The Corps V - Line of Fire

by W. E. B Griffin

  This Mongolian Operation, obviously, is just about as risky for the people involved as Ferdinand Six, Pickering thought. And one of the reasons McCoy is so matter-of-factly willing to go on it is that he believes, as a matter of faith, that if he gets in trouble, somebody else in The Corps will do all that's humanly possible to get him out.

  I'm right about this! Even if Rickabee, and probably Sessions, think I'm a goddamned fool "We could solve that problem, too," Pickering said. "Who's `they,' McCoy? Where are they working on this land-on-sand business?"

  "At an Army Air Corps airfield in Florida, General. On the Florida panhandle, up near the Alabama border."

  "That's where Jimmy Doolittle trained for his B-25 Shangrila mission on Tokyo," Pickering thought aloud.

  "Eglin Field, I think, Sir," McCoy said.

  "No. It's probably an auxiliary field, between Eglin and Pensacola. I was there a while back. Is there any reason you can't go down there and find out something for sure?"

  "I can go down there, yes, Sir."

  "Then go."

  "General, if I could have Lieutenant Moore and Sergeant Hart... having them with me might be helpful."

  "OK. Whatever you think you need," Pickering said, and went on: "We have concluded that the extraction of Joe Howard and Steve Koffler is not impossible..." You have the fantasy that it's not impossible, Rickabee thought. Jesus Christ, landing an airliner on a beach, right under the nose of the Japanese! Fifty, sixty miles from a Japanese fighter base!

  "We will now deal with your statement, Colonel, that my going to Australia is `out of the question."

  "Admiral Leahy would not give you permission, General", Rickabee said. And then, anticipating Pickering's response to that, he went on. "And if you were to go without permission, he would order you home as soon as he heard about it. Among other things, that would serve to call attention to this operation, which is the last thing you want to happen."

  "Jesus!" Pickering said bitterly.

  It was clear to Rickabee that he had made his point.

  "Lieutenant McCoy," he said, "carrying a letter of instructions from you, General, to Major Banning, would, I suggest, be all that's needed."

  "I don't think so," Pickering said. "McCoy is a lieutenant, Banning a major. What I have been thinking is that Jake outranks Banning." Goddamn it, I should have known he would pick up on that, Rickabee thought. Dillon came back into The Corps as a major while Banning was still in the Philippines as a captain.

  "Flem, for Christ's sake," Jake Dillon said uncomfortably, "I'm a press agent wearing a major's uniform. I don't know anything about this sort of thing."

  "You're a Marine, Jake," Pickering said. "And all you have to do is go there and report to me that Banning is or is not doing what you tell him to do. And what you tell him to do is what McCoy tells you he wants done."

  "General, that puts me in a hell of a spot," McCoy said.

  "There is a limited access communications channel available to us. Moore is familiar with it..." Pickering said.

  Jesus, he's talking about the MAGIC channel, Rickabee thought. He shouldn't even think of using that for this harebrained scheme of his! But Jesus, except for Admiral Leahy or the President himself there's no one to tell him he can't.

  "We will utilize that to keep in touch with day-to-day developments. As Rickabee just pointed out, the less attention paid to this operation, the better. The question, John, is whether you feel up to going back to Australia."

  "Yes, Sir. I feel fine."

  "General, he's walking around with a cane!" Rickabee protested.

  "You're sure?" Pickering asked Moore.

  "Yes, Sir, I'm sure," Lieutenant Moore said.

  "OK. We're under way," Pickering said. "Now we start with the administrative details. I've got some letters to write. Can I have a typewriter sent over here, Rickabee?"

  "I'll send you a secretary, Sir."

  "I asked for a typewriter," Pickering said.

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  "You can start on getting orders cut," Pickering said. "And McCoy and Moore and Hart will need plane tickets right away." "Sir," Lieutenant McCoy said, "the overnight train to Miami-`Seacoast Airline' they call it for some reason I never understood comes through Washington at half past six. If we could get on that, we could get a good night's sleep. We could get off in Tallahassee and catch the Greyhound bus to Eglin."

  "See if you can get them a compartment-compartments- on the train," Pickering ordered. "And see if you can't arrange to have somebody from Eglin pick them up at Tallahassee."

  "Aye, Aye, Sir," Sessions said. "No problem, we have an officer there in connection with Operation CHINA SUN." In the car on the way back to the Mall and Temporary Building T-2032, Captain Edward Sessions turned to Colonel F. L. Rickabee and asked, "Do you think they'll be able to pull this off, Colonel?"

  "It isn't my place to think about my orders, Captain. I'm a Marine officer; when I am given an order, I do my best to carry it out. But since you asked, no, I don't think so. Do I hope they can? Yes, I do."

  "Why do you suppose McCoy wanted to take Moore and Hart with him to Florida?"

  "I have absolutely no idea," Rickabee said, "my mind being otherwise occupied with such mundane questions as under what authority we are going to be able to transport Major Dillon to Australia. He is assigned to Public Affairs, after all.

