W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps V - Line of Fire

Colonel F. L. Rickabee was very impressed with Lieutenant K. R. McCoy. Having placed a great deal of confidence in Major Ed Banning's ability, he had not given a great deal of thought to the problems of extracting the-Howard and Koffler-from Buka... until his somewhat strained luncheon the previous afternoon with a somewhat intoxicated and very upset Brigadier General Fleming Pickering.

After giving the problem some hard thought, he had come up with very much the same conclusion that Banning had obviously reached in Australia-that getting those two guys out was impossible. It seemed pretty clear that McCoy had reached the same conclusion now that the facts were available to him.

This should shut Pickering up, Rickabee thought with a great sense of relief. As a veteran of the Makin raid, McCoy was obviously an expert in rubber boat landings. Pickering would accept his judgment. And McCoy was a Mustang: A former Marine would not decide they couldn't go and pick up the dead and wounded unless it was really impossible.

Better he should get this painful truth from McCoy than from me again.

"I gather that you and Major Banning are in agreement, then, McCoy, that there is absolutely nothing we can do for Joe Howard and Steve Koffler?" General Pickering asked, his voice now sounding very tired.

"No, Sir," McCoy said. "I didn't say that."

"Well then, goddamn it, let's have it!"

"I thought of two ways we might be able to carry this off," McCoy said.

"One's kind of wild."

"Let's hear it, McCoy."

"I started out with the submarine idea," McCoy said.

"Christ, there's so much I don't know!"

"We can get answers. Go ahead," Pickering said.

"Yes, Sir. OK. Step one. We find a beach that will take boats. Depending on what the surf and the beach are like when we get there, we put ashore the radios, the replacement Marines, and an Australian Coastwatcher. We'll also bring one, or better, two natives who know the island and can find Ferdinand Six. If the surf is bad, we just put the natives ashore. We don't try to land the radios and the replacement team. Then the natives find Ferdinand Six and tell them where the submarine will be probably a different beach. Maybe with a little bit of luck, there would be native boats to go out to the submarine-"

"I like it," General Pickering said, looking triumphantly at Colonel Rickabee.

Oh, shit! Rickabee thought.

"Then," McCoy went on, "as I was thinking about that, I had a wild hare."

And how, Lieutenant McCoy, Rickabee wondered, would you describe your previous "Errol Flynn Fights the Nasty Nips" idea as a tame hare?

"Well'?"

"Use an R4D, just go in, off-load the replacement team and radios, and pick up the guys that are there," McCoy said.

"I thought it was pretty well established that there was no airfield."

"There's beaches," McCoy said. "Maybe there's the right kind of sand, packed so it will take an R4D."

"I don't think so," Sessions said.

"You're talking about landing an R4D on a beach?" Rickabee asked incredulously. "It would just sink in."

"I've been nosing around for the Mongolian Operation," McCoy said. "We can make that flight only one time. If the Japs see the plane, we have to hope they think it was some guy just got lost. But if two planes got lost, they would be very suspicious. So we're going to have to take everything we'll need in with us and get it safely on the ground. And it's a one-way ride; there's no way the plane can get out again. So the question came up-they're still talking about it-of what to do with the airplane."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, McCoy," Pickering said.

"General, I'll have the Mongolia file in your hands this afternoon," Rickabee said.

"I want to hear about it now."

"General, we're getting into Need to Know," Rickabee said, gesturing toward Dillon and Hart.

"I'll decide who needs to know what," Pickering said icily.

"Go on, McCoy."

"Sir, we're setting up a weather observation station in the Mongolian desert. The only way we can get in is by air. So they're going to add auxiliary fuel tanks to an R4D that will give us the necessary range from the Aleutian Islands-"

"The Japanese hold Attu in the Aleutians," Pickering interrupted.

"Yes, Sir. That's one of the problems. Anyway, we can probably get enough range to make it in. The original idea was to parachute the team in and then leave the airplane on automatic pilot and let it crash when it ran out of fuel. But they were still cutting the fuel supply so tight, they were afraid it would run out too close to the drop site. So then they thought if they didn't use parachutes and the packing necessary for the equipment, they could carry that much more fuel. So they've been wondering how they land the plane in the desert. Maybe just land it and bury it in sand. Or maybe land it, unload it, and then take off again and put it on autopilot. Anyway, they're working on how to land it on sand. I don't know whether that will work, or if it does, whether it would work on a beach in Buka, but it would sure solve a lot of problems."

"The plane that dropped Howard and Koffler on Buka was shot down on its way home," Rickabee said.

This Mongolian Operation, obviously, is just about as risky for the people involved as Ferdinand Six, Pickering thought. And one of the reasons McCoy is so matter-of-factly willing to go on it is that he believes, as a matter of faith, that if he gets in trouble, somebody else in The Corps will do all that's humanly possible to get him out.

I'm right about this! Even if Rickabee, and probably Sessions, think I'm a goddamned fool "We could solve that problem, too," Pickering said. "Who's `they,' McCoy? Where are they working on this land-on-sand business?"

"At an Army Air Corps airfield in Florida, General. On the Florida panhandle, up near the Alabama border."

"That's where Jimmy Doolittle trained for his B-25 Shangrila mission on Tokyo," Pickering thought aloud.

"Eglin Field, I think, Sir," McCoy said.

"No. It's probably an auxiliary field, between Eglin and Pensacola. I was there a while back. Is there any reason you can't go down there and find out something for sure?"

"I can go down there, yes, Sir."

"Then go."

"General, if I could have Lieutenant Moore and Sergeant Hart... having them with me might be helpful."

"OK. Whatever you think you need," Pickering said, and went on: "We have concluded that the extraction of Joe Howard and Steve Koffler is not impossible..." You have the fantasy that it's not impossible, Rickabee thought. Jesus Christ, landing an airliner on a beach, right under the nose of the Japanese! Fifty, sixty miles from a Japanese fighter base!

"We will now deal with your statement, Colonel, that my going to Australia is `out of the question."

"Admiral Leahy would not give you permission, General", Rickabee said. And then, anticipating Pickering's response to that, he went on. "And if you were to go without permission, he would order you home as soon as he heard about it. Among other things, that would serve to call attention to this operation, which is the last thing you want to happen."

"Jesus!" Pickering said bitterly.

It was clear to Rickabee that he had made his point.

"Lieutenant McCoy," he said, "carrying a letter of instructions from you, General, to Major Banning, would, I suggest, be all that's needed."

"I don't think so," Pickering said. "McCoy is a lieutenant, Banning a major. What I have been thinking is that Jake outranks Banning." Goddamn it, I should have known he would pick up on that, Rickabee thought. Dillon came back into The Corps as a major while Banning was still in the Philippines as a captain.

"Flem, for Christ's sake," Jake Dillon said uncomfortably, "I'm a press agent wearing a major's uniform. I don't know anything about this sort of thing."