Mr. Kill (23 page)

Ernie watched as I climbed the sand dunes and marched toward the two-lane highway that paralleled the beach. Then, as if remembering something, he hurried and caught up with me.

“What do you mean, we can’t
force
Colonel Laurel to show us his morning report?” I asked. “What kind of nonsense is that? He’s a military man, isn’t he? He takes orders like anyone else.”

I sat on the front edge of the ondol floor of the living room of the woman who owned the Nokko-ri Yoguan. Her family lived just behind the reception counter. She kept a bright red phone on a knitted yellow pad and charged me five hundred won for the call to Hialeah Compound in Pusan.

“They’re stovepiped,” Riley told me, his voice coming in scratchy over the line. “They don’t take orders from Eighth Army. Only from Special Operations Command in the Pentagon.”

“So we have the Provost Marshal contact Special Ops,” I told him. “Tell them to order Colonel Laurel to let us see his morning reports.”

“That’ll take time,” Riley replied. “The Special Forces always stalls. First the Pentagon weenies will contact Colonel Laurel, and then they’ll wait to hear back from him, and then they’ll have a conference, and finally, after typing everything up in triplicate, they’ll respond to Eighth Army.”

“We don’t have time,” I shouted. “The Blue Train rapist could strike again at any moment.”

Riley didn’t answer. He wasn’t wasting his breath. He was just giving me time to let it sink in: the military bureaucracy moves at its own pace, and no one, with the possible exception of a four-star general, can hurry it up.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll find another way.”

“Be careful with those guys,” Riley said. “I wouldn’t want my two favorite investigators to come up missing.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a volcano up there, isn’t there? They could drop you in.”

“Thanks for the encouragement.”

“Don’t mention it.”

I hung up on him.

It had only taken a half hour for Ernie and me to hitchhike our way back from the beach. People were curious about two American G.I.s in civvies standing alone on a lonely road. A three-wheeled truck loaded with garlic pulled over and gave us a ride all the way to the intersection that led to Nokko-ri. From there, we caught a ride with a Korean contract trucker carrying a load of heating fuel up to the Mount Halla Training Facility. He let us off right in front of the Nokko-ri Yoguan. In both cases I offered the drivers money, but in both cases they smiled and waved it off. Once you get away from the hustlers who congregate outside the gates of military compounds, Koreans are generous to a fault.

There was a chophouse just twenty yards in front of the main gate, and in English they advertised
ohmu
rice and
yakimandu
and
ramian
noodles. Ernie and I sat at one of the rickety wooden tables, and the old woman who ran the place approached, wearing a white apron and a white bandanna wrapped tightly around gray hair.

“When do the G.I.s start coming out of the compound, Mama-san?” Ernie asked.

“Maybe five o’clock,” she replied. “After cannon go boom and flag come down.” She thought about that and added, “Tonight
skoshi
G.I., tomorrow
taaksan
.”

Only a few G.I.s tonight. Tomorrow plenty. The merchants in Nokko-ri were well attuned to the comings and goings of Colonel Laurel’s training cycles.

We both ordered ramian and split a plate of the yakimandu fried dumplings. Ernie was about to add a liter of cold OB beer to his order when I stopped him.

“We have work to do,” I said.

“Work? Like what?”

“Like finding somebody who knows what’s going on inside the Mount Halla Training Facility.”

“They’re all Green Berets,” Ernie said. “They’re not going to tell us nothing.”

“I’m not talking about Green Berets,” I said. “Somebody else.”

“There ain’t nobody else.”

“Yes, there is.”

I pointed through the dirt-smudged window of the Nokko-ri Chophouse. Ernie followed my finger and gazed up the side of Mount Halla.

“Smoke coming out of the volcano,” he said. “So what?”

“Off to the right a bit,” I replied.

Then he spotted it. A communications beacon. And next to that, a squat building.

“That’s American?” he asked.

“Must be,” I replied. “How else is Colonel Laurel going to stay in touch with the honchos at Eighth Army?”

“I don’t think he gives a shit about the honchos at Eighth Army.”

The old woman brought two steaming bowls of ramian noodles, and then she slid the yakimandu between us. Ernie stared at the fare sourly.

“Where’s the kimchee?” he asked.

“You likey?”

