A bullet cracked past his head. As he’d been trained, he got as low as he could and crawled forward. Another bullet hit in front of him and spat sand in his face. Ice-blue Japanese tracers, very different from the red ones Americans used, sprayed across the beach.
He saw movement ahead. No Americans had got that far. He fired two quick shots with his M-1. Whatever was moving went down. Maybe he’d killed somebody. Maybe he’d just made a Jap hit the dirt.
Mortar bombs whispered in and blew up with startling crashes. Soldiers screamed for corpsmen. Not all the landing craft could make it over the reef. Marines and punishment-brigade soldiers waded ashore in the waist-deep water of the lagoon. Mike had thought of the amtracs as ducklings. Those poor wading bastards were sitting ducks. One after another, they slumped into the warm sea, wounded or dead.
“Keep moving!” Captain Magnusson shouted through the din. “We’ve got to get off the beach if we can!”
That made sense. There was cover ahead, if they could reach it. They’d all get shot if they stayed here on the sand. But there were Japs ahead, too. They already had the cover, and they didn’t want to give it up.
Machine-gun fire came from a dugout just inland from the beach. The American bombardment had swept off some of the sand that protected the roof of coconut-palm logs. It sure as hell hadn’t wrecked the position, though. No, that was left for the guys with the P’s on their sleeves.
Mike waved to a couple of men with submachine guns to give him covering fire. He scrambled closer to the dark opening from which the machine guns blinked malevolently. He tossed two grenades into it, lobbing them in sidearm so he could raise up off the ground as little as possible.
Screams came from inside when the grenades went off. The machine guns fell silent. There was a back door—a Jap burst out of it, his shirt in shreds and blood running down his back. One of the Americans with a grease gun cut him down.
Other dugouts lurked farther inland. The Japs had spent a lot of time and effort fortifying Tarawa, and it showed. Every position had another position or two supporting it. If you cleaned out a strongpoint and stood up to wave your buddies forward, a Jap in the next dugout along would kill you.
As usual, Tojo’s soldiers didn’t, wouldn’t, surrender. If you wanted to get past them, you had to kill them. You had to make sure they were dead, too. They’d play possum, holding on to a grenade that they would use to take some Americans with them when they joined their ancestors.
Mike hadn’t known how he would react to killing people. He was too busy trying to stay alive himself to worry about it much. And the Japs hardly seemed like human beings to him, not with the savage way they fought to the death. It felt more like clearing the island of dangerous wild beasts.
Night came down with equatorial suddenness. Tracers and artillery bursts lit up the darkness, but the enemy didn’t mount a big counterattack. Noticing he was ravenous, Mike gulped rations. When he smoked a cigarette, he made sure no sniper could spot the match or the glowing coal.
Captain Magnusson came by, taking stock of his company. “How’re we doing?” Mike asked, adding, “All I know is what’s going on right in front of me.”
“We’re still here. They didn’t throw us off the island,” Magnusson said. “Not all of us are still here, though. They’ve already chewed us up pretty good.” He chuckled harshly. “This is what we signed up for, right?”
“Maybe what you did,” Mike said. “Me, I signed up ’cause I was sick and tired of cutting trees down in the Rockies in the snow.” He managed a chuckle of sorts. “Ain’t fucking snowing here, even if it would be there. End of November? Oh, hell, yes.”
“Get whatever sleep you can,” the company CO told him. “If it doesn’t pick up tonight, it will come sunup. More Marines will land then, up at the other end of the island.”
“Oh, boy,” Mike said.
He did get a little rest. The Japs didn’t attack during the dark hours, though they were known for that elsewhere in the Pacific. They must have decided they could make the invaders pay a higher price by sitting tight.
Things did pick up at first light. The Marines made it onto the beaches farther north, putting the Japs in a nutcracker. From then on, it was bunker-busting and dugout-clearing and fighting from one foxhole to the next. Mike’s bayonet had blood on it. He wore a field dressing on his left arm where a bullet had grazed him. Unless it started dripping pus or something, he didn’t figure he’d bother the medics about it.
