“I’ve sailed those interior waters, Jack,” Pickering said. “They are not among the best-charted waters in the world. We don’t want the Sunfish running—submerged—into an uncharted reef or shoal. The waters to the east of Mindanao are safest.”
“You’ll notice, Colonel,” Lewis said, pointing, “the subsurface terrain here. The Philippine Trench, with depths to about 9,000 fathoms, is only about seventy-five miles offshore. The 6,000-fathom curve is sixty miles offshore; the 4,000 curve thirty-five miles offshore; the 2,000 twenty miles offshore; and the 200-fathom curve runs almost along the shoreline.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Stecker said.
“According to Lewis, Jack, a submarine skipper is perfectly happy when he has a hundred fathoms under his keel,” Pickering said. “That’s six hundred feet. In my experience, and from what Lewis tells me, in the Navy’s, when you have fathom curve lines like these, there is little chance of encountering an underwater obstacle.”
“Even in a submerged submarine?” Stecker asked.
“We have a two-hundred-fathom depth all along here,” Pickering replied. “Twelve hundred feet. If a sub runs at three hundred feet, he’s got nine hundred feet under his keel.”
“OK,” Stecker said.
“Sir, if you will look here,” Lewis said, pointing at the chart again, “you will see the two-hundred-fathom curve just about touches the shore at this point, which is thirty miles south of a village fortunately called ‘Boston.’ ”
“Boston? Beans, right?” Stecker asked.
“That’s the idea, Sir,” Lewis said. “The Sunfish can sail, submerged, to within a couple of hundred yards of the coast-line and still have at least a hundred fathoms under her keel.”
“A couple of hundred yards?” Stecker asked doubtfully. “How are you going to keep from running into the shoreline?”
“SONAR, Sir,” Lewis said. “It stands for Sound Navigation and Ranging. The Sunfish has it aboard, Sir. She’ll know when she’s getting in close.”
“And you think Fertig will understand this Boston-beans connection?” Stecker asked dubiously.
“We tested that, too, Sir,” Pluto replied.
“How?” Pickering asked.
“McCoy and I went to the SWPOA Officers’ Club,” Sessions said. “We asked ten officers at the bar the first thing that came to mind when they heard the word ‘beans.’ We got six ‘Boston’ or ‘Boston baked’; and one each ‘lima,’ ‘snap,’ and ‘navy.’ ”
“You really did your research, didn’t you?” Pickering said, chuckling.
“That’s nine,” Stecker said. “You said you asked ten officers.”
“Now that you mention it, Colonel,” McCoy said, “we also got one ‘fart.’ ”
“Six out of ten responses with a Boston connection, Sir,” Pluto said, very quickly, “seems more than reasonable. I mean, I think we can presume Fertig will immediately discount ‘lima,’ ‘snap,’ and ‘navy.’ ”
“One fart, huh?” Pickering said, and laughed.
“What if you can’t get an acknowledgment from Fertig?” Stecker asked.
“There’s some argument about that, Sir,” Pluto said. “One being that the Sunfish should repeat the operation the next day, and the day after that, if necessary. The other argument is to put McCoy and party ashore just before daylight anyway, and attempt to contact Fertig by other means.”
“Argument Two came from McCoy, right?” Pickering said.
“Yes, Sir,” McCoy said.
“All right, McCoy,” Pickering said. “Tell us why you’re not happy with this.”
“The more complicated something is, the more things can go wrong,” McCoy said. “There’s too much ‘if,’ ‘if,’ and ‘if’ in this for me. I’d much prefer to do this simply. The four of us go ashore without doing anything to make the Japanese nervous. We find Fertig ...”
“How are you going to do that?”
“Zimmerman says that the Filipinos will know where he is, and I agree with him. And they will know we’ve come ashore.”
Pickering nodded. “Where is he, by the way?”
“He kept falling asleep, so I sent him home,” McCoy replied, and went on. “We’ll have good radios and a real code with us. So, as soon as we find Fertig, we get in direct touch with the submarine. It’s likely we can do it in five days. I think the sub can hang around that long, surfacing only for a few minutes to listen to the radio. Then we tell the sub where and when to meet us.”
