Nightmare Range (6 page)

Ernie got quiet. I knew him. He didn’t want to seem too anxious to take on this assignment, an all-expenses-paid trip to the wildest port in Northeast Asia, and he was cagey enough to put up some objections, to put some concern in the first sergeant’s mind about how difficult it would be to catch these guys. That way, if we felt like it, we could goof off the whole time and come up with zilch, and the groundwork for our excuse was already laid.

I had to admire him. Always thinking.

“And you, Sueño.” The first sergeant turned his cold gray eyes on me. “I don’t want you running off and becoming involved in some grandiose schemes that don’t concern you.”

“You mean, stay away from the navy brass.”

“I mean catch these guys who are doing the muggings. That’s what you’re being paid for. Some of those sailors were hurt badly the last time they were here, and I don’t want it to happen again.”

I nodded, keeping my face straight. Neither one of us was going to mouth off now and lose a chance to go to Pusan. To Texas Street.

The first sergeant handed me a brown envelope stuffed with copies of the blotter reports from the last time the
Kitty Hawk
had paid a visit to the Land of the Morning Calm. He stood up and, for once, shook both our hands.

“I hate to let you guys out of my sight. But nobody can infiltrate a village full of bars and whores and drunken sailors better than you two.” His face changed from sunshine to clouds. “If, however, you don’t bring me back some results, I guarantee you’ll have my highly polished size twelve combat boot placed firmly on your respective posteriors. You got that?”

Ernie grinned, a little weasel-toothed, half-moon grin. I concentrated on keeping my facial muscles steady. I’m not sure it worked.

We clattered down the long hallway and bounded down the
steps to Ernie’s jeep. When he started it up, he shouted, “Three days in Texas Street!”

I was happy. So was he.

But I had the uneasy twisting in my bowels that happens whenever I smell murder.

By the time we landed in Pusan I had read over the blotter reports. They were inconclusive, based mainly on hearsay from Korean bystanders. The assailants were Americans, they said, dressed in blue jeans and nylon jackets, like their victims and like all the sailors on liberty who prowled the portside alleys of Texas Street. The Navy Shore Patrol had stopped some fights in barrooms and on the streets, but they were unable to apprehend even one of the muggers.

By inter-service agreement, the army’s military police increased their patrols near the dock areas when a huge naval presence moved into the port of Pusan. The aircraft carrier
Kitty Hawk
, with its accompanying flotilla and its over five thousand sailors, more than qualified as a huge naval presence.

The MPs were stationed, for the most part, on the inland army base of Hialeah Compound. They played on Texas Street, knew the alleys, the girls, the mama-sans. But somehow they had been unable to make one arrest.

Sailors and soldiers don’t often hit it off. Especially when the sailors are only in town for three days and manage to jack up all the prices by trying to spend two months’ pay in a few hours. It seemed as if the MPs would be happy to arrest a few squids.

Something told me they weren’t trying.

We caught a cab at the airport outside of Pusan and arrived at Hialeah Compound in the early afternoon. We got a room at the billeting office, and the first thing we did was nothing. Ernie took a nap. I kept thumbing through the blotter report, worrying the pages to death.

There was a not very detailed road map of the city of Pusan
in a tourist brochure in the rickety little desk provided to us by billeting. Hialeah Compound was about three miles inland from the main port and had gotten its name because prior to the end of World War II the Japanese occupation forces used its flat plains as a track for horse racing. The US Army turned it into a base to provide security and logistical support for all the goods pouring into the harbor. Pusan was a large city, and its downtown area sprawled between Hialeah Compound and the port. Pushed up along the docks, like a long, slender barnacle, was Texas Street. Merchant sailors from all over the world passed through this port, but it was only the US Navy that came here in such force.

Using a thick-leaded pencil I plotted the locations of the muggings on the little map. The dots defined the district known as Texas Street. Not one was more than half a mile from where the
Kitty Hawk
would dock.

Ernie and I approached the MP desk.

“Bascom and Sueño,” Ernie said. “Reporting in from Seoul.”

The desk sergeant looked down at us over the rim of his comic book.

