W.E.B. Griffin - Retreat, Hell!

He looked between them.

"Okay. Do you want to see him now?"

"Can we?" Patricia Pickering said.

"He's outside. He doesn't know why. But I know him at least well enough to know that having you two see him in the NP Ward would not be good for him." He looked at Captain Unger. "May we use your office for about five min­utes, Captain?"

"Of course," Unger said. "Would you like me to leave?"

"No, sir, I'd rather that you stayed," McGrory said. "Mrs. Pickering, you heard the five minutes?"

"I'm grateful for that, Doctor," Patricia Pickering said.

"You can come back tomorrow, of course, but I really wish you wouldn't come every day."

"Whatever you say, Doctor."

McGrory got to his feet and walked to the door.

"You may come in now, Major Pickering," he said, and stepped out of the way.

Pick marched somewhat warily into the room and saw his mother.

He stopped.

Fowler thought: Jesus Christ, he looks like a cadaver. I hope Patty can keep a straight face.

"Boy, I thought we'd done this for the last time," Pick said. He raised his voice to a teenage falsetto: "Momma, Uncle Dick, I don't care what they told you I did, I didn't do it."

Fowler chuckled. "Dr. McGrory," he explained, "I have often found myself accompanying Mrs. Pickering to one of Pick's boarding schools when he had some difficulty with the rules."

"How are you, son?" Patricia Pickering asked.

"Well, now that they've stopped beating me, taken off the chains, and let me out of the straitjacket, not so bad, really. How about yourself?"

"Am I going to get a kiss and a hug?"

"Sure. You're still my best girl," Pick said, and went to his mother and put his arms around her. Then he hugged her very tight.

Fowler saw that tears were running down Pick's cheeks. He looked at Dr. McGrory, caught his eye, then quickly pointed to his own cheeks.

McGrory nodded, smiled, winked, and gave him a thumbs-up.

Pick let go of his mother. He put out his hand to Fowler.

"How are you, Uncle Dick?" he asked.

[SIX]

Fishbase

Socho-Ri, South Korea

1535 28 October 195O

The message exchange had been in the clear and cryptic. Captain Howard C. Dunwood, USMCR, had taken it himself.

"Fishbase, this is House. How read?"

"House, Fishbase. Read you five by five," Dunwood had replied into the mi­crophone in the commo hootch.

"Killer en route Fishbase. ETA fifteen-twenty. Acknowledge."

"Fishbase acknowledges Killer ETA fifteen-twenty."

"House, clear."

"Fishbase, clear."

That had been a little over an hour ago. Dunwood figured if it was going to take the Killer—Major McCoy—about an hour, and the message had come from the house, that made it pretty clear that McCoy was coming from Seoul, and in the Beaver.

Dunwood was a little surprised that McCoy was returning to Socho-Ri so soon. Both Master Gunner Zimmerman and Major Alex Donald had told him McCoy had taken a fairly serious hit while exfiltrating from up north on the Wind of Good Fortune, and the last word Dunwood had had was that he was in the Naval Hospital in Sasebo.

He wondered if Master Gunner Zimmerman had heard McCoy was com­ing and hadn't, intentionally or otherwise, told him. Dunwood thought—and it was not a criticism—that Zimmerman was the High Priest of Need to Know. Since there was no reason why Dunwood needed to be told McCoy was com­ing back, if Zimmerman knew, he hadn't told Dunwood.

But when Dunwood left the commo hootch and went to Zimmerman— who was inspecting the two teams who would be practicing insertions at twi­light—and told him, Zimmerman looked surprised.

He didn't say anything, he just looked surprised and nodded. Zimmerman, it could be fairly said, was the opposite of loquacious. For that reason, Dunwood had not discussed his thoughts about having himself—and as many of his Marines as wanted to—officially transferred to the CIA. He didn't think he would get any answer beyond "you better talk to the Killer" out of Zimmerman.

From the time he'd first told Staff Sergeant Al Preston, USMC, about his idea—the day McCoy had finally called in to say he was okay, just as Dunwood was about to launch the Bailout Mission—he'd given it a lot of thought. There was a lot to think about.

He realized there was a real possibility that when he finally said some­thing—not knowing when, or even if, McCoy was coming back, he had Major Dunston in mind as the man to talk to—he would be told, politely or other­wise, "No, thanks, Dunwood. We're about through with you and your men, and you'll soon be back with the 5th Marines."

With that possibility in mind, Dunwood had given a lot of thought to counterarguments.

For one thing, he had been running Fishbase since Zimmerman had been ordered to Sasebo, even before they thought McCoy had probably been detected and gone missing up north. He had had the Bailout Mission up and ready to go. That was a hell of a lot different than running a perimeter guard around the hangar at K-16.

While Dunwood liked what for lack of a better word was the "informality" of Fishbase, he had to admit that the absolute absence of an official chain of command posed some problems.

There was an unofficial chain of command, of course. Master Gunner Zim­merman, USMC, gave the orders, and Captain Dunwood, USMCR, and Major Alex Donald, USA, obeyed them. In the normal military scheme of things, ma­jors give orders to captains who give them to warrant officers, not the other way around.

At least Alex Donald and the pilots and crews of the Big Black Birds—and now the "borrowed" Beaver, and the two L-19s—knew where they stood. By command of General MacArthur himself they had been transferred to the CIA. By stretching it a little, you could say that Donald was getting his orders from the Army lieutenant colonel, Vandenburg, at The House in Seoul.

But the facts there were that Zimmerman told Vandenburg only what he thought Vandenburg had the need to know, and so far as Dunwood knew, Vandenburg hadn't even offered a suggestion about what the people at Fishbase should be doing.

Officially, Charley Company, 5th Marines, Captain Howard C. Dunwood, USMCR, commanding, was, by verbal order of the Commanding General, 1st MarDiv, on temporary duty of an unspecified nature for an indefinite period. And there were problems with that.

For one thing, Dunwood very seriously doubted if anyone in the 5th Marines—for that matter, the entire 1st MarDiv—had any idea where they were. He knew the division had landed at Wonsan.

He knew no one in 1st MarDiv knew what they were doing. Which lately had been practicing insertions and extractions using the Big Black Birds, which nobody was supposed to know about. And practicing for what? The shot-down Marine pilot they had been looking for had been found. Or he had found the Army. Anyway, he didn't need to be found, so what were they doing with the practice insertions/extractions?

The latest wrinkle in that was the idea of one of his Marines. Instead of jumping out of the door of the H-19s as they hovered several feet off the ground, they made the insertion by half sliding, half climbing down a twenty-foot-long knotted rope from the door of the Big Black Birds.

What the hell were they practicing for, night after night?

When Captain Dunwood had posed, as tactfully as he knew how, that ques­tion to Master Gunner Zimmerman, the response had been succinct but not very illuminating: "Because that's what the Killer said to do."

There were administrative problems, too. Every other day or so, when the Beaver made a supply run, it carried with it a bag of mail from home, and took out the letters the Marines had written. No stamps were necessary; you wrote "Free" on the envelope where the stamp would normally go.