“I likey.”

The woman smiled and in short order delivered one plate each of pickled cabbage and pickled cucumber and a bowl of water kimchee. As she set them on the table, the sharp tang of vegetables fermented in brine bit into my nostrils.

Ernie smiled and ordered a Seven Stars Cider. I stuck with the barley tea.

The cab driver wound around one sharp bend after another. The road was narrow, just wide enough for one vehicle. There were only a couple of bypass areas where a vehicle could move off to the side to make way for another.

“What happened to the jillions of dollars Eighth Army spends improving roads?” Ernie asked.

“I guess they spent it elsewhere. Must not expect many visitors up here.”

The cab driver’s name was Mr. Won. He had been introduced to us by the woman who owned the Nokko-ri Yoguan. I think he was her brother-in-law or something. Mr. Won leaned forward, both hands gripping the steering wheel, concentrating on his driving, ignoring us completely. Ernie sat in the front passenger seat. I sat in back. Below were rock-strewn valleys with little vegetation. Every now and then, I glanced back and saw the Mount Halla Training Facility and the village of Nokko-ri, growing ever smaller as we moved higher up the mountain. In the distance, the sea stirred placidly.

Finally, we rounded one more switchback turn, straightened out along the edge of the mountain, and there, on a plateau-like ledge, sat the squat green building I’d seen from the comfortable environs of the Nokko-ri Chophouse. Spiraling straight up was the metal edifice of the red-and-white communications tower.

Mr. Won stopped the car and immediately turned off the engine. His shoulders slumped forward and for a moment he bowed his head to fists still clenched on top of the steering wheel.

“
Yogi kidariyo?
” I said to him. You’ll wait here?

He nodded. As we’d agreed, he’d receive the bulk of his money once we were returned safely to the Nokko-ri Yoguan.

The small communications compound was surrounded by a high chain-link fence topped with concertina wire. It was all rusted out as if it hadn’t been replaced in years. A sign hung near the single gate in the fence:
Chulip Kumji
. And below that: Authorized Personnel Only.

Ernie strode up to the gate, studied it for a moment, and then pressed a buzzer. There was a rusty speaker next to the buzzer, but we heard no response. He pushed the buzzer again, and then again.

Finally a voice erupted from the speaker. “Yeah?”

“Who’s this?” Ernie asked.

“Vance.”

The voice sounded sleepy, as if we’d just woken him up.

“What’s your rank, Vance?” Ernie asked.

“Spec Four.”

He was waking up now and becoming a little nervous.

“My name is Agent Bascom. I’m from the Eighth Army CID in Seoul. My partner here is Agent Sueño. We want you to open the gate so we can talk to you.”

“CID?”

A slight sense of panic now.

“Yes. But we’re not here about the black market. We just need some information.”

“I’m not allowed to open the gate when I’m alone.”

“Alone? How many people are stationed up here?”

“Supposed to be three. A lieutenant, an NCO, and me, a technician. But we haven’t had a lieutenant since I been here.”

“How long is that?”

“Six months.”

“And where’s the sergeant?”

“Parkwood?”

“Yeah. Parkwood.”

“He’s on a supply run.”

“When do you expect him back?”

“Don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

There was a hesitation. “Sometimes he stops in the ville.”

Ernie slipped his badge out of the inner pocket of his coat and held it over his head. “Specialist Vance, from where you’re at, can you see my badge?”

There was a pause. “Yeah.”

“I’m going to ask my partner to show his badge too.”

I held mine over my head.

“Do you see them both?” Ernie asked.

“Yeah.”

“Open the gate, Vance.”

“But I was told … ”

“What you were told doesn’t matter,” Ernie said. “We have a warrant, we’ve traveled all the way from Seoul, and it’s important.”

There was a long pause. Finally, the gate buzzed. Ernie pushed it open.

The place was a dump. What you’d expect from two lonely bachelors living alone. There was a small reception area and then a large air-conditioned room filled with metal units as big as refrigerators, covered with buzzing lights and wires. A number of work consoles blinked at us and beeped. Beyond were a storage room piled high with crates of army C rations and a kitchen jammed with dirty dishes. In the largest room, piles of dirty laundry were draped atop army-issue bunks, unshined shoes, and combat boots. One cowboy boot poked its toe out from beneath green blankets spread in sweat-matted disarray.

