The Captains

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Mr. President,” the trial judge advocate said.

  “Just a minute,” the president of the court said. “I can’t permit you to make an unsupported statement like that, of that magnitude…”

  “Mr. President, Major Lowell is under oath,” Morefield said.

  “Major Lowell, you have made a charge against the entire disciplinary structure of the army,” the president said. “I am now going to ask you for the name of the officer who has taken the law into his own hands and ask you if he is available to this court. Is he in Korea?”

  “Sir,” Lowell said, “he’s in Korea. But I won’t give you his name.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I am unable to give you his name,” Lowell said.

  “Unable or unwilling?”

  “I respectfully decline to do so, sir,” Lowell said. “His action saved my life. I can hardly repay that by subjecting him to the same sort of difficulty Captain Parker is in.”

  “Sir,” the trial judge advocate said angrily, “I respectfully request that the witness be ordered and directed to reply to the question.”

  The president of the court looked at Lowell for a long time, and then up and down the table at the faces of the court.

  “The court,” he said finally, and with finality, “will not consider in its deliberations anything Major Lowell has said regarding his personal experience with a combat situation in which an officer allegedly shot another officer.”

  That did it, General Harrier decided. Parker will beat it. Parker and Lowell have come across as good commanders who had the balls to do something unpleasant that had to be done. The trial judge advocate looks to them like some noncombatant who is digging up something that should have been left buried.

  The general, he thought, is really going to be pissed.

  Screw him. Of all the officers under whom John Harrier had served in his military career, the general was the one who had given him the most difficulty in being a loyal subordinate. He was one of those who had managed to rise to high rank by delegating embarrassment and failure, and assuming responsibilities for other men’s successes.

  Once that thought had come forward in his mind, General Harrier grew really angry. Chickenshit sonofabitch hadn’t even had the balls to call Lowell in and eat his ass out. “Get him out of the Corps, John,” he said. “Quietly. And since he’s yours, you reply to the Chief of Staff.”

  He was going to sacrifice that kid’s career over a couple of photographs in a goddamned magazine.

  (Three)

  A victory party was held in Major Lowell’s tent on Colonel’s Row. Lieutenant Bennington T. Morefield finally took enough of the Haig and Haig Pinch to say what was on his mind.

  “I hope that the two of you realize you’re both through in the army,” he said. “Unless you want to pass the time until you’re retired in one idiot job after another.”

  “You think it’s that bad?” Parker asked, surprised.

  “May I speak freely?” Morefield said, with infinite sarcasm, and then went on immediately. “So far as you’re concerned, Captain, you have ceased being a safe and responsible token nigger. From this day forward, you’re going to be the nigger captain who beat a general court for murder with a smart-ass civilian lawyer.”

  “I’ve never thought I was anything but a nigger captain,” Parker said. “I can live with that. My father spent thirty years as a nigger officer. I have no illusions.”

  “Oh yes you do, you dumb shit,” Morefield said. “You think that by trying just a little harder than anybody else, you can make it. You think that since your father did that and got to be a colonel, you can do it, and because ‘times have changed’ you can probably even make general.”

  “I was found innocent, wasn’t I?”

  “You were acquitted. There’s a difference. Lowell and I got you off. That’s not being found innocent. No one thinks you didn’t blow those people away. You won’t ever be given another command, and neither will Lowell.”

  “You don’t seem to understand,” Parker said. “We have both proved ourselves as company commanders.”

  “You proved nothing,” Morefield said. “Can’t you see that? The fact that I managed to convince those guys that you should not be locked up for doing something they could see themselves doing, doesn’t mean that they’re patting you on the back. They felt sorry for you, that’s all. And when the time comes to pick somebody to command a battalion, they’re going to pick anybody but the nigger who blew the people away when he had a company, and almost got locked up for it. Can’t you see that?”

  Neither Phil Parker nor Craig Lowell replied. Morefield went on.

