W E B Griffin - Corp 10 - Retreat, Hell!

by Retreat, Hell!(Lit)

  There was a large conference room in what everyone called "The Pent-house," and two or three times a year it was actually used for that purpose. With that exception, however, The Penthouse was de facto the Pickering's San Fran-cisco apartment.

  Pickering started to get out of his soiled uniform the moment he stepped off the service elevator into the kitchen. He was trailed by Hart-carrying their two Valv-Paks-and Fowler and Banning.

  Pickering laid his tunic on the kitchen table and started to untie his necktie.

  "George," he said, turning to Hart, "in this order. Get on the horn and call Travis Air Force Base and tell them we'll be delayed, probably overnight."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  "Then get on the house phone and tell the manager we have urgent need of the valet, coffee, and some lunch...."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  "And then get on the horn to P&FE, ask for Mr. Kensington-he handles transportation-and tell him I said to get you on the next plane to Saint Louis. Call me at the Lafayette in Washington tomorrow night, and I'll let you know how long you can stay."

  "No, sir," Hart said. "Thank you, sir, but no thank you."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I don't want to go home, sir. I can't."

  "Why the hell not?"

  "I wouldn't be able to look any of the families of my Marines in the face," Hart said.

  "What the hell is he talking about, Ed?" Pickering demanded of Colonel Banning.

  "I think I know, sir. This has to do with disestablishment of your company, right, George?"

  "Yes, sir," Hart said.

  "What the hell are you talking about?" Pickering demanded. "What company?"

  "George had a company, an infantry company, in the Marine Corps re-serve," Banning explained. "It was activated, and ordered to Camp Pendleton. As soon as they got there, it was disestablished-broken up-and the men sent as fillers to the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade."

  "I trained those Marines, General," Hart said. "And I told their families I'd take care of them."

  "Why did they do that?" Pickering asked. "Break up his company?"

  "I have no goddamn idea," Hart said bitterly. "They just did it. The fuck-ing Marine Corps!"

  "Hey!" Banning said warningly, holding up his hand.

  Captain Hart was silent, but he did not seem repentant.

  "It was a cold-blooded, necessary decision," Banning explained. "The pri-ority was finding bodies to fill up the Provisional Brigade, find them anywhere, and George showed up with two hundred bodies. It was as simple as that."

  "I should have been with them in the Pusan Perimeter, and I should have been with them at Inchon," Hart said. "They were my Marines!"

  "George," Senator Fowler said, "in the big picture, you're making a greater contribution, meeting a greater responsibility, in taking care of General Pick-ering than you would have been able to do-"

  "Sir," Banning turned on him. "With respect-"

  "Dick," Pickering interrupted, "you don't understand. George is a Marine officer. There is no greater responsibility, no greater privilege, than leading Marines in combat. I know exactly how George feels."

  Fowler shrugged as if to say, I was only trying to help.

  Pickering turned to Hart.

  "You didn't mention any of this to me, George."

  "You said it, General, I'm a Marine officer. Marine officers go where they're sent and do what they're told to do. But I am not going to go home to Saint Louis so long as my Marines are in Korea."

  Pickering looked at him for a long moment.

  "Okay, Captain," he said finally, "change of orders. After you call Travis and tell them we'll be delayed-"

  "I'll take care of that, Fleming," Senator Fowler interrupted.

  "Okay. Then-and this is an order, Captain-you will get on the horn and tell your wife to pack her bags because in the next hour or two a man named Kensington is going to call her and tell her on which flight she and your kids are booked for Washington."

  "General-" Hart said, almost visibly trying to frame his objections.

  "Captain Hart," Pickering interrupted him, "the proper response from a Marine officer who has been given an order is Aye, aye, sir,' which translates to mean 'I understand the order and will comply.' "

  "Aye, aye, sir," Hart said.

  "Good," Pickering said. "And just for the record, George, Fowler's right. What you do for me is important. I don't know what the hell I would do with-out you."

  Hart nodded.

  "General," Banning said, "have you got anything for General Howe? Or McCoy? I've got to get back to Pendleton."

  Pickering thought it over.

  "Message them Hart and I made it this far and will be in Washington to-morrow," he said. "But that's about it."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  [THREE]

  Fleming Pickering marched into the kitchen of The Penthouse, freshly bathed, shaven, and attired in a fresh white T-shirt, boxer shorts, and stockings held up with garters.

  "I still don't have a uniform?" he demanded of Captain Hart. "For Christ's sake, all they had to do was press the spare in the suitcase."

  "And I'm sure they're working on doing just that," Senator Fowler said. "Have a cup of coffee and calm down."

  He pointed to a coffee service on the kitchen table.

  "You've got a clean uniform," Pickering said accusingly, to Hart.

