Under Fire

by Griffin, W. E. B.

  He was in one of the better rooms—perhaps the best—in the hotel. It had its own bathroom, toilet, washbasin, and tub and shower, as opposed to most of the others, which had only toilets and washbasins, according to Major Kim Pak Su while conducting a tour of the place the night before.

  McCoy tested the water, and after a moment it turned hot. He got a safety razor from his duffel bag and shaved while showering. When he returned to the bedroom, the bed had been stripped, and a freshly pressed set of utilities had been laid on it. And a freshly pressed T-shirt and drawers.

  He wondered how many Marines in the 1st Brigade would wear freshly washed—much less pressed—utilities and underwear today.

  And he was just a little uncomfortable with the knowledge that someone in the hotel was watching him closely enough to know when he’d gotten out of bed, and that he hadn’t heard anyone enter the room while he was showering.

  He put on the underwear, then strapped his Fairbairn to his lower left arm, put on the utilities, and slipped his bare feet into rubber sandals. Then he went looking for the dining room.

  There were five oblong, six-place tables in the room. Major Kim, Lieutenant Taylor, and Master Gunner Zimmerman were sitting at one of them. The chair at the head of the table was empty. McCoy wondered if that was a coincidence or if it had been left empty for him, as recognition that he was in charge. The Marines recruited from the 1st Brigade were spread among the other tables.

  They were, McCoy noticed, all wearing freshly laundered utilities.

  Zimmerman rose as McCoy approached the table. After a moment, Major Kim got up, and finally Taylor.

  "Good morning, sir,” Zimmerman said.

  That explained the empty chair at the head of the table. It was Zimmerman’s method of making the pecking order clear to all hands.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” McCoy replied, as he sat down at the head of the table. “Please take your seats.”

  A young Korean woman in a white ankle-length dress and white apron immediately appeared with a pitcher of coffee. She was no beauty, but she was female and young, and McCoy made a mental note to pass the word to the Marines that the help was off-limits.

  Breakfast was in keeping with what were apparently the standards of life in the hotel; it was not at all like what the rest of the Marines in Korea were getting. They were eating powdered eggs with chopped Spam off stainless-steel trays and drinking black coffee from canteen cups. McCoy was served two fried eggs and two slices of Spam on a china plate. Another plate held toast. There was both orange marmalade and butter.

  It was too much for McCoy to let pass without comment.

  “I’m delighted the Navy has taken over the mess, Mr. Taylor, ” he said. “We Marines are not used to living like this.”

  “But you can get used to it in a hurry, right?” Taylor said. “Actually, you have Major Kim to thank.”

  “Then thank you, Major Kim,” McCoy said, in Korean.

  Kim shrugged to suggest thanks were not necessary.

  “Major Dunston said whatever I could do to . . .”

  “Did he get into what we’re supposed to do here?”

  “No, sir.”

  “A Marine pilot has been shot down,” McCoy said. “Near Taejon. There is reason to believe he survived the crash and may still be alive. For reasons I can’t get into, it is important that we get him back. Or have proof that he’s dead.”

  “If he has been taken prisoner,” Kim said, immediately, “we can probably find that out, and also, probably, where he is being held. But . . . the Communists often do not take prisoners. . . .”

  “And they don’t keep records of which prisoners were shot and where,” McCoy finished for him.

  Kim nodded.

  “Right after breakfast,” McCoy said, “you and I are going into Pusan. Major Dunston’s been working on this overnight, and maybe you’ll be able to help,” McCoy said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  I think he swallowed that.

  “If we can locate him,” McCoy went on. “My men here are trained to operate behind the enemy’s lines. We may try to go get him.”

  Major Kim said nothing.

  He thinks that’s a stupid idea. But I think he believes me, which is important.

  “The junk here, if we decide to go after this pilot, would be useful in infiltrating the team,” McCoy said. “So while we are in Pusan, Lieutenant Taylor is going to see what shape it’s in. If there’s something wrong with it, it will have to be repaired. If it’s seaworthy, we’ll take it out for a dry run as soon as we can. Maybe as soon as this afternoon. Time is important.”

