The Door to Bitterness (12 page)

About a hundred yards on the far side of the village we came to a road that Lieutenant Park had told us we’d find. An arrow-shaped sign pointing north said USFK firing range No. 13, north 2km. The road was made of hard-packed mud and gravel and sat a few inches above the swampy grasslands surrounding it. Ernie shoved the jeep into low gear and made the turn.

“Hold onto your hat,” he said.

He was enjoying this a lot more than I was.

Was all this effort really worth our time? What would the members of Charley Battery have to tell us? If the sketch we showed them wasn’t Boltworks, all would be for naught. If it was him, we still wouldn’t learn much. Since he’d been AWOL for over a month, it was unlikely that anybody in the unit would have any idea about where to find him. Still, we had to ask. That’s what police work is all about.

Major Oliver back at Camp Pelham told us that Nightmare Range had been the site of a series of ferocious battles between the 8th United States Army and what was called, in those days, the CHICOMs, the Chinese Communist People’s Army. Known to GIs as “Joe Chink.” In the foreboding terrain we were traveling through now, I could imagine what it must’ve been like. Explosions everywhere, bayonet charges, hand-to-hand combat, men screaming, rolling through the cold mud and hot blood. And the mountains around us made things worse. They looked primeval: jagged, muddy, ringed with low-lying clouds that blocked the afternoon sun.

I shivered and hugged myself, wishing we were back in the cozy alleyways of Itaewon.

It took us ten minutes to drive the two kilometers the little sign had been talking about. When we arrived, we found a flat swampy area, but no field artillery unit.

“Charley Battery’s moved out,” Ernie said.

Fresh tire tracks were everywhere. I climbed out of the jeep and studied them.

“They’re heading north, up this road,” I said.

“Good work, Tonto.”

You didn’t exactly have to be an Apache tracker to see

9

where they’d gone. The mud and gravel had been plowed up everywhere.

We continued after them. All that afternoon we followed Charley Battery of the Second of the 17th but each time we drew close, they had already loaded up and moved out. Finally, the sun went down. Ernie and I were just about to give up, when we had to swerve off the side of the road for a huge diesel refueling truck that was barreling down the muddy path. We pulled over and Ernie flashed his lights, and the trucker rolled to a stop.

I climbed out and talked to him.

“Charley Battery?” he said. “Yeah, up the road about three klicks.”

The driver was a young Spec 4 from Dubuque, Iowa. He bragged that he knew the firing ranges up here like the back of his hand.

“You’re in luck,” he told me. “Charley Battery’s been given clearance to stand down for the night. That’s why I was able to refuel them. They’ve already put up the wire.”

He meant set up a defensive perimeter and unraveled coiled concertina wire around the battery’s position. When I asked him for directions, he started to explain, but the winding and turning grew too complicated. I pulled out my notebook and asked him to draw me a map. He did, using two sheets of paper. When he handed it back to me, I used the light inside his cab to read it and I asked questions to make sure I understood. Finally, we said our goodbyes, and he rumbled off down the road, red taillights fading.

“You know where they’re at now?” Ernie asked.

“Yeah. Got the map right here.”

Ernie started the jeep back up and, with his headlights on high beam, rolled north on the narrow lane. In the dim red glow of the dashboard, I studied the map again. At the end of the winding road, the fuel truck driver had drawn a large X.

Next to it, in childish script, he had written the words: Nightmare Range.

When we finally found Charley Battery, we didn’t just drive right up to the concertina wire surrounding the perimeter. Instead, we decided to reconnoiter. Ernie switched off the high beams and approached with only his parking lights on. While we were still a hundred meters away, he parked beside a hill. We climbed to the top and gazed down on the encampment of Charley Battery, Second of the 17th Field Artillery.

Six 105mm howitzers. That’s the first thing you noticed, long firing tubes glowing dimly in the moonlight. All six were covered with camouflage netting, and all six were pointing straight toward North Korea. Behind them, two rows of tents. Inside each, the faint glow of portable space heaters. Next came a row of two-and-a-half ton trucks. Eight of them. Six of the trucks were to pull the guns, one each, and also to haul each weapon’s “basic load,” its full complement of high explosive ammunition. One of the remaining trucks was for the maintenance crew and its associated equipment, and the last truck was for chow, a big box-like wooden cab teetering on its back.

Concertina wire was strung hapzardly around the entire bivouac.

Occasionally, some GI tromped from one tent to another. Spaced evenly around the perimeter, three armed guards, rifles carried at sling arms, paced within the wall of wire.