“Oh, yeah. Heard you guys were coming. Hold on. The duty officer wants to talk to you.”

After a few minutes, a little man with his chest stuck out and face like a yapping Chihuahua appeared. He seemed lost in his highly starched fatigues. Little gold butter bars flapped from his collar.

“The commanding officer told me to give you guys a message.”

We waited.

The lieutenant tried to expand his chest. The starched green material barely moved.

“Don’t mess with our people. We have a good MP company down here; any muggings that happen, we’ll take care of them; and we don’t need you two sending phony reports up to Seoul, trying to make us look bad.”

His chest deflated slightly. He seemed exhausted and out of breath.

“Is that it?”

“Yeah.”

Ernie walked around him and looked back up at the desk sergeant. “How many patrols are you going to have out at Texas Street tonight?”

“Four. Three MPs per jeep.”

“Three?”

The desk sergeant shrugged. “We’d have four per jeep if we could. The advance party of the
Kitty Hawk
’s arriving tonight.”

“All patrols roving?”

“No. One in the center of the strip, two more on either end, and one patrol roving.”

“You must put your studs in the center.”

“You got that right.”

“Who performs your liaison with the Shore Patrol?”

The desk sergeant shrugged again. “The lieutenant here, such as it is. Mainly they run their own show, out of the port officer’s headquarters down by the docks.”

“Thanks. If we find out anything—and there’s time—we’ll let your MPs make the arrest.”

“Don’t do us any favors. Those squids can kill each other for all I care.”

The lieutenant shot him a look. The desk sergeant glanced at the lieutenant and then back down at the comic book on his desk.

We turned to walk out. Ernie winked at the lieutenant, who glared after us until we faded into the thickening fog of the Pusan night.

Texas Street was long and bursting with music and brightly flashing neon. The colors and the songs changed as we walked down the street, and the scantily clad girls waved at us through beaded curtains, trying to draw us in. Young American sailors
in blue jeans and nylon jackets with embroidered dragons on the back bounced from bar to bar enjoying the embraces of the “business girls,” who still outnumbered them. The main force of their shipmates had not arrived yet, and the
Kitty Hawk
would not dock until dawn. But Texas Street was ready for them.

We saw the MPs. The jeep in the center of Texas Street was parked unobtrusively next to a brick wall, its radio crackling. The three MPs smoked and talked, big brutes all. We stayed away from them and concentrated on blending into the crowd.

Ernie was having no trouble at all. In bar after bar we toyed with the girls, bought drinks only for ourselves, and kept from answering their questions about which ship we were on by constantly changing the subject.

One of the girls caught on that we were in the army by our unwillingness to spend too much money and by the few Korean words that we let slip out.

“Don’t let the mama-san hear you speaking Korean,” she said. “If she does, she will know that you’re in the army, and she will not let me talk to you.”

“What’s wrong with GIs?”

I could answer that question with volumes, but I wanted to hear her version.

“All GI Cheap Charlie. Sailors are here for only a short time. They spend a lot of money.”

We filed the economics lesson, finished our beers, and staggered to the next bar.

Periodically we hung around near one of the MP patrols, within earshot of their radio, waiting for a report of a fight or a mugging. So far it was a quiet night.

Later, a group of white uniformed sailors on Shore Patrol duty ran past us, holding onto their revolvers and their hats, their nightsticks flapping at their sides. We followed, watched while they broke up a fight in one of the bars. A gray navy van pulled up, and the disheveled revelers were loaded aboard.

We found a noodle stand and ate, giving ourselves away as
GIs to the wizened old proprietor by knowing what to order. Ernie sipped on the hot broth and then took a swig of a cold bottle of Oriental beer.

“Quiet night.”

“No revelations yet.”

“Maybe tomorrow, when the entire flotilla arrives.”

“Flotilla. Sounds like the damn Spanish Armada.”

“Yeah. Except a lot more powerful.”

Just before the midnight curfew the Shore Patrol got busy again chasing the sailors back to the ship or off the streets.

We had taken a cab all the way back to Hialeah Compound before we heard about the mugging.

