W E B Griffin - Corp 09 - Under Fire

by Under Fire(Lit)

  Probably Pick. This is a Naval air station, and you're not supposed to land civilian airplanes on Naval air stations.

  Captain McCoy did the only thing he could think to do under the circumstances. He saluted crisply and said, "Good afternoon, sir."

  At that point, recognition, belatedly, dawned. It had been a long time.

  Lieutenant Colonel William C. Dunn, USMC, who car-ried 138 pounds on his slim, five-foot-six frame, returned the salute crisply.

  "How are you, McCoy?" he asked, and then stepped around McCoy to assist Mrs. McCoy in leaving the aircraft.

  "Oh, Bill," Ernie said. "What a-pleasant surprise!"

  "You're as beautiful as ever," Lieutenant Colonel Dunn said, "and as careless as ever about the company you keep."

  Pick Pickering got out of the airplane.

  "Wee Willy!" he cried happily, wrapped his arms around Lieutenant Colonel Dunn, and kissed him wetly on the forehead.

  Second Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, had been First Lieutenant William C. Dunn's wingman, in VMF-229, flying Grumman Wildcats off of Fighter One, on Guadalcanal. They had become aces within days of one another. Dunn had gone on to become a double ace. The Navy Cross, the nation's second-highest award for valor in the Naval service, topped Dunn's four rows of fruit salad.

  Dunn freed himself from Pickering's embrace.

  "You're a disgrace to the Marine Corps," Dunn said, fail-ing to express the indignation he felt was called for, but did not in fact feel. "My God, you're not even wearing socks!"

  "I don't have a loving wife and helpmeet to care for me," Pick said. "How's the bride?"

  "About to make me a father for the fourth time," Dunn said, "and unaware I'm on this side of the country."

  "What are you doing here-on this side of the coun-try-and here?"

  "Here," Dunn said, gesturing to indicate the airfield, or maybe southern California, "because I need to borrow, beg, or, ultimately, steal Corsair parts from our brothers in the Navy, and here here"-he pointed at the ground- "because when I landed I called the Coronado to see if you might be in town, and they said you were expected about now. So I checked with Base Ops to see if they had an inbound Corsair. The AOD was all upset about some civilian airplane about to land. I knew it had to be you."

  "As a token of the Navy's respect for the Marine Corps re-serve, I have permission to land here in connection with my re-serve duties," Pick said. "It's all perfectly legal, Colonel, sir."

  "I've heard that before," Dunn said.

  "Ken's reporting into Pendleton," Pick said. "We all just came from Japan-and on the way over, immodesty com-pels me to state, I set a new record...."

  "The most violently airsick passengers on one airplane in the history of commercial aviation?" Dunn asked, innocently.

  McCoy laughed.

  "Those who have nothing to boast about mock those who do," Pickering said, piously. "But since you ask, there is a new speed record to Japan."

  "Inspired, no doubt, by a platoon of angry husbands chasing the pilot?" Dunn said.

  McCoy laughed again.

  "You understand, Ernie," Pickering said, as if sad and mystified, "that these two-Sarcastic Sam and Laughing Boy-are supposed to be my best friends?"

  "The way I heard it, they're your only friends," Ernie said.

  "Et tu, Brutus?" Pick said.

  Dunn laughed, then turned to McCoy.

  "What are they going to have you doing at Pendleton, Ken?" Dunn asked.

  "I really don't know, Colonel," McCoy replied.

  Dunn didn't press McCoy. As long as Dunn had known him-and he had met him on Guadalcanal-he had been involved in classified operations of one kind or another that couldn't be talked about.

  "Captain McCoy," Pick said. "If you would be so kind, go into Base Ops and call us a cab while the colonel and I tie down the airplane. We have to eat, and the food is much better at the Coronado Beach than in the O Club here."

  Pickering walked around the nose of the Staggerwing to where Dunn was really stretching to insert a tie-down rope into a link on the wing.

  "Bill, so you don't say anything in innocence.... What the Killer's going to do at Pendleton is make up his mind whether he wants to go back to the ranks."

  "Jesus Christ!" Dunn said, in surprise. "I thought he at least would be the exception to the rule...."

  "What rule?"

  "Commissioned officers have to have a college degree," Dunn said. "I've lost four pilots in the last three months to that policy. But I thought they'd make an exception for somebody like McCoy."

  Pickering had not heard about that policy.

  But if I let Wee Willy think that's the reason the god damn Corps is giving him the boot, I won't have to get into the Killer's "There Will be a War in Korea in Ninety Days or Less" theory. Which, of course, I can't anyway.

  "I guess not," Pickering said.

  "Is he going to take stripes? Or get out?"

  "I don't know. I don't think it would bother him to be a gunny, but Ernie..."

  "Well, at least they don't have any kids to worry about," Dunn said.

  "No, they don't."

  Dunn looked at him thoughtfully.

  "Pick, I can easily get a field-grade BOQ. If things would be awkward at the hotel."