Why had we stopped to take a look? Call it cop instinct. Or more accurately, suspicion. We wanted a better idea of who we were dealing with before we barged in on this idyllic scene and started asking embarrassing questions. Like, why has one of your GIs seen fit to desert his unit? No commander likes to hear that one. And if Private Boltworks was our man, the Battery Commander would be even less pleased when he heard about a casino robbery and a shooting. A shooting that had resulted in death.

I was about to rise from my kneeling position and return to the jeep, when Ernie elbowed me in the shoulder. He pointed.

Something dark emerged from the reeds, about ten yards outside the concertina wire. One of the armed guards sauntered over.

“North Korean commando?” I asked.

“Not quite.”

With his thick-lensed glasses, Ernie’s eyesight was better than mine. I wished we’d brought some binoculars, but since we hadn’t, I rolled my eyes and tried my peripheral vision and then refocused on the dark figure standing in front of the guard. A woman. The red moonlight behind her outlined long, straight hair. She seemed to be wearing thick clothing— a jacket or a sweater—and holding it shut. Instead of challenging her with his weapon, the guard stood in front of her casually, his rifle still slung over his shoulder, motioning for her to come forward.

They seemed to be chatting.

Ernie shook his head. “Even out here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve heard about it,” he told me, “but I hardly believed it. In ‘Nam it used to happen constantly. But here too?”

Ernie seemed surprised, not shocked, and maybe a little disappointed.

“That woman,” I said, “who is she?”

“Girl, more likely. That’s why they bring them out here. So they won’t get busted by the KNPs for being under eighteen.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Business girls. Out here to make a few bucks. Turn a few tricks.”

“Out here?”

“Sure. They probably operate out of that village we passed, Uichon. Think about it. Units rotate in and out of these ranges constantly. Each one chock full of horny young GIs. And no competition. You take a few girls out here, and you have all that GI money to yourself.”

I stared at him. Still trying to fathom who would voluntarily come out into this cold and mud.

“Look,” he said, pointing. “Behind the girl, about twenty yards away from the wire.”

I scanned the tall grass. The tips of the vegetation were illuminated by the three-quarters moon, swaying in a soft breeze. Judging from the position of the girl, and the guard she was talking to, the grass must’ve been four feet tall. But ten yards farther in, away from the wire, a square patch of grass was missing. I studied the patch, and then I saw something pop up, something round.

“See?” Ernie said. “More girls. Back there. Waiting to see what kind of business the other one can drum up. They’d send the prettiest one first.”

I turned and studied Ernie. He was intent on the scene below us.

“How do you know all these things?”

“Years of research,” he said. Then he shushed me and pointed again.

Another GI was now standing behind the guard. They were talking. The girl moved back into the high grass. Then the two GIs moved quickly. If I hadn’t been watching, I might’ve missed it. The guard leaned down, grabbed a handful of concertina wire, and lifted. The other GI dropped to his belly and low-crawled forward. Within seconds he was through the wire, crouching and moving quickly into the grass.

“Come on,” Ernie said.

He charged straight over the hill, veering to his right, away from Charley Battery’s encampment. I followed. Within seconds we were on level ground, crouching and moving as quietly as we could through the same high grass that the GI and the girl were using for concealment.

Every minute or two, I poked my head up to see if the guards inside the Charley Battery perimeter had spotted us. I didn’t particularly want to be mistaken for a North Korean commando. But the guard we had seen earlier had moved away from this side of the perimeter. There was no one in sight.

When we approached the rectangular opening in the grass, Ernie stopped and motioned for me to be quiet. I came to a halt, listening.

Giggles, whispering, the rustle of grass and clothing.

Ernie inched forward and motioned for me to follow.

It wasn’t prurient interest that kept me moving forward. Not alone, anyway. But I knew that we had to talk to GIs in Charley Battery and preferably GIs who knew Private Rodney Boltworks. A guy like this GI, who’d leave his unit’s perimeter and risk court-martial or Article-15 for deserting his post, is a guy who would most likely know a troublemaker like Boltworks. And if we caught this GI, whoever he was, in flagrante delicto, we’d have leverage over him. He’d have to tell us everything he knew, and tell it straight. At least that’s what I was hoping for.

What Ernie was hoping for, I wasn’t quite sure.

We crept ever closer to the mashed-down grass. Now we could hear heavy breathing. Ernie turned, looked at me, and in the moonlight I could see his grin. He raised three fingers and started counting down: One, two, three.

