Combat- Parallel Lines

by William Peter Grasso

  It took a minute to find his voice again. Once it returned, he described his fear that the deportation would cause her to reject all things American, including him.

  When he was finished, it was her turn to be speechless.

  Not sure how to interpret her silence, he added, “Patchett said I was crazy, insisting you’d never leave me. Not after everything we’ve been through.”

  She smiled, laid her head on his shoulder, and replied, “Patchett was right, you bloody mug, you.”

  *****

  Over breakfast the next morning, Jillian asked, “Your leg, Jock…is it going to carry you through?”

  “Generals don’t have to walk very much, Jill. I think I can manage.”

  “And Patchett’s really going to stay with you?”

  “Yeah, he is, the crazy old coot,” Jock replied.

  “Good. I’ll feel better knowing he’s there. What about the other lads from our time together in the jungle? Is Theo still The Mad Greek?”

  “I’m afraid so. Five years as a civilian didn’t mellow the warrior in him one bit.”

  “And Lee Grossman…you say he’s expected to recover?”

  “That’s what we’re hearing. The war’s over for him…his arm’s going to need a lot of work, and he’ll carry the scars for the rest of his life. He’s in a military hospital here in Tokyo, you know. I thought maybe we’d visit him together.”

  “I’d very much like to do that, Jock. I need to thank the man who saved my husband’s life in person.” She took a sip of coffee and asked, “Is he really getting the Medal of Honor?”

  “Probably not. I’m sure it’ll get kicked down. The conventional wisdom lately seems to be that you’ve got to be dead to win it. I just hope it doesn’t get reduced any further than a Silver Star.”

  Their five-year-old daughter Jane, still in her pajamas, ambled to the table. Propping her arm against its polished teak as if holding a rifle in the firing position, she said, “Daddy, did you know that Mommy’s famous? Everyone in California calls her Annie Oakley.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard, sweetheart,” Jock replied. “Would you like some breakfast?”

  “No, thank you,” the child said. “I’ve got postcards to write.” Then she ran back to the bedroom.

  He asked Jillian, “Postcards? To who?”

  “Our little Janey is the belle of her nursery school, Jock. Several young lads have already asked for her hand in marriage.”

  “Oh, dear,” Jock said. “It’s starting already? Whoa…hang on. I think I get it. It’s her Australian accent…that’s the allure, right? You know how that works on American boys.”

  “It certainly worked on you, Jock Miles.”

  *****

  Later, as they strolled the busy streets of Tokyo, Jillian surveyed the hundreds of American servicemen wandering about. She asked, “Jock, are the Yanks going to win this bloody war?”

  “I think the point now is just not to lose it, Jill.”

  “How does an Army go about doing that?” she asked. “And how long will it take?”

  “I’m afraid those are questions only the politicians can answer,” he replied.

  “In other words, what they’re saying about die for a tie is true, then?”

  His pained silence was all the answer she needed.

  *****

  Sean Moon’s final destination for his two-week leave was Tokyo, but his first stop would be K-2 Airfield at Taegu. It didn’t take long to find his brother Tommy, who wasn’t flying that day; the rain and accompanying overcast in central Korea had kept most of the Air Force’s attack ships on the ground.

  When they first made phone contact, Sean told him, “I ain’t setting foot in no officers club, Half.”

  “Okay,” Tommy replied, “then how about I meet you at the NCO club? You know where that is, right?”

  “Where the hell do you think I’m calling from? Get your scrawny ass over here, sir.”

  Thirty minutes later, as they sat around a big wire spool pressed into service as a barroom table, Tommy said, “It’s funny, but nobody’s called me Half since I saw you at Sunchon back in November, Sean.”

  “Nobody in your squadron ever calls you that anymore?”

  “Nope.”

  With a devilish grin, Sean said, “Will you look at that? My little brother’s all grown up now.”

  Eager to change the subject, Tommy asked, “Did you hear about Mary Alice having another baby?”