  "Don't be silly. There's plenty of room, and I think hav-ing you around will be good for both of them."

  "What the hell is McCoy going to do outside the Corps? It's all he knows."

  Pick Pickering threw up his hands in a gesture of help-lessness.

  Then the two of them started to walk toward Base Ops.

  Lieutenant Colonel Dunn was having thoughts vis-a-vis Major Pickering he did not-could not-share with him.

  I love Pick, I really do. But the cold truth is that he is a lousy field-grade officer. A superb pilot-a natural pilot- and as far as courage goes, he makes John Wayne look like a pansy.

  But, my God, he's a Marine major, and he lands at a Navy field barefooted and dressed like a Hawaiian pimp in an airplane that he once flew under the Golden Gate Bridge-I got that incredible tale from George Hart, so it's absolutely true.

  I will, therefore, not tell Major Pickering that we have an old comrade-in-arms at Camp Pendleton who just might be able to turn the G-l around about reducing Mc-Coy to the ranks, and failing that, will certainly make his passage through the separation process at Pendleton as painless as possible.

  If I told Pick, he'd hop in a cab, go out to Pendleton, in his Hawaiian pimp's shirt and bare feet, march into the general's office, and begin the conversation. "Clyde, you won't believe what a fucking dumb thing the Corps has done this time..."

  Well, maybe it wouldn't be that bad, but it would be out-rageous and thus counterproductive, and therefore I will not tell him what I'm going to do.

  Not, of course, that there's much chance that I will be able to do anything at all.

  [FOUR]

  OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY COMMANDING GENERAL

  CAMP PENDLETON, CALIFORNIA

  1520 8 JUNE 1950

  Captain Arthur McGowan, USMC, aide-de-camp to the Deputy Commanding General, a tall, slim, twenty-nine-year-old, put his head inside the general's door.

  "General, Colonel Dunn's on the horn," he said.

  "I was getting a little worried," Brigadier General Clyde W. Dawkins, USMC, replied. He was a tall, tanned, thin, sharp-featured man who had just celebrated his fortieth birthday.

  He signaled with his index finger for Captain McGowan to enter the office, close the door behind him, and listen to the conversation on the extension telephone on a coffee table.

  General Dawkins waited until McGowan had the phone to his ear before he picked up his own.

  "I was getting a little worried, Bill," General Dawkins said. "Your ETA was noon. Where are you?"

  "At the Coronado Beach, sir."

  "I sort of thought you would be at Miramar," General Dawkins said.

  The Miramar Naval Air Station was the other side of San Diego-about fif
teen miles distant.

  "Bill," the general went on before Dunn could answer, "you're not going to tell me Pickering's involved in this lit-tle operation of yours?"

  "No, sir. But I'm in the suite. So's Pick. And until three minutes ago, so was Killer McCoy. And his wife."

  General Dawkins was familiar with "the suite" in the Coronado Beach Hotel. Its fifteen rooms occupied about half of the fourth floor of the beachfront hotel, and was permanently leased to the Trans-Global Airways division of the Pacific & Far East Shipping Corporation.

  At one time, before World War II, it had been leased to the Pacific & Far East Shipping Corporation for the use of the masters and chief engineers of P&FE vessels, and to house important passengers of the P&FE passenger fleet.

  During World War II, on a space-available basis, its rooms had been made available to Marine and Navy officers with some connection to P&FE, or the Pickering family per-sonally. That, in turn, had evolved into "the suite" becoming the unofficial quarters of Marine aviators, especially those who had served with VMF-229 on Guadalcanal, when they were assigned to-or passing through-one or another of San Diego's Marine and Navy installations.

  General Dawkins had many fond memories of the suite, and usually the first one that came to mind was of the harem of stunningly beautiful girls at one wartime party who had gathered like moths at a candle flame around Ty-rone Power and MacDonald Carey, both of whom had put their Hollywood careers on hold to serve as Marine avia-tors.

  Sometimes he remembered the party where the star had been the actor Sterling Hayden, who'd been a Marine offi-cer, but in the OSS, not an aviator.

  Now General Dawkins regarded the suite as a time bomb about to explode. The final evolution had been into where the Marine Reserve aviators stayed when in the area, at the invitation of Major Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR.

  Although it had not come to General Dawkins's official attention, he had no reason to doubt the rumors that, espe-cially during the two weeks of summer training many Ma-rine Corps Reserve aviators attended in the San Diego Area, considerable quantities of intoxicating spirits were consumed by them in the suite, in the company of young ladies who, despite their beauty, were not the type one took home to meet one's mother. Or one's wife.

  "No kidding?" General Dawkins said. "Give him my best regards. McCoy, I mean."

  "Actually, sir, I'm calling about McCoy."

  "First things first, Bill," Dawkins said. "There is at this moment in Hangar 212 at Miramar eight crates...."

  "Yes, sir, I know."

  "I don't know, and don't want to know, what they con-tain."

