W E B Griffin - Corp 03 - Counterattack

by Counterattack(Lit)

  "Daphne!" he called. He had to call again before he broke through her concentration.

  "Yes, Sir?"

  "We've been summoned to the Captain's office," Donnelly said.

  "I don't suppose we could ask him to wait thirty minutes, could we?" Daphne asked, smiling. "I'm finally almost finished with this."

  "He wants us right away."

  "Should I bring my pad?"

  "No, I don't think so."

  Lieutenant Junior Grade Eleanor McKee, Royal Australian Navy Women's Volunteer Reserve, commanding officer of all the women aboard RA Naval Station, Melbourne, was in the Captain's office when they got there.

  She looks as if she's been sucking a lemon again, Daphne thought. I wonder what the hell this is all about. I haven't done a damned thing, so far as I know.

  The Captain stood up.

  "Yeoman Farnsworth," he said, "it is my sad duty to inform you that your husband, Sergeant John Andrew Farnsworth, Royal Australian Signals, has been killed in action in North Africa."

  "Oh, God!"

  "You will, I am sure, be able to find some solace in knowing he died for king and country," the Captain said.

  "Oh, shit!" Daphne said.

  "I'm very sorry, my dear," the Captain said.

  (Five)

  Townesville, Queensland

  5 June 1942

  "I'm only saying this, you two must understand, because I have been drinking," Lieutenant Commander Eric A. Feldt, RAN, said to Major Edward J. Banning, USMC, and Lieuten-ant Joe Howard, USMCR, "but I am far more impressed with your band of innocents than I ever thought would be the case."

  They were in Commander Feldt's quarters, sitting on folding steel chairs, facing one another across a rickety wooden table on which sat a half-filled bottle of Dewar's Scotch and the empty hulk of another. A rusting bucket on the floor held a half-dozen bottles of beer and a soda siphon in a pool of melting ice.

  "You're only saying that," Major Banning responded, "be-cause you found out I outrank you."

  "That's beneath you, Banning," Feldt said, "bringing up a sodding six days' difference in the dates of our promotions."

  "And we gave you a truck," Joe Howard said, somewhat thickly. "We have a saying in America, `Never look a gift truck in the mouth.'"

  "You didn't give me the truck, you only loaned it to me. And anyway, the steering wheel is on the wrong side."

  "The steering wheel is in the right place," Howard said. "You people insist on driving on the wrong side of the road."

  Feldt stood up and walked, not too steadily, to a chest of drawers. He returned with a box of cigars, which he displayed with an elaborate gesture.

  "I mean it," he said. "Have a cigar."

  "Thank you, I don't mind if I do," Banning said. He took one and passed the box to Howard.

  "I got them from a Dutchman, master of an inter-island tramp," Feldt said, sitting down again, and helping himself to a little more of the Dewar's. "He swore they were rolled between the thighs of fourteen-year-old Cuban virgins."

  Banning raised his glass. "Here's to fourteen-year-old Cuban virgins."

  "Here, here," Howard said.

  "And here's to Captain Vandenhooven," Feldt said. "He gave me those cigars just in time."

  "Just in time?" Banning asked.

  "The next time he went out for me, the Japs got him. One of their sodding destroyers. They caught him off Wuvulu Is-land."

  "Shit," Howard said.

  Banning raised his glass again. "To the Captain," he said.

  He lit the cigar and exhaled slowly through pursed lips.

  "That's all right," he said approvingly.

  "Virginal thighs'll do it every time," Feldt pronounced sol-emnly.

  There was a polite knock at the door.

  "Come," Feldt called.

  A young, thick-spectacled man in the uniform of a Leading Aircraftsman, Royal Australian Air Force, came into the room and, in the British manner, quick-marched to the rickety table and saluted with the palm outward as he stamped his foot.

  "Sir!" he barked.

  Feldt made a vague gesture with his right hand in the direc-tion of his forehead; it could only charitably be called a salute.

  "What have you there, son?"

  "Group Captain Deane's compliments, Sir. He said he thought you should see these straight off."

  He handed Feldt a large manila envelope. Feldt tore it open. It contained a slightly smaller envelope, this one stamped most secret. Feldt opened this one and took out a half-dozen eight-inch-square photographs. Banning guessed they were aerials.

  "These are from where?" Feldt asked after a moment. Ban-ning heard no suggestion in his voice now that Feldt had been drinking.

  "Buka Island, Sir," the RAAF man said.

  "That will be all, thank you. Please convey to Group Captain Deane my deep appreciation."

  "Sir!" the RAAF man barked again, saluted and stamped his foot, and quick-marched out of the room.

  Feldt shoved the thin stack of photographs across the table to Banning and then stood up.

  Banning saw a man in a field, holding his arms above his head. There were three views of this, each differing slightly, as if they had been taken within seconds of each other. Matching each view were blow-ups, showing just the man and a small area around him.

