Close Combat

by W. E. B Griffin

  He put the handset in its cradle.

  “Lieutenant Pickering, I’m Gerald Samson, the general manager. I’m so sorry about the mix-up. We just had no record of your reservation.”

  “No problem,” Pick said. “All fixed.” He gestured around the room. “This is very nice. Lieutenant Dunn and I feel right at home in here. There’s only one thing missing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Bare-breasted maidens in grass skirts,” Pick said.

  “And poisonous insects,” Lieutenant Bill Dunn said, coming into the room. There was the sound of a toilet flushing. “Lots and lots of large poisonous insects.”

  Mr. Samson smiled uneasily. Thirty-five minutes previously, Paul Dester, the day manager, had telephoned him at home. Dester explained then that two Marine officers were in the lobby, insisting they had a reservation made by the Andrew Foster in San Francisco. Though Dester found no record of such a reservation (it would have been in the name of a Lieutenant Pickering), he called the Andrew Foster to check. And the day manager there said he was quite positive that no reservation had been made for Lieutenant Pickering. He would have remembered; Lieutenant Pickering was Andrew Foster’s grandson.

  At that point Dester actually had to call to ask what he was supposed to do:

  “Is there a cottage open?”

  “Only B, and we’re holding that for Spencer Tracy. For Mr. Tracy’s friends. They’ll be in tomorrow.”

  “Put Mr. Pickering in B, and send fruit and cheese and champagne. We’ll worry about Mr. Tracy’s friends later. I’ll be right there.”

  When Mr. Samson came into the room, the fruit-and-cheese basket and champagne were untouched. The reason for that became almost immediately apparent when a bellman appeared with bottles of scotch and bourbon, glasses, and ice.

  “How many bedrooms are there here?” Pick asked.

  “There are three, Mr. Pickering.”

  “A guest of mine, and a guest of his, will be arriving sometime this afternoon. Captain Charles Galloway. They’ll need the bigger bedroom.”

  “That would be the Palm Room,” Samson said, indicating one of the doors with a nod of his head. “We’ll be on the lookout for Captain Galloway, Sir.”

  “Thank you,” Pick said, and then the telephone rang and he grabbed it.

  “I’ve found a Marine Public Affairs Detachment, Sir. It’s in the Post Office Building. Should I ring it?” the operator asked.

  “Please,” Pick said, and covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “We’re about to have a little nip to cut the dust of the trail, Mr. Samson. Can we ask you to join us?”

  “Los Angeles Detachment, Marine Corps Public Relations, Lieutenant Macklin speaking.”

  “I’m trying to find Major Dillon,” his caller said.

  “May I ask who is calling?”

  “My name is Pickering.”

  “Lieutenant Pickering?”

  “Right.”

  “Where are you, Lieutenant?”

  “I asked first. Where’s Dillon?”

  “One moment, please,” Macklin said, and covered the microphone with his hand. He’d recently read an extract of the service record of First Lieutenant Pickering, Malcolm S., USMCR; and Pickering hadn’t been a first lieutenant long enough to wear the lacquer off his bars.

  I outrank him, and I don’t have to tolerate his being a wise-ass. But on the other hand, we’re going to be together for the next two weeks, and it would be better if an amicable relationship existed.

  “Major, it’s Lieutenant Pickering,” Macklin said.

  “Let me have it,” Jake Dillon said, and took the telephone from Macklin. “Hey, Pick, where are you?”

  “In the Beverly Hills.”

  “Dunn with you?”

  “Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”

  “You’re supposed to be in the Roosevelt.”

  “I don’t like the Roosevelt,” Pick said.

  “Have you been at the sauce?”

  “Not yet. They just brought it.”

  “Where in the Hills?”

  “Cottage B. It has a charming South Pacific ambience. You ought to see it.”

  “I will. I’ll be right there. And you will be there when I arrive. Both of you.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir. Whatever the Major desires, Sir.”

  “Let me add ‘sober,’” Dillon said, and hung up. He looked at Macklin. “Well, that’s two out of three. Or five out of six, counting the three we already have in the Roosevelt. I don’t think we’ll have a problem with Captain Galloway.”

