Battleground

by W. E. B Griffin

  “You’re going to shoot yourself in the ass one day doing that,” Hon said.

  Then he picked up the telephone and dialed a number.

  “Colonel Huff? Sir, this is Lieutenant Hon. I have several MAGIC messages that I believe should be brought to the Supreme Commander’s attention.”

  Moore unlocked the steel door and let himself out. When he reached the security post by the elevator, an Army technical sergeant from headquarters company was waiting for him.

  “Sergeant Moore, you went AWOL last night.”

  “There’s been a mistake, Sergeant,” Moore said. “I don’t live in the barracks any more. I’m not supposed to be on your duty rosters.”

  “You tell that to the first sergeant, Sergeant. He told me to find your ass and bring you home.”

  “I’m sorry,” Moore said. “I can’t do that.” He held up the briefcase.

  “I don’t give a shit about any fucking briefcase,” the sergeant said. “You come with me.”

  “I’ll have to tell my officer where I’m going,” Moore said and went back to the office. Hon was locking the steel door when he got there.

  “There’s a tech sergeant out there who wants to haul me off to headquarters company,” he said.

  “Oh, shit!” Hon said. “Come on.”

  The tech sergeant was waiting at the outer security point with his arms folded.

  “All right, Sergeant, what’s this all about?”

  “Sir, I’m here to return Sergeant Moore to Headquarters Company. We’re carrying him as AWOL.”

  “That’s in error. Sergeant Moore is not attached to Headquarters Company.”

  “Sir, I got my orders.”

  “And I have mine, Sergeant. Mine are to dispatch Sergeant Moore, with a briefcase full of classified documents, to—to who is none of your business. But to someone who ranks much higher around here than the first sergeant of Headquarters Company. For that matter, than the Headquarters Company commander. You will not interfere with that. If necessary, I will have this MP place you under arrest. Do you understand me, Sergeant?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “All right, Moore, get going,” Hon said.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Sergeant, you will return to Headquarters Company. You will tell your first sergeant that (a) Sergeant Moore is no longer his responsibility and (b) if he ever does something like this again around here, I will be forced to bring the matter to the attention of Captain Pickering—that’s Navy Captain Pickering—and I think he would speak to General Sutherland about it. You understand that?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “You may go, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  That may work, Hon thought. If it doesn’t, fuck it, I’ll go to Sutherland.

  As Moore was unlocking the door of the Studebaker, the Marine Aviator lieutenant colonel he had seen before walked up to him.

  “Good afternoon, Sergeant,” he said.

  Moore straightened and saluted.

  “Good afternoon, Sir.”

  “I’m delighted to see a familiar uniform around here,” Dailey said. “I’m Colonel Dailey. I’ve just been assigned here as the CINCPAC liaison officer.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Moore said. He remembered the radio Captain Pickering had sent SECNAV asking that a liaison officer be assigned.

  “What have they got you doing around here, Sergeant?”

  “I work for Major Banning, Sir.”

  “Major Banning is assigned to this headquarters?”

  “No, Sir. I mean, he works with SWPA, Sir. But he’s not assigned here.”

  “Oh?”

  “He commands Special Detachment 14, Sir.”

  “I see,” Dailey said. “Do you happen to know, Sergeant, who is the ranking Marine officer here?”

  “I suppose that would be Major Banning, Sir.”

  Well, that’s nice to know, too, Dailey thought. Since this man Banning is only a major, that makes me the senior Marine officer present.

  “When you see Major Banning, Sergeant, would you please tell him we bumped into each other, and that I’d like to meet him?”

  “Yes, Sir, I’ll do that.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  Dailey smiled at Moore and went back to the front door to wait for the car and driver that had been assigned to the CINCPAC liaison officer by General Douglas MacArthur’s personal order.

  He wondered what Special Detachment 14 was and what it did around here.

  (Five)

  WATER LILY COTTAGE

  MANCHESTER AVENUE

  BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA

  1730 HOURS 13 AUGUST 1942

  Ellen Feller was annoyed when she returned from the Doomben Tennis Club to see that the Studebaker was not there. She parked the Jaguar drophead coupe Fleming Pickering had left for her to use and went into the house.

  She wondered why it should annoy her that the car—and thus, Sergeant John Marston Moore—was not there. She concluded that it was because it left her with the choice of either driving to the Lennon Hotel for dinner, which she did not like to do alone, or making herself something to eat, alone, here. Neither option was appealing.

  She was desperately thirsty. The water at the tennis courts tasted as if it had been stored for a decade in a rusty barrel; and of course the Turf Club was closed for the duration, so there was no place to get even a soft drink.

  She found a bottle of water in the refrigerator. And beer. She shrugged and reached for a beer bottle and opened it. And since there was no one around to see her, she drank from the neck. It was good beer, more bitter than American beer, and reminded her somewhat of the beer she’d grown to like in China.

  On the sly, of course, she thought. The wife of the Reverend Glen T. Feller of the Christian & Missionary Alliance could not afford to have the recent heathen see her sucking on a bottle of beer.

