W E B Griffin - Corp 05 - Line of Fire

by Line Of Fire(Lit)

"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 with 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 like `Baby' 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!"

  "Aye, aye, Sir," Moore said and smiled at Joanne Miller.

  She surprised him by laying her hand on his forehead.

  "How long have you had malaria?" she asked.

  "I don't have malaria," he said.

  "The hell you don't," she said. "Glassy eyes, high temperature." She looked at Major Dillon. "He has malaria and he belongs in a hospital! Doesn't anybody give a damn?"

  "Shit," McCoy said.

  "I'm sorry you find that inconvenient, Lieutenant," Joanne Miller said icily.

  "Putting him in a hospital right now would be inconvenient."

  "People die of malaria, you damned fool!"

  "What would they do for him in a hospital that, can't be done here?"

  McCoy asked.

  "Well, they would put him on quinine, or a quinine substitute, for one thing. And put him in bed. And they wouldn't give him anything to drink."

  "Is there any reason that couldn't be done here? Is there anything else?"

  "Well, for one thing, where are you going to get the quinine?

  And who would take care of him?"

  "Nobody's listening to me," Moore said. "I'm all right."

  "Major, why don't you take the Lieutenant to the hospital and see that they give her whatever she needs? Maybe you better get a doctor over here to look at him." Dillon considered that a moment and then nodded.

  "You'd better bring a nurse, too," Joanne Miller said.

  "We already have two nurses," McCoy said.

  She looked at him and decided he was perfectly serious.

  "I'm on a seventy-two-hour pass. I can't stay here."

  "You've just been placed on temporary duty," McCoy said.

  "On whose authority?"

  "It can be arranged," Dillon said. "Would you mind coming with me, Lieutenant?"

  "I see this," Lieutenant John Marston Moore announced, as the beginning of a great romance."

  "You're a damned fool, you know that?" Joanne said, but when she stood up and looked down at him and saw him smiling, she found herself unable not to smile back.

  "Getting back to business," Pluto said, the moment the door had closed after Joanne and Dillon. "There has to be something. Maybe a place. Where did you meet? Under what circumstances? Did you ever"-he hesitated, and then went on-"go to a hotel or something."

  Barbara Cotter smiled, and Pluto thought he saw a suggestion of a blush.

  "What was the name of the hotel? Did anything special happen there?"

  "The first time I met Joe," Barbara said, half uncomfortably, half amused, "he was sent to me for a blood test. For syphilis: Hell of a way to start a romance, isn't it?" She looked at Pluto.

  "Is this the sort of thing you want?"

  "I think maybe," Pluto said. "Tell me about it."

  Chapter Fourteen

  [One]

  WATER LILY COTTAGE

  MANCHESTER AVENUE

  BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA

  1730 HOURS 30 SEPTEMBER 1942

  Major Jake Dillon returned from the local military hospital with everything necessary to treat a malaria patient, including a doctor. The only thing he didn't have with him was, a hospital bed.

  "I appreciate your coming over here, Sir," Major Banning greeted the doctor, a Lieutenant Colonel.

  The doctor's bearing, haircut, and ribbon-laden tunic told Lieutenant (J.G.) Joanne Miller, NNC, that he had not been recently commissioned into military service from civilian life.

  The doctor grunted at Banning and walked to the couch where Second Lieutenant John Marston Moore, USMCR, was resting.

  "How do you feel, son?"

  "I feel fine, Doctor," Moore said.

  Bullshit," the Colonel said. His ready use of the word confirmed Joanne's guess that this physician's patients over the years had not been in a position to complain about his bedside manner.

  He examined Moore quickly but carefully.

  "When did you stop taking Atabrine?"

  Moore thought a moment. "About six days ago, Sir."

  "Why? Did you really think they were giving it to you just so they could watch you turn yellow?"

  "It was... inconvenient... for me to get more, Sir."

  "Yeah, well, you see where that led us. It was inconvenient for me to come over here tonight, and it will be inconvenient to treat you here. You belong in a hospital."

