Griffin W.E.B. - The Corps 09 - Under Fire

There were four men engaged in filling the jerry cans and carrying them to the junk, and they wasted little effort. Still, the trailer held five hundred gallons, which meant the procedure would have to be repeated one hundred times. McCoy wondered how long they had been at it.

"They brought the diesel about twenty minutes ago," Lieutenant Taylor called out, as if he had been reading Mc-Coy's mind.

McCoy looked up and saw Taylor leaning on the rail of the high stern.

"This is going to take a little time," Taylor added, and pointed to a wood-stepped rope ladder on the side of the junk forward of the stern.

McCoy got out of the Jeep and went to the ladder. He was hoping Major Kim would wait for an invitation to join him-he needed to talk to Taylor privately-but Kim fol-lowed him to the ladder.

What the hell, he's just trying to make himself useful.

McCoy climbed the ladder to the deck. There were three hatches, and all were open. He walked down the deck and looked into each. The farthest aft hold was just about empty. The center hold held a Caterpillar diesel engine and its fuel tanks, one on each side. They each looked larger than the water trailer on shore, which translated to mean the fuel capacity was over one thousand gallons, informa-tion that was useless unless one knew how much fuel the Cat diesel burned in an hour, and how far the junk would travel in that hour.

The forward hold was half full. There were a dozen wooden crates with rope handles, all marked as property of the Japanese Imperial Army. Three of them had legends saying they held ten Arisaka rifles; the others held ammu-nition for them.

McCoy pushed open a door in the forecastle and saw that it was combination bunking space and a "kitchen." There were crude bunks, eight in all, mounted on the bulk-heads. Against the forward bulkhead was a table. In the center of the space was a square brick stove, on which sat three large, round-bottomed cooking pans.

Woks, McCoy thought. I wonder who invented that pan? The Chinese? The Japs? The Koreans? They're all over the Orient.

Under one of the bunks he saw a wicker basket full of charcoal.

He walked aft, and pushed open a hatch leading to space under the high stern. There were three doors off a center corridor, and crude sets of stairs leading down and up to the open area where he had seen Taylor. He started up those, aware that Major Kim was still on his heels.

Taylor, who was still leaning on the rail, looked over his shoulder as McCoy came onto the deck.

McCoy saluted him.

"Permission to come aboard, sir?" he said.

"Granted," Taylor said, returned the salute, and then asked, "Is that what they call McCoy humor?"

"No," McCoy said. "I wanted to make the point that knowing a hell of a lot less than a Marine officer should know about things that float, you're in charge, Captain."

"This your first time on a junk?" Taylor asked, smiling.

"No, but this is the first time I didn't pretend that I knew all about junks and wasn't particularly impressed with what I was seeing."

Taylor chuckled and smiled.

"You want a quick familiarization lecture?"

"Please."

"Okay. This one, according to her stern board, was chris-tened'-maybe Confucius-ed?-the Wind of Good Fortune. She's about ten years old, I would guess, and I suspect she was made somewhere in China. Good craftsmanship, good wood. You don't often find that in Korean junks. The Cater-pillar, I'll bet, was installed in Macao. I found some papers in Portuguese, and the Macao shipbuilders have been cater-ing to the smuggler trade since Christ was a corporal. Nice installation. It cost the former owners a fortune. I suspect she'll make maybe thirteen, fourteen knots."

"And we have enough fuel to go how far?"

"I'll guess that Cat will burn ten, twelve gallons an hour. Say twelve. Hell, say fifteen-her hull may be six inches deep in barnacles. I figure we have twelve hundred gallons in those two tanks. Twelve hundred gallons divided by fif-teen is eighty hours' running time at a reasonable cruising speed-say, twelve knots. Eighty hours-provided the winds and tides are not really against us-at twelve knots is 960 miles."

"Major Kim, will you please excuse us for a minute?" McCoy said, as politely as he could. "I need a word with Lieutenant Taylor."

"Yes, of course," Kim replied, smiling. He came to at-tention for a brief moment, then went down the stairs.

McCoy waited until he appeared on the deck.

"In other words, we have enough fuel to reach the Tokchok-kundo islands?"

"Easily, even running at full bore," Taylor replied.

"At regular cruising speed, how long will that take us?"

"It's about four hundred miles from here. At twelve knots-I think we can do that without sweat, but I won't know until we're actually at sea-that's four hundred di-vided by twelve: thirty-three point forever. Call it thirty-four hours."

"And at fourteen knots?"

"Call it thirty," Taylor said. "But I'd rather not push her unless I have to."

"What I want to do as soon as we can is get to Tokchok-kundo, get ashore, have a look around, and get the SCR-300 up and operating."

Taylor nodded his understanding.

"Are you planning on staying?"

"I'm going to leave Zimmerman there, and Major Kim. If Kim's there, he can't tell Dunston what we have in mind."

"Did the Marines come through with aerial photo-graphs?" Taylor asked.

"Lots of them," McCoy said. "But until I can compare them against maps, I don't know what I'm looking at."

"Charts, Captain McCoy, charts."

"I beg the captain's pardon," McCoy said, smiling.

"You'll have thirty-four hours to do that," Taylor said. "We can shove off in about an hour. That soon enough?"

"We have to wait for a passenger," McCoy said.

"Am I allowed to ask who?"

McCoy reached into his pocket for Jeanette Priestly's note, and handed it to Taylor.

"Jesus!" Taylor said when he read it. "This is that female war correspondent who wrote that piece about you and Zimmerman?"

"Yeah."

"What's her connection with Pickering's son?"

"She knows him. The guy at K-l thinks she has the hots for him. I don't know how she found out what the general does for a living."

"Do I understand this? You want to take her along?"

McCoy nodded.

"Can I ask why?"

"Because I can't think of anything else to do with her," McCoy said. "I can't let her write a story saying who Pick-ering's father is."

"What makes you think she'll be willing to go?"

"She'll be on board when we sail, Captain."

Taylor looked at him a long moment, but said nothing.

"Captain," Major Kim called, and both Taylor and Mc-Coy walked to the railing and looked down at him.

"Captain, my sergeant reports the fuel tanks are full."

`Tell him thank you, please," Taylor called back, and then looked at McCoy.

McCoy turned from the railing and spoke softly, in En-glish.

"He was talking to you. He picked up on me making it clear you're the captain."

"Good man, I think," Taylor said.

"The trouble with good men is that they tend to be pissed when they find out you've been lying to them," Mc-Coy said.

"Your orders, Captain?" Major Kim called.

`Tell him to wait a minute," McCoy said.

"Stand by, please, Major," Taylor called, in Korean.

"We'll be taking Major Kim, and a dozen of his people, and their equipment," McCoy said. "Plus eight of the Marines and Zimmerman. And their equipment."

"Plus the lady war correspondent," Taylor interjected.

"Where do we put them all?"

"There's three cabins below," Taylor said. "One is the mess and kitchen for the officers. There's a captain's cabin, more or less-we can put the lady in there-and another cabin for you, me, Zimmerman, and Major Kim. The weather's nice. If it stays that way, we can sleep on deck. The officers up here, the men on the main deck."