Line of Fire

by W. E. B Griffin

  "Right in front of the air-conditioning duct, if you please," Pickering said.

  "You'll catch cold," Fowler said.

  Pickering ignored him. He took off his cap, tossed it onto a couch, then unbuttoned and removed his shirt and dropped it onto the floor. In a moment his khaki trousers followed.

  Fowler looked at him with mingled resignation and alarm.

  Pickering suddenly marched into one of the bedrooms and came back a moment later with a sheet he had obviously torn from the bed. He started to drape it over the upholstered chair.

  Fowler, seeing what he wanted to do, snatched it from him and arranged it more neatly.

  Pickering collapsed into the chair.

  "Anything else I can get you, Flem? Are you in pain?"

  "How about a footstool and a pillow?" Pickering asked.

  "And of course the iced orange juice with gin." Fowler delivered the footstool and the pillow, which Pickering placed on the arm of the chair, and then he lowered his encasted arm onto it.

  "You look like hell, You're as gray... as a battleship."

  "I was feeling fine until they opened the door of the airplane and that goddamned humidity swept in like a tidal wave," he said. "I honest to God think the humidity is worse in Washington than it is in Borneo. Or Hanoi."

  "You really want a drink?"

  "It will make the gray go away, trust me." Fowler shook his head and then walked into the kitchen, returning with a bowl of ice and a silver pitcher of orange juice.

  He went to a bar against the wall, put ice and orange juice in a large glass, and picked up a quart bottle of Gilbey's gin.

  "I don't feel comfortable giving you this gin."

  "Please don't make me walk over there and do it myself." Fowler shrugged and splashed gin into the glass. He stirred it with a glass stick and then walked to Pickering and handed it to him.

  "I knew that sooner or later you would turn me into a criminal," Fowler said.

  "Meaning what?" Pickering asked, and then took several deep swallows of the drink.

  "Harboring and assisting a deserter is a felony."

  "Don't be absurd. All I did was leave the hospital. My orders permit me to go when and where I please."

  "I don't think that includes this. The hospital didn't plan to release you for at least another two weeks."

  "Yeah, they told me."

  "Does Patricia know about it?"

  "We stopped for fuel at Saint Louis. I called her from there."

  "And what did she say?"

  "She was unkind," Pickering said.

  "Are you going to tell me what this is all about?"

  "Well, I was getting bored in the hospital."

  "That's not it, Flem."

  "I want out of the Navy. I told Frank that when I saw him in California. When nothing happened, I tried to call him. But I can't get the sonofabitch on the telephone." Frank Knox was Secretary of the Navy.

  "Did he tell you he'd let you do that?"

  "He said we would talk about it when I got out of the hospital. I am now out of the hospital."

  "I don't think it's going to happen. You were commissioned for the duration plus six months. What makes you think the Navy will let you out?"

  "The Navy does what Frank tells it to. That's why they call him `Mr. Secretary."

  "What do you plan to do, enlist in The Marines?"

  "Come on, Richmond."

  "Well, what?"

  "Go back to running the company. That way I could make a bona fide contribution to the war."

  "Why do I think I'm not getting the truth?" Pickering started to get out of the chair.

  "What are you doing?"

  "I need another of these," Pickering said, holding up his glass.

  Fowler was surprised, and concerned, to see that he had emptied it.

  "I don't think so," Fowler said.

  "Richmond, for Christ's sake. I'm a big boy."

  "Oh, God. Stay where you are. I'll get it for you." Making the second drink just about exhausted the orange juice. Fowler was about to call down for a fresh pitcher when Pickering said, "I want to see Pick before he goes over there." That, Fowler decided, sounds like the truth He carried the glass to Pickering and handed it to him.

  "Well?"

  "Thank you."

  "That's not what I mean. You wouldn't let Knox send Pick out to the hospital. For God's sake, he doesn't even know you're home. Or that you've been wounded."

  "It would upset him."

  "That's what sons are for, to be upset when their fathers are wounded."

  "The odds are strongly against Pick coming through this war."

