Counterattack

by W. E. B Griffin

  “But we have to do something, Mac,” the Major General Commandant had said when McInerney reluctantly brought the matter to his attention. “Even Ernie King has heard about your Sergeant Galloway. Use your best judgment; I’ll back you up, whatever you decide.”

  McInerney knew what would satisfy the Navy, short of a court-martial: a letter saying that Galloway had been relieved of flying duties and assigned elsewhere.

  “I’m really furious with you, Galloway, about this,” McInerney said. “You’ve cost me a fine fighter pilot and what I’m sure would have been a superior squadron commander.”

  “Sir?”

  “You! You dumb sonofabitch!” McInerney said, with a fury that started out as an act, but became genuine as he realized that he was speaking the truth.

  “I’m sorry, Sir, I don’t understand.”

  “If you could have restrained your Alan Ladd-Errol Flynn-Ronald Reagan movie-star heroics for a couple of weeks, there would have been bars on your collar points and a squadron to command. You could more than likely have done some real damage to the enemy, a lot more than you could have caused even if you had managed to get that jury-rigged wreck to Wake. And probably taught some of these kids things that just might have kept them alive.”

  “I never even thought about a commission,” Galloway replied, so surprised, McInerney noticed, that he did not append “Sir” to his reply.

  “That’s your goddamn trouble! You don’t think!”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “The Corps spent a lot of time and money training you, Galloway, and now that’s all going to be wasted.”

  “Sir?”

  “It will be a cold day in hell, Galloway, before you get in a cockpit again.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Galloway said.

  McInerney saw in Galloway’s eyes that that had gotten to him. The worst punishment that could be meted out to someone like Galloway was to take flying, any kind of flying, but especially flying a fighter plane, away from him.

  I wonder why I said that? I don’t mean it. For a number of reasons, including both that the Corps needs pilots like Galloway, and that I have no intention of punishing him for doing something I would have done myself.

  “It has not been decided whether to proceed with your court-martial, Galloway. Until that decision has been made, you will report to MAG-11 at Quantico. You will work in maintenance. But you will not get in the cockpit of a Texan, or any other aircraft, to so much as taxi it down a taxiway.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  “That’s all, Sergeant. You may go.”

  “Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir,” T/Sgt. Charley Galloway said. He did an about-face and marched out of General McInerney’s office.

  Lieutenant Orfutt came into General McInerney’s office a moment later.

  “Have a memo typed up to General Holcomb,” McInerney said, “saying that I have temporarily assigned Sergeant Galloway to Quantico for duty as an aircraft maintenance supervisor. And then do a letter to CINCPAC saying that appropriate action in the case of Sergeant Galloway is being implemented.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” Orfutt said. “Damned shame to lose his experience.”

  “You’re not listening carefully, again, Charlie,” McInerney said. “The operative word is temporarily.”

  “Oh,” Orfutt said, and smiled. “Yes, Sir.”

  “And I said something in the heat of anger that might make some sense. Get a teletype out to the 1st and 2nd Aircraft wings, telling them to review the records of the Naval Aviation Pilots and submit to me within seven days a list of those they can recommend for commissions. Put in there somewhere that the lack of a college degree is not to be considered disqualifying.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  “Is there anything else, Charlie?”

  “Sir, you’re having lunch at the Army-Navy Club with Admiral Ward.”

  “Oh, Christ! Can I get out of it?”

  “This would be the third time you’ve canceled, Sir.”

  McInerney looked at his watch.

  “Order up the car.”

  “I’ve done that, Sir. It’s outside.”

  “Sometimes you’re just too goddamn efficient, Charlie. With a little bit of luck, maybe it would have had an accident on the way here from the motor pool.”

  “Sorry, Sir,” Orfutt said, and went to the clothes tree and took General McInerney’s overcoat from it and held it up for him.

  Fifteen minutes later, as the Marine-green 1941 Ford was moving down Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House, General McInerney suddenly sat up. He had been glancing casually out the side window, but now he stared intently, then turned and stared out the back.

