Red Phoenix - Страница 4
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Chadwick saw a round shape roll out of the blackness and dove for cover behind an empty, bullet-shredded fuel truck.
WHUMMP. The floor rocked as the North Korean grenade exploded, spraying fragments through the machine gun crew. The gunner screamed once and fell back dead. His two loaders lay badly wounded beside him, and the machine gun itself was a twisted wreck.
Then the carnage disappeared from view, cloaked by a wall of acrid, lung-searing smoke that now filled the tunnel — cutting visibility to just a few meters. Hundreds of rounds buzzed past and tumbled bouncing off the walls. It seemed impossible to move without being shot. Both sides were firing blind as fast as they could reload.
More South Korean troops arrived, hurdling the prone combat engineers still frantically placing and wiring charges. Several were hit in midstride and collapsed in a tangle of equipment. The rest flopped down behind whatever cover they could find — truck tires, empty explosives crates, or bodies — and opened up.
Chadwick stayed where he was and looked for Lee. The engineer squatted nearby, his face a mask of concentration as he wrapped wire around a lead. Lee finished tightening it and glanced up. He flashed a thumbs-up signal in Chadwick’s direction and reached for another charge.
Something blared sharp above the gunfire, and Chadwick’s mind rocked. A bugle. My God, he thought, the North Koreans are still using bugles. Suddenly he felt very close to his father, who’d told him about the human-wave attacks launched during the Korean War.
He clutched his pistol tighter.
WHUMMP! WHUMMP! WHUMMP! More grenades went off in rapid succession, thundering down the tunnel, showering the defenders with deadly fragments. More dust and smoke followed, turning everything into a hazy nightmare.
A squad of North Korean soldiers charged out of the smoke, urged on by their bugler. They were cut down by concentrated rifle fire, but there were others close behind them and the bugle kept blaring.
Chadwick heard screams and yells of defiance rising from the men around him. A burly South Korean sergeant rose from behind a truck, stood braced against the recoil, and emptied his M16’s magazine into the oncoming North Koreans. Four of them were knocked backward, their bodies, faces, and limbs disintegrating as the bullets slammed home. But then the sergeant was down, chopped nearly in half by an AK burst.
Time blurred as the fighting moved to close quarters.
Chadwick saw a North Korean run past, helmeted head down, pounding straight toward the engineers still working. He aimed quickly and fired twice. The soldier staggered and then slid dead to the tunnel floor.
He spun round as another came from the side, assault rifle swinging high to smash his skull. Chadwick dodged right and felt the rifle butt hammer his left arm. He gasped at the pain and fired once into the man’s stomach. The North Korean folded in on himself in agony and collapsed.
Chadwick sank to his knees cradling his left arm. It felt on fire.
“Captain Chadwick!”
He looked up in a daze. There were bodies everywhere in sight, sprawled like torn rag dolls across the tunnel. Lee motioned to him again. They were leaving. Several soldiers were still firing into the haze, trying to pin the North Koreans down, but the others were backing away — hauling their wounded with them and staying low.
Chadwick scuttled over to the South Korean engineer. “You done?” The smoke hanging in the air burned his throat.
Lee nodded vigorously. “Everything is wired.” He jerked a thumb south toward the exit. “I suggest that we get out of here while we still can!”
The bugle shrilled again from down the tunnel.
Shit. The harsh rattle of AK-47 fire grew louder, and new shapes appeared out of the haze. Another North Korean attack. One of Lee’s men turned to yell a warning and pitched backward, shot directly between the eyes.
Chadwick grabbed the dead man’s M16 and fired a burst down the tunnel, wincing as the recoil jarred his left arm. One of the North Koreans dropped in a spray of blood. The others scattered, seeking cover.
“Come on, Captain! This is no time for heroics!” Lee put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him away. A bullet cracked past his face, bringing him back to his senses. The engineer was right. It was past time to leave.
Together with the other rearguard troops, they turned and headed down the tunnel — moving as fast as they could without unnecessarily exposing themselves to enemy fire. The bugle continued to sound behind them.
They reached the first row of T-62s before the North Koreans realized they were going. Rounds started to slam into the vehicles and the rock around them. Jesus. Chadwick and the others all broke into a flat-out run. Something tugged at his sleeve and he saw the man running in front of him fall, a stain spreading across his battle dress.
