Lieutenant Colonel Brewer made a “come-on” gesture with his left hand.
“Sir, McCoy was commissioned when the Corps really needed officers. And, frankly, he was one of those who never should have been commissioned.”
“Why not?”
“Well, sir, he lacks the education to be an officer, and . . . this is difficult to put in words. He doesn’t really understand the unwritten rules on which an officer has to pattern his life. He’s not an officer and a gentleman, sir, if you take my meaning.”
“Where are you going with this, Macklin?” Lieutenant Colonel Brewer asked.
“I know McCoy well enough to know he’s living from payday to payday,” Macklin said. “You know the type, sir. Not a thought for tomorrow . . .”
“Okay, so what?”
“My thought, sir, is that if McCoy doesn’t take leave, he’ll be paid for it when he’s separated. Whether he leaves the Corps or reenlists, I’m sure that he’d like to have—is really going to need—a month’s pay in cash.”
Lieutenant Colonel Brewer considered that a moment, first thinking that it was really nice of Macklin to take an interest like this—he didn’t seem the type—and then considering what he was asking for.
The Eighth & Eye TWX had said McCoy “should be offered the opportunity” to take leave; it didn’t make it an order.
“Sure,” Lieutenant Colonel Brewer said. “Why not? Have him inventory supply rooms or something. There’s always a need for someone to do that.”
“And, sir, with your permission, I’d rather not have him get the idea we’re doing this out of—what . . . pity, I suppose, is the word.”
Brewer considered that for a moment.
“Handle it any way you think is best, Macklin.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. With your permission, sir?”
Lieutenant Colonel Brewer gave Major Macklin permission to withdraw with a wave of his hand.
Major Macklin returned to his office quite pleased with himself.
“Killer” McCoy getting himself booted out of the Corps was really no surprise. The miserable little sonofabitch should never have been a commissioned officer in the first place. I’m only surprised that he lasted as long as he did.
Having him assigned here, under my command, for his last twenty-nine days as an officer is really poetic justice. I owe him.
An officer and a gentleman would never have done to a brother officer what that lowlife sonofabitch did to me. And got away with.
Until now.
The next twenty-nine days are mine.
It’s payback time.
As he sat behind his desk, he had another thought that pleased him even more:
If he does accept whatever stripes Eighth & Eye decides he’s worth, and enlists—and how else can he earn a living?—maybe I could arrange to have him stationed here.
“Reduced to the ranks”? I’d like to see the sonofabitch busted down to PFC.
And with a little luck, I might be able to do just that.
[TWO]
THROUGH WITH ENGINES NEAR CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA, CALIFORNIA 0905 7 JUNE 1950
As Trans-Global Airways’ Flight 637, Luxury Service Between Tokyo and San Francisco, began the last (Honolulu-San Francisco) leg of the flight, Fleming Pickering had taken advantage of Ken McCoy’s visit to the rest room and had brought up the subject of Through with Engines to Ernie Sage McCoy.
Through with Engines was the more-or-less 110-acre Pickering estate near Carmel. On it was a large, rambling, but not pretentious single-floor house, designed to provide as many of its rooms as possible with the best possible view of the Pacific Ocean; a boathouse; a small airplane hangar; a small cottage for the servants; and a shedlike building used to house the grass-cutting—and other estate—machinery and a garage. None of the buildings—or the Pacific Ocean—could be seen from the road.
The land, which at the time had held only what was now the servants’ cottage, and the boathouse had been the wedding gift of Andrew Foster to Patricia, his only daughter, on her marriage to Fleming Pickering. The house—actually the first four rooms thereof; eight more having been added, often one at a time, over the years—had been the gift of Commodore Pickering to his son Fleming on the occasion of his successful passage of the U.S. Coast Guard examinations leading to his licensing as an Any Ocean, Any Tonnage Master Mariner, his right to call himself “Captain,” and his first command of a Pacific & Far East vessel.
It was originally used by the young couple as somewhere they could go for privacy when he returned from a voyage, and Patricia had almost immediately pointed out that, since there were no street numbers, and nothing could be seen from the highway, the place needed a name. And it also needed signs to inform the public that it was private property.
Patricia Foster Pickering had thought her husband’s suggestion of “Through with Engines”—the last signal sent from the bridge to the engine room at the conclusion of a voyage—was rather sweet, and told him she’d see about having a sign made.