Ernie rose to his feet and burst into the clearing.

I expected the women to scream but they didn’t. They were seasoned pros. But they did scoot back from their squatting positions, covering their mouths with their hands, and stared at us in wide-eyed astonishment. There were three of them, all bundled in thick jackets and mittens and wool scarves, as if expecting to be out in this cold weather for many hours. In front of them, on a blanket spread atop crumpled grass, lay a GI. All I could see of him was the back of his field jacket and his green fatigue trousers. Sticking out on either side of him were two small hands and two small feet. I noticed that the feet were incongruously shod with knitted wool socks.

Ernie grabbed the GI by the scruff of his neck and brutally jerked him backwards.

“What the . . . ?”

From nowhere, Ernie’s .45 glistened in the moonlight, the tip of the oil-slick barrel pointing straight up into the GI’s nostril. He was a black man, or at least partly black. Very light-skinned and slightly chubby around the jowls.

“Move and I’ll blow your dick off,” Ernie said.

The GI started cussing. The girl beneath him squealed and kicked her way back into the grass. Of the three women sitting across from us, two of them were young and one was old. Very old. I spoke to her in Korean, not bothering to use honorifics for the elderly.

“Weikurei yogi-ei?” What the hell are you doing here?

She answered in Korean, her withered hand pressed against her chest, and told me that Ernie and I had given her quite a start. I told her to shut up, while Ernie let the GI pull up his fatigue pants. I saw by the tag on his field jacket that his name was Taggard. He wasn’t wearing any rank insignia. That meant that he was a private E-nothing. Busted down to the lowest possible military rank.

“Court-martial time,” Ernie told Taggard. “Article Fifteen at least. You know you’re not supposed to be out here. What if there’s a fire mission? And the women out here are off limits. They probably don’t even have VD cards.”

Taggard cussed a little more, trying to regain some of the dignity he’d lost.

Ernie had referred to these prostitutes as women but they were, in fact, only girls. Fifteen or sixteen years old, I estimated. One still sported the Buster Brown haircut that middle-school girls in Korea are required to wear. Probably from poor families, sold to this old witch sitting here who was pretending to act so shocked at the intrusion.

Did the Korean National Police in Uichon know about this operation? Certainly, they did. A group of teenage girls living with an old crone, with no visible means of support? The KNPs knew. Worse, they were probably receiving a cut of the action.

“All right, Taggard,” Ernie said. “That’s your name, isn’t it? Unless you borrowed somebody else’s field jacket. No. Couldn’t be. Nobody else in the unit could be that fat.”

Taggard’s cheeks bulged with anger. Ernie held the .45 aimed at his face, although I knew the charging handle hadn’t been pulled back. Ernie couldn’t have shot Taggard if he’d wanted to. Fortunately, Taggard didn’t know that.

“I’m going to ask you some questions, Private Taggard,” Ernie said. “After each one you’re going to give me an answer. Understand? You’re not going to give me any bullshit or any excuses about why you don’t know. You’re just going to give me an answer. Got that?”

When Taggard didn’t reply, Ernie clanged back the charging handle of the .45, pressed it hard up against Taggard’s nose, and repeated the question, pronouncing each word slowly.

“Do you understand that?”

Reluctantly, Taggard nodded. Beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead.

I considered jumping on Ernie, wrestling the .45 away from him. But that might cause the gun to go off. Would he really shoot Taggard? From the look on Ernie’s face, I couldn’t be sure. He was enraged. In Inchon, when we gazed at the wounded Han Ok-hi in her oxygen tent, and at the Yellow House, when we examined the cigarette burns along Mi-ja’s arm, and then, in Songtan, when we saw the blood exsanguinated from the body of Jo Kyong-ah, Ernie had acted as if he were just a cop doing a job. No emotion showed on his face. But now his face was a mask of rage. He’d caught someone in the act of committing a crime: having sex for pay with an underage girl. What worried me most was that he was going to take all his rage and frustration out on a miscreant GI named Taggard. Maybe Taggard deserved to have his ass kicked. He probably even deserved time in the stockade, but he didn’t deserve to be shot dead.

“Boltworks,” Ernie said. “Rodney, K., Private First Class. Talk!”

“Asshole,” Taggard said.

“Explain!”

“He was an asshole, that’s all. Always messing with people. When he lost his ration control privileges, he started pestering everybody else—Let me use your ration card for this; let me use it for that. He beat up a few of the wimpy dudes in the battery and made them buy some shit out of the PX for him, but he knew better than to mess with me.”