of the 4th Marines, whom he had met at high-stakes poker games, had run him through his police knife-fighting course, and then given him one of his carefully guarded knives. Howe had never seen it before, although Pickering had told him McCoy was never without it.
McCoy took two leather wallets from the now-sliced-open envelope, put them in his hip pocket, then tossed the third wallet the envelope had held to Zimmerman.
“—then it’s possible, I think likely—” McCoy went on.
“What’s that, your wallets?” Howe interrupted.
His curiosity had gotten the best of him.
“Yes, sir. And the CIA credentials. We left them with the 25th Division G-2 when we went south,” McCoy said.
Howe thought: Which suggests, of course, that you thought there was a very good chance you would have been captured—or killed—yourselves. In either event, you didn’t want them to find the CIA identification.
“Go on, Ken,” Howe said.
“If all three things are true, sir, then possibly he’s had access to contingency plans which said the Chinese will intervene under such and such circumstances. . . .”
“For example?”
“Maybe something vague, like we get too close to the Yalu River, and they feel we’re not going to stop on the south riverbank there. There’s a big electric-generating plant, the Suiho, on the Yalu. If we interrupted service from there, it would cause the Chinese a lot of trouble. Or maybe, for example, something specific, like we look like we’re about to take Pyongyang. I don’t know, sir.”
“But you think this fellow has seen this, knows the trigger?”
“I think he’s cocky because he believes the Chinese will come in, sir. But this is another of those cases, sir, where I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. He may not know any more about Chinese intentions than I do.”
“If you were a betting man, Ken, what would the odds of Chinese intervention be?” Howe asked.
“Seven-three,” McCoy said, “that they will.”
“Can you think of anything that would increase the odds that they won’t?”
“If we destroy the NK Army, maybe by chasing it halfway to the Yalu, then stop, they may not—may not— feel threatened.”
“Two days ago, the Joint Chiefs authorized MacArthur to conduct military operations leading to the destruction of the North Korean armed forces north of the 38th Parallel,” Howe said. “Did you hear that?”
“No, sir.”
“Two caveats. Only South Korean troops can approach the Yalu, and our aircraft cannot fly over China or Russia.”
“The Chinese won’t care if our troops on their border are South Korean or American,” McCoy said.
“You think that would change the odds?” Howe asked. “How bad?”
McCoy didn’t reply directly.
“ROK troops on the Yalu would make it even worse,” he said. “The Chinese would believe us, probably, if we said we weren’t going across the river. But they don’t know how much control we have of the ROKs, and would act accordingly.”
“Changing the odds to?”
“Eight-two,” McCoy said. “Maybe nine-one.”
Howe exhaled audibly.
He looked at Charley Rogers, who was very carefully putting his arms into the sleeves of his fatigue jacket, on which the chevrons of a master sergeant had been stenciled in black paint that still looked wet.
“Much better, Charley,” Howe said. “I would have hated to see you hauled off to wash pots in a field mess somewhere.”
Then he turned back to McCoy.
“Forewarned is forearmed, Ken. There’s a very determined-looking second lieutenant from the 25th Division outside the gate who wants his vehicles back. You need some help with that?”
“No, sir. Thank you. I saw that coming. That’s one of the reasons I liberated the Russian jeep.”
He turned to Zimmerman.
“Ernie, let them have the jeep and the weapons carrier. We’ll see what we can scrounge from Tenth Corps or the division.”
Zimmerman nodded and walked out of the garage.
“You about ready to head for Kimpo, Ken?” General Howe asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“I was thinking I could ride with you in this magnificent vehicle of yours, and Zimmerman could ride in my jeep with Charley.”
“Whatever you want to do, sir,” McCoy said.
[TWO]
KIMPO AIRFIELD (K-14) SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA 0835 29 SEPTEMBER 1950
The terminal building at Kimpo had been in the line of fire of both sides since the war began, and was in pretty bad shape. Army engineer troops were already at work trying to make it functional, but at the moment base operations was two squad tents set up end to end and the tower was mounted on the back of an Air Force General Motors 6 × 6 truck.
Two platoons of military police from the 4th Military Police Company, whose usual mission was the