Bloodbath at the Rotary

The underboss was certain the advantage had swung his way.

He meant to steal the convoy's own method — trade stones at a distance, then drive his men all the way up to the trucks. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠With the numbers on his side, he reckoned the win was already his. The proof looked plain enough. Through the whole of the assault, nothing like a real counterblow had come back from the trucks. The stones and firebombs the convoy had laid in, he decided, were spent.

"A man's gotta use his head! Work this skull right, and the body don't suffer half so much. Hahaha!"

He laughed, big and bold, watching his thugs roll forward without a hitch. The laugh did not last.

The men who had charged straight down the central avenue got no farther. They broke and scattered. One giant was the cause of it, a long pole scything in his hands.

"That — that bastard. What is he?"

The giant was sweeping the men around him aside the way a broom takes a floor. Ten solid fellows kept a half-circle at his back, clubs in their fists and shields as broad as cauldron lids.

So that's the one......

The moment he understood — this was the man who had dropped two of his action chiefs — the underboss snapped out an order.

"The one with the pole! Beat him, and only him!"

At the word, the thugs posted at three o'clock and at nine closed in on Ma-ryang.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Ugh......"

The ten shielding him groaned, driving the rush back with shields and with their own bodies. Short clubs of hardened birch were all that saved them. They barely held, hammering at heads and shoulders as they gave ground by inches.

Wang Cheol saw it and set stones and firebombs flying.

"Throw wide of them! Don't hit our own!"

To keep the eleven safe, the firebombs were hurled as far as arms could send them, and the stones were saved for the men carrying weapons. What the underboss had written off as spent came back at him, and the certainty went out of his face. Worse, Ma-ryang was walking out of the flames with the iron pole in motion, closing the distance step by step. It was the asura hell itself — that realm where the slaughter does not end.

"Aaaagh!"

"Agh!"

Screams tore loose from thugs whose arms had snapped and whose shoulders had been wrenched from their sockets. Even an underboss worn smooth by every fight on the Busan streets went white and empty behind the eyes.

In the end the thugs, their nerve crushed under Ma-ryang's counterstroke, fell back once more.

When they had drawn off, he lowered the pole and turned a hard stare on the underboss, who had been watching all the while. Set against the fire, he looked like a tiger that had already chosen its prey. The underboss's knees went soft.

"What are you standing there for? Throw the tiles!"

They flung every roof tile they had left. Ma-ryang ticked the incoming tiles off the iron pole — tok, tok — and stepped backward. Then the band that had appeared like goblins slid through the narrow gaps between the vehicles and vanished, and he could almost believe he had dreamed the whole of it.

"Ah, what are those bastards? What did they even used to do?"

Rattled clean through, the underboss gathered ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his men and took a spell to put them back in order. The Cheongsan convoy rested as well.

The crew sat leaning against the trucks and watched Ma-ryang with something close to awe. The fight had heated him. He had stripped to the waist and sat on a crate, and sweat lifted off that beast of a body like steam. They had respected him on ordinary days. Today there was no one alive they would rather have trusted. Coming on through the fire with the iron pole swinging, never once checking his stride — he had looked like a general out of an old tale.

Wang Cheol brought him water and spoke.

"Brother, I don't think I can run."

"Run?"

Ma-ryang looked up at him, sweat running down his face.

"A while back I asked the president what he'd do if I took five years' wages in a lump and bolted. He said he'd send you and Director Shim to drag me back."

"He said that, did he."

Ma-ryang let out a short breath of a laugh and drank a basin filled to the brim, gulp after gulp.

"Haa...... now that's refreshing."

He rose, brushing himself off, and said,

"Let's get ready again. Hour and a half still left."

The Cheongsan convoy dressed its ranks and made ready to fight once more. Three waves held off, they braced for a fourth.

Ten minutes later the thugs came again, and a vicious exchange of attack and defense followed. The fourth wave broke as well. They were waiting on the fifth when a siren rose in the distance.

Convoy and thugs alike fixed on the sound. Word that a major fight had broken out at Seomyeon Rotary had pulled police in from ten substations round about. The crew brightened at the sirens. Ma-ryang did not. He thought only one thing.

So the police are here. That means we can drag this out.

The sirens cut off. A ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠man wearing a superintendent's insignia stepped down from a jeep and walked toward the thugs. He was commander of the mobile unit at Busan Police Station. An urgent report had hauled him out of sleep at home, and he had come to take command on the ground.

"What's going on here?"

The underboss, seeing him, bowed deep.

"Aigo, Chief. Been a long time."

The commander took the greeting and didn't, all at once.

"And what is all this? Hm?"

"Ah, well, it's......"

The underboss laid out the situation, and the commander said,

"That so? Those people are from out of town, you say?"

"Yes, sir. That's right."

Outsiders. With that one word, there was nothing left to discuss.

"Looks like somebody set a fire in the rotary, too. That your doing?"

"Eoyu, Chief, you'll get a man killed talking like that. Play with fire in Busan these days and you're finished."

