Under Fire

by Griffin, W. E. B.

  MacArthur looked at him intently for a moment.

  “Jean, darling,” he said. “Would you give Fleming and me a moment alone?”

  Jesus, what’s this? Does he know something I don’t? Did Cushman find Pick’s body?

  He imagined the exchange:

  Does Pickering know that they found the body?

  No, sir. I’d planned to go to the Imperial from here to tell him myself.

  That will not be necessary. I will tell him. We are old friends.

  "Of course,” Mrs. MacArthur said, softly, touched Pickering’s arm for a moment, and then walked out of the room.

  “Let us speak as soldiers,” MacArthur said.

  Pickering waited for him to go. He was aware that his stomach ached.

  “General Willoughby believes there is more than a seventy-thirty probability that Major Pickering survived the crash,” MacArthur said.

  “He does?”

  “And, if that is the case, that there is an eighty-twenty probability that Major Pickering is now a prisoner of the enemy.”

  Pickering didn’t reply.

  “I know you’re as aware as I am, Fleming, that the enemy has been executing prisoners out of hand,” MacArthur went on, “but—and this is Willoughby’s professional judgment, not a clutching at straws—in this case, because (a) your son is an officer; and (b) a Marine aviator, about whom the enemy knows very little, it would be in the enemy’s interests to keep him alive.”

  “I see,” Pickering said.

  “As one soldier to another, Fleming, there is something that might happen to turn this situation.”

  “Sir?”

  “As we speak, Ambassador Averell Harriman and General Matt Ridgway are somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii, en route here.”

  “General Howe told me, sir,” Pickering said.

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “In general terms, sir.”

  “Harriman is coming because the President didn’t quite understand my going to Taipei to meet with Chiang Kai-shek, ” MacArthur said. “I had no intention of asking for Chinese Nationalist troops for the war in Korea, and not only because all he would have to offer is poorly trained and poorly equipped troops. What I feared at the time was that the Chinese might see our difficulties in Korea as an opportunity for them to invade Formosa. I wanted to disabuse them of the notion that the United States would permit them to do so without instant retaliation. My presence there made that point. I was prepared to send several fighter squadrons to Formosa, but intelligence developed by Willoughby has convinced me that will not be necessary. The Chinese Communists are not preparing to attack Formosa. They do not wish to go to war with us.”

  “I see.”

  “The President, as I say, apparently didn’t quite understand my motives. When I meet with Harriman, I will be able to put any misunderstanding to rest once and for all.”

  “And General Ridgway?”

  “General Ridgway is coming for two reasons, I believe. He is the prime candidate to become chief of staff. I think he wants to see for himself what’s going on in Korea. There is—again, a question of not having firsthand knowledge of the situation—some concern with the manner in which General Walker is waging that war. There is also, in the Pentagon, far from the scene of action, a good deal of uneasiness about my plan to invade the west coast of Korea, at Inchon, at the earliest possible date.”

  “You have decided to make the Inchon invasion?”

  “I hope to convince General Ridgway, and through him the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President, that not only would such an action bring this war to a satisfactory conclusion very quickly, but also that it is the only way to avoid a lengthy and bloody conflict to drive the enemy from the Korean peninsula. The President committed the United States to the defense of South Korea, which means the defeat, total defeat, of North Korea’s army. There is no substitute for victory, Fleming, as you are well aware.”

  “And you think that Ridgway is the key to JCS approval of Inchon?”

  “Yes. And I don’t see that as a problem. When I lay the operation on the table, he can’t help but see—he has the reputation of being not only a fighter, but one of the finest brains in the Army—how it would cut the enemy’s supply lines, leaving the troops now in South Korea unable to wage war, in a position where they can be annihilated.”

  “General, I’m way over my head here, but I understand there are problems involved in bringing an invasion fleet to Inchon.”

  “Ned Almond and I have considered them carefully,” MacArthur said. “They can be overcome.”

  “Yes, sir,” Pickering said.

