W E B Griffin - Corp 08 - In Dangers Path

by In Dangers Path(Lit)

  Her mother had tears in her eyes when they loaded his suitcase-one of two farewell gifts from Ernie: a folding canvas Val-Pak and a leather toilet kit, the nicest he had ever seen, from Abercrombie & Fitch-into the LaSalle; and she had sounded as if she really meant it when she told him to hurry back and to take care of himself.

  Her father had been uncomfortable, but McCoy understood that. Ernie hadn't made it easy for him when she ended the evening by announcing, "Ken and I are going to bed now." No father wants to hear his only daughter announce that she's about to do what married people do with a man she is not married to.

  But her father was already up the next morning when they went into the kitchen. He made steak and eggs for the both of them, then walked with Ken to the barn to get the LaSalle.

  "Honey," McCoy said, as he slowed to stop at the gate, "why don't you drive this thing while I'm away?"

  "Because it's a gas guzzler," she said.

  "So what?"

  An Army military policeman stepped out of his guard shack and looked very suspiciously at the civilian-who-really-needed-a-shave.

  "This is a restricted area, sir," he said.

  "Magic wand time," Ernie said softly.

  McCoy produced his Office of Naval Intelligence credentials. They produced the expected result.

  "And the lady, sir?"

  "She's with me. Where do I find base operations?"

  "I'll have to get you a sign for the car, sir," the MP said. "And I'll get you a map."

  "See, I told you it would work," Ernie said as the MP stepped back into the guard shack. "Why can't you wave it around, say the magic words, and stay home for a while?"

  He didn't reply.

  After a moment, she said, "Sorry, honey," and took his hand.

  "It's okay," McCoy said.

  "You want me to call Carolyn?"

  "And say what? I think you better stay out of that, honey."

  "She loves him, Ken. I know what she's thinking."

  "She knew he was married when they started," he said. "That something like this was likely to happen."

  "You think Ed's wife is alive?"

  "I think he has to find out, one way or the other."

  "That's not what I asked."

  "No, I don't," he said, then corrected himself. "I don't know. I think if she was going to get out, through India, it would have happened by now."

  "So you think she's dead?"

  She's either dead, or sleeping with some Japanese officer, or officers, to stay alive.

  "I can't root for Carolyn, Ernie. I like Milla."

  "I wasn't rooting for Carolyn," Ernie replied. Yes, I was. I like Carolyn, and I don't know Ed Banning's Russian refugee wife.

  "Is there somebody you left over there I don't know about?" Ernie was horrified to hear herself blurt.

  "No," he said, suddenly very angry, and then went on. "Actually, I have two Chinese wives, one in Shanghai and one in Peking. And seven kids, or is it eight? It's hard for me to keep track."

  The MP returned from his guard shack with the Official Visitor sign for the car and a mimeographed map of the airfield with the base operations building circled, just as the lady with the ONI agent called him, "You bastard!"

  When they saw the LaSalle convertible pull into a visitor's parking slot, Colonel H. A. Albright, USA, and Lieutenant Colonel Edward Banning, USMC, were inside the base operations building, looking out the glass door. Banning was wearing a web belt with a holster.45 hanging from it.

  "They were good cars," Colonel Albright said. "I always wondered why they stopped making them."

  "That's McCoy's," Banning said, and wondered aloud, "How did he get it onto the field?"

  "There's someone with him," Albright said, and added accusingly, "a woman."

  "Well, you know what they say about Marines, Colonel," Banning said. "A girl in every port."

  After McCoy took his Val-Pak from the backseat of the car, he and Ernie walked up to the building.

  "Well, McCoy's here," Banning said, and then asked, in thick innocence, "I wonder whatever can have happened to the personnel records crates?"

  "They'll be here," Albright announced firmly. He checked his watch. "It's not 0900 yet."

  "Good morning, Captain McCoy," Banning said. "And, Ernie, what a pleasant surprise, and I mean surprise, it is to see you here."

  "Hello, Ed," Ernie said.

  She's not amused. And not only because Ken is going away again. She's annoyed with me. In her shoes, I would be, too. She and Carolyn are friends.

  "Colonel Albright, may I present Miss Ernestine Sage?" Banning said. "She and Captain McCoy are. what should I say?"

  "Try 'lovers,' " Ernie said. "How do you do, Colonel?"

  "How do you do, Miss Sage? Colonel Banning and I were just wondering how you managed to get on the base."

  "I gave Captain McCoy the choice: he could either get me in to watch his plane take off, or I would throw a fit at the gate," she said.

  Albright laughed politely. I like this young woman. Very starchy. And a beautiful girl. And obviously in love with McCoy.

  "How, Ken?" Banning asked.

  McCoy shrugged and tapped his jacket pocket. Banning understood he had used his ONI credentials.

