She turned her face away from him. Then turned back, frowning.
“But I suppose I was thinking that the bad news better come gently, and from me. I didn’t want that shocking revelation suddenly thrust upon him.”
“If you came from a background like his, it would upset you, too,” Ernie Sage said, loyally. “He has pride, for God’s sake. I know he’s a fool, but—”
“Did he tell you about the lady missionary?”
“What lady missionary?”
“There was a lady missionary in China who apparently gave him a bad time. Strung him along. Hurt him pretty badly.”
“I’d like to kill her,” Ernie Sage said, matter-of-factly.
“You’ve really got it pretty bad for him, don’t you?”
“As incredible as it sounds,” she said, “I’m in love with him. Okay? Can we proceed from that point?”
“Love, as in ‘forsaking all others, until death do you part’?”
“I was disappointed when I found out I wasn’t pregnant,” she said. “How’s that?”
“I hope you know what you’re getting into,” Pickering said.
“It doesn’t matter, Pick,” she said. “I have absolutely no control over how I feel about him. I thought that only happened in romantic novels. Obviously, it doesn’t only happen in fiction.”
“I’m jealous,” Pickering said.
“What have you got to be jealous about?” Ernie asked, and then she understood. “You should be,” she said. “But that’s your problem. What do we do about mine?”
“I don’t know,” Pickering said. “If you’re really sure about this, Ernie, Big Brother will think of something.”
“I have never been so sure of anything in my life,” she said. “It’s either him and me, hand in hand, or to hell with it.”
“For what it’s worth, with the caveat that I am relatively inexperienced in matters of this kind, I would not say it’s hopeless.”
Ernestine Sage brightened visibly.
“Really?” she asked.
“Really,” Pickering said. “For reasons I cannot imagine, Lieutenant McCoy seemed to be more than a little taken with your many charms.”
“God, I hope so,” she said, and then asked, “what’s he doing in Hawaii?”
“They made him an officer courier,” Pickering said. “He carries secrets in a briefcase.”
“I never heard of that,” she said. “How long did you say he’ll be gone?”
“He’s going to Hawaii. He got there today. Or will get there today. There is something called the International Dateline, and I’ve never figured it out. And from there, he’s going to Manila, and then back to Hawaii, and then back here.”
“And what are we going to do when he gets back here?”
“We’ll arrange for him to find you in a black negligee in his bed,” Pickering said. “As a Marine officer, he would be duty-bound to do his duty. You can play the ball from there.”
“If I thought that would work,” she said, “I’d do it.”
“I think, Ernie,” Pick Pickering said seriously, “that all it would take would be for him to find you sitting there, just like you are now.”
She looked at him and smiled. Then she got up and walked to him and kissed him on the cheek.
“And I was really afraid that you’d be a shit about this,” she said.
“My God! Me? Pick Pickering? Cupid’s right-hand man?”
She chuckled and looked at her watch.
“I was so sure of it, that I reserved a compartment on the three-fifteen to New York. I’ve still got time to make it.”
“Maybe,” Pickering said, “you should get some practice riding coach.”
She looked at him curiously for a moment until she took his meaning.
“If that’s what it takes, that’s what I’ll do,” she said. “But the next time. Not today.”
He smiled at her and walked with her to the door, where she kissed him impulsively again.
He had just rearranged himself in the chair with his feet on the pillow and The Miracle of Flight propped up on his belly when there was another knock on his door.
“Jesus H. Christ!” he fumed as he went to answer it.
It was Ernie Sage, and he could tell from the look in her eyes that something was terribly wrong.
“A radio,” Ernie said. “Have you got a radio?”
“There’s one in here,” he said. She pushed past him into the sitting room.
She had the radio on by the time he got there.
“Repeating the bulletin,” the voice of the radio announcer said, “the White House has just announced that the Navy Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, has been attacked by Japanese aircraft and that there has been substantial loss of life and material.”
“Jesus Christ!” Pickering said.