Pickering shrugged.
“This is not a democracy, and this is not going to be decided by a vote, but I’d like to hear what everybody thinks about this,” he said, and pointed at Koffler. “Starting with you, Steve. We’ll work our way up the ranks.”
“General, I’m with McCoy,” Koffler said. “I don’t want a bunch of excited Japs running around looking for us, particularly since we won’t know where to hide. And these messages are—no offense, Major, or you either, Mr. Moore—a little screwy.”
He is just a boy, not old enough to vote. But on the other hand, he knows more about keeping alive on a Japanese-occupied island than anybody in the room.
“I guess you’re next, John, aren’t you?” Pickering said.
“I disagree with Steve, about the messages being screwy,” Moore said. “Fertig, and the people with him, are desperate. Their minds will be at a high pitch. They’re intelligent. I think they will almost immediately comprehend the messages. The great unknown, which worries me, is how quickly the Japanese will be able to decipher both messages. And what that will mean. Steve’s ‘a bunch of excited Japanese running around’ worries me, even if they can’t make the Boston bean connection.”
That worries me, too.
“Which of you is senior?” Pickering asked, pointing to Lewis and Macklin.
“I believe I am, Sir,” Lewis said.
“That makes you next, Captain Macklin,” Pickering said.
“Sir, when I’m out of my depth, I try not to offer an opinion,” Macklin said in a flat voice.
“Let me put it this way, then. How do you feel about going ashore without our having made contact with Fertig?”
“I’m a Marine officer, General. I’ll go where I’m told to go.”
He has no interest in any of this. Why is he disinterested? There are two answers to that. Either he has closed his mind to the possibility that he’s going to find himself paddling up to an enemy-held shore in a rubber boat, or, and I think this is what it is, he doesn’t think he’s going.
I can’t believe he’d try to miss the boat on this. But stranger things have happened.
“Lewis?”
“General, since I’m not going ashore, I’d rather not offer an opinion,” Chambers D. Lewis said.
“Who’s right? Pluto or McCoy?” Pickering asked impatiently.
“I would have to align myself with Major Hon, Sir,” Lewis said.
“OK. You’re next, Ed.”
“I think I’d go with Koffler and McCoy, Sir,” Sessions said.
“Jack?” Pickering said. “We already know what Pluto thinks.”
“McCoy,” Stecker said.
Pickering nodded.
This places me in a very awkward position. The people I admire most in this room disagree with me, including the only people who know what it is to be on an enemy-held island, and to have—what did Koffler say?—“a bunch of excited Japs running around looking for them. ” But they’re wrong.
If you put a box around Mindanao, it would be 450 miles on a side. We don’t know where Fertig is inside that box, and we certainly can’t risk asking him where he is until we deliver to him a code the Japanese can’t break in an hour. And if McCoy and his people go ashore and are never heard from again, hell will freeze over before we can mount another mission. MacArthur will consider himself vindicated, and Donovan will gleefully announce that if he had been in charge, the operation would have worked.
“This is what we’re going to do,” Pickering
announced. “We will proceed with what Pluto and Moore have come up with. The Sunfish will surface thirty miles south of Boston one half hour after nightfall 23 December. Message One will be sent at that time. Sunfish will wait ten minutes for acknowledgment. If no acknowledgment is received, she will submerge. She will resurface at hourly intervals, ten minutes past the hour, the last surfacing to be at 0010 24 December...”
“That’s Christmas Eve!” Captain Macklin said, shocked.
“Merry Christmas, Sergeant Koffler,” McCoy said.
“... which is, of course, Christmas Eve,” Pickering said. “Whether or not there is acknowledgment, the Sunfish will surface again thirty minutes before sunrise—which will occur at five twenty-nine-and off-load McCoy, Zimmerman, Koffler, and Captain Macklin. They will carry with them only personal small arms, communications radios, the codes, and a token amount of gold and medicine. The Sunfish will remain on the surface until there is word that the landing party has made it safely to the beach ...”
“Or until a Jap airplane starts dropping bombs on it,” McCoy said, “whichever comes first.”