 
; "Colonel," Banning said, "did Major Dillon explain why that-"

  "I've seen your orders, Major. I am suitably impressed. I said it would be inconvenient to treat him here, not that it couldn't be done."

  "Yes, Sir," Banning said.

  "So far as the malaria is concerned, the reason he relapsed is that he interrupted his Atabrine regimen. We put him back on Atabrine and he'll start feeling better by tomorrow morning. Now, what's wrong with your legs?"

  "They're all right, Sir."

  "Bullshit. You nearly jumped out of your skin when I touched them. Take your pants off."

  When Moore hesitated, the Colonel said, "That wasn't a suggestion, Lieutenant. And these ladies are nurses, they've seen men with their pants off before."

  Moore started to push his trousers down.

  "I don't know that, come to think of it," the Colonel said. He looked at Joanne Miller. "You are an RN, right? Any specialty?"

  "I'm a nurse-anesthesiologist, Doctor."

  He grunted and looked at Barbara Cotter. "What about you?"

  "I'm a psychiatric nurse, Doctor."

  "That probably comes in handy around here," the Colonel said, and then looked at Moore's legs. "Mary, Mother of God' What moron discharged you from a hospital?" He probed the legs knowledgeably with his fingers. Moore winced.

  "Believe it or not, before I became a member of the Palace Guard, I thought I was an orthopedic surgeon. What did that, a grenade?"

  "A grenade or a mortar round."

  "Well, there's no sign of infection, but you really need some physical therapy." He looked at the nurses. "Make him walk around, if nothing else. Put him on his belly and force the legs back until the threshold of pain. Fifteen, twenty movements, each leg, four times a day. Got it?"

  "Yes, Doctor," they said, almost in unison.

  "When I said `walk him around,' I didn't mean he's to get out of bed or off the couch for more than thirty minutes at a time unless there's a reason. Give him all he wants to eat, aspirin for the pain, and Atabrine every two hours until tomorrow morning, when every four hours will be enough. I'll come back tomorrow. Got it?"

  "Yes, Doctor," Barbara said.

  "Alcohol, Doctor?" Joanne asked.

  "A couple of drinks won't hurt him. Don't let him get fall down drunk."

  Why did I ask that? Joanne wondered.

  "Speaking of which, if someone were to offer me some of that Famous Grouse, I wouldn't turn it down," the Colonel said."

  "Certainly," Banning said. "I could use one myself. Would you be offended, Sir, if I offered you a bottle of it?"

  "Offended? Jesus, how dumb do I look?"

  "Just don't tell anyone where you got it, please, Doctor," Banning said.

  "If you were trying to be subtle, Major, and trying to tell me to keep my mouth shut about tonight, save your breath. I don't even want to know what you and your people are up to, and I have been around the Service long enough to know what things you talk about and what things you don't." Thirty minutes after the doctor left, the telephone rang. Banning answered it, and then a moment later announced, "The weather's clearing at Townsville. We can go."

  He looked at Pluto Hon. "I just had an unpleasant thought. Will Moore be able to get into the dungeon?"

  What in the world, Joanne Miller wondered, is the dungeon?

  "With a little bit of luck, he won't have to," Hon said. "But yes, Sir. I took care of it."

  "And what about the truck and the car?"

  "They're supposed to be here," he looked at his wristwatch,, "in ten minutes, Sir."

  "Let's get Dillon's skis outside, on the porch, so they won't have to come in here," Banning said.

  Dillon's skis? Joanne wondered. Is that what he said, "Dillon's skis"?

  Two large wooden crates were manhandled through the living room and out the door.

  "Pluto will come back as soon we find out if that substitution code works-or come up with something that does," Banning said to Moore. "With you sick, I hate to take him. There's no other way."

  "I'm all right," Moore said.

  "Yeah, sure you are," Joanne heard herself say.

  "We're leaving the car for you," Banning said. "You are not, repeat not, to give it to Mrs. Feller under any circumstances."

