[THREE]
THE DEWEY SUITE
THE IMPERIAL HOTEL
TOKYO, JAPAN
1525 24 AUGUST 1950
"I didn't expect to see you back so soon," Major General Ralph Howe said when Brigadier General Fleming Picker-ing knocked at his door. He was sitting in an armchair, feet on a bolster, reading the Stars & Stripes. "Come on in. Tell me what's going on."
"I didn't want to come back at all," Pickering said.
"Then why did you?"
"I've been asked to supper at the Residence," Pickering said.
"You are already famous as the only man in Japan who dares tell El Supremo `Sorry, I have a previous engage-ment,' " Howe said. It was an unspoken question.
"Two reasons, Ralph," Pickering said. "I didn't want him wondering what my previous engagement was, and second, I was following my father's-now my own-ad-vice about getting out of the way of the competent people who work for you, and letting them do their job."
"Have you had your twelve o'clock snort already? And if so, is half past three too early for your five o'clock?"
"No, and no," Pickering said. "Keep your seat, Ralph, I'll make them."
"Where's our usual bartender?"
"Somewhere in the East China Sea. I hope to know pre-cisely where in the East China Sea shortly after nine tonight," Pickering said.
"What have you got him doing there?" Howe asked.
"Right now, he's on the junk, headed for Tokchok-kundo," Pickering said. "It was the only thing we could think to do to find out what's happened on the island, and, presuming McCoy and company are there, and the problem is a malfunctioning radio, to get another to them."
"Why Hart?"
"Because he made the point that he could be better spared-we both knew he meant `is more expendable'- than Dunston, my station chief in Pusan," Pickering said, as he made their drinks. "Dunston was willing to go. George, with somewhat less than overwhelming tact for a captain speaking to his general, correctly pointed out that sending Dunston would be stupid."
He handed Howe his drink, and they touched glasses.
"What are you going to do if El Supremo asks you flat-out about this operation tonight? I suspect he's going to do just that."
"I've been thinking about that," Pickering said. "I guess-"
The door opened, and Master Sergeant Charley Rogers came in.
"I didn't know you were back, General. There's a Major Dunston on that back-channel telephone line from Pusan.
When they couldn't find you or Hart, he asked to speak to General Howe."
"Can I take it in here?"
"I don't think it makes much difference," Rogers said, more than a little bitterly. "There's a tap on all our lines."
He walked to the telephone, picked it up, said, "Put my call in here, please," and held the telephone out to Picker-ing.
"Dunston," Pickering said to the telephone, "I don't think this is a secure line."
"Yes, sir," Dunston said. "General, I'm looking at an aerial our friend Dunn sent us. It was taken early this morning. Can you guess where?"
"I've got a pretty good idea," Pickering said.
"The shot shows a panel on which someone has written 'radio,'" Dunston said. "It also shows, faintly, what looks like a man in black pajamas."
"Interesting," Pickering said.
"I thought you'd want to know, General."
"Thank you. Everything is ready on your end for 2100 tonight?"
"Yes, sir."
"Let me know as soon as you know anything, will you?"
"Yes, sir, of course."
"Thank you, Bill."
"Yes, sir," Dunston said, and the connection broke.
"Charley, is Sergeant Keller handy?"
"I'll get him, General," Rogers said, and left the room.
"Good news?" Howe asked.
"Very good," Pickering said.
"About your son?" Howe asked.
"No. The best news I have about Pick is that Dunston says he's pretty sure Pick is not a POW."
"What was that call?"
Master Sergeant Keller came into the room.
"Yes, sir?"
"I need a message to go-it doesn't have to be classi-fied, but send it Urgent, Immediate Personal Attention of Lieutenant Colonel William Dunn, aboard the Badoeng Strait."
"Yes, sir?"
"Message is, quote, Many thanks. Radio is on the way. Signature, Pickering, Brigadier General, USMC, unquote. Got it?"
"I'll get it right out, sir," Keller said.
Pickering turned to Howe.
"One of the aerials Colonel Dunn took this morning of Tokchok-kundo shows a panel on which the word 'radio' is written," Pickering said.
"Then maybe-presuming Charley is right, and I'm afraid he is, and someone was listening to your phone con-versation-El Supremo will think it had to do with looking for your son."
"Oh, to hell with it, Ralph. If he asks me, I'm going to tell him," Pickering said.
[FOUR]
ABOARD WIND OF GOOD FORTUNE
34 DEGREES 20 MINUTES NORTH LATITUDE,
126 DEGREES 29 MINUTES EAST LONGITUDE
THE YELLOW SEA
2050 24 AUGUST 1950
Captain George F. Hart, USMCR, who was leaning on the railing on the aft of the high stern of the Wind of Good For-tune, next to the Korean sailor on the tiller, became aware that he could now see the light illuminating the compass in the small control compartment on the forward edge of the stern's deck.
