W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps IV - Battleground

"Welcome aboard. This is Major Stecker, who has been filling in."

Stecker offered his hand. Vandergrift spotted Moore, and offered him his hand.

"You came in with Colonel Dailey, Sergeant?"

"Yes, Sir."

"He was Flem Pickering's-I don't know what, orderly, I guess-in Australia," Dillon volunteered.

"Is that what you've been doing, Son?" Vandergrift asked. "Orderly?"

"No, Sir. I'm a Japanese-language linguist, Sir."

"In that case, I'm sure Major Stecker is even more glad to see you than he is to see Colonel Dailey," Vandergrift said. He looked at Major Jake Dillon and shook his head.

"Think about it, Jake," he said. "Did you really think they would airship an orderly in here?"

Stecker walked over to Moore and examined him closely.

"Give me a straight answer, Sergeant. How well do you speak-more important, how well do you read-Japanese?"

"Fluently, Sir."

"Sergeant!" Stecker said, raising his voice. A head appeared from behind the canvas that separated the outer "office" from "the map room."

"Sir?"

"Take the sergeant here up to the First Marines. He's a Japanese-language linguist."

"Belay that, Sergeant," General Vandergrift said. "I'm sure you have more important things to do, and Major Dillon has just kindly offered to take the sergeant, haven't you, Major?"

"Yes, Sir," Dillon said. "I'd be happy to."

"Sergeant," Jack Stecker said, "there's several boxes of stuff at the First, taken from the bodies of Japanese. We haven't had anybody who can read it. I want anything that looks official, anything that can help us identify enemy units, anything that would be useful to know about those units. Do you understand what I'm talking about?"

"Yes, Sir. I think I do."

"If you come across something, give it to Captain Feincamp. He's the S-2. I'll get on the horn and tell him you're coming."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"Anything that looks to you like it might be interesting. Don't bother with actually translating it. Just make a note of what it is. I'll decide whether or not you should make a translation."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"Have you got a weapon?"

If I tell him about the.45, he's probably going to take it away from me.

Sergeant John Marston Moore, surprised with how easily it came, lied.

"No, Sir."

"Sergeant!" Stecker raised his voice again, and again the head appeared at the canvas flap.

"Sir?"

"Give the sergeant that extra Thompson."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"You can use a Thompson?" Stecker asked Moore.

"Yes, Sir."

"I think that probably I'll have you-Colonel Dailey will have you-work here. But right now, we need to go through the stuff the First has collected."

"Yes, Sir."

The sergeant appeared and handed Moore a Thompson submachine gun and two extra magazines.

"Thank you."

"Drive slow, Jake," Stecker said. "Sergeant Moore is a very valuable man. We can't afford to lose him."

"Right," Dillon said. "OK, Sergeant. Let's go."

An alarm went off in the back of General Vandergrift's head. Something was wrong, but he couldn't put a handle on it.

Stecker's words, he finally realized. "We can't afford to lose him."

It was that, and the reference to Flem Pickering. And what Flem had said about Lieutenant Cory, whose place this young sergeant was taking.

The morning he left, Pickering had told him about MAGIC, and about his concern that Cory might have known about it. If Cory had that knowledge, he should never have been sent to Guadalcanal.

The sergeant, obviously, does not know about MAGIC. For one thing, that sort of secret is not made known to junior enlisted men. For another, he worked for Fleming Pickering. Therefore, if he knew, Pickering would have made sure he would not be sent to Guadalcanal

But this lieutenant colonel: He was an intelligence officer, he's senior enough to have had responsibilities which would have given him the Need to Know. And they rushed him here to replace Goettge. Since so few people actually knew about MAGIC, it was possible that whoever had rushed him over here hadn't even considered that possibility.

And this fellow-General Vandergrift had made a snap, and perhaps unfair, judgment that Lieutenant Colonel Dailey was not too smart; otherwise he would not have been assigned as a liaison officer to SHSWPA-if he was privy to MAGIC, it might well have been decided to send him to Guadalcanal anyway.

"Colonel," General Vandergrift asked. "Does the phrase MAGIC mean anything to you?"

"No, Sir," Lieutenant Colonel Dailey replied. "I've heard the word, Sir, but..."

"It's not important," General Vandergrift said.

(Five)

S-2 SECTION, FIRST MARINES

GUADALCANAL, SOLOMON ISLANDS

2005 HOURS 19 AUGUST 1942

Sergeant John Marston Moore, USMCR, sat on the dirt floor of the S-2 bunker in the brilliant light of a hissing Coleman gasoline lamp. His legs were crossed under him, and his undershirt was sweat soaked. He had long before removed his utility jacket. The Thompson submachine gun Major Stecker had given him now rested on it.

He was about two-thirds of the way, he judged, through the foot-and-a-half-tall pile of personal effects removed from Japanese bodies; and he had been at it steadily since shortly after eleven, less time out for "dinner"-a messkit full of rice, courtesy of the Japanese; a spoonful of meat and gravy, courtesy Quartermaster Corps, U.S. Army; and two small cans of really delicious smoked oysters, again courtesy of the Japanese.

He had found virtually nothing that Major Stecker could possibly use. He had learned that the Marines already knew the identity of the Rikusentai engineers-the 11th and 23rd Pioneers-who had been building the airfield.

He had been able to augment this by finding, in written-but-not-mailed letters home, references to the names of the commanding officers. He had written them down. He couldn't see how the names of three or four junior Japanese officers would be of much use, except perhaps as a psychological tool for prisoner interrogation.

That seemed to be a moot point. For one thing, Moore had learned there were damn few prisoners. The story of the Japanese warrant officer who led Colonel Goettge and the others into the trap had quickly spread through the division. The Marines had decided that discretion-don't take a chance, shoot the fucker!-overwhelmed the odd and abstract notion that prisoners had an intelligence value.

Tell that to Colonel Goettge!

For another, there seemed to be very few people around capable of interrogating prisoners at all, unless they happened to speak English, much less of outwitting them with psychological tricks.

He had spent long hours reading letters from home. It had been emotionally unnerving. He had lived in Japan. Tokyo was really as much home to him as Philadelphia. When he found an envelope bearing a Denenchofu return address, he knew it was entirely possible that he and the writer, somebody's mother, had met and bowed to each other at the door of a shop.

Much of the stuff was stained with a dark and sticky substance, now beginning to give off a sickly sweet smell, that he could not pretend was mud or oil or plum preserves.

Moore heard someone coming into the sandbagged tent. He turned and looked over his shoulder. It was Captain Fein-camp, the First Marine's S-2, and he had with him a lieutenant and a technical sergeant, a balding, lean man in his late thirties.

"How you coming, Sergeant?" Feincamp asked.

"I haven't found anything interesting so far, Sir," Moore replied.

"He's a linguist," Captain Feincamp explained to the lieutenant. "They just flew him in. There's a replacement for Colonel Goettge, too."

And then he explained to Moore the reason why the lieutenant and the technical sergeant were there.