  “Stop the car!” he ordered.

  “Sir?” the driver, a young corporal, asked, confused.

  “That was English, son,” McInerney snapped. “Pull to the curb and stop!”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” the Corporal replied, and complied with his orders.

  “There’s a Navy officer coming up behind us on the sidewalk. Intercept him and tell him I would be grateful for a moment of his time,” McInerney said. Then he slumped low in the seat.

  The driver got quickly out of the car, found the Navy officer, and relayed General McInerney’s desires to him. He walked just behind him to the car, then quickly stepped ahead of him to pull the door open.

  The Navy officer, a captain, saluted.

  “Good afternoon, General,” he said.

  “Get in,” General McInerney ordered.

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” the Captain said.

  The Captain complied with his orders.

  General McInerney examined him carefully.

  “‘Fuck the Navy!’ Isn’t that what I remember you saying, Captain?”

  “Yes, Sir, I seem to recall having said something along those lines.”

  “And how long now have you been wearing Navy blue?”

  “Three days, Sir. How do I look?”

  “If people didn’t know any better, they’d think you were a Navy captain. The look of confusion in your eyes, for example.”

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  “I’ve got a lunch date I can’t get out of,” General McInerney said. “But I can give you a ride. Where are you headed?”

  “Just down the block, Sir.”

  “To the hotel your father-in-law owns?”

  “Actually, General, to the White House. Secretary Knox wants me to meet the President. I’ve been invited to lunch.”

  “Oh, Flem, you sonofabitch! Why am I not surprised?”

  (Four)

  The White House

  Washington, D.C.

  30 January 1942

  “My name is Pickering,” Fleming Pickering said to the civilian guard at the White House gate. The civilian had come out of a small, presumably heated guardhouse at his approach. The two soldiers on guard, their ears and noses reddened by the cold, apparently were required to stay outside and freeze.

  “Let me see your identification,” the guard said curtly, even rudely.

  Fleming produced his new Navy identification card. The guard examined it carefully, comparing the photograph on it to Pickering’s face.

  “Wait here,” the guard said, and went back into the guardhouse. Pickering saw him pick up a telephone and speak with someone. He did not come back out of the guardhouse.

  A minute later, a Marine sergeant in greens came down the driveway. He saluted.

  “Would you come with me, please, Captain Pickering?” he said politely, crisply.

  Pickering marched after him up the curving drive toward the White House. There was a crust of ice on the drive. It had been sanded, but the road was slippery.

  The Marine led him to a side entrance, toward the building that had been built at the turn of the century to house the State, War, and Navy departments of the U.S. Government, and then up a rather ordinary staircase to the second floor.

  Pickering found himself in a wide corridor. A clean-cut man in his early thirties sat at a s
mall desk facing the wall, and two other men cut from the same bolt of cloth were standing nearby. Pickering was sure they were Secret Service agents.

  “This is Captain Pickering,” the Marine sergeant said. The man at the desk nodded, glanced at his wristwatch, and made a notation in a small, wire-bound ledger.

  “This way, please, Captain,” the Marine said, and led Pickering halfway down the corridor to a double door. He knocked. The door was opened by a very large, very black man in a starched white jacket.

  “Captain Pickering,” the Marine sergeant said.

  The black man opened the door fully. “Please come in, Sir,” he said. “The President’s expecting you.”

  This was, Pickering realized, the President’s private suite, the Presidential apartments, or whatever it was called. He was surprised. He had expected to be fed in some sort of official dining room.

  A tall, well-built, bespectacled man in the uniform of a Marine captain came out of an inner room. In the moment, Pickering recognized him as one of Roosevelt’s sons, he had no idea which one. The Captain said, “Good afternoon, Sir. Let me help you with your coat. Dad and Mr. Knox are right inside.”

  Pickering handed him his uniform cap and then took off his topcoat and handed that over. Captain Roosevelt handed both to the steward, then motioned Pickering ahead of him through a door.