  "I didn't have mine pressed," Hart said. "You said you wanted yours pressed."

  "And he didn't spill his breakfast on his," Fowler offered helpfully.

  Pickering glared at him.

  "I've got to call Patricia," he said.

  "I did that for you. She'll be at the Lafayette when you get there," Fowler said. And then he giggled as much as a dignified U.S. Senator can giggle. "I told her about... your uniform difficulties, and that you were in the shower."

  That earned Senator Fowler another dirty look.

  "Jesus, I've got to call Ernie Sage. I promised Ernie I would as soon as I got here."

  He went to the wall-mounted telephone and connected with the long- distance operator, who said she was required to ask, because of the increased telephone traffic caused by the war, if the call was necessary.

  "Trust me, Operator, I know there's a war, and this call is necessary."

  He then informed her that he wished to be connected, person-to-person, with Mr. Ernest Sage at the corporate headquarters of American Personal Phar-maceuticals in New York City.

  The call to Mr. Sage's office went through quickly enough, but Mr. Sage's secretary, he was told, "was away from her desk" and her telephone was being answered by someone else, who, to the scarcely concealed amusement of Sen-ator Fowler and Captain Hart, had never heard of Fleming Pickering, and more or less politely demanded to know what it was that he wished to speak to Mr. Sage about.

  "I brushed my teeth with your lousy toothpaste and my teeth fell out," Gen-eral Pickering replied. "Now, get him on the phone!"

  The someone else answering the telephone decided that she had best at least relay the information that some furiously angry man was on the phone to Mr. Sage's secretary, who had accompanied her boss to an important staff meeting, and did so.

  That lady came next on the line, and asked Pickering if he could possibly call back later, as Mr. Sage was conducting a very important meeting and she hated to disturb him.

  "I don't give a damn if he's conducting the New York Philharmonic," Pick-ering replied. "Get him on the phone now!"

  Mr. Sage then came on the line.

  "Is something wrong, Fleming?"

  "Not at all. I just thought you would be interested in a report about your daughter."

  "Flem, could I ask you to call Elaine?"

  "And report to her, you mean?"

  "Yeah. I'm really up to my ears in this meeting, Flem."

  "Ernie, I will not call Elaine and tell her myself," Pickering said, "because I can tell you what I have to say in two seconds, and it would take twenty min-utes to te
ll Elaine, and I don't have any more time to waste."

  "Well, Jesus, Flem, don't take my head off."

  "That's not what I would like to cut off, Ernie," Pickering said. "Now, lis-ten carefully. Write this down. Ernie is fine. She sends her love. Got it?"

  "You did try, right, Flem, to get her to come home?"

  "Yes, I did. And she said no. I have to go, Ernie. Go back to your meeting."

  Pickering hung up the telephone.

  "You were a little rough on Sage, Flem," Fowler said.

  "If I had a six-months-pregnant daughter halfway around the world and someone called me to report on her, any goddamned meeting I was having would have to wait." Fowler shrugged.

  The service elevator door opened and two bellmen carrying freshly pressed uniforms came in.

  "Finally," Pickering said.

  He took the uniforms from them and walked out of the kitchen.

  Senator Fowler waited until Pickering was out of earshot, then asked, "Is he all right, George?"

  "He's fine, sir."

  "How the hell can he be fine when no one knows where Pick is? Or even if he's alive."

  "McCoy and Zimmerman think he's alive," Hart said. "On the run, but alive."

  "So Banning told me," Fowler said. "What do you think his chances are?"

  "If he's made it this far, pretty good. That war's just about over."

  "I devoutly pray you're right, George."

  The telephone on a side table in the living room rang several minutes later as two bellmen were laying out their lunch.

  Fowler was closest to it, so he answered it.

  "Just a moment, please," he said, and then, to Hart: "Go tell him he's got a phone call."

  Pickering, now wearing trousers and a shirt, came into the living room.

  "That goddamn well better not be Elaine Sage," he said, taking the tele-phone from Fowler.

  "It's not," Fowler said.

  "Pickering," he snarled into the telephone, then: "Yes, Brigadier General Pickering."

  Then he said quietly in an aside to Hart and Fowler, "Jesus Christ, it's Truman."

  Then he said into the phone, "Good afternoon, Mr. President. I'm very sorry, sir, about the delay in getting to the airport. I was just about to resched-ule. We can be in the air in no more than two..."

  There was a short pause as Fleming listened to the President.

  "It's not?"

  A pause.

  "The last sighting of the signs he's leaving was several days ago, Mr. Presi-dent, so we know he was alive then. Major McCoy seems to feel there's a good chance of getting him back."

  A very long pause, followed by a barely audible sigh from Fleming.

  "That's very kind of you, Mr. President. I'm convinced that everything that can be done is being done. I'm deeply touched by your interest."