  ... And on the subject of Major Dillon, did it occur to you that Dillon has been made privy to Operation CHINA SUN?"

  "I think Dillon can be trusted to keep his mouth shut, Colonel. "

  "I hope so," Rickabee said. "Jesus Christ, I hope so!" Second Lieutenant John Marston Moore waited until they were in suite 614 of the Foster Lafayette Hotel before asking the question Captain Sessions asked: "Exactly what are we going to do in Florida, McCoy?"

  "I'm going to talk to an Air Corps guy I met down there. He knows all about the kind of sand you need to land airplanes on.

  And, more important, he invented a gimmick... you stick a cone, sort of, just far enough into the sand to make it stand up.

  Then you drop a ten-pound weight on it from exactly twenty

  four inches. How far that drives the cone into the ground tells you how much weight the sand will support."

  "Fascinating," Moore said.

  "I want to talk to him and talk him out of a couple of the cone things-as many as he'll give me," McCoy said. "That'll probably take the better part of an hour. Two hours if he buys us lunch in their officer's club. That reminds me, Hart, you're going to have to wear civilian clothes."

  "Yes, Sir," Hart said.

  "And what else?"

  "The beach along the Gulf Coast there is as pretty as any in Hawaii," McCoy said. "And the seafood is great. With a little bit of luck, we'll have twenty-four hours, maybe thirty-six, before Sessions gets us seats on the courier plane out of Pensacola back here."

  "What do you need us along for?" Hart asked.

  "Beth said she was on vacation," McCoy said. "Don't you think she'd like a day or two on the beach in Florida? And a romantic dinner on a train? I know damned well Ernie will."

  "Who's Beth?" Moore asked.

  "Hart's girlfriend," McCoy said. "She came to Washington to see him."

  "That was the mysterious telephone call?" Moore asked.

  Hart nodded.

  Jesus, what the hell will happen if they find out what Beth does for a living? Hart asked himself.

  It took Hart a moment to decide that McCoy was perfectly serious.

  McCoy saw the look on his face, and on Moore's.

  "Would you two like a few words of wisdom from an old Marine?" he asked, and went on without waiting for a reply "In case you haven't figured this out yet, we're about to get shipped out. The way Pickering is pushing Rickabee, we're going just as soon as they can cut orders. When Pickering said he wanted me to find out about landing an R4D on sand, the first thing I thought was that I would call this Air Corps guy, tell him the problem, then send Hart down there t
o get the gimmicks to test the sand. Then I thought that if I hung around here waiting for him to come back, Rickabee and Sessions would find things for me to do. Then I decided that I would have to go myself, even though that's a sacrifice. Then I decided that it would not be fair to a wounded hero-such as yourself, Lieutenant Moore-to leave you behind to run errands while Sergeant Hart and myself and our girlfriends are riding on a luxury train and lying on a Florida beach. Am I getting through to you two?"

  Moore laughed. "It sounds like we'll be busy!" he said.

  "As General Pickering said to me just this morning," McCoy said, " `Take what you can, when you can get it." Who am I to argue with a general?" Then he saw the look on Hart's face.

  "What's the matter with you? Don't you think Beth will want to, go?"

  "I'm sure she'll want to go," Hart said.

  I'm not sure I should take her. Jesus, why did she have to be a whore?

  "Then you better get your ass over to Union Station and get tickets for the girls on the Seacoast Airline Limited or whatever the hell they call it. You got any money?" he asked, as he took a sheaf of bills from his pocket.

  "Pity you don't have a girl, Moore," McCoy said. "But maybe you'll get lucky in the club car."

  When Major Jake Dillon walked into the Metro-Magnum Studios suite in the Willard Hotel, Veronica Wood was preparing herself for her day's work: Her long blond hair was pulled tightly back against her head, and she had converted the coffee table in the sitting room to a makeup table. She was wearing a really ugly brown cotton bathrobe.

  "Where the hell have you been?" she asked, looking up at him. The bathrobe was hanging open.

  Fantastic teats!

  "I had work to do," Jake said.

  "You think those cheap bastards would put a decent goddamned dressing room in here," Veronica said. "I've got an interview with that bitch from the Post at noon. I'm going to look like shit."

  "This is Seymour's apartment," Dillon said, referring to the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Metro-Magnum Studios. "He doesn't like to look at himself in mirrors." She chuckled and smiled at him.

  "You had a telephone call," she said. "Couple of them.

  Same guy. Name of Stewart. He's pissed at something."

  "Did he say he was `General' Stewart?" Veronica thought about that a moment, and then nodded.

  "Yeah. He did."

  "Oh, shit."

  "He said you were supposed to call him the minute you got I in."

  "OK, thank you, sweetheart."

  "You're going to be with me at lunch, right?"

  "I don't think that's possible, honey."

  "Goddamn, Jake, you know I can't deal with that goddamned dyke!"

  "Bobby O'Hara will be there," Jake said. "I'll call him."

  "I want you there, goddamn it, Jake!"

