W E B Griffin - Corp 03 - Counterattack

by Counterattack(Lit)

  What Captain Kelso did not know was that the Commanding General of the 2nd Joint Training Force had discussed him with Captain Stecker over a beer in the General's kitchen when Cap-tain Stecker had first reported aboard.

  "My aide may give you some trouble, Jack," the General had said. He and Stecker had been in Santo Domingo, Nicaragua, and France together. "He's an arrogant little prick, thinks he's salty as hell. Efficient as hell, too, to give the devil his due, which is why I keep him. But he's capable of being a flaming pain in the ass. If he does give you any trouble, let me know, and I'll walk all over him."

  "General, I've had some experience with young captains who thought they were salty," Stecker had replied dryly, "going way back."

  "Your commanding general, Captain, is sure you are not re-ferring to anyone in this kitchen," the General replied, laughing.

  "Don't be too sure, General," Stecker chuckled.

  "I have never known a master gunnery sergeant who couldn't handle a captain," the General said. "I don't know why I brought that up."

  "I appreciate it," Stecker said. "But don't worry about it."

  "And how may I be of service to the General's aide-de-camp, Captain Kelso?" Stecker said, oozing enough sarcastically insin-cere charm to penetrate even Captain Kelso's self-assurance and cause him to become just a little wary. Kelso recalled at that moment that the General habitually addressed Captain Stecker by his first name.

  "There's a Navy captain, from the Secretary of the Navy's office, on his way to see you..." He paused just perceptibly, and added, "Jack."

  "Oh? Who is he? What's he want?"

  "His name is Pickering, and I don't know what he wants. He just walked in out of the blue and asked for the General; and when I told him the General wasn't available, he asked for you. I've never seen a set of orders like his."

  Now Stecker was curious.

  "What about his orders?"

  "They say that he is authorized to proceed, on a Four-A prior-ity, wherever he deems necessary to travel in order to perform the mission assigned to him by the Secretary of the Navy, and that all questions concerning his duties will be referred to the office of the Secretary of the Navy."

  "That's goddamned unusual," Jack Stecker thought aloud. "I wonder what the hell he wants with me?"

  "I have no idea. But I'm sure the General would be interested in knowing, too."

  "What did you say his name was?"

  "Pickering."

  Stecker's office door opened and his sergeant stuck his head inside.

  "Sir, there's a Captain Pickering to see you, a Navy captain."

  "He's here," Stecker said, and hung the telephone up. He got to his feet, checked the knot of his field scarf as an automatic reflex action, and then said, "Ask the Captain to come in, please."

  Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR, walked into the office.

  "Good afternoon, Sir," Stecker said. "Sir, I'm Captain Stecker, G-3 Special Planning."

  Pickering looked at him, smiled, and then turned and closed the door in the Sergeant's face. Then he turned again and faced Stecker.

  "Hello, Dutch," he said. "How the hell are you?"

  "Sir, the Captain has the advantage on me."

  "I always have had, Dutch. Smarter, better looking... You really don't recognize me, do you?" Pickering laughed.

  "No, Sir."

  "I would have recognized you. You're a little balder, and a little heavier, but I would have known you. The name Pickering means nothing to you?"

  "No, Sir."

  "I'm crushed," Pickering said. "Try Belleau Wood."

  After a moment, Stecker said, "I'll be damned. Flem Picker-ing, right? California? Corporal? You took two eight-millimeter rounds, one in each leg, and all they did was scratch you?"

  "I don't think `scratch' is the right word," Pickering pro-tested. "I spent two weeks in the hospital when that happened."

  "You went into the Navy? Back to college, and then into the Navy? Is that what happened?"

  "I just came into the Navy," Pickering said.

  "Am I allowed to ask what's going on? You awed the gener-al's aide with your orders, but they didn't explain much."

  Pickering reached into his uniform jacket pocket and handed Stecker a copy of his orders.

  "I'm awed, too," Stecker said, after he read them.

  "You don't have to be awed, but I thought I should show them to you."

  "What do you want with me?" Stecker asked, as he handed the orders back. "You didn't come from Washington to see me?"

  "To tell you the truth, it wasn't until that self-important young man told me that General Davies was not available that I remembered that Doc Mclnerney told me you were out here someplace."

  "You've seen Doc?"

  "Sure have. And I got another interesting bit of information from him. Our boys are roommates at Pensacola."

  "I'll be damned!" Stecker said. "How about that?"

  "It would seem, Dutch, that we're getting to be a pair of old men, old enough to have kids who rate salutes."

  "I don't know about you, Captain," Stecker said dryly, "but I still feel pretty spry. Too spry to be sitting behind a desk."

  "They don't want us for anything else, Dutch," Pickering said. "Mac made that painfully clear to me. We're relics from another time, another war."

  "How'd you wind up in the Navy? Or is that one of those questions I'm not supposed to ask?"

