W E B Griffin - Corp 07 - Behind the Lines

by Behind The Lines(Lit)

  Pickering, you've just done it again. Another of your brilliant, snap judg-ments of character is one hundred eighty degrees off course.

  "Fine with me," Pickering said.

  "And the OSS people?"

  "There's only one of them, and I'll tell you about him later," Pickering said.

  Mrs. Cavendish removed the luncheon plates from the dining-room table, brought in two pots of coffee, and left, closing the door softly behind her. Gen-eral Pickering and Admiral Wagam were at opposite ends of the table. Lining the sides were Colonel Jack (NMI) Stecker, Captain Ed Sessions, Lieutenants McCoy and Hart, USMC, Lieutenant Lewis, USN, and a last-minute addition General Pickering sensed upset Lieutenant Lewis's concept of Naval propri-ety, Staff Sergeant Steve Koffler.

  The Navy's wrong about the way they treat-and think about-their en-listed men, Pickering thought when he saw the shock on Lewis's face after he told Koffler he wanted him present at the meeting. And I wonder where it started? In the merchant marine, just about every master, every chief engineer, first goes to sea as an apprentice seaman, or an apprentice wiper. The ones with brains and ambition, the ones willing to accept responsibility, are encour-aged to think about getting out of the forecastle. The Navy chains the forecastle port shut.

  "The problem, gentlemen, I should say problems," Admiral Wagam began, "are these: CINCPAC has available one submarine designed to carry cargo, the Narwhal. She is currently undergoing engine refit, and some other modifications, at Pearl. The operative word there is 'one' cargo sub. Her value to the Pacific fleet goes without saying." He paused, and then went on. "There is a shortage of standard boats as well. We've taken some pretty bad losses, and the sub fleet isn't half as large as we would like. We really can't afford to lose any more."

  "Tell us what Admiral Nimitz thinks we should do," Pickering inter-rupted.

  "All right," Wagam said. "And I am in agreement... not only because I work for Admiral Nimitz, but because I've given this problem a good deal of thought. First of all, the risk posed to the Narwhal in this operation is unaccept-able, in my opinion."

  "We need a submarine," Pickering said. "What do you suggest?"

  Wagam did not reply directly.

  "As I understand it," he said, "we do not have secure communication with Fertig, and will not have until we put ashore the first personnel and their communications equipment. Until we do that, until Fertig and his people can communicate directly, and securely, both with a submarine and with radio sta-tions here and elsewhere, we have no reason to assume that the sub can safely surface, much less discharge cargo, off Mindanao. It's entirely possible that the moment the conning tower breaks water, it will come under shore-based artil-lery fire."

  "We plan to go in at night, Admiral," McCoy said.

  "There are both artillery illuminating rounds, and aircraft parachute flares available to the Japanese, Mr. McCoy," Admiral Wagam said reasonably.

  "Let's hear what you would like us to do, Admiral," Pickering said, a touch of impatience in his voice.

  "OK. A new boat, the Sunfish, can be made available for Operation Windmill-"

  "Excuse me?" Captain Sessions asked.

  "Operation Windmill is what somebody in Washington is calling this operation," Pickering replied. "I'm sure that sooner or later someone would have remembered to tell us."

  "As in tilting at windmills, like Don Quixote?" Sessions asked.

  "I think that's a good guess, Ed," Pickering said. "Go on, please, Admi-ral."

  "The Sunfish can be made available to you at Espfritu Santo as of 10 De-cember. If that decision is made today, or no later than tomorrow. She is a standard submarine. This means she is not capable of carrying all the cargo you intend to take with you, even with half of her torpedoes removed."

  "Looking the gift horse in the mouth, Admiral, why are you willing to give us a new submarine?" Pickering asked.

  "Because this cruise for her would also serve as a shakedown voyage," Wagam said. "Our experience has been that losses of submarines, from enemy action or other causes, are disproportionately larger when a boat is making its first combat patrol."

  Stecker snorted.

  "In one sense, Colonel," Wagam said, now a little coldly, "you're right. CINCPAC would rather risk the Sunfish than the Narwhal. For one thing, the loss of the Sunfish would not be as damaging as the loss of the Narwhal. There are other Gato-class submarines in production. There are no Narwhal-class submarines on the way."

  "What are the 'disproportionate' losses of submarines on their first com-bat patrol?" Pickering asked.

  "Eighteen percent," Wagam replied.

  "One in five doesn't make it back? God, I had no idea it was that bad!" Pickering replied, visibly shocked.

  "CINCPACs thinking,"' Wagam said, "is that the Sunfish could make its first combat patrol with a lesser risk of loss than a full combat patrol would entail-despite the hazards incident to surfacing a thousand yards off an enemy-held shore for the hour or so it would take to off-load your men. That would both put your men ashore and get Sunfish back to Pearl with the experience of a first combat patrol under her belt. On the return voyage, after the off-loading, she could continue her patrol with the available fuel and half her normal complement of torpedoes."

  "Jack?" Pickering asked.