Fighting lasted two more days. It stopped only when no more Japs were left to kill. The Americans captured fewer than two dozen Japanese soldiers, all of them badly wounded. A hundred Korean laborers, maybe even a few more, gave up. The rest of the enemy were dead.
So were close to a thousand punishment-brigade men and Marines. Some of the leathernecks stayed on Tarawa to garrison the miserable place. The P-brigaders got shipped back to the replacement depot on Espiritu Santo to refit, to get their table of organization filled out with fresh recruits, and to get ready to hit the next beach.
Mike thought longingly of lodgepole pines. If he lived a while in the Pacific, he’d see a lot of things. Not lodgepoles, though. He was about as far from lodgepole pines as a man could get.
* * *
When the phone in Charlie’s White House office rang, he grabbed it. “Sullivan.”
“This is the long-distance operator. I have a call for you from Thelma Feldman in New York City.”
He started to tell her he didn’t know anybody called Thelma Feldman. But hadn’t Mike’s editor at the Post been named Stan Feldman? On the off chance this was a relative, he said, “Put her through. I’ll take the call.”
He heard the operator tell the person who’d made the call to go ahead. She did, in a strong New York accent: “Mr. Sullivan?”
“That’s right,” Charlie said. “Are you Mrs. Feldman?”
“I sure am. Mr. Sullivan, the Jeebies, they grabbed my husband. They grabbed him and they took him away. You gotta help me, Mr. Sullivan! You gotta help me get him free!”
“I . . . don’t know what I can do, Mrs. Feldman.” Charlie hated calls like this. He got more of them than he wished he did. One would have been more than he wished he got. Reporters and their friends and relations knew he worked in the White House. They figured he had enough juice to square things when one of them got in trouble. The problem with that was, most of the time they were wrong.
“Vey iz mir!” Thelma Feldman screeched in his ear. “You gotta try! He didn’t do nuttin’! Nuttin’ bad! They came and they grabbed him!”
“Why do you think I can help your husband when I couldn’t help my own brother? They arrested him years ago.”
“You gotta try!” Mrs. Feldman started to bawl.
Charlie hated women who cried. It was so unfair. Not only that, it worked. “Give me your number, Mrs. Feldman,” he said wearily. “I’ll see what’s what, and I’ll call you back.”
“You’re an oytser, Mr. Sullivan. An absolute oytser!” she said. That wasn’t a Yiddish word he knew; he hoped it meant something good. She gave him her phone number. He wrote it down. Then he hung up.
“Fuck,” he muttered. He wished he had some bourbon in his desk drawer. Anesthesia would be welcome. He wouldn’t have been the only man in history to stash a bottle like that, but he hadn’t done it. Shaking his head, he trudged down the hall to wait on Vince Scriabin.
He had to wait for him as well as waiting on him. After half an hour, J. Edgar Hoover came out of Scriabin’s office. “Hey, Sullivan.” He bobbed his head at Charlie and walked on. You always thought he went through doorways more or less by accident, and that he was just as likely to bull through a wall.
“Well, Charlie, what is it today?” Scriabin asked when Charlie went in. It was always something—that was what he seemed to be saying.
Sighing, Charlie answered, “I just got a p
hone call from Thelma Feldman, Stan Feldman’s wife. You know, Stan’s the guy on the New York Post.”
“Oh, sure. I know of him,” Scriabin said. “So?”
“So the GBI has arrested him. His wife’s upset. You can understand that. She wanted to know if there was anything I could do for him. I’ve met him a few times. He’s a nice enough guy. So”—Charlie spread his hands—“I’m seeing if there’s anything I can do for him.”
“No.” Scriabin’s voice was hard and flat. “We should have dealt with him a long time ago, but we finally got around to it.”
“You must have figured everything the Post put out was Mike’s fault.” Charlie didn’t bother to hide his bitterness.
“It wasn’t that. The paper stayed unreliable long after your brother, ah, left. It still is. With luck, it will be less so now.” As usual, Scriabin had no give in him at all.