  "I tried to come back in the Corps. I went to see Mac. He made it pretty plain that I would be of no use to the Corps. Then Frank Knox offered me a job working for him, as sort of a glori-fied gofer, and I took it. I jumped at it."

  "Frank Knox? The one I think of nearly reverently as Secre-tary Knox?"

  "You'd like him, Dutch. He was a sergeant in the Rough Rid-ers. Good man."

  "And you're out here for him?"

  "Yeah. I'll tell you about it over lunch. Let's go over to the Coronado Beach Hotel. They generally have nice lunches."

  "They generally have great lunches, and everybody knows about them, and you need a reservation. I don't think we could get in. We could eat at the club here."

  "Indulge me, Dutch," Pickering said. "It isn't only the food I'm thinking of."

  "You want to see somebody else?"

  "I'm about to appoint you-I'd really rather have gotten into all this over lunch-the Secretary of the Navy's Special Repre-sentative to See that Carlson's Raiders Get What They Want. You know about the Raiders?"

  "I'm already the General's man who does that," Stecker said. "Is that why you're here?"

  Pickering nodded. "So much the better, then. The Navy brass are as curious as a bunch of old maids about what I'm doing here. It will get back to them that I had lunch in the Coronado with you. It might come in handy for them to remember you have friends in very high places when you're asking for some-thing outrageous for the Raiders."

  Stecker looked at Pickering for a moment, until he concluded that Pickering was both serious and right.

  "OK. But first we have to get from here to the hotel, and my car may not start. Bad battery, I think. I had to push it off this morning."

  "The Admiral's aide met my plane and graciously gave me the use of the Admiral's car for as long as I need it," Pickering said.

  "And then we have to get in the dining room."

  "I think I can handle that," Pickering said. "Can I have your sergeant make a call for me?"

  "Sure," Stecker said, and called the sergeant into the office.

  "Yes, Sir?"

  "Sergeant," Pickering said, "would you call the dining room at the Coronado Beach for me, please? Tell the maitre d' that Captain Stecker and myself are on the way over there, and that I would like a private table overlooking the pool. My name is Fleming Pickering."

  "Aye, aye, Sir," the sergeant said. "A private table, Sir?"

  "They'll know what I mean, Sergeant," Pickering said. "They'll move other tables away from mine, so that other people won't be able to hear what Captain Stecker and I
are talking about."

  "Why is this making me nervous?" Stecker asked.

  "I have no idea," Pickering said. "Maybe because you're get-ting old, Dutch."

  "If there are any calls for me, Sergeant, tell them that I went off with Captain Pickering of Secretary Knox's office, and you have no idea where I went or when I'll be back."

  Pickering chuckled. "You're a quick learner, Dutch, aren't you?"

  "For an old man," Stecker said.

  (Five)

  United States Naval Hospital

  San Diego, California

  1515 Hours 2 February 1942

  "Tell me, Sergeant," the Navy doctor, a full commander, said to Staff Sergeant Joseph L. Howard, "do you suffer from syphi-lis?"

  "No, Sir."

  "How about gonorrhea?" Commander Nettleton asked.

  "No, Sir."

  Commander K. J. Nettleton, MC, USN, was a career naval officer. In his fifteen years of service, he had discussed venereal disease with maybe fifteen thousand Navy and Marine Corps enlisted men. In his experience, it was seldom possible to judge from an enlisted man's appearance whether he had been diving the salami into seas of spirochetes or not.

  He had treated angelic-looking boys who-as their advanced state of social disease clearly proved-had been sowing their seed in any cavity that could be induced to hold still for twenty seconds. And he'd treated leather-skinned chief bosun's mates and mastery gunnery sergeants who had not strayed from the marital bed in twenty years, yet were hysterically convinced that a little urethral drip was God finally making them pay for a sin-gle indiscretion two decades ago in Gitmo or Shanghai or New-port.

  But it was also Dr. Nettleton's experience that when regular sailors and Marines-sergeants and petty officers on their sec-ond or third or fourth hitch-contracted a venereal disease somewhere along the line, they tried to get their hands on their medical records so they could remove and destroy that portion dealing with their venereal history. They had learned how the services subtly and cruelly treated men with social diseases.

  His experience told him that's what he had at hand, in the person of Staff Sergeant Joseph Howard, USMC. Sergeant How-ard was taking a pre-commissioning physical. That meant he had applied for a commission. An Officer Selection Board was likely to turn down an applicant who had a history of VD, even one who was obviously a good Marine. You didn't get to wear staff sergeant's chevrons as young as this kid was without being one hell of a Marine-and one who looked like he belonged on a recruiting poster.

  "Sergeant," he said, "if anyone was to hear what I am about to say, I would deny it."

  "Sir?" Howard asked, confused.

  "There are ways to handle difficult situations," Commander Nettleton said. "But destroying your records is not one of them. Now, what did you have, and when did you have it?"