  "And have you given any thought to how she's going to get off the base?" Banning asked.

  "Miss Sage can leave with me," Albright heard himself saying. "No problem."

  "Thank you, sir," McCoy said.

  Banning touched Albright's arm and nodded toward the glass doors.

  A small convoy, consisting of a Chevrolet sedan, a Ford panel truck, and a second Chevrolet sedan, was approaching the base operations building. The three vehicles stopped and a man in civilian clothing stepped out of the first car, trying with little success to conceal a Thompson submachine gun by holding it vertically against his body.

  Albright turned to Ernie.

  "I'll meet you here, Miss Sage, in just a few minutes," he said, and walked out of the building.

  Banning went to a door off the base operations foyer, opened it, and motioned to the people inside to come out. Then he walked back to where Ken and Ernie were standing.

  "Five minutes, Ken," he said. "It's the only C-46 in the second line of airplanes. You can't miss it."

  "Aye, aye, sir," McCoy said. "Thank you."

  "Ernie, when you see Carolyn, tell her."

  "What, Ed?"

  "That I'm sorry, I guess," he said. "Tell her I never wanted to hurt her."

  "Yeah," Ernie said. "I know."

  Banning walked out of the building.

  Three men came out of the small room into the foyer. Two of them were Marines-a baby-faced lieutenant and an older man. Ernie had never seen either of them before. They were wearing belts with pistols hanging from them, and had Thompson submachine guns cradled in their arms.

  "Good morning, sir," they greeted McCoy.

  The third man, who was bearded like Ken and wearing civilian clothing, looked vaguely familiar. He had two identical canvas weekend bags, one of which he handed to McCoy.

  "You remember Gunny Zimmerman, Ernie?" McCoy asked.

  "Oh, yes," she lied, and smiled, and then did remember. She had met him one time in New York, in Pennsylvania Station.

  "Ma'am," Zimmerman said, and picked up McCoy's Val-Pak before following the others out of the building.

  Ernie saw that the back of the panel truck had been opened. Everyone put their luggage in the back, then got into the Chevrolet sedans. The little convoy drove away.

  Ernie looked into McCoy's eyes.

  "Damn," she said.

  "Damn," he agreed.

  "They don't give you a gun?" she asked. It was all she could think of that was safe to say.

  He raised the canvas weekend bag. "There's a machine pistol in here," he said.

  "I should have guessed," Ernie said, and then she said what she was thinking. "Goddamn you, Ken, when you come back, you're going to marry me and we're going to make babies
."

  "If I come back."

  "Don't use that goddamned word, 'if'!"

  "Let me finish."

  "Finish."

  "If I come back, we'll get married," McCoy said.

  She threw herself into his arms and stayed there, even though, the way he was holding her and his bag, the barrel of his machine pistol was painfully jabbing into her upper leg.

  And then he broke away.

  "Jesus Christ, I love you!" he announced, his voice breaking toward the end, and then he walked out of the building.

  In a moment, she followed him, and watched as he made his way to a very large twin-engine transport plane with air transport command painted along its fuselage. One of its engines was already running. Colonel Albright stood at the ladder leading down from the door in the fuselage. He shook McCoy's hand, and then McCoy climbed the ladder. As soon as he was inside, the door closed. The plane immediately began to move, taxiing with just one engine.

  Albright walked to her, and they stood in front of the base operations building while the C-46 taxied to the end of the runway, then roared down it, lifting off and heading for the skyscrapers of Manhattan, just visible on the horizon.

  "I understand your Captain McCoy is a very capable officer, Miss Sage," Albright said.

  "There has been a change in our status, Colonel," Ernie said. "Three minutes ago, it went from 'lovers' to 'affianced.' "

  "Then let me offer my best wishes."

  "Thank you," Ernie said.

  [TWO]

  The Greenbrier Hotel

  White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia

  1645 18 March 1943

  "Ah, there you are, James," Commander T. L. Bolemann, MC, USN, said to Captain James B. Weston, USMC, as Weston slid into a chair at his table. "I was afraid I was either going to have to send out the bloodhounds or pay for my own drinks."

  "I was playing pool," Weston said. "And winning. Never give a sucker an even break, as some wise man once said."

  "This will serve as your final psychological counseling session," Dr. Bolemann said, "so be advised that I am watching you professionally."

  A waiter appeared and delivered two martinis. Weston signed the chit, then picked up his glass. "To your very good health, Commander," he said.

  "And to yours, my dear Captain Weston," Bolemann said, and took a very appreciative swallow. "Tell me, James, have you plans for the weekend?"

  "I'm not going to Philadelphia, if that's what you were thinking. Janice has the duty. And anyway, I'll be in Philadelphia on Wednesday."

