Line of Fire

by W. E. B Griffin

"But we couldn't expect the Asshole to let us know he was coming, could we?" Under practically any other circumstances, Major Ed Banning's sense of military propriety would have been deeply offended to hear a brother officer call another officer an anal orifice. And he would have been especially offended when the insult came from a foreigner, and the officer and gentleman so crudely characterized was a full colonel of the U.S. Marine Corps.

  But at the moment, Major Banning was not at all offended. For one thing, he had a profound professional admiration and a good deal of personal affection for Commander Feldt. And for another, so far as Banning was concerned, Feldt's vulgar characterization fit to a T Colonel Lewis R. Mitchell, USMC, Special Liaison Officer between the Commander in Chief Pacific Ocean Areas (CINCPAC-Admiral Chester W. Nimitz) and the Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific (SWPOA-General Douglas MacArthur).

  Banning knew far more about Colonel Lewis R. Mitchell than Mitchell would have dreamed possible, including the fact that Mitchell had been given his present assignment in the belief that he could do less damage to the war effort there than he had been causing as one of a half dozen colonels assigned to the Personnel Division at Headquarters, USMC.

  "You really think it's Mitchell?"

  "Who else would it be? That's a sodding Dakota, not a puddle-jumper. If it were your Nip, he'd be in a puddlejumper." The "your Nip" reference was to First Lieutenant Hon Song Do, Signal Corps, U.S.

  Army.

  "I'm telling you for the last fucking time, Eric!" Banning flared furiously. "Don't you ever refer to Pluto as a Nip, mine or anyone else's!"

  "Sorry," Feldt said, sounding genuinely contrite. It did not satisfy Banning.

  "For one thing, he's a serving officer. For another, he's a friend of mine. And finally, for Christ's sake, he's Korean, not Japanese." Pluto Hon had made a good many trips by puddle-jumper from MacArthur's headquarters to Townsville to deliver to Banning classified messages that could not be entrusted to ordinary couriers. It was a long way to fly in a Piper Cub. Pluto Hon was a good man, a good officer, and he was not a fucking Nip.

  "I'm really sorry, old boy," Feldt said. "That just slipped out"

  "That's your fucking trouble!"

  Feldt did not respond.

  Banning decided he had gone far enough. In fact, he was chagrined that he had lost his temper.

  "Well, what do you say?" he asked. "Should we go down to the field and see if that is the Asshole?"

  "Sod him," Feldt said. "Let him walk."

  "We'd just have to send one of the men back for him," Banning replied as he braked and prepared to turn around.

  "And if one of my guys were out of uniform, say wearing one of these RAN sleeved blankets, the Asshole would have apoplexy."

  Feldt and Banning had been en route from the Coastwatcher Establishment antennae farm to their headquarters when Feldt had spotted the airplane. The airfield was in between; it took them only a few minutes to reach it.

  By then the C-47 had landed and taxied to the transient ramp. The door opened as Banning stopped the Studebaker at the hurricane fence between the parking lot and the field itself.

  As Banning walked to the policeman guarding the gate, Colonel Lewis R. Mitchell climbed down the short ladder, tugged at his trench coat to make sure it was in order, and marched toward the terminal.

  He looks like an illustration.- "Field Grade Officer, Dress Uniform, Winter, " Banning thought.

  He intercepted him and saluted crisply, "Good afternoon, Sir." Colonel Mitchell returned the salute but said nothing.

  What he's doing is mentally composing something memorable to say to me about the duffel coat.

  Colonel Mitchell's lips worked as if he was distinctly uncomfortable.

  "Major Banning," he said finally, "a communication has arrived which I have been instructed to place before you." What the hell is he talking about?

  "Yes, Sir?" Mitchell reached into the inside pocket of his blouse, removed an envelope, handed it to Banning, and then adjusted his uniform again.

  The envelope was unsealed. It contained a single sheet of paper. From its feel, even before he saw the red TOP SECRET classification stamped on it, Banning knew that it had come from the Cryptographic Room. The paper was treated somehow to aid combustion. When a match was touched to it, it almost exploded.

