It was breakfast time, the sharks were hungry, and Press Secretary Trainor, having strongly advised the president to spend a day or two at Camp David being presidential, meeting with Arab heads of state, now gladly offered himself for consumption, enjoying the cut and thrust with the pack, some of them former colleagues, a few still friends.
“But shouldn’t the president be in the White House?” It was from some young hotshot blonde at the Post, her white lace bra clearly etched beneath the tight white silk blouse and black tie that only accentuated her femininity rather than conveying the no-nonsense tough-press-woman image she’d intended. Trainor responded, smiling, assuring them that “the president is receiving regular reports on the situation in Korea.” What he didn’t say was that the last report had been received at 5:00 a.m., four hours ago—6:00 p.m. in Korea. Trainor saw the young reporter scribbling frantically, about to launch another question, but in all the excitement she’d forgotten to predicate her first question by indicating there’d be a follow-up. Trainor pointed to the Atlanta Constitution, who did announce he had a follow-up. “Mr. Trainor, we’ve had reports from Kodo News Service that North Korean forces are already halfway down the peninsula. Can you confirm this? “
“Well, with the DMZ being already halfway down the peninsula, Mr. Burns, I’d be surprised if they weren’t.” A chuckle from one of Burns’s colleagues. A mistake, thought Trainor— don’t alienate them. “I know what you mean, Mr. Burns. No, we don’t have any information that would confirm that.”
“Or would deny it?”
Get it over quickly, thought Trainor. “No. Ah, Miss Vogel?” She was a tall, older, freckle-faced woman they called “String Bean,” who had seen four presidents come and go. Her favorite technique was to let the eager pitchers go first, then she’d step in with the curve ball. “Mr. Trainor—” and no crappola, her expression seemed to say “—when did you last hear from Seoul? And I have a follow-up.”
“This morning,” Trainor answered — you crafty old bitch, and I know your follow-up.
“Precisely when was that?”
Trainor paused. Say you don’t know and you’ll be assigned gofer status. Tell her it was four hours ago and your information’s got whiskers on it. Trainor had never had to deal with a military “incident” this size before, but he knew enough that in modern conventional warfare, let alone nuclear strikes, four hours could turn defeat into victory or vice versa. “Earlier this morning,” he answered. “Ms. — ” Trainor looked puzzled, trying to read the name on the press pass of a newcomer, giving him time to regroup his defense. She was a honey blonde, good-looking, about five feet four inches, cool blue eyes.
“Miss Roberts,” she said. “Does the president plan to remain at Camp David until the New Hampshire primary?”
Trainor struck a thoughtful pose, giving the question its due, both hands on the lectern, remembering that the opinion polls were showing a surge in support of Mayne as the presidential candidate least likely to involve the United States in military actions around the world, especially in another quagmire in Asia. Trainor’s strategy of getting Mayne off to Camp David over the weekend before he could make any premature statement about Korea left Senator Leyland plenty of room to lose himself in how he’d deal with the Korean situation. “Stay away from it, Mr. President,” Trainor had advised. “Ask anyone in the street where the hell Korea is. They don’t have a clue. Over there somewhere. The Olympics one time.”
“The president,” Trainor answered, “has full confidence in General Cahill, commanding officer of all U.S. forces in Korea, and in the Republic of Korea’s ability to repel the incursion.”
“That’s a new one,” a reporter muttered in the first row, “ ‘incursion.’ “ Trainor wasn’t happy with his answer either, but only because he had mentioned Cahill first and not the ROK. He couldn’t mention President Rah of South Korea — even his own people had serious doubts about his commitment to democratic rule. The best you could say was that the “old fox,” as they called Rah in Korea, was more liberal than anybody in Pyongyang.
“How big is this ‘incursion’?” someone shouted from the back.
“Ah — the information we have, John, is that it’s regimental size.”
The blonde from the Post was on her toes, both hands waving in the forest of other hands, pen mikes, and barely controlled mayhem. “How big is that?” she called out, willing to show her ignorance of military dispositions the moment she sensed Trainor’s throwaway nonchalance as a little too cool. “How big is that?” she repeated loudly, stretching to her full height, the lace bra threatening to burst right out of the blouse.
A beefy, middle-aged West German reporter from Der Spiegel looked at her as if appraising a good leg of lamb. “Depends,” he said to no one in particular but with his eyes fixed on her. “It means two and a half thousand men in the NKA, nine hundred in the U.S.”
“Quite a difference,” she said.