  "Every father feels that way, Flem. The truth is that most people survive a war. I don't know what the percentage is, but I would bet that his odds are nine to one, maybe ninety-nine to one, to make it." "Most fathers haven't been where I have been, and seen what I have seen.

  And most sons are not Marine fighter pilots.

  Jesus, do you think I like facing this?"

  "I just think you're overstating the situation," Fowler said, a little lamely.

  "Just before the Gregory was hit, her captain told me what a fine airplane the F4F is. It's probably the last thing he ever said; he was dead a minute later. He was trying to do what you're trying to do, make the Daddy feel a little better. It didn't work then and it's not working now. But I appreciate the thought."

  "Goddamn it, Flem, I'm calling it like I see it."

  "So am I, goddamn it, and I'm calling it how I see it, not how I would like it to be."

  "Well, I think you're wrong," Pickering shrugged and took another swallow of the orange juice and gin,

  "Have I still got some uniforms here?"

  "No, I gave them to the Salvation Army. Of course you do."

  "How about having the house tailor sent up here? I need to have the sleeves cut out of some shirts."

  "Sure."

  "I mean now, Richmond."

  "You're leaving? You just got here."

  "I want to go see Frank. To do that, I'll need something more presentable than what I walked in here wearing."

  "Seeing Frank can wait until tomorrow. For that matter, I'll call him and ask him to come here."

  "Call downstairs for the tailor. Do it my way."

  "Yes, Sir, Captain," Fowler said. He walked to a table and started to pick up the telephone. Instead he picked up a copy of The Washington Star and carried it back to Pickering.

  "Here's the paper," he said, unfolding it for him and laying it in his lap.

  There were two major headlines:

  BATTLE RAGES ON GUADALCANAL WILLKIE HEADS OVERSEAS

  A photo of a Consolidated B-24 four-engine bomber converted to a long-range transport was over the caption,

  Republican Party head Wendell Willkie will travel in this Army Air Corps transport on his around-the-world trip as personal representative of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He will visit England, North Africa, China and the Soviet Union.

  "There are not enough bombers to send to the Pacific," Pickering said bitterly. "But there are enough to give one to a goddamn politician to go all over and get in the goddamned way." Fowler ignored him.

  "Are you hungry, Fleming? Have you eaten?"

  "No, and no. But I suppose I'd better have something. How about having them send up steak and eggs?"

  Fowler nodded picked up the telephone. He called the concierge and asked him to send up the tailor, and then called room service and ordered steak and eggs for Pickering. After a moment's indecision he added, "And send two pitchers of orange juice, too, please." He walked back to Pickering, thinking he could turn the pages of the Star for him. Pickering had fallen asleep. His head sagged forward onto his chest. His face was still gray.

  "Christ, Flem," Fowler said softly. He walked into the bedroom and came back with a light blanket, which he draped over him, and then he went to the air conditioner and directed its flow away from Pickering.

  Then he walked to his own
bedroom, in a far corner of the apartment, and closed the door. He took a small address book from the bedside table, found the number he was looking for, d picked up the telephone.

  "Office of the Secretary of the Navy, Chief Daniels speaking."

  "This is Senator Fowler. May I speak to Mr. Knox, please?"

  "One moment, please, Senator. I'll see if he's available."

  "Richmond?"

  "He's here, Frank."

  "Let me speak with him."

  "He's asleep. More accurately, he passed out in an armchair in my sitting room."

  "How is he?"

  "He looks like hell."

  "Shall I send a doctor over there?"

  "I don't think that's quite necessary. And there's one in the hotel if it should be."

  "Do you have any idea what this is all about? What's he up to?"

  "Two things. Apparently, you told him you would discuss his getting out of the Navy when he got out of the hospital. He says he is now out of the hospital."

  "I'd hoped he would forget that."

  "He says he wants to go back to running Pacific & Far East Shipping so that he can make a bona fide contribution to the war effort."

  "I wonder what he thinks he's been doing so far?" Secretary Knox asked, and then went on, without waiting for a reply.

