W E B Griffin - Corp 03 - Counterattack

by Counterattack(Lit)

  "Yes, Sir. Thank you."

  "The lorry should be there within the hour. Thank you, Cor-poral."

  "Thank you, Sir."

  Steve hung up and went looking for Mrs. Cavendish. He was going to need some place to store the crates, whatever they con-tained. She showed him a three-car garage behind the house, now empty, that was just what he was looking for. There were sturdy metal doors which could be locked, and there were no windows.

  The truck arrived forty-five minutes later. Steve, who had been looking out his bedroom window for it, saw that it said "Ford" on the radiator, but it was unlike any Ford Steve had ever seen. There were three people in the cab, all in uniform, and all female.

  They all wore the same kind of caps, something like a Marine cap, except the visor wasn't leather. They wore the caps perched straight on top of their hair, and Steve thought they all looked kind of cute, like girls dressed up in men's uniforms. Two of them wore gray coveralls. The third, who looked like she was in charge, wore a tunic and a shirt and tie and a skirt, with really ugly stockings.

  "Corporal Koffler?" she said, smiling at him and offering her hand. "I'm Petty Officer Farnsworth."

  "Hi," Steve said. She was, he guessed, in her early twenties. He couldn't really tell what the rest of her looked like in the nearly shapeless uniform and those ugly cotton stockings, but her face was fine. She had light hazel eyes and freckles.

  "Good day," the other two women said. In Australia that came out something like "G'die," which took some getting used to. One of them looked like she was about seventeen, and the other one looked old enough to be the first one's mother. Neither of them, Steve immediately decided, had the class of Petty Offi-cer Farnsworth.

  "How are you?" Steve said, and walked over and shook hands with them.

  "After we unload your crates," Petty Officer Farnsworth said, "Lieutenant Donnelly said I was to ask if you would like me to wait around and drive into Melbourne with you, to show you the way."

  "Great!" Steve said.

  "Where would you like the crates?"

  "Let's see what they are," Steve said, and walked to the back of the truck. He saw three wooden crates, none of them as large as a footlocker. He couldn't tell what they contained, and there was nothing stenciled on them to identify them.

  Petty Officer Farnsworth, who had followed him, handed him a manila envelope. "The shipping documents," she said.

  He tore the envelope open. The U.S. Army Signal Center, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, had shipped, on AAAA Air Pri-ority, by authority of the Chief Signal Officer, U.S. Army, to the Commanding Officer, USMC Special Detachment 14, Mel-bourne, Australia:

  1 EA SET, TRANSCEIVER, RADIO, HALLICRAFTERS MODEL 23C, W/48 CRYSTALS

  1 EA ANTENNA SET, RADIO TRANSMISSION, PORTABLE, 55-FOOT W/CABLES A GUY WIRES

  1 EA GENERATOR, ELECTRICAL, FOOT AND HAND POWERED, 6 AND 12 VOLT DC

  "Wow!" Steve said. He knew all about the Hallicrafters 23C, had studied carefully all of its specifications in the American Amateur Radio Relay League magazine, but he'd never seen one before.

  "Am I permitted to ask what they are?" Petty Officer Farns-worth asked.

  "Just about the best shortwave radio there is," Steve said.

  "Lieutenant Donnelly said that I wasn't to ask questions," Petty Officer Farnsworth said, "about what you're doing out here."

  "You didn't. You just asked what was in the boxes. There's nothing secret about that."

  She smiled at him.

  Nice teeth. Nice smile.

  "Where would you like them?"

  "Around in back," Steve said. "I'll show you."

  When the crates had been unloaded, Petty Officer Farnsworth sent the truck back into Melbourne.

  "It will take us no more than forty-five minutes to get to the quay," she said. "Which means we should leave here at eleven-fifteen. It's now quarter past nine. Where can I pass two hours out of your way, where I will see nothing I'm not supposed to see?"

  "I don't have anything to do. And there's nothing out here for you to see. Would you like a cup of coffee?"

  "Tea?"

  "Oh, sure."

  "That would be very nice, Corporal," Petty Officer Farns-worth said.

  Steve took her into the breakfast room, sat her down, and then went into the kitchen and asked for tea. They waited for several minutes in an awkward silence until one of the maids delivered a tea tray, complete to toast and cookies.

  "Where are you from in America?" Petty Officer Farnsworth asked.

  "Where the radios come from. New Jersey. How about you?"

  "I'm from Wagga Wagga, in New South Wales."

  "Wagga Wagga?" he asked, smiling.

  "I think that's an Aborigine name."

  "That's what you call your colored people?"

  "Yes, but as I understand it, they're not like yours."

  "How come?"

  "Well, yours were taken from Africa and sent to America, as I understand it, and the Aborigines were here when we En-glish arrived."

  "Sort of Australian Indians, in other words?"

  "I suppose. New South Wales, of course, is named after South Wales, in England."

