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

"And for being a very good Marine officer, they started to kick him out of the Marine Corps. There's a moral in there somewhere."

Ernie exhaled audibly.

"So what happens to him when this war is over?" Jeanette asked. "Which it may be by the time I get to Korea, from what they're saying at the Dai Ichi Building."

"I wish I knew," Ernie said. "He doesn't say anything—good Marine offi­cers don't criticize the sacred Marine Corps—but he has to be bitter about what they did to him."

"What would you like to happen?"

"What almost did," Ernie said. "When we thought he was being 'involun­tarily released,' which is the euphemism for getting kicked out, we went to see Colonel Ed Banning and his wife, and the Zimmermans, in Charleston. . . ."

"Who's Banning?"

"He and Ken and Ernie go all the way back to the 4th Marines in Shang­hai. He's the one who sent Ken to Officer Candidate School. They were together all through World War Two. Anyway, before this goddamn war came along, Banning—who was about to retire—and Zimmerman were going to develop an island. . . ."

"Develop an island?" Jeanette parroted.

"You know, build houses on it and sell them. Their idea was to sell them to retired Marines. But I saw the island, and I think they could sell them to just about anybody. The island is just off the coast, and it's just beautiful. Anyway—"

"Where are they going to get the money to do something like that?" Jeanette interrupted.

"Banning owns the island; he has money," Ernie replied. "A lot of money. He was Ken's role model for living on Marine pay, but he doesn't have to play poor when he retires. And Ernie's wife has the King Midas touch. They own a half-dozen businesses outside Parris Island. Anyway, they asked Ken to go in with them. He seemed to think it was a good idea. But that was when his choices were going back to being a sergeant or the island. Now . . . now they gave him his golden major's oak leaf back. I don't know what he'll do."

"You want to do this island-building thing?"

"Oh, yeah, I want to do the island-building thing."

"Then tell him, 'I've been chasing you around for all this time, now it's your turn to do what I want for a while.' "

"He would, but it's not that easy. As you're about to find out."

"Meaning what?"

"You got the brass ring," Ernie said. "You will have succeeded—or will, as soon as Ken gets Pick back—in getting Don Juan Pickering to the altar, suc­ceeding where God only knows how many women have tried and failed. But its not going to be easy. You better win the Pulitzer prize now, because when you march down the aisle to the strains of 'Here Comes the Bride,' you'll have taken yourself out of the competition."

"Two questions, and no bullshit, please. Do you think Pick's coming back?"

"Yeah, I do. No bullshit. I think I would know if he wasn't. I really love the sonofabitch; he really is like my brother. Next question?"

"You don't think Pick would like it if I kept working? Maybe get a job on a newspaper in San Francisco?"

"You never thought about this, huh? Your girlish mind was full of visions of the Sugar Plum Fairy? Moonlight? Violins playing 'I Love You, Truly' to the exclusion of everything else?"

"Don't be a bitch, Ernie," Jeanette said, and added, thoughtfully, "No, I guess I never did."

"Looking into my crystal ball, I see you, seven months after you march down the aisle, in this condition," Ernie said, and patted her swollen belly.

"I like the notion," Jeanette said. "I don't know how I'm going to like ac­tually going through what you're going through."

"I think you'll like it," Ernie said. "There's something really satisfying about being pregnant. Anyway, shortly after that, you'll have a baby. When that hap­pens, I don't think you'll really mind being a wife and mother, instead of a dash­ing war correspondent. To answer the question: No, I don't think Pick would like it at all if you kept on working. Knowing him as I do—and I know him, I think, better than anybody—what he will expect of you, when he comes home from setting a speed record between San Francisco and Timbuktu or wherever, will be to find you at the door wearing something very sexy, with the bed already turned down, champagne on ice, and the baby asleep in clean diapers."

"I just can't stop working, for Christ's sake!"

"It'll be your choice," Ernie said. "Like I say, I know him. He's really a great guy. But he's not a saint. What he is is a man, and all of them are selfish. They want what they want, and all we can do is learn to live with it. If we can't do that, we lose the man."

"Jesus Christ! And here I was feeling sorry for you."

"Don't feel sorry for me. I like my life—I love my life—with Ken."

"Yeah, that shows," Jeanette said. "Jesus Christ, Jeanette Priestly, wife, mother, and diaper changer!"

"Jeanette Pickering," Ernie corrected her.

"That does have a nice ring to it, doesn't it?" Jeanette asked.

She closed the rucksack and pulled the straps tight.

"You noticed, I'm sure, that amongst my delicate feminine apparel were two sets of GI long Johns?"

"I noticed."

"They itch," Jeanette said. "But Korea is cold at night. It is better to itch and scratch than to freeze your ass. Write that down."

Ernie laughed.

"You don't have to go with me to Haneda," Jeanette said.

"Yeah, I do," Ernie said.

Jeanette reached down to the bed and picked up and put on an olive-drab undershirt and a pair of olive-drab men's shorts. Over this, she put on a set of fatigues, then slipped her feet first into Army-issue woolen cushion sole socks and then into combat boots.

She looked at Ernie.

"How do I look?' she asked.

"Oddly enough," Ernie said, "very feminine."

"Bullshit, but thanks anyway."

She picked up the rucksack and walked out of the bedroom.

[TWO]

Near Jaeun-Ri, South Korea

1145 14 October 195O

Major Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, who had at first known to the minute how many days and hours and minutes it had been since he had had to set his Corsair down—how long he had been on the run—now didn't have any idea at all.

He wasn't even sure if he had eaten his last rice ball yesterday or the day be­fore yesterday.

All he was sure about was that deciding to move northeastward was prob­ably the worst fucking mistake he had made in his life. And might well be the last major mistake of his life.

There was nothing in this part of Korea but steep hills and more steep hills. No rice paddies. Damned few roads, and from what he'd seen of the traffic on them, it was mostly long lines of retreating North Korean soldiers, most of them on foot.

North American P-51 fighters, carrying the insignia of the South Korean Air Force, regularly flew over the roads, strafing anything they saw moving. They flew so low that there was no question in Pickering's mind that if he just stood in the middle of one of the roads he would be seen by one of the P-51 pilots, who would then stand the airplane on its wing, do a quick one-eighty, and then come back and let him have a burst from the eight .50-caliber Brown­ings in its wings.

The P-51 pilot would logically presume that anyone on these roads was a North Korean. The South Koreans were holed up someplace out of sight. He'd also come across, making his way over the mountains, a dozen or more rock formations that by stretching the term could be called caves. They didn't go deep into the mountains, but far enough so that a family of five or six could go into one of them and not be visible from either the ground or the air.

When one of the South Korean P-51s, or a section of them, caught a pla­toon, or a company, of North Koreans in the open and strafed them, the dead and wounded were left where they had been hit. There were very few North Ko­rean vehicles of any kind, and the few trucks he had seen—some of them cap­tured 6 X 6s and weapons carriers—were jammed with the walking wounded. They had kept their arms and used them to guarantee their positions on the trucks.