  "I see their reasoning," Stecker said thoughtfully. "But I don't like cut-ting the material we want to take to Fertig. Correct me if I'm wrong, Sir, but you want to give us the space normally taken up by half of the torpedoes nor-mally carried?"

  "Correct."

  "And if the Sunfish carried no torpedoes at all?" Pickering asked.

  He directed the question to Admiral Wagam, but Stecker answered:

  "We would still be able to carry only about half of what we could take on the Narwhal, right?"

  "That is correct," Wagam said.

  "Which means we could carry only one-quarter of what we planned to carry on the Narwhal," Pickering said.

  "Correct," Wagam said.

  "That's not very much," McCoy said, thinking out loud.

  "I ask you to consider this," Wagam said. "There would be room for the communications and cryptographic equipment, a certain amount of small arms and ammunition, medical supplies, and most important, I would suggest, the gold. All of which, I suggest, should convince Colonel Fertig-"

  "We think of him as 'General' Fertig," Pickering interrupted.

  "-should convince General Fertig," Wagam corrected himself, "that help is on the way."

  "When?" Pickering asked.

  "CINCPAC has directed me to tell you that you have his personal word that, once secure communications have been established, a supply mission, using the Sunfish, will have the highest priority."

  "The highest priority? Or a high priority?" Pickering asked.

  "The. Absolutely, The."

  "But I have that already, don't I?" Pickering said.

  "Yes, General," Wagam said. "You do."

  "Ken, you're the one going in," Pickering said. "What do you think?"

  "Sir, I'm a little over my head talking about something like this."

  "I'll decide that," Pickering said. "What do you think? What's wrong with what they're proposing?"

  McCoy cocked his head to the side, as if gathering his thoughts, then won-dering if he dared offer them.

  "Nothing against the Navy, Admiral," he said finally. "They did a hell of a job putting us onto Makin and then getting us off."

  "You were on the Makin raid?" Wagam asked.

  "Yes, Sir."

  "Drop the other shoe, Lieutenant," Wagam said. "We 'did a good job at Makin, but'?"

  "This is going to be the Sunfish's first patrol," McCoy said. "Whoever's running the submarine, by definition, and understandably, is going to be a little nervous. We're in the middle of going ashore. There is a sign that the Japs are onto us..."

  "And you don't want to be left floating around in a rubber boat between the shore and a submarine in the process of submerging, right?"
Pickering fin-ished for him. "OK, Admiral. We haven't addressed that. How do we know the crew of this new sub will be up to doing what they'll have to do?"

  "I'm going to give Lieutenant McCoy the benefit of the doubt that he's not questioning the courage of the Sunfish's crew-"

  "Permission to speak, Sir?" Lieutenant Lewis interrupted.

  Admiral Wagam visibly did not like being interrupted. But after flashing his aide a withering look, he said, "Certainly, Lewis."

  "McCoy, would it allay your reservations if an officer were aboard the Sunfish who was experienced in making runs like the one we're talking about and was also fully aware of CINCPAC's personal interest in this mission?"

  "We're back to that, are we, Chambers?" Admiral Wagam asked.

  "Back to what?" Stecker asked.

  "Lieutenant Lewis feels he could make a far greater contribution to the war by going on this mission than by opening doors for me," Wagam said. "Is that about it, Chambers?"

  "Yes, Sir."

  "Mr. Lewis is a submariner, Mr. McCoy," Admiral Wagam said. "Before he came to work for me, he was on three missions to Corregidor."

  "What I'm thinking, Ken," Pickering said, "-and I don't want to ques-tion the courage of the sub crew either, Admiral-is that knowing-"

  "That my aide is aboard," Wagam interrupted, "with orders to report to CINCPAC personally when, and under what circumstances, the Sunfish left Lieutenant McCoy and party, might keep them on position until they abso-lutely had no choice but to leave or be sunk?"

  "No offense, but that's what I was thinking," Pickering said.

  "I also know a little something about how to launch rubber boats from submarines, Mr. McCoy," Lewis said.

  "How are you at paddling one of them?" McCoy asked.

  "Probably a little better at it than you are," Lewis said. "I can also walk and chew gum at the same time."

  McCoy laughed.

  "You can't be too smart," McCoy said. "It sounds to me like you're volunteering."

  "You are volunteering, Chambers," Admiral Wagam said. "You under-stand that?"

  "Yes, Sir. I understand."

  Wagam looked at Pickering. ®

  "Have we an understanding, General?"

  "Ken?" Pickering asked.

  "If General Fertig is what he says he is, we're going to need the Nar-whal," McCoy replied. "I'd rather see her surface a month from now, two months from now, and be able to unload a couple of tons of equipment, than take a chance on losing everything now-which would also blow our chances to help Fertig for a long time."

  Pickering nodded.

  "We have an understanding, Admiral," he said.

  "Lieutenant Lewis, from this moment, you are detached until further or-ders to Operation Windmill," Wagam said.

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  "Can you really, Lewis?" McCoy asked.

  "Can I really what, McCoy?"

  "Chew gum and walk at the same time?"

  "Presuming the ground is reasonably level," Lewis replied.