  “And you, Major, do you really think the army is going to give a command to an officer who stood up in a general court-martial and announced that he can find nothing wrong with shooting people who get in his way?”

  And still there was no reply.

  “I’m not getting through to either one of you, am I?” Lieutenant Bennington T. Morefield said. “OK, fuck it. Forget I said anything.”

  “I don’t think we got through to you, Morefield,” Parker said.

  “Try again,” Morefield said, sarcastically.

  “I’m not sure if I can,” Parker said. “It sounds so simple that it’s hard to comprehend. We’re soldiers, the Duke and I. Soldiers. What do we do for a living is lead people in combat. We do it well. And leading people in combat is what the army is all about.”

  “Get it through your head that what you might be able to do isn’t going to count,” Morefield said. “They’re not going to give you the chance.”

  “I happen to have a little more faith in the army than that,” Parker said.

  Morefield didn’t reply. He just swung his head back and forth. There was nothing more he could say. And then he thought of something to say.

  “Look at it this way,” he said. “You’re a danger to the army, the both of you, exactly as the guys who got in your way were a danger to the army. The difference is that they’re not going to have to shoot you to get rid of you. They’re going to stick you away in some bullshit job, and do it with pleasure. But they’re going to keep you from posing any further danger to the army. You better believe that.”

  Goddamn him, Craig Lowell thought. He’s right. He sees the army much clearer than Phil does. The sad thing is that I see it, now, like he does. It’s time for me to go home and grow up.

  He realized sadly that that was really the last thing in the world he wanted to do, even if Georgia Paige was waiting for him in Los Angeles.

  XV

  (One)

  The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea

  0205 Hours

  16 November 1951

  The junk lay dead in the water, a mile offshore a deserted stretch of the North Korean coast. Despite a weather report to the contrary, the night was cloudless, and the light from a half-moon was far brighter than expected.

  Captain S. T. Felter, dressed in a black rubber wet suit, watched silently as two eight-man aviation life rafts were inflated. Their yellow color had been designed to provide the greatest visibility under all conditions of light, and their designers and manufacturers had done their job well. All attempts to paint over the yellow had failed; the paint either immediately flaked off, or, in the case of one initially promising experiment, promptly ate through the rubberized fabric.

  Shrouds had been sewn by female members of the Korean Army, sort of slipcovers made of black cotton. They were draped over the curved sides of the rafts and laced in place with the grommets and rope designed to permit downed aviators to climb aboard.

  Once the rafts had been inflated, and the shrouds laced in place, the rafts were carefully lowered over the side of the junk. Two Korean Marines slid down ropes and climbed into the rafts. Next, strapped to a four-foot square of plywood to provide stability, two three-quarter-ton-truck batteries were lowered by rope, and the plywood carefully put in position so that the flexing of the inflated boat wo
uld not chafe through the rubberized canvas.

  Finally, the electric motors, which operated almost silently, were lowered from the junk and fixed in place on the bouncing rafts. A third Korean Marine in a wet suit, his face blackened with what was actually lipstick, manufactured with a black rather than red pigment, slid down the rope into one of the converted life rafts.

  “You better put some more of that crap around your mouth,” Rudolph G. MacMillan said to Captain Sanford T. Felter, who was known as “the Mouse,” though only behind his back. “You look like Al Jolson.”

  The Mouse vigorously spread the black lipstick around his mouth with his fingers.

  “Better?”

  “Yeah,” Macmillan said.

  The Mouse stepped to the rail of the boat and carefully lowered two walkie-talkies into the rafts, and then the weapons—two fully automatic carbines, their stocks cut off at the pistol grip, a Thompson .45 caliber submachine gun, without the butt stock, and a Winchester Model 1897 trench gun. Each item was wrapped in heavy plastic.