  “All of this is to bring a ray of hope—faint but real—into your painful situation,” MacArthur said. “The situation as I see it is this: The North Koreans have failed to sweep us into the sea at Pusan. Walker’s Eighth Army grows stronger by the day, and the enemy weaker. Willoughby believes, and I concur, that they are growing desperate. They will make every effort to continue their attack, and every day Walker will be better prepared to turn the attack. In that circumstance, the movement of prisoners of war to North Korea—if indeed they ever intended to do so—has a low priority.

  “If Ned Almond can land with a two-division force at Inchon and cut the head of the dragon from its body—and I believe he can—then it is entirely possible that rapidly moving armored columns can sweep through the territory now held by the enemy and liberate our men from their prison compounds. In much the same way the First Cavalry operated—you were there, you remember—when I returned to the Philippines.”

  “I remember,” Pickering said.

  That’s more pissing in the wind. But right now, pissing in the wind is all I have.

  “Your glass is empty, Fleming. Another?”

  “Thank you, sir, but no.”

  “One more, Fleming, and then you can go. It will help you to sleep.”

  “All right,” Pickering said. “Thank you.”

  [TWO]

  Master Sergeant Charley Rogers was sitting in one of the armchairs in the lobby of the Imperial Hotel when Pickering walked into it. He was in civilian clothing, and there was a copy of Life magazine in his lap. He rose quickly and intercepted Pickering.

  “Hello, Charley,” Pickering said. “What’s up?”

  “General Howe thought maybe you’d feel up to a nightcap, General,” Rogers said. “But he said it was a suggestion, not an order.”

  Howe has heard about MacArthur’s limousine hauling me off.

  “Sure,” Pickering said. “Why not? How was dinner?”

  “We went to a place that serves Kobe beef,” Rogers said. “What that means is they massage the cattle to make it tender. The steaks were beautiful, cost an arm and a leg, and tasted like bread dough.”

  Pickering chuckled.

  “I had ham and eggs for breakfast years ago in a hotel in—here, come to think of it, Yokohama—and it looked like a magazine advertisement. Just beautiful. But it was ice cold. They’d made it the night before and put it in the refrigerator.”

  Rogers smiled. “The CIA guy was here. Hart wasn’t here, so I took the message. The CIA guy in Pusan got your message about McCoy.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How are you doing, General?”

  Pickering shrugged.

  “First, I feel sorry for my wife, then for me, and finally I get around to feeling sorry for my son. I think my priorities are screwed up.”

  “I lost a boy in War Two,” Rogers said, and left it at that.

  “Thank you for coming, Fleming,” General Howe said. “Bullshit aside, I wondered what the Viceroy had to say.” He turned to Rogers and signaled that he was to make Pickering a drink.

  “He was very gracious about my son,” Pickering said, “and I wondered how he found out. And then I got—now that I think about it—a very skillful pitch that I should do what I could to convince General Ridgway that Inchon makes sense.”

  “I got a message he and Harriman
are in—I suppose were in—Hawaii. It was just a fuel stop,” Howe said, and then asked, “What did he say about his going to see Chiang Kai-shek?”

  “That the President misunderstood his intentions. He said he never wanted Chinese Nationalist troops because they’d have to be trained and equipped, and he went there solely to impress on the Communists that we were behind Chiang and wouldn’t permit an invasion of Formosa.”

  “You believe him?”

  Pickering nodded.

  Master Sergeant Rogers handed him a drink. Pickering noticed that he’d made himself one.

  Rogers is far more to Howe than an errand boy. What is that line, “Command is a lonely thing”? I guess the next step is “Even generals need friends.”

  I’ll bet that when I get to my room, George Hart will be sitting there, waiting for me, wondering, worrying, where the hell I am.

  “You mind if I message the President, and tell that to Harriman when he gets here?” Howe asked.

  “No, of course not. I should have thought of messaging President Truman myself.”