  “Yeah, I did. What is it with our sisters, anyway? None of ’em are even thirty yet, but between the four of ’em they got like thirteen kids already, right?”

  “All boys, too,” Tommy added. “Pretty soon, they’ll have their own platoon.”

  Sean laughed out loud. “That’s pretty good, Half…The Moon Platoon. I like that.”

  “Except none of those kids are named Moon, Sean. Our sisters are all married, remember?”

  “Don’t be a wiseass, Major. You know what I mean.” He took a big gulp of his beer and asked, “So how long until you rotate home?”

  “I’m still twenty-eight missions shy of my hundred, Sean, so it’ll be a while.”

  “Then what?”

  “Not sure. But you’ll be the first to know.”

  Sean eyed his brother skeptically. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Half. You wanna pull jet duty back in Germany so you can be near Madame Bergerac again.”

  “Something wrong with that, Sean? I haven’t seen Sylvie in months.”

  “Nah…I just thought you might wanna stick around Korea and help us lowly ground-pounders grind those commie chinks to dust, that’s all. It’s gonna be a long, drawn-out fight now that them politicians have decided we’re just gonna hold the line at the Parallel and not pursue them bastards no more. Can you believe that shit? You got your enemy on the ropes but you’re not gonna pursue? Fuck me! Patton’s rolling over in his grave right now, I’ll bet.”

  “It may not take as long as you think, Sean. As long as we can keep the MIGs off us, the Air Force will keep bombing the hell out of every CCF supply line in North Korea. The chinks will be begging for peace before you know it.”

  “I ain’t so sure about that, Tommy. We keep hearing stories that every mile of track you blow up, every bridge you knock down…it’s all back in service within forty-eight hours. They must have about a million coolies on their repair crews.”

  “That’s why a fair percentage of the stuff we drop is time-delay bombs, Sean. They don’t explode until hours later, when the repair crews are on the scene.”

  “Sounds real clever, Half, but something tells me it’s not working out that way. You may nail ’em the first coupla times, but the chinks ain’t completely stupid. They’re gonna get wise and work around them time-delay bomb craters.”

  “So what’re you saying, Sean?”

  “I’m saying that if this war’s gonna be fought at a conference table, we’re gonna need a bargaining chip on the ground that scares the crap outta the chinks.”

  *****

  Spring had come early to Germany in 1951, and the summer promised to be a very warm one. Sylvie Bergerac—Madame Bergerac, as Sean Moon had called her—stepped off the Frankfurt tram, cursing herself for still having only her winter clothes. When she’d gone undercover two months ago near Grafenwöhr, Bavaria—close to the border with Czechoslovakia—it had still been the dead of winter. Now, the woolen skirt, sweater, and heavy socks she wore were hot and uncomfortable, but they were one of her few outfits that had survived that mission intact.

  I was lucky to get out of there alive. There’s a chance the Soviet agents I duped figured out my identity. I’ve been on their kill list since that mission in East Berlin back in 1945. Despite my many aliases, I only have one face.

  By rights, the CIA should send me out of the country. But they won’t. The fact that I’m still alive undermines my story of possibly being identified…

  And they need somebody for another mission. That somebody is me, apparently.
>
  She was on her way to a meeting that would lay out that mission. It wouldn’t be at CIA headquarters in the IG Farben Building, however; it was probable that Soviet agents surveilled and recorded the comings and goings there twenty-four hours a day. It would be a dangerous place for an undercover operative to show her face:

  Especially one who suspects she’s been compromised.

  But I want to remain in Germany. There’s an excellent chance Tommy will be stationed here soon, too, once his tour in Korea is over.

  It’s worth the risk…and I’ve been in worse trouble so many times before.

  A popular restaurant had been chosen as the meeting place, with an open air beer garden teeming with lunchtime diners now that the weather had warmed. Tracking and identification by Soviet spies would be difficult there; eavesdropping on conversations would be practically impossible.

