THE CORPS VI - CLOSE COMBAT

by W. E. B Griffin

  "That's about it, Lieutenant. And I don't like the tone of your voice."

  "With respect, Sir," McCoy said sarcastically, "isn't that a pretty shitty way to treat a kid who's just back from Guadalcanal?"

  "That did it, Lieutenant," the Major snapped. "I won't be talked to like that. May I have your identity card, please?"

  "What for?" Dillon asked.

  "So that I can put him on report to his commanding officer for insolent disrespect."

  "I'm his commanding officer," Dillon said. "I heard what he said. I agree with him."

  "And who is your commanding officer, Major?"

  "I don't think you're cleared to know who my commanding officer is," Dillon said. "Come on, McCoy."

  "I asked you who your commanding officer is, Major!"

  "Go fuck yourself, Major," Dillon said, and with McCoy on his heels, marched out of the office.

  As they walked off the steps of the frame building and turned toward Corporal Robert F. Easterbrook, USMC, who was sitting on his seabag waiting for them, McCoy said softly, "Do you think we'll get arrested now, or as we try to get off the base?"

  "Is that sonofabitch in the same Marine Corps as you and me?" Dillon asked bitterly, still angry. "Sonofabitch!"

  Easterbrook rose to his feet.

  "We ran into a little trouble, Easterbrook," Dillon said.

  "Nothing to worry about," McCoy said.

  "What happens now?" Easterbrook asked.

  "You and I are going to stay here, Corporal, while Lieutenant McCoy goes to the motor pool and gets us some wheels, and then we're all going to Los Angeles."

  "I've got to get to Washington," McCoy said.

  "They have an airport in Los Angeles," Dillon said. "I'd like to buy you guys a steak."

  "Aye, aye, Sir," McCoy said.

  Twenty minutes later, they were out of the U.S. Marine Recruit Depot, San Diego, and headed up the Pacific Highway toward Los Angeles in a Marine Corps 1941 Plymouth staff car that was driven by a PFC who looked as old as Major Dillon.

  "I didn't ask. How did you get the staff car?" Dillon asked.

  "I told them that I was an assistant to Major Dillon of Marine Corps Headquarters Public Relations," McCoy said, "and the Major needed a ride to Hollywood, so that the Major could ask Lana Turner to come to a party at the officers' club."

  "I thought maybe you waved that fancy ID card of yours at the motor officer."

  "I was saving that for the MPs at the gate when they started to arrest you for telling that feather-merchant major in personnel to go fuck himself."

  "I should have let him write you up," Dillon said. "You can be a sarcastic sonofabitch, McCoy, in case nobody ever told you."

  "Excuse me, Sir," Corporal Easterbrook said, turning around in the front seat, his voice suddenly weak and shaky, "but I have to go to the head."

  "Christ, why didn't you go at 'Diego?" McCoy asked. But then he looked closer at Easterbrook and said, "Oh, shit!"

  "Meaning what?" Dillon asked.

  "Meaning he's got malaria," McCoy said. "Look at him." He leaned forward and laid his hand on Easterbrook's forehead. "Yeah," he said, "he's burning up. He's got it, all right."

  "Goddamn," Dillon said.

  "Sir, I got to go right now," Easterbrook said.

  "Find someplace," McCoy snapped at the driver. "Pull off the road if you have to."

  The driver started to slow the car, but then put his foot to the floor when he saw a roadside restaurant several hundred yards away.

  With a squeal of tires, the PFC pulled into the parking lot, stopped in front of the door, then went quickly around the front of the car, pulled the passenger door open, and helped Easterbrook out.

  "He's dizzy, Lieutenant," the PFC said. "He's got it, all right."

  "Let's get him to the toilet," McCoy said.

  "Shit!" Major Dillon said.

  "Hey, he's not doing this to piss you off," McCoy said.

  Supported by McCoy and the PFC, Easterbrook managed to make it to a stall in the men's room before losing control of his bowels. Then he became nauseous.

  "Let me handle him, Lieutenant," the PFC said.

  "Sir, I'm sorry to cause all this trouble," Easterbrook said.

  "Never apologize for something you can't control," McCoy said. "I'll be outside."

  Major Dillon was waiting on the other side of the men's room door.

  "Well?"

  "He's got malaria. Half the people on the 'Canal have malaria," McCoy replied.

  "What do we do with him?"

  "He needs a doctor," McCoy said.

  "You want to take him back to 'Diego and put him in the hospital?"

  "I said a doctor," McCoy said. "General Pickering told me you know everybody in Hollywood. No doctors?"

  "You mean treat him ourselves?"

  "Why not? All they do for them in a hospital is give them quinine, or that new stuff..."

  "Atabrine," Dillon furnished, without thinking.

  "... Atabrine," McCoy went on. "And rest. If we put him in the hospital, they'll just lose him. Christ, he probably couldn't get into the hospital.... How's he going to prove he's a Marine without a service record?"

  "I'm not at all sure-" Dillon began and then interrupted himself: "I think they'd take my word he's a Marine, even if those personnel feather merchants won't pay him."