“You’ll need a lot more than one sign,” he had replied. “I’ll take care of it.”
She thought that was sweet, too, until, on her next visit to what she thought of as “the beach place,” she found the road lined at 100-yard intervals with four-by-eight-foot sheets of plywood signs, painted yellow, red, and black, reading:
PRIVATE PROPERTY THROUGH WITH ENGINES NO TRESPASSING UNDER PENALTY OF LAW
They had come from the painting shop of the P&FE maintenance yard, and consequently were of the highest quality, and designed to resist the ravages of storms at sea.
It had taken Patricia most of Pick Pickering’s life to get rid of the signs and replace them with something a little more attractive—and a little less belligerent. One original sign survived, and was now mounted on the wall of what she thought of as “the playroom,” and her husband referred to as the “big bar,” there being another—the “little bar”—by the swimming pool.
“Honey,” Fleming Pickering said to Ernie McCoy, “I just had a great idea. Why don’t you stay at Through with Engines while Ken’s at Camp Pendleton?”
She smiled at him, but there was an I know what you’re up to look in her eyes.
What the hell, when in doubt, tell the truth.
“It won’t be much fun for you down there, Ernie,” he said. “And Patricia—if she’s not already back—will want to see you.”
And want to talk to you, especially after I tell her about Ken being reduced to the ranks. It’s absolutely true that she thinks of you as a daughter. And talking to Patricia would certainly be a very good thing for you.
“I go where Ken goes,” Ernie said. “But thanks, Uncle Flem.”
“Have you considered that he might want you to stay at Through with Engines?”
“Pick said that, when he offered us Through with Engines, ” Ernie said. “Your minds run in similar paths.” She paused, then repeated, “I go where Ken goes.”
“Okay.”
“Pick’s going to fly us down there in his airplane,” she said. “We’re going from the airport to Through with Engines, spend the night, fly down to San Diego—North Island Naval Air Station—in the morning. Pick will then run the girls out of his suite in the Coronado Beach, and turn it over to us.”
“I didn’t know,” Pickering said.
“That way, I’ll have a little time with Aunt Pat,” Ernie went on. “The Pickerings are taking good care of the McCoys, Uncle Flem, and the McCoys really appreciate it.”
“Ernie, I don’t know how much good I’ll be able to do Ken,” Pickering said.
“I know you’ll do what you can,” she said, and then Ken had appeared in the aisle and he changed the subject.
Pick’s airplane was a Staggerwing Beechcraft, so called because the upper wing of the single-engine biplane was mounted farther aft than the lower. It was painted bright yellow, and there was a legend painted in script on the engine nacelle, “Once Is Enough.”
“I’ll bite
,” Ernie McCoy said, pointing to the legend after her husband and Pick Pickering had rolled the aircraft from the hangar behind the main house of Through with Engines. “Once what is enough?”
“Once under the Golden Gate Bridge,” Ken McCoy said, smiling at her.
“Mom’s father gave me the Beech when I came home from the Pacific,” Pick said. “It used to be Foster Hotel’s. Now they have an R4D. Together with a long ‘once is enough’ speech. So I had it painted on the nacelle.”
“Once what is enough?” Ernie said.
“I told you, baby,” McCoy said, smiling at her. “Once under the Golden Gate Bridge.”
“He flew this under the Golden Gate Bridge?” Ernie asked, incredulously.
“With poor George Hart with him,” McCoy said, chuckling at the memory.
“At the time it seemed like a splendid idea,” Pick said.
“George had just gone to work for the Boss,” McCoy said. “Colonel Rickabee decided the Boss needed a bodyguard, so I went to Parris Island and found George in boot camp. He’d been a detective in Saint Louis. . . .”
“Still is,” Pick said. “I saw him there a couple of months ago. He’s twice a captain, once in the cops, and once in the Corps Reserve. He’s got an infantry company.”
“I didn’t know that,” McCoy said. “Anyway, one day George is a boot, and the next day he’s a sergeant bodyguard protecting the Boss, and the day after that, the Boss collapses—malaria and exhaustion; that was right after he was hit on the tin can leaving Guadalcanal, and they made him a Brigadier—in the suite in the Foster Lafayette in Washington and winds up in the hospital. Rickabee sends George out here to tell the lunatic here that his father’s going to be all right, and the lunatic here loads him in this—which he stole from his grandfather for the occasion, by the way—and flies under the Golden Gate. George told me he prayed to be able to go back to the safety of boot camp on Parris Island.”
