Close Combat

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Yes, I suppose he is,” Pickering said.

  “Commander,” Stecker said, “are you familiar with arm wrestling? I think I’d like to break your wrist.”

  “Oh, you would, would you?”

  “We are not going to start breaking up the furniture,” Pickering announced.

  It was too late. Commander Feldt and Colonel Stecker were already removing the candelabra from a small table suitable for arm wrestling.

  [FOUR]

  * * *

  TOP SECRET

  EYES ONLY-CAPTAIN DAVID HAUGHTON,

  USN

  OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY

  DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN

  ORIGINAL TO BE DESTROYED AFTER

  ENCRYPTION AND TRANSMITTAL TO SECNAV

  FOR COLONEL F. L. RICKABEE

  OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS

  Brisbane, Australia

  Monday 9 November 1942

  Dear Fritz:

  I don’t know if you’ve heard or not, but Lt Colonel Jack NMI Stecker is here in Brisbane. He went to Staff Sergeant Koffler’s wedding with me, as a matter of fact, and is at this moment moving his stuff from the Army BOQ into my house.

  He’s here to set up facilities for the First Mardiv when they are relieved from Guadalcanal and brought here for rehabilitation and refitting. According to Stecker, they are in really bad physical shape; almost everybody has malaria.

  Stecker was relieved of his command of Second Battalion, Fifth Marines, and is now officially assigned to SWPOA in some sort of vaguely defined billet. I am unable to believe he was relieved for cause, and strongly suspect that it is the professional officer corps’ pushing a reservist/up-from-the-ranks Mustang to give the command to one of their own. I can’t imagine why General Vandegrift permitted this to happen. But it has happened, and it may be a blessing in disguise for us.

  I had a talk with Stecker after the wedding, and it came out that he had extensive experience with guerrilla operations in the Banana Republics, especially Nicaragua, between the wars. It seems to me that if you know how to fight against guerrillas, it would follow that you know how to fight as a guerrilla…. and certainly to knowledgeably evaluate how someone else is set up, and equipped, to fight as guerrillas.

  I haven’t said anything to him yet, but I know him well enough to know that he would rather be doing something either with or for this fellow Fertig on Mindanao than arranging tours of picturesque Australia or USO shows, which is what The Corps wants him to do now. So I want him transferred to us, with a caveat: He has already suffered enough humiliation as it is (goddamn it; he has the Medal of Honor; how could they do this to him?), so I want you to take every precaution to make sure there is no scuttlebutt circulating that he has been further demoted by his assignment to us.

  Do it as quickly as you can, and I think you had better send McCoy over here too, as quickly as that can be arranged. I think the sooner we get somebody with Captain/General Fertig, the better.

  Regards,

  Fleming Pickering, Brigadier General, USMCR

  TOP SECRET

  * * *

  [FIVE]

  The Main Ballroom

  The Hotel Portland

  Portland, Oregon

  1930 Hours 10 November 1942

  Veronica Wood excused herself politely from the knot of local dignitaries gathered around her and walked across the crowded floor to First Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR. She was wearing a silver lamé cocktail dress and, he was convinced, absolutely nothing else.

  “Hi, Marine!” she said. “Looking for a good time?”

  “Some other time, perhaps, Madam. I am just returned from learning more about the manufacture of truck windows than I really care to know. I have booze, and not lust, on my mind.”

  He offered his glass to her. She shook her head “no,” so he took a healthy swallow.

  “I was at the local theater group,” Veronica said. “You get no sympathy at all from me.”

  “Not even if I tell you I have just examined the banquet program, and right after where it says ‘baked chicken breast Portland,’ it says, ‘remarks by yours truly.’”

  She chuckled and then kissed him on the cheek.

  “You’re good at it, Pick,” Veronica said. “You really are. You have them in the palm of your hand.”

  “Did Jake send you over to stroke my feathers? He promised to get me out of making after-dinner speeches.”

  “No,” she said. “But if he thought of it, he probably would have. I came over to tell you Bobby said he was sorry he missed you, and good-bye.”

