Line of Fire

by W. E. B Griffin

  "What's that?" Ernie asked.

  "There was a story in the Times that Fleming Pickering has gone into The Marines. As a general."

  "I thought he was a captain in the Navy," Ernie said, looking at McCoy for an explanation.

  "I know," McCoy said. "He called me today."

  "I'll be goddamned, Ernest Sage thought. He didn't call me. I haven't heard from the sonofabitch since the war started, and we have been friends since before our kids were born. And if he called Ken McCoy, that means he called him at Ernie's apartment, which means he knows they're living together. Well, why the hell should that surprise me? Flem arranged for that boat they were shacked up in at the San Diego Yacht Club. Goddamn him for that, too.

  It had been a longtime, pleasant, and not entirely unreasonable fantasy on the part of Mr. and Mrs.

  Ernest Sage and Captain and Mrs. Fleming Pickering (the ladies had been roommates at college) that one day Ernestine Sage and Malcolm S. Pickering would find themselves impaled on Cupid's arrow, marry, and make them all happy grandparents.

  Instead, Pick Pickering joined the Marines, made a buddy out of Ken McCoy when they were in Officer Candidate School, and took him to New York on a short leave. Pick moved into one of the suites in the Foster Park and passed word around New York that he was in town and having a nonstop party over the weekend. Ernie Sage went to the party and bumped into Ken McCoy. End of longtime, pleasant, and not entirely unreasonable fantasy. Start of unending nightmare. As soon as Ernie saw Ken, she knew he was the man in her life. With that as a given, there was absolutely no reason not to go to bed with him four hours after they met.

  "I waited, Daddy," Ernie said. "Until I was sure. I'm sure.

  If it wasn't for my goddamned father, Ernest Sage often thought, I could at least threaten to cut her off without a dime.

  When Ernie was four, Grandfather Sage set up a trust fund for the adorable little tyke, funding it with 5

  percent of his shares (giving her 2.5 percent of the total) of American Personal Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

  Control of this trust was to be passed to her on her graduation from college, her marriage, or on attaining her twenty-fifth year, whichever occurred first.

  Ernie had graduated Summa Cum Laude from college at twenty.

  "Oh?" Ernest Sage asked.

  "What did he want?"

  "Well... I'm sorry about this. It's orders. I can't go to Bernardsville with you this weekend."

  "Why not?"

  "I've got to go to Philadelphia and then to Parris Island."

  "You're on leave, hospital recuperative leave," Ernie said angrily.

  "You're supposed to have thirty days!"

  "Come on, baby, I was only dinged," McCoy said.

  Yeah, Ernest Sage thought, and if whatever it was that dinged you in the forehead had dinged you an inch deeper, you'd be dead They don't hand out Purple Hearts for dings.

  "What are you going to do in Philadelphia?" Ernie asked.

  She doesn't argue with him. She'll argue with her mother and me till the cows come home. He tells her something and that's it.

  "A guy's in the hospital there I have to see," McCoy began, then interrupted himself. "You know him, baby, as a matter of fact. Remember that kid who we put up on the boat? Moore?

  On his way to Australia?"

  "Yes," Ernie said, remembering. "What's he doing in Philadelphia? In the hospital in Philadelphia?"

  "He got hurt on Guadalcanal," McCoy said.

  "Oh, God!" Ernie said. "Was he badly hurt?"

  "Bad enough to get sent home."

  "I thought he was going to Australia!" Ernie said, making it an accusation.

  "Until this morning I thought he was in Australia," McCoy said.

  "Why are they sending you to see him?"

  "They're going to commission him," McCoy said. "Pickering was going there to swear him in, but it turns out he has an infection and they won't let him travel."

  "An infection?" Ernest Sage asked.

  McCoy nodded. "He says it's not serious, but-"

  "Patricia told your mother," Sage said to Ernie, "that Flem just walked out of the hospital in California.

  Before he was discharged, I mean. He's a damned fool."

  "Daddy!"

  "Well, he is," Sage insisted, and then thought of something else. "What do you have to do with him, Ken?"

  "He's now my boss," Ken said.

  "I still don't understand why you have to go to Philadelphia," Ernie said.

  "I told you. Moore's getting commissioned. I'm going to swear him in, take care of the paperwork."

  "I want to go," Ernie said.