  "There are a number of reasons that's not possible. I suppose I should have told him that when I saw him.

  But he was a sick man..."

  "He's still a sick man. I told him, for what it's worth, that I didn't think you'd let him out."

  "It's now out of my hands, if you take my meaning." Fowler took his meaning. There was only one man in Washington who could override Frank Knox's decisions as Secretary of the Navy. He was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

  "You told him?"

  "He's being Machiavellian again. He has his own plans for Pickering."

  Fowler waited for Knox to elaborate. He did not.

  "He is also very anxious to see his son," Fowler said. "His idea is to see you, get out of the Navy, and then go to Florida."

  "I offered to have the boy flown to San Diego!"

  "I think he wants to see him alone. He's managed to convince himself that the boy will not come through the war."

  "He's not the only father who feels that way. You heard what our mutual friend's son has been up to?"

  That was an unmistakable reference to James Roosevelt, a Marine Corps Captain. Captain Roosevelt had recently participated in the raid on Makin Island.

  The Marine Corps had somewhat reluctantly formed the 1st and 2nd Raider Battalions. They were the President's answer to the British Commandos. The 1st was one of the units participating in the Guadalcanal operation. At about the same time, the son of the President of the United States was paddling ashore from a submarine with elements of the 2nd Raiders to attack Japanese forces on Makin Island.

  "I also heard the Germans have taken Stalin's son prisoner.

  Do you think our mutual friend-make that àcquaintance' has considered the ramifications of that?"

  "I have brought it to his attention," Knox said, then went on:

  "Technically, I suppose you know, Fleming Pickering is AWOL."

  "I don't think you could make the charge stick. And he has a lot of friends in high places."

  "And doesn't he know it?" Knox said, and then went on, again without waiting for a response: "I'm on my way to the White House. I'll get back to you, Richmond. Keep him there.

  I don't care how, keep him there."

  "I'll do what I can," Fowler said, and hung up.

  [One]

  HEADQUARTERS,

  2ND RAIDER BATTALION

  CAMP CATLIN, TERRITORY OF HAWAII

  31 AUGUST 1942

  When Gunnery Sergeant Ernest W. Zimmerman, USMC, Company A, 2nd Raider Battalion, was summoned to battalion headquarters, he suspected it had something to do with Sergeant Thomas Michael McCoy, USMCR.

  Zimmerman was stocky, round-faced and muscular. And he'd been in The Corps almost exactly seven years, having enlisted as soon as possible after his seventeenth birthday. He'd celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday a week before aboard the submarine USS Nautilus on the way home to Pearl Harbor from the raid on Makin Island. At the time he was nursing a minor, though painful, mortar shrapnel wound in his left buttock.

  Sergeant McCoy-four inches taller and forty-two pounds heavier than Gunny Zimmerman-had celebrated his twentyfirst birthday the previous January in San Diego, California.

  He was then in transit, en route to the Portsmouth U.S. Naval Prison in the status of a general prisoner.

  There was little question at his court-martial at Pearl Harbor that he had in fact committed the offense of

  "assault upon the person of a commissioned officer in the execution of his office by striking him with his fists upon the face and other parts of the body." He had also been fairly charged with doing more or less the same thing to a petty officer of the U.S. Navy in the execution of his office of Shore Patrolman, both offenses having taken place while PFC McCoy was absent without leave from his assignment to the 1st Defense Battalion, Marine Barracks, Pearl Harbor.

  The Marine Corps frowns on such activity. Thus PFC McCoy was sentenced to be dishonorably discharged from the Naval Service and to be confined at hard labor for a period of five to ten years.

  However, very likely because it was conducted during the immediate post-Pearl Harbor-bombing period when things were quite hectic, the court-martial failed to offer the accused certain procedural aspects of the fair trial required by Rules for the Governance of the Naval Service.

  These errors of omission came to light while the Record of Trial was being reviewed by the legal advisers to the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet. It was therefore ordered that the findings and the sentences in the case be set aside.

  Another trial was impossible, not only because of the possibility of double jeopardy, but also because the witnesses were by then scattered all over the Pacific.

