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

There was a bed with a visibly sagging mattress; a chest of drawers; a mirror which had lost at least half of its silver backing; a table against a wall; a straight-backed chair-, a bedside table with a 25-watt lamp on it; and a bare 100-watt bulb hanging from the ceding. There was a sink; and behind a curtain there was a tin-walled cubicle with a shower head and concrete floor. The toilet was down the corridor.

Mrs. Ellen Feller moved the 25-watt lamp from the bedside table to the table against the wall, pulled the chair up to it, and spent the next two hours composing a message to Brigadier General Fleming Pickering. It would go out that very night over the MAGIC channel, she decided, even if that meant she would have to pay for a taxi all the way out to the Supreme Headquarters, SWPOA building, spend thirty minutes in Pluto Hon's damned damp dungeon, and then either beg a ride back here from the staff duty officer or pay for another damned taxi.

Putting her thoughts on paper, however, turned out to be much more difficult than she initially imagined. Her first draft, quickly balled up and tossed on the floor, sounded like whining. And that wouldn't do. To win her point, she had to paint herself as a member of the team who had been unjustly excluded from team activities.

Neither was Fleming Pickering going to be automatically sympathetic to her eviction from Water Lily Cottage, she realized. Banning would just tell him that John Moore's nurses needed her room.

Maybe Johnny Moore really has malaria.

And then, slowly, as her fury waned, she saw other problems.

For instance, she wasn't entirely sure that Fleming Pickering would even get her carefully worded message. It would have to pass over Rickabee's desk. And Colonel Rickabee and that bastard Banning were not only brother Marine officers, but personally close. Even if she sent it EYES ONLY PICKERING, Rickabee would see it. He would be prepared to argue Banning's case by the time he handed it to Pickering.

And she couldn't send it EYES ONLY PICKERING and still look like a member of the team registering a justified complaint.

Rickabee was Banning's immediate superior, not Pickering.

Any complaints should be directed to him.

And finally, of course, that rude bastard Dillon just might have been telling the truth. Pickering himself just might have told him to keep Ellen Feller out of whatever it was they were doing.

Finally, she gave up. She retrieved all the crumpled-up balls of paper and put a match to them.

There were more than two ways to skin a cat.

General Willoughby was proud and sensitive about his role as MacArthur's intelligence officer. He would not be at all pleased to learn that a clandestine intelligence operation, directed from Washington, was being conducted right under his nose.

Let Willoughby send an EYES ONLY to Washington either on his own or at MacArthur's direction.

It wouldn't be hard for Willoughby to "find out." She'd go to the dungeon in the morning, and she would personally carry to General Willoughby the first MAGIC that came through.

Willoughby almost always wanted to chat a little. He'd offer her a cup of coffee and she'd accept it, of course.

She would, she decided, wear the white cotton see-through blouse Willoughby always seemed to find so fascinating.

On that happy note, Mrs. Ellen Feller (Assimilated Grade: Lieutenant Commander) took off her clothing, climbed into the bed with the sagging mattress, and went to sleep.

[Three]

At half past nine, Lieutenant (J.G.) Joanne Miller, NNC, came back into the living room. Second Lieutenant John Marston Moore, USMCR, was regally established there in a high-backed armchair, his feet on its matching footstool. He was wearing a hospital bathrobe, pajamas, and slippers. A card table had been arranged so that Joanne could sit on one side and Lieutenant (J.G.) Barbara Cotter on the other. The three of them had been playing gin rummy.

Joanne had gone into the kitchen to make a fresh pot of tea and to get Lieutenant Moore's Atabrine. She had refused his request for another beer, and he had somewhat surprised her by not giving her an argument. Usually, when he asked for a beer and she turned him down, he gave her an argument. And that was beginning to get to her. But then he began to annoy her in a different way. Every time she glanced at him, she saw that he was looking at her.

He's just a kid, a horny kid, she thought. If I ignore him, he'll stop.

He swallowed the Atabrine, washing it down with a swallow of Coca-Cola.

"How old are you?" she heard herself asking.

"Twenty-two," he said.

"You don't look it." She saw the strange look on Barbara's face.

"Did I do something wrong, or what?" Moore asked.

I'm twenty-four. What right have I got to think of him as a kid. "That just slipped out. Sorry."

"I thought you were going to tell me it was past my bedtime or something," he said.

"It is."

He looked at his watch.

"Please, Mommy," he said. "It's only half past nine. Can't I stay up till ten?"

"I said I was sorry," she said. "I really don't give a damn if you stay up all night. I'm going to bed."

Barbara flashed her another what's-wrong-with-you? look.

"Just a couple more hands, John," Barbara said. "It's been a long day for me, too."

Joanne went into the bedroom recently vacated by Ellen Feller and started to prepare for bed. She had just emerged from the shower when she heard the telephone ring. A minute later Barbara called her name.

Joanne put on her bathrobe and went into the living room in time to see John Moore walking awkwardly across the room to the couch. He picked up his cane and then went into his bedroom.

"He says he has to go out," Barbara said, and gestured toward the telephone.

"Like hell he's going out!" She pushed the door to his bedroom open.

Moore was pulling his pajama top over his head.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"I've got to go to the dungeon," he said. "I'd be grateful if one of you would drive me."

"You're not going anywhere."

"Hey," he said, almost nastily, "enough of this `me Mommy and you Little Boy' bullshit. I have to go to the dungeon. They called. I'm going."

"What the hell is the dungeon?"

He didn't answer her. He found a T-shirt and pulled it over his head. After he stuck his arms in the sleeves of a shirt, he looked at her.

"The dungeon is what they call the cryptographic room. It's in the SWPOA basement. A message there has to be decoded."

"And they don't have a cryptographic officer on duty? Why do you have to go?"

Again, he didn't reply. He turned his back to her and dropped his pajama trousers. She could see the scars on his legs. He almost fell over putting his undershorts on.

When he reached for his trousers, she went to him.

"Let me help you," she said, much more fiercely than she intended. "I don't want you breaking your leg."

He sat on the bed. She dropped to her knees, picked up his pants, and worked them up his calves. When she looked up at him, she saw him staring down the front of her bathrobe.

She flushed and angrily put her hand to the opening, closed the robe, quickly got to her feet, and turned around.

"I hope you got an eyeful!" she snapped.

She could see him in the mirror over the chest of drawers.

He pushed himself off the bed, stood up, and pulled his trousers up. He had an erection. It stood there defiantly until he had tucked his shirt in and buttoned his waistband. As he pushed himself inside his fly and zipped himself up, he said, "If you didn't want me to look, why did you come in here dressed like that?"

A wave of anger swept through her. She spun around and slapped him as hard as she could, so hard that he fell backward onto the bed.

"You bastard!" she hissed.