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

"You're a Marine, Jake," Pickering said. "And all you have to do is go there and report to me that Banning is or is not doing what you tell him to do. And what you tell him to do is what McCoy tells you he wants done."

"General, that puts me in a hell of a spot," McCoy said.

"There is a limited access communications channel available to us. Moore is familiar with it..." Pickering said.

Jesus, he's talking about the MAGIC channel, Rickabee thought. He shouldn't even think of using that for this harebrained scheme of his! But Jesus, except for Admiral Leahy or the President himself there's no one to tell him he can't.

"We will utilize that to keep in touch with day-to-day developments. As Rickabee just pointed out, the less attention paid to this operation, the better. The question, John, is whether you feel up to going back to Australia."

"Yes, Sir. I feel fine."

"General, he's walking around with a cane!" Rickabee protested.

"You're sure?" Pickering asked Moore.

"Yes, Sir, I'm sure," Lieutenant Moore said.

"OK. We're under way," Pickering said. "Now we start with the administrative details. I've got some letters to write. Can I have a typewriter sent over here, Rickabee?"

"I'll send you a secretary, Sir."

"I asked for a typewriter," Pickering said.

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"You can start on getting orders cut," Pickering said. "And McCoy and Moore and Hart will need plane tickets right away." "Sir," Lieutenant McCoy said, "the overnight train to Miami-`Seacoast Airline' they call it for some reason I never understood comes through Washington at half past six. If we could get on that, we could get a good night's sleep. We could get off in Tallahassee and catch the Greyhound bus to Eglin."

"See if you can get them a compartment-compartments- on the train," Pickering ordered. "And see if you can't arrange to have somebody from Eglin pick them up at Tallahassee."

"Aye, Aye, Sir," Sessions said. "No problem, we have an officer there in connection with Operation CHINA SUN." In the car on the way back to the Mall and Temporary Building T-2032, Captain Edward Sessions turned to Colonel F. L. Rickabee and asked, "Do you think they'll be able to pull this off, Colonel?"

"It isn't my place to think about my orders, Captain. I'm a Marine officer; when I am given an order, I do my best to carry it out. But since you asked, no, I don't think so. Do I hope they can? Yes, I do."

"Why do you suppose McCoy wanted to take Moore and Hart with him to Florida?"

"I have absolutely no idea," Rickabee said, "my mind being otherwise occupied with such mundane questions as under what authority we are going to be able to transport Major Dillon to Australia. He is assigned to Public Affairs, after all.

... And on the subject of Major Dillon, did it occur to you that Dillon has been made privy to Operation CHINA SUN?"

"I think Dillon can be trusted to keep his mouth shut, Colonel. "

"I hope so," Rickabee said. "Jesus Christ, I hope so!" Second Lieutenant John Marston Moore waited until they were in suite 614 of the Foster Lafayette Hotel before asking the question Captain Sessions asked: "Exactly what are we going to do in Florida, McCoy?"

"I'm going to talk to an Air Corps guy I met down there. He knows all about the kind of sand you need to land airplanes on.

And, more important, he invented a gimmick... you stick a cone, sort of, just far enough into the sand to make it stand up.

Then you drop a ten-pound weight on it from exactly twenty

four inches. How far that drives the cone into the ground tells you how much weight the sand will support."

"Fascinating," Moore said.

"I want to talk to him and talk him out of a couple of the cone things-as many as he'll give me," McCoy said. "That'll probably take the better part of an hour. Two hours if he buys us lunch in their officer's club. That reminds me, Hart, you're going to have to wear civilian clothes."

"Yes, Sir," Hart said.

"And what else?"

"The beach along the Gulf Coast there is as pretty as any in Hawaii," McCoy said. "And the seafood is great. With a little bit of luck, we'll have twenty-four hours, maybe thirty-six, before Sessions gets us seats on the courier plane out of Pensacola back here."

"What do you need us along for?" Hart asked.

"Beth said she was on vacation," McCoy said. "Don't you think she'd like a day or two on the beach in Florida? And a romantic dinner on a train? I know damned well Ernie will."

"Who's Beth?" Moore asked.

"Hart's girlfriend," McCoy said. "She came to Washington to see him."

"That was the mysterious telephone call?" Moore asked.

Hart nodded.

Jesus, what the hell will happen if they find out what Beth does for a living? Hart asked himself.

It took Hart a moment to decide that McCoy was perfectly serious.

McCoy saw the look on his face, and on Moore's.

"Would you two like a few words of wisdom from an old Marine?" he asked, and went on without waiting for a reply "In case you haven't figured this out yet, we're about to get shipped out. The way Pickering is pushing Rickabee, we're going just as soon as they can cut orders. When Pickering said he wanted me to find out about landing an R4D on sand, the first thing I thought was that I would call this Air Corps guy, tell him the problem, then send Hart down there to get the gimmicks to test the sand. Then I thought that if I hung around here waiting for him to come back, Rickabee and Sessions would find things for me to do. Then I decided that I would have to go myself, even though that's a sacrifice. Then I decided that it would not be fair to a wounded hero-such as yourself, Lieutenant Moore-to leave you behind to run errands while Sergeant Hart and myself and our girlfriends are riding on a luxury train and lying on a Florida beach. Am I getting through to you two?"

Moore laughed. "It sounds like we'll be busy!" he said.

"As General Pickering said to me just this morning," McCoy said, " `Take what you can, when you can get it." Who am I to argue with a general?" Then he saw the look on Hart's face.

"What's the matter with you? Don't you think Beth will want to, go?"

"I'm sure she'll want to go," Hart said.

I'm not sure I should take her. Jesus, why did she have to be a whore?

"Then you better get your ass over to Union Station and get tickets for the girls on the Seacoast Airline Limited or whatever the hell they call it. You got any money?" he asked, as he took a sheaf of bills from his pocket.

"Pity you don't have a girl, Moore," McCoy said. "But maybe you'll get lucky in the club car."

When Major Jake Dillon walked into the Metro-Magnum Studios suite in the Willard Hotel, Veronica Wood was preparing herself for her day's work: Her long blond hair was pulled tightly back against her head, and she had converted the coffee table in the sitting room to a makeup table. She was wearing a really ugly brown cotton bathrobe.

"Where the hell have you been?" she asked, looking up at him. The bathrobe was hanging open.

Fantastic teats!

"I had work to do," Jake said.

"You think those cheap bastards would put a decent goddamned dressing room in here," Veronica said. "I've got an interview with that bitch from the Post at noon. I'm going to look like shit."

"This is Seymour's apartment," Dillon said, referring to the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Metro-Magnum Studios. "He doesn't like to look at himself in mirrors." She chuckled and smiled at him.

"You had a telephone call," she said. "Couple of them.

Same guy. Name of Stewart. He's pissed at something."

"Did he say he was `General' Stewart?" Veronica thought about that a moment, and then nodded.

"Yeah. He did."

"Oh, shit."

"He said you were supposed to call him the minute you got I in."