“That’s quite enough, thank you, from you, Mr. McCoy,” Pickering said, but he was unable to restrain a smile. “As I was saying before Charley McCarthy here ran off at the mouth, the Sunfish will remain on the surface until the landing party is ashore.” (A highly popular radio program of the era featured ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, father of actress Candice Bergen, and his dummy, Charley McCarthy.) “She will then submerge, to resurface for five minutes at two-hour intervals, ten minutes past the hour, during the daylight hours, and from thirty minutes after sunset until thirty minutes before sunrise for a seven-day period. If contact has not been established during that period, she will return to Pearl Harbor. If there is contact between the landing party and the Sunfish, or between Fertig, somehow, and the Sunfish , we’ll play that by ear.”
He looked around the table.
“Any comments, Mr. McCoy?”
McCoy raised both hands palm upward.
“Permission to speak, Sir?” Captain Robert B. Macklin said.
“Certainly.”
“May I ask, Sir, how you came to the 23, 24 December dates?”
“Show him, Jack,” Pickering ordered.
Colonel Stecker passed to Captain Macklin a sheet of typewriter paper.
TOP SECRET
SPECIAL CHANNEL
FROM: CINCPAC HAWAII
1210 9DEC42
TO: SUPREME HEADQUARTERS SWPOA BRISBANE EYES ONLY-BRIG GEN FLEMING PICKERING USMC
DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN
ORIGINAL TO BE DESTROYED AFTER ENCRYPTION AND TRANSMITTAL
FOLLOWING PERSONAL FROM CINCPAC TO BRIG GEN PICKERING USMC
DEAR FLEMING:
(1) HAVE BEEN INFORMED SUNFISH WILL COMPLETE FUELING AND PROVISIONING ESPIRITU SANTO BY 1200 HOURS 10 DEC 1942.
(2) OFFICER COMMANDING NAVAL AIR TRANSPORT COMMAND BRISBANE HAS BEEN DIRECTED TO MAKE CORONADO PB2Y AIRCRAFT AVAILABLE TO YOU FOR TRAVEL ESPIRITU SANTO ON ARRIVAL BRISBANE ETA 0500 10 DEC 1942
(3) PLEASE PASS TO ALL HANDS ON BEHALF MYSELF AND REAR ADMIRAL DANIEL J. WAGAM GODSPEED GOOD SAILING AND GOOD LUCK.
BEST PERSONAL REGARDS CHESTER
END PERSONAL FROM ADM NIMITZ BRIG TO GEN PICKERING
BY DIRECTION:
WAGAM REARADM USN
TOP SECRET
“It’s about 1,300 nautical miles from here to Espíritu Santo,” Pickering said. “Say, seven hours in a Coronado. If it arrives here when it’s expected, at 0500 tomorrow, I think we can reasonably expect to get in the air by noon. That would put us into Espíritu no later than 1800. We should be able to load everything aboard the Sunfish in an hour or so, and we should be able to sail at first light the day after tomorrow.”
“ ‘We?’ ” Colonel Stecker asked warily. “I thought we discussed that.”
“Slip of the tongue, Jack. The Sunfish will sail, with me standing on the pier, at first light the day after tomorrow, which will be the eleventh. It’s 3,200 nautical miles from Espíritu Santo to Boston. Using Lewis’s ballpark figures that the Sunfish can cruise on the surface at fifteen knots, she should be able to make Mindanao in ten days. That would be the twenty-first. To give us a little slack, I’ve scheduled her to be off Mindanao on the twenty-third.”
He looked around the table.
“Any questions?”
“Sir,” Captain Robert B. Macklin said.
“Yes?”
“Nothing, Sir. Excuse me.”
“If you’ve got something to say, Captain,” McCoy said, not very pleasantly, “let’s hear it.”
“Very well, Mr. McCoy,” Macklin said. “Since you have the responsibility for this mission, I was wondering, if you have considered my physical condition, how that might adversely affect the mission.”
“I watched you paddle the rubber boat, Captain. It looked to me like you could handle that without much trouble. What exactly is your physical condition?”