  McCoy considered that a moment.

  "If he's in the hospital, I want to see him," Ernie went on.

  "From Philadelphia, I'm going to Parris Island," McCoy said.

  "For how long?"

  "Couple of days. I'm driving."

  "Any reason I can't go?"

  "Yes, there is."

  "Well, I can at least go to Philadelphia."

  "All I'm going to do is swear him in, handle the paperwork, and then head for Parris Island."

  "Today's Friday. Tomorrow's Saturday. We could have all day in Philadelphia, and then you could drive to Parris Island on Sunday," Ernie said reasonably.

  He shrugged, giving in.

  "Your mother will be disappointed," Ernest Sage said. "And where would you stay in Philadelphia?"

  "I don't know. The Warwick, the Bellvue-Stratford..

  "You're not married, you can't stay in a hotel together," Ernest Sage blurted.

  "Talk to Ken about us not being married," Ernie said. "I'm not the one being difficult on that subject."

  "Jesus, baby! We've been over that already!"

  "What we're going to do, Daddy, is spend the night in Bernardsville and drive to Philadelphia in the morning. Why don't you call Mother and ask her to meet us somewhere for dinner?

  The Brook, maybe, or Baltusrol?" There is absolutely nothing I can do but smile and agree, Ernest Sage decided. If I raise any further objections, she won't go to Bernardsville at all.

  "Baltusrol," he said. "They do a very nice English grill on Friday nights."

  He raised his hand, caught the headwaiter's attention, and put his balled fist to his ear, miming his need for a telephone.

  As he waited for the telephone, he had a pleasant thought: What did he say? That Fleming Pickering is now his boss? Jesus, maybe they'll give him a desk job. But an unpleasant thought immediately replaced it: Bullshit! Flem Pickering was supposed to be working for the Secretary of the Navy, which any reasonable person would think meant shuffling paper in Washington, and the next thing we hear is that he got all shot up and earned the Silver Star, taking command of some goddamn destroyer when the captain was killed.

  He looked at his daughter. She was feeding Ken McCoy a bacon-wrapped oyster. If he'd been an angel, her look couldn't have been more transfixed.

  All I want for you, kitten, is your happiness.

  "Elaine," he said a minute later to the telephone, "we're in Jack and Charley's, and what Ernie wants us to do is have supper at Baltusrol.

  "Yes, I know you've made plans for the weekend, but something has come up.

  "Elaine, for Christ's sake, just get in the goddamn car and go to Baltusrol. We'll see you there in an hour."

  "You want an oyster, Daddy?" `Yes, thank you, kitten."

  Chapter Six

  [One]

  HENDERSON FIELD

  GUADALCANAL, SOLOMON ISLANDS

  1545 HOURS 5 SEPTEMBER 1942

  Both Gunnery Sergeant Ernest W. Zimmerman and Sergeant Thomas McCoy were considerably relieved when the R4D made contact again with the earth's surface. It was Gunny Zimmerman's third and Sergeant McCoy's second flight in a heavier-than-air vehicle. Though these previous experiences had a happy outcome (they survived them), that success did not relieve their current anxieties. In fact, if they'd had a say in the matter, both would have traveled by ship from Ha
waii to wherever The Corps was sending them.

  They were not given a choice. Their orders directed them to proceed by the most expeditious means, including air; and a AAA priority had been authorized.

  They flew from Pearl Harbor to Espiritu Santo aboard a Martin PBM-3R Mariner, the unarmed transport version of the amphibious, twin-engine patrol bomber. Flight in the Mariner was bad enough, both of them privately considered during long flight from Pearl, but if something went wrong with an amphibian like that-should the engines stop, for example-at least it could land on the water and float around until somebody came to help them.

  The flight from Espiritu Santo in the R4D was something else. It was a land plane. If they went down in the ocean it would sink, very likely before they could inflate the rubber rafts crated near the rear door.

  During the flight they were warm, though not uncomfortably so. But by the time the R4D completed its landing roll and taxied to the parking ramp, they were covered with sweat, and wet patches were under their arms and down the backs of their utility jackets.

  The crew chief came down the fuselage past the crates of supplies lashed to the floor and the bags of mail scattered around, and pushed open the door.

