Entering through a steel door, the first thing he noticed was the dim red glow of an electric heater at the base of the inner curved wall. The men blessed the designers every day for those heaters. The nights at the 38th parallel could get quite cold and the winters brutal. The heaters at the base were out of sight and the warmth radiated up to the men on the top. The floor the men stood on was wooden and had small vents in it. This allowed their feet to stay warm even if the rest of them froze. It made all the difference in the world.
Hufham slowly climbed the ladder to join the two men on watch. As he opened the hatch at the top, he could feel the heat rushing past him into the cold, dark space above.
“Come on in the house,” said a quiet voice from the darkness.
“How the hell did you know it wasn’t some North Korean trying to sneak up on you two,” the Master Sergeant grunted as he closed the hatch.
“Been watching you make your rounds. Besides, you’re too big to be a Korean,” said Corporal Bill Masters from the other side of the enclosure. He and Hufham once spent a tour together and had come to know each other pretty well. He also knew enough to continue looking out towards the DMZ and not turn to address Hufham. What came next was not unexpected.
“Keep your sights on that DMZ, Private, or I’ll shove my foot so far up your ass that you’ll taste shoe leather,” Hufham growled at the figure across the way.
Masters grinned. Private Dale Ricks was a newbie. Still wet behind the ears and couldn’t keep from turning around to try and see who came in. It was one of Hufham’s pet peeves. Always watch the guy across the street. What’s behind you makes no difference. That was something he always drilled into the guys up here. As a result, they caught onto a few things on the other side that no one else seemingly observed. True, it was small things like smoke break habits and the tendency to avoid certain places along their line where there might be something under the ground to avoid.
“Yes, Master Sergeant,” came the sullen, quiet reply from Ricks. Masters could almost feel the young kid deflate as he turned his eyes back to the viewports.
Hufham walked over to where Masters was watching his sector. “See anything new?”
“Just the usual. Guard change and a sentry taking a leak and a cigarette break.”
“How can you tell that?”
Masters grinned. “He stood in one place a long time and when he took a draw I didn’t see any hands,” Masters said confidently. He heard Hufham chuckle.
“If our night vision equipment was working you might have had a show,” Hufham said grinning. After the one high altitude blast that occurred over the zone, nothing worked worth a damn.
“What show? I bet that North Korean could hardly find his own dick,” Masters joked. “Make a loud noise and he’d probably piss his pants before he could get it out.”
The two men shared a light moment as Masters strained his eyes through the binoculars. After a moment, he lowered them and rubbed his eyes. “Sure wish we had our equipment back. It’s hard as hell to see anything with just binoculars.”
“Yea, I know. You get kind of used to all that stuff. When it’s gone you appreciate it more. Last I heard we wouldn’t get replacements for a couple of months. Just do as best you can,” Hufham said. It was painful having to guard a border with almost none of the hardware they were used to. He was already having nightmares of soldiers streaming across the Z. Luckily, there were enough mines scattered across no man’s land to wake the dead and stop an advance cold. He took a few minutes to stare across the void towards the towers opposite them. Men would be in those, too, possibly thinking the same things they were.
“What the fuck is that?” came the voice of Private Ricks.
“What do you see?”
Ricks was staring out his port watching a small red light blink in a watch tower. As the Master Sergeant watched, it was picked up by the next tower, and then the next along the line.
“I don’t like this,” said Hufham as he reached for the portable battle phone on the wall. He began turning the crank furiously.
The explosion knocked the three men off their feet as the tower shook beneath them. The second sent shrapnel through the wooden floor from below. The tower, built of reinforced concrete, actually began to tilt backwards. The men inside scrambled to maintain their footing as the structure seemed to bend in half at the waist in slow motion almost as if bending over to pick something up from the ground. It stopped when the roof of the structure finally struck dirt.
Gunfire suddenly erupted outside and bullets began pinging against the side of the structure as Hufham grabbed Ricks and pulled him toward the roof hatch. He yelled at Masters to join them as he kicked the hatch open, glanced out to see that there was still some cover from the rain of lead outside, and then shoved Ricks through it. Turning for Masters, Hufham saw he was not nearby. He quickly scrambled over to where Masters had been. He found him lying in a heap in one corner. Feeling rapidly around his body, he found a two foot piece of splinter from the floor sticking up through Masters’ chin and out the top of his head. Cursing aloud, Hufham grabbed Masters’ rifle, sidearm and ammo packs, and then dashed through the hatch into the compound and the hail of bullets outside. Rifle fire seemed to come from everywhere. Luckily, the way the tower fell afforded some shelter, but not enough. He caught a glimpse of someone crouching behind the small latrine built for the guards. In a brief lull in fire, he dashed over to find Ricks taking cover, scared to death.
“Come on Ricks,” Hufham shouted. “We ain’t gonna die behind a shithouse!” Grabbing Ricks by the collar the two dropped to the ground and crawled from cover to cover trying to avoid the now withering fire coming from a few places in the opposite trees. Most of the fire was concentrated at the tower and a general spraying of the compound. Just after they left, explosions from a couple of grenades blew the flimsy latrine apart.
Once deeper in the woods, Hufham raised up to get a look at the situation. None of the gunfire was now directed at them. It appeared whoever it was still thought they were in the tower. From the explosions and gunfire along the Zone it was obvious there had been a well coordinated attack on each of the outposts. He saw the outline of a man with a gun move across the compound and fire into the hatch of the now smoldering tower. He then motioned for some others and they began to join him and fan out to look for survivors.
The Master Sergeant eased back down into the thick scrub and saw Ricks raise his rifle and aim it toward the oncoming soldier. Hufham placed his hand on Ricks’ gun, pointing it down and shaking his head. “Better part of valor son,” he said in a whisper. They hid silently as the soldier passed. Whoever it was didn’t appear to be anxious to find anyone and soon turned back to the compound as the other soldiers congregated and signaled across the Zone with a flashlight.
Silently, Hufham and Ricks crawled through the woods away from the compound. Once clear, they made their way just below the top of the ridgeline and began the descent to the next valley. More hills would be beyond that. At one point near the base of a mountain, they were close enough to the road to hear heavy vehicles moving along it. Hufham left Ricks to get a look and was surprised to see heavy trucks full of soldiers tearing down the road followed by a couple of tanks and other equipment. The trucks did not have white stars on the side like he was used to seeing. More to the point, they were entering the regular road from a side road that looked very new.