“Macklin,” Colonel Stecker said, even less pleasantly, “if you’d like, we can run you past a doctor and get an official report on your condition.”
“I was only thinking of the mission, Colonel,” Macklin said. “But I do have one question, Sir.”
“Let’s have it.”
“Has the OSS been kept up on how the mission is proceeding?”
“No,” Pickering said. “They haven’t.”
“Do I have your permission to do so, Sir?”
“I don’t see why not....”
“Why don’t we just tell them when we come back?” McCoy said.
For some reason, McCoy doesn’t like the idea of Macklin getting in touch with the OSS. I can’t see what harm it would do, but I think I should indulge McCoy.
“Don’t worry about the OSS, Captain Macklin,” Pickering said. “As soon as the Sunfish puts out to sea, I’ll see that Secretary Knox is notified. I’m sure he’ll pass the word to Mr. Donovan.”
“Thank you, Sir,” Captain Robert B. Macklin said.
[TWO]
Water Lily Cottage
Brisbane, Australia
2305 Hours 11 December 1942
First Lieutenant Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, pulled the sheet of paper from the typewriter, laid it on the dining-room table, stood up, took a Waterman’s fountain pen from his shirt pocket, and scrawled his name at the bottom. Then he picked it up and read what had taken him the better part of an hour to write.
Brisbane, Australia
9 December 1942
Dear Ernie:
Ed Sessions is going to the States the day after tomorrow, and has promised to carry this with him. This will be the last letter for a while, as I’ve got a job to do someplace where there isnʹt mail service. That means you donʹt have to write, either, as I wouldnʹ t get it anyhow.
I canʹt tell you where I’m going, and I donʹt know when Iʹll be back. Please donʹt put Ed on the spot by trying to get him to tell you. I canʹt see the necessity for all the secrecy, but Ed is an intelligence type, and they’re all a little hysterical about secrets. If they could, intelligence types would classify the telephone book TOP SECRET.
Iʹll be taking that Episcopal cross, or whatever it’s called, you sent here with Ed with me. And the people going with me are first rate Marines.
Actually, I’m sort of looking forward to it. All those native girls in grass skirts and nothing else doing the hula hula, and eating roasted pigs with apples in their mouths, etcetera.
I was thinking a while ago that I met you 20 November last year. That’s just a little over a year, even if it seems like much longer. And I remembered that saying,
‘It’s better to have loved and lost than not have loved at all. ʺ
I guess what I’m trying to say is that if something goes wrong, not that I think itʹs going to, I really think I’m still ahead of the game. I never thought I would be lucky enough to get to know somebody like you, much less have you as my girl friend, and to even think that maybe y
ou like me half as much as I like you.
But, letʹs face it, things sometimes do go wrong. If that happens, what I want you to do is get on with your life. I’m really grateful we had our thirteen months. If it turns out that I do find myself sitting on a cloud playing a harp, that’s the way the ball bounced, at least it will have happened doing something I’m good at, and that has to be done. A lot of people get killed doing stupid things like getting hit by a bus walking across a street.
I know Pick will be around for you if something goes wrong, and to tell you the truth, if I had to pick a husband for you, he would be at the head of the list.
Thanks for everything, Baby.
Love,
He very carefully folded the letter in thirds, found an envelope, and wrote “K.R.McCoy, 1/LT USMCR” in the upper-left-hand corner, “Miss Ernestine Sage, Personal” in the center, inserted the letter, licked the adhesive flap with his tongue, and carefully sealed the envelope.
He looked at the envelope, tapped it against his hand, and exhaled audibly. His eyes fell on the cupboard. He walked to it, opened it and took out a bottle of Famous Grouse, put it to his lips, and took a healthy swallow.
Then he walked out of the dining room, across the living room, and down the corridor to Ed Sessions’s room. There was a crack of light under the door. McCoy knocked, waited for a response, and then opened the door and went inside.
Sessions, in pajamas, was about to get into bed. He saw the envelope in McCoy’s hand.
“For Ernie?”
McCoy nodded and handed it to him.
“Thanks, Ed.”
Behind the Lines Page 42