W E B Griffin - Corp 05 - Line of Fire

by Line Of Fire(Lit)

  "Yes, Ma'am," McCoy said. "We're sorry." He turned off the lights. The Civil Defense lady left the room to return to her appointed rounds. McCoy closed the door, locked it, and then turned the lights on again.

  "You're really the life of the party, aren't you?" McCoy said to Moore, misquoting Where do you think the light went when it escaped? "The one thing we don't need is to get hauled off to the local police station."

  "Yes, Sir," Moore said, sounding not at all remorseful.

  "Sorry, Lieutenant, Sir."

  "Are there really German submarines out there?" Ernie asked.

  "Probably," McCoy replied. "They try to sink the oil tankers coming out of the Texas Gulf ports and whatever sails from,, New Orleans. But I don't think they're in this close to shore, There's just too many airfields along here. There was a story going around that they caught half a dozen Germans near the mouth of Mobile Bay. They were supposedly landed from a sub."

  "Isn't that interesting?" Moore said.

  McCoy flashed a cold look at him and Ernie saw it. Without a good deal of effort, she had already concluded that whatever Ken and the other two were doing down here had something to do with beaches.

  When they were on the beach this afternoon, Moore and Hart had a steel cone and a square block of lead. They went up and down the beach, pounding the cone into the sand. And then at the Officer's Club Steak Broil-the club was right on the beach-Ken left the party for a "walk on the beach" with Lieutenant Mainwaring, the Marine officer who picked them up at the train station in Tallahassee and drove them here, and the Army Air Corps guy who gave Beth the T-shirt. They took the cone and lead block with them. They were gone forty-five minutes.

  It does not take a wild imagination, Ernie Sage thought, to put that cone, whatever the hell it's for, together with Johnny's dry crack after Ken's story about Germans caught coming from a submarine, and come up with a studied guess that what they're about to do involves a submarine and a beach. And not a beach in Florida, either.

  Oh, God!

  `Mademoiselle, " Johnny Moore interrupted her chain thought by handing her his empty bottle of beer, "if you would be so kind?"

  "Avec grand plaisir, mon cher, " Ernie said, and went to the beer buckets and got him one.

  "What did they do to the Germans?" Beth asked. "The ones they caught from the submarine?"

  "I don't know," McCoy said. "I didn't see the file, just heard the scuttlebutt. If they were in uniform, they were just put in POW cage. If they were in civilian clothing, that makes them spies. Then they could be shot. Or maybe hung."

  "What would the Japanese do if they caught Americans?" Ernie asked.

  "How did we get onto this subject?" McCoy said.

  That means, Ernie decided, that the Japanese would do nothing quite as civilized as shooting someone they caught trying to land somewhere from a submarine-these three, for example.

  There was a knock at the door. Not nearly as imperious as the previous knock. This one, in fact, was somehow furtive.

  "Do you think the guardian of the beach has summoned the local vice cops?" Moore asked.

  "I hope not," McCoy said as he turned the lights off, unlocked the door, and opened it.

  When the lights came back on, Lieutenant Mainwaring and Captain Al Stein, the Army Air Corps officer-now that she saw him, Ernie remembered his name-and two Air Corps enlisted men were entering the small room. They had two wooden crates with them, rolling them on what Ernie thought of as a furniture man's dolly.

  "Room service," Stein said.

  "Why did you bring them here?" McCoy asked.

  Ernie tried to read what was stenciled on the crates. Whatever had been stenciled there had been obliterated, and very recently, for the paint was still wet.

  "Because I don't have the faith everybody else seems to have in this colonel of yours to fix this."

  "Everything will be all right, Al," Mainwaring said.

  "He said as Stein was led off in irons, destination Leavenworth U.S. Army prison."

  "Help yourself to a beer," McCoy said to the Air Corps sergeants. "Or there's booze if you'd rather."

  "I think maybe we'd better get the truck back," the older of the two Air Corps sergeants said.

  "Have a beer," Stein ordered.

  "OK, Captain, thank you."

  "Have all the beer you want," McCoy said. "We really appreciate this."

  "Ah, what the hell, Lieutenant," the sergeant said.

  "I am sure, Captain Stein," Moore said, propping himself up against the headboard, "that an officer of your demonstrated logistical genius is aware that these crates won't fit in that Chevrolet staff car?" Stein looked at Moore and laughed.

  "I'm surprised that you're still able to talk."

  "Hell, he's been quoting the Bible to us," McCoy said. "An amazing man is our Lieutenant Moore."

  "We'll bring the truck back at oh six hundred, Lieutenant," the Air Corps sergeant said. "That'll give us just over an hour to make it to Pensacola. Plenty of time. We just didn't want to try to get these crates through the gate at the field in the morning."

  "You have three seats on the seven A.,M. courier flight and authorization for six hundred pounds of accompanied baggage," Lieutenant Mainwaring said.

