Line of Fire

by W. E. B Griffin

  "No, Sir," Richardson said, chuckling. "And you don't look like a candy-ass from MacArthur's headquarters, either. The Major really hates it when they show up here." Dillon smiled.

  "I'll bet," he said. "I'll also bet that you would be able to put your hands on a cold beer to save the life of an old China Marine, wouldn't you?"

  "I don't have any with me in the car, Major, but I'll drive like hell to where you can get one."

  "Bless you, my son," Dillon said, making the sign of the cross.

  "That wasn't the regular courier plane, was it?" Richardson asked a minute or so later as he headed for the Coastwatcher Establishment. But it was really a statement rather than a question.

  No, that was a medical evacuation plane from Guadalcanal', headed for Melbourne. I asked them to drop me off."

  "No cold beer on Guadalcanal?"

  "No cold beer, and not much of anything else, either," Dillon said. "The goddamn Navy sailed off with most of our rations still on the transports. We've been living on what we took away from the Japs."

  "Yeah, we heard about that," Richardson said.

  When Major Edward F. Banning, USMC, Commanding Officer of USMC Special Detachment 14, glanced into the unit's combined mess hall and club, he saw Major Dillon sprawled in a chair at the table reserved for the unit's half dozen officers. He was working on his second bottle of beer.

  Sergeant Richardson, smiling, holding a bottle of beer, was leaning against the wall.

  When Banning walked into the room, Richardson pushed himself off the wall and looked a little uncomfortable.

  "I'm afraid to ask what you've got in the blood container, Jake," Banning said.

  "There was film in it," Dillon replied. "Richardson put it in your refrigerator for me."

  "What kind of film?"

  "Still and 16mm. Eyemo."

  "That's not what I meant."

  "Of heroic Marines battling the evil forces of the Empire of Japan. With a cast of thousands. Produced and directed by yours truly. Being rushed to your neighborhood newsreel theater. "

  "You may find it hard to believe, looking at him, Sergeant

  Richardson," Banning said, "but this scruffy, unwashed, unshaven officer was once famous for being the best-turned-out Marine sergeant in the Fourth Marines."

  "Don't give me a hard time, Banning," Dillon said.

  "We was just talking about the Fourth, Sir," Richardson said. "We know people, but we wasn't there at the same time."

  "How are you, Jake?" Banning asked, walking to him and shaking hands.

  "You look like hell."

  "I was hungry, dirty, and thirsty. Now I'm just hungry and dirty, thanks to Sergeant Richardson."

  "Well, I'll feed you, but I won't give you a bath."

  "You got something I can wear until I get to Melbourne? My stuff is there."

  "Sure. Utilities? Or something fancier?"

  "Utilities would be fine," Dillon said.

  "See what you can do, Richardson, will you?" Banning ordered. "Major Dillon will be staying in my quarters."

  "Aye, aye, Sir," Richardson said. "You want to give me that.45, Major, I'll get it cleaned for you." Dillon hesitated, then stood up and unfastened his pistol belt.

  "Bless you again, my son," he said.

  "Anytime, Major," Sergeant Richardson said with a smile and then left.

  Dillon looked at Banning.

  "I think I better go have that bath now, while I'm still on my feet."

  "You sick, Jake, or just tired?"

  "I hope to Christ I'm just tired. What you can catch on that fucking island starts with crabs and lice and gets worse.

  They've got bugs nobody ever heard of, not to mention malaria."

  "If you want a bath, " Banning said, as he led Dillon, still clutching his beer bottle, from the mess hall, "I'll ask Feldt. All I have is a shower."

  "Shower's fine. How is Commander Charming?"

  "He might even be glad to see you, as a matter of fact," Banning said. "You didn't show up here in a dress uniform, taking notes, and telling him how to run things."

  "Speak of the devil," Dillon said as he saw Commander Feldt coming down the corridor. He raised his voice slightly.

  "Well, there's the pride of the Royal Australian Navy."

  "Hello, Dillon," Feldt said, offering his hand. There was even the suggestion of a smile on his face. "How are you"" It was not the reception Dillon expected. He wouldn't have been surprised if Feldt completely ignored him, and even less surprised if Feldt was grossly insulting and colorfully profane.