“Hart was with your dad all through the war, wasn’t he?” Ernie asked.
“All the way, right to the end. He was even on the plane when the Old Man went into Japan before the surrender,” Pick said. “Good man, George.”
“And you got away with it?” Ernie asked. “You flew under the bridge, and got away with it?”
“I was a newly rated Marine aviator,” Pick said. “With probably two hundred hours’ total time, and therefore convinced I could fly anything anywhere . . .”
“By the skin of his teeth,” McCoy said, “and with the considerable assistance of Senator Fowler.”
“I don’t like the look in your eyes, Pick,” Ernie said. “Nothing smart-ass with the airplane today, Okay?”
"Nothing could possibly be further from my mind,” Pick said, smiling wickedly.
"She means it, Pick,” McCoy said. “Nothing cute with the airplane.”
Pick looked at McCoy, surprised at his seriousness.
“Ernie’s pregnant,” McCoy said. “This is the fourth time; the first three didn’t—”
“Jesus H. Christ!” Pick said. “Jesus, Ernie, you didn’t say anything. . . .”
“The first time, I told everybody, and everybody was really sympathetic when I miscarried,” Ernie said. “Like it says, ‘once is enough.’ ”
“You’re the only one who knows,” McCoy said. “Don’t make us sorry we told you.”
Pick looked between the two of them for a moment.
“Would congratulations be in order?”
“Nice thought,” Ernie said. “But a little premature. Wait six months, and have another shot at it.”
[THREE]
NORTH ISLAND NAVAL AIR STATION SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA 1400 8 JUNE 1950
“North Island,” Pick Pickering said into his microphone. “Beech Two Oh Two.”
Pick was wearing a flamboyantly flowered Hawaiian shirt, yellow slacks, and loafers without socks.
Ernie McCoy was sitting beside him, wearing a dress. Pick had refused, considering her delicate condition, to let her defer to the rule that men sat in the front of a vehicle— wheeled or winged—and women in the back. McCoy, wearing his uniform, was in the back with the luggage that wouldn’t fit in the baggage compartment.
“Civilian aircraft calling North Island. Go ahead.”
Ernie could hear the conversation over her headset.
“North Island, this is Beech Two Oh Two, VFR at 4,500 over the beautiful blue drink, about ten miles north of your station, request approach and landing, please.”
“Beach Two Oh Two, North Island is a Navy field, closed to civilian traffic. Suggest you contact Lindbergh Field on 214.6.”
“North, Two Oh Two, suggest you contact whoever has the exception to the rules book, and then give me approach and landing.”
“Hold One, Two Oh Two.”
There was a sixty-second pause.
“Two Oh Two, North.”
“Go ahead.”
“North clears Beech Two Oh Two to descend to 2,500 feet for an approach to Runway One Eight. Report when you have the field in sight.”
“Roger. Understand 2,500, Runway One Eight. Beginning descent at this time.”
“Aircraft in the North pattern, be advised that a civilian single Beech biplane will be in the landing pattern.”
“North, Two Oh Two, at 2,500, course one eight zero, I have the runway in sight.”
“Two Oh Two, North. You are cleared as number one for a straight-in approach and landing on Runway One Eight. Be advised that high-performance piston-and-jet aircraft are operating in the area.”
“North, Two Oh Two, understand Number One to One Eight. I am over the outer marker.”
“Two Oh Two, North. Be advised that Lieutenant Colonel Dunn will meet your aircraft at Base Ops.”
“Thank you, North.”
There was no headset in the back of the Staggerwing, and McCoy had not heard the conversation between the North Island control tower and Pick Pickering. And because he was in the rear of the fuselage, when the airplane stopped and he heard the engine dying, he reached over, unlatched the door, and backed out of the airplane. When his feet touched the ground, he turned around and was more than a little startled to see a light colonel standing there wearing the gold wings of a Naval aviator, a chest full of fruit salad, and a displeased look on his face that, combined with the fact he had his hands on his hips, suggested he was displeased with something.
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 carried 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, failing 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 country—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 reserve, I have permission to land here in connection with my reserve 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 compels 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.
Under Fire Page 9