  "That's what these weigh?"

  "Pray they don't weigh them," Stein said.

  "What about the extra cone sets?"

  "I've got those in the car," Mainwaring said. "All I could get you was three."

  "Plus the one we have?" McCoy asked.

  "Including the one you have," Stein said.

  "Beggars can't be choosers," McCoy said. "Thank you."

  "I won't see you in the morning, McCoy," Stein said. "So I'll say this now. In no more than seventy-two hours-probably within forty-eight-somebody's going to miss this stuff. I would deeply appreciate it if you will do whatever you can to keep Mrs. Stein's little boy from ending his Air Corps career making little rocks out of big ones at Leavenworth."

  "Did you talk to the Colonel, Mainwaring?" McCoy asked.

  Mainwaring nodded.

  "There's supposed to be TWX on the way down here."

  "That ought to do it, Stein," McCoy said. "But I'll check on it myself as soon as we get to Washington."

  "Good enough," Captain Stein said. He looked at his two sergeants. "Take enough of those bottles to sustain you throughout the journey, gentlemen, and then let us be on our way. "Thanks, Stein," McCoy said. "We owe you one."

  "You owe me a good deal more than one," Stein said, putting out his hand. "Good luck, McCoy. Be careful. You two, too," he said, waving at Hart and Moore.

  "May the peace of God which passeth all understanding," Moore proclaimed from the bed, "go with you and yours."

  "Oh, shit!" Stein said, laughing, and snapped off the lights.

  Just before the door slammed shut after them, Stein called out, "Mazeltov, you all!"

  "Why do you think Moore got so drunk?" Ernie asked as she made a halfhearted attempt to clean up the room when the others had gone.

  "I think he was in pain," McCoy said.

  "What kind of pain?"

  "I think it started when he went in the water and got saltwater in his wounds," McCoy answered matter-of-factly.

  "And then I think he hurt his legs, either in the water, or maybe walking in the sand."

  "So why didn't you do something about it?"

  "Getting drunk worked as good as anything from the dispensary," McCoy said. "And if we had taken him there, they probably would have wanted to keep him."

  "That's pretty damned callous!"

  "He's a big boy, baby. He wanted to come down here."

  "And he wants to do whatever it is you're about to do, right?"

  "Right."

  "And you're not going to tell me what that is, right?"

  "Right."

  "How about how Beth and me are supposed to get back to Washington?"

  "The way Mainwaring was looking at you, I thought maybe you'd want to stay."
r />   "Go to hell!"

  "After Mainwaring drops us at Pensacola-I'm not sure we can get you on the base without a lot of hassle; you may have to wait outside the gate-he'll take you to Mobile. That's another forty miles or so. You catch a train there to Montgomery and connect with the Crescent from New Orleans to Washington."

  "And by the time I get to Washington, are you still going to be there?"

  "Baby, I don't know."

  "In other words, I may not see you after tomorrow morning?" He didn't reply.

  "For how long?"

  He shrugged.

  "And if I hadn't asked, you were just going to get on that goddamned airplane tomorrow without even saying goodbye?"

  "Saying goodbye to you is hard for me, baby."

  "How about saying, `I love you, Ernie'? Is that hard for you, Ken?"

  "I love you, Ernie," McCoy said.

  "If you love me, you sonofabitch, why won't you marry me?" she said. But she didn't expect a reply or wait for one. She walked quickly to him and waited for him to put his arms around her. When he did, she told him she loved him, too.

  Two rooms down, Beth Lathrop also asked what was going to happen to her and to Ernie the next day. When she asked it, she was standing in the door to the bathroom, wrapped in a towel.

  "Mainwaring is going to take both of you to Mobile to catch a train."

  "Do you think she means it when she says she can get me assignments as a photographer?"

  "I'm sure she does." She doesn't know you're a whore. Maybe if she knew that, she wouldn't.

  "You don't think she's just saying that?"

  "You better be able to produce, Beth."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It better not be bullshit, you being a photographer."

  "You bastard! Is that what you think?"

  "All I'm saying is that if you're not a photographer, now is the time to say so. Don't make a fool of her. She's a nice girl."

  "You think I've been lying all the time, don't you?"

  "I don't know what the hell to think."

  "That's not all. Say what you're thinking!"

  "She knows Pick. He knows you. What is he going to tell her about you?"

  "I didn't think about that," Beth said. "Oh, Jesus!"

  "Shit," George said, and went to the dresser and opened the bottle of beer he'd brought from McCoy's and Ernie's room.

  "OK," Beth said, "so what I'll do is tell her thanks but no thanks."

  "No," Hart said. "No, you won't. If she says she can get you a job, you'll take it."

  "What about Pick?"

  "She won't be seeing him anytime soon," Hart said. "Maybe ever. "

  "My God, what a rotten thing to even think!"