From 1953 through the end of 1954, great fires had broken out one after another, and the whole of Busan had come within a breath of burning away. The police handled a flame the way they handled a crime.

"All right. I'm going in, so open me a path."

At the commander's demand, the thugs cleared a way. Megaphone in hand — a loudhailer shaped like a funnel — he walked into the rotary and shouted toward the Cheongsan trucks locked in their seven-sided wagon circle.

"I'm Kim Won-taek, commander of the Busan Police Station mobile unit! Let me see a face!"

Watching the officer come on at a steady tread, Ma-ryang stepped out. Face to face with him, Kim Won-taek felt the size of the man press on him, just a little.

"You. What are you people, exactly?"

"We haul beer. We were to deliver it to the 55th Quartermaster Depot, but those fellows blocked the road and jumped us. It came to this."

"And where from?"

"Seoul."

Kim Won-taek nodded and pointed at a cart burned black.

"This your work?"

"Couldn't be helped."

"So you did set the fire. I put my nose to it — gasoline, I'd say. Mind if I look farther in?"

"Come ahead."

Ma-ryang led him through between truck and bus. In the inner ground ringed by buses and trucks, some two hundred firebombs stood in their rows, and the commander gave a start.

"Hey! You made these on purpose and came ready, didn't you?"

"No. The thugs tried to take the beer, so we dumped it and filled the bottles with fuel out of the vehicles."

The commander sniffed. Gasoline, and riding over it a thick reek of beer. They had emptied some twelve hundred bottles. Of course the place smelled of it. He nodded.

"Well, now. You parted with an awful lot of expensive beer."

The crew caught on that the policeman was looking them over and counting heads, man by man, and they did not like it. Wang Cheol stepped up to Kim Won-taek.

"Commander, open the road so we can move the beer. Where under heaven is there a country that lets thugs stop military freight?"

Kim Won-taek looked elsewhere and played the fool.

"And how would I know whether the beer here is a proper army shipment or something slipped out of the military? I don't even know that the people outside are thugs."

"What...?"

Wang Cheol could not believe his ears. He pushed the papers issued by the Bupyeong depot in front of the man's face.

"Look at this. Papers the U.S. Army issued, for hauling this from Bupyeong to Busan."

"I don't know English, so I really couldn't say......"

The commander went on pretending ignorance.

"You aren't in debt to those people outside, are you? Or tied up with them over a woman......"

A debt, maybe. But a love affair?

Wang Cheol was so staggered his mouth would not close. Ma-ryang saw it and smiled a thin, bitter smile. He had expected the police to buy them time. He had not expected them to take a side.

The officer looked through the truck beds as well, then dusted his hands together as if the matter were finished.

"I'm confiscating the bricks and the firebombs. Every one of them. Refuse to cooperate and I'll arrest you here and now. Understand that."

"Hold on. Commander, what are you saying?"

When Wang Cheol protested, Ma-ryang checked him.

"Do as you please."

"Then the police may step inside this bus?"

"That, you may not."

At the flat refusal, the commander nodded. He went back out, gathered his officers, and had the bricks and firebombs hauled away. To stretch every minute, Ma-ryang passed the firebombs out through the gaps between truck and bus, one bottle at a time.

When the collecting was done, the commander sidled up to the underboss and dropped his voice.

"Have it finished before the sun's up. Fifty men inside. No stones. No firebombs."

"Thank you, Chief. I'll see you're looked after this afternoon."

"Ahem. We'll keep the traffic in hand out here. You hurry."

"As if I'd do otherwise. Haha."

The police pulled back, and the thugs' spirits climbed. The weapons the convoy had fought with were gone. Now was the time to show what they really were.

The underboss gave the signal, and two hundred thugs charged as one.

"Waaaaah!"

Clubs and iron pipes in their hands, they came from every direction at once, and up on the trucks and buses the crew began to whip bamboo through the air. The leafed bamboo Ma-ryang had bought in Gunsan stung the face of every thug trying to climb. They could not get their eyes open. The sharp leaves took their wits apart. Faces were split and eyes were jabbed, one man after another.

A few who recovered tried to catch, in their hands, the branches swinging down from above. No use. The branches had been oiled beforehand, and no hand could hold them.

Watching it, Ma-ryang's mind went back, just for a moment, to the Second Sino-Japanese War. Bamboo had been worth something in the close fighting against the Japanese. Facing soldiers with bayonets fixed, he had swung leafed bamboo more than once and broken the point of their charge. He pulled himself out of the memory that had risen unbidden and shouted.

"Strike down!"

While the thugs flailed, the convoy men began bringing ordinary poles down on the ones clinging beneath the buses.

Thud. Thud.

"Uwaaah!"

"Ah! Ah!"

A sweeping with bamboo, then a thrashing with poles, and wails broke out on every side. The thugs had meant to cling to the buses and rock them. That plan, too, had come to nothing.

Ma-ryang looked at his watch.

6:55.

Forty minutes until the sun. They had only to hold a little longer. He waited for Ki-jo. Ki-jo had promised he would come around the time the sun rose.