“If he’s dead,” Ernestine Sage said melodramatically, “I’ll kill myself.”
“You don’t mean that,” Pickering said.
“Oh, my God, Pick! Your mother and father are there!”
He hadn’t thought of that.
Somehow, he wound up holding her in his arms.
“Everything is going to be all right, Ernie.”
“Bullshit!” she said against his chest.
And then it occurred to him that he was a Marine officer and that what he should be doing now was getting into uniform and reporting for duty.
(Two)
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
7 December 1941
The Japanese task force, which had sailed from Hitokappu Bay in the Kurile Islands, began to launch aircraft at 0600 hours. The task force was then approximately 305 nautical miles from Pearl Harbor. In relation to the task force, Pearl Harbor was on the far side of Oahu Island, the second largest island of the Hawaiian Chain.
Japanese Intelligence was aware that the attack could not be entirely as successful as was initially hoped. In the best possible scenario, essentially all of the United States Pacific Fleet would be in Pearl Harbor. The worst possible scenario was that essentially all of the Pacific Fleet would be at sea. The reality turned out to be between these extremes. All the battleships of the Pacific Fleet were in Pearl Harbor, as well as a number of other ships.
But the seven heavy cruisers and the two aircraft carriers the Japanese had also hoped to find at anchor were at sea. The Japanese knew the composition of the at-sea forces, but not their location.
Task Force 8—an aircraft carrier, three cruisers, and nine destroyers and destroyer minesweepers—was approximately 200 nautical miles from Pearl. Task Force 3—one cruiser and five destroyers and destroyer minesweepers—was 40 nautical miles off Johnson Island, about 750 nautical miles from Pearl Harbor. Task force 12—one carrier, three cruisers, and five destroyers—was about as far from Pearl Harbor as Task Force 3, operating approximately 400 nautical miles north of Task Force 3.
The decision was made to attack anyway. There was always the chance of detection; the destruction of harbor facilities and airfields was of high priority, and the destruction of one or more battleships would severely limit the capability of the American fleet.
The code command for the attack was “Climb Mount Niitaka 1208.”
Approximately 125 nautical miles from Pearl Harbor, the stream of aircraft from the Japanese task force split into two streams. Fifty miles from Oahu, what was now the left stream began to split again, this time into three streams. The first two turned right and made for Pearl Harbor across the island. The third stream continued on course until it was past the tip of Oahu, and then turned toward the center of the island and made an approach to Pearl Harbor from the sea.
Meanwhile, the right stream had broken into two, with one crossing the coastline and making for Pearl Harbor across the island, and the second continuing on course past the island, then turning back to attack Pearl Harbor from the open sea.
The first wave of Japanese bombers struck at 0755 hours and the second at 0900. By then the task force had changed cour
se and was making for the Japanese Inland Sea, hoping to avoid any encounter with carrier-based aircraft from Task Forces 12 and 8 or with land-based aircraft on Oahu. Intelligence reported that at least one squadron of long-range, four-engine B-17 bomber aircraft was en route from the continental United States.
Despite the risk of detection by radio direction finders, shortly after 1030 hours, a priority message from the Japanese task force was radioed to headquarters of the Imperial Japanese Navy in Tokyo: “Tora2, Tora, Tora.” It was the prearranged code for the successful completion of the attack.
(Three)
Although he tried to be very nonchalant about the whole thing, Second Lieutenant K.J. McCoy made his first aerial trip from Anacostia to the West Coast. All in all, once he got used to it, he found it very enjoyable. The airplane was a Navy transport, but so far as he could tell, identical to the Douglas DC-3s used by civilian airlines. The Navy called it an R4-D, yet it even had white napkins on the seats to keep your hair tonic from soiling the upholstery.
It was considerably more plush than the aircraft that carried him from California to Hawaii. As Major Almond had warned, there were a lot of people in California with an AAA priority waiting for air transportation to Hawaii. He could wait, the sergeant told him, until there was a space, but he should understand that when two people had an AAA priority, the one who was senior in rank got the seat. As a second lieutenant, he was liable to wait a long time.
