W E B Griffin - Corp 05 - Line of Fire

by Line Of Fire(Lit)

  The bartender, who was familiar with Ernest Sage's drinking habits, slid him a Manhattan with an extra shake of Angostura bitters.

  Ernie Sage-properly Ernestine Sage-was Ernest Sage's only child, and Ernest Sage loved her very much. At the same time he was aware of the facts of growth and maturity. And so he had pondered the inevitability of her one day transferring her affections to a young man.

  Though he'd dwelt at length on every possible Worst Case, he'd never dreamed that the reality would be as bad as it turned out. It was not that he didn't like Ken McCoy. Ken McCoy was beyond question a really fine young man.

  Ernest Sage would have been happier, of course, if there had been some family in McCoy's background-some money, frankly-and if he had a little better education than Norristown, Pennsylvania's, high school offered. But such things weren't insurmountable, in his view. In fact, under other circumstances, he could have resigned himself to Ken McCoy.

  Ernie could have done a hell of a lot worse.

  But the circumstances were that the war was not even a year old, that he saw no end to it, that Ken McCoy was already wearing three Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for valor in combat, and that his nickname in the Marines was "Killer." Purple Hearts and Bronze Stars and nicknames weren't in themselves hugely significant. But in Ernest Sage's mind, they added up to a significant conclusion: The chances of Ken coming through the war alive and intact ranged from slim to none.

  In Worst Possible Case Number Sixty-six, for instance, Ken came home missing a leg, or blind. And Ernie was condemned to a life of caring for a cripple.

  If that makes me a heartless prick, so what? I'm worried about the life my daughter will have. What's wrong with that?

  The funny thing was that Ken McCoy not only understood Sage's concerns but agreed with them. And yet Sage almost had a harder time dealing with that than if Ken had run off with her to a justice of the peace the day after he met her.

  "I'm not going to marry her, Mr. Sage," Ken had told him.

  Not while the war is on. I don't want to leave her a widow." It was another reason he genuinely liked Ken McCoy.

  The real problem, in fact, wasn't McCoy, it was Ernie. She had reduced the situation to basics. She was a woman in love.

  What women in love do is stick to their man and have babies.

  She didn't even much give a damn whether she was married to Ken or not-she wanted his baby.

  "Look, Daddy," she had told him over lunch in the Executive Dining Room of the American Personal Pharmaceuticals Building. "If Ken does get killed, I would at least have our baby.... And it's not as if the baby and I would wind up on charity." Ernest Sage had clear and definite ideas about moral values and a good moral upbringing. He had, for example, taught Sunday School classes for six goddamned years in order to set a proper example for his daughter. So it wasn't at all easy for him to go to her lover to discuss her intention to become pregnant by him. But Ernest Sage did that. He had to.

  And again Ken McCoy surprised him... and made him uneasy-not because Ken was going to do his daughter wrong (he wasn't), but because he kept acting just exactly the way Ernest Sage himself would have acted if he had been in the boy's shoes.

  "Yeah, I know she wants a kid," Ken said. "But no way.

  That'd be a rotten thing to do to her."

  That was why Ernest Sage couldn't help liking and admiring Ken McCoy. Ken was very much like himself-a decent man with enough intelligence to see things the way they were, not through rose-colored glasses.

  Goddamn this war, anyway!

  "Miss Sage is here, Mr. Sage," one of the headwaiters said softly in his ear. "Your regular table be all right, Sir?" Women were not welcome at the bar. Since they weren't actually prohibited, however, Ernie felt free to sit there, to hell with what people think. But whenever he could, her father tried to make her sit at a table.

  "Yeah, fine," Sage said, looking toward the entrance for his daughter.

  She was tall and healthy looking, slender but not

  thin; her black hair was cut in a pageboy. She wore a simple skirt and blouse, with a strand of pearls that had belonged to her maternal grandmother.

  He waved. She returned it, but there was a look of annoyance on her face when she saw the headwaiter rushing to show her to a table.

  He noticed, too, that male eyes throughout the room followed her.

  She stood by the table until they joined her.

  "Hi, baby," Ken McCoy said.

  "Is that the best you can do?" Ernie Sage asked.

  "What?"

  She grabbed his neatly tied necktie, pulled him to her, and kissed him on the mouth.

  "Jesus Christ," he said, actually blushing when he finally got free..

  "Hi, Daddy," Ernie said, smiling at him and sitting down.

  When she smiled at him, he could not be angry with her.

  "What may I get you, Miss Sage?" a waiter asked.

  "What's good enough for The Marine Corps is good enough for me."

  "Bring us all one," Ernest Sage said.

  "Thank you for asking how my day was," Ernie said. "My day was fine. I was told my copy for Toothhold was "really sexy." I wonder what that man does behind his bedroom door if he thinks adhesive for false teeth is sexy?"

  "My God, kitten!" Ernest Sage said.

  Ken McCoy laughed. "Don't knock it until you try it."

