W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps VII - Behind the Lines

Feldt nodded.

"Yes, Sir," Major Hon said. "Would you like to see the message before it goes out?"

"I have a profound faith in your spelling, Pluto," Pickering said, smiling, "but you better send an information copy to Haughton. I'm sure there are thirty admirals on CINCPAC's staff, with twice as many good reasons why CINC-PAC should not let us have the Narwhal. I may have to go to Frank Knox about this, and Haughton should have forewarning."

"Yes, Sir," Pluto said. "Haughton but not Rickabee?"

"Ask Haughton to advise Rickabee," Pickering said, and then asked, "Where are they?"

Major Hon pointed to the rear of the cottage.

Pickering took a healthy swallow of the whiskey, then set the glass down beside a row of empty glasses. He then immediately picked it and the empties up with the fingers of one hand. With the other, he grabbed the bottle of Fa-mous Grouse by the neck.

He walked out of the living room and down the corridor to a closed door, and knocked on it with the whiskey bottle.

"Open up!" he ordered.

The door was opened by Staff Sergeant Steve Koffler.

"It's the cocktail hour," Pickering said. "Didn't anyone notice?"

He handed the Famous Grouse to Koffler, and walked to a table in the middle of the room and set the glasses on it. Lieutenant Colonel Jack (NMI) Stecker and First Lieutenant Kenneth R. McCoy were sitting at the table, their uniforms protected by flower-patterned aprons, obviously borrowed from the kitchen. The table held three small rifles, technically U.S. Carbines, Caliber.30, Ml, broken down. Pickering saw their trigger group assemblies were also in pieces.

"When you can part with that adorable apron, Jack," Pickering said, "stick these in your pocket."

He tossed a small cellophane-covered package onto the table. It contained two silver eagles, the insignia of a colonel.

"That's a little premature, isn't it?" Lieutenant Colonel Stecker asked, a little uncomfortably.

"The Secretary of the Navy told me, I told General MacArthur; and to-morrow morning at oh eight forty-five, with suitable ceremony, El Supremo will pin those on you."

Stecker shook his head.

"That really wasn't necessary," Stecker said.

"There will be a photographer," Pickering went on. "Elly will soon have a picture of her husband the Colonel, with El Supremo beaming at him, with which to dazzle her neighbors."

Elly was Mrs. Jack (NMI) Stecker.

"I suppose," Colonel Stecker said, reaching for the bottle of whiskey, "that it would be bad manners if I were to say I wish to hell the General had minded his own business?"

"I suppose you've heard the bad news? No Aussie sub?" Pickering asked.

"Feldt told us," Stecker said. He held the bottle over one of the glasses and asked with a gesture if Lieutenant McCoy wanted him to pour.

McCoy held up fingers, indicating that he wanted about an inch and a half.

"Thank you, Sir," he said.

"And will Mrs. Koffler banish you from the marriage bed if you come home smelling of this?" Stecker asked Sergeant Koffler.

"I've got some Sen-Sen, Sir," Koffler said. "A little one, please."

"Now that you've taken those apart, can you put them back together again?" Pickering asked, indicating the carbines. "What are you doing, any-way?"

"Working on the sears," Stecker said.

Pickering was aware that the carbines were almost certainly in perfectly functioning order as they came out of their crates. But he was not at all sur-prised that Stecker and McCoy felt it necessary to fine-tune them. They were not only Marines, nor even only Marine marksmen-both had drawn extra pay as enlisted men for being Expert Riflemen-but weapons experts.

"I think we can get them back together, General," McCoy said. "And if the Colonel can't, Sergeant Koffler can."

Stecker chuckled.

"And you're determined that's what you want to take with you?" Picker-ing asked.

"I'd rather take a Garand," McCoy said.

"I thought I'd explained why we... why you should take the carbines," Stecker said.

"That's not what the General asked, Colonel," McCoy said, smiling at Stecker. "The General asked me what I'd rather take. I will take one of these, but I'd rather take a Garand."

"He was a sea lawyer the first time I ever met him," Stecker said, smiling at Pickering. "Wiseass little China Marine corporal in a handmade uniform. Knew everything. Had Expert medals pinned all over him. But when he went on the KD range, he couldn't hit anything but the butts. It looked like a Chinese fire drill, with all those Maggie's drawers flying." (The KD range was the known distance small-arms range, while Maggie's drawers was a red flag waved from the target butts to signal a complete miss.)

"Christ." McCoy chuckled. "I forgot about that. Until I figured out what that bastard was doing to me, I thought I was losing my mind."

"Until what bastard was doing what to you?" Pickering asked.

"General," Stecker said, "I know you'll find this hard to believe, but there were a number of officers who didn't think Corporal McCoy should be an officer and a gentleman."

"There was a Master Gunny who didn't think so either, as I remember it," McCoy said.

Before being called to active duty as a reserve officer, Stecker was the senior master gunnery sergeant at Marine Base, Quantico, Virginia.

"I didn't say that," Stecker said. "I said that if by some miracle you got through OCS, you would probably be the worst officer in the history of The Corps. And time seems to have proved me right."

"Are you two going to explain what you're talking about?" Pickering said.

"As I was saying, General, before this impertinent sea lawyer interrupted me," Stecker said, "there was a lieutenant who was sent right up the wall by the prospect of this young man putting on an officer's uniform-"

"Macklin," McCoy interrupted. "Robert B. Macklin. That was the sonofabitch's name!"

"That's the man," Stecker said. "What happened, General, was that he tried to get the sea lawyer here kicked out of OCS."

"Why?" Pickering asked.

"I had a run-in with him in China," McCoy said, "when I was working for Ed Banning. He was-is, if he's still alive, and I suppose it's too much to hope that he isn't-a miserable, lying sonofabitch. Banning wrote him an effi-ciency report that should have gotten him kicked out of The Corps, and would have, if the war hadn't come along."

Whatever happened in China, Pickering decided, if Ed Banning sided with McCoy, the officer in question was dead wrong.

Stecker saw the confusion on Pickering's face.

"I didn't know any of this at the time," he explained. "Ken being too proud, or too dumb, to ask for help."

"What was I supposed to say, 'Gunny, this lieutenant doesn't like me, and is being mean to me'?"

"Yeah," Stecker said. "Exactly. That's exactly what you should have done. And told me why he didn't like you."

"You would have laughed me out of your office," McCoy said.

"Anyway," Stecker said. "I heard that McCoy wasn't qualifying on the KD range. That didn't seem right, so I went and had a look, and found this Lieutenant Macklin in the pits, scoring McCoy's targets himself. He was scor-ing every third shot as a Maggie's drawers. Then I did some snooping around and got the rest of the story."

"In other words, General," McCoy said, "if it wasn't for the Gunny here sticking his nose in where it didn't belong, I would now be a buck sergeant in some nice, safe mess-kit-repair platoon somewhere."

Instead of, Pickering thought, getting ready for the third time to climb into a rubber boat and paddle it ashore from a submarine onto a Japanese-held island. First the Makin Island raid, then Buka to get Howard and Koffler out,

and now the Philippines.

"There's a word for someone like you, Lieutenant," Stecker said. "It's spelled ungrateful sonofabitch."