Nightmare Range by Martin Limon Read Free Book Online

citizen and therefore not under our jurisdiction, we contacted Captain Kim and had him go along with us to make the pinch.
    She was behind the bar of the Spider Lady Club, just getting ready for the evening’s business, laughing and joking with the other girls.
    Ernie and I came in the door first, wearing our coats and ties, and when she saw Captain Kim behind us and the blue sweater in my hand, the exquisite lines of her face sagged and her narrow eyes focused on me, like arrows held taut in a bow. Blood drained from her skin, and she stood stock-still for a moment. Thinking.
    Then she reached under the bar and pulled out a long glistening paring knife, and as her girlfriends chattered away she kept her eyes on me and pulled the point of the blade straight down the flesh of her forearm.
    She kept pulling and ripping until finally the other girls realized what was going on and by the time we got to her, her arm was a shredded mess.
    Her nurse training had come in handy because she knew that stitches weren’t likely to close arteries that had been cut lengthwise. We applied a tourniquet, but somehow she managed to let it loose while she was in the ambulance and, turning her back to the attendant, kept her secret long enough to do what she wanted to do: die.
    Janson was put on the first flight out of the country by order of the commanding general, his personal effects packed and shipped to him later.
    Billings spent a lot of time at the NCO Club, restricted topost. He spun romantic tales about his two friends and what he saw as their self-sacrificing love.
    The girls at the Spider Lady Club told us the truth. About how proud the Spider Lady had been to be marrying a doctor.
    Through it all, from bar to bar, all I could think about was the doll-like woman with the nice curves.
    Whose smile had been filled with life.

PUSAN NIGHTS
    “T he last time the USS
Kitty Hawk
pulled into the Port of Pusan, the Shore Patrol had to break up a total of thirty-three barroom brawls in the Texas Street area. Routine. What we didn’t expect was the fourteen sailors who were assaulted and robbed in the street. Six of them had to be hospitalized.
    “From eyewitness accounts, the local provost marshal’s office ascertained that the muggings appeared to have been perpetrated by Americans, probably the shipmates of the victims. However, no one was caught or charged with a crime.”
    We were in the drafty headquarters building of the 8th Army’s Criminal Investigation Division in Seoul, two hundred miles up the Korean Peninsula from Pusan. When the first sergeant called me and Ernie into his office, we expected the usual tirade for not having made enough black market arrests. What we got was a new assignment. The first sergeant kept it simple.
    “First, make sure you take the right flight out of Kimpo. Then, when you land in Pusan, infiltrate the waterfront area and find out who’s been pulling off these muggings.”
    Ernie adjusted his glasses and tugged on his tie.
    “Maybe the gang who did it has left the navy and gone on to better things.”
    “Not hardly. The
Kitty Hawk
was here only six months ago.The tour in the navy is four years, minimum. Not enough time to break up the old gang.”
    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