Mr. Kill (24 page)

“I can imagine. So tell us about the Green Berets at the Mount Halla Training Facility.”

“One guy’s due back tomorrow,” Vance said. “He went back to the States on a thirty-day mid-tour leave.”

“Who’s that?”

“Munoz. I think he’s Puerto Rican. At least that’s what his travel orders said, that he was going there, to Puerto Rico I mean.”

I jotted the name down in my notebook.

“Nobody else has been gone,” Vance said. “Except for maybe if they took the regular chopper run to Pusan on the weekend. But even that’s unlikely. There’s only nine Green Berets stationed there, not counting Colonel Laurel. And he insists on a CQ every night, so they pull a lot of duty.”

CQ. Charge of Quarters.

“They’re a strack unit,” Ernie said.

“Right,” Vance said admiringly. “Straight-arrow military.”

“So to the best of your knowledge,” I said, “only one guy has been gone from the Mount Halla Training Facility in the last few weeks.”

“As best as I can tell,” Vance replied.

“How about their ration-control cards?” I asked.

“Their what?”

“The ration cards. You know, like at the PX when your ration-control plate is anviled when you buy something like liquor or beer. They have a PX, don’t they?”

“A small one.”

“So somebody has to deliver their ration cards.”

“Yeah. I forgot about that. Sergeant Amos runs it up to Seoul every week.”

“What’s his full name?”

“Walker R. Amos, Sergeant First Class.”

I jotted the name down. “Why him? Why is he the only one to run it up every week?”

“Something about his profile,” Vance replied. “He’s older than the other guys. Can’t do all the physical training they do.”

“So Colonel Laurel makes him escort the ration cards up to Seoul each week. Sort of demeaning, isn’t it?”

Vance shrugged.

“So he takes the weekly chopper to Pusan. From there does he take the train?”

“I guess,” Vance replied. “I never heard of anybody traveling up to Seoul any other way. Unless they take one of the training flights that come in.”

“There’s an airport?”

“Yeah. The ROK Army has one.”

“Can you think of anyone else who’s left the compound recently?”

“No. That’s it. Not unless you count Colonel Laurel.”

“When did he leave?”

“Last week. I don’t remember the exact day. There was some sort of commander’s call in Seoul.”

When Ernie and I climbed back into the cab, I studied the ranks and names I had jotted down. The first was Munoz, a buck sergeant. That meant he was relatively young; maybe he’d gone back to visit his family in Puerto Rico. Lifers don’t travel that much. Once you’ve spent a decade or two in the army, your family tends to forget about you and you tend to forget about them. The second man, the one who’d delivered the ration cards to Seoul, was a sergeant first class, which meant he’d been around a while. The full name was Walker R. Amos. Could he be black? If so, and if it could be proven that Munoz had gone to Puerto Rico, I could eliminate both men and I’d be back to square one. I asked Specialist Vance, but he’d never met either man personally. But something told me that SFC Walker R. Amos would be white. Something told me we were close to the Blue Train rapist. Very close.

Mr. Won was even more petrified driving down Mount Halla than he had been while driving up. I didn’t like the way he kept jamming on the brakes, pressing the pedal almost to the floorboard. Ernie finally said something.

“When was the last time you put in new brake pads,
Ajjosi
?”

I shushed him. The man didn’t understand anyway. Best to let him concentrate on his driving and hope for the best. I actually thought of telling Mr. Won to stop so we could get out and walk the three or four miles downhill back to Nokko-ri, but I didn’t think he could stop this old cab now if he wanted to.

Ernie spotted it first. He pointed.

“Look!”

A puke-green quarter-ton truck, army-issue, chugging up the incline.

“Must be Parkwood,” I said, “coming back from his supply run.”

“There’s a bypass,” Ernie said, “closer to him than to us.”

“I hope he has the sense to use it,” I replied.

Mr. Won didn’t understand a word we were saying. He stared in terror at the winding road ahead, jamming on the brakes, both hands knuckled white atop the steering wheel.

I reached over and honked the horn.

If the man driving the truck below heard it, he gave no indication.