  “They’re not in the Hollywood Roosevelt, Sir?”

  “No, they’re in the Foster Beverly Hills.”

  “I don’t understand, Sir.”

  The telephone rang, and again Lieutenant Macklin answered it in the prescribed military manner.

  “Sir,” his caller said, “may I speak with Major Dillon, please. My name is Corp—Lieutenant Easterbrook.”

  Macklin covered the microphone with his hand.

  “It’s Lieutenant Easterbrook, Sir,” he said.

  In Lieutenant Macklin’s professional judgment, the commissioning of Corporal Easterbrook was an affront to every commissioned officer who’d earned his commission the hard way. The right way (and the hardest way) to earn a commission, of course, was to go through Annapolis, as he himself had. But failing that, you could take a course of instruction at an Officer Candidate School that would at least impart the absolute basic knowledge a commissioned officer needed and weed out those who were not qualified to be officers. Simply doing your duty as an enlisted man on Guadalcanal should not be enough to merit promotion to commissioned status.

  These thoughts made Macklin wonder again about his own promotion. If he had been able to answer the telephone “Captain Macklin speaking, Sir,” perhaps Pickering’s tone would have been a little more respectful.

  Dillon took the phone from him again.

  “Hey, Easterbunny, where are you? How was the leave?”

  “Just fine, Sir. I’m at the airport, Sir. You said to call when I got in.”

  “Great. Look, hop in a cab and tell him to take you…Wait a minute. In ten minutes, be out in front. Lieutenant Macklin will pick you up. You came on TWA, right?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Be out in front in ten minutes,” Dillon said, and broke the connection with his finger. He dialed a number from memory.

  “Jake Dillon,” he said to whoever answered, as Macklin watched with curiosity. “Is Veronica Wood on the lot? Get her for me, will you?”

  He turned to Macklin.

  “The station wagon is here, right?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Go pick up the Easterbunny, and take him to the Foster Beverly Hills, Cottage B. I’ll meet you there. It’s about time you met Pickering and Dunn. And they probably know where Galloway is, too.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” Macklin said.

  “Hey, baby,” Jake said to the telephone. “I’m glad I caught you. You want to meet me, as soon as you can, at the Hills?”

  There was a pause.

  “I don’t want to sit around the goddamn Polo Lounge either. I want you to meet a couple of friends of mine, Marines. They’re in B.”

  “Boy,” Second Lieutenant Robert F. Easterbrook, USMCR, said to First Lieutenant R. B. Macklin, USMC, as they drove up the palm-tree-lined drive to the entrance of the Foster Beverly Hills Hotel, “this is classy!”

  Lieutenant Macklin ignored him and looked for a place to park the station wagon. Another of Major Dillon’s odd notions was to decree that enlisted men could almost always be put to doing something more useful than chauffeuring officers around, and that henceforth the officers (meaning Macklin, of course; Dillon habitually drove his own car) would drive themselves.

  He saw a spot and started to drive into it. A bellman held up his hand and stopped him.

  “We’ll take care of the car, Sir,” the bellman said. “Are you checking in?”

  “We’re here to se
e Major Dillon,” Macklin said. “I don’t think it’s permissible for a civilian to drive a military vehicle. I will park it myself, thank you, just the same.”

  The bellman considered that a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and stepped out of the way.

  Macklin parked the station wagon and carefully locked it. And then, with Lieutenant Easterbrook at his side, he walked into the lobby.

  “How would I find Cottage B?” he inquired of the doorman.

  “May I ask whom you wish to see, Sir?”

  “Major Homer Dillon, USMC.”

  “There must be some mistake, Sir. There is no Major Dillon in Cottage B.”

  “How about a Lieutenant Pickering?” Macklin snapped.

  “One moment, Sir,” the doorman said. “I’ll see if Lieutenant Pickering is in. May I have your name, please?”

  “Macklin,” Macklin said. “Lieutenant R. B. Macklin.”

  The doorman picked up a telephone and dialed a number.

  “Excuse me,” he said to whoever answered. “There is a Lieutenant Mackeral at the door who wishes to see Lieutenant Pickering. May I pass him through?”

