Nightmare Range (11 page)

I ordered my beer in Korean and that made her smile and then she came back to see how well I could really speak the language. After a while, she told me that she was twenty-four, divorced with a daughter, and had originally come south with her family when she was an infant during the Korean War. Her hometown was Hamhung, far to the north in that area of the world that the Cold War mapmakers were still painting in red.

The guys at the other end of the bar grew antsy at the lack of attention and she had other orders to fill, but as soon as she had everybody smiling again she came back to me. I had a couple more liters of beer and we talked as if we were old friends. Her eyes lit up when I told her that I had just arrived in country, on my second tour in Korea. Opportunity for both of us. Her name was Miss Ma.

Someone kicked the door in. A group of shouting, hooting Americans trundled inside the Golden Nightclub. Officers. Even in civilian clothes they were practically wearing signs around their necks. First of all, they were acting like jerks. Also, they had whitewall haircuts and blue jeans and sport shirts that, although wrinkled, had been neatly pressed before they left the compound. They acted like they owned the place.

They pulled a couple of tables together and started ordering and grabbing at the waitresses, and one of them peeled away from the group and lumbered toward the bar. Miss Ma moved away from me quickly.

He didn’t order anything. Instead, he leaned over and whispered something in Miss Ma’s ear. At first she didn’t move, but then she spoke to him and he seemed to become angry and she spoke again and then she had him convinced of something and they were both nodding and finally he walked away. She got busy filling orders from the waitresses, and it was another ten minutes before she returned to me.

“You go back compound tonight?”

“Yes. I won’t have an overnight until tomorrow.”

She exhaled slightly—relieved—and then her shoulders rose and she smiled. “Maybe I will see you then?”

Playing hard to get is a ploy that has never entered my repertoire.

“You will,” I said.

After a couple more beers and a few dirty looks from the officer who had talked to Miss Ma, I stumbled out the door and made it back to Camp Edwards. Once I jumped in the rack, visions of her smiling face danced before me. Later that night I tried to struggle free from miles of unraveling copper wire, spinning off its spool, entrapping me in an ever-shrinking web of shimmering metal.

After watching the overloaded deuce-and-a-half pull out just before dawn, I spent the day trying to adjust to the routine of my new job as the assistant company clerk. The first sergeant was a little young, as first sergeants go, and seemed to be in over his head. The company clerk, Specialist 5 Flourey, didn’t seem overly efficient, either. Basically the whole place was a mess. I did what I could, straightening out some files, typing some supply requests for the first sergeant, but mainly I concentrated on finding out who was who. After work I showered and shaved,
signed out on my new overnight pass, and took a cab north to the RC4 Enlisted Club.

I pulled Ernie away from the bar, and we sat at the most isolated table we could find, which is sort of difficult in a one-room Quonset hut.

“The guy who drove the truck,” I said, “was Sergeant First Class Rawlings, NCO-in-charge of the supply point.”

“That’s a lot of stripes for driving a truck.”

“Depends on where he was going.”

“And what he was carrying.”

Ernie stopped the waitress and ordered us a couple of Fal-staffs. “He went up north to the DMZ, Camp Kitty Hawk. A group of GIs unloaded the truck, and after he left I checked out the supplies.”

“Find anything?”

“Nothing but lumber and cement,” Ernie said. “I lead-footed it down the MSR and caught up with him.”

“No other stops?”

“None.”

“They must be getting the wire off post some other way.”

We sipped on our beer for a while.

“They must be covering for him back at Camp Edwards,” I said. “That amount of supplies couldn’t be disappearing without somebody higher up noticing it.”

“Who’s the logistics officer?”

“Captain Calloway. All I have is a name so far. I’ll match it to a face tomorrow.”

“You need to get into the supply point and check their invoices.”

“I think I can manage it,” I said. “But not tonight.”

“Why?”

“We might as well make this all-expenses-paid trip last for a while.”

Ernie nodded.

“And besides, I have a date tonight.”

The waitress brought our beers, smiling at Ernie. “So do I,” he said. “With the entire village of Sonyu-ri.”

A couple of hours later, Ernie wandered out into the village and I caught a cab and made it back to Kumchon. Ten minutes before the midnight curfew, Miss Ma took me by the hand and led me down long rows of narrow, dark alleys until we arrived at her hooch. Lying on the warm floor I discovered that she was more wonderful than I had imagined.

Her five-year-old daughter slept on the mat beside us.

In the middle of the afternoon a neatly uniformed officer stormed into the orderly room and chewed out the first sergeant for putting his supply point people on the duty roster. The first sergeant patiently explained that he was only trying to comply with army regulations, but the captain didn’t appear at all satisfied. When he stomped out of the office, he shot a quick glance at me, and I realized that he was Miss Ma’s paramour from the Golden Night Club. The one who had leaned across the bar and whispered in her ear. I also saw his nametag. Captain Calloway. The logistics officer.

I wedged the crowbar into the back window of the big Quonset hut, and after I pried in three different spots, it slammed open. I crawled through the window and closed it behind me. The place was typical GI issue. Rows of gray desks, filing cabinets, and a disbursing counter in the middle of the big cylindrical barn. I pulled out the flashlight I had bought at the PX and rifled through some of the files.

I pulled out my list of invoices, trying to match them to what was in the files, but the pertinent ones weren’t where they were supposed to be. They’d been removed. We would have to go back to the issuing point at Camp Casey and retrieve copies of the original invoices, which were sequentially numbered, to prove that Camp Edwards had received the stuff. If they’d also been removed there, we’d have to go back to Seoul. It would
be a lot of work, but eventually the accountability would be established.