There was another way to get to Hawaii. The Army Air Corps was flying a squadron of B-17 bombers to Hickam Field. They had excess weight capacity because they would not carry bombs, and they were carrying passengers.
“Well, if that’s the only way to get there, Sergeant,” McCoy said, with feigned reluctance, “I suppose that’ll have to be it.”
The truth of the matter was that he was a little excited about the idea of flying on a bomber. And the flight started off on an ego-pleasing note, too. When he got to the airbase and presented his orders, a thoroughly pissed-off Air Corps major had to get out of the airplane so that Second Lieutenant McCoy of the Marines with his briefcase and AAA priority could get on.
They were supposed to land at Hickam Field about noon. An hour before that, the radio operator established contact with Hawaii. Moments later the pilot came back in the fuselage and told the crew and the four supercargo passengers (two Air Corps lieutenant colonels, an Army master sergeant, and McCoy) what had happened in Hawaii.
It was all over when the B-17 appeared over Oahu, but some dumb sonsofbitches didn’t get the word and shot at the B-17, not just once but twice, the second time as they made their approach to Hickam Field.
The airfield was all shot up. There were burning and burned-out airplanes everywhere, and not one hangar seemed to be intact. An enormous cloud of dense black smoke rose where the Japs had managed to set off an aviation fuel dump.
They had no sooner landed than an Air Corps major appeared in a jeep and told the pilot to take off again for a landing field on a pineapple plantation on one of the other islands. He seemed thoroughly pissed-off when the pilot said he didn’t have enough fuel aboard to take off for anywhere.
McCoy very politely asked the Air Corps major about transportation to the Navy Base at Pearl Harbor.
“Good Christ, Lieutenant!” the Air Corps major said, jumping all over his ass. “Are you blind? Pearl Harbor isn’t there anymore!”
There was no point arguing with him, so McCoy, the briefcase in one hand and his suitcase in the other, started walking.
There were a lot of other excited types at Hickam running around like chickens with their heads cut off, and even more who seemed to be moving around with strange blank looks in their eyes.
None of them were any help about getting him from Hickam to Pearl Harbor, even after he showed a couple of them his credentials. So McCoy decided that under the circumstances it would be all right to borrow transportation. He found a Ford pickup with nothing in the back and the keys in the ignition.
The MP at the gate held him at rifle point until an officer showed up. The officer took one look at the credentials and let him go.
As he approached the Navy Base, there was even more smoke than there’d been at Hickam Field. When he got to the gate, the Marine MP on duty wasn’t any more impressed with the credentials than the Army MP at Hickam Field had been, and he had to wait for an officer to show up before he would let him inside.
While he was waiting for the officer to come to the gate, McCoy asked the MP if the Marine Barracks had been hit, and if so, how badly. The MP wouldn’t tell him. That worried McCoy even more. Tommy was in the Marine Barracks, which meant in the middle of this shit. He didn’t like to consider the possibility that Tommy had got himself blown up.
The officer who came to the gate passed him through and told him where he was supposed to go.
The Navy seemed a lot calmer than the Air Corps had been, but not a whole hell of a lot. Still, he found a classified-documents officer, a middle-aged, harassed-looking lieutenant commander, who relieved him of the contents of the briefcase. As McCoy was taking off the handcuff and the .45’s shoulder holster so he could put them into the briefcase, he asked the lieutenant commander what he was expected to do now.
“Get yourself a couple of hours of sleep, Lieutenant,” the lieutenant commander said. “And then report back here.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The lieutenant commander looked at him strangely.
“You got a wife, anything like that, Lieutenant,” he said. “You might want to write a letter.”
McCoy’s eyebrows rose quizzically.
“You’re going on to Cavite,” he said. “With a little bit of luck, you might get there before the Japs do.”
“The Japs hit Cavite, too?”
