do, it seems to me, is take them just as soon as we can.”
“Wouldn’t that give the North Koreans even more notice of the invasion?” Ernie McCoy asked.
It was evident on Taylor’s face that he was not accustomed to having a woman—even an officer’s wife—just join in a discussion of a military operation.
“It would, Mrs. McCoy—”
“Please call me ’Ernie,’ ” she interrupted.
“Okay. It would, Ernie, if the Army did it. Or the Marines. But if they thought it was a South Korean operation, they might—probably would—think it was just that. And if their intelligence didn’t come up with any unusual Naval activity in the next week, ten days, they’d probably relax again.”
“I see a couple of problems with that,” McCoy said, “starting with the fact that the South Koreans don’t have any forces to spare, and if they did, they wouldn’t know to attack an island.”
“I’m not thinking of the South Korean Army, McCoy,” Taylor said. “I want to do this with irregulars, guerrillas, militia, whatever the right word is.”
“Where are they going to come from?” McCoy said.
“We recruit them, train them . . .”
“Who’s we?” McCoy asked. “You and me?”
“Give me a chance with this, will you, McCoy?” Taylor said.
“Go ahead,” McCoy said. “Convince me.”
“There are hardly any troops on these islands. Maybe a platoon, maybe a reinforced platoon on Taemuui-do, and even fewer men on Yonghung-do. And they’re not first-class troops, either. Some of them are North Korean national police.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know,” Taylor said.
“As of when?”
“As of ten days ago,” Taylor said.
“That’s what’s known as old intelligence,” McCoy said. “A lot can happen in ten days.”
“Mr. Taylor, he’s always doing that,” Zimmerman said. “Looking for the worst thing. Trust me, he’s good at this sort of sh—operation.”
“But keep in mind, Taylor,” Hart said, “that his bite is really worse than his bark.”
There were chuckles.
“On the Tokchok-kundo islands . . . ,” Taylor said, pointing at the map again, “here, in addition to the natives, there’re a lot of refugees from the mainland. And fishermen from Inchon, and up and down the coast, are always going there. Going off at a tangent, the fishermen should be put to work keeping us aware of what’s going on in the area; they’re always going in and out of Inchon, and the North Koreans leave them alone, by and large.”
“Are you talking about recruiting the natives and the refugees?” McCoy asked.
“Something wrong with that? Those people don’t want the North Koreans to win. They know what will happen to them.”
“I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it,” McCoy said.
“Ken, you and I could go have a look,” Zimmerman said.
“Yeah,” McCoy said, thoughtfully.
“If we could recruit these people, quietly,” Taylor urged, “arm them, train them, and maybe get a destroyer to provide some naval gunfire—it wouldn’t take much—we could—they could—take both Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do, and the North Koreans would think the South Koreans were doing it because they thought they could get away with it.”
“And not as step one in an amphibious invasion of Inchon, ” Ernie McCoy said, agreeing with him. “Ken?”
“I could probably talk General Craig out of enough Marines to train these people. . . . You’re talking about training them right on those islands, right?”
“Right.”
“Killer, there’re South Korean marines,” Zimmerman said.
“Yeah, we saw them on the pier in Pusan, right?” McCoy replied. His tone made it clear that he didn’t want to employ South Korean marines in this operation.
“They wouldn’t need anything heavy,” Taylor said. “Carbines and .30-caliber air-cooled machine guns. Maybe a couple of mortars.”
“The problem is going to be getting this past Whitney and the other clowns on the SCAP staff. From painful personal experience, I know they don’t think much of operations like this.”
“But you think it would work?” Taylor asked.
“Well, hell, it’s worth a shot. But Ernie—the Ernie with the beard—is right. We’ll have to take a look at these islands ourselves.”
“The question, Killer, is what are you going to say when the boss asks you what you think of the idea?” Zimmerman said.
“It makes sense,” McCoy said. “It’s worth a shot. Anything that will change the odds at Inchon in our favor is worth a shot.”
“How are you going to get to those islands?” Ernie McCoy asked.
“I don’t know yet. We must have some Navy vessels operating in that area that could sneak us in at night.”
“They don’t have PT boats anymore, do they?” Zimmerman asked.
“No. They’d be ideal, too,” McCoy said. “There must be something.”