  "OK, darling, I'll bring some home. There's a case of it on my filing cabinet." Ernie McCoy was a senior copywriter at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. Ernest Sage took a great deal of pride in knowing that she had the job on her own merits and not because American Personal Pharmaceuticals billed an annual $12.1 million at JWT.

  "I learned something interesting today," Ernest Sage said, which I saved until we could all be together."

  "What's that?" Ernie asked.

  "There was a story in the Times that Fleming Pickering has gone into The Marines. As a general."

  "I thought he was a captain in the Navy," Ernie said, looking at McCoy for an explanation.

  "I know," McCoy said. "He called me today."

  "I'll be goddamned, Ernest Sage thought. He didn't call me. I haven't heard from the sonofabitch since the war started, and we have been friends since before our kids were born. And if he called Ken McCoy, that means he called him at Ernie's apartment, which means he knows they're living together. Well, why the hell should that surprise me? Flem arranged for that boat they were shacked up in at the San Diego Yacht Club. Goddamn him for that, too.

  It had been a longtime, pleasant, and not entirely unreasonable fantasy on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Sage and Captain and Mrs. Fleming Pickering (the ladies had been roommates at college) that one day Ernestine Sage and Malcolm S. Pickering would find themselves impaled on Cupid's arrow, marry, and make them all happy grandparents.

  Instead, Pick Pickering joined the Marines, made a buddy out of Ken McCoy when they were in Officer Candidate School, and took him to New York on a short leave. Pick moved into one of the suites in the Foster Park and passed word around New York that he was in town and having a nonstop party over the weekend. Ernie Sage went to the party and bumped into Ken McCoy. End of longtime, pleasant, and not entirely unreasonable fantasy. Start of unending nightmare. As soon as Ernie saw Ken, she knew he was the man in her life. With that as a given, there was absolutely no reason not to go to bed with him four hours after they met.

  "I waited, Daddy," Ernie said. "Until I was sure. I'm sure.

  If it wasn't for my goddamned father, Ernest Sage often thought, I could at least threaten to cut her off without a dime.

  When Ernie was four, Grandfather Sage set up a trust fund for the adorable little tyke, funding it with 5 percent of his shares (giving her 2.5 percent of the total) of American Personal Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Control of this trust was to be passed to her on her graduation from college, her marriage, or on attaining her twenty-fifth year, whichever occurred first.

  Ernie had graduated Summa Cum Laude f
rom college at twenty.

  "Oh?" Ernest Sage asked.

  "What did he want?"

  "Well... I'm sorry about this. It's orders. I can't go to Bernardsville with you this weekend."

  "Why not?"

  "I've got to go to Philadelphia and then to Parris Island."

  "You're on leave, hospital recuperative leave," Ernie said angrily.

  "You're supposed to have thirty days!"

  "Come on, baby, I was only dinged," McCoy said.

  Yeah, Ernest Sage thought, and if whatever it was that dinged you in the forehead had dinged you an inch deeper, you'd be dead They don't hand out Purple Hearts for dings.

  "What are you going to do in Philadelphia?" Ernie asked.

  She doesn't argue with him. She'll argue with her mother and me till the cows come home. He tells her something and that's it.

  "A guy's in the hospital there I have to see," McCoy began, then interrupted himself. "You know him, baby, as a matter of fact. Remember that kid who we put up on the boat? Moore?

  On his way to Australia?"

  "Yes," Ernie said, remembering. "What's he doing in Philadelphia? In the hospital in Philadelphia?"

  "He got hurt on Guadalcanal," McCoy said.

  "Oh, God!" Ernie said. "Was he badly hurt?"

  "Bad enough to get sent home."

  "I thought he was going to Australia!" Ernie said, making it an accusation.

  "Until this morning I thought he was in Australia," McCoy said.

  "Why are they sending you to see him?"

  "They're going to commission him," McCoy said. "Pickering was going there to swear him in, but it turns out he has an infection and they won't let him travel."

  "An infection?" Ernest Sage asked.

  McCoy nodded. "He says it's not serious, but-"

  "Patricia told your mother," Sage said to Ernie, "that Flem just walked out of the hospital in California. Before he was discharged, I mean. He's a damned fool."

  "Daddy!"

  "Well, he is," Sage insisted, and then thought of something else. "What do you have to do with him, Ken?"

  "He's now my boss," Ken said.

  "I still don't understand why you have to go to Philadelphia," Ernie said.

  "I told you. Moore's getting commissioned. I'm going to swear him in, take care of the paperwork."

  "I want to go," Ernie said.

  McCoy considered that a moment.

  "If he's in the hospital, I want to see him," Ernie went on.

  "From Philadelphia, I'm going to Parris Island," McCoy said.

  "For how long?"

  "Couple of days. I'm driving."

  "Any reason I can't go?"

  "Yes, there is."

  "Well, I can at least go to Philadelphia."

  "All I'm going to do is swear him in, handle the paperwork, and then head for Parris Island."

  "Today's Friday. Tomorrow's Saturday. We could have all day in Philadelphia, and then you could drive to Parris Island on Sunday," Ernie said reasonably.