“Do this one as a favor for me. Please. How often do I ask?” Charlie loved begging as much as anyone else would have. He did it anyhow, more as a backhand present for Mike than for Thelma Feldman.
“You could be worse.” From the Hammer, that was no small concession. “Take it to the boss if you want to. Tell him I said you could. If he decides it’s all right, then of course it is.” As far as Scriabin was concerned, anything Joe Steele decided was right.
But begging from Joe Steele was even worse than doing it from Vince Scriabin. Again, Charlie wished for a shot of Dutch courage. He went upstairs. He had to wait for the President, too. Joe Steele received him in the oval study. He wasn’t smoking, but it smelled of his pipe tobacco anyhow. “Well?” he said without preamble.
“Well, sir . . .” Charlie explained—again—what he wanted.
Before replying, Joe Steele did fill his pipe and light it. Maybe he used the time to think. Maybe he just let Charlie stew. Once he had the pipe going, he said, “No. Feldman is a troublemaker. He’s been one for years. Some time in an encampment may straighten him out. I can hope so, anyway. We’re too soft on these wreckers, Charlie. We aren’t too rough on them.”
“His wife asked me to do what I could,” Charlie said dully. “I figured I owed her that much.”
“Now you can tell her you’ve done it, and tell her with a clear conscience.” Joe Steele sent up another puff of smoke. “Or is there anything more?”
“No, sir. Nothing more.” Charlie got out of there. The Jeebies could come for him, too, even now. Did Joe Steele have a clear conscience? If he didn’t, he never let the world know. That came close enough, didn’t it?
Charlie telephoned Thelma Feldman. He told her he’d talked to Scriabin and to the President, and that he’d had no luck. She screamed and wailed. He’d known she would. He said he was sorry, and got off the phone as fast as he could. Then he went to the watering hole around the corner from the White House and got plastered. It helped, but not nearly enough.
* * *
“We have landed in Europe.” Static on the shortwave set made General Omar Bradley’s voice go snap, crackle, pop. “American, British, Canadian, and Polish troops have secured a beachhead in Normandy and are moving deeper into France. German resistance, though ferocious in spots, is lighter than expected. The Second Front has come.”
“About time,” Charlie said. Leon Trotsky wasn’t the only person who thought so. Americans had been expecting the invasion for months. The Germans must have expected it, too, but they couldn’t stop it.
Charlie hadn’t known when the landing would come. If somebody told you something big like that, fine. If no one did, it was because you didn’t need to know ahead of time. Charlie didn’t love military security, but he saw the need for it.
“About time is right,” Esther said—they were listening to the BBC in their front room. “Now we can give it to the Nazis like they deserve. I just hope some Jews in Europe will still be left alive by the time we knock them flat.”
“Me, too, babe,” Charlie said. “I’ve bent the boss’ ear about it whenever I get the chance. Kagan does the same thing. And Trotsky’s warned Hitler he’s got no business killing people on account of religion.”
“Hitler really listens to Trotsky, of course,” Esther said. Charlie flinched. She went on, “And Trotsky never killed a Jew in his whole life.”
“He didn’t kill them because they were Jews. He killed them because they weren’t revolutionary enough to suit him,” Charlie said.
“Are they any less dead that way?”
“Um—no.”
“Well, then.” Instead of rubbing Charlie’s nose in it some more, Esther changed the subject: “If we’re finally on the Continent, that means we can see the end of the war, even if we can’t touch it yet. And if the war looks won, that makes Joe Steele’s chances for a fourth term better.”
“Looks that way, yeah.” Charlie figured Joe Steele would win the election in November unless the Nazis invaded Massachusetts—maybe even then. He might not get the most votes, although, with the war going well and more jobs than there were people to fill them, he was likely to. But whether he did or not, he would be recorded as winning. The people who counted ballots were in his pocket. Or enough of them were, in enough places in enough states.
“Dewey for the Republicans this time?”
“Looks that way,” Charlie said again. “If their mustaches were running, Joe Steele’s would win every state.”
