The 55th Quartermaster Depot
Cheongsan Transport's destination was the 55th Quartermaster Depot.
It stood in Beomil-dong, Dong-gu, Busan, on ground the Imperial Japanese Army had first taken under colonial rule for the storage of military supplies. After liberation the U.S. Army occupied the site, and when the Korean War broke out they put the depot to serious use from August onward. Across nearly sixty acres they kept fuel, weapons, and every kind of equipment, and from that ground they sent the gathered stores out to every corner of the country. It was the American logistics hub in Korea.
On December 26, 1954—the day after Christmas—a great fire tore through the place and left staggering damage behind. Down by Busan Harbor the burned warehouses were being shoved aside by heavy machinery while new ones rose in their place. That was why the U.S. Army had even weighed making Incheon, rather than Busan, its logistics base. Incheon Harbor was an awkward port, shallow and yoked to a brutal tidal range, yet even if it could not wholly replace Busan there was sense in splitting the flow of supplies between the two.
Around midnight the Cheongsan convoy that had set out from Daegu divided at Yangsan. Five trucks under Ma-ryang and Wang Cheol turned for Busan; the other five, led by Han-su, headed for Masan. Ma-ryang posted Truck No. 2 at the rear of the party bound straight for the city, to cover the column's tail.
At four in the morning, the hour when both people and traffic were thinnest, Ma-ryang's convoy rolled into the empty streets of Busan. The moment they entered the city, a motorcycle swung out from behind and slid past Truck No. 1.
"Brother Ma-ryang, the man on that motorcycle looks wrong to me."
It was Gwak Tae-sik who spoke. Ma-ryang had brought him over from the Jongno faction. He had started the run in Truck No. 2, and Ma-ryang had pulled him up to ride in No. 1. Ma-ryang felt the same chill when he saw the rider flick a glance at the lead truck, twist the throttle, and vanish at full speed.
"Director Go. Faster's all right, isn't it?"
"Of course," Wang Cheol answered.
He had been leading the convoy only along the great boulevards, roads too wide to barricade easily, and good for speed besides. At Ma-ryang's word he stamped the accelerator flat.
Racing southwest, the trucks were coming up on Seomyeon Rotary. Clear that, and they could run straight down the road that reached the 55th Quartermaster Depot.
In those days the rotary was nothing like the place it would become. It was an open plaza where five roads met. Busan Tower, which would not rise until 1963, was nowhere in sight, and streetcars, buses, trucks, and oxcarts tangled through the square in a disorderly crush. At an hour without traffic, though, it was simply empty ground. Come in along the central boulevard, Jungang-daero, from the two-o'clock road and slip out at six, and the thing was done.
Wang Cheol took the rotary at full speed, hauled the wheel left, and aimed for six o'clock. The instant he looked down the boulevard that led to the depot, a curse tore out of him.
"Ah... fuck..."
All four of the great roads running south were packed solid with trucks and carts. The Busan gangsters were a different breed from the ones in Incheon. They had thrown a staggering weight of men and machines into choking off the beer.
"Director Jang, should we try to punch through?"
There was no confidence in Wang Cheol's voice. Ram bumpers or not, forcing a way through looked like more than the trucks could do.
"Slow down. Wheel them into the middle of the rotary."
"Yes, sir!"
Ma-ryang thrust a red flag out the window and spun it in a circle. At the signal the five haulers, with Truck No. 2 now holding the rear, began to take up the formation they had drilled, until seven trucks and a bus had drawn together at the heart of the rotary and started to shape a line. Like wagon trains in a Western, circling up under Indian attack, the trucks formed a seven-sided ring.
The men aboard did not get out. Each of them took up a weapon and waited. By now even the road they had come in on was sealed, and they were shut fast inside the rotary. From all five directions armed men were closing in, a dark mass. The crew swallowed against dry throats and waited on nothing but Ma-ryang's order.
He watched the men who had blocked Jungang-daero, the road through to the depot, as they came on at a walk.
"Brother, I'll go out."
"You know a face out there?"
"Yes. The one walking at the very front."
Gwak Tae-sik climbed down from the truck, shrugged off his leather jacket, and handed it to Ma-ryang. The brown turtleneck left bare the thick column of his neck, the wide set of his shoulders, and the heavy slab of his chest. He walked a few steps forward and shouted to the man coming on.
"Brother Jong-dae! How have you been?"