  He shrugged, giving in.

  "Your mother will be disappointed," Ernest Sage said. "And where would you stay in Philadelphia?"

  "I don't know. The Warwick, the Bellvue-Stratford..

  "You're not married, you can't stay in a hotel together," Ernest Sage blurted.

  "Talk to Ken about us not being married," Ernie said. "I'm not the one being difficult on that subject."

  "Jesus, baby! We've been over that already!"

  "What we're going to do, Daddy, is spend the night in Bernardsville and drive to Philadelphia in the morning. Why don't you call Mother and ask her to meet us somewhere for dinner?

  The Brook, maybe, or Baltusrol?" There is absolutely nothing I can do but smile and agree, Ernest Sage decided. If I raise any further objections, she won't go to Bernardsville at all.

  "Baltusrol," he said. "They do a very nice English grill on Friday nights."

  He raised his hand, caught the headwaiter's attention, and put his balled fist to his ear, miming his need for a telephone.

  As he waited for the telephone, he had a pleasant thought: What did he say? That Fleming Pickering is now his boss? Jesus, maybe they'll give him a desk job. But an unpleasant thought immediately replaced it: Bullshit! Flem Pickering was supposed to be working for the Secretary of the Navy, which any reasonable person would think meant shuffling paper in Washington, and the next thing we hear is that he got all shot up and earned the Silver Star, taking command of some goddamn destroyer when the captain was killed.

  He looked at his daughter. She was feeding Ken McCoy a bacon-wrapped oyster. If he'd been an angel, her look couldn't have been more transfixed.

  All I want for you, kitten, is your happiness.

  "Elaine," he said a minute later to the telephone, "we're in Jack and Charley's, and what Ernie wants us to do is have supper at Baltusrol.

  "Yes, I know you've made plans for the weekend, but something has come up.

  "Elaine, for Christ's sake, just get in the goddamn car and go to Baltusrol. We'll see you there in an hour."

  "You want an oyster, Daddy?" `Yes, thank you, kitten."

  Chapter Six

  [One]

  HENDERSON FIELD

  GUADALCANAL, SOLOMON ISLANDS

  1545 HOURS 5 SEPTEMBER 1942

  Both Gunnery Sergeant Ernest W. Zimmerman and Sergeant Thomas McCoy were considerably relieved when the R4D made contact again with the earth's surface. It was Gunny Zimmerman's third and Sergeant McCoy's second flight in a heavier-than-air vehicle. Though these previous experiences had a happy outcome (they survived them), that success did not relieve their current anxieties. In fact, if they'd had a say in the matter, both would have traveled by ship from Hawaii to wherever The Corps was sending them.

  They were not given a choice. Their orders directed them to proceed by the most expeditious means, including air; and a AAA priority had been authorized.

  They flew from Pearl Harbor to Espiritu Santo aboard a Martin PBM-3R Mariner, the unarmed transport version of the amphibious, twin-engine patrol bomber. Flight in the Mariner was bad enough, both of them privately considered during long flight from Pearl, but if something went wrong with an amphibian like that-should the engines stop, for example-at least it could land on the water and float around until somebody came to help them.

  The flight from Espiritu Santo in the R4D was something else. It was a land plane. If they went down in the ocean it would sink, very likely before they could inflate the rubber rafts crated near the rear door.

  During the flight they were warm, though not uncomfortably so. But by the time the R4D completed its landing roll and taxied to the parking ramp, they were covered with sweat, and wet patches were under their arms and down the backs of their utility jackets.

  The crew chief came down the fuselage past the crates of supplies lashed to the floor and the bags of mail scattered around, and pushed open the door.

  By the time Zimmerman and McCoy stood up, a truck was backed up to the door. That meant they had to climb onto the bed of the truck before they could get to the ground. The Marine labor detail on the truck bed unloading the cargo were mostly bare-chested, wearing only utility trousers and boondockers. They were tanned and sweaty.

  The sergeant in charge of the detail told Zimmerman where he could find the office of MAG-21. They put their seabags onto their shoulders and started to walk across the field.

  The office turned out to be two connected eight-man squad tents, with their sides rolled up. The tents were surrounded by a wall of sandbags.

  A corporal sat on a folding chair at a folding desk, pecking away with two fingers on a Royal portable typewriter. When Zimmerman walked into the tent, he saw another kid, bare chested, asleep on a cot.

  "Can I help you, Gunny?" the corporal asked.

  `Reporting in," Zimmerman said, and handed over their orders. The corporal read the orders and then looked at Zimmerman.

  "Sergeant Oblensky around?" Zimmerman asked.
>
  The corporal ignored him.

  "Lieutenant?" the corporal called.

  The blond-headed kid on the cot raised himself on his elbows, shook his head, and then looked around the tent, finally sing his eyes on Zimmerman.

  "Do something for you, Gunny?" he asked.

  Jesus, he's an officer. He don't look old enough to have hair on his balls.