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

Oh, God!

`Mademoiselle, " Johnny Moore interrupted her chain thought by handing her his empty bottle of beer, "if you would be so kind?"

"Avec grand plaisir, mon cher, " Ernie said, and went to the beer buckets and got him one.

"What did they do to the Germans?" Beth asked. "The ones they caught from the submarine?"

"I don't know," McCoy said. "I didn't see the file, just heard the scuttlebutt. If they were in uniform, they were just put in POW cage. If they were in civilian clothing, that makes them spies. Then they could be shot. Or maybe hung."

"What would the Japanese do if they caught Americans?" Ernie asked.

"How did we get onto this subject?" McCoy said.

That means, Ernie decided, that the Japanese would do nothing quite as civilized as shooting someone they caught trying to land somewhere from a submarine-these three, for example.

There was a knock at the door. Not nearly as imperious as the previous knock. This one, in fact, was somehow furtive.

"Do you think the guardian of the beach has summoned the local vice cops?" Moore asked.

"I hope not," McCoy said as he turned the lights off, unlocked the door, and opened it.

When the lights came back on, Lieutenant Mainwaring and Captain Al Stein, the Army Air Corps officer-now that she saw him, Ernie remembered his name-and two Air Corps enlisted men were entering the small room. They had two wooden crates with them, rolling them on what Ernie thought of as a furniture man's dolly.

"Room service," Stein said.

"Why did you bring them here?" McCoy asked.

Ernie tried to read what was stenciled on the crates. Whatever had been stenciled there had been obliterated, and very recently, for the paint was still wet.

"Because I don't have the faith everybody else seems to have in this colonel of yours to fix this."

"Everything will be all right, Al," Mainwaring said.

"He said as Stein was led off in irons, destination Leavenworth U.S. Army prison."

"Help yourself to a beer," McCoy said to the Air Corps sergeants. "Or there's booze if you'd rather."

"I think maybe we'd better get the truck back," the older of the two Air Corps sergeants said.

"Have a beer," Stein ordered.

"OK, Captain, thank you."

"Have all the beer you want," McCoy said. "We really appreciate this."

"Ah, what the hell, Lieutenant," the sergeant said.

"I am sure, Captain Stein," Moore said, propping himself up against the headboard, "that an officer of your demonstrated logistical genius is aware that these crates won't fit in that Chevrolet staff car?" Stein looked at Moore and laughed.

"I'm surprised that you're still able to talk."

"Hell, he's been quoting the Bible to us," McCoy said. "An amazing man is our Lieutenant Moore."

"We'll bring the truck back at oh six hundred, Lieutenant," the Air Corps sergeant said. "That'll give us just over an hour to make it to Pensacola. Plenty of time. We just didn't want to try to get these crates through the gate at the field in the morning."

"You have three seats on the seven A.,M. courier flight and authorization for six hundred pounds of accompanied baggage," Lieutenant Mainwaring said.

"That's what these weigh?"

"Pray they don't weigh them," Stein said.

"What about the extra cone sets?"

"I've got those in the car," Mainwaring said. "All I could get you was three."

"Plus the one we have?" McCoy asked.

"Including the one you have," Stein said.

"Beggars can't be choosers," McCoy said. "Thank you."

"I won't see you in the morning, McCoy," Stein said. "So I'll say this now. In no more than seventy-two hours-probably within forty-eight-somebody's going to miss this stuff. I would deeply appreciate it if you will do whatever you can to keep Mrs. Stein's little boy from ending his Air Corps career making little rocks out of big ones at Leavenworth."

"Did you talk to the Colonel, Mainwaring?" McCoy asked.

Mainwaring nodded.

"There's supposed to be TWX on the way down here."

"That ought to do it, Stein," McCoy said. "But I'll check on it myself as soon as we get to Washington."

"Good enough," Captain Stein said. He looked at his two sergeants. "Take enough of those bottles to sustain you throughout the journey, gentlemen, and then let us be on our way. "Thanks, Stein," McCoy said. "We owe you one."

"You owe me a good deal more than one," Stein said, putting out his hand. "Good luck, McCoy. Be careful. You two, too," he said, waving at Hart and Moore.

"May the peace of God which passeth all understanding," Moore proclaimed from the bed, "go with you and yours."

"Oh, shit!" Stein said, laughing, and snapped off the lights.

Just before the door slammed shut after them, Stein called out, "Mazeltov, you all!"

"Why do you think Moore got so drunk?" Ernie asked as she made a halfhearted attempt to clean up the room when the others had gone.

"I think he was in pain," McCoy said.

"What kind of pain?"

"I think it started when he went in the water and got saltwater in his wounds," McCoy answered matter-of-factly.

"And then I think he hurt his legs, either in the water, or maybe walking in the sand."

"So why didn't you do something about it?"

"Getting drunk worked as good as anything from the dispensary," McCoy said. "And if we had taken him there, they probably would have wanted to keep him."

"That's pretty damned callous!"

"He's a big boy, baby. He wanted to come down here."

"And he wants to do whatever it is you're about to do, right?"

"Right."

"And you're not going to tell me what that is, right?"

"Right."

"How about how Beth and me are supposed to get back to Washington?"

"The way Mainwaring was looking at you, I thought maybe you'd want to stay."

"Go to hell!"

"After Mainwaring drops us at Pensacola-I'm not sure we can get you on the base without a lot of hassle; you may have to wait outside the gate-he'll take you to Mobile. That's another forty miles or so. You catch a train there to Montgomery and connect with the Crescent from New Orleans to Washington."

"And by the time I get to Washington, are you still going to be there?"

"Baby, I don't know."

"In other words, I may not see you after tomorrow morning?" He didn't reply.

"For how long?"

He shrugged.

"And if I hadn't asked, you were just going to get on that goddamned airplane tomorrow without even saying goodbye?"

"Saying goodbye to you is hard for me, baby."

"How about saying, `I love you, Ernie'? Is that hard for you, Ken?"

"I love you, Ernie," McCoy said.

"If you love me, you sonofabitch, why won't you marry me?" she said. But she didn't expect a reply or wait for one. She walked quickly to him and waited for him to put his arms around her. When he did, she told him she loved him, too.

Two rooms down, Beth Lathrop also asked what was going to happen to her and to Ernie the next day. When she asked it, she was standing in the door to the bathroom, wrapped in a towel.

"Mainwaring is going to take both of you to Mobile to catch a train."

"Do you think she means it when she says she can get me assignments as a photographer?"

"I'm sure she does." She doesn't know you're a whore. Maybe if she knew that, she wouldn't.

"You don't think she's just saying that?"

"You better be able to produce, Beth."

"What does that mean?"

"It better not be bullshit, you being a photographer."

"You bastard! Is that what you think?"

"All I'm saying is that if you're not a photographer, now is the time to say so. Don't make a fool of her. She's a nice girl."

"You think I've been lying all the time, don't you?"

"I don't know what the hell to think."

"That's not all. Say what you're thinking!"