  “‘Good-bye?’ What happened to him?”

  “The first group of…what do you call them, ‘Marine war correspondents’?”

  “Combat correspondents,” Pick furnished.

  “Combat correspondents…are in Los Angeles. Jake put him on the train at half past four. Bobby’s supposed to teach them how to do it. At Metro-Magnum.”

  “I must be getting old,” Pick said. “I think making him an officer was idiotic. He’s a nice kid, but the word is kid.”

  “You and Jake,” Veronica said. “But Jake said he’ll probably do OK.”

  “Jake’s whistling in the dark. Would you, if you were a man, take orders from Bobby?”

  “I think you underestimate him, Pick.”

  “I hope so. Still, for the sake of the combat correspondents, better Bobby than Macklin.”

  “Ooooh, that’s an interesting observation! What have you got against him?”

  “Forget it,” Pick said. “I was thinking out loud. I shouldn’t have.”

  “Speaking of the devil…”

  First Lieutenant R. B. Macklin, USMC, walked up to them.

  “I wondered where you were, Pickering,” he said.

  “I was out inspiring the workers to make more and better truck windows,” Pick said. “Was that idle curiosity that sent you in my direction? Or did you have something on your mind?”

  “Washington has asked for a transcript of your remarks…”

  “Washington?”

  “General Stewart’s office. Since this tour is going so well, I think they intend to use it as sort of a model for the East Coast and Midwest war bond tours. They’re next, you know.”

  “I just stand up and open my mouth,” Pick said. “I never wrote anything down.”

  “Well, that’s what I’m asking, Pickering, that you write it down, so I can send it to General Stewart.”

  Pickering motioned with his index finger for Macklin to put his head close to his. When he did, he whispered a few words into his ear.

  Macklin colored, glared at him, and then said, “Well, we’ll see what Major Dillon has to say about that! Excuse me, Miss Wood.”

  Veronica watched him go. “What was that all about, Pick? Did you whisper sweet obscenities in his ear?”

  “And now he’s going to tell Daddy that I have been a bad boy,” Pick said.

  “Tell me something, Pick,” Veronica said. “Did Bobby ever say anything to you about Dawn Morris?”

  “About Dawn Morris?” Pick answered, thought a moment, and then replied, “No, what do you mean?”

  “Well, he was hanging around with you and Dunn. I thought maybe he said something.”

  “No. He hung around with us because we protected him from Macklin. Macklin likes to prove he’s a Marine officer by ordering Bobby around and making him call him ‘Sir.’…And I think maybe Bobby was hoping he could latch on to one of Little Billy’s rejects.”

  “And did he?”

  “You act like his mother. No, Mother, Bobby has been a good boy. I think—I know—that a couple of Billy’s rejects would have been perfectly happy to play house with him…with anyone wearing a Marine uniform. But I don’t think he could work up the courage to make a pass.”

  “Maybe you should have found the courage for him,” Veronica said. “Where is Billy Dunn, by the way?”

  “The last time I saw him was at the…what the hell were the
y making at that factory? Before lunch?”

  “Before lunch was the place that used to make thermostats and is now making artillery fuzes.”

  “Lieutenant Dunn was last seen entering a Buick owned by the wife of a well-known thermostat manufacturer,” Pick said, in a credible mimicry of Walter Winchell. Winchell was a radio news broadcaster who specialized in celebrity gossip. His trademarks were the sound of a telegraph key and an intense, staccato speaking voice. “The word going around is that they were going to test each other’s temperatures.”

  “You sound jealous,” Veronica said, laughing.

  “I am,” Pick said.

  “Maybe you ought to smile back at Dawn Morris.”

  “Lips that have touched Macklin’s shall never touch mine.”

  Veronica was truly surprised. “You really think she’s…uh…”

  “They could, I suppose, be holding Midnight Vespers in her room.”

  “Do you think Bobby knew that?”

  “Yeah, sure he did. We saw Macklin going into her room at one in the morning—in Sacramento, I think, on the second or third day of this odyssey—in his dressing gown, no less. Why did you ask that?”