  Major Kim nodded.

  “On the dry run—the practice run, the rehearsal run— we’ll take half of the Marines and eight or ten of your men with us,” McCoy said.

  “May I ask why?”

  “In the Marine Corps, we try to make a dry run as much like the real thing as we can,” McCoy said.

  “I will tell my lieutenant to prepare the men,” Kim said.

  And he swallowed that, too. So far, so good.

  “I don’t know how much, if any, fuel is aboard the junk,” Taylor said. “Or available here.”

  “Give that problem to Sergeant Jennings, Mr. Zimmerman, ” McCoy said. “Have it solved by the time we get back from Pusan.”

  "Aye, aye, sir,” Zimmerman said.

  McCoy looked down at his plate and was surprised to see he had finished eating.

  He stood up.

  “Let’s get this show on the road,” he said.

  [FOUR]

  MARINE LIAISON OFFICE USAF AIRFIELD K-1 PUSAN, KOREA 1105 5 AUGUST 1950

  “The Badoeng Strait’s COD isn’t here yet, McCoy,” Captain Kenneth Overton said when McCoy and Zimmerman walked into his office.

  “Colonel Dunn said ‘by twelve hundred,’ ” McCoy replied.

  “But you have an envelope,” Overton said, smiling somewhat smugly, and handed McCoy a business-size envelope, with “Capt K. McCoy, USMC” written on it in pencil.

  McCoy took it and opened it. There was a note, written in pencil.

  K-1, 0800 5 AUG

  McCoy:

  I want to know what’s happened to Pick Pickering.

  I know what his father really does for a living.

  The PIO at Eighth Army will know where I am.

  If I don’t hear from you, I will write my story on what I do know.

  Jeanette Priestly

  Chicago Tribune

  “Shit,” McCoy said, and handed the note to Zimmerman.

  “Oh, Jesus!” Zimmerman said.

  “When was she here?” McCoy asked of Captain Overton.

  “She was here twice. Last night, right after you were. And again this morning. She was asking about a Major Pickering.”

  “What was she asking about Pickering?”

  “If I’d heard anything about him.”

  “And had you?”

  “Isn’t he the guy who’s been busting all the locomotives? ”

  “That’s all you know about him?”

  “I had the feeling the lady has the hots for him. She said he was aboard the Badoeng Strait, and she wanted a ride out to her.”

  “And?”

  “Last night, I told her there wouldn’t be a COD until first thing this morning. She was back here at oh seven hundred. A COD from the Sicily landed at oh seven thirty and she leaned hard on the pilot to take her out to the Badoeng Strait.”

  “And?”

  “She’s a persuasive lady. Good-looking lady, too. The Sicily pilot caved in enough to get the Air Force to radio for permission. It was denied. Then she asked if I ever saw you around here.”

  “And you told her ‘yeah’?” McCoy asked, icily.

  “I told her you’d been here.”

  “And that I would be back before noon?”

  “No. Just that you came by sometimes. And then she wrote that note and told me to give it to you.”

  “What are you going to do, Ken?” Zimm
erman asked.

  “I know what I’d like to do to her,” McCoy replied.

  “You and every other Marine in Korea,” Captain Overton said.

  “I’m not talking about nailing her,” McCoy said.

  He pointed to the telephone on Overton’s desk.

  “Can I get the Eighth Army PIO on that?”

  “You can try,” Overton said.

  “Ernie, go to Eighth Army. Get her. Take her out to the Evening Star.”

  “What if she doesn’t want to come?”

  “Take her out to the Evening Star,” McCoy repeated. “I don’t care how you do it.”

  “How are you going to get back there?”

  “Dunston said he would send Major Kim out there in a Jeep. I’ll have Kim pick me up here. And I’ll call Eighth Army—if I can get through—and get word to Miss Priestly that you’re on the way.”

  “You want her to see the Evening Star?”

  “I don’t want her to write a story based on what she thinks she knows.”

  “And if she asks about Pick?”