  “He called you ‘Mackeral,’” Lieutenant Easterbrook observed, chuckling…quite unnecessarily.

  “Turn right at the reception desk, Lieutenant,” the doorman said, pointing. “And then your first left. Cottage B is the second cottage.”

  “Thank you very much,” Lieutenant Macklin said, somewhat icily. “Follow me, Easterbrook.”

  There was just time for Lieutenant Macklin to be introduced to Lieutenants Dunn and Pickering when Captain Charles M. Galloway and Mrs. Carolyn Ward Spencer walked into the cottage. They were trailed by a bellman carrying luggage.

  “The temporary arrangements,” Pick said, pointing to the door to the Palm Room, “are that you and Charley are in there. If you’d rather, we could find you some other…”

  “This is marvelous,” Carolyn said. “Thank you, Pick. I keep saying that, but you keep doing things…”

  “Enjoy it while you can,” Pick said. “I no longer have to polish the Skipper’s apple; me or Dunn. We are all now Instructor Pilots.”

  “I heard about that,” Charley said. “I think it makes sense.”

  “I can’t believe you’re saying that. You like the idea of being an IP?”

  “He’s not going to be an IP is why,” Carolyn said. “Somebody blew a trumpet, and he’s going back over there.”

  “How did you work that, Skipper?” Dunn asked.

  “Clean living, Mr. Dunn,” Galloway said. “You ought to try it sometime. Works miracles.”

  Clean living indeed, Lieutenant Macklin thought. What the Captain is up to with this woman is defined as illicit cohabitation. It’s conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, de facto and de jure.

  “Any chance we can go with you, Skipper?” Pick asked.

  “No,” Galloway said. “I asked, and the answer is no. Somebody decided clowns like you two are worth their weight in gold. But thanks, Pick. I wish it was otherwise.”

  “This must be the place,” a female voice announced from the doorway. “I can smell Marines in rut.”

  That’s Veronica Wood! Lieutenant Macklin realized in surprise. Did she actually say what I think I heard?

  Veronica crossed the room and kissed Lieutenant Easterbrook wetly, then moved to Jake Dillon and kissed him with a little more enthusiasm.

  “Bobby gets kissed first,” Veronica said, “because he’s prettier than you are, even if you are my fiancé.”

  “Jesus,” Jake said.

  What did she say? “Fiancé”? Macklin thought.

  Veronica glanced around the room and noticed Carolyn for the first time. She walked to her and kissed her. “The East Coast President of the Marine Corps Camp Followers. When was the last time?”

  “The Hotel Willard, in Washington,” Carolyn said.

  “Right!” Veronica said, and then accused: “You promised to write, and you never did.”

  “I thought you were just being polite,” Carolyn said.

  “Don’t be silly. We have to stick together. You going on the tour?”

  “No, she is not,” Jake Dillon said. “Which brings us to that. Enjoy tonight, children, because tomorrow it’s all over. Tomorrow at 0900, we will all gather at the Hollywood Roosevelt, luggage all packed and ready to be loaded aboard the bus….”

  “Bus?” Pick asked. “What bus?”

  “The Greyhound bus we have chartered to carry everybody on the tour,” Dillon said, “on which, regrettably, there is no room for anyone else.”

  “You better find one more seat, Jake,” Veronica said. “Or there will be a empty seat on your bus anyway.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Jake said, but it was a surrender.

  I can’t believe this! Macklin thought. He’s actually going to permit this woman to come on the tour—this, to use her own words, camp follower. There will be questions about her, questions that cannot avoid bringing embarrassment to The Corps.

  “Jake, if it would pose prob—” Carolyn said, and was interrupted by Veronica.

  “No problems, right, Jake?”

  “No problems, Carolyn,” Jake said. “But I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do about hotel rooms….”

  “No problem,” Veronica said. “I will stay in your room, and Charley and Carolyn will stay in mine.”

  “Yeah,” Jake said. “That’d work.”