  "Sir, if you mean syphilis or the clap, I never did."

  Nettleton fixed Howard with an icy glare.

  You dumb sonofabitch, I just told you I'd fix it!

  "Never?"

  "No, Sir," Howard replied, both confused and righteously in-dignant.

  I'll be damned, I think he's telling the truth.'

  `Then how do you explain the absence of the results of your Wassermann test in this otherwise complete stack of reports?"

  Staff Sergeant Howard did not reply.

  "Well?"

  "Sir, I don't know what-what did you say, Wasser Test?- is."

  "Wassermann," Doctor Nettleton corrected him idly. "It's an integral part of your physical."

  "Sir, I don't know. I went everywhere they sent me."

  Commander Nettleton looked at him intently, and decided he didn't really know if he was looking at Innocence Personified or a skilled liar.

  He reached for the telephone, found the number he was look-ing for on a typewritten sheet of paper under the glass on his desk, and dialed it quickly.

  "Venereal, Lieutenant Gower."

  "This is Commander Nettleton, Gower. How are you?"

  "No complaints, Sir. How about you?"

  "You don't want to hear them, Lieutenant. I need a favor. How are you fixed for favors?"

  "If I've got it, Commander, you've got it."

  "You got somebody around there who can draw blood for a Wassermann for me? And then do it in a hurry?"

  "Yes, Sir. I'll take it to the lab myself. They owe me a couple of favors up there."

  "It has to be official. I need the form and an MD to sign off on it."

  "No problem."

  "I'm sending a Staff Sergeant Howard to see you. Make him wait. If it comes back negative, send him and the report back to me. If it's positive, put him in a bathrobe and find something unpleasant for him to do. Call me and I'll see that he's admit-ted."

  "Aye, aye, Sir," Lieutenant Gower said.

  "Appreciate it, Gower," Commander Nettleton said, hung up, and turned to Staff Sergeant Howard. "You heard that, Ser-geant. The Venereal Disease Ward is on the third floor. Report to Lieutenant Gower."

  "Aye, aye, Sir," Staff Sergeant Howard said.

  Like Commander Nettleton, Lieutenant Gower was a career naval officer, with nearly as much commissioned service as he had. She had entered the Naval Service immediately upon grad-uation from Nursing School, and, in the fourteen years since, had served at naval hospitals in Philadelphia; Cavite (in the Phil-ippines); Pearl Harbor; and San Diego. She had just learned that she was to be promoted to lieutenant commander, Nurse Corps, USN.

  While on the one hand Lieutenant Hazel Gower did not con-sider herself above the mundane routine of the VD ward, of which she was Nurse-in-Charge, on the other hand, Rank Did Have Its Privileges.

  She rapped on the plate-glass window surrounding the Nurses' Station with her Saint Anthony's High School gradua-tion ring, and caught the attention of Ensign Barbara T. Cotter, NC, USNR. Ensign Cotter had just reported aboard, fresh from the Nurses' Orientation Course at Philadelphia.

  Lieutenant Gower gestured to Ensign Cotter to come into the nurses' station.

  "Yes?" Ensign Cotter asked.

  "The way we do that in the Navy, Miss Cotter," Lieutenant Gower said, "is `Yes, Ma'am?' "

  "Yes, Ma'am," Ensign Cotter said, her face tightening.

  "This is not the University of Pennsylvania, you know."

  "Yes, Ma'am," Ensign Cotter said, just a little bitchily.

  That remark made reference to Ensign Cotter's nursing edu-cation. Ensign Cotter, unlike most of her peers, had a college degree. She had graduated with a bachelor of science degree in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, and had earned, from the same institution, the right to append "RN" to her name. She'd been trained as a psychiatric nurse. And she had been lied to by the recruiter, who told her the Navy really had need of her special skills. In fact, the Navy used medical doctors with psychiatric training and large male medical corpsmen to deal with its mentally ill.

  When Ensign Cotter reported aboard Naval Hospital, San Diego, the Chief of Nursing Services told her that since they had no need for a female psychiatric nurse, she wondered how she would feel about working in obstetrics. An unpleasant scene fol-lowed, during which it was pointed out to Ensign Cotter that she was now in the Navy, and that the Navy decided where its people could make the greatest contribution. Following that, Lieutenant Gower in Venereal received a telephone call from the Chief of Nursing Services, a longtime friend, telling her she was getting a new ensign who was an uppity little bitch who thought her college degree made her better than other people. The little bitch needed to be put in her place.

  "There's a syphilitic Marine sergeant on his way up here," Lieutenant Gower said to Ensign Cotter. "Draw some blood for a Wassermann."

  "He's not on the ward?"

  "I'm getting tired of telling you this, Cotter. When you speak to a superior female officer, you use `ma'am.' "

  Ensign Cotter exhaled audibly.

  "He's not on the ward, Ma'am?"

  "No."

  "Then how, Ma'am
, do we know he's syphilitic?"