Line of Fire

by W. E. B Griffin

  "What's he doing here?" Banning asked.

  "He's here because he told Brigadier General Pickering that he wanted to come," he said, using the line he'd used for Moore, "and Brigadier General Pickering said, `Good boy."

  "In other words, you're not going to tell me?"

  "Not until McCoy and Hart get here, and Mrs. Feller goes shopping or something," Dillon said.

  "Major Dillon," Ellen Feller said coldly, "I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but I hold the same security clearances as Major Banning,"

  "I didn't know that, Mrs. Feller," Jake said. "But what I do know is that General Pickering told me that the less you know about this the better."

  "You won't mind, will you, Major," she said, "if I verify that with General Pickering?"

  "I wish you would," Dillon said- calmly. "But for the moment, I'd be grateful if you could find something else to do for an hour or two. Here comes a truck. I suspect McCoy and Hart are on it."

  "How am I supposed to do my job if I am denied access to... whatever is going on around here?"

  "Mrs. Feller, I'm just a simple Marine," Jake Dillon said. "General Pickering gave me an order and I'm going to carry it out. He said that the less you know about this, the better."

  She stood up, her face white.

  Whatever you do now, don't lose your temper! Just get out of here, calm down, and think this through.

  There is absolutely no reason to think you won't be able to deal with this offensive bastard.

  "Major Banning, may I use the Studebaker?" Ellen asked

  "Are we going to need wheels, Jake?"

  "Possibly," Dillon said. "Can't you call and get a staff car?"

  "You can't get a staff car this time of night, and you know it!"

  Careful, Ellen! They would love it if you lost your temper!

  "I think I can get you one, Mrs. Feller," Lieutenant Pluto Hon said, and walked to the telephone.

  [Three]

  LADIES' BAR

  MCSHAY'S SALOON & CAFE

  BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA

  2005 HOURS 29 SEPTEM13ER 1942

  "What are we doing in here?" ` Major Ed Banning asked Lieutenant Ken McCoy as McCoy led him into the room and to a table.

  "There aren't as many people in here as in the other bar," McCoy said. "I looked through the window."

  A waitress came to the table. She stood about five feet tall and measured nearly that distance around,

  "And what can I get for the Yanks?"

  "I want a beer, please," McCoy said. "And how about something to eat?"

  What would you like, love?"

  "I would like a steak about that thick," he said, holding his thumb and index finger an inch and a half apart. "Medium."

  The waitress laughed. "But you'd settle, right, for fish and chips?"

  "How about scrambled eggs and chips?"

  The waitress nodded.

  "And for you, love?"

  "Just the beer, please," Banning said. He waited until she was out of earshot, then asked, "Is that why we left the house?" "You were hungry?"

  "I got you out of there because you were about to get into it with Dillon and say something you would regret," McCoy said. "And because I'm starved."

  "You understand," Banning said, "that I will have to ask to be relieved?"

  "Shit," McCoy said.

  "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

  "That I was right in getting you out of there," McCoy said.

  The beer was delivered in two enormous, foamy mugs.

  McCoy took a swallow of his and made a face.

  "It's warm," he said.

  "The Aussies like it that way," Banning said.

  "Jesus!"

  "They get that from the English," Banning said, and then returned to his original topic. "It has been made perfectly clear that there is considerable doubt in my ability to perform my assigned duties. Under the circumstances I have no choice but to request to be relieved. Can't you see that?"

  "Drink your beer," McCoy said.

  "I can't understand your reaction to Pickering's idiotic idea," Banning said. "You actually seem to think it can be carried off."

  "One, I'm just a simple Mustang who does what he's ordered to do. And, two, yeah, I think it can be carried off."

  "Not by me!"

  "If you're not going to play by my rules, I'm going to take my ball and go home, and fuck all of you!"

  Right?"

  "McCoy, we've been friends for a long time, but don't push it! I'm not a child, and this is not a goddamned game!"

  "It really hasn't been a long time, but it does seem like fucking forever, doesn't it?" McCoy said. "My ambition in Shanghai was maybe to make staff sergeant before I retired."