16

W
hen I was growing up in East L.A., freeways blossomed everywhere. The Santa Ana, the San Bernardino, the Pomona, the Harbor, the Long Beach, all were being renovated or widened or extended or planned or laid down. Overweight politicians in stiff business suits were constantly cutting ribbons. It was as if by paving the entire planet and drawing lane-change lines to the end of the earth, we’d finally find happiness. That was one of the reasons I’d been so smitten by Korea when I first arrived. Sure, there were roads and cars and trucks—and a new four-lane freeway was being built to run between Seoul and Pusan—but still, there were plenty of places for people to actually walk. Muddy lanes, dirt roads, cobblestoned pathways, tree-lined avenues, streets with shops pressed up against one another—occasionally you’d even spot wooden carts pulled by oxen, a man leading the snorting beast, a woman and small children huddled together on wooden planks. Not all human movement had been turned over to the internal combustion engine. Even the Blue Train seemed more human to me than driving on an eight-lane freeway.

Every day of my youth in the Los Angeles Basin, my lungs had been involuntarily filled with smog. Now, on a remote volcano on the edge of Asia, it looked as if I were finally going to meet the fate of so many of my compatriots. I was finally going to become a statistic in a head-on collision.

“The asshole didn’t stop at the bypass!” Ernie shouted.

Mr. Won had both feet pressed on the brake pedal, but it wasn’t doing much good. The momentum of the cab was now carrying us downhill at about fifty miles per hour. Around the sharp curves, he was barely maintaining control, drifting toward the left edge of the lane, and the G.I. driver of the truck below seemed to have no idea that he was only a few seconds from impact.

I reached forward across Mr. Won and once again sounded the horn. Beyond a boulder, the truck loomed into view. We went screaming around a curve.

I crouched behind the front seat, covering my head. As I did so, Mr. Won screamed. He veered to the extreme left, trying to avoid a head-on with the truck. The wheels spun on gravel and the cab started tipping to the left. Out of the side window, I glanced down into the abyss. The wheels still had traction and we were moving forward—but two or three more inches to the left and we’d plummet to our deaths. I glanced forward just in time to see the quarter-ton truck barreling toward us. Ernie cursed, grabbed the steering wheel, and shoved it hard to the right. Won let go of the wheel and covered his eyes. Green iron grating flashed in front of me and then something slammed into the rear of the cab. We spun, three, four, five times; and finally, with a jarring thump, came to a shuddering halt in the ditch on the right side of the road.

I sat up. Dust rose around us in an enveloping cloud.

“You all right?” I asked.

“All right,” Ernie replied. He reached for Mr. Won.

“How about you, Baba Louie?”

Won uncovered his eyes, looked around, and started to moan. Ernie and I both climbed out of the cab and pulled him out of the driver’s-side door. We laid him on the edge of the road, searching as we did so for wounds. He didn’t have any.

“He’s just shaken up,” Ernie said.

“He deserves it,” I replied, “for having such lousy brakes.”

On the road above us, the quarter-ton truck continued to churn its way up Mount Halla, oblivious, apparently, to our plight below.

The back of the cab was smashed in.

“You think it’ll still run?” I asked Ernie.

“Won’t know until we try. Give me a shove.”

He climbed into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and thrust the shift into a low gear. On three, he stepped on the gas and I stood behind the cab, pushing it forward. After rocking it three times, the back wheels caught and it climbed out of the ditch. Deftly, Ernie turned the cab around. I helped Mr. Won to his feet, led him to the cab, opened the door, and allowed him to lie down on the back seat. I sat up front with Ernie.

Using the lowest gear possible, bumping against earthen berms when possible, Ernie churned slowly down Mount Halla.

“Shopping?” Ernie asked, incredulous.

“Yeah,” I replied. “We have to go shopping.”

The cannon fired at the Mount Halla Training Facility and the retreat bugle sounded. Up and down the main drag of Nokko-ri, lights were beginning to switch on. In front of the Sea Dragon Nightclub, a red and gold serpent sparkled to life, a lewd tongue flicking out flames.

“It’s time for a wet,” Ernie said. “We’ve done enough work for today. Nearly got ourselves killed, and now you want to go
shopping
?”

“On the black market.”

“I don’t care what freaking market it is, I’m gonna get a cold one.”

“Where?”