  "Good, then I won't have to tell you to forget going to Philadelphia, or whatever else you had planned to fritter away your time."

  "What I am going to do is spend the weekend here, watching the clock tick as it counts down on my time in your little rest home," Weston said.

  "Tomorrow, at zero nine hundred hours," Bolemann said, "you will be at the Charleston Municipal Airport, to which destination I have been charged by the management to deliver you sober, shaved, shined, and in the properly appointed uniform."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "You will there be met by a Navy aircraft flying what was described to me as the Pensacola-Norfolk-Washington round-robin. I wonder where the hell that term came from?"

  "I don't know where it came from and I have no idea what you're talking about."

  "You will be transported on silver wings to the U.S. Naval Air Station, Pensacola. From there you will be transported back to Charleston on Monday next, presumably on a similar pair of round-robin wings, with your estimated time of arrival here fifteen thirty hours."

  "Are you going to tell me what this is all about?"

  "The flag officer commanding said Pensacola Naval Air Station, one Rear Admiral Sayre, spoke with our beloved commander, Captain Horace J. Johnson, early this afternoon. The Admiral requested, your schedule here and physical condition permitting, that you be allowed to visit the said Naval Air Station, Pensacola, round-robin transportation to be furnished, over the weekend. Our beloved skipper, who has never been known in thirty years of Naval service, most of it on shore behind a desk, to ever have said no to an admiral, was pleased to grant the Admiral's request."

  "I'll be damned!" Jim said.

  "What's this all about?" Bolemann asked.

  "I can only guess," Jim said.

  He had a sudden chilling thought. Jesus, is Martha behind this? That seems unlikely. But on the other hand, what happened in the San Carlos was important to her. It was not a casual roll in the hay. She told me that she had fantasies, after Greg got killed, about me coming home to comfort her, and that she "died all over again" when she heard I was KIA.

  And she is, after all, Daddy's Darling Daughter.

  "Daddy, Jim is bored out of his mind at that hotel in West Virginia. Is there any way we could get him here for the weekend?"

  "Guess away. Curiosity consumes me," Bolemann said.

  "When I was down there before, he."

  "I gather you are personally acquainted with the Admiral?"

  "When his daughter got married, I was the groom's best man," Weston said. "And General Mclnerney called him about this idiotic pilot retraining. Anyway, he was going to talk to me about what's going to happen when I get to Pensacola when some admiral showed up."

  "It's amazing, isn't it, how these admirals tend to fuck up the best-laid plans of mice and men? Even those of other admirals?"

  ". and he couldn't do it. Either he wants to do it this weekend, or he wants my advice on how to teach people how to fly."

  So instead of getting to talk to the Admiral, I took his daughter out, and then to bed, which is probably number one on the List of 100 Really Dumb Things I Have Done Since Turning Twelve.

  Jesus, does Admiral Sayre see me as a suitable replacement husband for Greg Culhane?

  Oh, my God! Why couldn't you keep your pecker in your pants?

  "Sounds logical," Bolemann said.

  "That's all I can think of," Weston said.

  He finished his martini and looked around for the waiter to order another.

  [THREE]

  Municipal Airport

  Charleston, West Virginia

  0855 19 March 1943

  Weston was surprised to see a Consolidated Catalina PBY-5A turning on final to land at Charleston. It was a Navy airplane, and therefore very likely the one Admiral Sayre had ordered to pick him up at Charleston. But he would have expected that a Douglas R4D-a transport, not a long-range reconnaissance aircraft-would be used for Pensacola-Norfolk-Washington round-robin administrative flights.

  Whoever was flying it, Weston judged professionally, knew what he was doing. The landing was a greaser.

  The last Catalina he himself had been in was the one he'd flown from Pearl Harbor to Cavite in December 1941, shortly before he had been "without prejudice" taken off flight status and transferred to the 4th Marines. Then he saw that pensacola nas was painted on the vertical stabilizer, leaving little question that it was "his" airplane.

  And then came another surprise. When the plane taxied up to the passenger terminal, he recognized the pilot, Major Avery R. Williamson, USMC.

  The last time I saw him, I smelled of booze.

  When Major Williamson climbed out of the Catalina, he was saluted with parade-ground crispness by Captain Weston.

  "Good morning, sir," Weston said.

  Major Williamson's salute was far less crisp.

  "I think I should tell you, Captain," he said, "that I had planned to spend the day-after rising at a reasonable hour, say 0900-afloat on beautiful Pensacola Bay, alone with the sea, the sky, and my wife, who I see damned little of these days."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Instead of flying-since 0500-that ugly airplane at a hundred and fifty knots to Asshole, West Virginia, if you take my meaning."

  This is not an unscheduled stop on a round-robin; Williamson was sent here especially to pick me up.