“And everything else in the Philippines,” the lieutenant commander said. “But what I meant is ‘before the Japs land in the Philippines.’”
“Is that what’s going to happen?” McCoy asked.
The lieutenant commander nodded. Then he shrugged.
“There was a Secret Operational Immediate [the highest-priority communication] a couple of hours ago,” the lieutenant commander said. “A Japanese invasion fleet was spotted headed for the Lingayen Gulf. Why the hell it was classified Secret, I don’t know. The Japs must know where they are and where they’re headed.”
“And you think that once I get there, I’m stuck?” McCoy asked.
“I didn’t say that,” the lieutenant commander said. “But if I was going to fly into Cavite on a Catalina, I’d write my wife, or whatever, a letter.”
“Thank you,” McCoy said.
McCoy didn’t even consider writing his sister. If anything happened to him, she would find out when they sent the insurance check to her kids. Briefly, the notion of writing Pick entered his mind, but he dismissed it. He wouldn’t know what the hell to say. And he thought, for a moment, of writing Ernie.
Just for the hell of it, I thought you would like to know I love you.
Then he saw that for what it was, a damned-fool idea, and went looking for Tommy. It wouldn’t be exactly what he had had in mind when he’d thought about seeing Tommy at Pearl Harbor. Tommy didn’t even know he was an officer. He’d planned to surprise him with that, to see what he did when he saw him with the lieutenant’s bars.
He got back in the borrowed pickup and drove to the Marine Barracks.
One of the barracks buildings had been set on fire, but the fire was out. There were bullet marks all over, and in the middle of the drill field was a huge unidentifiable, fire-scarred chunk of metal.
There weren’t very many people around. A few noncoms, and some other people. But no troops. Nobody seemed to be running around looking for something to do.
He found the headquarters building and went inside. There was a guard in field gear and steel helmet at the door. He saluted.
And there was a first lieutenant and a PFC in the personnel office.
The
lieutenant spotted him before the PFC, who belatedly jumped to his feet.
“Reporting in, Lieutenant?” the lieutenant asked.
“Passing through, sir,” McCoy said. For a moment, he thought about dazzling the lieutenant with his special agent credentials, and then decided that wouldn’t be right.
“What can I do for you?”
“My brother’s assigned to the First Defense Battalion,” McCoy said. “I’ve been wondering about him.”
“No doubt,” the lieutenant said. He handed McCoy a yellow lined pad.
“This is the first casualty report,” he said. “My clerk’s about to type it up. All the names on there are confirmed casualties, or KIA, but that’s not saying all the casualties are on the list.”
“Thank you, sir,” McCoy said. He quickly scanned the names. Tommy’s name wasn’t on it.
“Well, he’s not on it,” McCoy said. “He’s a private. McCoy, Thomas J.”
The lieutenant started to consult a list, and then remembered just seeing that name. He consulted another list at the head of which he had penciled, “Cut orders transferring Wake Island.”
One of the names on the list of those to be shipped out (as soon as transport could be found) as reinforcements for the small Marine force under Major James Devereux on Wake Island was McCoy, Thomas J.
“He’s in the beach defense force,” he said. “I don’t know where the hell to tell you to look for him.”
“I don’t have the time, anyway,” McCoy said.
“You said you were passing through?”
“On my way to Manila,” McCoy explained.
“To the Fourth Marines?”
McCoy nodded. There was no point in telling this guy he was a courier.
“You’re going to have a hell of a time finding transport,” the lieutenant said.
“Maybe, with a little bit of luck, I won’t be able to,” McCoy said.
“I did a hitch with the Second Battalion until ’39. As an enlisted man. Good outfit.”
“I used to be on a water-cooled .30 in Dog Company, First Battalion,” McCoy said.
“Look,” the lieutenant said. “They’re not going to ship you out of here for a couple of days, at least. The odds are, your brother will be back in here. If he gets in, I’ll pass the word you’re here and send him over to the transient BOQ.”
Semper Fi Page 37