  “You heard that, Charley,” Howe said. “Find Sergeant Keller and have him get that off right now.”

  Rogers nodded.

  “If you see Captain Hart, Charley,” Pickering said. “He doesn’t know where I went. Tell him I’m here.”

  “Ask him if he wants a drink, Charley,” Howe ordered.

  Rogers wordlessly left the room.

  “You think he can carry it off, don’t you?” Howe asked.

  “The Inchon invasion?”

  Howe nodded.

  “Yes, I do,” Pickering said.

  “Right now, it’s the Viceroy, that gang of sycophants around him, and you, versus the collective wisdom of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Howe said.

  “I thought the Bible salesman had made a convert of you,” Pickering said.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Howe said. “I started thinking about McCoy and Taylor. What that is, really, Fleming, is two junior officers, a squad of Marines, and maybe two squads of Korean policemen taking two small islands. The invasion can’t succeed unless they succeed. On solemn reflection, that seems to be a lousy way to stage an invasion.”

  “What makes it worse,” Pickering agreed, “is that Taylor’s idea makes a hell of a lot more sense than what the Dai-Ichi planners want to do: take the islands on D Minus One.”

  Howe looked at him intently for a moment.

  “Having granted my point, you still think it will work?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Is that what they call ‘faith’? As in ‘faith in God’ or ‘faith in the Viceroy’?” Howe challenged, pleasantly.

  Or maybe I think it will work because I desperately want it to work, so that one of El Supremo’s armored flying columns can liberate Pick from a POW camp?

  No. That’s not it. I think it will work because MacArthur says it will. I thought that before tonight, even before Pick got shot down.

  “I’d like to think it’s a calm, professional judgment, but since I’m not really a professional, and with my son missing, I don’t suppose I’m thinking very calmly—clearly— either.”

  Howe opened his mouth to reply, but stopped when the door opened and George Hart came in.

  “That was quick, George,” Pickering said.

  “Something was said about a drink,” Hart said, and then blurted, “When I came back from the movie, and you weren’t in the suite . . .”

  My God, he was really worried about me!

  “You must be the only man in the hotel who didn’t know that Colonel Huff carried me off to meet with MacArthur,” Pickering said.

  “That miserable sonofabitch!” Hart said, furiously.

  “Captain,” General Howe said, amused, “you are referring to the very senior aide-de-camp to the Supreme Commander of all he surveys. A little respect might be in order.”

  “Very little,” Pickering said.

  Christ, that was a dumb thing to say. You must be more than a little plastered, Fleming Pickering.

  “I’m talking about that CIC clown in the hall. I asked him if he had seen you, and he said he had no idea where you were.”

  “So you went looking for me?” Pickering asked, softly.

  “Yes, sir. I thought maybe you took a walk, or something. ”

  “Or was having a belt or two in the hotel bar? You looked for me there?”

  “Yes, sir. I was about to go to General Howe—I didn’t know what the hell to do—when Charley . . . Sergeant Rogers . . . came in the suite.”

  “I’m all right, George. MacArthur heard about Pick and wanted to express his concern.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Make yourself a drink, George,” Howe said.

  He looked at Pickering as he spoke.

  My God, he’s thinking the same thing I am. George was really concerned, really worried. More than that, he saw that George’s concern went far beyond that of an aide-de-camp /bodyguard for his general. It was—what?—loving concern? Well, maybe not loving concern, more like the concern of a son for his father. But isn’t that, by definition, loving concern?

  “No, thank you, sir,” Hart said. “I’ll just stick around until the boss decides to go to bed.”

  “The boss has just decided to do just that,” Pickering said, and drained his glass. He looked at Howe. “By your leave, sir?”

  “That sounded very military, Flem,” Howe said. “Very professional, if you take my meaning. And just to keep things straight between us: I don’t think you’re capable of not thinking clearly. Goodnight, my friend.”

  When Pickering got out of the shower and went into his bedroom, a crack of light under the door to the sitting room made him suspect that George was still in there.