  The President of the United States, in a wheelchair, rolled across the room to him, his hand extended. Pickering knew, of course, that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been crippled by polio, but the wheelchair surprised him. He was almost never photographed sitting in it.

  “We’ve been talking about you, Captain,” Roosevelt said as he shook Pickering’s hand in a very firm grip. “Have your ears been burning?”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. President,” Pickering said.

  He heard his father-in-law Andrew Foster’s dry voice in his mind: “The sonofabitch is obviously a socialist, but giving the devil his due, he probably saved this country from going communist.”

  “Naval officers are forbidden to drink on duty,” the President said, smiling warmly, “except, of course, when the Commander in Chief doesn’t want to drink alone.”

  Another steward appeared at that moment with a glass of whiskey on a small silver tray.

  “Thank you,” Pickering said, and raised the glass. “Your health, Sir,” he said, then took a sip. It was Scotch, good Scotch.

  “That all right?” Roosevelt asked. “Frank said you’re a Scotch drinker.”

  “This is fine, Sir.”

  “He also told me that you’d much rather be wearing a uniform like Jimmy’s,” the President went on, “but that he’d convinced you you would be of greater use in the Navy.”

  “I was a Marine, Sir,” Pickering said. “Once a Marine, always a Marine.”

  Roosevelt laughed.

  “Frank also told me to watch out for you—that if I let my guard down, you’d probably ask me for a Letter of Marque.”

  Pickering glanced at Frank Knox, who smiled and shook his head.

  “May I have one, Sir?” Pickering said.

  Roosevelt laughed heartily.

  “No, you may not,” he said. “I admire your spirit, Pickering, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to fight this war like everybody else—including me—the way someone tells you to.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” Pickering said, smiling.

  I am being charmed. I wonder why.

  “Why don’t we go to the table and sit down?” Roosevelt said, gesturing toward a small table near windows overlooking the White House lawn. Pickering saw there were only four places set.

  Stewards immediately began placing small plates of hors d’oeuvres before them.

  Roosevelt began to talk about the British commandos. Pickering quickly saw that he was very impressed with them—as much for the public’s perception of them as for any bona fide military capability.

  “When Britain was reeling across Europe from the Nazi Blitzkrieg,” Roosevelt announced, as if making a speech before a large audience, “when they were literally bloody and on their knees, and morale was completely collapsing, a few small commando operations, militarily insignificant in themselves, did wonders to restore civilian morale and faith in their government.”

  “I had really never thought of it in that context,” Pickering said honestly. “But I can see your point.”

  Roosevelt, Pickering was perfectly willing to grant, was a genius at understanding—and molding—public opinion.

  “A very few brave and resourceful men can change the path of history, Pickering,” the President said sonorously. “And fortunately, right now we have two such men. You know Colonel Jim Doolittle, don’t you?”

  “If you mean, Mr. President, the Jim Doolittle who used to be vice-president of Shell Oil, yes, Sir. I know him.”

  “I thought you might,” the President said. “Two of a kind, you know, you two. Not thinking of the cut in pay that putting on a uniform meant, but rather rushing to answer the call of the trumpet.”

  I really am being charmed, Fleming Pickering decided. He wants something from me. I wonder what. Not the damned ships again!

  “Frank, have you told Captain Pickering what Jim Doolittle’s up to?”

  “It’s top secret, Mr. President,” Secretary Knox replied.

  “Well, I think we can trust Captain Pickering…. Captain Pickering, would you be offended if I called you by your Christian name?”

  “Not at all, Mr. President.”

  “Well, Frank, if Flem’s going to be working for you, he’ll find out soon enough anyway. Wouldn’t you say?”

  “Probably, Mr. President.”

  “Jim Doolittle, Flem, came to me with the idea that he can take B-25 Mitchell bombers off from the deck of an aircraft carrier.”

  “Sir?” Pickering asked, not understanding.