  TOP SECRET

  URGENT

  HEADQUARTERS USMC WASH DC 29 AUG 1942 1105

  TO: HEADQUARTERS SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREA

  ATTN: (EYES ONLY) COLONEL L. R. MITCHELL USMC

  1. Reference your radio 25Aug42 subject, "Request for clarification of role SWPOA-CINCPAC liaison officer vis-a-vis USMC Special Detachment 14 and RAN Coastwatcher Establishment, which has been referred to HQ USMC for reply.

  2. You are advised that you have no repeat no role vis-a-vis USMC Special Detachment 14 or RAN

  Coastwatcher Establishment. You are further advised that Commanding Officer USMC SPECDET 14 is under sole and direct repeat sole and direct command of the undersigned and therefore not subject to orders of any USMC officer in CINCPAC or FPOA, regardless of position or rank.

  1. In order to insure that there is absolutely misunderstanding, you are directed to personally make the contents of this message known to Major Edward Banning, USMC; LTCOM Eric A. Feldt, ; and 1st Lt S.D. Hon, SigC, USA.

  It Hon is directed to inform the undersigned )f date and time he has seen this message. Major Banning is directed to inform the undersigned of -the date and time he has seen this message, and to inform the undersigned when its contents were made known to LTCOM Feldt. A consolidated reply, classified Top Secret, will be dispatched by urgent radio.

  5. You are further advised that your raising of this question has called into doubt your ability to perform the duties of your present assignment.

  FOR THE COMMANDANT

  HORACE W. T. FORREST

  MAJOR GEN, USMC

  ASSISTANT CHIEF OF STAFF, G2, USMC

  TOP SECRET

  Banning raised his eyes to Colonel Mitchell's.

  "Yes, Sir," he said.

  "I apparently overstepped my authority and responsibility as I understood it..." Mitchell said.

  Jesus Christ, I actually feel sorry for him.

  "... and if an apology is in order, Major, please consider one extended."

  "No, Sir. No apology is required, Sir. They should have briefed you."

  "Is that Commander Feldt in the car?"

  "Yes, Sir."

  "If you will give me that message back, I will show it to Commander Feldt and then see about getting back to Melbourne."

  "Colonel," Banning said, "unless you have some pressing business in Melbourne, why don't you spend the night with us, and let us show you what we're doing here?"

  "In light of that message, that strikes me as-"

  "Sir, it was a question of Need to Know. With respect, Sir, you have not been cleared for what we're doing here."

  "I have a TOP SECRET clearance," Mitchell said. "I'm the liaison officer between the two senior headquarters in the Pacific, and I'm the senior Marine officer present at SWPOA." Banning, aware that he was about to lose his temper, spoke very carefully.

  "Colonel, you have two choices. You can get back on that airplane or you can spend the night with us, let us show you why this is all so important."

  "You had something to do with that message I just got, didn't you, Major? It was not just a reply to my radio, was it?"

  "Sir, when you told me what you wanted me to do, and I told you what you asked was impossible, and when I learned you had sent that radio, I sent a back-channel message-"

  "Who told you about my radio? That Oriental cryptographer?"

  "That Oriental cryptographer"? Fuck you, Asshole!

  Banning came to attention.

  "Sir, I will bring this message to Commander Feldt's attention and arrange to have the confirmation of its receipt radioed to General Forrest. Good afternoon, Sir." He saluted, and without waiting for it to be returned, execut
ed a perfect about-face movement and then marched toward the Studebaker.

  "Now see here, Banning!" Colonel Mitchell called after him.

  Banning reached the Studebaker, got behind the wheel, and drove off.

  "The Asshole, I gather, is not coming to tea?" Commander Feldt asked.

  "Sod him," Major Banning said.

  The story that ended with the arrival of Colonel Mitchell in Townsville had its start some months earlier with what Banning now recognized to be a hell of a smart idea on the part of Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. At the beginning of the war, Knox realized that he was going to read very few honest reports on the functioning of Navy in the Pacific so long as those reports were written by Navy captains and admirals.

  Knox concluded that if he was going to get anything like what he actually needed, he'd have to find someone who was not a member of the Navy establishment, yet who understood the Pacific and the Navy's responsibilities there. He found him, in spades, in the person of Captain Fleming W. Pickering. In addition to having been an any-tonnage, any-ocean master mariner (hence Captain) since he was twenty-six, Pickering was Chairman of the Board of Pacific & Far East Shipping Corporation.

