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

"You're a Marine officer? A regular?"

"Yes, I am."

"Are there other officers around?" McCoy asked. "Somebody with more rank?"

"Captain Hedges," Everly said. "He's leading a patrol here."

"When will he get here?"

"Two, three days. He has to come sixty miles. Maybe four," Everly said.

"Nobody higher than a captain?"

"That's it, McCoy," Everly said.

"Can you paddle a rubber boat, Captain?" McCoy asked. "I mean, if we can get you into a rubber boat, could you paddle it out to the submarine?"

"I think so."

"How much do you know about Fertig's operation?"

"Here you go, Mr. McCoy," Koffler said, handing him a carbine. "Care-ful, it's loaded and not locked."

"What the hell is that thing?" Everly asked derisively. And then, "He called you 'Mister McCoy'?"

"You can call me 'Sir,' Percy," McCoy said. "It's a carbine. Fires a real-hot.30 caliber pistol cartridge from a fifteen-round magazine. Good little weapon. We're going to try to bring one hundred of them ashore."

"You know I don't like being called 'Percy,' " Everly said.

"Then don't call me 'Killer,' or I will make you call me 'Sir,' Percy."

"Mr. McCoy is a lieutenant," Koffler furnished helpfully.

"You're in charge, here, Mr. McCoy?" Weston asked.

"I am," McCoy said simply. "I asked you how much do you know about Fertig's operation?"

"I'm the G-2," Weston said.

"That OSS guy is in the first boat, Mr. McCoy," Koffler said. "Him and Mr. Lewis."

McCoy turned to look at him. He was peering out to sea through binocu-lars.

"Give me those," he ordered.

Koffler somewhat reluctantly handed them over.

"Police up that plastic," McCoy ordered. "Jesus Christ, Steve! You know better than to leave stuff like that for the Japs to find!"

"Sorry," Koffler said contritely, and immediately dropped to his knees to pick up the shredded plastic in which the radio, the binoculars, and the carbines had been wrapped.

"What I want you do to, Captain," McCoy said, "is go out in the surf until you're up to your waist. Koffler will go with you. Leave the Thompson. When that first boat gets here, help unload it. The stuff will float, and Koffler will see it doesn't get away. Then get in, and go out to the submarine."

"What for?" Weston asked.

"My orders are to send the highest-ranking officer I can find out with the Sunfish. You're it."

"Why? I'm not sure-"

"Don't argue with me," McCoy said coldly. "Just do it!"

"You better do it, Mr. Weston," Everly said.

Weston looked at McCoy, confusion in his eyes. McCoy felt sorry for him.

"I think you're going to brief General MacArthur on what's going on around here," he said with a smile. "I know you're going to brief General Pickering."

"MacArthur?" Everly said. "No shit?"

"No shit, Everly," McCoy said. "And, Captain, don't shave off that beard until General Pickering sees it."

Everly still looked confused and hesitant.

"Go, goddamn it!" McCoy said. "By the time you wade through the surf, the boat'll be there."

Weston looked at Everly, who nodded.

"Have a cold one for me, Mr. Weston," he said, and put out his hand.

"Take care of yourself, Everly," Weston said, aware and surprised that he wanted to cry again.

"Yeah," Everly said. He held out his hand for Weston's Thompson sub-machine gun. Weston gave it to him, then walked to the edge of the water and waded in.

"Where can we stash the stuff we're bringing ashore?" McCoy asked, turning to Everly.

"How much stuff?"

"What's in those two boats for now," McCoy said. "More stuff tomor-row, if we get away with this."

"I think you can forget tomorrow," Everly said. "There's going to be Japs over here sooner or later, and I think sooner."

"Tell me about the Japs," McCoy said.

"Four-man patrol," Everly responded. "I think they got off a truck down there a ways, and were supposed to be picked up by another a couple of miles down that. When they don't show up, I think somebody will come looking for them."

"How much time?"

Everly threw up his hands helplessly.

"If we're lucky, nobody heard the Thompson. That may give us a little more time. If they did, we could have Japs anytime."

"What about stashing this stuff?"

"There's jungle for maybe half a mile from here to the road, in a straight line. Any place between here and the road would be as good as any."

"How far away is Fertig?"

"Sixty miles. But he's moving."

"What do you mean he's moving?"

"He figured maybe one of us would be captured. He didn't want us to tell the Japs if we got captured. If we don't know where he went, we can't tell the Japs."

"Oh, Jesus!"

"But no sweat, McCoy. He'll find us, if the Japs don't find us first."

"What do you think of Fertig?"

"He's a little weird," Everly said. "He's got a little red goatee, and I guess you know he's not a real general. He was a light colonel, I think. But he's smart, and he's got balls."

That's about as close to high praise as Everly is likely to give, McCoy decided.

"OK. Here's the drill. The first thing we do is get Koffler and one of the radios to Fertig. How do we do that?"

"I know where to meet Captain Hedges and the patrol...."

"How many men on the patrol? Enough to carry this stuff?"

"Enough to carry a lot of it. You won't believe how much crap these Flips can carry. But I don't know how many men. Probably fifteen, twenty, any-how."

"Can a couple of them take Koffler to Fertig? I guess he's got about a hundred pounds of gear."

"I got a motorcycle stashed a ways back," Everly said. "If I can find the sonofabitch. Can we strap what he has to take on the motorcycle?"

"What about Japs on the road?"

"I don't know," Everly said. "And the General didn't say anything, but like I said, he's smart. He'll probably do something the other side of Boston to have all the Japs running around up there."

"Fertig, you mean?"

Everly nodded.

"Or I could carry-what did you say his name is?"

"Koffler."

"-Koffler and his stuff to the motorcycle and wait until tonight to move down the road."

"Your call," McCoy said. "Just keep in mind, getting Koffler and that radio to Fertig is the most important thing right now."

"Just one radio?"

"I got another one here. And there's two more on the sub, if we can get more stuff off."

He looked out to sea. The first boat had reached Koffler and Weston, and Lewis was shoving black plastic-wrapped parcels over the side. Captain Rob-ert B. Macklin, USMC, was kneeling in the center of the boat doing, as far as McCoy could see, absolutely nothing.

The second boat, carrying Zimmerman and two sailors from the Sunfish, was approaching them.

The sun was fully up now. If a Japanese patrol boat appeared, or worse, an airplane, the Sunfish would be in trouble.

McCoy scanned the horizon, and then the skies, with the binoculars. There was nothing.

Zimmerman's boat passed Lewis's and kept coming.

"If they don't go over the side now, it'll turn over in the surf," McCoy mused aloud.

A minute later, his prediction came true. The boat flipped over on its side, dumping the three men and the stack of plastic-wrapped parcels into the sea.

"Come on, we better get those people some weapons," McCoy said, and led Everly to the boat they had dragged off the beach into the jungle. He reached into the boat, pulled a plastic-wrapped parcel of carbines from it, and slit the plastic.

"That's the knife you had in Shanghai, right?" Everly said.

"So what?"

"Just curious, is all," Everly said.

"Let me show you how this works," McCoy said, picking up one of the carbines. "The safety and the magazine release are here on the trigger assem-bly. You flip the little lever horizontal to take it off safety. You push the button and the magazine falls out." He demonstrated. "Fifteen shots. You shove it back in until it clicks. Then you work the action-he demonstrated again-and it's ready to go."