ROK equivalent of the German field marshal’s baton. My general is known for his temper; I don’t want to have to tell him, when he flies back in here in the third of our aircraft, that I loaned one of the others to a Marine who didn’t give it back.”
McCoy smiled.
“Colonel, if you would have me dropped at the Race Track, your pilot would not even have to shut the engine down, and anyone trying to commandeer your airplane would have to go through me.”
Colonel Pak grunted, then replied: “At Quantico, Major, one of the lessons I learned—in addition to how to drink martinis—was that a Marine officer’s word is his bond.”
“We try to keep it that way, sir,” McCoy said, and then curiosity got the better of him. “May I ask what you were doing at Quantico, sir?”
“The idea was that South Korea was to have Marines,” the colonel said. “But that, obviously, is going to have to be put off for the moment.” He smiled at McCoy. “May I offer you a cup of tea before you take off, Major?”
“That’s kind, but unnecessary, sir.”
“It would be my pleasure, I insist,” Colonel Pak said. “And, if you don’t mind, I’d like to have your—unofficial, of course—thoughts on the possibility that the Chinese will enter this conflict.”
“Frankly, sir, I was wondering if I could ask you the same thing,” McCoy said.
Twenty minutes later, one of the Capital ROK Division’s two aircraft bounced down National Route 5 and lifted off, very slowly, into the air.
It took an hour and forty minutes against a headwind to reach the Race Track in Seoul.
McCoy spent the entire time looking down at the ground for a stamped-out arrow or any other sign of Pick Pickering. He found none.
But there was time to think, of course, and he thought that perhaps if he couldn’t get anybody to let him have an L-19—not to mention the other airplane Donald had said would be really useful, the Beaver—he might be able to get his hands on an L-4.
And he wondered what Dunston’s agents were going to find up north. Both he and Colonel Pak—whom he now thought of as “the Quantico ROK colonel”—were uncomfortable with the idea that the war was just about over, and that the Chinese and the Russians were just going to stand idly by and watch while their surrogate army was annihilated by the Americans and their surrogate forces.
And the Quantico ROK colonel was right about the hunger of senior ROK officers for their own airplanes, too. No sooner had the L-4 landed at the Race Track and taxied to a fuel truck than an ROK colonel appeared and told the L-4 pilot that he had an important mission and would require the use of the L-4.
“You’ll have to look elsewhere, Colonel, I’m afraid,” McCoy said. “This aircraft has been assigned to me.”
McCoy showed him his CIA credentials. He thought the colonel backed off more because of McCoy’s fluent Korean than because of the credentials. Since the Korean didn’t try to argue with him in English, there was a good chance he had no idea what the CIA credentials were, or what they said.
He stayed with the L-4 until it taxied off to the strip for takeoff.
And then, when he tried—and failed—to get a jeep from the officer in charge of the airstrip to take him to the house, he had to make his own irregular requisition.
He walked to a street not far from the Race Track, waited until the first Marine vehicle—a weapons carrier— came down it, flagged it down, and told the corporal driving that he needed a ride.
“Sir, I can’t—”
“All I want to hear from you, Corporal, is ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ ”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
[SEVEN]
THE HOUSE SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA 1145 4 OCTOBER 1950
Technical Sergeant J. M. Jennings came through the door in the metal gate to the house as the weapons carrier carrying McCoy stopped in front of it.
“That was a quick trip, sir,” he said as he saluted.
“I got lucky,” McCoy said. “Get a phone number from the corporal, and then get on the horn and tell his officer I had to borrow the truck.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Jennings said. “Major, there’s an Army light colonel inside. . . .”
“How did he get inside?” McCoy asked.
“Sir, I’m a tech sergeant, and he showed me orders signed by some general at UNC.”
“Did he say what he wants?”
“He wants to see Major Dunston,” Jennings said.
“Where’s General Howe?”
“He went south to see General Walker,” Jennings