his staff that it was necessary to do so. Strictly speaking, his presence on the beachhead was not according to regs; a sniper or a mortar shell could cut him down, and ― quite apart from what Caruso thought about the matter ― that loss would more than outweigh any benefit to be gained by his being there in person.