He looked at his watch, then pushed himself off the rail-ing and walked across the deck to the captain, whose name was Kim, as were the names of two of the four Korean sea-men aboard. The fourth seaman, the cook, was named Lee.
He touched Captain Kim on the shoulder and mimed-first by pointing at his watch, then pointing below, and fi-nally by holding a make-believe microphone in front of his face-that it was time for him to report their position to their higher headquarters.
Captain Kim nodded, and either cleared his throat or grunted.
Hart took a chart from the pocket of his tunic. Surprising him, after a long, hot humid day, it had actually gotten chilly on the stern about half past five, and he had gone be-low to his cabin to get the tunic.
He held the chart out to Captain Kim, who studied it a moment, and then pointed out their position with a surpris-ingly delicate finger. They were slightly southwest of the extreme tip of the Korean peninsula. They had, in other words, just begun to sail northward up the Korean Penin-sula, far enough out to sea so it was unlikely that anyone on the shore could see the Wind of Good Fortune.
They weren't, technically, sailing. The sails had been lowered as soon as they were out of sight of Pusan, and they had moved under diesel power since.
Hart went to his-the captain's-cabin, closed the door and turned on the light. The SCR-300, still on a shipping pallet, was lashed to the deck. On top of it was a non-GI Hallicrafters communications receiver, also carefully lashed in place.
The radios had been installed in the wee hours of the morning personally by Captain R. C. "Pete" Peters, Signal Corps, USA, of die 8th Army (Rear) Communications Center. And he had personally supervised the installation of the antennae at first light in the morning. Then he had established radio contact with his radio room.
The radios had worked then, which did not mean, Hart thought, that they would work now, either because some-thing was wrong with them, or more likely because he didn't really have a clue how to work the sonofabitch, de-spite Captain Peters's instructions, each step of which Hart had carefully written down in a notebook.
Hart laid the chart on top of the radio, then took a large sheet of translucent paper from his tunic pocket and care-fully laid this on top of the chart. It was an overlay. The night before, "Major" Dunston had spent two hours care-fully preparing overlays. There were two sets of them, one set for the waters offshore the Korean peninsula, and the other set for the islands in the Flying Fish Channel. The overlays in each set were identical. O
n each were drawn a number of boxes, each one labeled with numbers. The numbers were-intentionally-in no way sequential. "063," for example, was surrounded by "109," "040," "101," and "171."
When he placed the overlay on the chart, Hart saw mat the position Captain Kim had pointed out to him was in-side the box numbered "091." Hart wrote the number in his notebook, then carefully folded the chart and the overlay and put them back in bis tunic pocket, with the aerial photo of the Flying Fish Channel islands and its overlay.
Then, carefully studying the first of the notes he had made during Captain Peters's very patient orientation, he threw bottom left-hand switch on the Hallicrafter and was relieved and pleasantly surprised when the dials im-mediately lit up.
Three minutes later, all the dials and gauges on both the transmitter and the receiver were lit up, and indicating what Hart's notes said they should.
He put on his earphones, and heard a hiss.
He picked up the microphone, pressed the press to talk switch, and said, "Dispatch, Dispatch, H-l, H-l."
H-l was the radio call sign assigned to the chief of the homicide bureau of the St. Louis police department. When the question of radio call signs for the good ship Wind of Good Fortune had come up about 0300 that morning, H-l had seemed be as good a call sign as any of the others sug-gested, and a lot better than some. And, Hart knew, he was unlikely to forget it.
He thought about this now, and of St. Louis, and its po-lice department, and asked aloud, "What the fuck am I do-ing here?"
The hiss in his earphone vanished suddenly, and a voice so loud it actually hurt his ears said, "Dispatch. Go ahead."
"Zero Niner One," Hart said into the microphone, and then repeated it.
"Dispatch understands Zero Niner One, Confirm," the too loud, very clear voice said in Hart's earphones.
"Confirm, confirm," Hart said into the microphone.
"Dispatch clear," the too loud voice said, and the hiss came back to Hart's earphones.
Hart put the microphone on top of the SCR-300, then carefully studied the front of the Hallicrafters, finally set-tling on a round knob. He moved it very carefully. The hiss in his earphones diminished. He started to leave the knob where it was, but on reflection-If I turn it too far down, I might not be able to hear him the next time-turned it back up-Then, consulting his notes, he began to shut the radio down.
[FIVE]
TOKCHOK-KUNDO ISLAND
0405 25 AUGUST 1950
They had spent most of the previous day rehearsing how to get the boats into the water, and their equipment into the boats, and what ran through Captain Kenneth R. McCoy's mind as he jumped from the wharf into Boat Two was that at least the boat part of the operation wasn't going to cause any problems.
He pushed the starter button on the control panel, and the lifeboat's engine, after a few anemic gasps, came to life.