  I'll be damned, Pickering thought. McCoy likes him. And vice versa. I wonder what Sessions thinks of him; I'll have to ask.

  "Ed," he said. "You'll take care of Lewis? Find him a place to stay, et cetera? There's no more room here, unfortunately."

  "My pleasure, Sir," Sessions said.

  "Colonel Stecker and I are now going to take the Admiral on a tour of Brisbane's famed tourist attractions," Pickering said. "Starting with the Gen-tlemen's Bar at the Maritime Club."

  "If Commander Feldt calls, General, shall I tell him where you are?" McCoy asked.

  "By all means, Mr. McCoy," Pickering said. "Commander Feldt is one nautical experience that I'm sure the Admiral, despite his long career, has not yet experienced."

  "Feldt?" Wagam asked. "The Coastwatcher man?"

  "Right," Pickering said. "As a matter of fact, Ken, see if you can get Feldt on the horn and ask him to join us. And if Colonel DePress calls, ask him to join us, too... if he calls. I hope he does, but do not call him; I don't want Willoughby to accuse me of arranging secret meetings with somebody on his staff."

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  "Captain," Lieutenant Lewis said to Sessions almost as soon as Pickering, Wagam, and Stecker were out the door, "don't we know each other?"

  "You're '40, right?"

  "Right," Lewis asked, immediately understanding that Sessions meant the class of 1940 at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis. He was un-able to keep himself from looking at Sessions's hand. There was no Annapolis

  ring.

  "Thirty-nine," Sessions said. "I think we had a class in steam generation together."

  "And then the Navy wouldn't take you and you had to join the Marines?"

  "Why do I think we're going to have trouble with this swab-jockey?" McCoy asked.

  "They start out all right, Ken," Sessions said. "But then they send them down in submarines, and all that pressure squeezes their brains."

  "Can I go home, Mr. McCoy?" Staff Sergeant Koffler asked. "Or are you going to need me for something?"

  "My compliments to Madame Koffler, Sergeant Koffler," McCoy said. "Take a jeep. Then call Pluto about 2100 and see if Gimpy has a way home from the dungeon. The General does not, repeat does not, want him driving himself. If he needs a ride, you drive him. And we'll see you at 0800."

  "Ken," Lieutenant Hart said, "I'll go fetch Gimpy."

  "You stay loose to drive the General. If Feldt shows up at the Gentleman's Bar, they'll probably need somebody to drive them."

  "Right," Hart said. "Sorry, Koffler."

  "No problem, Mr. Hart," Koffler said, and turned to McCoy. "Aye, aye, Sir."

  McCoy waited until Koffler had left the dining room, and then opened a drawer in a sideboard, took out a bottle of scotch, and held it up in a gesture of asking if anyone else wanted a drink.

  Interesting, Lewis thought, the sergeant asked Lieutenant McCoy for his orders, not Captain Sessions. And McCoy gave the orders; and McCoy, not Sessions, announced the cocktail hour.

  "Yes, please," Lewis said.

  "Me, too," Sessions said.

  "Thank you very much," Hart said.

  Hart took a tray of glasses from the sideboard. McCoy splashed whiskey into four of them, announced that only feather merchants used ice, and raised his glass.

  "Welcome aboard, Swabbie," he said.

  "Thank you," Lewis said.

  "It will at least teach you something that every Marine learns in boot camp," McCoy said.

  "I already know how to tie my shoes, Mr. McCoy." Lewis said.

  "I was thinking about never volunteering for anything," McCoy said.

  "You volunteered, Ken," Sessions said. "Pickering told me."

  "Knowing you're the only guy available to do the job is not the same as volunteering," McCoy replied.

  "That's splitting hairs."

  "I have to go, and you know it," McCoy said.

  "Can I ask a question?" Lewis asked.

  "Depends on the question, whether you get an answer," McCoy said.

  "What about the OSS?"

  "I'm deeply ashamed to confess the sonofabitch is a classmate of mine," Sessions said; and then, seeing McCoy had held up his hand like a traffic po-liceman, said, "What, Ken?"

  "The General told me I was not to discuss that subject with the Navy until he brought it up with the Admiral. I think that includes you."

  "OK," Sessions said.

  "Do I look like a Japanese spy, or what?" Lewis asked.

  "In that white uniform, you look more like a Good Humor man, I'd say," McCoy said. "Next question?"

  It was said jokingly, but Lewis knew that he was not going to learn any-thing more about the man from the OSS from either Sessions or McCoy.

  "Tell me about 'Pluto' and 'Gimpy' and the 'dungeon,' " he said.

  "The dungeon is the Special Channel place, inside the SWPOA Comm Center," McCoy said. "Unless you've got a MAGIC clearance, you can't get in there. We're not even supposed to know about it. Plu
to, otherwise known as Major Hon Son Do, Signal Corps, USA, runs it. Gimpy is Lieutenant John Marston Moore, USMCR, who forgot to duck on the 'Canal and as a result limps. He works for Pluto. They live here; you'll meet them. Next question?" "Everybody lives here but the OSS man?" Lewis asked.