  Pickering, in other words, had all the necessary credentials that Knox required.

  It is a sign of Frank Knox's considerable integrity that he actually chose Fleming Pickering for the job; for their initial encounter was not pleasant, Fleming Pickering being a notably outspoken man with very strong views indeed. They met in connection with Pickering's refusal to sell his forty-two-vessel cargo fleet to the Navy (he did sell the Navy his twelve-vessel passenger-liner fleet). During their meeting (it took place not long after the attack on Pearl Harbor), Pickering told Knox that he should have resigned after that fiasco, and they should have shot the admirals in charge.

  Peace between the two was arranged by their mutual friend, Senator Richmond F. Fowler (R., Cal.), and Pickering was commissioned into the Navy as a Captain on Knox's personal staff. He left almost immediately for the Pacific, where he filed regular reports on what the Navy and Marine Corps were actually doing-as opposed to what they wanted Frank Knox to know about.

  Unfettered by the restraints he would have endured had he been under the command of CINCPAC, and with a wide network of friends and acquaintances in Australia and elsewhere in the Far East, Pickering put his nose in wherever he wanted to.

  Very soon after he learned of the Royal Australian Navy Coastwatcher Establishment, he realized its great intelligence value. And it didn't take Pickering long after that to realize that he and Lieutenant Commander Eric Feldt were both just about equally contemptuous of the brass hats the Navy sent to work with the Coast watchers.

  As a result, a lengthy radio message from Pickering to Navy Secretary Knox resulted in the formation of Marine Corps Special Detachment 14, Major Edward S. Banning, commanding, under the Marine Corps Office of Management Analysis (its name was purposely obfuscatory). Banning's mission was not only to get along with Commander Feldt at any cost, but to provide him with whatever personnel, material , and money Feldt felt he could use.

  Shortly after he took command of Special Detachment 14, Banning was made aware of one of the great secrets of the war, a secret that Pickering was also privy to.

  Navy cryptographers at Pearl Harbor had broken many (but not all) of the codes of the Imperial Japanese General Staff.

  Decoded intercepts of these messages were furnished to a very few senior officers (in SWPOA, for instance, only General MacArthur and his intelligence officer, Brigadier General Charles A. Willoughby, got them). The operation had its own security classification: TOP SECRET-MAGIC. And the only cryptographic officer at SWPOA (South West Pacific Ocean Area) cleared to decrypt MAGIC

  messages was a Ph.D. in mathematics from MIT, First Lieutenant Hon Song Do, Signal Corps, U.S.

  Army. Banning joined "Pluto" Hon on the MAGIC list, as a stand-in for Pickering.

  Meanwhile, Fleming Pickering and Douglas MacArthur grew friendly-bearing in mind that to call any relationship with the General "friendly" might be stretching the truth. It was MacArthur's view (and Pickering agreed with him) that the Navy was telling him (like Frank Knox) only what it wanted him to know, and only when it wanted to tell him. As a result, a radio message brought the appointment of Marine Lieutenant Colonel George F. Dailey as liaison officer between CINCPAC and SWPOA, with orders to keep MacArthur as fully briefed as possible.

  Dailey had a second function... though he wasn't aware of it. A former Naval attach‚, he had the security and intelligence background that would enable him, if necessary, to replace Banning as both Commanding Officer of USMC Special Detachment 14 and as Pickering's stand-in on the MAGIC list.

  Since he had no Need to Know, he was told little about the Coastwatcher Establishment and nothing whatever of MAGIC-not even of its existence.

  That issue became moot when the intelligence officer of the First Marine Division was killed in the opening days of the Guadalcanal operation. Officers at Headquarters USMC Personnel, unaware of Dailey's standby role as Banning's replacement, saw only a qualified replacement for the dead First Marine G-2. And so they ordered Dailey to Guadalcanal.

  And either taking care of one of their own or (in Banning's judgment) getting rid of the sonofabitch-they ordered Colonel Lewis R. Mitchell to Australia to replace Lieutenant Colonel Dailey.

  By the time Mitchell arrived, Captain Pickering had gone to Guadalcanal (where he figured he would be more useful than he was in Melbourne). With Pickering's departure Banning lost his own one-man-removed access to Navy Secretary Knox.