  "It's hard to believe all that's happened in the last year, eighteen months."

  "I wonder what's happening in Shanghai tonight?"

  "Some Jap sonofabitch is driving my Pontiac down the Bund," Banning said, chuckling. "And will probably get laid in my bed later on."

  "You never heard anything about Mrs. Banning?"

  "No," Banning said softly, flatly.

  "White Russians seem able to deal with bad situations," McCoy said.

  "What do they call that, `Whistling in the dark'?"

  "She made it from Russia to Shanghai," McCoy said. "That took some doing."

  "You don't think Shanghai, under the Japs, would be worse for a white woman?"

  "Was that a question or what?"

  "A question."

  "I don't think the Japs are standing every white face they see against a wall, which is what the communists did to the White Russians. For all you know, she's just in some internment camp with other Americans."

  "She's not an American."

  "She's an American officer's wife. She can say she lost her passport and her other identification. I think that's what she probably tried to do, and I think she can probably get away with it." Banning held his empty beer mug over his head.

  "Right you are, love," the waitress bellowed.

  "I am going to request that I be relieved," Banning said.

  "Can't you see that I have to?"

  "We need you for this goddamned operation, don't be silly."

  "That's why Pickering sent Dillon over here, right?"

  "Pickering thinks you became too professional, too cold blooded, and fell under the evil influence of the Australian swabbie."

  "What the hell does that mean'?"

  "What's his name?"

  "Feldt, Lieutenant Commander Eric Feldt, and I would appreciate it if you didn't call him an Australian swabbie."

  "Pickering thinks that Feldt is too willing to write these guys off. Pickering is thinking like he's still a corporal in France, running around no-man's-land picking up the wounded. The difference, the important difference, is that Pickering has the influence. He's a general."

  "What's influence got to do with it?"

  "If your man Feldt gets in the way, he's going to get run over. "

  "That would really be the cherry on the cake," Banning said.

  "If it wasn't for Feldt there wouldn't be a Coastwatcher Establishment. If they relieve him, it would collapse."

  "Then you better tell him not to cross Dillon, because that's the same as crossing Pickering. If he does, he's out on his ass. Your man Feldt works for the Australian Admiral with two names-"

  "Soames-Haley," Banning furnished. "Vice Admiral Keith Soames-Haley."

  "Right. Who is an old buddy of Pickering's. Dillon's going to see him first thing tomorrow morning, with a letter from Pickering. If it comes to Soames-Haley having to make a choice between Pickering and Feldt, who do you think it will be?"

  "Sonofabitch!"

  "What you better do is stop insisting this can't be done and start thinking about how it can be." Banning looked at him for a long moment before replying.

  "As you were saying, McCoy, it seems only yesterday that you were a corporal I was defending on a murder charge."r />
  "Yeah, and you wanted me to throw myself on the mercy of the court and take my chances on getting no more than six months or a year in Portsmouth. You didn't even ask me if I was guilty.

  Banning's face tightened.

  "That was below the belt, don't you think?"

  "It's the truth. The Colonel wanted to stay on the right side of the American Consul General and the Italians, and if that meant a corporal had to go to Portsmouth, tough luck for him. And you went along with him."

  The reason I'm so goddamned mad, Banning thought, is that it is the unvarnished truth.

  "I thought you accepted my apology for that," Banning said.

  McCoy shrugged. "You brought it up. I was willing to forget it."

  The waitress appeared suddenly. In one hand she held two beer mugs. In the other was a plate heaped high with french fried potatoes and scrambled eggs, topped with two slices of toast.

  "In other words, you're in agreement with Pickering that I haven't done enough to try to get those two off Buka? Maybe because I don't want to make waves? Because not doing more than I have was the easiest thing to do?"

  "I'm very impressed with Pickering," McCoy said.

  "That doesn't answer the question."

  "OK. Yeah, I am."

  "That brings us back to square one. I have to ask to be relieved."

  "Who are you going to ask? Rickabee?"

  "He's my immediate superior."

  "He works for Pickering."