  "Bobby is very good with her," Dillon said. "They're both Irish." He picked up the telephone and made two calls. The first was to Mr. Robert T. O'Hara, of the Washington office of Metro-Magnum Studios, Inc., to remind him he had a luncheon engagement with Miss Veronica Wood. The call lasted about sixty seconds.

  The second, to Colonel F. L. Rickabee of the Office of Management Analysis, was even more brief.

  "Colonel, Jake Dillon. General Stewart has been looking for me. I'm supposed to call him."

  "Don't call him. Don't go near him. I'll take care of it," Rickabee said, and then the line went dead.

  "Please, Jake!" Veronica Wood asked. "Come with me'." I was nice to you. "

  "That was last night. What have you done for me today?"

  "You sonofabitch!" Veronica said delightedly. "That's why I love you. You're a prick but you admit it."

  "If I go to lunch with you, will you promise not to say `prick'? I don't think Whatsername from the Post likes that word." The telephone rang again. Dillon picked it up. As he spoke his name, he realized that was pretty dumb. It was probably General Stewart, shitting a brick about something.

  "Hey, Jake. Charley Stevens. How the hell are you?" Charley Stevens was a screenwriter.

  "How are you, Charley?"

  "Got a question, Jake. I'm doing the first rewrite of the Wake Island script. Got a question, figured you were a Marine and could answer it. Need some love interest. Please tell me, there were nurses on Wake Island?"

  "No nurses on Wake Island, Charley, sorry."

  "Shit!" Charley Stevens said.

  "You'll think of something, Charley," Jake said and hung up.

  [Two]

  OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR

  PUBLIC AFFAIRS

  OFFICE HEADQUARTERS, U.S. MARINE CORPS

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  1530 HOURS 22 SEPTEMBER 1942

  Brigadier General J. J. Stewart summoned his deputy into his office and handed him a sheet of green paper.

  "Take a look at this, will you?" he fumed.

  INTEROFFICE MEMORANDUM

  DATE: 22 September 1942

  FROM: Assistant Chief of Staff, Personnel

  TO: Director Public Affairs Office Hq, USMC

  HAND CARRY

  SUBJECT: Dillon, Major Homer J. , USMCR, Temporary Assignment Of

  1. Effective immediately, subject officer is placed on temporary duty for an indefinite

  period with the office of Management Analysis, Hq USMC.

  2. All records of subject officer now under the control of the Public Affairs Division

  will be hand-carried to the Office of management within twenty-four (24) hours.

  3. Discussion of this assignment or requests for reconsideration thereof is not desired.

  BY DIRECTION OF THE COMMANDANT:

  Alfred J. Kennedy

  Major General, USMC

  Assistant Chief of staff, G-1

  After General Stewart's deputy read the memorandum, he looked at General Stewart, but he didn't say anything.

  "How the hell they expect me to do my job if they keep stealing my officers, I don't know," General Stewart said.

  "Who the hell am I going to get to run the war bond tour' I've got a goddamned good mind to take this to the Commandant!" In the end, of course, he did not. He was a good Marine officer, and good Marine officers accept the orders they are given without question or complaint.

  [Three]

  SEA BREEZE MOTEL

  MARY ESTHER, FLORIDA

  24 SEPTEMBER 1942

  Lieutenant K. R. McCoy, in a T-shirt and swimming trunks, opened the door to room 17 in response to an imperious knock.

  He found himself facing a stout woman in her late forties, wearing flowered shorts and a matching blouse under a transparent raincoat. On her head she had a World War I-style steel helmet, painted white, bearing an insignia consisting of' the letters CD within a triangle. A brassard around her right arm had a similar insignia, and she was armed with a policeman's nightstick, painted white.

  While McCoy was reacting to the sudden appearance of the CD lady, she pushed past him into room 17 and slammed the door behind her. Before returning to his room, he had spent three hours on the beach doing his share of the damage to a case of PX beer. After that, he attended a steak broil at the Hurlburtt Field Officer's club, each table there had come furnished with four bottles of California Cabernet Sauvignon.

  "I could see light!" the lady announced in righteous indignation. "Your drapes permitted light to escape!"

  "Sorry," McCoy said.

  "There are German submarines out there!" the lady declared. "Don't you people know there's a war on?"

  " Where do you think it went when it escaped?" Lieutenant John Marston Moore, USMCR, asked from the bed where he was resting. "The light, I mean?" His voice was somewhat slurred, as if he had partaken of a considerable quantity of intoxicants.

  "Shut up, Johnny," Miss Ernestine Sage said. She was wearing a bathing suit and a T-shirt. In three-inch-high red letters, US MARINES was stretched taut across her bosom.

  The pride of the Mary Esther, Florida, Civil Defense Force stared at her; and then s
he looked around the room. Also in the room were Miss Elizabeth Lathrop, in a swimsuit and T-shirt reading US ARMY AIR CORPS, Sergeant George Hart, and two galvanized iron buckets filled with iced beer and several bottles of liquor.

  "You girls should be ashamed of yourselves!"