W E B Griffin - Corp 03 - Counterattack

by Counterattack(Lit)

  "Then it would seem reasonable to assume it is on the fourth floor, wouldn't you say?"

  "I suppose."

  "And I think it would also be reasonable to assume that it would have a bathroom, wouldn't you say?"

  "Sure. I'm sure it would."

  "Nature calls," she said. "And there, lucky me, are the eleva-tors."

  "Would you like me to wait here?"

  "No."

  She walked ahead of him and got on the elevator.

  "Four, please," she said to the elevator operator.

  She didn't look at him on the way up. He followed her into the corridor.

  She stopped and turned to him, and looked into his eyes.

  "If you don't kiss me right now, I'm going to lose my nerve," she said.

  He didn't move. He looked paralyzed.

  "Didn't anybody ever tell you not to look a gift horse in the mouth?" Barbara said.

  He kissed her.

  And then they walked, arms around each other, down the cor-ridor until they found suite 418. He had a little trouble fitting the key to the lock, but once they were inside, and after he kissed her again, everything went off without a hitch.

  Chapter Six

  (One)

  Building "F"

  Anacostia Naval Air Station

  Washington, D.C.

  0845 Hours 13 February 1942

  "General Mclnerney," Brigadier General D. G. Mclnerney answered his telephone, not taking his eyes off the thick stack of paper before him.

  "Colonel Hershberger, Sir."

  "Hello, Bobby, how are you? What can I do for you?"

  Colonel Robert T. Hershberger was Chief of Staff, 1st Marine Air Wing, Quantico, Virginia.

  "General, the General is gone. He's at New River. I'm mind-ing the store."

  The General was Brigadier General Roy S. Geiger, Com-manding, 1st Marine Air Wing.

  "Got something you can't handle, Bobby?"

  "General, I can handle this. What I would like is your advice on how to handle it."

  "Shoot. Advice is cheap."

  "I have a requirement to send one R4D, rigged for parachut-ists, to Lakehurst, to arrive NLT 0600, 14 February. That's to-morrow."

  "I know. I laid that requirement on you."

  "And your Major made it pretty plain that this is a must-do."

  "It is."

  "And thirty minutes ago, I got a call from the Director of Public Relations, just checking to see that the aircraft was sched-uled, and asking me if I could take particular care to see that the crew was `photogenic'"

  "The sonofabitch called me just a few minutes ago," General Mclnerney said. "He told me that the Commandant had `ex-pressed enthusiastic interest in the project.' You know what it is?"

  "Life magazine is sending a photographer. Photographers. Plural. To watch the parachute trainees jump out of the air-plane."

  "Right. The idea, apparently, is that when the red-blooded youth of our nation see these heroic daredevils, they will rush to the nearest recruiting office to join up," General Mclnerney said dryly.

  "That being the case, I figured there was no way I could get out of sending my only R4D up there," Colonel Hershberger said.

  "If that's why you called, Bobby, save your breath. I don't know if General Holcomb really knows about whatever this public-relations operation is, but that requirement came down here from the Throne Room."

  "There are four people here qualified in the R4D," Hershber-ger said.

  "That's all?" Mclnerney asked, surprised.

  "General, you may not have noticed, but people have been sending my pilots overseas."

  "I can do without the sarcasm, thank you very much, Bobby," Mclnerney said. "And you may not have noticed, but there's a war on."

  Colonel Hershberger did not reply.

  "What's the problem, Bobby?" Mclnerney said, more cor-dially. "It only takes two pilots to fly one of those things, doesn't it?"

  "Two of the four pilots don't look old enough to vote; and they have just finished the checkout. The check pilot, aware of the pilot shortage, was not as critical as he should have been."

  "How do you know that?" Mclnerney snapped.

  "I was the check pilot," Hershberger said. "Primarily because I am the only R4D Instructor Pilot here."

  "You said four pilots."

  "Well, he has two hundred-odd hours in the aircraft, and he went through the parachute-dropping course at Fort Benning."

  "Well, then, what the hell is the problem? Send him. And send the two kids with him to see how it's done."

  "Aye, aye, Sir. I hoped the General would say that. The name of the only fully qualified pilot for this mission is Technical Ser-geant Charles Galloway."

  General Mclnerney exhaled audibly.

  "Oh, you sonofabitch, Bobby," he said. "You sandbagged me."

  "The options, General, as I see them, are to send the two kids and pray they don't dump the airplane, or drop the parachutists in the Atlantic or over Central Park, while Life's cameras are clicking. Or fly it myself. I've never dropped parachutists. I can probably find Lakehurst all right, but it occurred to me that it would look a little odd to have a full bird colonel flying a mission like this. Or send Charley Galloway."

  "I told you about Galloway."

  "Yes, Sir, I know that he embarrassed the U.S. Navy by get-ting repaired an airplane that BUAIR said was beyond repair. And then he further embarrassed the U.S. Navy's security pro-cedures by finding out where a Task Force was, and then flying the unrepairable airplane out to it. And I know the only excuse he offered for this outrageous behavior was that he thought Ma-rines were supposed to fight the enemy."