  "Can't complain," Dillon said.

  "You look like something the sodding cat dragged in." Commander Feldt then disappeared.

  Three minutes later, in Banning's room, he surprised Dillon again. The shower curtain parted and a hand holding a bottle of scotch appeared.

  Have a taste of this, Dillon," Feldt said. "It might not kill the sodding worms, but it'll give them a sodding headache."

  "Bless you, my son," Dillon said.

  "Sod you, Dillon," Feldt said, but there was unmistakable friendliness and warmth in his voice.

  When Dillon came out of the shower, Feldt was sprawled on Banning's bed, holding the bottle of scotch on his stomach.

  Banning was sitting on his desk.

  "So how are things on Guadalcanal?" Feldt asked.

  I am probably, Dillon realized, the first man he-or Banning, for that matter-has talked to who has been on the island.

  "What I really can't figure is why the Japs haven't gotten their act together and thrown us off," Dillon said.

  Feldt grunted.

  "Are those stories true about the Navy sailing away with the heavy artillery, et cetera, or are you sodding Marines just crying in your sodding beer again?".

  "They're true," Dillon said. He walked naked to the bed, took the bottle from Feldt, and drank a swallow from the neck.

  "If it wasn't for the food the Japs left behind, the First Marine Division would be starving. And if it wasn't for the engineer equipment the Japs left behind, Henderson Field simply wouldn't exist. The fucking Navy sailed off with almost all of our engineer equipment still aboard the transports." Feldt looked at him a moment and then swung his feet off the bed.

  "Cover your sodding ugly nakedness, Dillon," he said. "I asked one of the lads to fix you a steak."

  "Thank you," Dillon said.

  "Just for the record, you have the ugliest, not to mention the smallest-I will not dignify it by calling it àpenis'-pisser I have ever seen on a full-grown man."

  "Sod you, Eric," Dillon said.

  But for some inexplicable reason, I am glad to see you.

  "What are you doing here, anyway?"

  "Flacking," Dillon said as he pulled an undershirt over his head.

  "What in the sweet name of Jesus is `flacking'?"

  "I am a flack," Dillon replied. "What flacks do is `flack,' hencèflacking."

  "What is this demented sodding compatriot of yours rambling about, Banning."

  "I'm a press agent, Eric," Dillon said. "My contribution to the war effort will be to encourage red-blooded American youth to rush to the Marine recruiter and shame their families, friends, and neighbors into buying war bonds. That's what flacks do."

  "I don't think he's trying to pull my sodding leg, Banning, but I haven't the faintest sodding idea what he's talking about."

  "Neither do I," Banning said.

  "I'm on my way home with six wounded heroes, two of whom I have yet to cast," Dillon explained as he pulled utility trousers on. "Said wounded heroes will be put on display all over America, with a suitable background of flags and stirring patriotic airs."

  "You don't sound very enthusiastic about it, Jake," Banning said.

  "I almost got out of it," Dillon said. "I almost had Vandergrift in a corner." Major General Alexander Archer Vandergrift, USMC, was Commanding General, First Marine Division.

  "You almost had Vandergrift in a corner?" Banning asked incredulously.

>   "I went and asked him if I could have a company," Dillon replied and then stopped. The alcohol is getting to me, he thought. I'm running off at the mouth.

  "And?" Banning pursued.

  "He said, `Thanks very much, but captains command companies and you're a major." And I said, Ì

  would be happy to take a bust to captain, or for that matter back to the ranks." And?" He said he would think about it, and I really think he did.

  But then we got a fucking radio from Headquarters, USMC.

  The Assistant Commandant is personally interested in this fucking wounded-hero war bond tour, it seems, and he wanted to know what was holding it up. And that blew me out of the fucking water."

  "It's important, Jake," Banning said, more because he felt sorry for Dillon than because he believed in the importance of war bond tours.

  "Bullshit," Dillon said. "They have civilians in uniform who could do as well as I can. I'm a Marine. Or I like to think I am."

  "Yours not to reason why, old sod," Feldt said, "yours but to ride into the sodding valley of the pracks."

  "Flacks," Dillon corrected him automatically.

  "Flacks, pracks, flicks, pricks, whatever," Feldt said cheerfully. "You about ready to eat?"

