I should’ve been expecting it, but, like an idiot, I wasn’t.
The fist caught me on the side of my head. Reflexively I crouched and moved to my left. More punches came at me, but now I had raised my hands and was able to deflect most of them. In the glare of light from the fluorescent bulb in the hallway, I glimpsed a contorted face coming at me-pasty skin and a pug nose under the black helmet: Moe Dexter.
Ernie was shouting and other voices were shouting and then the thunderous report of a round from an automatic weapon echoed into the night. For a moment, everything was quiet. The punches stopped raining down on me. I used the time to brace myself against the cement-block wall of the barracks, to balance myself in an upright position, to try to focus my eyes. Ernie had his flashlight out now, shining it into the faces of Moe Dexter and the three other MPs in fatigue uniform who stood behind him. Ernie’s.45 was out and he was pointing it right at them.
“Back off,” he growled. “Back off or I’ll plug you where you stand!”
Dexter raised his hands to his sides, grinning. “What’s the matter, Bass Comb? Doesn’t your boy Sweeno want to play fair?”
“You’ll play fair when I pop a fucking forty-five round in your face,” Ernie told him. “Back off!”
The four MPs did.
Ernie helped me to the jeep. Captain Prevault still sat in the back seat. “I tried to warn you,” she said, “but two of them held me here. One of them put his filthy hand over my mouth.”
“Drive!” Ernie said.
It took her a moment to understand. She climbed into the front seat. Ernie pulled the passenger seat forward, and I dove into the back seat, still dizzy from the initial blow. Ernie lowered the front seat and sat down, all the while keeping his flashlight and the barrel of his.45 pointed at the MPs. Captain Prevault wasn’t sure where the ignition was. Ernie pointed it out to her.
“I’ve never driven a stick shift before,” she said.
“Move the seat forward.”
She did.
“Now put your left foot on the clutch.” She seemed confused. “That pedal to the left of the brake. That’s it. Press down on it.” Ernie shifted the gear shift into first. “Now let up on it slowly.”
She did. We lurched forward. The four MPs, including Moe Dexter, backed away. When we reached their jeep, Ernie told her to stop. He hopped out, still keeping his weapon trained on the MPs, and walked around the MP jeep and systematically shot out all four of their tires. As an afterthought, he shot out the spare bolted to the rear. Then he fired a round at them. They ducked and took cover.
Ernie hopped back into the jeep.
“Drive!” he said.
She did, haltingly at first, with the little vehicle shuddering and stopping and then speeding up. Finally, we were out in Seoul traffic.
“Don’t you want to take over from here?” Captain Prevault said.
“You’re doing fine,” Ernie replied.
Her small hands gripped the huge steering wheel. I would’ve felt sorry for her, driving her first stick shift at night in the maddening Seoul traffic, but my head was pounding too hard to worry much about driver’s ed. I lay down as best I could in the small canvas-covered seat. Somehow, amidst all the honking and commotion and swirling beams from headlights, I passed out.
Ernie leaned back from the passenger’s seat and shook me awake.
“Are you all right, pal?”
I sat up. “Where are we?”
“Out in the countryside. Not too far from the Taebaek Mountains, I don’t think.”
My head throbbed like a marching drum. “Dexter’s not following us, is he?”
“Naw. That asshole is only good on compound or in Itaewon when he’s got a bunch of MPs around him. If he hadn’t sucker punched you, you would’ve kicked his ass.”
“Right,” I said, although I didn’t believe it at the time. “Do you have any aspirin?”
Ernie didn’t but Captain Prevault, still driving, searched her purse. She pulled out a bottle of Tylenol. I thanked her and popped down four of them, dry.
“We should stop somewhere,” she told Ernie, “and have George checked out. He might be suffering from a concussion.”
“Him?” Ernie said. “He’s got the hardest head in Eighth Army.”
“It’s not a joke,” she insisted.
Ernie glanced around at the dark rice paddies surrounding us. “You see any clinics around here?”
Ernie told Captain Prevault to pull over to the side of the road. A good chance for a piss break, I thought, which is what we would have normally done, but with Captain Prevault there, I hesitated. She sensed what we were thinking.
“Go in those bushes over there,” she said. “I’ll stay near the jeep.”
So Ernie and I relieved ourselves about ten yards away while Captain Prevault squatted in front of the jeep. An occasional vehicle cruised by but no one paid any attention. In Korea, the natural functions of the body are seen as just that, natural functions. No one pays them any mind.
When we were done, we climbed back into the jeep. Ernie asked me if I wanted to drive, but I told him no. I wasn’t ready for that yet. We rotated into our usual positions: Captain Prevault in the back, Ernie driving, me in the passenger seat.
“You did a good job,” I told her, “getting us out of Seoul.”
“Thanks. It’s not something I want to do again.”
I pulled out the Army-issue maps I’d already stuffed in the glove compartment. Using a penlight, I studied them. The coordinates Riley had given me, the last known position of the Lost Echo, were only a few kilometers from the Buddhist Monastery known as Simgok Sa, the monastery that had been used to christen the nameless child Miss Sim.
“When we reach the town of Yang-ku,” I told Ernie, “we best see if we can gas up. I don’t think there’ll be much chance beyond that.”
“There’s not much out here already.”
As it turned out, about a dozen kilometers up the road, at an intersection of three country roads, a big neon sign flashed Sok-yu. Rock oil. A gas station. We stopped and I spoke to the attendant in Korean and asked him if there’d been any other people up here this evening from Seoul heading into the Taebaek Mountains. He looked at me as if I were mad. I didn’t press the issue. When I paid him, I flashed my badge and told him if anyone asked if Americans had come this way, he was to tell them no. He continued to stare at me blankly.
“Arraso?” I asked. Do you understand?
Finally, he nodded.
I don’t think I’d intimidated him, but I still believed he’d keep his mouth shut. Refusing to get involved, in the States, is seen as shirking your civic duty. In a police state it’s the smartest way, and sometimes the only way, to survive.
With a full tank of gas, the three of us hopped back into the jeep. Ernie checked the nonexistent traffic and we drove off into the night.
— 14-
By early morning, we had reached a village known as Im-dang. Ernie looked pretty tired, so I told him we should rest and find some chow. He didn’t disagree. Captain Prevault slept soundly in the back seat, her face leaning up against one of the canvas duffel bags.
The side of my face still hurt. I touched it gently. Bruised. I probably looked like hell. My headache had been alleviated somewhat by the Tylenol Captain Prevault had given me last night, but it was throbbing again and I didn’t have the heart to wake her just for that. She snored softly.