  PFC McCoy was released from the San Diego brig an assigned to the 2nd Raider Battalion, then forming at Camp Elliott just outside San Diego.

  There PFC McCoy met Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman. He almost immediately posed a number of disciplinary problems for Gunny Zimmerman. For instance, while he had apparently learned his lesson about striking those superior to him in the military hierarchy, on two occasions he severely beat up fellow PFCs with whom he had differences of opinion.

  But what really annoyed Gunny Zimmerman about PFC McCoy's behavior was that it was seriously embarrassing to a Marine officer. Normally, this would not have bothered Gunny Zimmerman-indeed, under other circumstances, he might have found it amusing-but this particular officer was Second Lieutenant Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, PFC McCoy's three-year-older brother. Lieutenant McCoy and Gunny Zimmerman had been friends before the war, when Zimmerman had been a buck sergeant and McCoy a corporal with the 4th Marines in Shanghai.

  There were very few people in The Corps who enjoyed Ernie Zimmerman's absolute trust and admiration, and Lieutenant "Killer" McCoy was at the head of that short list.

  Since all other means of instilling in PFC McCoy both proper discipline and the correct attitude had apparently failed, Zimmerman decided that it behooved him to rectify the situation himself.

  He accomplished this by going to the Camp Elliott slop chute, where he politely asked PFC McCoy if he could have a word with him. He led PFC McCoy to a remote area where they would not be seen. He then removed his jacket (and, symbolically, the chevrons of his rank) and suggested to PFC McCoy that if he thought he was so tough, why not have a go at him?

  When PFC McCoy was released from the dispensary four days later-having suffered numerous cuts, bruises, abrasions and the loss of three teeth: after a bad slip in the shower-he'd undergone a near miraculous change of attitude.

  The change was not temporary. Within three weeks, with a clear conscience, Gunny Zimmerman recommended PFC McCoy for squad leader. The job carried with
it promotion to corporal.

  And Corporal McCoy performed admirably on the Makin raid. Because of his size and strength, Zimmerman had given McCoy one of the Boys antitank rifles. The Boys, which looked like an oversize bolt-action rifle, fired a larger (.55 caliber) and even more powerful round than the Browning Heavy.50

  caliber machine gun.

  Although he could not prove it -there were other Boys rifles around-Zimmerman was convinced that McCoy was responsible for shooting up a Japanese four-engine Kawanishi seaplane so badly that it crashed while trying to take off from the Butaritari lagoon.

  Nothing heroic. Just good Marine marksmanship, accomplished when the target was shooting back.

  And when they were in the rubber boats trying to get off the beach back to the submarines disaster-McCoy really came through, really acted like a Marine. His had been one of the few boats to make it through the surf, almost certainly because of his enormous strength. Then, when they reached the sub, which was all that was expected of him, McCoy volunteered to go back to the beach for another load-despite his exhaustion.

  Again nothing heroic, but good enough to prove that McCoy had the stuff Marine sergeants should be made of. After they were back at Camp Catlin, Colonel Carlson asked him if anyone should get a promotion as a reward for behavior during the raid. The first name Zimmerman gave him was Corporal McCoy's.

  Word reached Gunny Zimmerman an hour before his summons to battalion headquarters that Sergeant McCoy had apparently strayed from the path of righteousness. He'd had a telephone call from another old China Marine, now working with the Shore Patrol Detachment in Honolulu. The Shore Patrol sergeant informed him that Sergeant McCoy apparently took offense at a remark made to him by a sergeant of the Army Air Corps. He expressed his displeasure by breaking the sergeant's nose. He then rejected the invitation of the Shore Patrol to accompany them peaceably.

  Zimmerman's old China Marine pal told him, not without a certain admiration, that it took six Shore Patrolmen to subdue and transport Sergeant McCoy to the confinement facility. He was now sleeping it off there.

  There seemed little doubt that before the day was over Sergeant McCoy would once again be Private McCoy. Unless, of course, Colonel Carlson wanted to make an example of him and bring him before a court-martial.