  And he also had to deal with Mitchell. Colonel Mitchell might not have been a problem except that he turned out to be what Banning considered the most dangerous of men, a stupid officer with ambition.

  Soon after his arrival, Mitchell somehow learned of a priority air shipment of radio equipment Banning had ordered for Feldt from the United States. In short order he demanded to know: what the equipment was to be used for; why it was necessary to have it shipped with the highest air priority; why he had not, as Senior Marine Officer present, been consulted; what was this half-assed Coastwatcher operation all about anyway; and, since the United States was paying all the bills, why a U.S. officer was not in charge.

  Banning, as politely as possible, told him he did not have the Need to Know.

  That resulted in a radio message from Mitchell to CINCPAC "requesting clarification of his role vis-a-vis USMC Special Detachment 14 and the Australian Coastwatcher organization." When Pluto Hon showed this to Banning and asked what he should do about it, Banning told him to delay transmission for twenty-four hours while he considered his choices.

  Banning saw two options: He could go directly to General MacArthur. Or he could send a back-channel message to the Office of Management Analysis.

  On the one hand, going to MacArthur could raise more problems than it solved: MacArthur believed in the chain of command. Since colonels are de facto smarter than majors, majors do not question what colonels do.

  On the other hand, back-channel messages are not filed and therefore do not have to be phrased in military-acceptable terminology:

  URGENT FROM

  CO USMC SPECDET 14

  VIA CINCPAC MAGIC

  TO MARINE OFFICE MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS

  EYES ONLY COLONEL RICKABEE

  MITCHELL REALLY DANGEROUS X HE WILL SEND MESSAGE CINCPAC TOMORROW

  REQUESTING CLARIFICATION

  OF HIS ROLE VISAVIS EVERYTHING HERE X CAN YOU GET HIM OFF MY BACK X

  REGARDS X BANNING END

  [Three]

  THE FOSTER LAFAYETTE HOTEL

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  1415 HOURS 31 AUGUST 1942

  Senator Richmond F. Fowler (R., Cal.), was a silver-haired, erect sixty-two-year-old, Despite his attire

  -he wore a sleeveless undershirt and baggy seersucker trousers held up by suspenders- he still managed to look dignified when he opened the door of his apartment him
self in response to an imperious knock.

  Fowler occupied a six-room suite on the eighth floor of the Foster Lafayette. It was a corner suite, and so half its windows gave him an unimpeded view of the White House on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue. Though the suite's annual rental was not quite covered by his Senatorial salary, this was not a problem. The Senator had inherited from his father The San Francisco Courier-Herald, nine smaller newspapers, and six radio stations. And it was more or less accurately gossiped that his wife and her brother owned two square blocks of downtown San Francisco and several million acres of timberland in Washington and Oregon.

  A tall, distinguished-looking man in his early forties was standing in the corridor. He was wearing a khaki uniform, shirt, trousers, and overseas cap. The U.S. Navy insignia and a silver eagle were pinned to the cap, and silver eagles were on his collar. The right armpit area of the shirt was dark with sweat. The left sleeve had been cut from the shirt at the shoulder to accommodate a heavy plaster cast which covered the arm from the shoulder to the wrist.

  The two men looked at each other for a long time before Senator Fowler finally spoke.

  "I am so glad to see you, you crazy sonofabitch, that I can't even be angry."

  "May I come in, then?" the other man asked with gentle sarcasm.

  "Are you all right, Fleming?" Fowler asked, concern coloring his voice.

  "When I get out of these fucking clothes, and you get me something cold-and heavily alcoholic-I will be."

  "You want to get in bed? Should I call a doctor?"

  "I want a very large glass of orange juice, with ice, and a large hooker of gin," Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR, said, as he walked into the sitting room of the suite. "I have been thinking about that for hours."

  "Can you have alcohol?"

  "Hey, I have a broken arm. That's all."

  "A compound fracture of the arm," Senator Fowler said.

  "Plus, I have been told, a number of other unnatural openings in the body." with his good hand Pickering started to shove an overstuffed chair across the room.

  "What are you doing? Let me do that!" Fowler said and walked quickly to him.