The Corps V - Line of Fire

by W. E. B Griffin

  PRESENT STATION TO RECEIVING UNIT. PRIORITY AAA IS AUTHORIZED.

  BY DIRECTION: C.W. STANWYCK LTCOL USMC

  "The Twenty-first MAG is on Guadalcanal," Colonel Carlson said.

  "Yes, Sir, I know."

  "Then this doesn't surprise you, Gunny? You knew about it?"

  "No, Sir. I mean, no, Sir, I didn't know anything about this."

  "I'm curious, Gunny," Carlson said, conversationally. "If this question in any way is awkward for you to answer, then don't answer it. But would you be surprised to learn that Lieutenant McCoy had a hand in this somewhere?" The question obviously surprised Zimmerman. He met Carlson's eyes.

  "Sir, nothing the Kill- Lieutenant McCoy does surprises me anymore. But I don't think he's behind this. I think I know where it come from."

  "You did know, didn't you, Gunny, what Lieutenant McCoy was doing, really doing, when he was assigned here?" Zimmerman's face flushed.

  "I had a pretty good idea, Sir," he said uncomfortably.

  "Lieutenant McCoy is a fine officer," Carlson said, "defined first as one who carries out whatever orders he is given to the best of his ability, and second as a gentleman who is made uncomfortable by deception. You know what I'm talking about, Gunny?"

  "Yes, Sir. I think so, Sir."

  "I saw Lieutenant McCoy in the hospital just before they flew him home. He told me then what he'd really been doing with the Raiders. I then told him I had been aware of his situation almost from the day he joined the Raiders." Zimmerman looked even more uncomfortable.

  "I told him I bore him no hard feelings. Quite the contrary. That I admired him for carrying out a difficult order to the best of his ability. If certain senior officers of The Corps felt it necessary to send in an officer to determine whether or not the commanding officer of the 2nd Raider Battalion was a communist, then it was clearly the duty of that officer to comply with his orders."

  "The Killer never thought for a minute you was a communist, Sir," Zimmerman blurted.

  Carlson smiled.

  "So I understand," he said. "And I hope you have come to the same conclusion, Gunny."

  "Jesus, Colonel!"

  "I also told Lieutenant McCoy that whatever his primary mission was, he had carried out his duties with the Raiders in a more than exemplary manner, and that I considered it a privilege to have had him under my command."

  "Yes, Sir."

  "The same applies to you, Gunny. I wanted to tell you that before you ship out."

  "Colonel," Zimmerman said, the floodgates open now, "the Killer told me he arranged for me to be assigned to the Raiders in case he needed me for something he was doing. He didn't tell me what he was doing, and the only thing I ever did was take some telephone messages for him. I didn't even know what the fuck they meant."

  "Hence my curiosity about your transfer," Colonel Carlson said. "You said, didn't you, a moment ago, that you thought you knew what was behind the transfer?"

  "Yes, Sir. I mean, I don't know for sure, but what I think is... when they were forming VMF-229 at Ewa, they was having trouble with their aircraft-version Browning.50s. A tech sergeant named Oblensky, an old China Marine, was. He come to me and McCoy-Sergeant McCoy-and me went over there and took care of it for him."

  "And you think Sergeant-Oblensky, you said?"

  "Yes, Sir. Big Steve Oblensky."

  "-was behind this transfer?"

  "Yes, Sir. He goes way back. He's too old now, but he used to be a Flying Sergeant. He was in Nicaragua, places like that, flying with General McInerney. He knows a lot of people in The Corps, Sir." Brigadier General D. G. McInerney was not the most senior Marine Aviator, but he was arguably the most influential.

  "And you think that based on Sergeant Oblensky's recommendation, General McInerney, or someone at that level, convinced Fleet Marine Force Pacific that MAG-21 needs you and Sergeant McCoy more than the 2nd Raider Battalion does?"

  "Yes, Sir. That's the way I see it."

  "I think you're probably right, Gunny," Colonel Carlson said, standing up and offering his hand to Zimmerman. "We'll miss the two of you around here, but I'm sure you'll do a good job for MAG-21." Zimmerman got quickly to his feet and took Carlson's hand.

  "I don't suppose I got anything to say about this transfer, do I, Sir?"

  "Yes, of course you, do. You've been given an order, and when a good gunny gets an order, he says, `Aye, aye, Sir."

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  "Good luck, Gunny. And pass that on to Sergeant McCoy, please, "

  "Aye, aye, Sir." Zimmerman did an about-face and marched to the office door. As he passed through it, he suddenly remembered that Sergeant McCoy was at the moment behind bars in Honolulu charged with drunkenness, resisting arrest, and Christ only knows what else.

  (Two)

  ARMED FORCES MILITARY POLICE DETENTION FACILITY

  HONOLULU, OAHU, TERRITORY OF HAWAII

  31 AUGUST 1942

  Sergeant Thomas M. McCoy, USMCR, had not been provided with a pillow or any other bedclothes for his bunk, a sheet of steel welded firmly to the wall of his cell.

