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

He looked at her for a long moment, then said: "Ken McCoy says he has every reason to believe Pick is alive and in good shape, and that we'll have him back in short order."

"And you believe him?'

"Yes, honey, I do."

"I wish I shared your faith," she said bitterly.

He didn't reply.

"For the last four days," Patricia said, "ever since Dick Fowler called and told me you were on your way to Washington, I have had fantasies of having your arms around me. And I promised myself I would remember it isn't your fault. . . what's happened to Pick . . . and that I wouldn't be a bitch. . . ."

He looked at her a moment, then nodded.

"If you promise not to bite my jugular, Patricia," he said softly, "I'll put my arms around you."

She didn't reply.

He took a step toward her, then held his arms open. Very slowly, she walked into them, and he held her against him.

"Oh, my God, Flem," she said softly, and then she began to sob. "Oh, God, I've missed you!"

"Me, too, honey." His voice was not quite under control.

He held her a long time, until her sobs subsided.

Then she said, "I wish you'd take off that goddamn uniform."

"I'll still be a Marine, honey," he said.

"My fantasy was to feel your bare arms around me," she said softly.

"Well," he said. "I guess it is like riding a bicycle. You never forget how."

He was lying on his back in their bed. She was lying half on him.

She pinched him, painfully, on the soft flesh of his inner thigh.

He yelped.

"I'd forgotten you do that, too," he said.

She didn't reply.

"Pick's got a girl," he said.

"Pick has always had a girl," she said. "He wasn't even five years old when he talked Ernie Sage into playing doctor, and it went downhill from there."

"This is serious, I think," Pickering said.

"I have heard that before, and find it very hard to believe."

"In many ways, she's very much like you."

"You know her? That is unusual."

"Yeah. I know her. And Ernie knows her and likes her too; they've become quite close."

She propped herself up on her elbows and looked down at him. "Tell me about her. What do you mean, she's like me?"

"Tough, smart, competent, and, I think, very much surprised to find her­self in love with Pick. She's a reporter, a war correspondent. Jeanette Priestly, of the Chicago Tribune."

"I've seen her stories," she said. "No pictures."

"Tall, graceful . . . like you. Long blond hair. Not peroxide. Blue eyes. Good-looking young woman."

"I had a mental picture of a middle-aged frump with a short haircut," Pa­tricia said.

"No. Very nice."

"And they're in love?"

"Yeah. And I mean love, rather than lust."

"If you think that, then it is serious."

"It had to happen eventually," Pickering said. "It's the natural order of things."

"How's... what's her name? Jeanette?... taking what's happened to Pick?"

"About like you, me, and Ernie," Pickering said. "Stiff upper lip. She doesn't say much. But there's really not much that can be said, is there?"

"Do you know what happened—I mean, in detail—to Pick? How was he shot down?"

"He was flying what they call 'low-altitude tactical interdiction sorties, seek­ing targets of opportunity,' " Pickering said. "What he was doing was shooting up locomotives."

"Railroad locomotives?" she asked, surprised.

"If you can take out, for example, an enemy supply train, that denies the enemy supplies and ammunition, and so on. Pick was apparently pretty good at it. He had three locomotives painted on the nose of his airplane."

"I thought he was shot down by another airplane."

"We pretty much have what is known as air superiority," Pickering said. "A lot—most—of aviation activity is in close support of the troops on the ground."

"So it was antiaircraft fire?"

"What Billy Dunn . . . You remember Colonel Dunn?"

"The tiny little man with an Alabama accent you can cut with a knife?"

"That's him," Pickering said. "Billy thinks that a locomotive blew up just as Pick was passing over it, and there was damage to the aircraft, most likely to the engine, from parts of the locomotive. Pick had to make an emergency land­ing; he couldn't get back to the Badoeng Strait, the aircraft carrier."

"Was he hurt?" she asked softly.

"Billy didn't think so, and the proof seems to be that he's covered a lot of distance. If he was injured, he couldn't move as fast and as far as he has."

"That sounds as if you know where he is," she said.

"We have an idea where he is," Pickering said. "He finds a rice paddy some­where, and stamps out an arrow and his initials."

"If you know where he is, then why can't you go get him?"

"Because he has to keep moving. By the time a pilot who spots one of the arrows gets back to his aircraft carrier to report it, or by the time they can spot one of his arrows on an aerial photo—which is what happens most—and we can get people to that spot, he's three, four, five miles away. McCoy said the last time he doesn't think they missed him by more than a couple of hours."

"But you really believe he's . . . going to come back?"

"Yeah, I do."

"Don't lie to me, Flem."

The cold truth is that I don't know whether my faith that he's coming back is based on my professional assessment of the situation, or whether I'm just pissing in the wind.

"I'm not, honey."

The telephone on the bedside table rang.

"Don't answer it," Patricia said. "God, we're entitled to at least a few minutes."

"I have to, honey," he said, and stretched his arm out for the telephone.

Patricia didn't move off him.

"Pickering," he said.

"The President wants to see you," Senator Fowler said without any pre­liminaries.

"When?"

"Right now."

"Where?"

"Here."

"He's with you?"

"That's right."

"It'll take me a few minutes to get dressed."

[TWO]

There were two neatly dressed muscular men—obviously Secret Service agents—in the corridor when Pickering left his suite and walked down it to­ward Senator Fowler's suite.

"The President is expecting you, General," one of them said to Pickering, then knocked at Fowler's door and opened it without waiting for a reply.

Harry S Truman, President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of its Armed Forces, was sitting on a couch in Fowler's sitting room drinking a cup of coffee. His hat was on the stable, and he was wearing one of his trade­mark bow ties. He stood up and smiled as Pickering entered the room.

"I'm sorry to interrupt your homecoming . . ." he said, extending his hand.

"Good morning, Mr. President," Pickering said.

"... but as I was taking my walk, it occurred to me this would be a good time to speak with you," Truman finished. "I wanted to do that before having to make some decisions."

"I'm at your disposal, Mr. President."

"Will you excuse me, Mr. President?" Senator Fowler asked.

Truman considered that.

"Okay, Dick, if you'd rather not hear this," he said. "But you're welcome to stay."

Fowler considered the reply, then sat down.

"When I was in the Senate, General, I learned that there were a few mem­bers of the loyal opposition who could be trusted to place the country's inter­est above partisan politics, and Dick headed that list."

"Thank you, Mr. President," Fowler said.

"They were most often wrong about things," Truman said with a smile, "but they could be trusted."

Fowler smiled at him.

"Will you have some coffee, General?" Truman asked. "And please sit down."

Truman pointed to the couch on which he was sitting, poured Pickering a cup of coffee, then slid to the far end of the couch and turned so that he was facing Pickering. He waited until Pickering had picked up his cup before con­tinuing.