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

"The doc's medical bag, sir, and some weights to bring it to two hundred pounds. You want me to go ahead, sir?"

Dunn nodded, and Chief Orlovski bellowed, "CHAIR AWAY!"

The chair began to move between the ships. When it was almost exactly in the middle between them, the two vessels leaned toward each other. The loop in the cable dropped the bosun's chair to the surface of the sea, where it sank briefly beneath it.

When the two ships leaned away from each other, the loop straightened and the bosun's chair rose out of the water. As it continued to move toward the Mansfield, everyone watching the "transfer" could see that Lieutenant Patter­son's medical bag and the weights that had been in the seat were no longer there.

Major Pickering said, "I am offering three-to-five the doc never makes it"— there was appreciative laughter from the pilots—"in which case, the colonel's going to have to think of some better way to get me off this vessel."

More laughter.

Dunn looked coldly at Pickering but said nothing.

He had been giving Pickering a lot of thought ever since the Air Force pilot had relayed McCoy's "Bingo, heads up" message.

His first reaction had been personal: joy and relief that Pickering had not perished in some desolate rice paddy or at the end of some North Korean's bay­onet. That was understandable. They had been close friends since Guadalcanal, when, flying VMF-229 Grumman Wildcats off of Fighter One, Second Lieu­tenant Pickering had been First Lieutenant Dunn's wingman.

His second reaction, he'd originally thought, was sort of cold-blooded pro­fessional. Pickering's return to the Badoeng Strait after everyone—including himself—had decided he wouldn't come back at all was going to do a great deal to restore the sagging morale Dick Mitchell's death had caused among his pilots.

The first unkind or unpleasant thought had come when the Army pilot had flown the black H-19A out to the Badoeng Strait. For one thing, he had heard and believed that helicopters—particularly new ones, and the H-19A was as new as they came—were notoriously unreliable. Somebody who knew what he was talking about had told him that if it were not for the helicopter's ability to land practically anywhere—or, for that matter, to flutter without power to the ground in what they called an "autorotation"—they would be banned as a gen­eral hazard to mankind.

It was well over one hundred miles from Socho-Ri to where the Badoeng Strait cruised in the Sea of Japan. Finding the ship itself was risky. And if the H-19A had engine trouble, the "can land anywhere" and "autorotation" safety features would be useless at sea. It could flutter to the sea intact, of course, but then it would immediately begin to sink.

Dunn hadn't thought the H-19A would have life jackets—much less a rub­ber lifeboat—aboard, and he checked, and it didn't. Everybody on board would have died if they hadn't been able to make it to the Badoeng Strait.

And that was only the beginning of the problem. The Army aviator who had flown the machine had never landed on an aircraft carrier before. Dunn had admired his courage, and later his flying skill, but he had thought that if it hadn't been for Pick trying to become the first Marine locomotive ace, he wouldn't have been shot down, and no one would have had to risk their lives to save his ass.

That Pick had not been brought up short by a direct order to stop flying all over the Korean landscape looking for a locomotive to shoot up instead of what he was supposed to do, was what was known at the Command and Gen­eral Staff College as a failure of command supervision. Major Pickering's ass­hole behavior had been tolerated, not stopped, by his commander, whose name was Dunn, William C.

Phrased another way, what that meant was that Colonel Billy Dunn was re­ally responsible for all the lives risked, and all the effort spent, to save Pick Pick­ering's ass, because if he had done his job, Pick would not have been shot down trying to become the first locomotive ace in the Marine Corps.

"You ready, Doc?" Chief Orlovski asked.

"As ready as I'll ever be," Patterson replied.

"CHAIR AWAY!" Orlovski bellowed.

Dr. Patterson, in disturbingly quick order, felt himself being hauled up ver­tically, then moving horizontally off the Badoeng Strait, then sinking suddenly toward the Sea of Japan, then felt his feet being knocked out from under him as they actually encountered the Sea of Japan, then rising vertically and sideways at once, and then having strong male arms wrapped around him, and then dropping with a thump to the deck as someone released the bosun's chair from the cable.

Major Pickering turned to Lieutenant Colonel Dunn.

"I really don't want to do that, Billy," he said.

"Shut up, Pick," Dunn said, not very pleasantly.

Two sailors, supervised by a chief petty officer, began to attach Major Pick­ering's chair to the cable.

"As a matter of fact," Major Pickering said, "I'll be goddamned if I'll do that." He looked over his shoulder, saw Chief Orlovski, and ordered: "Get me out of this thing, Chief."

Pick started to unfasten the straps, and was startled to find Colonel Dunn's hand roughly knocking his fingers away from the buckle.

"Hook him up, Chief," Dunn ordered. "He's going."

"I am like hell!" Pick protested.

"You're going, Pick," Colonel Dunn said. "Goddamn you!"

"In my delicate condition, I really think it's ill-advised," Pick said lightly, and added, "I really would prefer to wait for weather that will permit me to fly off this vessel, as befitting a Marine officer, aviator, and gentleman, if that's all right with you, Colonel, sir."

"No, it's not all right with me, you self-important sonofabitch," Dunn said furiously. "Your delicate condition is your own goddamn fault. And we both know it." Dunn turned to Orlovski: "Snap it up, Chief!"

"What the hell is wrong with you, Billy?" Pick demanded.

"There's not a damn thing wrong with me. Your problem is that you have never, not fucking ever, really understood you're a Marine officer who does what he's ordered to do."

"What brought this on?" Pick asked, genuinely surprised at Dunn's tone.

"You really don't care how much trouble your childish behavior has caused, do you? Or how many good people have put their necks out to save you from the consequences of your sophomoric showboating, do you?"

"Jesus Christ!" Pick said softly.

"Haul him away, Chief!" Dunn ordered coldly.

Chief Petty Officer Felix J. Orlovski bellowed, "CHAIR AWAY!"

Ninety seconds later, after a brief but thoroughly soaking dip in the Sea of Japan, Major Pickering was sitting on the deck of the USS Mansfield.

A ruddy-faced chief bent over Pickering to help him out of the bosun's chair.

"I'm really sorry you got dunked, Major," he said, obviously meaning it. "It was the last goddamn thing I wanted to have happen to you."

"Chief, the skipper says the major is to go to his cabin," a voice said.

Pickering moved his head and saw a full lieutenant standing beside the chief.

"You all right, sir?" the lieutenant asked.

"I'm fine," Pick said.

The chief and the lieutenant hauled him to his feet and gently led him through a port into the Mansfield's superstructure.

Pick felt the Mansfield lean as she turned away from the Badoeng Strait.

[FOUR]

USAF Airfield K-16

Seoul, South Korea

175O 16 October 195O

Major William R. Dunston, TC, USA, was waiting in the passenger section of base operations at K-16 when the 1500 courier flight from Haneda arrived.

He saluted somewhat sloppily when Pickering walked into the building, trailed by Banning and Hart.