  "And anyway, what he tells her about you has nothing to do with you and me."

  "Meaning what?"

  "Meaning I don't give a good goddamn what anyone knows, or thinks." That's true, goddamn it, he thought. I don't even give a good goddamn what my father would say if he found out.

  "You say that but you don't mean it," Beth said.

  "Goddamn it, I mean it."

  "I mean it, George, when I say I love you," Beth said.

  "Yeah, me, too," George said.

  "I'll do whatever you tell me to do," Beth said.

  "Whatever I tell you?"

  "Whatever you tell me, honey."

  "Take off the damned towel."

  [Four]

  WALTER REED ARMY GENERAL HOSPITAL

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  1005 HOURS 25 SEPTEMBER 1942

  Colonel F. L. Rickabee was in uniform when he knocked on Brigadier General Fleming Pickering's hospital room. He entered without waiting.

  "Good morning, General," he said.

  Christ, Pickering thought, clothes do make the man! He is far more impressive in his uniform than in those off-the-rack Sears, Roebuck suits he usually wears.

  "Good morning, Rickabee."

  "Sorry to be late, Sir. I went to the Friday Morning."

  "You went to the what?"

  "The Friday Morning Intelligence Summary at ONI," Rickabee explained.

  ONI was the Office of Naval Intelligence.

  "That's why you're in uniform?"

  "Yes, Sir. That saves the usual two minutes of Naval humor when I show up in mufti." Pickering chuckled.

  "Hear anything interesting?"

  "Yes, Sir. The Naval attach‚ in London sent an URGENT radio that he had just heard a reliable report from the English that on the twenty-third, General Rommel was flown to Germany from North Africa, ostensibly for medical treatment, and that yesterday General Halder was relieved and replaced by a man named Zeitler."

  "Who's General Halder?" Pickering asked.

  `He was Chief of Staff OKH-Oberkommando Heeres, Ground Forces Headquarters-which has de facto responsibility for the Russian Front. There's some thought that Hitler may send Rommel to Russia. Interesting."

  "Yes," Pickering agreed.

  Proving again, Brigadier General Pickering, Pickering thought, that your total knowledge of the global war can he written inside a matchbook with a grease pencil The only name you recognized was Rommel's.

  "And just as we were breaking up there was an OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE in from CINCPAC that there was confirmed damage to two Japanese destroyers and a cruiser making a supply run to Guadalcanal."

  "Sea or air?"

  "Sea, Sir."

  "I don't think you came all the way over here to report on the-what did you call it?-the Friday Morning."

  "No, Sir."

  "Well, let's have it."

  "Sir, I have certain obligations as your deputy-"

  "Cut the crap," Pickering interrupted. "Get to the point." Rickabee's face tightened.

  "I consider it my duty, General, to make it clear to you that in my professional judgment, your intended operation to relieve the men at Buka is ill-advised; it has very little chance of success; it will require the expenditure of assets, personnel, and materiel that are needed elsewhere; and it is of questionable legality." After a moment Pickering asked, "Anything else?"

  "Yes, Sir. There is a very good chance that when word of it gets out, you will be relieved as Director of the Office of Management Analysis. I would hate to see that happen, Sir, for both selfish and personal reasons."

  "Selfish?"

  "Yes, Sir. We need somebody who can go to Admiral Leahy directly when we need something." Pickering poured a cup of coffee for himself. He held the pot up as an offer to Rickabee, who shook his head, no. And then he put the cup to his lip.

  He lowered it without taking a sip.

  "The operation goes," he said. "I appreciate your candor, Rickabee."

  "Aye, aye, Sir. I thought that would be The General's reaction."

  "We're back to `The General,' are we?" Pickering asked.

  Rickabee ignored the remark. He reached into the lower, bellows pocket of his blouse and took out an envelope.

  "I had Sessions make this up last night, Sir," he said. "There are copies for Dillon, that's his; and for McCoy, Moore, and Sergeant Hart. They will be on the courier plane from Pensacola arriving at Anacostia about seventeen hundred." Pickering took what Rickabee handed him and read it.

  "You'll have to sign the endorsement, General. That's just to show you what it will look like when we're done. I thought about getting Major Dillon a set of ONI Special Agent credentials-McCoy, Moore, and Hart already have them, of course-but I thought that might cause people to ask questions we don't want asked." Pickering's original orders on White House stationery, signed by Admiral Leahy, had been photographed and reduced in size by half, printed, and placed within sheets of cellophane, stapled shut.

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  Washington, D.C.

  3 September 1942

  Brigadier General Fleming W. Pickering, USMCR, Headquarters, USMC, will proceed by military and/or civilian rail, road, sea and air transportation (Priority AAAAA-1) to such points as he deems necessary in carrying out the m
ission assigned to him by the undersigned.