  He had remedied the situation by making a pillow of his shoes; he'd wrapped them in his trousers. And his uniform jacket was now more or less a blanket, He was very hung over, and in addition he suffered from a number of bruises and contusions. The combined force of Navy and Marine Corps Shore Patrolmen, augmented by two Army Military Policemen, had been more than a little annoyed with Sergeant McCoy at the time of his arrest.

  They had used, with a certain enthusiasm, somewhat more than the absolute minimum force required to restrain an arrestee. Sergeant McCoy's back, hips, buttocks, thighs, and calves would carry for at least two weeks long thin black bruises from nightsticks, and both eyes would suggest they had encountered something hard, such as a fist or elbow.

  When the door of his cell, a barred section on wheels, opened with an unpleasant clanking noise, Sergeant McCoy had been awake long enough to reconstruct as much as he could of the previous evening's events and to consider how they were most likely going to affect his immediate future in The Marine Corps.

  Even the most optimistic assessment was not pleasant: He would certainly get busted. Depending on how much damage he'd done to the Shore Patrol-the bloody gashes on the fingers of his right hand suggested he'd punched at least one of the bastards in the teeth-there was a good chance he would find himself standing in front of a court-martial, and would probably catch at least thirty days in the brig, maybe more.

  On the premise that the damage was already done and that nothing else could happen to him, he ignored whoever it was who had stepped into his cell. When whoever it was pushed on his shoulder to wake him, he ignored that, too.

  "Wake up, McCoy," the familiar voice of Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman said as his shoulder was shaken a little harder.

  The doesn't sound all that pissed, McCoy decided. And then there was another glimmer of hope: Zimmerman ain't all that bad compared to most gunnies. Maybe I can talk myself out of this.

  He straightened his legs. That hurt.

  Those bastards really did a job on me with their fucking nightsticks.

  He pushed himself into a sitting position and looked at Zimmerman, a slight smile on his face.

  He saw that Zimmerman had a seabag with him and that Zimmerman was in greens, not utilities.

  That's probably my bag. He looked and saw his name stenciled on the side.

  "You look like shit," Zimmerman said.

  "You ought to see the other guy, Gunny."

  "Anything broke?"

  "Nah," McCoy said.

  "I got your gear," Zimmerman said, kicking the seabag.

  "Shave and get into clean greens. I'll be back in five minutes.

  It stinks in here."

  "How the hell am I supposed to shave? There's no water or nothing in here."

  "Big, tough guy like you don't need any water or shaving cream." Zimmerman turned around and struck one of the vertical cell bars with the heel of his
balled fist. It clanked open. The moment Zimmerman was outside the cell, it clanked shut again.

  Exactly five minutes later he was back. McCoy had changed into a clean set of greens.

  "Where we going, Gunny?"

  "I told you to shave."

  "And I told you there's no water, no mirror, no nothing, in here. How the fuck... ?" Zimmerman hit him twice, first in the abdomen with his fist, and then when he doubled over, in the back of his neck with the heel of his hand.

  McCoy fell on the floor of the cell, banging his shoulder painfully on the steel bunk and nearly losing consciousness. He was conscious enough, though, to hear what Zimmerman said, almost conversationally: "I thought I already taught you that when I tell you to do something it ain't a suggestion." McCoy heard the sound of Zimmerman's fist striking the cell bar again, then he saw the cell door sliding open, and then closing again.

  After a moment McCoy was able to get into a sitting position, resting his back against the cell wall. He took a couple of deep breaths, each of which hurt, then he pulled his seabag to him, unfastened the snap from the loop, and dug inside "or his razor.

  (Three)

  UNITED STATES NAVAL AIR STATION

  LAKEHURST, NEW JERSEY

  1705 HOURS 31 AUCUST 1942

  Second Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, glanced over at his traveling companion, Second Lieutenant Richard J. Stecker, USMC, saw that he was asleep, and jabbed him in the ribs with his elbow.

  Pickering, a tall, rangy twenty-two-year-old with an easygoing look, was considered extraordinarily handsome by a number of females even before he had put on the dashing uniform of a Marine officer. Stecker, also twenty-two, was stocky, muscular, and looked-on the whole-more dependable. They were sitting in adjacent seats toward the rear of a U.S. Navy R4D aircraft. To judge from the triangular logotype woven into the upholstery of its seats, the R4D had originally been the property of Delta Air Lines.

  "Hey! Wake up! I have good news for you!"

  "What the hell?" Stecker replied. He had not been napping. He had been sound asleep.

  " `You too can learn to fly,' " Pickering read solemnly.

  " `For your country, for your future."

  "What the hell are you reading?" Stecker demanded.

  "Whether you're sixteen or sixty,' " Pickering continued, " `if you are in normal health and possess normal judgment, you can learn to fly with as little as eight hours of dual instruction."

  "Stecker snatched the Life magazine from Pickering's hand.

  "Jesus, you woke me up for that?" he said in exasperation, throwing the magazine back in his lap.

  "We have begun our descent," Pickering said. "If you had read and heeded this splendid public service advertisement by the Piper people, you would know that."