  By the time Zimmerman and McCoy stood up, a truck was backed up to the door. That meant they had to climb onto the bed of the truck before they could get to the ground. The Marine labor detail on the truck bed unloading the cargo were mostly bare-chested, wearing only utility trousers and boondockers.

  They were tanned and sweaty.

  The sergeant in charge of the detail told Zimmerman where he could find the office of MAG-21. They put their seabags onto their shoulders and started to walk across the field.

  The office turned out to be two connected eight-man squad tents, with their sides rolled up. The tents were surrounded by a wall of sandbags.

  A corporal sat on a folding chair at a folding desk, pecking away with two fingers on a Royal portable typewriter. When Zimmerman walked into the tent, he saw another kid, bare chested, asleep on a cot.

  "Can I help you, Gunny?" the corporal asked.

  `Reporting in," Zimmerman said, and handed over their orders. The corporal read the orders and then looked at Zimmerman.

  "Sergeant Oblensky around?" Zimmerman asked.

  The corporal ignored him.

  "Lieutenant?" the corporal called.

  The blond-headed kid on the cot raised himself on his elbows, shook his head, and then looked around the tent, finally sing his eyes on Zimmerman.

  "Do something for you, Gunny?" he asked.

  Jesus, he's an officer. He don't look old enough to have hair on his balls.

  "Zimmerman, Sir. Gunnery Sergeant Ernest W. Reporting in with one man."

  "My name is Dunn," the kid said. "I'm the OD. Welcome aboard. Now, where the hell did you come from?" He looked at the corporal. "Those the orders?"

  "Yes, Sir," the corporal said and handed them to him.

  He read them and then looked up. "MacNeil," he asked, where's the skipper?"

  "On the flight line, Sir. Him and the exec, both."

  "See if you can find him," Dunn ordered. "Or the exec. One or the other."

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  "I don't understand your orders," Dunn said to Zimmerman. "A transfer from the 2nd Raider Battalion to an air group seems odd, even in The Marine Corps."

  "Yes, Sir," Zimmerman agreed.

  Lieutenant Colonel Clyde W. Dawkins, a tall, thin, sharp featured man in his thirties, appeared a few minutes later, trailed by Captain Charles M. Galloway. Both were wearing sweat-darkened cotton flying suits. Dawkins also wore a fore-and-aft cap and a Smith & Wesson.38 Special revolver in a shoulder holster, while Galloway had on a utility cap that looked three sizes too small for him, and a.45 Colt automatic hung from a web pistol belt.

  Zimmerman and McCoy popped to attention. Dawkins looked at them and smiled.

  Stand at ease, Gunny," he said, and then asked Dunn.

  "Where's MacNeil?"

  ""I sent him to look for you, Sir. These two just reported in." He handed Dawkins the orders.

  Dawkins read them and made very much the same observation Dunn had: "I don't understand this. A transfer from the 2nd Raider Battalion to the 21st MAG?" He handed the orders to Galloway and looked quizzically at Zimmerman.

  "It wasn't my idea, Colonel," Sergeant McCoy volunteered.

  "I didn't ask to come to no fucking air group!"

  "Shut your mouth!" Zimmerman said as Galloway opened his mouth to offer a similar suggestion.

  Colonel Dawkins coughed.

  "We've met, haven't we, Gunny?" Galloway said to Zimmerman.

  "Yes, Sir. I went down to fix your Brownings when you was at Ewa."

  "I thought that was you," Galloway said. "Oblensky at work, Colonel."

  "Oh?"

  "The gunny was good enough, in exchange for a portable generator, to make our Brownings work. I remember Oblensky saying at the time, `We need him more than the Raiders do."' "Oh," Dawkins said.

  "And was Sergeant Oblensky right, would you say, Captain Galloway?"

  "I think Sergeant Oblensky has managed to convince somebody that we need him, both of them, more than the Raiders, Sir."

  "Persuasive fellow, Sergeant Oblensky," Dawkins said. "I wondered what happened to that generator.

  One moment it was there, and the next, it had vanished into thin air."

  "On the other hand, Colonel, the gunny here, and his right hand man, I guess, did make those machine guns work."

  "That's a Jesuitical argument, Captain, that the end justifies the means," Dawkins said, trying without much success to keep a smile off his face. He turned to Sergeant McCoy. "Did I hear you say, Sergeant, that if things were left up to you, you would not be here in the fucking air group?" `No, Sir. I mean, I didn't ask for this, Sir." Well, we certainly don't want anyone in our fucking air group who doesn't want to be in our fucking air group, do we, Captain Galloway?"

