He glanced at Ian Bruce. Ian was looking at him, waiting for the signal to stop pumping. Steve shook his head, made a keep-it-up gesture and replied to Townsville.
FRD1,FRD6. GA.
Go ahead, Townsville.
The message was not unusually long, maybe fifteen five character blocks, but after Steve sent the usual, FRD1, FRD6. AK, Townsville came right back: FRD6, FRD1. FRD1 SB. FRD1 SB.
Townsville was standing by, waiting for an answer to their message.
Steve made a cutting motion across his throat. It would take him a couple of minutes, at least, to decode the message. Ian Bruce needed a break.
And a bath. I can smell him from here.
"Bloody hell!" Ian Bruce said.
"See if you can find Lieutenant Howard, will you?"
"Right you are." Both Lieutenant Howard and Sub-Lieutenant Reeves came into the hut before Steve finished decoding the message.
"What the hell is this?" he asked, giving the decoded message to Howard.
USE AS SIMPLE SUBSTITUTION X JULIETS NAME X ROMEOS NAME X WHAT SHE THOUGHT HE HAD WHEN
THEY MET X NAME OF TEST X RESULT OF TEST X
18xl9xO9x37xll
15x23xO8xO9xll
OlxO2xO3xO4xO5
06xO7x23x3lxO5
"They've gone sodding bonkers," Sub-Lieutenant Reeves said, and then added an unpleasant afterthought. "You don't think this could be from our Nipponese churns, do you?" Steve shook his head. "No," he said. "I recognized his hand."
"I know what simple substitution is," Joe Howard said, and so should you. But who the hell is Romeo?"
"It would have to be our lad, here," Reeves said. "Neither you nor I are romantically involved at the moment."
"Lay off him," Howard said.
"No offense, Steve, my lad."
"Go fuck yourself," Steve said. "What does that `what she thought he had when they met' mean?"
"I think I know," Howard said.
He dropped to the dirt floor. They had two pads of message paper left.
He picked up one of them. Holding it on his knees, he wrote:
BarbaraJosephSyphilisWassermanNegative
"My girl's name is Barbara," he said. "Mine is Joseph. I was taking my pre-commissioning physical in San Diego, and the doctor thought I was lying when I told him I'd never had VD.
He sent me to the VD ward for a Wasserman."
"I have the oddest feeling that he actually believes he knows what he's doing," Lieutenant Reeves said.
"Barbara was the nurse on duty," Joe added.
Very carefully, he wrote numbers under the letters. When he finished, it looked like this:
BarbaraJosephSyphilisWassermanNegative
12345678901234567890123456789012345678
Then he recopied the numbers so there was space beneath them, and made the translation.
18x19x09x37x11
I l o v e
15x23xO8xO9xll
y a j o e
OlxO2xO3xO4xO5
b a r b a
06xO7x23x3lxO5
r a a n a
"Does that say anything?" Reeves asked.
"Yeah," Joe Howard whispered.
He wrote out two five-character blocks of numbers and handed them to Steve.
"You up?"
"No."
"I'll pump the goddamned bicycle. You get on the air and send that."
"What the hell does it say?" Reeves asked.
"What they sent says, `I love ya, Joe Barbara,' " Steve Koffler said.
"The last three letters are fillers, to fill the five-character block.
What he's replying is none of your business." The dials came to life.
Steve's hand worked the key.
FRD1, FRD6. FRD1, FRD6.
Coastwatcher Radio, this is Ferdinand Six.
FRD6, FRD1, GA.
Ferdinand Six, go ahead.
Steve sent the reply, and then showed it to Reeves.
28x38x25x10x10
M e T o o
OlxO2xO4xl5xO5
B a b y a
Townsville came right back:
FRD6, FRD1. AK
lOx23x28x32xlO
35x38x37x38xOl
02xl2xl3x3Ox38
END
FRD1, FRD6. AK. SB.
Coastwatcher Radio, acknowledged. Standing by
"Go pump the bike," Steve said. "Let him decode this.
Maybe there's more." There was:
3OxO2x35xl3xO7
31x17x11x19x22
Steven sent the reply:
FRDI, FRD6. AK. MORE??
The reply came immediately:
FRD1. CLR.
"That's it," Steve said as he made the cutting motion across his throat.
Reeves stopped pumping.
Steve turned the radio off, stood up, and handed the last message to Howard. After that he hovered over Howard, watching him as he finished decoding the previous message.
10x23x28x32x10
S A M E S
35x38x37x38xOl
T E V E B
02xl2xl3x3Ox38
A P H N E
"What the hell does that say?"
"'Same Steve, signed Daphne,"' Howard said.