  "Have you got someplace we can take him, or not? He'll be out of there in a minute."

  "Goddamn you, McCoy. Why did you have to tell me he was about to go over the edge?"

  "Because he was."

  "Dr. Barthelmy's office," Dawn Morris said into the telephone receiver. Miss Morris, who was Dr. Harald Barthelmy's receptionist, was a raven-haired, splendidly bosomed, long-legged young woman. Though she was dressed like a nurse, she had no medical training whatever.

  "Dr. Barthelmy, please. My name is Dillon."

  "I'm sorry, Sir, the doctor is with a patient. May I have him return your call?"

  "Honey, you go tell him Jake Dillon is on the phone."

  Dawn Morris knew who Jake Dillon was. He was vice president of publicity for Metro-Magnum Studios... the kind of man who could open doors for her. The kind of man she'd planned to meet when she took a job as receptionist for the man Photoplay magazine called the "Physician to the Stars."

  "Mr. Dillon," Dawn Morris cooed. "Let me check. I'm sure the doctor would like to talk to you if it's at all possible."

  "Thank you," Jake Dillon said.

  She left her desk and walked down a corridor into a suite of rooms that Dr. Barthelmy liked to refer to as his "surgery."

  After his undergraduate years at the University of Iowa, and before completing his medical training at Tulane in New Orleans, Dr. Barthelmy spent a year at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. As a result, he'd cultivated a certain British manner: He'd grown a pencil-line mustache, and acquired a collection of massive pipes and a wardrobe heavy with tweed jackets with leather elbow patches. And he now spelled his Christian name with two 'a's and addressed most females as "dear girl" and most males as "old sport."

  The surgery was half a dozen consulting rooms, opening off a thickly carpeted corridor furnished with leather armchairs and turn-of-the-century lithographs of Englishmen shooting pheasants and riding to hounds.

  Dawn knew immediately where to find Dr. Barthelmy. One of his nurses, a real one, an old blue-haired battle-ax, was standing outside one of the consulting cubicles. This was standard procedure whenever Dr. Barthelmy had to ask a female patient to take off her clothes. A woman had once accused Dr. Barthelmy of getting fresh while he was examining her; he was determined this would never happen again.

  "I have to see the doctor right away," Dawn said to the nurse.

  "He's with a patient," the nurse said.

  "This is an emergency," Dawn said firmly.

  The nurse rapped on the consulting-room door with her knuckles.

  "Not now, if you please!" a deep male voice replied in annoyance.

  "Docto
r, it's Mr. Jake Dillon," Dawn called. "He said it's very important."

  There was a long silence, and then the door opened. Dr. Barthelmy looked at her.

  "Mr. Dillon said it's very important, Doctor," Dawn said. "I thought I should tell you."

  "Would you ask Mr. Dillon to hold, my girl?" Dr. Barthelmy said. "I'll be with him in half a mo."

  "Yes, Doctor," Dawn said.

  The consulting-room door closed.

  "He's on line five, Doctor," Dawn called through it, and then went quickly back to her desk.

  She picked up the telephone.

  "Mr. Dillon, Dr. Barthelmy will be with you in just a moment. Would you hold, please?"

  "Yeah, I'll hold," Dillon replied. "Thanks, honey, but you stay on the line."

  "Yes, of course, Mr. Dillon."

  "Jake, old sport, how good to hear your voice."

  "Harry, what do you know about malaria?"

  "Very little, thank God."

  "Harry, goddamn it, I'm serious."

  "It is transmitted by mosquitoes, and the treatment is quinine, or some new medicine the name of which at the moment escapes me. You have malaria, old boy?"

  "A friend of mine does."

  "And you want me to see your friend? Of course, dear boy."

  "I'm twenty minutes out of San Diego. By the time I get to my house, I want you there with the new medicine (it's called Atabrine, by the way), a nurse, or nurses, and whatever else you need."

  There was a just-perceptible pause before Dr. Barthelmy replied: "That sounded like an order, old sport. I'm not in the Marine Corps, as you may have noticed."

  "Harry, goddamn it..."

  "Which house, old boy? Holmby Hills or Malibu?"

  "Malibu. I leased the Holmby Hills place to Metro-Magnum for the duration."

  "Your contribution to the war effort, I gather?"

  "Fuck you, Harry. Just be there," Dillon said, and hung up.

  Dawn waited until she heard the click when Dr. Barthelmy hung up, and then hung up herself.

  There are not many people, she thought, who would dare talk to Dr. Harold Barthelmy that way. Or, for that matter, call him "Harry. " Only someone with a lot of power. And getting to know someone with a lot of power is what I have been looking for all along. The question is, how am I going to get to meet Jake Dillon?

  Dr. Harald Barthelmy himself answered the question five minutes later. He came into the reception area, smiled at waiting patients, and said, "May I speak to you a moment, Miss Morris?"

  "Yes, of course, Doctor," Dawn said, rising up from behind her desk and stepping into the surgery corridor with him. He motioned her into one of the consulting rooms.