The rehearsals for getting the boats into the water had been sort of fun, although smiling at the men's activities would have been inappropriate.
He had begun the exercise by explaining that they weren't actually going to remove the camouflage netting over the boats-because the boats might then be seen-they were going to mimic uncovering them, and getting them into the water, and getting the equipment into them once they were in the water.
Everyone seemed to agree that was a logical approach to the problem.
As the boats when they were really put into the water would have to be carried there, they started with that. They were heavy, and would require eight men on each side to carry them.
The men were assigned numbers, Left #1 through Left #8, Right #1 through Right #8.
After Boat One was in the water, Boat Two would be uncovered and put in the water. Whereupon Left #7 and Left #8 would remain in Boat Two, Right #7 and Right #8 would move to Boat One, and everybody else would form a line to the now-roofless house where their weapons, am-munition, and everything else they were taking with them had been laid out in a precise pattern. Then, first each indi-vidual weapon would be passed from man to man down and into the boats, and then each man's equipment.
Setting the system up and running through it, even in mime, had taken all morning, and through the lunch break, and then they had rehearsed how they would assault Yonghung-do.
About 1700, McCoy had gathered everybody together and gone through what Major Kim had learned of the dis-position of the physical characteristics of the island, the lo-cation of the North Korean troops on the island, and the plan: Yonghung-do was about three miles long, north to south, and shaped something like an hourglass. Each end of the island was about a mile wide, and each had a 250- to 300-foot hill in its center. About in its middle, the island narrowed to a few hundred feet.
"That's where We'll land," McCoy said, pointing to a drawing he'd made of the island in the now-dried mud. "They won't expect us, and we can land there without be-ing seen. We'll leave a four-man team there-the.30 Browning machine-gun team plus one BAR and one rifleman-plus eight of Major Kim's men, under Mr. Taylor. Their job will be to keep the NKs in the village at the north end of the island, Nae-ri, from coming to help the NKs in the village, Oe-Ri, on the south end of the island.
"With a little bit of luck, the people we leave on the beach won't have anything to do. If we can move that mile over the hill quietly-no one fires a round by mistake, or Mr. Zimmerman doesn't fart-"
He got the expected laughter, waited for it to subside, and then went on:
"They won't expect us, and we can take them without firing a shot. `Them' is their lieutenant, one of their ma-chine guns, probably the ammo supply for all the islands, and their radio, with maybe a generator we can use to power ours. We're not going into that village shooting. If there's a radio, or diesel fuel, I don't want it full of bullet holes. There's also about two hundred civilians. I will re-ally have the ass of anyone who pops a civilian.
"Okay, once we have secured the southern village, we leave Major Kim's people there, go back to the landing beach, pick up everybody except the machine-gun team and Mr. Taylor, head norm, go over the other hill, and se-cure the other village, Nae-ri. Once we do that, a volunteer will run happily back over the hill to the beach and tell Mr. Taylor, who will then bring the boats to Nae-ri, and haul us-less Major Kim and his policemen, who will be stay-ing until we can get the militia in there-out. Any ques-tions?"
There had been no questions.
"Well, in that case, before it gets really dark, I think we ought to have one more-maybe even two more-dry runs of the boat launching," McCoy said.
There were groans. Once the system had been set up and tried and it worked once, and then twice, and then three times, it had become a flaming, stupid, pain-in-the-ass chickenshit exercise.
He waited until they had subsided.
"On the other hand," McCoy went on, straight-faced, "maybe it would just be easier to put the boats in the water now, load the gear in them, put the camo nets over them, and then all we'd have to do in the morning would be get in them, take off the nets, and take off."
There was a moment's shocked silence, and then mur-murs.
McCoy pointed his finger at one of the Marines, a tech-nical sergeant who had been a Marine Raider.
"What did you say, Sergeant?"
"I didn't say anything, sir."
"That's odd," McCoy said. "I could have sworn I heard you say, `Oh, what a pity our beloved and brilliant com-mander didn't think of that earlier!' Or words to that ef-fect."
"Yes, sir, words to that effect."
"What happens now is that you, Sergeant, will run out to the end of the wharf, taking these with you..."
He tossed him his binoculars.
"... through which you will scan the sea. When you are absolutely sure there is nothing out there, you will make an appropriate signal..."
McCoy had put his arms over his head and waved them.
"... whereupon the rest of this magnificent Marine ex-peditionary force, having assembled by Boat One, will get the camo off and
get it into the water as soon as they can, load the gear in it, put the camo back on, and then look at you again. If you are not making some sort of signal sug-gesting that there's a boat out there, they will then repeat the operation with Boat Two.
"If you see a boat while they're doing their thing, you will signal, but they will finish loading the boat and cover-ing it with the camo net before getting out of sight. Any questions?"
"No, sir," the sergeant said.
W E B Griffin - Corp 09 - Under Fire Page 69
