Under Fire

by Griffin, W. E. B.

  McCoy pointed his finger at one of the Marines, a technical 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 commander didn’t think of that earlier!’ Or words to that effect. ”

  “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 expeditionary 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 suggesting 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 covering it with the camo net before getting out of sight. Any questions?”

  “No, sir,” the sergeant said.

  “Let’s do it,” McCoy said.

  The sergeant took off in a fast trot for the wharf, and then down it.

  Twenty minutes later, both boats were in the water, loaded, and covered with camouflaged netting.

  McCoy signaled for the sergeant at the end of the wharf to come back.

  “To answer the questions you’re afraid to ask,” McCoy said. “You went through that mimicry business so that it would be second nature when you actually did it. And we didn’t do the real thing until now. It’s almost dark. Even if a boat did show up, I don’t think they could see the lifeboats at the wharf unless they came into the harbor. Any questions?”

  There had been no questions.

  “Are you ready, Captain McCoy?” Lieutenant Taylor called.

  “Ready.”

  The sound of the engine in Taylor’s boat changed as he put it in gear.

  McCoy saw that the two Marines holding the lines holding the boat to the wharf were looking at him.

  “Let loose the lines,” McCoy called. “Shove us off.”

  Both Marines pushed the boat away with the wharf with their feet.

  McCoy pulled the transmission lever away from him, into forward.

  There was immediately the screech of tortured metal.

  He had no idea what it was, but it was obviously time to put the transmission in neutral. He pushed it forward, and the screaming stopped.

  “What the fuck was that?” someone in the boat said.

  Taylor made a tight circle with his lifeboat, pulled up beside McCoy’s boat, and nimbly jumped into it.

  “I don’t know what the hell . . . ,” McCoy said.

  Taylor moved the transmission control into forward, and then immediately back out as the screeching started again.

  “You got the shaft, I think,” Taylor said. “I hope that’s all that’s wrong.”

  “Is it serious?”

  “It means we’re not going anywhere this morning,” Taylor said. “I can’t even look at it until it’s out of the water and there’s light.”

  [SIX]

  TOKCHOK-KUNDO ISLAND 0725 25 AUGUST 1950

  Boat Two was now on the shore, upside down, with the camouflage net suspended over it from the wall of the generator building.

  Boat One was still in the water, loaded and under a camouflage net. It had been a gamble lost. McCoy—and Taylor, too, although he kept it to himself—desperately had hoped that whatever was wrong with the boat would be able to be fixed quickly, so the operation could go on. That seemed to justify the risk of leaving Boat One in the water, where it might—almost certainly would—look very suspicious to anyone coming close to Tokchok-kundo.

  By the time they had gotten Boat Two unloaded, so that it could be brought ashore, the predawn darkness had given way to dawn, and that meant the operation had to be scratched. There was no way to sneak past Taemuui-do and Taebu-do in daylight.

  Neither was the damage to Boat Two something that could quickly be repaired, if it could be repaired at all. The shaft, coming through the hull to the propeller, had somehow been bent.

  To repair it would mean removing it from the boat, heating it, beating it with hammers until it was straight again, and then putting it back in the boat. Taylor was not at all sure it could be done, and told McCoy so.

  “We can’t tow this with the other boat?” McCoy asked.

  Taylor shook his head, “no.”

  “Maybe in the open sea,” he said. “But not with the tides in the channel.”

  “Then I guess we’ll have to fix this one,” McCoy said.

  When they heard the sound of aircraft engines, they had gotten as far as removing the bent shaft from the boat, and building a makeshift forge and anvil, both from rocks. The shaft would have to be heated first until it was glowing red before an attempt could be made to straighten it.

  There was considerable doubt that the shaft could be heated hot enough on the wood fire, and neither Taylor nor the Korean, who had some experience with rudimentary metalworking, could even make a guess as to how often the heating/hammering process would have to be repeated, if, indeed, the heating could be done at all.

  Two Corsairs appeared where the Corsairs had appeared the day before, coming down the Flying Fish Channel from the lighthouse. But today one of them was much lower, not more than 300 feet off the water, and with his landing gear down.

  “Jesus,” McCoy said, softly, to Taylor and Zimmerman, “do you think he’s going to drop us a radio?”

  “He’s going to drop something,” Zimmerman said.

  McCoy stared intently at the approaching airplane, but could see nothing but ordnance hanging from the hard-points under its wings.

  And then something did come off the aircraft, something small, at the end of what looked like a ribbon.

  The moment the object started to fall, the landing gear of the Corsair started to retract into the wings, and the aircraft banked to the left to avoid the hill and began to pick up altitude.

  The object dropped from the Corsair lost its forward velocity and then dropped straight down, landing ten yards from the wharf and twenty yards from the shore. The ribbon, or whatever it was, now lay on the surface of the mud left by the receding tide. Whatever it was attached to was buried in the mud.

  McCoy turned to look at Zimmerman. He was sitting on the ground, pulling his boondockers and socks off. Then he stripped out of the black pajama shirt and trousers and then his underpants.

