“Sir, we cannot take such threats lightly. The disturbances have grown more violent each day, and this one has been most difficult to control. These criminals may think they can actually reach the palace. But they will not get through this line. It is all planned, sir. My men will fire a volley over their heads to force them back — if the tear gas doesn’t work.”
The lieutenant straightened up. “Those are my instructions, sir. And my men and I will carry them out. We cannot allow these terrorists to cause trouble this close to the Blue House — or this close to your embassy for that matter.
“In any event, General, this is an internal matter. And I am not under your command.” The Combat Police lieutenant seemed slightly more at ease now that he had remembered that. He saluted sharply and moved back to his men.
McLaren stared after him — working hard not to explode in rage. The trouble was, the little son of a bitch was right. As the overall commander of all the regular military forces in South Korea, McLaren could control the movements of more than six hundred thousand South Korean and American troops. But he didn’t have any authority over the country’s internal security and paramilitary units, and so he could not issue orders to this one half-assed Combat Police junior officer. There wasn’t any way around that — not in time for it to matter anyway.
His long, black staff car, paced by two sweating policemen, pulled up beside him, and Corporal Harmon stuck his head out the window. “Hey, General, sir. We’re out and ready to roll.”
McLaren climbed into the backseat and slammed the car door shut. “Did you get through to the Blue House, Doug?”
“They’ve canceled today’s meeting, sir. Something about this upcoming demonstration ‘requiring immediate attention.’ ” His aide laughed. “Whatever that means.”
McLaren jerked a thumb out the window as they passed through the rifle-armed Combat Police. “Well, I’ll tell you. It sure as hell doesn’t mean anything good. Let’s head up to the embassy to check in.”
They sat back in silence as the car moved toward the gates of the American embassy compound. But as the Marine sentries at the entrance came to attention, McLaren leaned forward again. “Hold it, Harmon. I’m getting out here.”
He turned to his aide. “Doug, you go on into the embassy and report in to HQ. Get a status report on the demonstration and try to find out if the CIA has any idea why the South Koreans are so goddamned spooked. Meantime, I’m going to go back and eyeball this one — I don’t like the feeling I’m getting about all of this.”
McLaren noticed his aide and driver exchanging rueful looks as he got out of the car. Well, let them. He knew they didn’t approve of his gallivanting off into a “situation,” but they’d also learned the hard way not to try to stop him. He just didn’t see the point in holing up with the ambassador while something explosive was happening just outside the embassy’s gates.
It really was none of his business. After all, student protests often seemed like a national sport in South Korea. The season ran from the time school opened in September until winter set in during November — and then it reopened in the spring until the summer monsoon closed it down in June. At times the protestors and the Combat Police — the ROK’s internal security force — acted as though they were simply carrying out some age-old ritual. But then somebody would get killed — hit in the head by a tear gas grenade, torched by a homemade, paint-spray flamethrower, or beaten to death in a wild street melee. When that happened, it wasn’t a game, and everybody damned well knew it.
Combat police did not carry rifles. Whoever gave that order was scared of something. He wanted to find out what, before the kimchee really hit the fan.
He moved back down Sejong-Ro and stood on the sidewalk watching as the streets emptied of civilian traffic and filled up with truckload after truckload of green-jacketed riot police. It was very quiet now and growing hotter as the sun climbed directly overhead.
Then he heard it. Softly at first, but growing louder with every passing second. A rhythmic sound that seemed to echo off the tall buildings around him. Then he recognized it. It was the sound of thousands of voices chanting, yelling the same phrase over and over: “Tokchae Tado! Tokchae Tado! Down with the dictatorship! Down with the dictatorship!”
The Combat Police at the barricades heard it too. McLaren saw their officers — including that s.o.b. lieutenant — cursing and kicking them into formed ranks. The engines of the armored cars behind them caught and roared into life. The turrets with the water cannon and tear gas launchers turned to point down the empty street.
McLaren was tall enough to see over most of the riot police, and he could just begin to catch glimpses of the front rank of the crowd marching up the boulevard. He whistled softly to himself. There were a damned lot of them — thousands at least. And their shouts were even louder now that they’d seen the police line.
Most of them didn’t look like the longhairs who’d taken to the streets in the States while he was in Nam. They wore clean clothes and neatly cropped hair. But they were also wearing handkerchiefs and surgical masks over their faces to block out tear gas. And there was something unnerving about their relentless approach.
Despite the heat McLaren felt a chill run up his spine. This felt a lot like combat, but it was too mechanical, too predictable. It was like watching some kind of animated physics diagram — high-velocity mass meets immovable object. McLaren knew what bothered him most about it all. He wasn’t in charge and he couldn’t do a single thing to change the outcome.
Suddenly he tensed. Someone was behind him. It was the same feeling he’d had just before that damned Cong sniper put an AK round into his right leg back in Nam. Without turning around, McLaren stepped into the shelter of a store doorway and chanced a look back down the street. He started and had to stop himself from laughing out loud. It wasn’t a rifle scope that he’d sensed. It was the big lens on a TV camera.
But he ducked back into the doorway all the same as the CNN cameraman and his assistant jogged past toward the barricade line. It wouldn’t do at all for the folks back home to see an American officer in full uniform standing around in the middle of a South Korean protest. That’d be just the sort of thing that would give the nervous Nellies in the Pentagon PR office the fits.
Twenty yards down the street the cameraman clambered onto the hood of a parked car to get a better shot of the demonstrators surging toward the police barricades.
“Tokchae Tado! Tokchae Tado! Tokchae Tado!” The chant was even louder now, and growing more guttural, more threatening. McLaren couldn’t hear the orders being yelled to the Combat Police, but suddenly the front two ranks brought their Plexiglas shields up and drew their nightsticks.
The demonstrators closed to within fifty yards, then forty, thirty, twenty. Bricks and bottles started clattering off the riot troopers’ raised shields. McLaren snarled. What the hell were they waiting for?
Now. A grenade launcher on one of the armored cars coughed. Others followed suit, and McLaren saw a white mist of tear gas billowing above the crowd, drifting downwind south along the street. He waited for the water cannon to open up. But the damned idiots had parked them too far back. The armored cars were rolling forward, but it was too late. The protestors were too close.
They smashed into the front ranks of the riot police — shoving barricades aside, wrenching at plastic shields or kicking under them, and still screaming, “Tokchae Tado!” The police fought back, clubbing students with their nightsticks and slamming shields into their faces. McLaren saw demonstrators going down with blood streaming from cut foreheads or broken noses. It wasn’t enough.