  Felter turned and looked at MacMillan. Then he shrugged. There really wasn’t anything to say. He grabbed the rope and slid down it into one of the rafts. Over the sound of the water lapping at the junk’s hull came the sound of a click; then, faintly, the hum of an electric motor. Water churned under the end of the rafts.

  By the time they passed around the bow of the junk, the four men in them were lying flat on their stomachs, so that nothing above the sides of the rafts could be seen.

  MacMillan walked to the high stern of the junk and followed the boats as long as he could through night glasses. He could see them far longer than he wanted to. He was half sure he could see the phosphorescence of the waves breaking on shore. He had a gut feeling that something was going to go wrong.

  He stepped into the cabin, closed the door, and lit a cigarette. He took two puffs, nervously, and then crushed it out and went back outside. He looked through the night glasses again, and wondered if he could really still make out the two rafts, or whether it was simply his imagination.

  Fifty yards offshore, just as they could detect the action of the breaking waves, there was another click, and the hum of the electric motors stopped. Two of the Korean Marines, chosen for their height, quietly slipped into the water, trying to find the bottom with their feet. One of them raised his arm straight above his head and pushed himself to the bottom. Only his hand remained above the water.

  Felter slipped into the water and whispered in Korean, “A little further in should do it.”

  They pushed the rubber rafts another ten yards toward shore. The Korean Marine could now stand on the bottom, his head out of the water. Felter was still in over his head. He swam a few strokes, tried it again, and then swam another few strokes. He could now make his way to the beach, walking in the trough of the waves, letting the crests lift him off his feet. He looked over his shoulder. The Korean Marine who was to accompany him was to his left, a few feet behind him.

  As they came closer to the beach, he bent his legs further and further, so that only his head was out of the water. Toward the end, he was nearly in a squatting position.

  He took a look up the beach, and down it, and then signaled to the Korean Marine. He came smoothly, but not quickly, out of the water, and then, without taking his foot completely out of the water, so there would be no splashing sound to be heard above the crash of the waves, walked out of the water and onto the beach. He ran across the sand into a small valley between dunes. There was only about fifteen feet of hard-packed sand, and then the dunes. The dunes were more rock than sand, the granite mountains of Korea meeting the Sea of Japan.

  He took up a position behind a rock and unwrapped the Winchester trench gun. He pulled the exposed hammer back with his thumb. There was already a round in the chamber, and silence was important. He heard the click-clack as the Korean Marine opened the action of the carbine, just far enough to check to make sure there was a round in his chamber.

  He pulled up the elastic cuff of his wet suit sleeve and stole a quick look at the luminous face of his watch. They were fifteen minutes early. As much as it terrified him to spend so much time ashore early, he had learned that unless he was at the rendezvous point when the agent to be picked up arrived, the pickups had a habit of taking off to try again another day.

  It was better to be early. The risk to the whole operation was less that way. This operation was important. They were bringing out a Red Chinese colonel who was chief of staff to a Red Chinese lieutenant general. The Red Chinese lieutenant general, who had been educated at Southern Methodist, had come to the painful decision that Mao Tse-tung was not China’s savior, and that his Stalinist policy of exterminating the middle class was as wrong, as sinful, as impractical, as Stalin’s had been.

  It was believed the lieutenant general would be useful.

  He heard the sound of a jeep engine.

  A jeep?

  He crawled around the rock, far enough out onto the narrow strip of sand to look both ways.

  A jeep’s blackout lights were coming down the beach.

  The Mouse crawled backward behind the rock.

  With the light from that damned moon, he realized, they had decided they could patrol the beach by vehicle using blackout lights only, without running the risk of being seen from offshore and fired upon.

  And, Felter realized, there was enough light for them to see that the smooth sands had been disturbed, if not the actual footprints.

  The jeep was close enough now so that he was aware of the peculiar whining noise of the transmission in four-wheel drive.

  Then they saw where the sand had been disturbed. The jeep stopped. The brakes squealed; the jeep needed a brake job.

  “In there,” a Korean voice said.