  “The Japanese Emperor is sitting in his palace in Tokyo, convinced that he’s absolutely safe from American bombing. Colonel Doolittle and his brave men are about to disabuse him of that notion,” Roosevelt said, cocking his cigarette holder almost vertically in his mouth as he smiled with pleasure.

  “The idea, Pickering,” Secretary Knox said, “is that we will carry Doolittle on a carrier within striking distance of Tokyo; they will launch from the carrier, bomb Tokyo, and then fly on to China.”

  “Fascinating,” Pickering said, and then blurted, “but can Doolittle do it? Can you fly airplanes that large from aircraft carriers?”

  “Doolittle thinks so. They’re down in Florida now, in the Panhandle, learning how,” Knox said. “Yes, I think it can be done.”

  “Christ, that’s good news!” Pickering said excitedly. “So far, all we’ve done is take a licking.”

  “And there will be other reverses in the near future, I am very much afraid,” Roosevelt said.

  “The Philippines, you mean?” Pickering asked.

  “You don’t believe that Douglas MacArthur will be able to hold the Philippines?” Roosevelt asked. He was still smiling, but there was a hint of coldness in his voice.

  Jesus Christ, my mouth has run away with me again!

  “Mr. President, I don’t pretend to know anything about our forces in the Philippines, but I do know that they will require supplies. I do know something about shipping. I know that there are not enough bottoms to supply a large military force, and even if there were, there are not enough warships after Pearl Harbor to protect the sea lanes to the Philippines.”

  “Aren’t you concerned, talking like that,” Roosevelt asked, carefully, “that someone who doesn’t know you might think you’re a defeatist?”

  “If I have spoken out of turn, Mr. President…”

  Roosevelt looked at him thoughtfully for a long moment before he spoke again.

  “I said, a while ago, we have two brave and resourceful men,” he said. “Jimmy here is allied with the other one. And don’t tell me this is top secret, too, Frank. I know.”

  “Yes, Mr. Presid
ent,” Knox replied.

  “The commander of the Marine Guard at White Sulphur Springs a few years back,” Roosevelt said, “was a man named Evans Carlson. You happen to know him?”

  “No, Sir.”

  “Major Carlson is now out in San Diego, starting up a unit I think of as American Commandos. But I don’t want it to appear as if we’re slavishly copying our British cousins, so we’re calling them Raiders. All volunteers, highly trained, who will hit the Japanese and then run.”

  “Sounds very interesting,” Pickering said.

  I wonder how he’s going to move them around? It’s thirty, forty miles from the English coast to the French. Distances in the Pacific are measured in multiple hundreds, multiple thousands, of miles.

  “Frank had the Navy yards convert some old four-stacker destroyers to high-speed transports,” Roosevelt said.

  He’s reading my mind, Pickering thought.

  “The idea, Flem,” Captain Roosevelt said, “is that by striking the Japanese where they don’t expect it, in addition to what damage we do there, we will force the Japanese to put forces they could use elsewhere to work guarding all of their islands.”

  “I see,” Pickering said.

  “And, Flem,” the President said passionately, “think of what it will do for morale! As you just said, all we’ve done so far in this war is take a licking and lick our wounds!”

  “Yes, Sir. I understand.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to tell you that my enthusiasm is not shared by either the Navy or the Marine Corps,” the President said.

  “Now, Frank,” Secretary Knox said, “that’s not true.”

  “They are dancing with Evans Carlson with all the enthusiasm of a fourteen-year-old in dancing school paired off with a fat girl,” Roosevelt said, and everyone laughed. “They have to do it, but they don’t have to like it.”

  “Frank,” Secretary Knox said, “if you really think that’s the case, I’ll send Captain Pickering out there to see what needs straightening out.”

  Roosevelt looked as if he had just heard a startlingly brilliant suggestion for the first time.

  You fraudulent old sonofabitch, Pickering thought, that’s what this whole thing with your boy here for a private lunch is all about. Knox brought me here to let you know what he intended to do with me, and you’ll let him, providing I take care of this Major Evans Carlson. Tit for tat. I haven’t been here a week, and I’m already in politics.