"Daphne is spelled with a `D,' not a `B,"' Steve said.
"There's no `B' in the substitution, Steve," Howard solid.
"What sounds closest?"
He started working on the final block of numbers and finally handed that to Steve.
"Take a look at that, Jacob," Howard said. "What do you make of it?"
30x02x35x13x07
N A T H A
31xl7xllxl9x22
N I E L W
17xl9xl9xlOx22
I L L S E
26x16x23x26x11
E P A T I
38x3lxl4xllx24
E N S E S
09xO9x3lxO2xO7
O O N A A
"Nathaniel Willseep At?" Reeves asked. "What the bloody hell is `ienses'?"
"Nathaniel will see Patience soon," Howard said.
"There's no `C' in Patience," Steve said.
"Same thing. You use what you have, in this case an `S.' The question is, who is Nathaniel? And what the hell does it mean?" They found Miss Patience Witherspoon washing Steve's spare utility trousers on a rock in the stream. Nathaniel Wallace turned out to be one of her friends when she was at the Mission School.
"Do you know where he is now?" Reeves asked.
"Yes, Sir. He was sent to Australia just before the war to enroll in King's College. Nathaniel is very intelligent. He did very well in school."
"And did Nathaniel know you were going into the bush with me?" Reeves asked very carefully.
"I sent him a note with the St. James, " Patience said. "Asking him to pray for us."
"What?" Howard asked.
"The St. James was the last ship to leave here before the Japanese came," Reeves said. "It wasn't a ship, really, more like a powered launch."
"Bingo," Howard said. "We are about to be reinforced." He'd caught himself just in time. He was about to say "relieved."
"Is that what you think?" Reeves asked.
"They must know our radio is on its last legs," Howard said.
"And that we need supplies."
"But why take the risk of letting us know someone's coming?"
"So we'll be on the lookout for parachutes, prepared to receive them."
"You think they'd do that again?"
"There's no other way."
"And the Japs know it," Reeves said. "And they're looking for parachutes. And when they break that child's code of yours, they'll really be looking."
"That child's code isn't going to be as easy to break as you think," Howard said. "It'll take them a couple of days... when they start on it. And then they have to guess the meaning."
"Submarine," Steve Koffler said. "They could send people in by submarine."
"I don't think so, Steve," Howard said. "I think we should start looking for an airplane, and parachutes. Even
, if they could talk the Navy out of a submarine, and they managed to land somebody safely, how could he get here? Especially carrying replacement radios and equipment?"
"He's from here," Steve said. "This Nathaniel is."
"Nathaniel is very intelligent," Miss Patience Witherspoon said. "And very strong."
[Five]
ROYAL AUSTRALIAN NAVY COASTWATCHER ESTABLISHMENT
TOWNSVILLE, QUEENSLAND
1 OCTOBER 1942
"We'll get into specific details later," Major Edward F. Banning said to open the first briefing session for Operation PICKLE, "so please don't start asking questions until I'm finished." Just over twenty people were sitting around the tables of the mess hall, Australians of the Coastwatcher Establishment and Marines of Special Detachment 14. Some were drinking coffee and eating doughnuts. The majority were drinking beer.
"The RAN is going to provide us with a submarine, HMAS Pelican. It will take a replacement team to this beach...." He turned and pointed to a map of Buka with an eighteen-inch ruler.
"... According to Chief Wallace, it's approximately fifty yards wide at low tide and has a relatively gradual slope. And again according to Chief Wallace, it is a twenty-four- to thirty-six-hour march from Ferdinand Six, which is about here. I asked him to err on the side of caution. Carrying that equipment in that terrain is going to be a bitch.
"Getting it ashore in rubber boats is going to be a bitch, too.
The shallow slope of the beach results in pretty heavy surf under most conditions. We won't know what those conditions are until we get there."
"We?" Sergeant George Hart thought, somewhat unkindly.
What's this we crap? We're not going. These guys are going.
"At that time-when the Pelican surfaces-a decision will have to be made," Banning went on, "whether to try to land the entire team and all the equipment. If the surf or other conditions make that too risky, then we'll put just Chief Wallace and three other men ashore.
"That decision will be made by Lieutenant McCoy. Lieutenant McCoy's something of an expert on rubber-boat landings.
The last one he made was on Makin Island with the Marine Raiders." Heads turned to look at Lieutenant K. R. McCoy.
That was probably necessary, George Hart decided, to impress these people. But McCoy sure didn't like it.
"If it turns out we can only put four men ashore safely, two will immediately start out for Ferdinand Six. Two will remain on the beach. The two on the beach will have two missions. The first is to conduct tests of the beach, to see if the sand there will support the weight of an airplane. That information will be sent to the submarine and then relayed here. After that the submarine will immediately depart the area; it will return the following day. Their second mission will be to tell the submarine, after its return, whether or not it is safe to land the full team.