“One sailor,” the desk sergeant said. “Beat up pretty bad. The navy medical personnel are taking care of him now.”

“Any witnesses?”

“None. Happened right before curfew. Apparently he was trying to make it back to the ship.”

In the morning, before our eggs and coffee, we found out that the sailor was dead.

The buildings that housed the port officer’s headquarters were metal Quonset huts differentiated from the Army Corps of Engineers’ Quonset huts only by the fact that they were painted battleship gray while the army’s buildings were painted olive drab. Slightly less colorful than Texas Street.

The brass buttons on the old chief’s coat bulged under the expanding pressure of his belly. We showed our identification.

“Who was the sailor who got killed in the mugging last night?”

The chief shuffled through some paperwork. “Petty Officer Third Class Lockworth, Gerald R.”

“What ship was he on?”

“The USS
Swann
. One of the tenders for the
Kitty Hawk
. They say he was carrying a couple months’ pay.”

“Nothing left on him?”

“No.”

“Maybe the girls got to it first.”

“Maybe. But I doubt it. He was three-year veteran of the Pacific Fleet.”

“What was the cause of death?”

“Massive hemorrhage of the brain.”

“Have you got your eyes on any particular group of sailors that might be preying on their shipmates?”

“Not really. The brass tends to think that it’s some Korean gangs working the streets. Maybe they’ve developed a taste for the Seventh Fleet payroll. That would explain why there haven’t been any arrests made.”

“The police here want to protect the sailors. There’s a lot of pressure from the ROK Government to make the US Navy feel welcome.”

“Maybe. But at a lower level, policies have a habit of being changed.”

“Do you buy all that, Chief?”

“Could be. I keep an open mind. But in general I tend to go with the scuttlebutt.”

“What’s that?”

“That it’s some of your local GIs that got a taste for the Seventh Fleet payroll.”

“If the average sailor starts to believe either one of those viewpoints, it could cause a lot of trouble down here on Texas Street.”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t want to be a dogface on liberty in this town tonight.”

“Thanks for the encouragement.”

“You’re welcome.”

The
Kitty Hawk
finally pulled in at noon, and standing by the dock were the mayor and the provincial governor and the US Navy’s 7th Fleet band. The sailors lined the deck of the huge gloating edifice, their bell-bottoms and kerchiefs flapping in the breeze. The ship’s captain and his staff, in their dazzling
white uniforms, bounced down the gangplank to the tune of “Anchors Aweigh,” and were greeted by a row of beautiful young Korean maidens in traditional dresses who placed leis over their necks and bowed to them in greeting.

The governor made a speech of welcome and the captain answered with a long rambling dissertation on the awesome firepower of the
Kitty Hawk
. Greater, he said, than the entire defense establishments of some countries.

“I thought he wasn’t supposed to confirm or deny that they have nuclear capability,” I said.

Ernie smirked. “He’s also not supposed to confirm or deny that he’s a jerk.”

After the tedious ceremony was over, the sailors—free at last—poured like a great white sea into the crevices and alleys of Texas Street.

The night was mad. The Shore Patrol ran back and forth, unable to keep up with all the explosions being ignited by the half-crazed sailors. Even the MPs had to keep on the move. They were tense. Alert.

I saw different faces in the jeeps tonight and asked one of the MPs about it.

“We’re on twenty-four hour alert while the
Kitty Hawk
is here, but we have to get some rest sometime.”

“Twelve-hour shifts?”

“Or more, if needed.”

Ernie and I wandered away from the bright lights, checking the outskirts of the bar district. Like all beasts of prey, the muggers would look for stragglers, strays who’d wandered from the main herd.

It was mostly residential area back there, high walls of brick or stone and securely boarded gates.

There were a few bars, however, and a few neighborhood eateries. Some sailors were wandering around, those who wanted to get away from the hubbub.

A couple of big Americans about a block in front of us turned a corner. They looked familiar to me somehow. We trotted after them, but by the time we got to the dimly lit intersection they were gone.

“Who was it?”

“I’m not sure.”

We walked into a bar closer to Texas Street proper and ignored the girls until they left us alone with only two cold beers for company.