  I wonder what that bastard is up to these days?

  The Reverend Feller had elected to go about The Lord’s Work during the war years by bringing the Gospel to the Indians in Arizona.

  Which is probably where he has the jade he smuggled out of China when we left. I know it’s nowhere around Baltimore or Washington. If it was, I would have found it.

  He’s probably waking up right about now in bed with some well-muscled, smooth-skinned young Indian lad in whom he was taking a special interest.

  Well, what’s wrong with that? There is a lot to be said for being in bed with well-muscled, smooth-skinned lads. Like Sergeant John Marston Moore, for example.

  Oh, God, is that why I was so annoyed when I found out he wasn’t here? Am I in that dangerous condition again? That’s absurd. I know better. Only a stupid ladybird dirties her own nest, to coin a phrase.

  She finished the bottle of beer and was surprised at how quickly she did it.

  It was the lousy undrinkable water at Doomben. I’m dehydrated. I’m not even very sweaty.

  She tested this theory by raising her arm and sniffing her armpit. There was an unpleasant odor, but not what she expected after an hour and a half on the court with an Australian woman who was built like a boxcar but who moved around the court with really amazing speed and grace.

  Ellen opened the refrigerator door again and started to reach for another bottle of beer, and then changed her mind.

  It will make me flatulent and probably keep me up all night.

  There was a quart can of Dole’s pineapple juice in the refrigerator.

  Moore’s, she thought. Lieutenant Hon got it for him somewhere.

  Well, fuck him, I’m thirsty.

  There you go again, Dear. Thinking dangerous thoughts. She took the can of pineapple juice from the refrigerator, punched a hole in the top with a beer can opener, and then poured it in a glass and added ice cubes.

  After that she walked into the living room, to the array of bottles on a table, and went through them. She could find neither gin nor vodka, but there was a bottle of rum. She carried that back into the kitche
n.

  I wonder what that will do to pineapple juice? For that matter, what does straight rum taste like?

  She took a pull from the neck of the rum bottle.

  God! That’s awful! It burns like cheap whiskey!

  She poured rum into the pineapple juice, stirred it with her finger, and then licked her finger.

  Not bad!

  She took a tiny sip from the glass, then a much larger one. She was pleased with the taste.

  She put the glass on the table and went into the refrigerator again, looking for something she could make for dinner after she had her shower. She saw the remnants of a leg of lamb.

  Nothing in the world tastes worse than cold lamb!

  In the pantry, she found a dozen cans of chicken and dumplings, furnished, she supposed, by Lieutenant Hon.

  I wonder what he does about his sinful lusts of the flesh? God knows, no respectable Australian girl would dare to be seen with an Oriental, even one wearing an American officer’s uniform.

  I wouldn’t mind trying a few relatively hairless muscular young male bodies again; but that would be even more stupid than doing something with John Marston Moore.

  She took one of the cans of chicken and dumplings from the pantry, carried it into the kitchen, and set it on the sink. Then she picked up her drink and finished it.

  She could feel the warmth spread through her body.

  You have another one of those, Dear, you’ll have trouble finding the bathroom. And God knows how you’ll manage to get in and out of the tub.

  She put more ice, pineapple juice, and rum into the glass, stirred it with her finger, licked her finger, took one little sip, added another little drop of rum, stirred, licked, and tasted again. Satisfied, she carried it with her out of the kitchen and into the master bedroom, where she would have it when she finished her bath.

  She undressed, and put the soiled tennis dress and her underclothes in the hamper. When she turned, she saw her reflection in the mirror over the chest of drawers. She remembered what Fleming Pickering said the night he saw the same thing, the night she arrived in Australia: “I wondered what they would really look like.”

  She smiled to herself. Making love to Fleming Pickering had been a wise move. He regarded their sex together as far more important than she ever dreamed he would. It was the first time he had been unfaithful to his wife, he told her, and she believed him. But Ellen was truly surprised to hear it. Someone as good looking and as rich and prominent as Fleming Pickering should have had women jumping into his bed the moment word got out that Mrs. Pickering wasn’t in it.

  Anyway, doing it had accomplished her intentions. It put Fleming Pickering permanently in her corner. It was sort of a living, breathing insurance policy. And she needed that. There was still a chance—more and more remote as time passed, to be sure—that the smuggled jade would become a matter of official attention. If it did, she would need a bit of insurance.

  Back in China before the war, Ken McCoy told her that the Marines knew all about the jade. McCoy was a member of the 4th Marine’s escort detachment then. They were guarding the missionaries from the mission to Shanghai when they had to get out.

  But she didn’t know exactly what he meant: The junior officers of the guard detachment? Or just the other enlisted men? Or Captain Ed Banning, who had been the 4th Marines Intelligence Officer? She hadn’t thought to ask until it was too late.

  For a while, Ellen Feller thought the whole matter of the jade was water under the bridge. So far as getting in trouble for smuggling it out of China was concerned, at least. Getting her fair share of the money from her husband would have to wait until the war was over.