  “No reason, Pick. Just feminine curiosity. Oh, there’s Billy.”

  “I hate that sexually satiated look on his face,” Pick said.

  Dunn crossed the room to them, snatching a drink from a waiter’s tray on the way.

  He took a sip from it, grimaced, and handed it to Pick.

  “Scotch,” he said.

  “God is punishing you,” Pick said.

  “I’ll take it,” Veronica said, taking the drink from Pickering.

  “God has been very kind to me lately, actually,” Dunn said. “And how was your afternoon, Mr. Pickering?”

  “What would you like to know about truck windows?”

  Dunn looked at his watch.

  “Isn’t it about time for the triumphal entry?” he asked.

  “Any minute now,” Pick said. “If you want a drink before the baked chicken breast Portland, you’d better get it now.”

  “Not chicken again!”

  “I told you, God is punishing you. When he said, ‘Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery,’ He meant it. He knows how you spent the afternoon.”

  “Oh, Pick, shut up.” Veronica giggled.

  Another waiter passed with a tray full of drinks. Dunn took another chance. To judge by the pleased look on his face after he tasted it, this time he was successful.

  “See, He does love me after all. This is pretty good sour mash.”

  There was a small ripple of applause. It gradually swelled as everyone in the Main Ballroom turned to the door.

  Staff Sergeant Thomas Michael “Machine Gun” McCoy, USMCR, stood in the doorway. He was wearing a dress blue uniform, and the Medal of Honor on its white-starred ribbon was hanging around his neck. Behind him, in greens, were a pair of gunnery sergeants.

  The Mayor of Portland walked to the door and shook Sergeant McCoy’s hand. The applause died down. The strains of the Marine Hymn, from an electric organ, filled the room.

  With the exception of Lieutenants Dunn and Pickering, everyone there seemed to come to attention. A few people actually put their hands over their hearts.

  When the music was over, Sergeant McCoy waved shyly and modestly at the crowd. And then, with the mayor at his side and the two gunnies one step behind him, he crossed the room to the bar. Once he was there, a bartender handed him a Pilsner glass of beer.

  “I would really like to know what Jake Dillon said to him, to get him to behave,” Dunn said.

  “It is probably what the gunnies have done to him,” Pickering said.

  “You mean you don’t know?” Veronica asked.

  “Know what?” Pick asked.

  “If he behaves all day, and all the way to dinner, Jake sees that he gets two drinks after dinner. And that isn’t the only carrot Jake dangles in front of his nose, either.”

  “The lady speaketh, I believeth, the truth,” Pick said.

  “Major Dillon is a man with an uncommon problem-solving ability, isn’t he?” Dunn asked admiringly.

  “Every night?” Pick asked.

  “Every night, if he has behaved all day,” Veronica said.

  “How come nobody ever dangles a carrot in front of my nose?” Pick asked.

  “God doesn’t love you,” Dunn said. “And look who’s coming!”

  Lieutenant R. B. Macklin was walking across the room to them.

  “Would you mind posing with Sergeant McCoy and the mayor, Miss Wood, for some photographs?” he asked when he reached them.

  “Certainly.”

  “Maybe it would be better if you left your drink here,” Macklin suggested. Veronica handed it to Pickering. Dunn drained his bourbon.

  “We would like you in the photos too, Dunn,” Macklin said.

  “I’ve been through this before, Macklin,” Dunn said.

  “You two could have expressed a certain respect for The Corps by coming to attention when the Marine Hymn was played,” Macklin said.

  “Unless you want to be photographed on your rear end, Lieutenant,” Dunn said softly and icily, “you had better not say one more word to either me or Mr. Pickering for the entire balance of the evening.”

  He turned to Veronica Wood. “Would you take my arm, Ma’am, and we’ll sashay across the ballroom and have our picture taken.”

  “I would be honored, Lieutenant Dunn,” Veronica said. She took his arm, and they marched across the room, with Lieutenant Macklin trailing along behind.

