“Yes, sir.”
Kevin nodded to himself. Miller’s move made sense. One of the security battalion’s chief duties was guarding Daesong-dong, the only village inside the DMZ. In exchange for the risks they ran just by living so close to the border with North Korea, the two hundred or so civilian farmers were well paid — but they had to accept a number of restrictions like nighttime curfews and obedience to military orders. ROUNDUP was the code word for an emergency evacuation of Daesong-dong. Sobong, Miller’s South Korean second-in-command, and the unit’s civil affairs company knew the drill. It was an operation they rehearsed with the villagers every three months.
“Now that is weird. Just wild-ass weird,” one of the young officers manning a computer console said abruptly. He swiveled around to face Miller. “Sir! None of the guys at our checkpoints or watching the remote cameras have eyes on any KPA guards inside the JSA.”
“What?”
“They’re gone, Colonel,” the lieutenant said. “Or they could be sheltering real deep. But we’ve got no visual contact or thermal trace on anyone on their side of the line.”
“How long have they been gone?” Miller demanded.
The lieutenant swallowed hard. “Maybe ten minutes. Maybe more. Maybe less.” He gestured at the screen in front of him. “We were focused on spotting any infiltrators trying to sneak across the line…”
And not paying enough attention to the normal goons who stood guard, Kevin realized. It was a form of target fixation; the less technical term was tunnel vision.
He saw Miller’s jaw tighten. The officers and men at those checkpoints and those monitoring the remote cameras were going to catch hell during the morning debriefing on this incident.
If any of them are still alive when the sun comes up, Little thought grimly.
There were a number of scenarios that might explain why North Korea’s radio station would go off the air around the same time its soldiers at Panmunjom vanished. Unfortunately, none of them seemed likely to do much for the life expectancy of anyone at Camp Bonifas.
Kevin shook his head, half-amused and half-disgusted by his own sudden fit of pessimism. Maybe, just maybe, he should have pulled his twenty and gone back home to run the family ranch in eastern Washington like his parents had always wanted. Hell, he’d seen a lot of combat over multiple tours in Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq. His luck had to be running mighty thin by now.
Then he shrugged. He’d make a lousy rancher. You had to like cows and horses to be a good rancher. And he hated cows. And horses. Especially horses.
Miller’s voice broke in on his thoughts. “Captain Shin! Call the MAC Joint Duty Officer and tell him to report here, pronto. I don’t want him caught outside the wire if this situation turns sour.”
The UN’s Military Armistice Commission kept specially trained officers on duty twenty-four hours a day to monitor a telephone hotline linking the two sides at Panmunjom. Their office was just thirty feet away from a North Korean guard post and right in the line of any fire.
“Checkpoint Three reports lights moving on the Reunification Highway, near Kaesong!” Major Lee said suddenly, listening to one of the CP’s secure phones. “Many lights.”
Christ, Kevin thought, not really believing it. Here they come. Again. The Reunification Highway was bound to be a major axis for any new North Korean armored offensive into the south.
“Get me a count,” Miller snapped. “And ID those vehicles.”
“Yes, sir!” Lee said. He spoke urgently into the phone, dropping into Korean while he demanded more information from the soldiers manning Checkpoint Three, a blue-painted building perched on a hill overlooking the western perimeter of the JSA. Anyone stationed there had North Korean territory on three sides.
Kevin watched the South Korean major’s face closely. For a moment, Lee stayed calmly professional, listening to the reply. Then he blinked once. His eyebrows rose in astonishment. At any other time, his expression would have been funny as hell.
“The lights are from automobiles,” Lee said slowly, as though he couldn’t really believe what he was saying. “A group of at least six civilian cars driving out of Kaesong on the highway. They are coming toward the DMZ at fifty or sixty kilometers an hour. With their headlights on.”
“You have got to be fricking kidding me, Major,” Miller said.
“No, sir,” Lee said stubbornly. “I am not kidding you.”
Miller shook his head in disbelief. He glanced at Kevin. “This is getting stranger and stranger, Colonel Little. What in the name of God’s little green earth is going on? Could this be some kind of hush-hush diplomatic thing that Seoul and DC forgot to tell us about?”
Kevin shrugged helplessly and shook his head. He hadn’t heard a thing, and he doubted there was anything to hear. The striped-pants folks in the US and South Korean state departments could be slow to tell their respective armed forces what they were up to, but even they had to know that running an unannounced diplomatic mission up to the DMZ in the dead of night was asking for major-league trouble. That kind of trouble could get people killed and wreck a lot of promising bureaucratic careers.
“Well, whatever the hell this is, I’m going up to Checkpoint Three to see for myself,” Miller decided. He turned toward another of the South Korean officers. “Captain Shin, I want the ready platoon mounted and on the way to Checkpoint Three in five minutes. And tell my driver I’m on the way.”
Miller looked at Kevin with the hint of a sardonic smile. “You want to ride along, Colonel? Things could get… interesting.”
Are you willing to stick your head out of the cozy, relative safety of Camp Bonifas and play headquarters tourist at the most exposed site on the whole DMZ… right as the proverbial shit is flying toward the fan, Kevin silently translated. He snorted. The smart move would be to head back to Seoul right now. Going with Miller was just an excuse to stare again at the tigers prowling around right across the line. Then again, he decided, sometimes that was the safest thing to do. It was usually the predator you didn’t see who pulled you down.
He grinned back at the other man. “I wouldn’t miss it, Lieutenant Colonel Miller.”
The entire Panmunjom Truce Village was brightly lit by floodlights mounted on buildings and tall metal lampposts. Once past the entrance to the UN side of the compound, the convoy of trucks and Humvees carrying the security battalion’s ready platoon swung left onto a two-lane road heading west, and then turned sharply onto an even narrower one-lane road heading uphill toward Checkpoint Three. Trees and underbrush lined both sides.
“Stop here, Harmon,” Miller told his driver. They were near the top of the hill and within a hundred meters of the demarcation line, but still just out of sight of the closest North Korean guard post.
Kevin swung himself out of Miller’s Humvee, stifling a grunt as his knees and feet briefly took on the full weight of his body armor, ammo, and other gear. Counting the M4A1 rifle one of the security battalion’s sergeants had issued him before they drove out of Camp Bonifas, he was probably carrying around forty-five to fifty pounds of extra weight. That wasn’t the full load carried by an infantryman on an extended foot patrol, but it was more than enough — especially for someone who was closer to fifty years old than to forty.
“Better leave that in the Humvee, sir,” Miller said quietly, nodding at the assault rifle. “This close to the line, we only carry sidearms. Our KPA pals get nervous if they see heavier firepower.”
“And if we see some of those ‘pals’ are toting something a bit bigger?” Kevin asked.