  As Sylvie entered the restaurant, she spotted her handler immediately. The tall, blond American in well-cut civvies looked authentically German and spoke the language flawlessly. He was a major in the US Army named Joe Bachmann and, like her, could blend into any Frankfurt crowd.

  Seated beside him, though, was a man whose looks and mannerisms positively screamed American with unrelenting clarity. The inelegant cut of his Sears and Roebuck clothes, his cheap haircut, and military low quarter shoes conspired to leave no doubt.

  Sylvie slid into the booth as Bachmann filled a stein from a pitcher for her. They wasted no time getting down to business.

  The American’s name was McCarthy, a civilian employee of the Army’s White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico. He explained he was a nuclear weapons engineer, engaged in a top secret project to produce tactical nuclear projectiles for American artillery. These projectiles would be of a much smaller yield than was possible with air-dropped bombs but could engage close-in targets and troop concentrations, day or night, in any weather condition, with pinpoint accuracy.

  “That’s something you can never be sure of with an airplane,” McCarthy said. “You know that the bomb dropped on Nagasaki actually missed its aiming point by several miles, don’t you? If it’d been off much more, it would’ve landed behind a mountain range and done almost no blast damage to the city at all.”

  When Sylvie and Bachmann shrugged in ignorance, McCarthy continued, “The issue with nuclear artillery ammo is size. We’ve determined that the smallest we can make the shell is two hundred eighty millimeters—that’s about eleven inches. Currently, we don’t have a land-based cannon in the inventory that can fire a shell of that caliber, so we’re building one.”

  Sylvie asked, “How long will that take?”

  “About two more years.”

  “Two years?” Bachmann said, his impatience bristling. “So why the hell are we even talking about this now?”

  “Because your bosses, Major, believe that just the threat of nuclear artillery will drive the Chinese and North Koreans to the bargaining table very quickly. The only way they’ve been able to succeed in Korea is by massing their forces to astounding levels. But those massed forces could be wiped out by the tens of thousands by just one nuclear shell. If they’re smart, they’ll take a negotiated settlement while they can. Otherwise…”

  Sylvie finished the sentence: “…we can turn them to dust.”

  “You catch on quickly, Miss Bergerac,” McCarthy replied.

  “That’s Missus Bergerac. Madame, s’il vous plaît.”

  “Oh, pardon me. I didn’t realize you were married.”

  “I’m not. I’m a widow…a war widow.”

  “Okay,” Bachmann said, “this is all well and good. But how can my people help you with this bluff?”

  “Oh, it’s not a bluff, Major Bachmann.”

  “I beg to differ, Mr. McCarthy. If you’re trying to scare people with a weapon that’s nowhere near ready yet, that’s a bluff. And what if the Russians are developing nuclear artillery of their own? I mean, they finally did get the bomb.”

  McCarthy’s body language was dismissing Bachmann’s point before he’d even finished speaking. “The Russians are years behind in this technology. Decades, maybe. It’s not a factor right now.”

  Bachmann was the dismissive one now, but he said, “Well, give us the details anyway, and we’ll see what we can do. Sylvie’s pulled more than one rabbit from the hat in her illustrious career. She can probably do it again.”

  McCarthy laid out the details of moving the faux atomic cannon to Germany. When he was done, he had one question of the operatives: “What I don’t understand is why we’re sending this little circus here instead of Korea. If your bosses are just interested in putting on a show, wouldn’t it be better doing it closer to the action?”

  Bachmann glanced at Sylvie and asked, “You want to take this one?”

  “I’d be glad to,” she replied. “Even though this is the first we’re hearing about the technical details, I can tell why it’s coming to Germany. Washington may be interested in driving the Chinese to the conference table, but they want to drive fear into the hearts of the Russians while they’re at it, who you claim are decades behind. Based on the sophistication levels of the various Soviet intelligence networks, there’s a far better chance they’ll pick up on your mock-up atomic cannon here in Germany rather than in Korea. There are no Russian agents in Korea—they’d be too easy to spot—so they’re using Korean surrogates, who aren’t very skilled and are poorly compensated for their efforts, if at all. We’ve killed or captured most of them already. You put that fake gun into Korea and word might never get to Moscow or Beijing. Put it here in Germany, though, and Moscow will know about it the very next day, Beijing the day after. And they’ll both be very worried about it, at least for a while.”