  “Go to bed, Captain Hart!” he called.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Hart called back. “In just a minute.”

  Pickering got in bed and turned out the light.

  It was three full minutes before the crack of light under the door went out.

  Well, if I think about it, it’s not so strange that George thinks of me as a son thinks of a father. From the time the Killer recruited him from Parris Island, from the first day, he’s been taking care of me. When I was sick in Washington. All through the war. After. I was his best man when he got married, because he’d lost his own father. His second son is Fleming Pickering Hart. And not to kiss my ass. On half a dozen occasions, I made it as clear as I could that I would be delighted to help—loan him money, give him money—and he always turned me down.

  And he was really uncomfortable when Patricia and I set up the trust funds for his kids.

  What does that mean?

  It means that while I may have—probably have—lost one son, I still have another. Named George.

  Jesus! Not one. Two! The Killer.

  The three of them were like brothers.

  Patricia was really upset when Ernie married the Killer and not Pick. I wasn’t. As far as I was concerned, the Killer was family, and it didn’t really matter whether Ernie married Pick or Ken McCoy.

  My God! The Pickering line ends here. And the Foster line.

  Now, obviously there is very little chance that there will ever be a squalling infant named either Malcolm S. Pickering Jr., or Fleming Pickering II. Or Foster Pickering. Anything like that.

  Does that matter to me?

  Pick being gone matters a hell of a lot. I really would have liked to see the family continue. Patricia will never be a grandmother of a child carrying her father’s name.

  And that thought opens the door to another problem I never considered before: What happens to P&FE and Foster Hotels, now that Pick won’t be around to inherit them, the way that Patricia and I did?

  Jesus H. Christ, all the time and money we spent on lawyers to make sure that when Patricia and I were gone, Pick would get P&FE, and Foster Hotels, Inc., and not the goddamn government.

  That’s all down the tube.

  What does
it matter?

  Who cares?

  Something will have to be done.

  I will be goddamned if the government gets P&FE and Foster. Or one of those goddamned charities of Greater San Francisco United Charities, Inc.!!!

  Leave it to George and the Killer?

  Suddenly dumping enormous sums of money on someone whose previous experience with money is worrying about how to make the mortgage and the car payments is a sure blueprint for disaster.

  If we split it between George and the Killer, Ernie could handle the Killer’s share, but George?

  That will require some thought. Just as soon as this mess is over—hell, before it’s over—I’m going to have to get with the goddamn lawyers. . . .

  Jesus Christ, Pickering, you are drunk!

  You don’t even know that Pick is dead, and you’re worrying about what’s going to happen to his inheritance.

  Oh, Pick, goddamn it!

  Why you and not me? My life’s about over, and yours was just starting!

  He felt a sudden pain in his stomach, and he was having trouble breathing, and his throat convulsed, and his eyes watered.

  Jesus Christ, I’m crying!

  Dear God, please let Pick be alive!

  [THREE]

  EVENING STAR HOTEL TONGNAE, SOUTH KOREA 0605 5 AUGUST 1950

  Captain Kenneth R. McCoy went from sleep to full wakefulness in no more than five seconds. It had nothing to do with where he was, or any subconscious perception of danger. That was just the way he woke. Sometimes it annoyed his wife, who took anywhere from three to thirty minutes to be fully awake, and was not prepared to report, for example, what the guy at the garage had said about the condition of the brakes on the car, the moment she opened her eyes.

  Without moving his head, McCoy looked around the room, establishing where he was. Next he looked at his wristwatch, establishing the time, and a moment later, kicked off the sheet covering him and swung his legs out of the bed.

  He had slept naked, anticipating a hot and humid night. That hadn’t happened. The hotel was not only close enough to the water to get a breeze from it, but some clever Oriental—he wondered if it was a clever Japanese or a clever Korean; but whoever had built the “rest house” for the officers of the Emperor’s army—had rigged some sort of powerless device that directed the breeze into the rooms.