  Feldt reappeared with a large magnifying glass with a handle. He dropped to his knees and examined each of the photographs with great care.

  "Well, at least he was still alive when these were taken," Feldt said.

  "What am I looking at?" Banning asked. He enunciated the words very carefully; for he now very much regretted helping himself so liberally to the Scotch, and he wanted at least to sound as sober as possible.

  "Can I look?" Joe Howard asked.

  "Sure," Feldt said, and then went on, "Sub-Lieutenant Jacob Reeves. From whom we haven't heard in the last ten days or so. He's on Buka. Important spot. I was afraid the Nips had nipped him. But it's just that his wireless is out."

  Banning looked at him. There had been no intent on Feldt's part, he saw, to play with words. Feldt was perfectly serious when he said nipped by the Nips. He was now icily serious. "How do you know his radio is out?" Howard asked. "What the bloody hell else do you think `RA' could mean?" Feldt asked impatiently, almost contemptuously. He pointed, and Banning saw what he had missed. The tall grass, or whatever the hell it was, in the field had been cut down so it spelled out, in letters twenty-five or thirty feet tall, the letters RA.

  More gently now, as if he regretted his abruptness, Feldt said, "Interesting man, Jacob Reeves. He's the far side of forty. Been in the islands since he was a boy. Been on Buka for fifteen years. Never married. Has a harem of native girls. I don't think he's been off the island more than three times since he's been there. We had a hell of a time teaching him Morse code, at first. And of course, he doesn't know a sodding thing about how a wireless works."

  Banning raised his eyebrows at that.

  "It could be anything from a loose wire," Feldt explained, "through a complete failure. Or his generator has gone out-he has a small gasoline-powered generator... God only knows."

  "Where does he get gas for the generator?" Howard asked.

  "There were supplies of it on Buka," Feldt said. "He took a truckload of supplies, presumably including fuel, when he went up into the hills. If he was out of petrol, I think he would have cut PET in the grass."

  "Where did the pictures come from?" Banning asked.

  "I asked Group Captain Deane to send an aircraft over there. He has a couple of Lockheed Hudsons."

  Banning nodded. The twin-engine, low-winged monoplane with a twin tail obviously traced its heritage to the famous air-plane in which Amelia Earhart had been lost trying to set an around-the-world speed record.

  "I think we had better send Sub-Lieutenant Reeves one of your Hallicrafters sets, Major Banning," Feldt said. "I'm glad you mentioned the petrol. I have no idea how much he has left. If any. That bicycle gene
rator is what he needs."

  "They're yours," Banning said immediately.

  "That poses several questions. First, how we get it to him. He's in the hills, so that eliminates either a submarine-even if I could get the use of one-or a ship."

  "By parachute, then," Banning said. "Would your Group Captain Deane be able to do that?"

  Feldt nodded, meaning that he could get an aircraft. "The question then becomes, can a Hallicrafters set be dropped by parachute?"

  "I'm sure our Corporal Koffler could answer that," Banning said. "Off the top of my head, I can't think of a reason why not."

  "The question then becomes, would your Corporal Koffler be willing to go in with it?"

  "Why would that be necessary?" Banning asked.

  He immediately saw on Feldt's face that his simple question had been misinterpreted; Feldt suspected that Banning was re-luctant to send one of his men behind the Japanese lines.

  "I'm afraid it really would be necessary, Banning," Feldt said. "Otherwise dropping the Hallicrafters would be useless; Reeves would have no idea how to operate it. And I don't think he could work from a set of directions; his mind doesn't work that way."

  "How soon would you like Koffler to jump in?" Banning asked.

  "Today's Friday. How long would it take your man to prepare the Hallicrafters to be rigged for a parachute drop?"

  "Again, I'll have to ask him. But again, off the top of my head, I can't imagine why it would take more than a couple of hours. I presume we can get parachutes from the RAAF7"

  Feldt nodded. "I'll ring Deane and ask him to arrange for your man to be flown up here tomorrow."

  "Am I allowed to say something?" Howard asked.

  Banning looked at him curiously, even impatiently.

  "Sure," Feldt said.

  "If I understand this correctly," Howard said, "what we have here is a very important Coastwatcher station-"

  "Arguably, the most important station," Feldt agreed. "Cer-tainly one of the most important."

  "Staffed by one man who apparently knows very little or noth-ing about radios."

  "That's why we're going to jump Koffler in to join him."

  "Koffler doesn't know a Zero from a Packard," Howard said. "If something happens to your man Reeves, Commander, what you're going to have is a perfectly functioning radio station from which we'll get no intelligence because Koffler won't know what to send."

  "Granted," Feldt said. "So what?"

  "So what you need is a team. Send two people in. The other one should be someone who can identify Japanese aircraft and ships as well as your man Reeves. If something should happen to Reeves, that man could possibly keep the station operating. At least better than someone who was in high school this time last year."

  "I don't have anybody to spare at the moment," Feldt said.