Ernie pointed across the street from the Sea Dragon to the Volcano Bar.

“Okay. I’ll meet you there in a half hour or so.”

Ernie shrugged, thrust his hands in his pockets, and stalked off across the street. He gets like this sometimes, pissed that he doesn’t have an eight-to-five job—especially when happy hour hits.

The woman who ran the Nokko-ri Yoguan told me where to go. Down the street behind a fruit stand in the open-air Nokko-ri Market, everything was on display: web gear, ponchos, rubber overshoes, steel pots, ammo pouches, metal space heaters, canvas tent halves with poles. About the only type of military equipment you couldn’t buy there was weaponry.

I rummaged through the parkas and the heavy overcoats and the gloves and the fur-flapped headgear and the insignia and the badges until I found what I wanted. One set for Ernie. One set for me.

Ernie was drunk.

It wasn’t like him to get blasted so early, but the reason was clear. Next to his frothing brown bottle of OB beer sat a thick glass tumbler, half full of a clear brown liquid. I watched him raise it to his lips, where it was—once again—emptied.

“
Yoboseiyo
,” Ernie called to the young man behind the bar. “Yogi,” he said, pointing to the empty glass. Dutifully, the young man grabbed a quart of booze from behind the bar, scurried over, and refilled Ernie’s glass. The bottle was labeled Christian Brothers Brandy. What was actually in the bottle was another story; once the import tax is paid and a bottle is revenue-stamped, it is refilled and reused—sometimes for years.

I sat on the bar stool next to Ernie and ordered a beer. He swiveled his head slowly and stared at me.

“You finish your
shopping
?”

“Yeah,” I said, taking the proffered beer and slapping some money on the bar.

“Find any
bargains
?” he asked.

I didn’t bother to answer. Ernie was in a surly mood, and I thought I knew why. This was the first time in a while that we’d been away from Marnie Orville and the Country Western All Stars. Maybe he was thinking about her. Maybe he was thinking of her close proximity to her ex, Freddy Ray Embry. Whatever Ernie was thinking, I knew better than to ask. Instead, I surveyed the club.

There was a rock band tuning up, hipless young men with straight hair just covering their ears. Business girls filtered in, chattering about their hairdos and their clothes and occasionally mentioning the American unit that was scheduled to arrive tomorrow. Ernie and I were an anomaly here. Most of the tables were filled with young Korean couples who thought it daring to enter G.I. nightclubs. After the band tortured a couple of numbers, Ernie and I wandered across the street to the Sea Dragon Nightclub. It was quieter there, and darker. Round cocktail tables were lit dimly by lamps covered with red shades. On stage, velvet curtains were drawn shut. Business girls sat alone or in pairs. The bar was empty. We filled it. As if on cue, somebody started up a sound system; some American vocal group singing about the sea.

Instead of a young man behind the bar, a tall Korean woman was wearing a white tuxedo shirt with cummerbund, bow tie, and high collar. Almond eyes shaded in purple stared at us quizzically. Somehow, in the opulence of this joint, beer didn’t seem appropriate. I ordered bourbon on the rocks. Ernie had the same. Within an hour, the joint was packed with young Korean people, well dressed and trendy. Too trendy. I felt as out of place as a tarantula in a kimchee jar. Once again, we were about to leave when a familiar face appeared in the seat next to us.

Warnocki.

He was still wearing his fatigues, and his green beret was still cocked to the side of his round head. He smiled. Without asking, the slender barkeep brought him a beer. With narrow fingers she poured it for him into a glass, white foam bubbling up to the edge. Warnocki laid money down, thanked her, and delicately took a sip. When he set the glass down, he turned to me and said, “You almost bought it on the mountain.”

“You heard about that?”

“Colonel Laurel makes it his business to hear about everything.”

“Has he decided to cooperate yet,” Ernie asked, “and show us the morning report? Lives are at stake.”

Warnocki’s smile didn’t change. “Your request has already hit Special Ops. They’re taking it under advisement.”

I swiveled on my bar stool and stared Warnocki right in the eye. “So, what do you think, Warnocki? Do you think the Blue Train rapist could be one of your Green Berets?”

“Sure,” he replied, still smiling. “And if it is, you’d better hope you never catch him.”