  “Tell her I’ll tell her everything she wants to know,” McCoy said.

  Captain Overton touched McCoy’s arm and pointed out the window. An Avenger had taxied up in front of the Base Operations building.

  “There’s your Badoeng Strait COD,” Overton said.

  “Get going, Ernie,” McCoy said.

  [FIVE]

  EVENING STAR HOTEL TONGNAE, SOUTH KOREA 1215 5 AUGUST 1950

  When McCoy and Major Kim drove around the hotel to the pier, there was a U.S. Army water trailer backed up to the shore end of the pier behind one of the freshly painted USMC Jeeps. A white legend on it read “Potable Water ONLY!!!” But what was coming out of the faucet and being fed into five-gallon jerry cans was obviously not water.

  As soon as one of the jerry cans was full, one of the South Korean national policemen carried it onto the pier, to the side of the junk, and hoisted it high enough so that another Korean on the junk could reach it and haul it aboard. Then an obviously empty jerry can was lowered over the side to the man on the pier, who carried it back to the “water trailer” and took up his position in line.

  There were four men engaged in filling the jerry cans and carrying them to the junk, and they wasted little effort. Still, the trailer held five hundred gallons, which meant the procedure would have to be repeated one hundred times. McCoy wondered how long they had been at it.

  “They brought the diesel about twenty minutes ago,” Lieutenant Taylor called out, as if he had been reading Mc-Coy’s mind.

  McCoy looked up and saw Taylor leaning on the rail of the high stern.

  “This is going to take a little time,” Taylor added, and pointed to a wood-stepped rope ladder on the side of the junk forward of the stern.

  McCoy got out of the Jeep and went to the ladder. He was hoping Major Kim would wait for an invitation to join him—he needed to talk to Taylor privately—but Kim followed him to the ladder.

  What the hell, he’s just trying to make himself useful.

  McCoy climbed the ladder to the deck. There were three hatches, and all were open. He walked down the deck and looked into each. The farthest aft hold was just about empty. The center hold held a Caterpillar diesel engine and its fuel tanks, one on each side. They each looked larger than the water trailer on shore, which translated to mean the fuel capacity was over one thousand gallons, information that was useless unless one knew how much fuel the Cat diesel burned in an hour, and how far the junk would travel in that hour.

  The forward hold was half full. There were a dozen wooden crates with rope handles, all marked as property of the Japanese Imperial Army. Three of them had legends saying they held ten Arisaka rifles; the others held ammunition for them.

  McCoy pushed open a door in the forecastle and saw that it was combination bunking space and a “kitchen.” There were crude bunks, eight in all, mounted on the bulkheads. Against the forward bulkhead was a table. In the center of the space was a square brick stove, on which sat three large, round-bottomed cooking pans.

  Woks, McCoy thought. I wonder who invented that pan? The Chinese? The Japs? The Koreans? They’re all over the Orient.

  Under one of the bunks he saw a wicker basket full of charcoal.

  He walked aft, and pushed open a hatch leading to space under the high stern. There were three doors off a center corridor, and crude sets of stairs leading down and up to the open area where he had seen Taylor. He started up those, aware that Major Kim was still on his heels.

  Taylor, who was still leaning on the rail, looked over his shoulder as McCoy came onto the deck.

  McCoy saluted him.

  “Permission to come aboard, sir?” he said.

  “Granted,” Taylor said, returned the salute, and then asked, “Is that what they call McCoy humor?”

  “No,” McCoy said. “I wanted to make the point that knowing a hell of a lot less than a Marine officer should know about things that float, you’re in charge, Captain.”

  “This your first time on a junk?” Taylor asked, smiling.

  “No, but this is the first time I didn’t pretend that I knew all about junks and wasn’t particularly impressed with what I was seeing.”

  Taylor chuckled and smiled.

  “You want a quick familiarization lecture?”

  “Please.”