His wife giggled. “You’re right about that. Say what you want about Joe Steele, but he’s got a real mustache. Dewey looks like a lounge lizard. You can’t take him seriously.”
“I sure can’t,” Charlie said. He suspected part of the problem was that he and Dewey were about the same age. He still wanted to think of the President as something like a father. A father couldn’t be the same age you were.
Of course, Joe Steele was the kind of father who took his country behind the woodshed with a strap. You had a tough time loving a father like that. People had always had a tough time loving Joe Steele. But they respected him, and he kept them on their toes.
Sarah came in to hear the last of that exchange. She seemed bigger and more grown-up every time Charlie looked at her. How did she get to be six? he wondered with a father’s bemusement. “What’s a lounge lizard?” she asked.
Charlie and Esther looked at each other. “You used it,” Charlie said. “You explain it to her.”
“Thanks a lot.” Esther gave him a dirty look. She screwed up her face as she thought for a second. Then she said, “It’s old-fashioned slang—”
“Are you and Daddy old-fashioned?” Sarah broke in.
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” Esther said, which set Charlie laughing. She went on, “It’s old-fashioned slang for someone who hangs around in bars and thinks all the girls are in love with him because he’s so wonderful.”
“But he really isn’t?” Sarah wanted to make sure she had things straight.
“That’s right.” Esther nodded. Charlie made silent clapping motions. She’d done better with the explanation than he could have.
Patrick wandered in after her. He was carrying a picture book. He climbed up into his father’s lap and said, “Read!” At two, he still talked like a telegram—the fewest words that would get the job done.
“Okay,” Charlie said. “This is the story of Curious George and the Man with the Pink Pantaloons. They—”
He didn’t get any further. “Read right, Daddy!” Pat said irately.
“Sorry,” said Charlie, who wasn’t. He’d played this game with the book ever since they got it. It made things more fun for him and drove his kid bonkers. Who could ask for better than that? “Well, anyway, Curious George and the Man with the Orange Socks—”
“Daddy!”
“Okay, okay. Now the Man with the Yellow Hat”—Charlie waited for Pat to smile in relief, then sprang his sneak attack—“knew that George was a curious little hippopotamu
s, and he—”
“Daddy!”
* * *
Mike smoked cigarette after cigarette as the amtrac rattled toward the next island. This one was called Saipan. The punishment brigade had spent more than six months waiting for another call. They had replacements for every casualty they’d taken on Tarawa. Mike wondered whether the new guys, who didn’t know what they were getting into, were more or less nervous than the ones who’d lived through Tarawa and seen the kind of fight the Japs put up.
Mike didn’t know the answer. He did know how nervous he was. The Japs wouldn’t give up, no matter what. They fought till you killed them, and you had to be goddamn sure they were dead. You called them slanties and slopes and yellow monkeys so you wouldn’t have to remind yourself they were men, and tough men at that.
Everything from destroyers to battleships to bombers had given Saipan a once-over the past few days. You wouldn’t think an ant could have lived through that pasting, let alone an army. But they’d hit Tarawa with everything but the kitchen sink, too. As soon as soldiers got close enough for the Japs to start shooting them, they did. Mike figured it would be the same way here.
He spat out the butt of one Camel and lit another. The best he could hope for, he figured, the absolute best, would be to lose something like a foot or an arm and not be able to fight any more. Otherwise, they’d keep throwing him in till he got killed or the war ended, and the war didn’t look like ending any time soon.
Was it worth it? he wondered. If you had it to do over again, would you still have written those stories about Joe Steele? Years too late to worry about it now, of course. One thing was plain: he’d underestimated how ruthless the man could be. He’d taken it for granted that the First Amendment and the whole idea of freedom of the press shielded him from anything a politician might do. He’d never dreamt he—or the country—would run into a politician who cared no more for the First Amendment than he did for the rest of the Constitution.
Then the amtrac’s belly scraped on sand. The water drive stopped. The tracks churned. A bullet slammed into the steel, then another one. Mike stopped caring about the Constitution, too. All he cared about was living through the next five minutes—with luck, about living till tonight.
Joe Steele Page 33