  "I'm a prick of a flack, who used to be a flack for the flicks," Dillon heard himself say.

  Jesus, I'm drunk!

  "Actually, old sod, I would say you're a prickless prack," Feldt said. And then he laughed. It was the first time Dillon could remember hearing him laugh.

  The steak was not a New York Strip, charred on the outside and pink in the middle. It was thin, fried to death, and (to put a good face on it) chewy. But it covered the plate.

  And it was the first fresh meat Jake had in his mouth for six weeks. He ate all of it with relish.

  "Jesus, that was good!"

  "Another, old sod?" Feldt asked.

  "No, thanks."

  "You haven't told us what you're doing here, Jake," Banning said.

  "Well, I'm on my way home. I thought maybe you'd want me to call your wife-" Dillon stopped abruptly.

  Too late, Dillon remembered that Mrs. Edward F. Banning did not get out of Shanghai before the Japanese came. She was a White Russian refugee whom Banning had married just before the Fourth Marines were transferred from Shanghai to the Philippines.

  You're an asshole, Dillon, and don't blame it on the booze.

  "-Shit! Ed, I'm sorry!" he went on, regret in his voice. "That just slipped out."

  "Forget it," Banning said evenly.

  "Or get you something in the States," Dillon went on somewhat lamely.

  "Send us Pickering back," Feldt said. "If you want to do something useful."

  "Amen," Banning said, as if anxious to get off the subject of Mrs. Edward F. Banning. "The minute he left, the assholes in MacArthur's headquarters held a party, and then they started working on us."

  "That figures," Dillon said. "I'll make a point to see him, talk to him."

  "I don't think it will do any good," Banning said.

  "I don't know. It sodding well can't do any sodding harm," Feldt said. "That would be a service, old sod."

  "Consider it done," Dillon said. "He still works for Frank Knox. Hot radios from the Secretary of the Navy often work miracles. Is there anything in particular?"

  "Ask him to get that sodding asshole Willoughby off our back," Feldt said.

  Newly promoted Brigadier General Charles A. Willoughby, USA, was MacArthur's intelligence officer.

  He was one of the "Bataan Gang," i.e., the men who escaped by PT Boat with MacArthur from the Philippines.

  "Since he is the theater intelligence officer," Banning said, "Willoughby feels that all intelligence activities should come under him. In his shoes I would probably feel the same way.

  But it really isn't Willoughby who's the problem so much as the people he has working for him."

  "Willoughby," Feldt insisted, "is a sodding asshole, and so are the people working for him."

  "They want us to route our intelligence through SWPOA," Banning said. (MacArthur's official title was Supreme Commander, South West Pacific Ocean Areas.) "So Willoughby can look important," Feldt said.

  `Do you?" `Yes and no," Banning said. "When possible, the Coast watchers communicate with CINCPAC Radio directly. We monitor everything, of course. So if our people can't get through to them, we relay to CINCPAC. If that happens, we send a copy to SWPOA." (CINCPAC: Commander in Chief, Pacific, the Navy's headquarters at Pearl Harbor.) "Willoughby wants our people to communicate with SWPOA, and he'll pass it on to CINCPAC," Feldt said. "We have been ignoring the asshole, of course."

  "So far successfully," Banning said. "But, oh how we miss Captain Pickering. He could get Willoughby off our back."

  "Speaking of òur people,"' Dillon said, remembering the two boys on Buka. It was one thing, he thought, to have your ass in the line of fire in a line company on Guadalcanal-having your ass in the line of fire was what being a Marine was really all about-and something entirely different to be one of two Marines on an enemy-held island with no chance of being relieved.

  "Good lads," Feldt said. "Every time I want to say something unpleasant about you sodding Marines, I remind myself there is an exception to the rule."

  "So far they're all right, Jake," Banning said. "All right being defined as the Japs haven't caught them yet.

  Buka, right now, is probably the most important station."

  "How are they?" Dillon asked. When neither Feldt nor Banning immediately replied, he went on: "I'm headed for the Fourth General Hospital. Barbara's there. She'll ask me about Joe."

  "Lie to her," Feldt said. "That would be kindest." Lieutenant (J.G.) Barbara T. Cotter, NNCR, was engaged to First Lieutenant Joseph L.