  Brief pause.

  "Yes, sir, Mr. President, I look forward to seeing you soon, too. Good af-ternoon, Mr. President."

  He put the telephone in its cradle.

  "I was rough on Ernie Sage, was I? That sonofabitch didn't even ask about Pick. The President of the United States just did."

  Fowler looked at Pickering, then turned to Hart.

  "George, unless I'm mistaken, there's a two-year supply of Famous Grouse in the last cabinet on the left of the sink. Why don't you make us all a little nip?"

  "Aye, aye, sir," Hart said.

  [FOUR]

  Base Operations

  Kimpo Airfield (K-16)

  Seoul, South Korea

  O4O5 4 October 195O

  Lieutenant Colonel Allan C. Lowman, USAF, a tall, good-looking thirty-five-year-old, who would have much preferred to be flying Sabrejets but who the powers that be had decided could make a greater contribution to the Air Force and the war as Commander, K-16 USAF Base, had elected to set up his cot in an unused-at-the moment radio van mounted on a GMC 6x6 truck.

  There were several advantages to this. The van had its own electrical gen-erator, driven by a gasoline engine. The generator was primarily intended to power the radio equipment, but it also provided electric lights and the current necessary to operate his electric razor, an electric hot plate, and his Zenith Transoceanic portable radio, on which it was possible to listen-usually-to the Armed Forces Network Radio Station in Tokyo, and even-sometimes-civilian radio stations as far away as Hawaii and the West Coast.

  When someone knocked at the rear door of the van, waking him, the lu-minescent hands of his Rolex-a gift from his wife-told him it was a little after 0400.

  He had left orders with the duty NCO to wake him at 0500, so this was obviously a problem of some sort. The question was what kind of a problem.

  Feeling a little foolish-it was probably the duty NCO bearing an early-morning teletype message that required his attention-he felt around on the floor until he found his.45, took it from the holster, pulled the slide back, chambered a cartridge, and only then got off the cot and walked barefoot in his underwear to the door.

  "Who is it?"

  "Sergeant Alvarez, Colonel."

  Colonel Lowman put his right arm-and the.45-behind his back and then opened the door.

  It was Sergeant Alvarez, all right, but with him were three officers, all ma-jors. Two of them were Army-a plump, rumpled Army major and an Army aviator. The third was a Marine who had a Thompson submachine gun slung from his shoulder.

  "These officers insisted on seeing you, Colonel," Sergeant Alvarez said.

  "What can I do for you?" Colonel Lowman asked, aware that he felt a little foolish standing there in his underwear with his pistol hidden behind his back.

  "May we come in, please, sir?" the Marine asked.

  Colonel Lowman could not think of an excuse not to let them into the van. He backed up and gestured for them to climb up the short flight of stairs.

  "Thank you, Sergeant," the Marine said.

  "If you'll pull that door closed, we can turn the lights on," Lowman said.

  The Marine pulled the door closed and latched it. Lowman switched the lights on.

  The rumpled, stout major held out a small leather wallet to Lowman.

  Lowman saw the credentials of a Special Agent of the United States Cen-tral Intelligence Agency. It was his first contact of any kind with the CIA.

  "How can I help the CIA?" Lowman asked.

  "In that hangar across the field, Colonel, as I'm sure you know, are two Si-korsky helicopters," the Marine said.

  "Yeah, I know. This has to do with them?"

  "What we want to do, in the next few minutes, is get them out of here with as few people as possible knowing about it," the Marine said.

  "I'm not sure I understand," Lowman confessed.

  "We don't want to talk to the tower, sir," the Army aviator said.

  "Why not?"

  "We have to presume the NKs have people monitoring your tower traffic," the rumpled major said.

  "What we hope to do, sir," the Marine said, "by taking off in the dark, and not talking to the tower, is get those machines out of here without letting the NKs know."

  "You really think they're listening to the tower traffic?" Lowman asked.

  That possibility had never occurred to him.

  "I'm sure they are," the Marine said. "And since they were listening when the helos first arrived, and when the helos made their only flight out of here and back, they know about the helos. What we hope to do now is get the helos out of here without them knowing-with a little luck, thinking they're still in that hangar."

  "How do you propose to do that?" Lowman asked.

  "Sir, we'll fire them up, warm them up, inside the hangar," the Army avia-tor said. "Then shut them down and roll them out of the hangar. Then we'll call the tower-'K-16, this is Air Force two oh seven, radio check.' If there's no reason we can't take off, the tower will give the radio check. We'll then reply, 'K-16, thank you,' fire them up again, and take off immediately. If you have incoming or departing traffic, just ignore our call, and we'll wait five minute
s and call again."

  Colonel Lowman considered that a moment.