  "No, Sir."

  "Since Sergeant Oblensky, Captain Galloway, is your man, I will leave the resolution of this situation in your very capable hands."

  "Aye, aye, Sir," Galloway said.

  "Might I suggest, however, that since the sergeant doesn't want to be in our fucking air group, he might be happier in the 1st Raider Battalion. Only the other day, Colonel Edson happened to mention in passing that he had certain personnel problems."

  "That thought ran through my mind, Sir," Captain Galloway said.

  "How about that, Sergeant?" Colonel Dawkins asked solicitously. "How you would like to go to the Raider Battalion here on Guadalcanal? The Fucking First, as they are fondly known."

  "I'd like that fine, Sir," Sergeant McCoy said happily. "I'm a fucking Raider." Colonel Dawkins was suddenly struck with another coughing fit. Motioning for Lieutenant Dunn to follow him, he quickly left the tent; and a moment later they were followed by Captain Galloway, similarly afflicted.

  Colonel Dawkins was first to regain control.

  "'I didn't ask to come to no fucking air group,"' he accurately mimicked Sergeant McCoy's indignant tone, "'I'm a fucking Raider."' That triggered additional laughter. Then there was just time for the three officers to hear, inside the tent, Sergeant Zimmerman's angry voice... "When I tell you to shut your fucking mouth, asshole, you shut your fucking mouth."... when another sound, the growling of a siren, filled the air.

  All three of them were still smiling, however, when they ran to the revetments and strapped themselves into their Wildcats.

  [Two]

  ROYAL AUSTRALIAN NAVY COASTWATCHER ESTABLISHMENT

  TOWNSVILLE, QUEENSLAND

  6 SEPTEMBER 1942 Staff

  Sergeant Allan Richardson, USMC, senior staff noncommissioned officer of USMC Special Detachment 14, did not at first recognize the single deplaning passenger of the U.S. Navy R4D as a field grade officer of the USMC.

  Although Sergeant Richardson was himself grossly out of the prescribed uniform-he was wearing khaki tr
ousers, an open-necked woolen shirt, a Royal Australian Navy duffel coat, and a battered USMC

  campaign hat-he had been conditioned by nine years in the prewar Corps to expect Marine officers, especially field-grade Marine officers, to look like officers.

  The character who stepped off the airplane was wearing soiled and torn utilities, boondockers, no cover, and he was carrying what looked to Richardson's experienced eye like a U.S. Navy Medical Corps insulated container for fresh human blood. A web belt hung cowboy-style around his waist, and two ammunition pouches and a.45 in a leather holster were suspended from it.

  Richardson stared at the insulated containers until he was positive-red crosses in white squares were still visible under a thin coat of green paint-that the containers had almost certainly been stolen. By then the character was almost at Richardson's Studebaker President automobile. When Richardson looked at him, he saw for the first time that not only was USMC stenciled on the breast of the filthy utilities, but that a major's golden oakleaf was pinned to each collar point.

  At that point Richardson did what all his time in the prewar Corps had conditioned him to do: He quickly rose from behind the wheel, came to attention, and saluted crisply.

  "Good afternoon, Sir!"

  "Thank Christ, a Marine," Major Jake Dillon, USMCR said with a vague gesture in the direction of his forehead that could only kindly be called a return of Sergeant Richardson's salute.

  Dillon, a muscular, trim, tanned man in his middle thirties, opened the rear door of the Studebaker, carefully placed the ex-fresh human blood container on the seat, and closed the door.

  "How may I help the Major, Sir?" Richardson asked.

  "I'm here to see Major Banning," Dillon said as he walked around to the passenger side of the car and got in.

  "Who, Sir?" Richardson had heard Dillon clearly. Indeed, Major Ed Banning himself was the one who sent him to the airport when they heard the R4D overhead. But as a general operating principle, the personnel of USMC Special Detachment 14 denied any knowledge of the detachment or its personnel.

  "It's all right, Sergeant. My name is Dillon. I'm a friend of Major Banning's." When he detected a certain hesitancy on Sergeant Richardson's part, Dillon added: "For Christ's sake, do I look like a Japanese spy?"