Nightmare Range by Martin Limon Read Free Book Online Page A

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 thesteps 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 Pusanin 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