“No houseboy up here?” Ernie said.

“I wish,” Vance replied.

Specialist Vance was a smallish man, with a slouch to his shoulders and a hangdog expression enhanced by—or maybe caused by—drooping jowls. His skin was clear and his dark brown hair had not a hint of gray, but somehow he carried himself with the aura of a person who, at a very young age, had already been defeated by the world.

“Get down to the ville much?” Ernie asked.

“Only when we have a reason to drive the truck down there. Parkwood usually goes.”

“He’s the ranking man.”

Vance nodded. “There’s supposed to be at least two of us here at all times, but without a lieutenant that’s impossible. So sometimes, like now, it’s down to just me.”

A bell on one of the consoles started to ring.

“Excuse me,” Vance said.

He sat down at a keyboard and tapped on a few buttons until a printer came to life and started rat-tat-tatting on a sheet of paper. As it rolled off the printer, I read it. Military acronyms. Routine stuff, about deadlines for supply reorders.

“This isn’t for you,” I said.

For the first time, Vance looked up at me. “Naw. We get a lot of stuff that’s on general distribution to all units in Eighth Army. We send it down to the training facility anyway in case they have a need to know. Some of the traffic, on those machines over there, is strictly for relay. You know, microwave stuff that we pass on to the next commo site north of Pusan.”

“Horang-ni?”

“Yeah. Horang-ni. How’d you know?”

I shrugged. “And they relay it on up to the line to Seoul?”

“Right.”

Ernie strolled around the work area, staring at somebody’s short-timer calendar. A naked lady was half covered with red ink. He turned away from the calendar and as he did so his shoulder brushed against a half-dozen clipboards hanging on a nail. Four of them clattered to the ground. Onionskin papers scattered across the tiled floor, and Ernie stooped to pick them up.

“What are these?” he asked.

Specialist Vance helped him pick up the reports, reorganized them, and put the clipboards back on their nail, one by one. “IG results,” he said.

“The Eighth Army Inspector General stopped here?”

“Naw. Just the Long Lines Battalion IG.”

Ernie gazed around the cluttered work area. “Whoever he was, he must’ve ripped you guys two new ones.”

“Yeah,” Vance said. “It’s been a mess with no lieutenant and me doing most of the work. You know, all the routine stuff like maintenance reports, microwave alignments, checking telecom circuits. I do most of it.”

“But not enough,” Ernie said.

“No, we flunked the IG. They’re even threatening to bar Parkwood from reenlistment.”

Ernie peeked inside a couple of filing cabinets. “Don’t you have any booze around here?”

“Naw. We used to. But neither Parkwood nor I drink.”

“But there used to be someone who drank?”

“An old sergeant, before Parkwood arrived. That’s all he did.”

“My kind of guy,” Ernie said.

“So you relay traffic down to the training facility,” I said.

“That’s one of our main jobs,” Vance replied.

“Do they relay stuff up here?”

“Of course. And then we send it on.”

“Like their morning report?”

“Yeah. We send it over to Sasebo in Japan.”

“Not up to Eighth Army?”

“No. The training facility’s under a separate command.”

“Do you keep records here of that morning report?”

“No. I read it every day, though. Sort of gives me an idea of whether or not the ville’s going to be crowded.”

“Like when all the SF guys are on duty, they must have a training cycle in.”

“You got it. And those Second Division guys go nuts down in Nokko-ri. Drive the prices sky-high.”

“I thought you said you don’t go down to the ville often,” Ernie said, but he smiled as he said it.

Vance flushed red. “Only sometimes.”

“I don’t blame you for going to the ville,” I told him. “I’d go down there as often as I could if I worked in a remote place like this.”

Vance nodded but didn’t reply. I continued.

“So Sergeant Parkwood probably won’t be back until tomorrow morning, right? Not if he’s smart.”

“Maybe,” Vance said.

Ernie cut in. “Don’t worry so much, Vance. We’re not here about all that. We just want to know who in the last two or three weeks has been on TDY or in-country leave from the Mount Halla Training Facility.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all,” Ernie replied. “After we get that, we’ll leave you alone.”

“I don’t mind the company. Honest. It gets sort of lonely up here.”