The German’s bottom lip protruded, “Ja. I think he wants you think American. Nine hundred.”
Trainor was pointing to someone else in the front row as the blonde, sitting down, pressed the German, “How come they’re so different in size?” She tried to read his name from his press card, but it was hidden beneath his blue suede jacket.
“Very confusing,” he answered. “NKA is based on the Russian regiment, you see. They only have the same firepower, though, as a U.S. regiment.”
Now the Post was really confused. “So there’s no difference really?”
The German held his hand up for her to be quiet, his attention shifting to Trainor. Someone, probably a plant, he thought, was asking for the administration’s response to Senator Leyland’s accusation that the apparent “debacle” now overtaking one of America’s “foremost allies” was an example of the “serious implications of President Mayne’s cutting of the defense budget.”
Trainor loved it. It wasn’t a plant, it was a gift from Heaven. He could take the high road. “If Senator Leyland wishes to disparage our allies and use this incident to inflame sword rattling, then, of course, he’s free to do so. This administration, this president, has repeatedly said that the security of the United States has no price. And quite frankly, I’m — er — I’m somewhat taken aback by the senator’s apparent attempt — did he use the word ‘debacle’?”
“Yes,” came a shouted chorus. “No TV at Camp David?” called out another. There was laughter.
Trainor shrugged. “All I can say is that ‘debacle’ is an odd word to be using only hours after some violations of the DMZ have been reported. But if Senator Leyland is so desperate for votes that he wants to characterize—”
“They’re shelling Seoul, aren’t they?”
“That’s not new,” retorted Trainor. They were closing in on him, but he saw a way out. “Gentlemen — and ladies—” He was flushed, but it was anger they were seeing, not embarrassment. “If you people spent as much time in Korea as you did in the—” he almost said, “Tel Aviv Hilton,” but stopped himself in time “—in the Middle East, you’d realize that in Korea, as in the Middle East, incursions take place every week along the Korean DMZ and that there have been several false alarms already. As recently as July we had…”
The hands shot up again. “Are you saying, then, that this is a false alarm?”
“No — I’m not saying that. There are significant numbers of troops moving, but — ah, as yet we don’t know the full extent…”
An aide slipped in from behind the podium, keeping his eyes low out of the glare, deposited a note on the lectern, and was gone. Despite the heat, rhetorical and that coming from klieg lights, Trainor felt his gut go cold. General Cahill, the note informed him, had ordered the three remaining bridges leading south out of Seoul to be blown within the hour.
Trainor didn’t read the rest of the page or notice the fact that Cahill’s decision signified much more than the imminent collapse of Seoul.
Because the subway stations of Hapchong, Yongsan, Ichon, Oksu, and Kangbyon — all on the north side of the river — had been gutted by NKA infiltrators earlier that morning, the three bridges to be blown — Songsan, leading to Kimpo Airport, Tongjak Bridge, seven miles east, leading out of the city from Yongsan and Niblo Barracks, and Chamshil Iron Bridge near the old Olympics site, all packed with high explosives, ready for destruction — were the only escape routes left for millions of civilians still trying to flee the city, and there would be no time to clear the bridges, even if they could be cleared, by the time set for demolition. All Trainor knew was that his and National Security Adviser Schuman’s plan to distance the president in order to underplay the situation was collapsing around him. Mayne had to get back to the White House. And fast. The news conference, amid howls of protest, the scratching of chairs and dousing of lights, was called to an end, Trainor excusing himself, smiling, nodding, saying “No comment,” trying to avoid the snaking TV cables that, despite his strict instructions to have them coiled and bound with fluorescent tape, seemed as disorderly as ever, waiting to trip him up.
If it was a cold-blooded military decision on Cahill’s part to blow the three bridges, it was a hot-blooded affair for the millions of terrified civilians — mostly women and children and elders, their screams heard above the screams of artillery, some stumbling, near death — pressed into three enormous funnel-shaped escape routes converging on the three remaining bridges, many people on the outer edges of the funnels spilling off, others shoved aside down embankments into the now putrid river or trampled to death by those behind in the unstoppable force that was five million trying to flee the razored hail of hot steel.
The NKA’s Fourth Division met its first really sustained resistance around Uijongbu. In doing so, the NKA tied up so many of the rear guard elements that the NKA Special Forces Corps on the western flank driving south from Munsan to reach the Han three miles west of Seoul’s western outskirts easily forded the Han in an armada of lightweight canvas boats under cover of heavy smoke.