  "So is New Jersey," he said. "Jersey is in England."

  "I thought it was an island."

  "Well, it could be. I never really paid much attention."

  Petty Officer Farnsworth had an unkind thought. Corporal Koffler was a nice enough young man, and not unattractive, but obviously bloody goddamned stupid.

  Petty Officer Farnsworth was twenty-three years old, and she had been married for five years to John Andrew Farnsworth, now a sergeant with the Royal Australian Signals Corps some-where in North Africa.

  Before the war, she and John had lived in a newly built house on his family's sheep ranch. When John had rushed to the sound of the British trumpet-a move that had baffled and enraged her-his family had decided that she would simply shoulder his responsibilities at the ranch in addition to her own. After all, John's father, brothers, and amazingly fecund sisters reasoned, she had no children to worry about, and One Must Do One's Part While the Family Hero Is Off Defending King and Coun-try.

  Petty Officer Farnsworth, whose Christian name was Daphne, had no intention of becoming a worn-out woman before her time, as the other women of the family either had or were about to. She used the same excuse to get off the ranch as John had: patriotism. When the advertisements for women to join the Royal Australian Navy Women's Volunteer Reserve had come out, she had announced that enlisting was her duty. Since John was already off fighting for King and Country, she could do no less, especially considering, as everyone kept pointing out, that she had no children to worry about.

  The RANWVR had trained her as a typist and assigned her to the Naval Station in Melbourne. She had a job now that she liked, working for Lieutenant Donnelly. There was something different every day. And unlike some of the other officers she had worked for, Lieutenant kept his hands to himself.

  Every once in a while she wondered if Donnelly's gentlemanly behavior was a mixed blessing. Lately she had been wondering about that more and more often, and it bothered her.

  "Do all Marines wear boots like that?" she asked.

  "No. Just parachutists."

  "You're a parachutist?"

  He pointed to his wings.

  "Our parachutists wear berets," she said. "Red berets."

  "You mean like women?"

  My God, how can one young man be so stupid?

  "Well, I suppose, yes. But I wouldn't say that where they could hear me, if I were you."

  "I didn't mean nothing wrong by it, I just wanted to be sure we were talking about the same thing."

  "Quite. So you're a wireless operator?"

  "Yes and no."

  "Yes and no?"

  "Well, I am, but the Marine Corps doesn't know anything about it."

  "Why not?"

  "I didn't tell them, and then when they gave everybody the Morse code test, I made sure I flunked it."r />
  "Why?" Now Daphne Farnsworth was fascinated. John had written a half-dozen times that the worst mistake he'd made in the Army was letting it be known that he could key forty words a minute. From the moment he'd gotten through basic training, the Army had him putting in long days, day after day, as a high-speed wireless telegrapher. He hated it.

  "Well, I figured out if they was so short of guys who could copy fifty, sixty words a minute-you don't learn to do that overnight-they would be working the ass off those who could. Ooops. Sorry about the language."

  "That's all right," Daphne said.

  Well, Daphne, you bitchy little lady, you were wrong about this boy. Not only is he smart enough to take Morse faster than John, but he's smart enough not to let the service hear about it.

  "My husband's a wireless operator," Daphne said. "With the British Eighth Army in Africa. He's a sergeant, but he hates being a wireless operator."

  "I figured somebody as pretty as you would be married," Steve Koffler replied.

  Is that the distilled essence of your observations of life, or are you making a pass at me. Corporal Koffler?

  "For five years."

  "You don't look that old."

  "Thank you."

  "You know what I'd really like to do before we go into town?"

  Rip my clothes off, and throw me on the floor?

  "No."

  "I'd like to unpack that Hallicrafters. I've never really seen one. Could you read the newspaper, or something?"

  "I think I'd rather go with you and see the radio. Or is it clas-sified?"

  "What we're doing is classified. Not the radio."

  And now I am curious. What the bloody hell is going on around here? Marine parachutists? Villas in the country? "World's best wireless" shipped by priority air?

  (Two)

  Townesville Station

  Royal Australian Navy

  Townesville, Queensland

  24 May 1942

  The office of the Commanding Officer, Coastwatcher Service, Royal Australian Navy (code name Ferdinand) was simple, even Spartan. The small room with whitewashed block walls in a tin-roofed building was furnished with a battered desk, several well-worn upholstered chairs, and some battered filing cabinets. A prewar recruiting poster for the Royal Australian Navy was stapled to one wall. On the wall behind the desk was an unpainted sheet of plywood, crudely hinged on top, that Major Ed Ban-ning, USMC, immediately decided covered a map, or maps.

  The Officer Commanding, Lieutenant Commander Eric A. Feldt, Royal Australian Navy, was a tall, thin, dark-eyed, and dark-haired man. He was not at all glad to see Banning, or the letter he'd brought from Admiral Brewer; and he was making absolutely no attempt to conceal this.

