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

Lieutenant Hon passed through the second of the steel doors, closed and locked it behind him; and then, after setting it up for MAGIC, he fed the tape into his code machine. When it began to clatter, he read the message that came out;

FROM CINCPAC RADIO PEARL HARBOR

TO SWPOA RADIO BRISBANE

27SEP42 NUMBER 34

TOP SECRET-MAGIC

FOLLOWING NON LOG SERVICE MESSAGE FROM RICKABEE WASHINGTON FOR BANNING BRISBANE

X START X THREE OFFICER ONE ENLISTED SPECIAL DETACHMENT 14 AUGMENTATION TEAM DEPARTED SAN

DIEGO BY AIR WITH 800 POUNDS SPECIAL EQUIPMENT 0730 27SEPT42 X ADVISE ARRIVAL YOUR STATION

REGARDS FROM BRIG GEN PICKERING X BANNING X END

Lieutenant Pluto Hon wondered idly why Banning was getting three more officers. What will he do with them? he asked himself. And what's the 800 pounds of special equipment? At the same- time he was pleased to see the regards from Brigadier General Pickering.

General Pickering. He'd heard a rumor about that. He found it hard to understand how Pickering would get a commission in the Marines. Then he put all that from his mind.

Because it was a Service message, it didn't have to be logged in. instead, he put a match to it, and the tape, and watched them burn. Banning would certainly call within the next twenty-four hours. When he did, Hon could tell him then that he was getting three officers and a Marine.

The four men and their equipment would probably arrive on either the twenty-ninth or thirtieth. So he called the motor pool and ordered a staff car and a three-quarter-ton truck for those days. Next he decided to put them up at Water Lily Cottage for as long as they were in Brisbane. If Ellen Feller didn't like it-in that marvelous Army phrase-she could go fuck herself.

It did not enter his mind to inform Mrs. Feller herself about the message.

Even though he was a lowly lieutenant floating around in a sea of colonels and generals, all needing wheels, the motor pool gave him no trouble about the vehicles. Three weeks before, he was late for a bridge game with General MacArthur. When he arrived, he apologized, saying that the motor pool had been unable to give him transportation.

"Dick," the Supreme Commander said to Colonel Richard Sutherland, his aide-de-camp, "make sure that doesn't happen to Pluto again." Lieutenant Pluto Hon didn't think it would. As the man said, when you are a first-rate bridge player you fall their to a number of social advantages.

[Two]

U.S. ARMY AIR TRANSPORT COMMAND PASSENGER TERMINAL

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA

1615 HOURS 29 SEPTEMBER 1942

It took some time for the SWPOA telephone operator to even admit to the existence of Lieutenant Hon Song Do; and it took another minute before Hon came on the line.

"Pluto, this is John Moore," Moore said into the phone. He was standing in the passenger terminal next to a counter. The telephone was on the counter.

"John Moore?" Pluto asked incredulously. "Johnny, my God' Where are you)"

"At the ATC passenger terminal."

"We heard you were hurt and sent back to the States-"

"Can You get us some wheels? We'll need a truck, or a jeep with trailer."

It came together in Pluto's mind. Johnny Moore was the Marine in the Special Detachment Augmentation Team that the message from Rickabee mentioned.

"I just checked an hour ago," Pluto said. "There was no plane due from Pearl."

"We went into Melbourne on a Navy P132Y," Moore replied. "The Army flew us up here on a C-46."

The PB2Y was the Consolidated Aircraft Coronado, a four engine amphibian Navy transport, while the C-46 was the Curtiss-Wright Commando, a twin-engine, thirty-six-passenger transport taken into the Army as the C-46 and by the Navy as the R5C.

I turned the vehicles loose," Pluto said. "Can you catch a cab to the cottage? Banning said to put you up there."

"We've got a bunch of stuff with us," Moore said, and then added, "Hold it a minute." There was a pause, and then Moore asked, "Where's Major Banning? Didn't he know we were coming?"

"He's probably at the club; we were going to have dinner there."

"Major Dillon says to tell you to ask him to meet us at the cottage."

Who the hell is Major Dillon?

"I'll get a truck started on its way over there and I'll go by the club and find Banning. Can you all get in the truck or should I come out there and get you?"

"Wait one," Moore said. And then came back on the line.

"Major Dillon says he'll get wheels here to take him to the cottage, but we're going to need a truck."

"I'll have one there in twenty minutes," Pluto said. "God, boy, it's good to hear your voice. See you in a little while."

Lieutenant Hon tried to telephone Mrs. Ellen Feller to tell her there would be guests in Water Lily Cottage. But she was not in the office General Willoughby had provided for her in the SWPOA G-2 Section, and there was no answer at the cottage.

He did manage to reach Major Banning at the bar of the Officer's Club.

"Dillon? The only Dillon I know is a Hollywood press agent, and he's in the States running a war bond tour."

"I didn't speak to him, Sir. Just to Sergeant Moore."

"Well, he can't have been hurt as badly as we heard, otherwise they wouldn't have sent him back over here," Banning said. "You be waiting out front, Pluto, I'll be there in ten minutes."

At the time Lieutenant Hon was trying to reach her, Mrs. Ellen Feller was at the Officer's Class Six Store. She had charmed the sergeant in charge there to allow her to exchange the two bottles on her ration of "Spirits, Domestic" (the Army's term for gin, bourbon, or blended whiskey) to "Spirits, Foreign" (brandy, cognac, or similar). The sergeant didn't mind; there was a greater demand for bourbon than for cognac, and Mrs. Feller was one of his very few customers with a great pair of teats.

She went from the Class Six Store to the PX, where she obtained her weekly ration of Chesterfield cigarettes (twelve packs), Hershey bars (a dozen), and Lux bath soap (three bars).

Then she went back to where they were waiting for her in the Chevrolet staff car.

She'd had to beg a ride from the motor pool. Because that bastard Banning was in town, he'd claimed the Studebaker President sedan that was assigned to them, They dropped her off at Water Lily Cottage about ninety seconds before a staff car pulled into the driveway. When the car drove up, she was on the wide stairs leading to the porch of the large, open, single-floor house. When she saw it, she stopped, turned, and went back down.

A Marine major stepped out of the car.

"May I help you?"

"You're Ellen Feller, right?"

"That's correct. "

He put out his hand. "I'm Jake Dillon."

"And how may I help you, Major Dillon?"

"Well, we're going to be staying here for a while," he said. "I hope that won't be too much of an inconvenience."

"Staying here?" she parroted. "I don't think so. These are my quarters." There was somebody else in the car, getting out of it with difficulty. It was another Marine officer, this one a second lieutenant. The driver had to pull him to his feet.

Banning is obviously behind this. I'll be damned if I will permit that man to turn My quarters into a transient BOQ for every Marine officer who passes through town.

"That's not the way I heard it," Jake Dillon said. There was neither sympathy nor kindness in his voice. He was tired from a practically nonstop flight halfway around the world, and his considerable experience with the opposite sex had permitted him to make an instant assessment of Mrs. Ellen Feller: She was a bitch.

"Oh? And how did you hear it?"

My God, that's Johnny Moore! What is he doing back here?

"Flem Pickering told me he's renting this place," Dillon said. "More to the point, he told me to use it while we're here."