He reached down and grabbed the South Korean’s arm, trying to drag him to his feet. He couldn’t do it.
“Leave him! He’s finished!” Lee screamed in his ear over the gunfire and pulled him onward. Chadwick obeyed.
They ran on, letting the fear they were feeling flow into their legs.
Harsh cries and the slap of running feet echoed down the tunnel from behind them.
Panting, they rounded the last bend and saw sunlight from the opening in the roof along with something even more welcome — two rope ladders dangling, waiting for them. Chadwick didn’t even break stride. He hit the ladder four feet up and started climbing. The pain in his arm suddenly didn’t matter at all. The troops waiting above exhorted them on, while Lee’s sergeant marked their progress from a detonator box.
As soon as their shoulders cleared the opening, they were grabbed by a man on each side and half-dragged away from the hole. When they were well away, the sergeant screamed a warning in Korean and pressed the plunger.
It wasn’t a very neat explosion. First, only a small, muffled boom, then a thundering roar, then a series of several teeth-rattling THUDS. The rippling lasted for a few seconds, and then a shock wave too loud to be called a sound slammed them into the ground. Flame, smoke, and shattered rock toppled away from the hole in slow motion as the ground subsided into a shallow, crooked gully leading north. The tunnel had collapsed.
Chadwick decided he really didn’t need to get up right away, and he looked over at the rest of the men, who were in various stages of befuddlement. Lee shook his head like a punch-drunk prizefighter and lay panting on the ground.
After a while Chadwick levered himself to his feet and walked over to stare at the man-made gully that had become the graveyard of an entire North Korean armored battalion and its security detachment. He stayed motionless for several minutes and only gradually became aware that Captain Lee had joined him.
Lee smiled wanly through the dust that caked his face and uniform. “You see, we were able to catch those communists after all.”
Chadwick looked at him for a moment and then turned back toward the collapsed tunnel. “Yeah. We caught ’em all right.” Then he swung around to stare into the Korean engineer’s eyes. “But doing what?”
He looked down at the ground, as if he could read the enemy’s intentions by scrutinizing the bare, weathered rocks and the sun-browned grass. But any answers they held were buried as deeply as the crushed remains of the North Korean tanks.
What the hell was going on?
CHAPTER 1
Ignition
AUGUST 20 — CNN HEADLINE NEWS
The anchorman looked earnestly into the cameras, seemingly wide-awake despite the early morning hour.
“In North Korea’s first official reaction to the US/South Korean discovery of a tunnel filled with military hardware, radio Pyongyang today dismissed the find as, quote, an absurd forgery, a despicable and desperate lie fomented by the militarist clique occupying Seoul, end quote.”
The anchorman, his unruly shock of brown hair, Italian-made suit, and the gleaming, high-tech anchor desk in Atlanta all vanished, replaced by stock-footage shots of the barbed-wire tangle and barren hills marking the DMZ.
“And at this morning’s meeting at Panmunjom, the North flatly rejected the UN Armistice Commission’s demand for both an explanation and reparations for the South Korean soldiers killed or wounded in the border clash. UN negotiators said they were prepared to press their claims against the North for as long as necessary.”
The camera cut away to footage from Seoul showing streets around the National University filled with chanting students, impassive riot police, lobbed gasoline bombs, and tear gas volleys.
“In other news from Korea, radical students opened a new protest season against the government by hurling rocks and firebombs at police. They were met with tear gas and water cannon. More than ten demonstrators and police were injured in the two-hour clash. Student leaders vowed to continue their pressure on the government until South Korea’s National Assembly met their demand for a new presidential election and meaningful moves toward peaceful reunification with the North.”
The images of street violence dissolved back to a close-up of the anchorman in Atlanta.
“Meanwhile, here at home, police in California announced they were close to cracking the mysterious string of murders attributed to the so-called Bayside Butcher…”
AUGUST 25 — PYONGYANG, NORTH KOREA
One hundred and fifty kilometers north of the DMZ, the capital of the communist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea lay sweltering under a merciless afternoon sun. Like all artificial creations, Pyongyang’s every aspect reflected its builders’ innermost beliefs and priorities.
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