"Repeated attempts to land the replacement team and its equipment will be made until they are successful or the tests have indicated that the beach will take an aircraft.
"If that proves to be the case, then the aircraft will land there with the second replacement team and its equipment. That will of course solve both the insertion and extraction problems, since the aircraft will take the present team out with it, as well as the two people we insert onto the beach.
"The problem-at least in my judgment-is that the aircraft plan is not likely to work. If it doesn't, then the insertion of the replacement team and the extraction of the people now operating Ferdinand Six will be by submarine."
He looked around the room. "OK, questions?"
"Do I understand, Sir," a young Australian Sub-Lieutenant asked, "that I would be inserted regardless of surf conditions?"
"No," Lieutenant Commander Eric Feldt answered for Banning. "We will land either the entire team or none of it. Except, of course, for Chief Wallace."
"Yes, Sir."
"Question, Sir?" a buck sergeant of USMC Special Detachment 14 asked.
"Shoot."
"In case of bad surf conditions, no radios will go ashore, right?"
"Right. I just said that. The whole team goes in or none of it."
"How will the two people onshore communicate with the sub?"
"The Navy-our Navy," Lieutenant McCoy answered, "has a portable, battery-powered radio. A voice radio. Two of them are being flown in here. It has enough range to reach from the beach to the sub. And about two hours' battery life. If we can't land the whole team, I'll take one of them and a spare set of batteries with me in the rubber boat."
"Yes, Sir. But what about the airplane?"
"What about the airplane?"
"How are you going to communicate with it?"
"Shit!" Lieutenant McCoy said furiously.
"I mean, Sir, if we get it."
"I know what you mean," McCoy said. "Goddamn it, I didn't think about that!"
"Lieutenant," Chief Signalman Nathaniel Wallace, Royal Australian Navy Volunteer Reserve, asked, pronouncing it Lef-tenant, "I think we could probably modify the Navy radio so it would net with the aircraft radios. When did you say they are coming?"
"As soon as they can fly them in. Probably today," McCoy replied.
"I may be wrong, of course, but those types of short-range radios often radiate in the same general area of the frequency spectrum as aircraft radios. I rather suspect that we could make it work."
"Jesus Christ, I hope so."
Chief Signalman Wallace was the ugliest single human being Sergeant George Hart, USMC, could ever remember seeing.
He was also the only Navy man he had ever seen wearing a skirt.
But it wasn't possible to dismiss him as some quaint and ignorant savage out of the pages of National Geographic magazine. Hart had already long since realized that his bushy head of hair and blue-black teeth, his scars and tattoos, were not all of him. On the other side of all that was a mind at least as sharp as his own.
For one thing, Nathaniel spoke fluent English-English English, like the announcers on the British Broadcasting Corporation's International Service. For another, of the dozen or more radio technicians (including three Marines) who ran the Coastwatcher Establishment's radio station, he probably knew the most about radios, inside and out.
Above the waist, Chief Wallace wore the prescribed uniform for Chief Petty Officers of the RAN. Just as in the American Navy, the senior enlisted rank of the RAN wore officer-type uniforms: Instead of the traditional bell-bottom trousers and a blouse with a black kerchief and flap hanging down the back, they wore a double-breasted business suit with brass buttons, and a shirt and tie. And instead of those cute little sailor hats (as George and most other Marines thought of them), Chief Petty Officers wore brimmed caps with a special Chief Petty Officer insignia pinned on them.
The white crown of Chief Wallace's brimmed cap was not quite as wide as the mass of black, crinkly hair it rode on. It was centered with almost mathematical precision at least three inches over his skull. A neatly tied black necktie was pulled with precision into the collar of his immaculate white shirt. The brass buttons of his jacket glistened, as did his black Oxford shoes. Between the jacket and the shoes he wore a skirt, of blue denim, and knee-high immaculate white stockings. This served to expose incredibly ugly knees and skinny upper legs matted with crinkly hair.
"If we can't get the radio to communicate with the aircraft, McCoy, we could work out some sort of landing panel signals," Banning said.
"With respect, Sir," Chief Signalman Wallace said, "I don't think it will be a problem."
"Any other questions?" Major Banning asked.
"What are these beach tests, Sir?" a USMC Special Detachment 14 corporal asked.
"As I understand it," Major Banning said, "Sergeant Hart has a steel cone he pounds into the sand with a ten-pound weight. He then reads the markings on the cone. The theory is that it can be determined how much weight the sand will support."
W E B Griffin - Corp 05 - Line of Fire Page 45