  Bachmann was nodding his agreement the whole time she spoke. Then he added, “But if you want to hang a real threat over their heads, you’d better hurry up and get the real thing working—and demonstrate it—or they’re going to catch on that it’s all been a big fraud.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  On a sunny afternoon five days later, Sylvie laid her bicycle against an old stone wall in Baumholder outside the sprawling US Army base. She watched as the massive—but fake—cannon maneuvered slowly down the narrow streets of the town. To heighten its mystery, tarps covered the long carriage and gun tube, concealing their details from view. The tractors on both ends of the carriage skillfully performed the coordinated dance to maneuver the sham weapon’s eighty-four-foot length through curves and around corners. Inevitably, though, there was damage to civilian property, and a few streetlamps were knocked over as well, snapped like twigs by tons of unforgiving steel in motion. Army engineers stood by to make immediate repairs or file paperwork to compensate in cash, the usual practices as American mechanized might couldn’t help but harm German towns and countryside even when ensuring peace.

  The movement of this massive charade from the railroad yard to the base had been a spectacle that was impossible to miss. To make sure the townspeople would be forewarned along with the Soviet agents in the area positioned to keep an eye on US Army activities at Baumholder, Sylvie had begun a whispering campaign about the new super weapon, suggesting the massive cannon was nicknamed Atomic Annie. The campaign had worked; among the many bystanders lining the road, she’d seen a man and a woman she was fairly sure were spies for the Soviets taking photos.

  So far, so good, she told herself. But if they only knew that beneath all that canvas is a long length of oilfield pipe dressed up to look like a cannon from a distance. Up close, the tinny sound of knuckles rapping against the barrel or the lack of rifling on the interior would give its secret away.

  But this was only prologue. The main act was yet to come.

  *****

  The day after the fake cannon arrived came its phony nuclear ammunition. Sylvie had made sure the whispering campaign was still going strong among the civilians in Baumholder. At a printing shop she trusted, she created sham handbills on atomic awareness, each
copy displaying and identifying the symbol for nuclear material—a black-rimmed circle containing six concentric, pie-shaped wedges: three black, three yellow. The handbills’ crudeness gave the impression they’d been produced by some underground cabal protesting the American military presence and suggested the likelihood the Americans were stocking nuclear weapons at their Baumholder base.

  But merely driving a deuce-and-a-half carrying the dummy ammunition through the town of Baumholder—even with the requisite nuclear symbols hanging on all sides as a warning—might not make a strong enough impression. American trucks rumbled through the town every day, drawing little attention beyond a scowl or grumbled complaint. This transit—theater that it was—would have to be unequivocally memorable.

  That’s where her pool of ex-Wehrmacht soldiers came into play.

  She’d worked with these German veterans before. As civilians, they’d struggled to make ends meet in a nation all too slowly recovering from the ravages of war. US dollars had convinced these men, still skilled in the military arts, to set aside their hatred of Americans and wage the occasional act of insurgency against the Soviets, who they hated far more and offered them no compensation.

  They were good men—tough men—and they knew how to keep secrets.

  As long as the US was paying in hard cash, the former German soldiers had no problem taking orders from a French woman—now a naturalized American citizen barely thirty years old—who was once a fighter in La Résistance. They had no doubt she was a seasoned guerrilla who had, in all likelihood, taken the lives of fellow German soldiers. Despite her quiet but forceful charm, they had the distinct impression she wouldn’t hesitate to take their lives, too, if she suspected them of double-dealing.

  But she was the paymaster, so she was obeyed.

  Sylvie had selected two of the Germans—both of them fallschirmjäger, or paratroopers—to man the deuce carrying the fake nuclear ammunition. When she offered them the job, she’d posed it this way: “You both know how to fall, don’t you?”