The man at the head of the advance checked his step and peered at whoever had called to him.
"And who are you, acting as if you know me?"
"It's me. Gwak Tae-sik. Have you been well?"
"Gwak Tae-sik?"
When he had come close enough for his face to show, he brightened at the sight of Tae-sik.
"Well, I'll be damned. What the hell are you doing in Busan?"
"I came down on a truck with a brother I know."
"A brother you know?"
Jong-dae, of the Busan underworld, stole a glance at Ma-ryang sitting in the truck.
"That the brother?"
"Yes."
"Don't know him, then. Don't tell me he's one of Brother Hwa-ryong's. Or Lee Jeong-jae's people?"
"No, Brother."
"Yeah? So he's no Seoul muscle. That what you're saying."
"That's right."
The wariness in Jong-dae's eyes shifted. Once he understood the other man was no Seoul gangster, he looked easier in himself. He took out a cigarette and offered it to Tae-sik, drew in a lungful of smoke, and asked.
"Come on, Tae-sik. Tell me straight. You come down here for money?"
"Yes, Brother."
"Well, that makes this a little awkward..."
"I took a job with a transport company. What would be awkward about that?"
"A gangster, hiring on at a place like that—what the hell for!"
Jong-dae took one last pull, dropped the cigarette, and ground it out under his shoe as he spoke.
"Tae-sik. Get behind your brother."
"I took their money. How could I?"
"You... you thick-skulled bastard. You stay over there and you die. Those people aren't walking out of here alive today."
He was genuinely sorry for Tae-sik.
The man Ma-ryang had brought into Cheongsan was Jongno to the bone. Late in the war he had come down to Busan as a refugee and run with Lee Hwa-ryong, then gone back to the Jongno faction once the fighting ended. Seoul gangsters had been thick on the ground in Busan in those days. Flooding south with the refugees, they had quickly seized the markets and the commercial streets. The native Busan crews resisted at first, and in the end they made their peace and split the take.
Before the war the city had held four hundred thousand people. Refugees swelled it to a million, and with American goods pouring in there was more graft than anyone could spend. No one needed to take it all. Better to divide the markets amicably than to maim one another fighting. When the war ended the Seoul men left Busan, though some kept the old tie alive on the strength of good memories. Tae-sik and Jong-dae were one such pair.
"Tae-sik, I know your loyalty's something else. But not today. You think you're the only one with a code? I'm keeping faith with you right now. Listen to your brother and let the company business go. Stay in Busan and live with me."
While Tae-sik played for time, Ma-ryang was getting the convoy crew ready to hit. The men in the haulers got out the bamboo he had bought in Gunsan, and a number of them shifted in secret to Truck No. 1 and the tail vehicle and climbed up into the cargo beds.
"Hey, you! You not gonna listen to your brother?"
"Brother! Those men are only hauling beer the way the Americans told them to. Please, just let them through."
"We're stopping those men, not the U.S. Army! You think we'd block the Americans?"
"Brother, just this once—couldn't you shut your eyes tight and open the road?"
Tae-sik dropped to his knees in front of Jong-dae. Cornered and miserable, Jong-dae shouted.
"Tae-sik! Why do you keep doing this to me?"
As Tae-sik dragged the moments out, the gangsters around Jong-dae began to stir.
"Brother Jong-dae, want us to clear him off?"
When his men moved to deal with Tae-sik themselves, Jong-dae exploded.
"Get the hell back! Don't you know who Gwak Tae-sik is? He's my equal, you bastards! Where do you get off, talking about clearing Tae-sik out of the way?"
He hauled Tae-sik up by force.
"Brother Jong-dae, company or no company, I can't turn traitor. Better you knock me down and go on past."
"What kind of talk is that?"
"I'll do what's mine to do."
"So you're saying you'll hit me too. That it?"
"How could I hit you, Brother? Only you should hit me. When I go down, then you do what you have to."
"God. This is gonna drive me crazy..."
While Jong-dae hesitated, the man on the motorcycle came up beside him.
"Brother, the head boss says he's coming himself. You'd better hurry."
"Yeah. I'll handle it."
Jong-dae set his jaw and grabbed Tae-sik by the collar.
"Tae-sik, take a few and go down, you hear me? Once you're down, I'll pull you out of here."
With that he drove a fist into Tae-sik's side.
