“We ship out tomorrow,” Danny concluded. “Aside from Cal and Rick, we should all be together in Moscow in three weeks’ time. By then, Tim will have worked with the CIA station chief in Moscow to get us a safe house, and Mrs. Stevens should have some preliminary plans on how to proceed. Come on up and get your briefing papers. Study them tonight and commit them to memory — we’ll be burning them in the morning. Good luck, everyone. See you in Moscow.”
Cal let everyone get up to get their files first, figuring they had the harder task ahead. But when he got to the lectern, Danny and Rick were waiting for him. “Got a little something else for you to do before you head to Helsinki, Cal,” Danny said with an apologetic smile. “Sorry to do this to you, but we’re making a pit stop on the way.”
Of course, Cal should’ve known nothing would be so easy. He took the folder Danny offered him. “Do I wanna know where?” he asked.
“Korea,” Danny replied. “We have a new Variant we need to find and collect.”
Grimacing, Cal looked down at his shoes for a moment, mustering some patience and peace before replying. “I hope you mean to say somewhere way in the south part, right? Away from the lines?”
Danny didn’t reply.
5
The ground shook constantly as the skies rained metal and the angry shouts of God and Satan pummeled the ears. Miguel Padilla would have given anything for a respite, anything for two minutes of quiet and safety in order to pray and put his soul in God’s hands before rising from his trench again to face the bullets of the Chinese Army.
That wasn’t going to happen, of course. He turned to look at his compatriot, Hugo Contreras, a fellow private in the 2nd Platoon, Company B of the 31st Infantry’s famed Colombia Battalion. Two years ago, they were aimless boys in the poor neighborhoods of Bogotá, resigned to scraping together a meager existence on odd jobs and petty theft. They had volunteered together, gone to Korea together, sent the Chinese fleeing in Operation Thunderbolt.
And now Miguel was sure they would die here on Hill 266, a scrap of a hill called Old Baldy that wasn’t worth a damn to anybody except as something to fight over.
“Come on,” Miguel told Hugo, trying to regain courage. “Let’s show these bastards how Colombians fight.”
Hugo, wide-eyed and covered in mud and sweat and the blood of the dead men around them, nodded nervously, clutching his rifle. “I’m with you. But I’m not a good shot like you.”
This was true. Miguel was the best shot in the squad. In the company. The battalion. Possibly on the entire Korean Peninsula. He pointed to a now vacant machine gun emplacement ten yards off. “When I start shooting, run over there and start firing,” Miguel said. “You don’t have to be a good shot to kill Chinese with a machine gun, yes?”
Hugo smiled this time and nodded quickly, then crouched down and prepared to run. Miguel, meanwhile, set his rifle down and pulled two pistols from his belt — one from his now deceased sergeant, the other from a wounded lieutenant who was in a bunker that would probably not last another hour. The shells rocked the ground around them, the flashes pierced the cold, wet night. He could hear the screams of men on both sides and the barrage of gunfire popping like the sounds coming from the Devil’s own drums.
Miguel had thirteen rounds between his two weapons.
Time to go.
He stood quickly and immediately saw a Chinese face thirty yards away. A second later, the face erupted in a crimson splash from Miguel’s first bullet. The second hit the hand of a Chinese soldier from forty yards out, one gripping a hand grenade. The explosion robbed him of two more targets, but he found three others on his right, another forty-five yards off. Three bullets later they were dead and he ducked back down into the trench.
Hugo was still there. “What the hell, you bastard?” Miguel hissed. “That was your chance!”
But Hugo had no words. He merely stared, on the verge of tears, trembling.
“Mierda,” Miguel sighed. “Let’s try again, okay? I’m going to—”
A gout of flame erupted overhead, prompting both men to duck.
The Chinese had a flamethrower.
“That fucker!” Miguel growled. “Hang on.”
He popped up again, one pistol already extended, and took his shot from just twenty yards out. The bullet went right through the nozzle of the flamethrower, through the Chinese soldier’s right lung and into the tank of fuel behind his body.
The explosion bathed the valley in unholy light — revealing more targets. In the space of five seconds, Miguel took seven more shots. Seven more men died, the last one from nearly a hundred yards away.
A moment later, he was back down in the trench, but Hugo was not there. Ten feet away, Hugo’s body was crumpled on the ground, just short of the machine gun emplacement.
Miguel wanted nothing more than to stop and cry and scream and mourn and take his friend’s body away from this meat grinder. He could do none of those things.
A radio nearby, in the hand of another dead man, sparked to life. “Attention all forces! Retreat! Retreat! We’re about to be overrun! Retreat! Retreat!”
Miguel took one last look at Hugo’s body. “Go with God,” he whispered. Then he ran.
Bullets tore after him as he leaped across the open space and grabbed Hugo’s rifle, crouching behind the machine gun. There were only about fifty rounds left on the machine gun, but Miguel decided to put them to good use. Closing his eyes and reaching out with his mind’s eye, he remembered the terrain in front of him, thinking where the Chinese might try to come next.
He put his finger on the trigger and opened fire, swinging the gun around and targeting the Chinese with short bursts. When the rounds were spent, he took up Hugo’s rifle again and ran, knowing there were fifty less Chinese behind him who could shoot him in the back.
Indeed, he had just gotten his two seconds of silence, and he used it to run like hell for the bottom of the hill.
“Commander, I genuinely don’t give a damn whose order this is, but right now Pork Chop Hill and Old Baldy are being overrun by the Reds, and if you go even one mile north, you’re gonna get dead real fast.”
Colonel William Kern, U.S. Army, stared hard at Danny, as if willing him to make better choices in life, and honestly, Danny couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t like he wanted to drive up into a hellstorm, but there wasn’t much of a choice. Danny could sense the new Variant ahead of him, toward the fighting, and he was afraid that spark of Enhancement in his mind’s eye might wink out at any moment. There wasn’t any time.
“Colonel, I appreciate that, and believe me, I’m not looking forward to going. But I have to. These orders are straight from General Vandenberg himself, and I don’t think anybody here is in a position to countermand them. All I need is a jeep. That’s it,” Danny said.
Kern shook his head sadly. “Jeeps don’t grow on trees, son. I’ve half a mind to make you walk. But—” The colonel raised his hand to cut off Danny’s retort. “You got one. If you don’t bring it back, at least do me a favor and crash it into the Chinese, okay? But really, bring it the hell back in one piece.”
Danny walked out of the farmhouse serving as Kern’s office in some village outside Yeoncheon and made his way to the impromptu motor pool in a nearby barn, where Cal and Rick were already waiting. Both were covered as Marine-enlisted — Cal as a gunnery sergeant, Rick as a lance corporal. Danny had given some thought to covering them all as U.S. Army, since the Army was in charge of the front here, but the customs and nuances would likely escape them all. Their orders would cause them to stick out anyway, so they might as well stick out all the way.