  "I grant your point. Reeves should have a replacement. I'll work on it."

  "The time to send him in is now," Howard argued. "You said that getting planes is difficult. You might not be able to get an-other; and even if you could, it seems to me the Japanese would sense that something important was going on in that area."

  "Commander Feldt says he doesn't have anyone to send," Banning said curtly.

  "I was in the First Defense Battalion at Pearl," Howard said. "In addition to my other duties, I taught Japanese aircraft and vessel recognition."

  "Fascinating," Commander Feldt said, softly.

  "You're not a parachutist," Banning said.

  "Neither was Steve Koffler, this time last year," Howard ar-gued.

  "Ed," Feldt said softly, "I was given a briefing on agent infil-tration by an insufferably smug British Special Operations Exec-utive officer. He told me, among other things, that their experience parachuting people into France has been that they lost more people training them to use parachutes than they did jumping virtually untrained people on actual operations. Conse-quently, as a rule of thumb, they no longer subject agents going in to the risks of injury parachute training raises."

  Banning looked between the two of them, but said nothing.

  "What worries me about this is why Joe wants to go," Feldt said. He looked directly at Howard. "Why do you want to do this?"

  "I don't want to do it," Howard said after a moment. "I think somebody has to do it. Of the people available to us, I seem to have the best qualifications."

  "Are you married? Children?" Feldt asked.

  "I have a... fianc‚e," Joe said. It was, he realized, the first time he had ever used the word.

  "The decision, of course, is Major Banning's," Commander Feldt said formally.

  Banning met Howard's eyes for a moment.

  "I think it might be better if Joe and I went to Melbourne," Banning said finally, evenly. "I don't know, but maybe Joe and Koffler will need some equipment I don't know about. If there is, it would more likely be available in Melbourne to a major than to a lieutenant."

  "Your other ranks seem to do remarkably well getting things from depots," Feldt said. "But of course you're right. I'll ar-range with Deane to have you two flown down there in the morning."

  He reached for the Scotch bottle and topped off everyone's glass.

  "And of course, Melbourne's the best place to get the shots."

  "Shots?"

  "Immunizations."

  "The Marine Corps has given me shots against every disease known to Western man," Howard said.

  "I don't really think, Joe, that your medical people have a hell of a lot of experience with the sort of thing you're going to find on Buka," Feldt said. "And since Major Banning and I have decided to indulge you in this little escapade, it behooves you to take your shots like a good little boy."

  "Aye, aye, Sir," Howard said.

  "Cheers," Feldt said, raising his glass.

  (Six)

  Two Creeks Station

  Wagga Wagga, New South Wales

  6 June 1942

  It had been called a memorial service, but what it really had been, Daphne Farnsworth realized, was a regular funeral miss-ing only the body. There had even been an empty, flag-covered casket in the aisle of St. Paul's Church. The Reverend Mr. Bar-tholomew Frederick, his World War I Australian-New Zealand Army Corps ribbons pinned to his vestments, had delivered a eulogy that had been at least as much a recitation of the virtues of Australian military prowess and courage generally as it had been a recounting of the virtues of the late Sergeant John An-drew Farnsworth.

  And before and after, before even she had gotten home, the neighbors had gone through the ritual of visiting the bereaved. In the event, Daphne Farnsworth only barely counted as one of the bereaved. The visitors had "called on" John's parents at the big house, instead of at John's and her house. Their house had been more or less closed up, of course, and his parents' house was larger; but she suspected that the roasts and the casse-roles and the clove-studded hams and potato salad would have been delivered to the big house even if she hadn't joined the Navy.

  She was both shamed and confused by her reaction to the of-ferings of sympathy. They annoyed her. And she resented all the people, too. She was either being a genuine bitch, she de-cided, or-as she had heard at least a half-dozen people whisper softly to her in-laws-she was still in shock and had not really accepted her loss. That would come later.

  She had been annoyed at that, too. They didn't know what the hell they were talking: about. She had accepted her loss. She knew that John was never coming back, even, for Christ's sake, in a casket when the war was over. She knew, with a horrible empty feeling in her heart and belly, that she would never again feel John's muscular arms around her, or have him inside her.

  She was angry with him, too-the decisive proof that she was a cold-hearted bitch. He didn't have to go. He had gotten himself killed over there for the sole reason that he had wanted to go over there, answering some obscene and ludicrous male hunger to go off and kill something... without considering at all the price she was going to have to pay.

  And their ch
ildlessness-a question John had decided for all time by enlisting and getting himself killed-had been a subject of some conversation by those who had come to call to express their sympathy. The males, gathered in the sitting room, drink-ing, and the women in the kitchen, fussing with all the food, seemed to be divided more or less equally into two groups: those who thought it a pity there wasn't a baby, preferably a male baby, to carry on the name; and those who considered it a mani-festation of God's wise compassion that he had not left poor Daphne with a fatherless child to add to her burden.