  "Sir, they will be picked up first thing in the morning. My Gooney-Bird lost the oil pump in the port engine, and was delayed in Kansas City. Its ETA here-North Island- is 0500 tomorrow morning. Figure an hour to fuel it, and I'll have it on the deck at Miramar at 0630, and with any luck at all, I'll be wheels-up from Miramar at 0730."

  " `I'll be wheels-up'?" Dawkins parroted. "You'll be flying the Gooney-Bird?"

  The Gooney-Bird was R4D, the Navy/Marine version of the Douglas DC-3 twin-engine transport.

  "Yes, sir. I came out here in a Corsair. One of my kids will take that back."

  "And you don't think anyone will wonder why a light colonel is flying a R4D?"

  "I thought the Navy might be less prone to question a lieutenant colonel, sir," Dunn said.

  That's probably true. But the real reason, Wee Willy, that you`ll be flying the R4D is because you don't want one of your officers catching the flak if this midnight requisi-tion of ours goes awry; you`ll take the rap. You're a good officer, Dunn.

  "If you're not wheels-up by 0830, give me-or Art McGowan-a heads-up, and I'll start the damage control."

  "General, I really appreciate-"

  "Save that until you're back at Beaufort," Dawkins said. "Save it until two weeks after you're back at Beaufort."

  "General, even with cannibalizing, I can only get fifty-five percent of my Corsairs in the air-"

  "I seem to recall, Colonel, your mentioning this before," Dawkins interrupted him. "And, to save a little time here, ensuring that you will be wheels-up at Miramar with these crates aboard by 0830 tomorrow, let's change the subject."

  "Yes, sir."

  `Tell me about the Killer," Dawkins said.

  "He's being reduced to the ranks," Dunn said.

  "That goddarnn college-degree nonsense again?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Oh, Jesus, Bill."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Well, I've had a shot at it, but I don't think I'll be able to do much good. All I get is the same speech-there's no money, we have to reduce the number of officers, and one of the elimination criteria is education."

  "Yes, sir. And actually, I think it's too late to help the Killer. He was ordered home from Japan, to Pendleton, for separation not later than 30 June."

  "We're going to wind up with an officer corps consisting mainly of college graduates who can't find their ass with both hands," Dawkins said, bitterly.

  "General, what I was hoping you could do is spare the Killer as much of the separation nonsense as possible. It has to be a humiliation for someone like the Killer to be told the Corps doesn't want him as an officer anymore."

  "What the hell is he going to do as a civilian?" Dawkins asked, rhetorically.

  "Well, in the sense he doesn't need a job, he's a lot bet-ter off than some of the people caught in the reduction."

  It took Dawkins a moment to sort that out.

  "Oh, yeah, that's right. His wife has money, doesn't she?"

  "Her father is chairman of American Personal Pharma-ceutical," Dunn said. "I understand there are two majority stockholders: Ernie McCoy's father, and Ernie McCoy."

  "That much, huh? I'd heard something, but I had no idea she had that kind of money."

  "And even if that wasn't true, the Pickerings, father and son, would make sure the Killer doesn't go hungry."

  "And I think we can presume that when General Pickering heard the Corps was giving the Killer the boot, he did his best to see that it wouldn't happen."

  "I'm sure he did, sir."

  "And couldn't help, either," Dawkins added, bitterly.

  "It doesn't look that way, sir."

  "So what can I do for the Killer, Bill?"

  "Maybe have a word with the G-l, sir. Speed him through the process."

  "Done, Bill," General Dawkins said.

  "Thank you, sir."

  "When does he report in here?"

  "He's on his way out there right now, sir."

  "Then I'd better get off my ass, hadn't I? Make sure you're wheels-up by 0830, Bill, or we're both liable to be reporting to the G-l for involuntary separation."

  "I'll do my best, sir. And thank you, sir."

  "Have a nice slow flight across the country, Colonel," General Dawkins said. He hung up the telephone and turned to his aide. "Get the car, Art."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  [FIVE]

  OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT CHIEF OF STAFF, G-l

  HEADQUARTERS

  CAMP PENDLETON, CALIFORNIA

  1545 8 JUNE 1950

  The usual practice when one of Camp Pendleton's general officers had business to transact with the G-l was that the G-l, who was a full colonel, went to their offices. Thus, the G-l, Colonel C. Harry Wade, USMC, was surprised to hear someone bark, `Ten-hut on deck," a command given only when someone senior to the senior officer on duty-in this case Colonel C. Harry Wade-came into the building.

  Wade looked through his open office door to see what the hell was going on and saw Brigadier General Clyde Dawkins marching purposefully toward his office, trailed by his aide-de-camp.

  Colonel Wade rose quickly to his feet.

  "Got a minute for me, Harry?" General Dawkins asked, as he entered Wade's office.

  "Good afternoon, General," Wade said. "Of course, sir. Can I offer you some coffee?"

  "No, thanks," Dawkins said. "I'm coffee-ed out. Art, will you close the door
, please?"