  "It's a damned good thing we've been friends for twenty-odd years, Bobby," Mclnerney said. "Otherwise, I'd have your ass for talking to me that way."

  "Doc, for God's sake, I'm bleeding for pilots. Not only for this stupid public-relations nonsense, but all over. It makes abso-lutely no sense to have a pilot like Galloway sitting on the god-damned ground with a wrench in his hand when he could be, for example, teaching the kids how to fly the goddamned R4D."

  Mclnerney didn't reply.

  "And if we hadn't been friends for twenty years, Doc, and somebody else was sitting at your desk, I would have just sent him without asking, and said, `Fuck you, court-martial me,' if anybody said anything about it."

  There was a long silence.

  Finally, Mclnerney said, "Got your mouth under control now, Bobby?"

  "Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir."

  "Colonel Hershberger, you have my permission to restore Ser-geant Galloway to flight status. You have my permission to have Sergeant Galloway fly this public-relations mission to Lakehurst. And you may utilize Sergeant Galloway in such other fly-ing roles as you deem appropriate for someone of his skill and experience, except that he will not leave the Quantico local area without my express permission."

  "Aye, aye, Sir. Thank you, Sir."

  "And you tell that sonofabitch, Bobby, that if he so much as farts and embarrasses you, me, or Marine Aviation in any way, I personally guarantee that he will spend the rest of this war as a private in a rifle company."

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  General Mclnerney slammed the handset into its cradle and returned his attention to the thick stack of papers on his desk.

  (Two)

  Lakehurst Naval Air Station

  Lakehurst, New Jersey

  14 February 1942

  Lieutenant Colonel Franklin G. Neville, USMC, who was thirty-seven years old, balding, barrel-chested, and carried 212 pounds on a six-foot-two-inch body, had seen the future and it was Vertical Envelopment.

  In 1937, as a very senior (and nearly overage-in-grade) cap-tain, Neville was appointed Assistant Naval Attach‚, United States Embassy, Helsinki, Finland. His previous assignment had been as an infantry company commander.

  When he was not selected to attend the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and was then asked if he would accept t
he Helsinki embassy assign-ment, Neville understood that his Marine Corps career was drawing to a close.

  If he was lucky, he might be promoted major while on the four-year embassy assignment. But promoted or not, he knew-in fact, he'd been unofficially informed-that in the spring of 1941, when his Helsinki tour was over, he would be retired.

  He'd also been told-and he believed-that he himself was in no way personally responsible for his coming retirement. He had, in other words, not been found wanting. He was a good officer who performed his assigned duties well. There was no record, official or whispered, that he was too fond of the bottle or of the ladies, or of any other sport inappropriate for a Marine officer.

  The bottom line was that there were only so many billets available for majors in the peacetime Marine Corps, either in the serving Corps or in the professional schools. And others competing for these spots were better qualified than he was. The rule was "up or out"-meaning that if an officer was not selected for promotion, he was either separated from the Corps or re-tired. Retirement was the fate of officers like Captain Neville, who had enough years of service to qualify for it.

  He'd understood the rules of the game when he'd accepted a regular Marine commission in 1919; and he had no complaints now-although, naturally, he was disappointed.

  Franklin G. Neville had entered the Marine Corps as a second lieutenant in June of 1916, on his graduation from Purdue Uni-versity. He had come home from France a wounded, decorated captain, who had taken over command of his company when its commander had been killed at Belleau Wood.

  The Corps, and the war, had changed him. He no longer wanted to become a lawyer specializing in banking law, like his father. He now knew that any personal satisfaction he might find in the practice of law could not compare with the satisfaction he had known leading men in battle.

  His father never understood that. Worse, he shared with most of his peers the notion that a man served in the peacetime mili-tary only if he could do nothing else. And he was simply incapa-ble of understanding why anyone would want to settle for the pittance paid regular officers when a financially rewarding career right there in St. Louis was available.

  Available, hell, it's being handed to you on a silver platter, you damned fool!

  Estelle Wachenberg Neville, whom he had married five days before shipping out to France, had understood. And she had also brought into the marriage a substantial trust fund established for her by her maternal grandfather, who had been one of the original investors in the Greater St. Louis Electric Power Gener-ation & Street Railway Company.

  So money was never a problem, except in the perverse sense that he and Estelle had had to be very careful not to let their relative affluence offend anyone. In fact, this did not turn out to be much of a drawback. Franklin didn't think that a young lawyer in Saint Louis could drive a Harmon or a Pierce Arrow, or even a Cadillac, without offending someone senior to him. Not many in that hierarchy had a quarterly check from a trust fund.

  By the time the Helsinki assignment-his "tailgate" assign-ment-came along, there was no longer a requirement to be "discreet" about their affluence. So he and Estelle decided to go out in style. They left the boys behind in the States, at Phillips Exeter, to join them in the summers. And in Finland, Estelle found a furnished villa in Helsinki's most aristocratic section, Vartio Island, about five miles from the embassy.

