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

They ran up the hill, McCoy decided. But they look more disgusted than angry or alarmed. Now what?

"Look at this goddamn thing," Zimmerman said, point-ing to a nearly square-about five inches on a side-olive-drab tin can in Worley's hand.

"What is it?"

"It's from the SCR-300...."

"It's a transformer, sir," Sergeant Worley said.

"Without which the SCR-300 won't work?"

Oh, shit!

"When we took it out of the crate, sir, I noticed oil," Worley said. "It came from here, I found out."

He pointed to a corner of the transformer, where the sol-dered joint had separated.

"The question was, the radio won't work without it?"

"No, sir."

"You can't fix it? Replace the oil, whatever?"

"I could maybe have done something," Worley said, em-barrassed. "But I burned the sonofabitch up when I fired up the transformer." He met McCoy's eyes. "Captain, I never had one of these fail on me before. But it's my fault, I should have checked."

Yeah, you should have. But there's no point in eating you out now. What's done is done.

"I told you getting that thing up was the first priority,"

McCoy said. "So you hurried. It's as much my fault as yours."

"No, sir, it's not," Worley said.

"So what do we do now?"

"I'll try to rig something, Captain, but I can't promise..."

"How long will that take?" McCoy asked.

"Longer than we have," Taylor said. "Unless you want to spend another twelve-maybe twenty-four-hours here."

"Those fucking tides?" McCoy asked angrily.

"Those... expletive deleted... tides," Taylor replied.

"Sorry, Jeanette," McCoy said. "That slipped out."

"I told you," Taylor said. "The data in the tide book is wrong."

"Is that the same tide book they're using in the Dai-Ichi Building?"

"That's where I got this one."

"And it's wrong?"

"I told you, this place has mixed tides. And this must be, for here, the worst part of the monthly cycle. This area was not supposed to be as low as it is. Or going out as fast as it is."

"And what about an invasion fleet?"

"We better have that radio up and running by the time they decide to try to come down the Flying Fish," Taylor said. "Or there's liable to be ships stuck in the mud from here to Inchon."

"How soon do we have to leave?"

"Now," Taylor said. "The sooner the better."

"Okay," McCoy said. "Worley, I'll get a transformer to you as quick as I can. How delicate are they?"

"They're usually built... hell, sir, look at it. What hap-pened to this one probably won't happen again for years."

"If we wrapped one up well, cushioned it good, could it be dropped from an airplane?"

"Yeah, but dropping it with a chute would probably be better, sir."

"Zimmerman, I'm going to take Jennings back with me. He's a world-class scrounger. And we have to do some fast and fancy scrounging."

Zimmerman nodded his understanding.

"I suggest you set up in these houses. Make firing posi-tions in case you need them. When you put out panels, put them between the houses. Start training the natives," Mc-Coy said. "And make sure the bad guys don't learn you're on the island."

Zimmerman touched his forehead in a gesture only vaguely resembling a salute. But that's what it was.

"You're going to drop supplies on here from an air-plane?" Jeanette asked.

"If I can," he said.

"And you're going to Tokyo?"

"Right."

"I need to talk to you a minute," she said.

"You heard what Taylor said. We have to get out of here now."

"It's important to me," she said.

"Okay," he said, gesturing to one of the small rooms opening off the center of the house.

He followed her into the room.

"Make it quick," he said when she didn't immediately start to talk.

"I don't know why the hell I'm so embarrassed," she said. "You're a married man, right? And you had those `personal hygiene' classes in high school, right?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Would you please ask your wife to go to the PX and get me sanitary napkins and tampons? And then drop them in here with that transformer for the radio?"

He didn't reply for a moment.

"Don't be clever about this, McCoy," she said. "I hadn't planned to make this trip."

"You really thought I was going to leave you here?"

She didn't reply.

"Jeanette, my Marines need all the strength they can conserve," he said. "I can't have you doing to them what Delilah did to Sampson. Get your ass on the Wind of Good Fortune."

"You sonofabitch!" she said.

The water level had dropped so far at the wharf that the deck of the Wind of Good Fortune was only four or five feet above it.

And, McCoy thought, she's riding high because just about everything we had aboard has been taken off.

Taylor clambered aboard and immediately started the engine, as Major Kim and two of his men untied the lines. The bottom of the Wind of Good Fortune noisily scraped the bottom twice as Taylor backed away from the wharf, and twice again as he turned her around and as they moved toward and then into the Flying Fish Channel.

[THREE]

pilot's ready room

the uss badoeng strait

39 degrees 06 minutes north latitude,

129 degrees 44 minutes east longitude

the sea of japan

0955 8 AUGUST 1950

When Lieutenant Colonel William C. Dunn walked up to him in the ready room, Lieutenant Commander Andrew McDavit, USNR, prepared for flight, was sitting in the rearmost of the rows of leather-upholstered chairs with a cigarette in one hand and an ice-cream cone in the other.

He started to push himself out of the chair, and Dunn gestured, telling him not to bother.

"Good morning, Colonel," McDavit said. He wasn't overly fond of most of the jarhead birdmen aboard Badoeng Strait, but he liked Dunn. "You're already back?"

"We took off at oh dark hundred," Dunn said. "The North Koreans tried to send a division-the Third, I think-across the Naktong starting at 0300."

" `Tried'? Don't tell me the Army held them?"

"The 5th Cavalry chewed them up pretty bad," Dunn said. "They had preregistered artillery, a lot of it. And pretty good fields of fire for their automatic weapons. Part of one NK regiment got across, but the other two took a pretty good licking from the air and went back to their side of the Naktong."

"Marine and Navy Air, you mean?"

Dunn nodded. "The brigade wasn't going to need us un-til this afternoon, so they released us to the Army."

"What happens this afternoon?"

"The 3rd Battalion of the brigade's going to attack up to-ward Chindong-Ni. They'll need us then."

"For my part, I can look forward to another exciting flight, dodging Air Force transports at K-l," McDavit said. "Did I ever tell you that I once was an honest Wildcat pilot?"

"Flying the Avenger is a dirty job, right, but someone has to do it?" Dunn said, sympathetically. "And you're wondering why you?"

"Even the name is obsolete," McDavit said. "That war's long over. We already avenged Pearl Harbor."

"Actually, that's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"Pearl Harbor?" McDavit joked, then: "What can this old sailor do for you, Colonel?"

"You're about ready to go to Pusan?"

"Just as soon as I get some sort of mysterious envelope for the Marine liaison at K-l, I am."

Dunn pulled the zipper of his flight suit down and indi-cated that he had the mysterious envelope.

"There's a fellow I really want to see in Pusan," he said. "And they're replacing some hydraulics on my Corsair, which means I have the time to go."

"There's plenty of weight on the way in," McDavit said, "and you're sure welcome to it. But I have no idea what I'll have to haul back. Maybe a couple of mailbags, maybe the Golden Gate Bridge in pieces. You're liable to get stuck there overnight."