  "Nothing personal, Major," he said finally, looking up at Ban-ning from behind the desk. "I should have bloody well known this would be the next step."

  "Sir?" Banning replied. He was standing with his hands locked behind him, more or less in the at-ease position.

  "This," Feldt said, waving Admiral Brewer's letter. "You're not the first American to show up here. I ran the others off. I should have known somebody would sooner or later go over my head."

  "Sir," Banning said, "let me make it clear that all I want to do here is help you in any way I can."

  "Help me? How the hell could you possibly help me?"

  "You would have to tell me that, Sir."

  "What do you know about this area of the world?"

  Banning took a chance: "I noticed you drive on the wrong side of the road, Sir."

  It was not the reply Commander Feldt expected. He looked carefully at Banning; and after a very long moment, there was the hint of a smile.

  "I was making reference, Major, to the waters in the area of the Bismarck Archipelago."

  "Absolutely nothing, Sir."

  "Well, that's an improvement over the last one. He told me with a straight face that he had studied the charts."

  "Sir, my lack of knowledge is so overwhelming that I don't even know what's wrong with studying the charts."

  "Well, for your general information, Major, there are very few charts, and the ones that do exist are notoriously inaccurate."

  "Thank you, Sir."

  "I don't suppose that you're any kind of an expert concerning shortwave wireless, either, are you, Major?"

  "No, Sir. I know a little less about shortwave radios than I do about the Bismarck Archipelago."

  There was again a vague hint of a smile.

  "I know about your game baseball, Major. I know that the rule is three strikes and you're out. You now have two strikes against you."

  "I'm sorry to hear that, Sir."

  "Here's the final throw-"

  "I believe the correct phrase is `pitch,' Sir."

  "The final pitch, then. What do you know of our enemy, the Jap?"

  In Japanese, Banning said, "I read and write the language, Sir, and I learned enough about them in China to come to believe that no Westerner can ever know them well."

  "I will be damned," Commander Feldt said. "That was Japa-nese? I don't speak a bloody word of it myself."

  "That was Japanese, Sir," Banning said, and then translated what he had said a moment before.

  "What were you doing in China?"

  "I was the Intelligence Officer of the 4th Marines, Sir."

  "And you went home to America before they were sent to the Philippines?"

  "No, Sir, afterward."

  "Are we splitting a hair here, Major? You went home before the war started?"

  "No, Sir. After."

  "You were considered too valuable, as an intelligence officer who speaks Japanese, to be captured?"

  "No, Sir. I was medically evacuated. I was blinded by concus-sion."

  "How?"

  "They think probably concussion from artillery, Sir. My sight returned on the submarine that took me off Corregidor."

  "Axe you a married man, Major?"

  "Yes, Sir."

  "How would your wife react to the news-actually, there wouldn't be any news, she just wouldn't hear from you-that you were behind the Japanese lines?"

  "That's a moot point, Sir. The one thing I have been forbidden to do is serve as a Coastwatcher myself."

  Feldt grunted. "Me too," he said.

  "My wife is still in China, Commander," Banning said.

  Feldt met his eyes.

  "I'm sorry," he said.

  Feldt grunted as he heaved himself to his feet. He raised the sheet of plywood with another grunt, and shoved a heavy bolt through an eyebolt so that it would stay up. A map, covered with a sheet of celluloid, was exposed.

  "This is our area of operation, Major," Commander Feldt said. "From the Admiralty Islands here, across the Pacific to the other side of New Ireland, and down to Vitiaz Strait between New Guinea and New Britain, and then down into the Solomon Sea in this area. The little marks are where we have people. The ones that are crossed out are places we haven't heard from in some time, or know for sure that the Japs have taken out."

  Banning walked around the desk and studied the map for sev-eral minutes without speaking. He saw there were a number of Xs marking locations which were no longer operational.

  "The people manning these stations," Feldt explained, "have been commissioned as junior officers, or warrant officers, in the Royal Australian Navy Volunteer Reserve. The idea is to try to have the Japs treat them as prisoners of war if they are cap-tured. There's sort of a fuzzy area there. On one hand, if some-one is in uniform, he is supposed to be treated as a POW if captured. On the other hand, what these people are doing, quite simply, is spying. One may shoot spies. The Japanese do. Or ac-tually, they either torture our people to death; or, if they're pay-ing attention to the code of Bushido, they have a formal little ceremony, the culmination of which is the beheading of our peo-ple by an officer of suitable rank."

  Banning now grunted.

  "My people," Feldt went on, "are primarily former civil ser-vants or plantation managers and,
in a few cases, missionaries. Most of them have spent years in their area. They speak the na-tive languages and dialects, and in some cases-not all-are protected by the natives. They are undisciplined, irreverent, and contemptuous of military and naval organizations-and in par-ticular of officers of the regular establishment. They are people of incredible courage and, for the obvious reasons, of infinite value to military or naval operations in this area."