  Zimmerman started wading out through the mud toward the ribbon. He sank over his ankles in the mud, and once, for a moment, it looked as if he was stuck in the mud and about to fall. But he regained his balance, and finally had his hand on the white ribbon. He started to pull on it, and then met more resistance than he thought he would. So he waded farther out, to where the ribbon’s end entered the mud. He carefully began to haul upward on the ribbon. Thirty seconds later, he was holding something in his hand.

  “It’s a fucking flashlight!” he called in disgust.

  “Bring it ashore,” McCoy called, and Zimmerman started to wade back toward the shore, winding the ribbon around the “flashlight” as he moved.

  He finally came ashore, puffing from the exertion.

  “How’m I going to get this stinking fucking muck off my legs?” he asked, and tossed the “flashlight” and the muddy ribbon around it to McCoy.

  The ribbon, McCoy immediately saw, was parachute silk. He unwound it from around the “flashlight,” and saw that it was indeed a flashlight, a big four battery-size one from some mechanic’s tool kit. The twenty-foot-long strip
of parachute silk had been attached to the flashlight’s cylinder with heavy tape.

  He moved the switch. There was no light.

  He unscrewed the head and saw that one of the batteries had been removed, and that there was a piece of folded paper where it had been. He carefully removed it and unfolded it. It was a message written in grease pencil:

  From Pickering

  “Radio on the way.”

  Hang In There.

  Semper Fi

  Dunn

  Lieutenant Taylor, Major Kim, and Master Gunner Zimmerman—who was still naked, and had both hands covered with the mud he had tried unsuccessfully to wipe from his legs—walked up to McCoy.

  “What the hell is it?” Taylor asked.

  McCoy handed the note to him. Taylor read it and started to hand it to Zimmerman, changed his mind, and held it in front of Zimmerman’s face so that he could read it.

  “Mr. Zimmerman, if you don’t mind my saying so,” McCoy said. “You smell of dead fish and other rotten things I don’t even want to think about.”

  “Fuck you, Killer,” Zimmerman said, but he had to smile.

  Taylor handed the note to Major Kim.

  “ ‘On the way’ doesn’t tell us when,” Taylor said. “Or how.”

  “If General Pickering says a radio is on the way, a radio is on the way,” McCoy said. “That’s good news.”

  “And what do we do until the good news arrives?” Zimmerman asked.

  “You, Mr. Zimmerman, will make every effort to make yourself presentable,” McCoy said. “The rest of us will try to fix the boat, meanwhile hoping that nobody goes sailing by and wonders what the hell the natives here have concealed under that camouflage net by the wharf.”

  “With the tide out like this,” Taylor thought aloud, “we can’t get it ashore, either.”

  “Let’s get started on the boat,” McCoy said. “Major Kim, would you put a couple of people out on the wharf to give us warning if we’re going to have visitors?”

  [SEVEN]

  ABOARD WIND OF GOOD FORTUNE 37 DEGREES 38 MINUTES NORTH LATITUDE, 126 DEGREES 57 MINUTES EAST LONGITUDE THE YELLOW SEA 1500 25 AUGUST 1950

  Captain George F. Hart, USMCR, now attired in black cotton pajamas, with a band of the same material around his forehead, nodded when Captain Kim pointed at a landmass on the horizon.

  Then he mimed making his radio report by holding an imaginary microphone in front of his mouth. Captain Kim nodded, and either cleared his throat or grunted.

  Hart went down the ladder to his cabin, turned on the light, took out his notebook, and went through each step necessary to turn the radio on. Then he put on the headset and picked up the microphone.

  “Dispatch, Dispatch, H-1, H-1,” he said.

  There was an immediate response, which this time— Hart having acquired faith in his ability to control the volume in his headset—did not hurt his ears.

  “H-1, Dispatch, go.”

  “One Seven Three,” Hart said into the microphone. “I say again, One Seven Three.”

  “Dispatch understands One Seven Three, confirm,” the voice in Hart’s earphones said.

  “Confirm, confirm,” Hart said into the microphone.

  “H-1, Dispatch. Stand by to copy.”

  That was the first time he’d heard that order, and he had absolutely no idea how he was supposed to reply.

  “Okay, Dispatch,” he said into the microphone.

  “Message begins, Proceed your discretion with great caution. Report immediately. Godspeed. The Boss, Message ends. Acknowledge.”

  “Acknowledged,” Hart said, without really thinking about it.

  “Dispatch clear.”

  The hiss came back to Hart’s earphones.

  Hart laid the microphone down, took off the headset, and then shut the radio down.

  He went back on deck.

  Captain Kim looked at him with a question in his eyes. He wants to know if I’ve finished.

  Hart nodded.

  The question on Captain Kim’s face was still there.

  Hart made a cutting motion across his throat, which he hoped Captain Kim would interpret to mean that he had finished making his report.

  Captain Kim began to shout.

  What the hell is that all about?

  One of the other Kims, and Lee, the cook, suddenly appeared in the forecastle door, and looked up at Captain Kim for orders. He shouted something, and they immediately went to the forward mast and started to raise the venetian blindlike sail.