  The waters of Kallahden Bay were solidly frozen from Febru-ary to April, permitting the Neville's Packard 280 sedan (Estelle's) and Auto-Union roadster (Franklin's) to drive directly from the mainland to the front door. In the warmer months, a varnished speedboat carried them back and forth from the is-land to the shore.

  His Excellency the Ambassador was a political appointee, a deserving St. Louis Democrat who professed a closer friendship with both Estelle's and Franklin's parents at home than was the case. In point of fact, a letter from Estelle's father indicated that so far as he was concerned, the Ambassador was a traitor to his class for supporting that socialist sonofabitch in the White House.

  Nevertheless, the polite fiction served both to keep the Naval and Army attaches off Franklin's back and to open social doors that permitted Estelle to enjoy a role as hostess that she had been denied all those years.

  Between Franklin's social contacts within the diplomatic-military community and Estelle's with the diplomatic people and their neighbors on Vartio Island, it was a rare evening in-deed when their butler served dinner to them alone at home.

  When the boys arrived in the summer (they spent the Christ-mas holidays with their grandparents in St. Louis), they were, as Estelle wrote home, "received by the best young people in Finland." They fished and sailed, and they danced and kept close company with a number of splendidly beautiful and aston-ishingly blond Finnish girls. In due course, Franklin found it necessary to have a serious man-to-man talk with them about how they would embarrass not just their mother but the United States of America if one of the young ladies should find herself in the family way. He then counseled them on the absolute necessity of faithful use of rubber contraceptives.

  In October of 1939, Captain Franklin G. Neville was pro-moted major. The promotion came as a surprise. He could not imagine that his immediate superior, Lieutenant Commander H. Raymond Fawcett, USN, the Naval Attach‚, had been writ-ing glowing efficiency reports on him. Fawcett's disapproval (and/or jealousy) of the Nevilles' lifestyle was nearly visible. But still, it would be nice, when they went back to St. Louis, to be able to call themselves "Major and Mrs. Neville."

  In November of 1939, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics attacked Finland across the southeastern province of Karelia. Before the 1917 Revolution, Finland had been part of Tsarist Russia; specifically, it was a Grand Duchy thereof. When Fin-land declared its independence, the military forces of the Soviet Union were in no position to do anything about it.

  Now they were. They regarded Finland as part of Russia, and they wanted it back.

  Major Franklin Neville immediately went to the war zone as an observer. It was clearly his duty, perhaps the most important duty a military attach‚ can perform, to observe the combatants at war, to report on their relative efficiency and capabilities, and to learn what he could.

  Neville, along with an officer from the Finnish High Com-mand and Lieutenant Colonel Graf Friedrich von Kallenberg-Mattau, an assistant military attach‚ at the German Embassy with whom Neville played golf and tennis in the summer and hunted and skied in the winter, drove to Karelia in Freddy von K's Mercedes. Freddy argued that the Mercedes had a better heater and more luggage space than either Neville's Auto-Union roadster or the official, smaller Mercedes sedan the Finnish Gen-eral Staff officer had been given.

  As they drove off, there was little question in Franklin Nev-ille's mind that soon, perhaps within the day, he would be in the hands of the Russians. They outnumbered the Finns by a factor of better than twenty to one. As courageous as the Finns might prove to be, that sort of a disbalance of opposing forces could result in only one end: the Finns would be overrun and wiped out.

  He wondered if the Russians would honor his diplomatic sta-tus, or whether he would be shot out of hand, or whether he would perhaps simply disappear.

  It didn't matter. It was his duty to go; and without any false heroics whatever, he could no more not have gone than he could have flapped his wings and flown.

  What he found in Karelia Province was not in any way what he expected.

  He could not believe that the military forces of a major, con-temporary world power would be committed to combat with such poor planning, or with such an absolute ignorance of the kind of warfare they would have to wage.

  Though the wintertime temperature in Karelia regularly dropped to below minus forty degrees Fahrenheit, eighty or ninety percent of the attacking Russian forces were not clothed or otherwise equipped to fight in such conditions.

  The apparent Russian plan to penetrate and overrun the Finns swiftly, through sheer numbers and massive artil
lery barrages, was an absolute disaster. The Russian artillery, for instance, was almost useless in the bitter cold. And when the pieces could be coaxed into firing, most of the projectiles simply buried them-selves deep in the snow before exploding. Rarely did they do any real harm.

  The Finns, on the other hand, were not only superbly equipped to deal with the weather (they even had stoves and fa-cilities to build "warming areas" where troops were routinely returned to be fed and warmed), but were able to wage war effec-tively in it. Their infantry was equipped with skis and snow-shoes, permitting rapid movement over deep snow. They had snow-colored parkas, glasses to prevent snow blindness, and even white sleeves to place over their rifles to camouflage them.