  “Okay. This one, according to her stern board, was christened—maybe Confucius-ed?—the Wind of Good Fortune. She’s about ten years old, I would guess, and I suspect she was made somewhere in China. Good craftsmanship, good wood. You don’t often find that in Korean junks. The Caterpillar, I’ll bet, was installed in Macao. I found some papers in Portuguese, and the Macao shipbuilders have been catering to the smuggler trade since Christ was a corporal. Nice installation. It cost the former owners a fortune. I suspect she’ll make maybe thirteen, fourteen knots.”

  “And we have enough fuel to go how far?”

  “I’ll guess that Cat will burn ten, twelve gallons an hour. Say twelve. Hell, say fifteen—her hull may be six inches deep in barnacles. I figure we have twelve hundred gallons in those two tanks. Twelve hundred gallons divided by fifteen is eighty hours’ running time at a reasonable cruising speed—say, twelve knots. Eighty hours—provided the winds and tides are not really against us—at twelve knots is 960 miles.”

  “Major Kim, will you please excuse us for a minute?” McCoy said, as politely as he could. “I need a word with Lieutenant Taylor.”

  “Yes, of course,” Kim replied, smiling. He came to attention for a brief moment, then went down the stairs.

  McCoy waited until he appeared on the deck.

  “In other words, we have enough fuel to reach the Tokchok-kundo islands?”

  “Easily, even running at full bore,” Taylor replied.

  “At regular cruising speed, how long will that take us?”

  “It’s about four hundred miles from here. At twelve knots—I think we can do that without sweat, but I won’t know until we’re actually at sea—that’s four hundred divided by twelve: thirty-three point forever. Call it thirty-four hours.”

  “And at fourteen knots?”

  “Call it thirty,” Taylor said. “But I’d rather not push her unless I have to.”

  “What I want to do as soon as we can is get to Tokchok-kundo, get ashore, have a look around, and get the SCR- 300 up and operating.”

  Taylor nodded his understanding.

  “Are you planning on staying?”

  “I’m going to leave Zimmerman there, and Major Kim. If Kim’s there, he can’t tell Dunston what we have in mind.”

  “Did the Marines come through with aerial photographs? ” Taylor asked.

  “Lots of them,” McCoy said. “But until I can compare them against maps, I don’t know what I’m looking at.”

  “Charts, Captain McCoy, charts.”

  “I beg the captain’s pardon,” McCoy said, smiling.

  “You’ll have thirty
-four hours to do that,” Taylor said. “We can shove off in about an hour. That soon enough?”

  “We have to wait for a passenger,” McCoy said.

  “Am I allowed to ask who?”

  McCoy reached into his pocket for Jeanette Priestly’s note, and handed it to Taylor.

  “Jesus!” Taylor said when he read it. “This is that female war correspondent who wrote that piece about you and Zimmerman?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s her connection with Pickering’s son?”

  “She knows him. The guy at K-1 thinks she has the hots for him. I don’t know how she found out what the general does for a living.”

  “Do I understand this? You want to take her along?” McCoy nodded.

  “Can I ask why?”

  “Because I can’t think of anything else to do with her,” McCoy said. “I can’t let her write a story saying who Pickering’s father is.”

  “What makes you think she’ll be willing to go?”

  “She’ll be on board when we sail, Captain.”

  Taylor looked at him a long moment, but said nothing.

  “Captain,” Major Kim called, and both Taylor and McCoy walked to the railing and looked down at him.

  “Captain, my sergeant reports the fuel tanks are full.”

  “Tell him thank you, please,” Taylor called back, and then looked at McCoy.

  McCoy turned from the railing and spoke softly, in English.

  “He was talking to you. He picked up on me making it clear you’re the captain.”

  “Good man, I think,” Taylor said.

  “The trouble with good men is that they tend to be pissed when they find out you’ve been lying to them,” McCoy said.

  “Your orders, Captain?” Major Kim called.

  “Tell him to wait a minute,” McCoy said.

  “Stand by, please, Major,” Taylor called, in Korean.

  “We’ll be taking Major Kim, and a dozen of his people, and their equipment,” McCoy said. “Plus eight of the Marines and Zimmerman. And their equipment.”

  “Plus the lady war correspondent,” Taylor interjected.