W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps 03 - Counterattack

"Would you mind sitting in the car for a minute while I tell Mrs. Cavendish I’m back?" Steve asked as he made the turn. "Maybe there’s a message for me, or something."

"Of course not."

He drove down the long line of ancient elms that lined the driveway. When they reached the house, there were two cars parked in front of it. One was a drop-head Jaguar coupe and the other a Morris with Royal Australian Navy plates. After a moment, to her surprise, Daphne recognized it as Lieutenant Donnelly’s car.

She wondered what he was doing out here, and then she won dered what he was going to think when he saw her with Corporal Steve Koffler of the United States Marines; she was supposed to be still at home, grief-stricken.

"Oh, shit!" Steve Koffler said, when he saw the cars.

When Major Edward J. Banning, USMC, noticed the glow of the headlights flash across the front of The Elms, he rose to his feet and went to one of the French windows in the library. As he pushed the curtain aside, the Studebaker pulled up beside the Jaguar and the Morris.

It has to be Corporal Steven Koffler, goddamn the horny little AWOL sonofabitch!

I am not going to eat his ass out. It is not in keeping with the principles of good leadership to eat the ass out of an enlisted man just before you ask him to parachute onto an enemy-held island. If he doesn‘t kill himself in the jump, there is a very good chance he will be killed by the Japanese, probably in some very imaginative way.

If I were a corporal, and they left me all alone with the keys to a car, would I take the car and go out and try to get laid? Never having been a corporal, I can’t really say. But probably.

Banning couldn’t help recalling Kenneth R. "Killer" McCoy, late Corporal, 4thMarines, Shanghai.

If I had set up the Killer in a house like this in China, and told him he would be left alone for a week or ten days minimum, he would have had a nonstop poker game going here in the library, a craps table operating in the foyer, half a dozen ladies of the evening plying their trade upstairs; and he’d be using the Studebaker to ferry customers back and forth to town.

It was not the first time Banning had thought of Corporal Killer McCoy during the past twenty-four hours. He started remembering McCoy just after he and Captain Pickering arrived at The Elms; they were informed then by Mrs. Cavendish that Corporal Koffler had taken the Studebaker at five the previous afternoon, and that he hadn’t been seen since. And no, she had no idea where he might have gone. That sounded like something McCoy would have done.

Which did not mean that Corporals McCoy and Koffler were not stamped out of the same mold-far from it. Banning would have been nervous about sending Killer McCoy to jump on Buka, but he wouldn’t have had this sick feeling in his stomach. Killer was probably capable of carrying off something like this with a good chance of coming through it alive. Banning did not think that would be the case with Joe Howard and Steve Koffler. The words had come into his mind a half-dozen times: I am about to send two of my men to their deaths.

It was not a pleasant feeling, and his rationalizations, although inarguably true, sounded hollow and irrelevant: I am asking him to risk, and perhaps even give, his life so that other men may live. And: He’s a volunteer, nobody pushed him into this at the point of a bayonet. And even: He’s a Marine, and Marines do what they are ordered to do.

There was really no point whatever in wishing that the Killer was here. For one thing, Killer was no longer a corporal. He was now an officer and a gentleman and would soon find himself ordering some enlisted Marine to do something that would probably get him killed.

And there was no other enlisted man in Special Detachment 14 who could be sent. No one else, not even the Commanding Officer, knew how to jump out of an airplane without getting killed. And that, as applied to Joe Howard, violated a principle of leadership that Banning devoutly believed, that an officer should not order-or ask-someone to do something he would not do himself.

"I think that’s him," Banning said, turning from the window to Captain Pickering and Lieutenant Donnelly. He kept his voice as close to a conversational tone as he could muster as he continued, "Maybe I’d better go find Howard and his nurse." They had not been seen, which surprised no one, since they had left the sitting room.

"I’ll get him, Major," Lieutenant Donnelly said.

"Good evening, Sir," Corporal Koffler said, coming into the library. Nervously, he looked at Pickering and Banning in turn, and said, "Sir," to each of them.

"Welcome home," Banning said.

"Sir, I didn’t expect to see you."

"Well, you’re here. Have you been drinking?"

"No, Sir."

Lieutenant Donnelly came into the room.

"They’ll be here in a minute," he said.

"You know Captain Pickering," Banning said to Koffler, "and I understand you’ve met Lieutenant Donnelly."

"No, Sir. I talked to him a couple of times on the phone."

"How are you, Corporal?" Donnelly said.

"How do you do, Sir?"

Banning saw in Donnelly’s eyes that he had expected Corporal Koffler to be somewhat older. Say, old enough to vote.

"Something pretty important has come up," Banning said.

"Yes, Sir?"

"There’s several if’s," Banning continued. "Let me ask a couple of questions. First, would it be possible to drop one of the Hallicrafters sets by parachute? Or would it get smashed up?"

"I thought about that, Sir."

"You did?" Banning replied, surprised.

The door opened again, and Ensign Barbara Cotter and Lieutenant Joe Howard came into the room.

Barbara Cotter averted her eyes and looked embarrassed, confirming Fleming Pickering’s early judgment of her as a nice girl. Then he had a thought that made him feel like a dirty old man: Christ, I could use a little sex myself.

"How goes it, Steve?" Joe Howard asked. "We were getting a little worried about you."

"Hello, Sir."

"The lady is Ensign Cotter, Koffler," Banning said. "Lieutenant Howard’s fianc?e."

"Hello," Barbara said.

"Ma’am," Koffler replied uneasily.

"Should I be in here?" Barbara asked.

"You don’t look like a Japanese spy to me," Pickering said. "And it seems to me you have an interest in what’s going on."

"Sir ..." Banning started to protest. Ensign Barbara Cotter, whatever her relationship with Joe Howard, had no "need to know."

"Ensign Cotter is a Naval officer," Pickering said formally, "who is well aware of the need to keep her mouth shut about this operation."

Banning had called Pickering as soon as he arrived at the airport in Melbourne. He thought he should know that USMC Special Detachment 14 was about to drop two of its men behind Japanese lines. Pickering had been more than idly interested. In fact, he promptly announced that if he "wouldn’t be in the way," he would pick Banning up and drive him out to The Elms while the operation was being set up. Banning had wondered then if Pickering was in fact going to get in the way, and now it looked as if he was.

For a moment, Banning looked as if he was on the edge of protesting further, but then reminded himself that Special Detachment 14 wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for Pickering.

"Yes, Sir," Banning said finally.

"Corporal Koffler was telling us how he would drop one of the Hallicrafters by parachute," Pickering said. "Go on, please, Koffler."

"You’d need a parachute," Koffler said. "I mean," he went on quickly, having detected the inanity of his own words, "I mean, I think you’d have to modify a regular C-3 ‘chute. All the cargo ‘chutes I’ve ever seen would be too big."

"I don’t understand," Fleming Pickering confessed.