I checked some of the desks. Nothing. Then I checked the desk with SFC Rawlings’s name plate perched on the front edge. I found them in the bottom drawer, wadded up under a half-empty bottle of Old Overholt. I spread them out on the desk, took a shot of the whiskey straight from the bottle, and shone my flashlight on them.

About thirty invoices altogether. The ones I had on my list and a whole bunch more. Enough to put these guys away. I still didn’t have the link, though. Captain Calloway, the logistics officer, would certainly be found guilty of dereliction of duty for not checking on them, but I would need more proof to nail him for actual collusion in the scheme. It could even go up beyond him. Maybe to the post commander.

Farfetched, perhaps. But it wouldn’t be the first time.

Behind one of the file cabinets was a wall locker with a non-army padlock. I looked through Sergeant Rawlings’s desk until I found a key. It worked. The locker was filled with some of your more valuable supplies: a brand new buffer with a pad, a few field jackets, a case full of Coleman lanterns. Under the shelves I found two large metal disks, about three feet across. They were rusted and soiled. Next to them lay a metal pole about four feet long. It had a narrow, flattened hook on the end.

I thought about it for a while, relocked the closet, and then went back and had another shot of Old Overholt.

I put the bottle of whiskey back where I’d found it, stuffed the invoices in my shirt, and climbed out the window. I stumbled in the snow for a minute, regaining my footing. Footsteps.

Before I could turn around, the back of my head exploded through my skull. My brains splattered against the olive drab walls of the sheet metal Quonset hut.

Or at least that’s what it felt like.

I came to after a few minutes, and when my eyes focused, I
checked my watch. Almost nine. I’d been lying there for an hour. I stood up and inspected the various parts of my body. There was a big knot on the back of my head, but otherwise I was okay. The invoices, of course, were gone.

I almost climbed back into the Quonset hut to retrieve the bottle of Old Overholt, but then I remembered that the NCO Club was open. I could see the lights from there, and as I slogged up the hill I heard the music. I dusted the dirty ice off my jacket and gingerly combed my hair.

When I reached the bar I ordered a double shot of bourbon, straight up, and a Falstaff back.

Nothing had ever tasted sweeter.

I got drunk that night. Very drunk. And when they closed the club I wandered out into the darkness thinking about Miss Ma, but I never made it farther than the barracks, where I hit my bunk and passed out.

In the morning I took off my clothes, showered, shaved, and went directly to the dispensary. They gave me aspirin.

Ernie called me at the orderly room. It was a serious break in cover.

“What the hell is it?”

“There’s been a murder. Outside. In Kumchon. What’d you tell me her name was?”

“The girl I was seeing?”

“Yeah.”

“Miss Ma.”

“That’s her.”

I clutched the receiver. The throbbing in my head seemed about to explode. I spoke carefully.

“How soon can you pick me up at the front gate?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“I’ll be there.”

I told the first sergeant I had to go. He didn’t like it, but I told him it would all be explained to him later. He said it had better.

I ran back to the barracks, changed into my blue jeans and sneakers, and was waiting at the front gate when Ernie’s jeep pulled up in a burst of slush.

She looked like she was asleep until you noticed the indentation in her neck. And the copper wire.

The Korean police asked me how I knew her. Ernie had returned my CID identification to me, and I flashed it at them. I told them we had been working on a case on the compound—the pilfering of supplies—and we believed this murder might be related.

The landlady had discovered the body early that morning. She hadn’t seen who had spent the night with Miss Ma, but whoever he was, he’d paid to have the old woman take care of the child for the evening.

Somebody who was flush. And wanted to get rid of witnesses.

After the police were finished in the room, they left her there. The landlady was supposed to be trying to notify Miss Ma’s relatives, but so far she wasn’t having any luck. I didn’t hear the little girl. When I looked in the landlady’s room she was just sitting there, her head down. No tears.

On the way back to Camp Edwards, I told Ernie about getting beaned last night. I also told him about the invoices, and the metal disks, and the long slender hook. He saw it right away.

“They were smuggling out the spools of wire under a false bottom in the trash drums.”

“Right. And since they had that down to a science, no sense going after the more awkward stuff like lumber and cement and steel bars.”

“And whoever followed you last night knew he had to get his hands on those invoices.”

“Yes,” I said. “But he also knew that eventually we’d follow the chain of paperwork until we nailed both the NCO-in-charge and the logistics officer. With a good lawyer they might be able
to avoid getting charged with direct culpability, but no matter how you look at it, that much thievery on their watch would ruin their careers.”

“The young captain would be out on his ass, and the old sarge would be lucky to hang on until retirement.” Ernie popped another stick of gum into his mouth. “So why the girl?”

“Whoever it was that popped me on the head thought it over later and decided that he should have killed me. Aware of Miss Ma’s charms, he decided that even with a bump on the head I’d make it out to her hooch last night.”

“But you didn’t?”

“No. So he was sitting there waiting for me, staring at her, and he realized that all she’d have to do is open her mouth once and I’d know who was behind the whole scene.”

“So he killed her?”

“Exactly.”

Ernie shook his head. “The guy should have taken the rap for the copper wire. Let it go at that.”

We flashed our identification to the MPs at the main gate, and Ernie stared up the hill.

“Who do we see first? Sergeant Rawlings or Captain Calloway?”

I thought about it. Captain Calloway was a young officer, the kind who cherished his army career maybe more than he cherished his left testicle. But still he was young. And he had a college degree. If he got kicked out with a bad discharge, he could get up, dust himself off, and continue with his life. Sergeant Rawlings, on the other hand, didn’t even have a high school diploma. And the skills he’d learned in the army—chewing out privates and pilfering supplies—don’t pay a lot on the outside. He’d probably end up driving a hack and working on systematically demolishing his liver.

I decided to go with the more desperate of the two.

“Sergeant Rawlings first,” I said.