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

"I'm a psychiatric nurse, Doctor."

"That probably comes in handy around here," the Colonel said, and then looked at Moore's legs. "Mary, Mother of God' What moron discharged you from a hospital?" He probed the legs knowledgeably with his fingers. Moore winced.

"Believe it or not, before I became a member of the Palace Guard, I thought I was an orthopedic surgeon. What did that, a grenade?"

"A grenade or a mortar round."

"Well, there's no sign of infection, but you really need some physical therapy." He looked at the nurses. "Make him walk around, if nothing else. Put him on his belly and force the legs back until the threshold of pain. Fifteen, twenty movements, each leg, four times a day. Got it?"

"Yes, Doctor," they said, almost in unison.

"When I said `walk him around,' I didn't mean he's to get out of bed or off the couch for more than thirty minutes at a time unless there's a reason. Give him all he wants to eat, aspirin for the pain, and Atabrine every two hours until tomorrow morning, when every four hours will be enough. I'll come back tomorrow. Got it?"

"Yes, Doctor," Barbara said.

"Alcohol, Doctor?" Joanne asked.

"A couple of drinks won't hurt him. Don't let him get fall down drunk."

Why did I ask that? Joanne wondered.

"Speaking of which, if someone were to offer me some of that Famous Grouse, I wouldn't turn it down," the Colonel said."

"Certainly," Banning said. "I could use one myself. Would you be offended, Sir, if I offered you a bottle of it?"

"Offended? Jesus, how dumb do I look?"

"Just don't tell anyone where you got it, please, Doctor," Banning said.

"If you were trying to be subtle, Major, and trying to tell me to keep my mouth shut about tonight, save your breath. I don't even want to know what you and your people are up to, and I have been around the Service long enough to know what things you talk about and what things you don't." Thirty minutes after the doctor left, the telephone rang. Banning answered it, and then a moment later announced, "The weather's clearing at Townsville. We can go."

He looked at Pluto Hon. "I just had an unpleasant thought. Will Moore be able to get into the dungeon?"

What in the world, Joanne Miller wondered, is the dungeon?

"With a little bit of luck, he won't have to," Hon said. "But yes, Sir. I took care of it."

"And what about the truck and the car?"

"They're supposed to be here," he looked at his wristwatch,, "in ten minutes, Sir."

"Let's get Dillon's skis outside, on the porch, so they won't have to come in here," Banning said.

Dillon's skis? Joanne wondered. Is that what he said, "Dillon's skis"?

Two large wooden crates were manhandled through the living room and out the door.

"Pluto will come back as soon we find out if that substitution code works-or come up with something that does," Banning said to Moore. "With you sick, I hate to take him. There's no other way."

"I'm all right," Moore said.

"Yeah, sure you are," Joanne heard herself say.

"We're leaving the car for you," Banning said. "You are not, repeat not, to give it to Mrs. Feller under any circumstances."

"Aye, aye, Sir," Moore said.

Banning looked at Joanne Miller. "When Hon comes back, one of you can pick him up at the airport." Lieutenant (J.G.) Miller decided she did not like Major Ed Banning.

"Aye, aye, Sir," she said, as sarcastically salty as she could manage. As she said it, she came to attention.

Her sarcasm went right over his head.

"Good girl," he said, and smiled and left.

Two minutes later, Lieutenants Miller and Cotter were alone in Water Lily Cottage with their patient.

[Two]

BILLETING OFFICE

OFFICE OF THE HEADQUARTERS COMMANDANT

SUPREME HEADQUARTERS

SOUTH WEST PACIFIC OCEAN AREA

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA

1905 HOURS 30 SEPTEMBER 1942

There were only two female field-grade officers, a major and a lieutenant colonel, assigned to Supreme Headquarters, South West Pacific Ocean Area. Both of them were nurses. The Lieutenant Colonel was on the staff of the senior medical officer, and she was in charge of whatever concerned army nurses. The Major was on the staff of the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-4 (Mat‚riel), as the resident expert on medical supplies. Both had elected to live in the Female Bachelor Officer's Quarters provided for the nurses assigned to what was known as Mercy Forward. Mercy Forward was in fact a detachment Fourth U.S. Army General Hospital (code name, Mercy) to Brisbane from Melbourne to provide medical service MacArthur's headquarters.

Major R. James Tourtillott, the SWPOA Deputy Headquarters Commandant, explained all this in some detail Ellen Feller, Department of the Navy Civilian Professional Employee (Assimilated Grade: Lieutenant Commander), to explain why there was no Female Field Grade Bachelor Quarters he could move her into.

"Where have you been living, Mrs. Feller?" Major' Tourtillott asked. "Is there some reason you can't just stay there?"

Yes, there is a goddamned reason! Major Ed Banning, that bastard, has turned Water Lily Cottage into a goddamned hospital, complete with two nurses: "Sorry, Mrs. Feller, you'll move into a BOQ until this is over. We just have to your room.

Obviously, there is no reason, no reason at all, why Moore could not be treated for his malaria-if he really has malaria, he looks perfectly healthy to me-in Mercy Forward. And even if there is some "security reason," as Banning said, for keeping him out of the hospital, there is no reason at all why those two Navy nurses couldn't live in the Nurse's BOQ at Mercy Forward. They're only junior-grade lieutenants, after all, I'm an assimilated Lieutenant Commander.

"There's a project, Major Tourtillott, a classified project I can't talk about, that seems to have evicted me."

"I could call Mercy Forward and see if they could put you up with the nurses."

"I don't want to move in with the nurses, for one thing, and for another, I have to be somewhere close to Supreme Headquarters. I'm on twenty-four-hour call."

"I'm sure something can be worked out, Mrs. Feller,' Tourtillott said, thinking that the best solution for housing lame-duck female -I wonder what the hell she does? As an assimilated Lieutenant Commander, she's no secretary- would probably be to move her into the Devonshire, a small, luxurious hotel requisitioned to house full colonels and one-star generals; but he couldn't do that without the OK of the Headquarters Commandant. "But not today."

"You don't seem to understand," Ellen Feller said. "I don't have a place to sleep." Major Tourtillott handed her a printed form.

"This is a billeting voucher on Mason's Hotel," he said.

"They'll put you up overnight, and if you'll come back, say at oh nine hundred, oh nine thirty, I'll have you fixed up by then."

"Where is Mason's Hotel?"

"Not far," Major Tourtillott said. "It's the best I can do right now."

The reason I am being humiliated like this is because Banning hates me, has been waiting for an opportunity to humiliate me, and now he's found it in spades. Not only is he denying me access to whatever he and that offensive Major Jake Dillon are up to, but he is rubbing that humiliation in my face by ordering me out of Water Lily Cottage.

He thinks he can just order me around like I'm one of his Marines.

And he thinks there is absolutely nothing I can do about it, because he's the senior Office of Management Analysis officer e even if my assimilated rank is equal to his.

Well, we'll see about that! Fleming Pickering won't let hint get away with this, once he hears about it!

Room 6 of Mason's Hotel turned out to be a small, more or less square room on the upper floor of a fifty-year-old, wood-framed, tin-roofed, two-story building.