  "That whole thing is a sick joke. Pickering has no more right to be a brigadier general than-"

  "Than what? Than Jake Dillon has to be a major? Than me to be a lieutenant'? Is that what's really bothering you? You think we're all a bunch of amateur Marine officers, ex-enlisted men, who should defer to your professional officer-type thinking?"

  "Now you've gone too far," Banning said coldly.

  "Not quite," McCoy said. "Let me go all the way. Let me tell you my orders. From Rickabee, not Pickering. I am to advise him within forty-eight hours of my arrival here whether or not I think you're going to be in the way. If I decide you will be in the way, you'll be on the next plane out of here and you'll spend the rest of the war counting mess kits in Barstow."

  The Marine Corps operated a large supply depot at Barstow, California.

  Banning looked at him as if he could not believe what he just heard.

  "I find that hard to believe," he said finally.

  "Believe it. They sent me to the 2nd Raider Battalion to see if Colonel Evans Carlson was a communist and needed to be gotten rid of. You're only a major. You're not even in the same league."

  "Apparently," Banning replied sarcastically, "you decided Carlson was not a communist."

  McCoy ignored him.

  "Sessions has his bags packed. He's got that MAGIC clearance that I'm not supposed to know about.

  You wanted to know why Moore was sent here still using a cane: Moore will fill in for you doing whatever this MAGIC crap is. You want to get relieved, stay on your high horse and Sessions will be on his way here in seventy-two hours." Banning picked up his beer mug, took a long pull at it, and then burped.

  "Well, Lieutenant McCoy, I am relieved to learn that Jake Dillon's not really in charge."

  "Don't underestimate Major Dillon, Major Banning," McCoy said.

  "I don't want to count mess kits," Banning said.

  "That's up to you," McCoy said. "I hope both you and Feldt are around to help while we do this."

  "He's not going to like it," Banning said.

  "The idea itself, or the challenge to his authority?"

  "Either. Both."

  "Then you better talk to him." Banning nodded.

  "What do you want from me, McCoy?"

  "I want you to punch holes in the plan and then I want solutions to the problems you find." Banning nodded.

  "Ellen Feller's liable to pose problems," Banning said. "The way Dillon ran her off was stupid. He didn't have to tell her to butt out; he didn't have to get her ego involved. She'll be on the back channel to Pickering by morning. If she hasn't already radioed to tell him to tell us to let her in on this."

  "He won't," McCoy said. "He doesn't want her to get splattered if the shit hits the fan. "

  "Did you know that your sainted General Pickering was fucking her?"

  "No," McCoy admitted, visibly surprised. "You're sure'?" Banning nodded.

  "And Lieutenant Moore has enjoyed the privilege of her bed.

  "No kidding?"

  "Everybody, apparently, but you and me," Banning said, and smiled.

  "Everybody but you and Dillon," McCoy said. "But that was as of an hour ago."

  "You, too?" McCoy didn't respond to the question.

  "Dillon's quite a swordsman," he said admiringly. "Hart told me he had Veronica Wood in the sack in Washington. He saw them."

  "Veronica Wood?" Banning said. "Maybe there is more to Dillon than meets the eye." Their eyes met for a moment, long enough for them both to understand that they'd resolved the problem between them.

  "Speaking of women," McCoy said, "do you happen to know if our Lieutenant Howard had a girlfriend over here""

  "Yeah, as a matter of fact, he did. Does. Why?"

  "Well, he's like me. No family. His home address is care of USMC, Washington, D.C. We need some really personal details about this girlfriend."

  "What for?"

  "Radio code, before we go in. Where is this girl? Who is she?"

  "She's a Navy nurse, assigned to the 4th General Hospital in Melbourne."

  "I want to talk to her," McCoy said. "Right away."

  "She knows where he is, incidentally. And so does Steve Koffler's girl. She's in the RAN. I can have both of them here by tomorrow afternoon.

  I'll have to find a phone."

  "It'll wait until after I eat," McCoy said. "You're sure you don't want some of this?"

  "If you insist, Ken," Banning said, reaching for a french fry.

  "I'm glad we're back tòKen,"' McCoy said. "Let's keep it that way."