  Captain Kim reached into the control compartment and shut down the diesel engine.

  Within minutes, all the sails were up, and the Wind of Good Fortune was moving toward the landmass under sail.

  Three minutes later, Hart was able to pick out the lighthouse that marked the entrance to the Flying Fish Channel.

  He went over the message from General Pickering in his mind.

  He didn’t have to tell me to proceed at my discretion and with great caution. I don’t have any “discretion.” I told him I would sail into Tokchok-kundo on this thing and get the SCR to McCoy, presuming he and the others are still there, which means I have to do it, and there’s no discretion involved.

  Great caution? I’m not, and he knows I’m not, John Wayne. Of course I’m going to be careful.

  Report immediately? He should have known I’d do that, anyway. The only reason I’m bringing the goddamn radio is so that he’ll have contact with McCoy, and McCoy— presuming he’s there—wouldn’t wait until Thursday of next week to get in contact.

  What’s the variable meaning? What am I missing?

  Okay. McCoy is not there. He and Taylor never made it to the island from the destroyer, or they made it and were grabbed by the North Koreans. If that’s the case, Zimmerman and the others have also been grabbed by the NKs.

  Wishful thinking aside, that’s the most likely situation.

  So we sail in there, fat, dumb, and happy, and we get grabbed. And get shot as spies, especially me in these goddamn pajamas.

  Oh, shit! Report immediately means that if he doesn’t hear from me, immediately, I will have been grabbed— which would mean that everybody else has been grabbed, too—and that would mean this whole operation has gone down the toilet.

  Of course, he’d want to know that immediately. Maybe there would be time to try something else, maybe not, but he would want to know right away.

  So what’s the point of the great caution?

  If the NKs are holding Tokchok-kundo, is there any chance I could see them before they see me and get out of there with my ass intact?

  About as much chance as there is of me being taken bodily into heaven.

  So what this really boils down to is we go in there and (a) McCoy greets me with a brass band and asks me what took me so long, or (b) we go in there and half the North Korean army greets me with a couple of machine guns.

  And after a suitable interrogation, shoots me—which they have every right to do, with me in my spy pajamas.

  I don’t want to be interrogated; somehow I suspect I won’t be able to claim my constitutional right to refuse to answer any questions on the grounds they may tend to incriminate me.

  So what else is there I can do?

  I can get out of these fucking pajamas, is what I can do. And if I am going to get blown away, maybe I can take some of them with me before I go. And get buried in a Marine uniform.

  Ten minutes later, Captain George F. Hart came on the stern again. He was now in the prescribed semi-dress uniform for the summer months of the year for officers of the U.S. Marine Corps, including a field scarf. The uniform had lost its press and was not very clean. A Thompson Submachine Gun Model 1928 Caliber .45 ACP was hanging from his shoulder on a web strap.

  When he looked around, the Flying Fish Channel lighthouse was behind him to his left.

  There was a nautical way to say that, but he couldn’t think what it was.

  [EIGHT]

  TOKCHOK-KUNDO ISLAND 1535 25 A
UGUST 1950

  One of the two national policemen Major Kim had stationed on the end of the wharf came running down the wharf to where Kim was watching another of his men hammering at the dull red—not heated quite enough— shaft of Boat Two.

  He reported that a junk was on the horizon, coming down the Flying Fish Channel, but that it was too early to tell whether it was headed for Tokchok-kundo.

  Major Kim started to make the translation, then stopped when McCoy held up his hand.

  “Thank you,” McCoy said, in Korean, to the national policeman. “I would be grateful if you would return to your post and perhaps climb down from the wharf itself, so that anyone looking might not see you. And please tell us what else you see.”

  The national policeman saluted and ran back out onto the wharf.

  “So what do we do,” Zimmerman said, “if it comes here, or even close enough to get a look?”

  “Dave, could you climb onto that junk from the lifeboat if it was, say, fifty yards offshore?”

  “I could if there weren’t people on the deck shooting at me,” Taylor replied.

  “Zimmerman and I will try to make sure there’s nobody on the deck alive,” McCoy said. “We’ll go halfway up the hill, Ernie, so we’ll have a good shot at the deck. . . .”

  “We could do sort of a TOT on it,” Zimmerman suggested. “We have enough firepower to really sweep it clean.”

  “There’s probably no more than four or five people on it,” McCoy said. “I’ll start at the stern, you start at the bow.”

  Zimmerman nodded his acceptance.

  “I don’t want a sudden burst of small-arms fire to attract anybody else’s attention,” McCoy said, then turned to Major Kim: “Major Kim, see how well you can hide this”—he gestured at the upside-down lifeboat and the makeshift forge—“and then make sure everybody’s out of sight.”

  Major Kim nodded.

  “If we take it just as it approaches the wharf,” McCoy said to Zimmerman, “it would be moving slowly. And it would be, I’d say, about two hundred yards from halfway up the hill.”

  “I’d make it two hundred yards,” Zimmerman agreed.