  There was, she noticed, an open book facedown on the examination table. The spine read, "Basic Principles of Diagnosis and Treatment."

  I'll bet, Dawn thought, that that's open to "Malaria. "

  "If memory serves, Miss Morris, you told me you had accepted the receptionist position as a temporary sort of thing, until you can get your motion picture career on the tracks, so to speak?"

  "Yes, Doctor. That's true."

  "Something a bit out of the ordinary has come up. I don't suppose you... monitored... my conversation with Mr. Dillon? Major Dillon?"

  "Oh, of course not, Doctor."

  "I'd rather hoped you would have. No matter. You do know who Major Dillon is?"

  "I think so, Doctor."

  "He is a quite powerful man in the motion picture community. He rushed to the colors, so to speak, the Marine Corps, of all things, when the trumpet sounded. But that has not diminished at all his importance in the film industry. Do you take my meaning?"

  "Yes, Doctor, I think so."

  "To put a point on it, my girl, he could be very useful to someone in your position."

  "I don't quite understand..."

  "Mr.... Major Dillon-who is a dear friend, of long standing-has come to me asking a special favor. One of his friends-I don't know who-is apparently suffering from malaria, and for some reason doesn't want to enter a hospital. I can think of a number of reasons for that. He, or she, for example, may be under consideration for a part, for example, and does not want it known that he, or she, is not in perfect health. You understand?"

  "Yes, I do."

  "As a special favor to Mr. Dillon, I have agreed to treat this patient at Mr. Dillon's beach house in Malibu. Malaria is not contagious. The regimen is a drug called Atabrine and bed rest. Mr.... Major Dillon has at his house a Mexican couple who would be perfectly capable of dispensing the Atabrine, but he would feel more comfortable if a nurse were present."

  "I understand."

  "Dear girl, do you think you could portray a nurse convincingly?" Dr. Barthelmy asked. "It would make things so much easier for me. God knows, I haven't a clue where I could get a special-duty nurse on such short order."

  "I'm sure I could."

  "I would be most grateful; and so, I am sure, would Major Dillon," Dr. Barthelmy said. "I'll have the agency send someone over to fill in for you straightaway."

  He turned from her, took a prescription pad from a cabinet drawer, and began to write. He handed her four prescriptions.

  "These should do it," he said. "As soon as your replacement shows up, have them filled and charged to my account at the chemist's, and then let me know and we'll run over to Malibu."

  "Yes, Doctor."

  "Good girl!"

  When Dawn Morris slid open the glass door and walked out to them, Jake Dillon and Ken McCoy were sitting on chaise lounges on the balcony of the beach house. Beside them lay the remnants of a hamburger and french fries meal. Beer bottles were in their hands.

  "The patient," Dawn announced, "has had his medicine and is resting comfortably. I thought it best to leave him alone. Where would you suggest I wait?"

  " 'Resting comfortably'?" Dillon replied. "I doubt that."

  "I beg your pardon, Major Dillon?"

  "He may be a sick kid, but he's not that sick. If you leaned over him to give him the Atabrine, the one thing he's not doing is resting comfortably."

  McCoy laughed. "Jesus, Jake!"

  "I beg your pardon?" Dawn asked, trying for a mixture of indignation and confusion.

  "Honey, if you're a nurse, I'm an obstetrician," Dillon said. "Where did Harry get you, Central Casting?"

  Dawn hesitated only a moment.

  "I'm Doctor Barthelmy's receptionist."

  Dillon nodded.

  "Would you like me to go?" Dawn asked.

  "Hell, no. I just wanted to be sure that we understood each other. What did Harry tell you, that I could get you a screen test?"

  "He was more subtle than that," Dawn said.

  "I have to go to Washington in the morning," Dillon said, glanced at McCoy, and corrected himself: "We have to go to Washington. When I come back, if I see that you've taken good care of the Easterbunny... if you've seen to it that he's taken the Atabrine when he should, that he's been given everything he wants to eat, and that you have made him happy in every way you can think of-and yes, I mean what you think I mean- I'll make a couple of calls for you, tell a couple of producers who owe me favors that I owe you one. Your tests may turn out to be bombs. Most screen tests do. But on the other hand, they may not. What's your name?"

  "Dawn Morris."

  "What's your real name?"

  "Doris Morrison."

  Dillon thought that over a moment. "Dawn Morris isn't bad," he decided. "Do we understand each other, Dawn Morris?"

  "Yes, Mr. Dillon, we do."

  "It's Major Dillon," he said. "This is Lieutenant Ken McCoy. You can call us Jake and Killer."

  "Screw you!" McCoy flared disgustedly. "Goddamn, Dillon!"

  "You can call us Jake and Lieutenant," Dillon said, not chagrined. "Sit down, Dawn. Can I have Maria-Theresa fix you something to eat?"

  "I am a little hungry," Dawn confessed.

  [THREE]

  Supreme Headquarters

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  1910 Hours 18 October 1942