  She is absolutely shameless! Macklin thought. The both of them are absolutely shameless! If any of this comes out, how am I going to look? If there is a scandal, and that seems entirely possible, my promotion will go down the toilet.

  “Major, Sir,” Pick said. “Are there any more logistical problems to be solved? Or can we start thinking about how to enjoy our last night of freedom?”

  “Just as long as you understand, Pick, that this is your last night of freedom, and that from now on you behave, that’s all I have.”

  “In that case, I think the condemned man will start drinking his last meal,” Pick said.

  “Lieutenant,” Lieutenant Easterbrook asked, “would it be all right if I used the phone? I’d sort of like to call somebody.”

  “Somebody named Dawn, no doubt,” Veronica said. “Well, we now know how Bobby plans to spend the night, don’t we?”

  Lieutenant Easterbrook blushed, but no one seemed to notice.

  XV

  [ONE]

  Cryptographic Section

  Supreme Headquarters, South West

  Pacific Ocean Area

  Brisbane, Australia

  1145 Hours 8 November 1942

  Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMCR, was in a particularly sour mood. He was just about finished decrypting a MAGIC intercept from Pearl Harbor. The bitch of it was that he was not very good at operating the cryptographic machine, and this meant that it took him a long, painstaking hour and a half to decode an intercept in which a verbose Japanese admiral was exhorting his underlings to do good—at great length…and this obviously had about as much bearing on the conduct of the war as the price of shoe polish in Peoria, Illinois.

  General Pickering was aware that he had no one to blame for his present unhappiness but himself: To begin with, General Pickering of the Horse Marines had grandly ordered the people in Pearl Harbor to send him “anything and everything.” General Pickering of the Horse Marines would decide what was and what was not important. Next, even though such training had been regularly offered by Major Hon Song Do, General Pickering the prevaricator had successfully escaped on-the-job practice training in the efficient use of the cryptographic machine. If General Pickering the prevaricator had accepted such training, he would an hour ago have been been finished with decrypting the current MAGIC, analyzing the current MAGIC, and shredding the ten pages of verbose Japanese bullshit and putting it in the burn bag. And finally, General Pickering the idiot had learned as a corporal that the one thing you don’t do in The Marine Corps is volunteer for anything. Even
so, he had volunteered to come to the dungeon. The fact that it still seemed the decent thing to do did not alter the fact that he was in fact spending this lovely Sunday morning in a goddamned steel cell, three floors underground, with water running down the goddamned walls.

  The telephone rang.

  “Yes?” he snarled into the receiver.

  “General Pickering?”

  “Speaking,” he snapped.

  “Sir, this is Sergeant Widakovich.”

  Who the hell is Sergeant Widakovich? Oh, yeah, that enormous Polish Military policeman. He looks like he could pull a plow. His hands are so big they make that tommy gun I’ve never seen him without look like something you’d buy for a kid in Woolworth’s.

  “What can I do for you, Sergeant?”

  “General, I’m sorry to bother you…”

  Perfectly all right, Sergeant. The sound of the human voice has a certain appeal. I was beginning to think I’d be here alone for the rest of my life.

  He looked at his watch.

  Oh Christ, it’s quarter to twelve. Hart’s going to relieve me at noon. Please don’t tell me, Sergeant, that Hart called and will be late.

  “What’s up, Sergeant?”

  “Sir, there’s an officer out here. A Marine lieutenant colonel…”

  That must be that idiot who relieved the other idiot CINCPAC sent here as liaison officer. Obviously. When The Corps has a supply of idiot lieutenant colonels on hand they don’t know what to do with, they make them liaison officers. What the hell does he want? I told him I was not to be disturbed when I was down here.

  “…He’s been waiting over an hour, Sir.”

  Good, let the sonofabitch wait.

  “…and I thought I should tell you, Sir.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  “His name is Stecker, Sir.”

  “Say again, Sergeant?”

  “It’s a Lieutenant Colonel Stecker, Sir.”

  “I’ll be right there, Sergeant. Thank you.”

  Pickering waited impatiently while the steel door leading to the anteroom of the Cryptographic Section was opened. That required unlocking two locks, then removing the bars these held in place. Finally the door creaked open.