  “Is that what they mean when they say a ‘two-fisted drinker’?” a female voice behind Pick asked. He turned to see who it was. She was in a cocktail dress, an older woman, thirty-five anyway; her hair seemed to be prematurely gray.

  “I guess it is,” Pick said. He finished his drink and set it down.

  “You’re Lieutenant Pickering, right?” the woman asked, offering her hand.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” he said.

  “I’ve been wanting to introduce myself,” she said. “We’re going to dinner together. I’m Alice Feaster. Mrs. Alice Feaster. For what it’s worth, I’m the President of the City Council’s sister. That’s how I got a ticket.”

  “How do you do?” Pick said. “I didn’t know we were going into dinner in pairs.”

  “I arranged it,” Mrs. Feaster said.

  What the hell does that mean?

  “And the Major…what’s his name?”

  “Major Dillon.”

  “…pointed you out to me, but I didn’t want to interrupt. You were having a private conversation with Miss Wood.”

  “You should have come up. If I had known, I would have gone looking for you.”

  “May I ask you a personal question?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Is there…uh…anything between you and Miss Wood?”

  “Miss Wood is going to marry Major Dillon. We’re just friends.”

  “You seem to be very good friends,” she said.

  “We are. Can I get you a drink, Mrs. Feaster?”

  “I’d love one. A martini. Gin. Onions.”

  On the way back from the bar, Pickering observed that Mrs. Feaster was very well preserved, for an older woman.

  “Thank you very much,” she said, looking at him over the rim of the martini glass.

  “Did your brother the City Council President manage a ticket for Mr. Feaster, too?”

  “Mr. Feaster is in Spokane tonight.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You wouldn’t really like him; he’s rather dull.” She reacted to the surprised look in his face by asking: “Don’t you think people should say what they want to?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And where is your wife, while you’re off on the war bond tour?”

  “No wife.”

  “I’m surprised. You’re a very good-looking young man. I’m surprised that some sweet young thing hasn’t led you to the altar.”<
br />
  “So is my mother.”

  Chimes sounded.

  “I think that’s for us,” Mrs. Feaster said.

  “It sounded like an elevator,” Pick replied. “You know, ‘third floor, ladies’ lingerie’?”

  Why did I say “ladies’ lingerie”?

  She laughed as she took his arm.

  “May I?”

  She walked very close to him as they crossed the room to the place where the guests at the head table were gathering. The President of the City Council was a tall, balding man with a skinny wife.

  “We’re really honored to have you in Portland, Lieutenant,” he said.

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  “And grateful for the excitement, right, Frank?” Mrs. Feaster said. “We don’t have much excitement in Portland, do we?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Alice.”

  “I would,” Alice said with a sharp laugh; then she gave Pick’s arm a little squeeze. When he looked down at her, he (almost entirely innocently, he told himself) got a look down the opening of her dress.

  Black lace and white flesh are inarguably erotic.

  Lieutenant Pickering made his way back to his seat at the head table, next to Mrs. Alice Feaster. He held a plaque on which was mounted a gold key to the City of Portland. The audience was giving him a nice hand.

  “I would like to thank Lieutenant Pickering for those inspiring remarks,” the mayor said after the applause died down.

  “Give me that,” Mrs. Feaster said. “I’ll put it on the floor.”

  As she did so, he caught another glimpse of black lace and white flesh.

  Watch yourself, Pickering. You’ve had three drinks and probably two bottles of wine. You weren’t nearly as brilliant a speaker up there as you think you were. They thought you were funny as hell when you told them it was a pleasure to be in Spokane. But the truth is that you forgot where you are. And you said Spokane because that’s where she told you her husband is tonight.

  “I would now like to recognize the other Guadalcanal aces,” the mayor went on. “I will ask them to stand as I call their names and come here for their keys to our city. I’ll ask you to hold your applause until everyone has received his key.”

  Mrs. Feaster turned in her seat so she could watch the other aces. In doing so, her knee touched Pick’s leg.