  Howard, USMCR, who Was now on Buka with Sergeant Steven M. Koffler.

  "Why are you going to the Fourth General?" Banning asked.

  "I have four wounded heroes; I need two more. I'm going to hold an audition at the hospital to fill the cast. Don't change the subject. Tell me about Joe and Koffler. I don't want to lie to Barbara."

  "They are on the edge of starvation," Feldt said. "They are almost certainly infested with a wide variety of intestinal parasites. The odds are ten to one they have malaria, and probably two or three other tropical diseases. They have no medicine.

  For that matter they don't even have salt. They are already two weeks past the last date they could possibly be expected to escape detection by the Japanese."

  "Jesus!" Dillon said.

  "Tell Barbara that if you like," Feldt said in a level voice.

  "What about getting them out?"

  "Out of the sodding question, old sod," Feldt said.

  "Well, what the hell are you going to do when they are caught?" Dillon asked angrily. "You just said-Banning just said-that Buka is, right now, the most important station."

  "When Buka goes down, Jake," Banning said, "we will start parachuting in replacement teams. The moment we're sure it's down, we start dropping people. Giving Willoughby his due, he has promised us a B-17 within two hours when we ask for one."

  "A B-17? Why a B-17?"

  "Because when we jumped Joe and Koffler in there-Christ, two Jap fighter bases are on Buka-we used an unarmed transport. It was shot down. Fortunately, after Joe and Koffler jumped.

  "And nothing can be done?"

  "I don't know. We haven't given it much thought," Feldt said, thickly sarcastic. "But perhaps someone of your vast expertise in these areas has a solution we haven't been able to come up, with ourselves."

  "Eric, I'm sorry you took that the wrong way," Dillon said.

  Feldt didn't reply; but a moment later he stood up and leaned over to refresh Dillon's glass of scotch.

  "What makes you think you ran get a replacement team on the ground?"

  Dillon asked after a long silence.

  "The operative word is `teams,' plural," Banning replied.

  "We have six, ready to go. We will jump the
m in one at a time until one becomes operational. And then we'll have other teams standing by to go in when the operating team goes down."

  "Jesus Christ!" Dillon said.

  "If we're not able to inform CINCPAC and Guadalcanal when the Japanese bombers take off from Rabaul and the bases near it, our fighters on Henderson Field and on carriers will not be in the air in time to deflect them. That would see a lot of dead Marines," Banning said. "Viewed professionally, the mathematics make sense. It is better to suffer a couple of dozen losses to save a couple of hundred, a couple of thousand, lives.

  The only trouble is that I-Eric and I-know the kids whose lives we're going to expend for the common good. That makes it a little difficult, personally." Dillon raised his eyes to Banning's.

  "So tell Barbara the truth, Jake. Tell her that we continue to hear from Joe at least once a day, and that so far as we know he's all right."

  "Speaking of the truth, old sod," Feldt said, "Banning told me a wild tale. He claims you've dipped that miniature wick of yours into most of the famous honey pots in Hollywood." The subject of Buka was closed, and Jake knew that he could not reopen it.

  "I cannot tell a lie, Commander Feldt," Dillon said. "The story's true."

  [Three]

  UNITED STATES NAVAL HOSPITAL

  PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

  0930 HOURS 6 SEPTEMBER 1942

  "May I help you, Lieutenant?" Lieutenant (J.G.) Joanne McConnell, NNC, asked.

  "We're looking for Sergeant Moore, John M.," McCoy said.

  "They told us he was on this ward."

  "He is, but-this isn't my idea-the rule is no visitors on the ward before noon."

  "This is official business," McCoy said.

  "Nice try," Lieutenant McConnell said. "But I don't think Commander Jensen would buy it. Maybe you, but not the lady.

  Commander Jensen runs a tight ship."

  "Who's he?"

  "She. She's supervisory nurse in this building." McCoy took a wallet-sized leather folder from his pocket, opened it, and held it out for Lieutenant McConnell to see.

  It held a badge that incorporated the seal of the Department of the Navy, an identification card with McCoy's picture on it, and the statement that the bearer was a Special Agent of the Office of Naval Intelligence.