"Hhk—"
A strangled groan broke from Tae-sik's mouth. As he clutched his belly and folded, Jong-dae made ready to give the signal to attack.
"Brother Jong-dae... I haven't gone down yet..."
Tae-sik was on his feet again, and Jong-dae poured curses over him.
"Just stay down! You bastard! You swallow a whole bowl of nothing but nerve?"
This time he fed a fist into Tae-sik's temple. Tae-sik reeled, staggered, and found his balance again, so Jong-dae kicked him in the solar plexus. Tae-sik went down and tried to rise, and Jong-dae climbed on top of him and hammered his face. When Tae-sik, soaked in blood, seemed to lose consciousness, Jong-dae stopped swinging and stood. Breathless, the air caught high in his throat, he worked his fist and raged.
"Hah... you rotten leper's whelp, why wouldn't you listen to your brother... If you'd given it up from the start, it didn't have to come to this... Han-gyu! Get Tae-sik to a hospital."
Then a huge shadow fell in front of him.
"And who said you could?"
Jong-dae looked up at the enormous Ma-ryang standing over him.
"You—what the hell are you?"
"Me? Tae-sik's boss."
Ma-ryang threw the punch in the same breath as the answer. One blow rolled Jong-dae's eyes back. As he staggered, Ma-ryang locked an arm around his neck, seized the fallen Tae-sik by the scruff with the other hand, and dragged him toward the trucks.
The Busan gangsters froze. They watched Ma-ryang drop their mid-boss with a single punch and haul the unconscious Tae-sik along one-handed. Jong-dae himself was a hulk of a man, well over two hundred and twenty pounds. Wang Cheol climbed down from his truck, took hold of Tae-sik, and pulled him inside the ring of vehicles. Ma-ryang, holding the unconscious Jong-dae like a hostage, shouted.
"Five at a time. Step out. You'll have to lay me out before you take your boss back."
No one was quick to answer. Then the man in the black leather jacket, still astride his motorcycle, jabbed a finger at Ma-ryang and yelled.
"Everybody in! Cut that bastard's throat first!"
Ma-ryang marked the rider for second in their pecking order and flung the unconscious Jong-dae to the ground. Then he blew the whistle hanging at his neck.
Shreee—
The signal to attack.
The men in the cargo bed of Truck No. 1 began hurling the broken bricks piled there. In an instant a storm of stones was in the air, and the gangsters charging in flinched.
"Wh-what the hell is this..."
The man on the motorcycle was rattled. Ma-ryang took a brick Wang Cheol had brought him and shouted at the rider.
"Hey! You on the bike—look over here!"
By the time the rider looked at Ma-ryang, the brick was already flying at his face.
Thock.
With that dull crack he left the motorcycle the way a man is thrown from a horse, and hit the ground.
"Come on! Come in! Come on in!"
Ma-ryang roared like a fiend, and even the gangsters who had been dodging bricks to rush him flinched. When a few of those who had hesitated were struck by the bricks he threw and dropped where they stood, the rest lost all nerve to come any closer.
This ought to hold them thirty minutes...
Ma-ryang was satisfied with the opening. Just as Ki-jo had ordered, he was putting to good use the defective bricks from the Cheongsan factory, loaded onto two of the trucks. Ki-jo had said it plain.
"The gangs may pick a stone fight with you. Haul the scrap bricks along on the trucks. If they come to nothing, dump them in the sea on the way home."
In truth, gangsters had fought large-scale stone battles in the very heart of Seoul. The prime example was the Golden Carriage Raid of 1956. A stone-fight had broken out between Lee Hwa-ryong's Myeongdong gang and the Samuhoe—the Three Friends Association—formed of the Jongno faction and the Seodaemun faction in alliance with Lee Jeong-jae. The Myeongdong men, lying in wait with stones already prepared, had flung them and left the Samuhoe drenched in blood.
And it was not only gangsters. Stone-fighting was a familiar thing to Koreans. Seokjeon, stone battle, had been a traditional sport that flourished in Joseon right up through the last years of the old dynasty. Until the Japanese banned it, country men fought bloody seokjeon against the men of the next village, and some of them died with a stone in the skull.
The Cheongsan haulers were used to whole bricks. Broken pieces felt almost too light in the hand. The old childhood game came back to them, and there was a sport in picking the men off one by one. They snatched up the shattered bricks and hurled them as freely as they pleased.