"Yeah, easy for you to say, Sarge, sitting back there at fucking Bonifas. They wouldn't hit you for about three minutes after they squash us like bugs under their tank treads."
"Okay, Johnson, give it a level-one alert. I'll call the colonel. He ain't gonna be happy getting woke up at four damn o'clock in the fucking morning."
"Thanks, Sarge. Level-one alert now on the boards. Nobody here gets up, right? Nobody in his tank?"
'"Right. Now shut up a minute. Hey, you see anything with your NVGs?"
"Nope. Too far away. But the sound comes through. Everything but the tanks starting up."
"Stay on it."
Willy Johnson tried the night-vision goggles again. They turned the Korean no-man's-land into a dull green, but he could see the centerline, the bunkers, even some shrubs that had grown up.
But the NK tankers were too far away. He put down the goggles and listened.
More sounds of metal on metal. Were those closing tank turrets? Maybe the slap of a wrench on a stubborn nut? How about a tread getting slammed home with a hammer?
He listened again. Damn, he could just see those damn NKs swarming over those sixteen tanks over there with their 105 cannon all aimed south. Hell, maybe they were backing out of their revetments. No, not without starting their engines.
Then the sound came clear and unmistakable: The diesel engines on sixteen tanks ground over all at once. Johnson grabbed the phone.
"Sarge, Sarge. the damn tank engines are starting. Sounds like all of them."
Nobody answered. The line was supposed to be open all the time. "Sarge, come in, Sarge." He gave up on the phone and keyed the small radio. "This is Oullette calling Bonifas, calling anybody, over."
Only a gentle hum came from the radio speaker.
"Bonifas, we've got sixteen NK tanks with engines running. Does anybody copy?"
"Yeah, I copy, Oullette. This is the Ninety-first Tank. That for real, those NKs fired up?"
"Damn straight. I heard them before. Now I can't raise Bonifas."
"Let me try." Willy Johnson waited a long sixty seconds; then the radio came on.
"Yeah, I got Bonifas. The OD said remember last week. He's not excited about it."
"Hell, Nine One, they could be backing those machines out of their holes right now and pointing them at you."
"Right as rain, little buddy, right as — "
The first North Korean artillery round slammed out of the darkness and exploded on the 91st Armored Battalion's communications center. The officer of the day and three enlisted men died from the first shell and all communications were out. Twenty-four rounds rained down so quickly that half the tankers in the center were either killed or wounded.
Deep in their bunkers the tanker crews came awake with a jolt, pulled on boots and helmets, and ran for their tanks. Ten of the sixteen crews made it to their machines and started the motors. Long guns were lifted, trained on the DMZ to the north.
Another barrage of artillery battered three of the manned tanks and four of the empty ones. One tank took a direct hit, and twenty of the 10 5 shells in its locker went off with a deafening roar.
"Move out, move out," Major Kitts bellowed into his tank-to-tank radio. The big tanks backed out of their assigned bunkers and jolted into the DMZ to escape the killing artillery.
"How many tanks we have left?" Kitts asked his radio. He took reports from seven units. "Okay, we form a line here just in back of the centerline and wait for the bastards. They must be coming. Keep a sharp lookout."
The eight American tanks lined up forty yards apart, twenty yards from the DMZ centerline, and waited.
Major Yim Pak Lee had his troops up at 3 a.m. and briefed the officers, then the enlisted men. They manned their sixteen tanks at 0415. His orders were to attack as soon as he heard the first artillery shell come overhead. The shell whispered over at precisely 0420, and the major dropped into his tank and buttoned up the turret.
"All tanks fire one round at predesignated target one on my command. Ready, fire." His own gunner blasted one 105 toward the Americans. Yim reveled in the smell of the burned powder in the tank despite the best fans.
"'All tanks move out into attack positions on command. The three-tank spearhead and five. Bravo Team to the right. Move.'"
The sixteen North Korean tanks swung into position, then angled to their right directly at the enemy tanks they knew had been hit hard by artillery fire. Major Yim lifted the turret of his tank and looked out. He could hear the rumbling of his battalion on both sides of him. There was concentrated artillery fire directly ahead. He would slow enough to miss it. There was the whisper of fighter jets high overhead waiting for dawn. The light would come in three quarters of an hour. By then he hoped he and his men would have punched a hole five miles into the South Korean landscape.
A gentle valley leading southwest was his route. Once he broke through there, there would be little to stop him for twenty miles. He grinned in the morning darkness. They were only a quarter of a mile from the start of the DMV. The machine gunner on his tank cut loose with a ten-round burst, then a second one. Nerves. They all had them, but the MG men could do something about it.
"Target, gunner?" Yim asked.
"Swear I saw some troops out there, Major, maybe an ambush patrol."
Corporal Arley Whitworth had tried for almost three minutes to get a radio contact with Bonifas. Nobody answered. He and his ambush patrol had heard the first artillery. He figured it had targeted the camp's headquarters and then the American tanks.
Five minutes later they all heard the tanks coming from the north. "Tanks, Sarge," Whitworth said.
The older man nodded. Sergeant First Class Benton Crawford had seen it all. Vietnam, Gulf War, and now Korea. "They're coming, sure as hell. We've got no radio, no phone. We play it by fucking ear. We bring any RPGs?"
The word went around quickly. "We got two pair, Sarge. Holy shit, there they are. Must be twenty fucking tanks."
Sergeant Crawford signaled down the line for all of his nine men to get into a shallow ditch in case the tanks came right at them.
"Get them RPGs up here." Benton sent the word down the line. His men were ten yards apart. The two troopers with the rocket-propelled grenades settled in three yards on each side of their patrol leader.
"Coming our way, Sarge?" one of the GIs asked.
"Looks that way. The only good we can do with those RPGs is to knock his tread off. I want you guys to aim at the tread. So shoot low. Each of you take a different tank. Closer the better. Shit."
He looked up and saw one tank less than thirty yards from them and aimed straight at his men. A machine gun on a tank down the row cut loose. They had another ambush patrol fifty yards down on the right.
"If this bastard keeps coming at us, we crawl through the ditch so half of us are on each side. When he hits the ditch, you two guys blast him with your RPGs. Should be one on the other side. Let's knock this guy out of action."
The infantrymen settled down in the three-foot ditch. It wouldn't be enough to save them if the tank ran directly over them. The dirt would cave in on both sides and smother whoever was under the tank.
The big long gun on the tank fired, the round slamming over the heads of the troops in the ditch.
"Still coming right at us, Sarge," Corporal Whitworth said.
"Spread out," Sergeant Crawford called. "Whitworth, you take half on down to the right. Rest of you, move my way. Remember, hit those fucking treads."
Five of the GIs crawled along the trench to get out of the way of the clanking monster rolling towards them. The tank's machine gun cut loose again, but the fire was well over their heads. The tank rolled forward, aimed at the part of the trench vacated by the men. Sergeant Crawford grabbed the RPG and sighted in on the tank as it rolled and clanked toward them. When it was thirty feet from the ditch, he aimed at the tank's treads and fired.