  Banning met his eyes and nodded.

  [Four]

  WATER LILY COTTAGE

  MANCHESTER AVENUE

  BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA

  1530 HOURS 30 SEPTEMBER 1942

  Lieutenant John Marston Moore was lying on the couch with his legs elevated on two pillows.

  "It says here," he said, lowering The Brisbane Dispatch and reaching for a bottle of beer on the coffee table, "that they made 488 cargo ships last year."

  "Who's `they'?" Lieutenant K. R. McCoy asked. He was sitting at a table with Lieutenant Hon Song Do, having just taught General MacArthur's favorite bridge partner the favorite game of Marine enlisted men, Acey-Deucy.

  "Us, for Christ's sake!" Moore said.

  "I wonder how many they sank?" McCoy asked innocently.

  "They' meaning the Japs and the Germans."

  "You mean despite the Air Raid Warning lady's best efforts?" Moore asked.

  McCoy laughed. When he saw the look of confusion on Hon's face, he said, "Private joke, Pluto. And you go easy on the suds, Moore."

  "Aye, aye, Sir," Moore said, raising the bottle to his lips.

  There was the sound of gravel crunching beneath tire wheels.

  A minute later the door opened and two Navy nurses walked into the room.

  They were followed by Major Jake Dillon.

  "Ladies, these gentlemen-using the word loosely-are Lieutenants Hon, McCoy, and Moore," Dillon said.

  "Banning told me one of them was Australian," McCoy said.

  "And these ladies, gentlemen," Dillon said, are Lieutenant Barbara Cotter and her friend Lieutenant Joanne Miller. They came together from Melbourne."

  "Whose stupid idea was that?" McCoy said unpleasantly.

  "There was only supposed to be Howard's girl."

  "Jesus, McCoy!" Moore said.

  "It was mine, Lieutenant," Barbara said. "I thought they were bringing me here to get some bad news, and I asked her to come wit
h me."

  "I don't see any problem, McCoy," Dillon said. They locked eyes for a moment, and then Dillon said, "I was able to tell Barbara that we heard from Joe Howard at eight this morning."

  "My name is Hon," Hon said, getting up from the table.

  "They call me Pluto."

  "Barbara," Lieutenant Cotter said.

  "Barbara, " McCoy said, still unpleasantly, "how much does the other one-"

  "Joanne," Lieutenant Miller furnished just as unpleasantly.

  "-know about your boyfriend?"

  "She knows he's off somewhere I can't tell her, doing something I can't tell her. I am not a fool, Lieutenant." McCoy looked at Joanne Miller.

  "Lieutenant... oh shit!"

  "Actually, it's Miller," Joanne said.

  "What the hell is your problem, McCoy?" Dillon asked.

  "They call it `military security,' Major," McCoy said. "Lieutenant, take this as an order. Everything you know about anything your friend has told you, anything you hear here, anything you might guess here, is TOP SECRET."

  "It may come as a big surprise to you, Lieutenant," Joanne Miller said, "but I had actually figured that out myself."

  "I didn't mean to jump on you," McCoy said.

  `Really?" Joanne Miller asked.

  "You come sit by me, Joanne," Moore said, "and I'll be nice to you." She looked at him and smiled. And then she walked to the couch and sat on the edge of it.

  "Jake didn't say what all this was about," Barbara said.

  "We need some details," Pluto said. "Personal details, that only you and Lieutenant Howard would know, about your personal relationship."

  "Why?" Barbara asked.

  "We need a new code," Pluto said. "We have to assume that the code Howard's using now has been broken by the Japanese."

  "I don't understand," Barbara said.

  "Does he have a private name for you? Or do you have one for him?"

  "You mean something likèBaby' or `Darling'?"

  "Yes, but not those words. They're too general. How about `Cutesy-poo'? `Precious Doll'? Something like that?"

  "Joe doesn't talk like that," Barbara said.

  "I'm surprised," Moore said. "I can think of a dozen unusual terms of endearment I would use if you were my girl."

  "That's the end of your beer," McCoy said. "If you can't handle the sauce, leave it alone!"