The Wandering Ghost (A Sergeants Sueño and Bascom Novel) by Martin Limon

Author:Martin Limon [Limon, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781569477816
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2008-11-01T05:00:00+00:00

9

It was too dangerous to drive Ernie’s jeep back into the Division AO. The MPs would’ve taken note of the unit designation and jeep number stenciled on the bumper. Instead, Ernie left it in the care of a buck sergeant with grease-stained fingers at the Camp Red Cloud motor pool, promising him a free pizza dinner at the Papa-san Club upon our return.

Staff Sergeant Riley made us promise once more that we’d be back at 8th Army headquarters for duty Monday morning. “Tonight and Sunday,” he said. “That’s all the time you’ve got. If you don’t find Matthewson by then, you’re back in Seoul where you belong.”

We agreed. Then he nodded goodbye to Brandy and drove his sedan back to Seoul.

In front of the Camp Red Cloud main gate, Ernie, Brandy, and I waved down a kimchee cab. Brandy gave directions to a village east of here known as Koyang. We traveled on back roads, avoiding the MSR. Our goal was to dodge all 2nd Infantry Division checkpoints, to sneak back into the 2nd Infantry Division area of operations without being noticed.

Koyang was a small cluster of buildings, one of which featured the Chinese characters for sokyu—“rock oil”—overhead: a gas station. The little town also had a noodle shop and a transshipment point for produce. We climbed out of the cab, shivered in the cold February wind, and after we paid the driver, we watched him make a U-turn and speed back toward Uijongbu.

The shadows of quivering poplar trees began to grow long; evening would soon be upon us. Ernie and I checked our pockets. We each had about forty bucks on us, plenty to last us until we returned to Seoul Monday morning.

Brandy entered the noodle shop, chatted with the owner, and within five minutes another local cab pulled up, ready to transport us north to Bopwon-ni. Legal Hall Village. We climbed in and the little sedan sped north. The two-lane road followed a meandering valley. Fallow rice paddies spread on one side and elm-covered hills rose on the other. Swaths of snow clung to the hills although, since we’d arrived, there’d been no new snowfalls. Unusual for February. Atop many of the hills were burial mounds and atop one of them was an elaborate stone-carved statute of an ancient king of the Yi Dynasty.

“It’s like another world back here,” Ernie said.

I knew what he meant. Even though we were only some twenty miles north of Seoul as the crow flies, there was a mountain range between us and Seoul and smaller ranges of hills on either side of this valley. Few modern amenities existed back here. Telephone and electrical lines paralleled the road and that was about it. Gazing in any direction, one could imagine that he’d been transported back in time to the ancient kingdom known as the Land of the Morning Calm. The sun sank behind the hills to the west, darkening straw-thatched roofs.

There were few military installations in this valley. No U.S. bases and only one or two small ROK Army compounds specializing in communications.

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