  "Aye, aye, Sir," Moore said.

  Banning looked at Joanne Miller. "When Hon comes back, one of you can pick him up at the airport." Lieutenant (J.G.) Miller decided she did not like Major Ed Banning.

  "Aye, aye, Sir," she said, as sarcastically salty as she could manage. As she said it, she came to attention.

  Her sarcasm went right over his head.

  "Good girl," he said, and smiled and left.

  Two minutes later, Lieutenants Miller and Cotter were alone in Water Lily Cottage with their patient.

  [Two]

  BILLETING OFFICE

  OFFICE OF THE HEADQUARTERS COMMANDANT

  SUPREME HEADQUARTERS

  SOUTH WEST PACIFIC OCEAN AREA

  BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA

  1905 HOURS 30 SEPTEMBER 1942

  There were only two female field-grade officers, a major and a lieutenant colonel, assigned to Supreme Headquarters, South West Pacific Ocean Area. Both of them were nurses. The Lieutenant Colonel was on the staff of the senior medical officer, and she was in charge of whatever concerned army nurses. The Major was on the staff of the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-4 (Mat‚riel), as the resident expert on medical supplies. Both had elected to live in the Female Bachelor Officer's Quarters provided for the nurses assigned to what was known as Mercy Forward. Mercy Forward was in fact a detachment Fourth U.S. Army General Hospital (code name, Mercy) to Brisbane from Melbourne to provide medical service MacArthur's headquarters.

  Major R. James Tourtillott, the SWPOA Deputy Headquarters Commandant, explained all this in some detail Ellen Feller, Department of the Navy Civilian Professional Employee (Assimilated Grade: Lieutenant Commander), to explain why there was no Female Field Grade Bachelor Quarters he could move her into.

  "Where have you been living, Mrs. Feller?" Major' Tourtillott asked. "Is there some reason you can't just stay there?"

  Yes, there is a goddamned reason! Major Ed Banning, that bastard, has turned Water Lily Cottage into a goddamned hospital, complete with two nurses: "Sorry, Mrs. Feller, you'll move into a BOQ until this is over. We just have to your room.

  Obviously, there is no reason, no reason at all, why Moore could not be treated for his malaria-if he really has malaria, he looks perfectly healthy to me-in Mercy Forward. And even if there is some "security reason," as Banning said, for keeping him out of the hospital, there is no reason at all why those two Navy nurses couldn't live in the Nurse's BOQ at Mercy Forward. They're only junior-grade lieutenants, after all, I'm an assimilated Lieutenant Commander.

  "There's a project, Major Tourtillott, a classified project I can't talk about, that seems to have evicted me."

  "I could call Mercy Forward and see if they could put you up with the nurses."

  "I don't want to move in with the nurses, for one thing, and for another, I have to be somewhere close to Supreme Headquarters. I'm on twenty-four-hour call."

  "I'm sure something can be worked out, Mrs. Feller,' Tourtillott said, thinking that the best solution for housing lame-duck female -I wonder what the hell she does? As an assimilated Lieutenant Commander, she's no secretary- would probably be to move her into the Devonshire, a small, luxurious hotel requisitioned to house full colonels and one-star generals; but he couldn't do that without the OK of the Headquarters Commandant. "But not today."

  "You don't seem to understand," Ellen Feller said. "I don't have a place to sleep." Major Tourtillott handed her a printed form.

  "This is a billeting voucher on Mason's Hotel," he said.

  "They'll put you up overnight, and if you'll come back, say at oh nine hundred, oh nine thirty, I'll have you fixed up by then."

  "Where is Mason's Hotel?"

  "Not far," Major Tourtillott said. "It's the best
I can do right now."

  The reason I am being humiliated like this is because Banning hates me, has been waiting for an opportunity to humiliate me, and now he's found it in spades. Not only is he denying me access to whatever he and that offensive Major Jake Dillon are up to, but he is rubbing that humiliation in my face by ordering me out of Water Lily Cottage.