However, the pilot was having none of it. After all, he had just been rescued by Cole and seen him in action. He didn’t give a damn if the man talked like a peckerwood and had a Confederate flag painted on his helmet. As far as he was concerned, Cole was the real deal.
“Now hold on a minute,” Lieutenant Commander Miller said, stepping forward to address Ballard. “I owe this man my life. Without him, I’d be a Chinese prisoner and halfway to Beijing by now.”
“You’re the pilot who got shot down,” Ballard remarked.
“Lieutenant Commander Jake Miller,” he said. “And yes, I did get shot down — along with my wingman. But not before we took out a few of those MiGs. We were fighting Soviets up there, not Chinese or sorry-assed North Korean pilots. Hell, I don’t think those people fly anything more than kites.”
“Soviets?” Ballard seemed surprised.
“Sure, they’re mixed up in this war, although they’re trying not to get their hands dirty. I think they would have left us alone, but we weren’t going to stand for that.”
Ballard didn’t seem to know what to say. Instead, he turned his attention to the three civilians. The older man and the boy kept their eyes on the ground. However, Jang-mi glared defiantly at the officer.
“The last thing we need is more gooks around here. Who are these people, anyhow?” Ballard asked, clearly bewildered. He was even more surprised when it was the Korean woman who answered him.
“We helped save your pilot,” she said. “I am not a gook. I am Korean. You can call me Jang-mi.”
“You speak English?”
“When I must,” she said. “Many people in our village died when the Chinese soldiers came looking for your pilot.”
“Your village?”
“Many miles from here, between the Imjin-gang and the Lǒngmo Sanseong. You would call it Fortress Lǒgnmo.”
“Fortress?” To his surprise, every response from the woman seemed only to prompt more questions and leave him more confused. He was not aware of any fortifications beyond Outpost Kelly. From the corner of his eyes, Ballard noticed a grin play over Cole’s thin lips.
“Yes, it is where my ancestors stood against the Japanese and the Chinese. You see, my people are used to fighting invaders.”
“It was Jang-mi and these two who found me after my parachute came down,” Miller explained. “There were some others, but they didn’t make it.”
“We ran into some Chinese,” Cole explained. “Just a patrol, but they were determined cusses, I’ll give ‘em that. The thing is, sir, there’s a whole lot more Chinese out there. A lot more than we thought. Hell, I’d say there’s a whole army out there in the hills.”
“That’s nonsense,” Ballard said. “We’ve seen some enemy activity, but there is no evidence of a large army.”
“I have seen them,” Jang-mi spoke up. “Many Chinese soldiers.”
“She’s right,” Miller said. “When I was coming down in my chute, the hills looked like they were crawling with Chinese.”
Ballard looked at Cole. He didn’t know these other two, even if one was a fellow officer, and so he did not trust their observations. Even if he didn’t like Cole, he knew that his designated sniper wasn’t one to exaggerate.
Cole nodded curtly. “It’s true. If the Chinese are headed our way, I reckon we’re in trouble.”
“Nuts,” Ballard said.
To add to the situation, it seemed that there was a lot of rain coming. It was what the Koreans called a monsoon. Korea’s weather wasn’t all that different from that of the United States, with a few notable exceptions. The summers could be hot and humid, with temperatures getting into the nineties. Winters tended to be cold and dry, although the mountainous regions received their fair share of snow — just ask any survivors of the Chosin Reservoir campaign about that.
What made Korean weather a bit different was monsoon season, generally a couple of weeks each summer and winter. This occurred when moist air swept in from the Pacific and brought with it deluging rains — or snow in the winter monsoon season. The weather pattern was a little like what Americans would call “El Nino” in decades to come.
While the South Koreans were well-familiar with the monsoon season, this was something new for many of the U.S. troops.
“Gonna rain,” Cole announced, sniffing the air like a caveman. As someone who had lived his whole life mostly outdoors, he was attuned to the weather and the seasons.
“If you say so,” the kid replied, looking doubtfully at the Korean sky. He saw a few clouds, but it didn’t look like rain to him.
Cole took out his trenching tool and dug the ditch deeper around their pup tent, which was comprised of two canvas shelter halves buttoned together along the ridge.
The kid watched him for a moment, then joined in with his own trenching tool. He knew that not much got by Cole. If the hillbilly said it was going to rain, then you had better dig a deeper ditch around your tent.
The tent didn’t provide more than basic shelter. Two short poles raised the roof just enough for them to sit upright as long as they were directly under the highest part of the tent. There wasn’t any floor.
Their tent was not the Ritz, but after the mission to rescue the pilot, they had some welcome down time. Nobody was shooting at them, at last.
The pilot along with Jang-mi and her companions were staying at the MLR for now. With the hills crawling with Chinese, it would be dangerous for Jang-mi and her companions to try to get back to her village. Besides, how much of the village was even left after what the Chinese had done to it?
As for the pilot, he was cooling his heels until he could get a Jeep ride out of here. Again, the Chinese hadn’t been making that an easy proposition.
For Cole and kid, some extra time without much to do was welcome for a change. It helped that they had plenty of rations and actual choices — the canned franks and beans were the most popular among the men, with Hershey bars for dessert. They could make fires to heat up their rations and boil coffee. Unlike the Chinese, they didn’t need to hide their cooking fires from enemy planes or from the Chinese, who knew they were there and were watching them from the heights of the Rice Mound, about a mile distant from the outpost.
During the night, there had been a hot little fight to repel a small raid against the line of tanks defending the crest of the hill that anchored this section of the line, but it had not been a full-fledged attack. One thing about the Chinese was that they loved their raids and they were excellent night fighters.
“I heard those guys let the Chinese through,” the kid said, nodding at several soldiers from the Puerto Rican regiment who were walking by at the moment. Even by the standards of troops who had been in the field a while, these fellows looked sloppy — some not wearing helmets, uniforms a mess, and none of them carrying weapons in a combat zone as required.
“If Lieutenant Ballard sees them, he’ll have a fit and give them hell.”
“For all the good it will do,” Cole said. “I understand that most of them don’t speak English.”
“No wonder the Chinese got through our lines and hit those tanks.”
“One thing about the Chinese is that if they want to get through, they usually do,” Cole said. “They must have been after those tanks to knock ‘em out. They may be planning a larger attack.”
“I sure hope not,” the kid said. “I’m no general, but now would be a good time for the Chinese to catch us with our pants down.”
Cole grunted. “You got that right, kid. Let’s hope the goons don’t figure that out.”
One of the units assigned to the outpost was rotating out and new troops were coming in. This meant that for a few days at least, there would be new soldiers and new officers who didn’t yet have their bearings. If the Chinese had any inkling of that situation, it would indeed be a good time to attack.