  "Where the hell are we?" Stecker said, looking out the window.

  "I devoutly hope we are over New Jersey," Pickering said.

  He picked up the magazine, found his place, and continued reading aloud:" `In the future a huge aviation industry will offer great opportunities to pilots of all ages. Visit your Piper Cub Dealer. He will be glad to give you a flight demonstration and tell you how you can become a pilot now."

  "Will you shut the hell up?"

  "It says right here, `flying saves you time, gas, and tires." How about that?"

  "You're making that up."

  "I am not, see for yourself," Pickering said righteously, holding up the magazine.

  Stecker did not look. He was staring out the window.

  "I see water down there," he announced.

  "And clever fellow that you are, I'll bet you've figured out that it's the Atlantic Ocean."

  "You're in a disgustingly cheerful mood," Stecker said.

  "I have visions of finally getting off this sonofabitch, and that has cheered me beyond measure. My ass has been asleep for the last forty-five minutes."

  "And your brain all day," Stecker said triumphantly, and then added, "There it is." Pickering leaned across him and looked out the window. The enormous dirigible hangar at Lakehurst Naval Air Station rose surrealistically from the sandy pine barren, dwarfing the eight or ten Navy blimps near it, and making the aircraft-including other R4Ds-parked on the concrete ramp seem toylike.

  The Naval Aviators here are at war, Stecker thought. Every day they fly Navy blimps and long-range patrol bombers over the Atlantic in a futile search, most of the time, for German submarines that are doing their best to interrupt shipping between the United States and England.

  "How'd you like to fly one of those?" Stecker asked. "A blimp?"

  "Not at all, thank you. I have had my fucking fill of the miracle of flight for one day." It was about 1300 miles in straight lines from Pensacola, Florida, to Lakehurst, N.J.

  Using 200 knots as a reasonable figure for the hourly speed of the Gooneybird, that translated to six and a half hours. It had taken considerably longer than that. There had been intermediate stops at the Jacksonville, Florida, Naval Air Station; at Hurtt Field, on Parris Island, S.C.; at The Marine Corps Air Station, Cherry Point, N.C.; the Norfolk NAS, Va.; and Anacostia NAS, Md.

  They had taken off from Pensacola at first light, just after four A.M. It was now nearly four P.m., or actually five, since they had changed time zones.

  "I mean, really," Stecker said.

  "Not me. I'm a fighter pilot," Pickering said grandly.

  "Oh shit," Stecker groaned.

  The Gooneybird flew down the length of the dirigible hangar, then turned onto his final approach. There was the groan of hydraulics as the Gooneybird pilot lowered the flaps and landing gear.

  "You know, it actually rains inside there," Stecker said.

  "So you have told me. Which does not necessarily make it so.

  "It really does, jackass."

  "Another gem from R. Stecker's fund of useless knowledge," Pickering said, mimicking the dulcet voice of a radio announcer, "brought to you by the friendly folks at Piper aircraft, where you too can learn to fly." With a chirp, the Gooneybird's wheels made contact with the ground.

  "The Lord be praised, we have cheated death again," Pickering said.

  "Jesus Christ, Pick, shut up, will you?" Stecker said, but he was unable to keep a smile off his lips.

  They taxied to the transient ramp at one end of the dirigible hangar. A two-story concrete block there was dwarfed by the building behind it.

  The plane stopped. The door to the cockpit opened, and a sailor, the crew chief, went down the aisle and opened the door.

  He was wearing work denims and a blue, round sailor's cap. A blast of hot air rushed into the cabin.

  He unstrapped a small aluminum ladder from the cabin wall and dropped it in place.

  Pickering unfastened his seat belt, stood up, and moved into the aisle. When the other passengers started following the crew chief off the airplane, he started down the aisle.

  "Put your cover on," Stecker said. "You remember what happened the last time."

  "Indeed I do," Pickering said. It wasn't really the last time, but the time before the last time. He had exited the aircraft with his tie pulled down, his collar unbuttoned, and his uniform cap (in Marine parlance, his "cover") jammed in his hip pocket.

  He had almost immediately encountered a Marine captain, wearing the wings of a parachutist-Lakehurst also housed The Marine Corps' parachutists' school-who had politely asked if he could have a word with him, led him behind the Operations Building, and then delivered a brief inspirational lecture on the obligation of Marine officers, even fucking flyboys, to look like Marine officers, not like something a respectable cat would be ashamed to drag home.

  Dick Stecker, who'd listened at the corner of the building, judged it to be a really first-class chewing-out. He'd also known it was a waste of the Captain's time and effort. It would inspire Pickering to go and sin no more for maybe a day. He had been right.

  If I hadn't said something, he would have walked out of the airplane again with his cover in his pocket and h
is tie pulled down.

  When Stecker got off the plane, he found Pickering looking up like a tourist at the curved roof of the dirigible hangar.

  From that angle it seemed to soar into infinity.

  He jabbed him in the ribs.

  "I'll go check on ground transportation. You get the bags." Pickering nodded.

  "Big sonofabitch, ain't it?"

  Stecker nodded.