  But then she’d taken a job as a Japanese language translator with Naval Intelligence in Washington, and both McCoy and Banning had turned up again. McCoy by then had been commissioned, and Banning had been promoted to major.

  She hadn’t thought that McCoy would be a problem. She could buy his silence in Washington the same way she had bought it in China ...

  Here come those smooth, muscular young male body thoughts again, Dear ...

  But Banning was one of those moral, highly principled men who would have loved to blow the whistle on her. His sense of right and wrong would have been offended if he ever found out that his Marines had risked their lives to protect jade that missionaries were illegally removing from China to line their own pockets.

  But nothing was ever said about that. Ken McCoy kept his mouth shut, apparently. And just as apparently, Major Ed Banning did not know about the jade. Otherwise he would have blown the whistle.

  Now, Ellen thought, as she walked into the bath and turned on the water, the whole affair is almost certainly buried forever. Even if something happens—and as stupid as the Reverend Glen T. Feller can sometimes be, that is a real possibility—and the smuggled jade comes to light, it probably won’t touch me. I am now a respected, responsible senior civilian employee of Naval Intelligence, and if I say I don’t know a thing about any jade, I will be believed Especially if Captain Fleming Pickering comes to my aid, as he would probably do in any case. But he certainly will do that now that he’s been in my bed.

  As she adjusted the temperature of the water, she decided to shower rather than have a bath. So she pulled the thingamabob on the faucet. At that moment her lovemaking with Fleming Pickering flashed again into her mind. And it brought with it another one of those dangerous thoughts about smooth young muscular male bodies generally and Sergeant John Marston Moore specifically.

  In bed, Fleming Pickering was everything that she hoped he would be, and more. He held his age well. Even his body had been firmer and more youthful than she expected.

  It wasn’t that he left me unsatisfied, but that he whetted my appetite; opened the floodgates, so to speak.

  But I am not a fool. I am not going to risk what I have so carefully built up for so long by behaving like a bitch in heat. While it would be very nice to actually have John Marston Moore’s smooth and muscular young body in my bed, I am going to have to do that in fantasy.

  She turned the shower head so that it produced a strong, narrow stream of water, rather than a spray; and then she directed the stream where she thought it should go.

  Sometimes, under the right circumstances, the fantasy is better than the actuality.

  She sat down in the tub, slid against the sloping back side, and spread her legs. The stream of water struck the tub eight inches from the right spot.

  “Damn!”

  She stood up and moved toward the shower head again.

  The screen door slammed, and a moment later, the front door. Sergeant John Marston Moore did that every time he came home. Thus every time he came home, the whole damned house shook.

  She inhaled deeply. After that, she changed the shower flow back into a spray, and shifted the head again, so that it flowed onto her hair, instead of halfway down the tub. Then she picked up the soap and went ahead with her shower.

  Fate, she thought. Kismet. I really didn’t want to do it that way, anyway.

  XVII

  (One)

  WATER LILY COTTAGE

  MANCHESTER AVENUE

  BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA

  1905 HOURS 13 AUGUST 1942

  Three or four hairs popped up from the aureola of Sergeant John Marston Moore’s nipples. Ellen Feller thought they were adorable. She toyed with them with her fingernail, watching them spring back into little coils when she turned them loose.

  “Baby,” she said, “if we’re going to do this again, you’re going to have to use something.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I don’t want to find myself in the family way,” Ellen said.

  I should have thought of that before. God, was it the rum? Or how excited his shyness made me? For a while there, I was beginning to think that he was either a fairy or a virgin.

  “Oh,” he said. “I see what you mean. Are we going to do it again?”

  “You don’t sound very enthusiastic
. You did a minute or two ago.”

  “I mean, is it smart? What if we got caught?”

  “Who’s going to catch us? Or didn’t you like it?”

  “It was great,” Moore said.

  And fuck you, Mrs. Howard P. Hawthorne. You are not the only fish in the sea. And your teats aren’t as nice, either.

  “It was great for me, too,” she said. “I can’t believe it happened.”

  “Me, either.”

  “You must think me terrible, giving in to you the way ...”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “I didn’t have any idea you ... were thinking of me in that way.”

  “It was the tennis dress,” he said. “When you showed me your tennis dress.”

  “What about my tennis dress?”

  “I thought your legs were great,” he said.

  I’ll be damned. He’s blushing again. How sweet!

  “You really think so?” she asked, and threw the sheet off them.

  “They’re beautiful,” he pronounced.

  “Yours aren’t so bad, either,” she said, and ran her hand over his hip and then down his leg.

  “There’s a pro station at the barracks,” he said. “But, Christ, I hate to go out there.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a pro station.When they give out the you-knowwhats, at the barracks. But I hate to go out there.”

  “Maybe you could buy some at a drug store. What do they call them here, ‘chemists’?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is there any chance that Hon is going to show up here?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so. He’s going to play bridge with General MacArthur.”

  Thank God for small blessings!

  “But he’s going to want to know what we thought of the intercepts in the morning,” Moore added.

  “We’ll have time,” she said. “We have plenty of time. For everything. But what are we going to do about that?”