  “I will call the lieutenant,” another voice said.

  Shit, a radio.

  “Now!” Felter said, in a whisper.

  He and the Korean Marine fired almost at once. The blast from the muzzle of the short-barreled riot gun was painfully yellow. Felter fired twice, to make sure. One of the Koreans screamed, a painful wail. Felter fired a third time, and the scream stopped abruptly.

  The Mouse stepped toward the jeep, to make sure everyone was dead. He was falling. He had no control over his left leg. He fell against the rear of the jeep, then fell to the ground. His shotgun fell onto the sand, and he thought, now I’ll be up all night cleaning the damn thing.

  All of a sudden, he was aware that his leg was asleep. He put his hand down the leg. His fingers felt something wet and warm. He put his fingers in front of his face. It was blood.

  The Korean Marine bent over him.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he asked.

  “I’ve been shot,” Felter said.

  If he had been shot, then he had been shot by the Korean Marine. A stockless carbine, fired full automatic, had a life of its own.

  “Are we going to go?” the Korean Marine asked. It was really a question. It was not a request.

  “If the pickup was anywhere around here,” Felter said, “he heard that shooting. He won’t be coming.”

  The Korean Marine nodded.

  Felter pulled himself to his feet by clinging to the jeep. His face passed the left rear bumper. 1CAV. Half the vehicles in the North Korean Army had been captured from the 1st Cavalry. They called them the “Chinese Quartermaster.” Goddamn the 1st Cavalry, Felter swore mentally. Erect now, he took a step toward the water. And then another, and then he crashed heavily onto the sand.

  There was a shocking pain in his knee now, and he screamed in pain. The Korean Marine came back to him. There was a question on his face. The orders were clear. The wounded were to be shot, rather than have them fall into North Korean hands. Torture cannot force answers from dead men.

  “Help me into the water,” Felter said. “Maybe I can swim.”

  He was a little ashamed of himself. He had issued the eliminate-the-wounded order. Now that it applied to him, he was
unwilling to live up to it.

  The Korean Marine straddled him, grabbed him under the armpits, and ran awkwardly with him to the water’s edge. Felter scurried into the shallow water like a crab, until he was deep enough to feel the water start to buoy him up.

  He remembered he had left MacMillan’s shotgun on the beach.

  Without thinking, he kicked both his legs. He screamed and got a mouthful of water and choked. He got into a somewhat erect position, his head out of the water, and threw up. And then he pushed himself back into the water, out toward the rafts. He bit his lip to keep from screaming again. The undulation of the water moved his knee—he knew now that he had taken a carbine bullet in the knee—so that the broken bones grated against one another.

  He saw, momentarily, the Korean Marine swimming strongly away from him. He isn’t supposed to do that, Felter thought, angrily. He is supposed to kill me before he leaves me.

  He felt nauseous, and wanted desperately to throw up, but forced the urge down by sheer power of will. He swam using his arms only, trying at the same time to press his legs together in the hope that that would keep the wounded knee from flexing.

  At least he could get into deep water, so that when he passed out, he would drown.

  The damned trouble was that when he was reported missing, Sharon would keep hoping. If that damned Korean Marine had done what he was supposed to have done, then she would know.

  The pain, as incredible as it was, was getting worse. He screamed and water filled his mouth, and he felt himself losing consciousness. And then something jerked his head, grabbed him by the hair. He wondered if it was a shark. There were sharks in these waters, and sharks were attracted by blood, and when you were bitten by a shark, you weren’t supposed to feel it.

  Something pulled at his knee. It must be a shark, he thought. They take successive bites at people. He wondered how long it would take him to die.

  He felt himself slowly, but inexorably, losing consciousness.

  He was throwing up. He was throwing up everything he had ever eaten. That meant he wasn’t dead. He smelled the peculiar smell of the rubber of a raft. He was in a raft, his face pressed against the curved sides, his face smeared with his vomitus.