The flesh on his face didn’t move, but somehow his grin grew even larger.

Ernie stood up. Warnocki leaned back on his bar stool, holding up both hands in mock surrender. Then he grabbed his glass, downed it in two huge gulps, wiped his mouth and, still grinning, slid off his bar stool and sauntered carelessly away, cocking his beret a little farther to the side as he pushed through the padded double doors of the Sea Dragon Nightclub.

Early the next morning, we took a cab away from Nokko-ri and headed toward the ocean. When I told the driver to let us off at the intersection of the main coastal highway, he seemed astonished.

“
Wei-yo?
” he asked. Why?

There was nothing in any direction except the sandy coastline and rice paddies.

“Don’t worry,” I told him and paid him what I owed him.

After he drove away, Ernie turned to me and said, “What are we doing way the hell out here?”

“Waiting for a bus,” I said.

“
What
bus?”

“The one that is bringing Bravo Battery, Second of the Seventeenth Field Artillery, from the Cheju Airport to the Mount Halla Training Facility.”

Last night I had persuaded the owner of the Nokko-ri Yoguan to do a little ironing for me. In the morning, the two uniforms I had purchased on the black market were waiting for us, patches sewn on, boots shined, brass belt buckles polished. Ernie put his on, grumbling, but finally acquiesced to what he referred to as one of my “crazy plans.” Then we’d taken the cab out to this intersection to wait. After twenty minutes, three green army buses rolled up. I waved down the first one. The Korean driver stared out at me, smiling. I climbed aboard, Ernie right behind me.

We were wearing pressed fatigue uniforms and matching fatigue caps, and also black leather armbands that said: Cadre, Mount Halla Training Facility. To clinch the illusion, I had stuck a pencil behind my ear and carried a clipboard. The world always welcomes a man with a clipboard.

“Welcome to Mount Halla,” I shouted to the men in the bus and then turned around and told the driver to move out. Nobody questioned us. They figured we were just some sort of advance party escorting them to the compound. Ernie and I found a spot in the back of the bus and sat down. Within ten minutes, the convoy of three buses had stopped at the big chain-link main gate of the Mount Halla Training Facility. The dispatches were checked and, once everything was found to be in order, a Korean guard swung the gate open.

When the buses reached the edge of the central parade field, they stopped. Special Forces trainers wearing blue helmet liners stood outside, shouting.

“
Move!
I want every swinging dick off that bus and standing in formation. Now! All I want to see is assholes and elbows. Let’s go
!
”

Within seconds the men had filed off the bus and were standing in formation in the center of the parade field. Before the last G.I. stepped off the bus, Ernie and I crouched behind seats in the back. The driver, thinking the bus was empty, closed the door and slowly started to turn the vehicle around. Before he reached the main gate, I stood up and hurried forward.

“Let us off here, Ajjosi,” I said.

He was startled, but years of aberrant G.I. behavior had prepared him for anything. He stopped the bus and opened the door, and Ernie and I hopped off. We left our armbands on the bus, but I kept my clipboard. After the bus pulled away, we slipped into the shadow of a Quonset hut.

“Where to?” Ernie asked.

I glanced at my clipboard. “Munoz, Sergeant E-five, and Amos, Walker R., SFC. Those are the two guys we have to talk to.”

“So how do we find them?”

“Moolah the hell out of me.” And then I spotted street signs on a pole. White arrows pointed in four directions. One of them said S-3 Training. We followed it and soon found a Quonset hut marked Mount Halla Training Command. In the distance, angry voices shouted and, in unison, dozens of boots pounded on dirt. As best I could tell, the G.I.s were being divided up into smaller groups and marched to the various training stations, rappelling or commando tactics or whatever other edifying courses Colonel Laurel had cooked up for them.

We tried the front door. Locked.

“They’re all out there with the troops,” Ernie said.

“You check on that side,” I said. “I’ll meet you out back.”

Ernie nodded and trotted around the corner.

What we were looking for was an open window, a door, anything so we could gain access. Before I reached the rear, Ernie was already whistling. The back door of the Quonset hut was also locked, but one of the windows was filled with an air-conditioning unit. It wasn’t turned on, and there was enough space between the metal casing and the windowsill to reach inside the building.