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

Having him assigned here, under my command, for his last twenty-nine days as an officer is really poetic justice. I owe him.

An officer and a gentleman would never have done to a brother officer what that lowlife sonofabitch did to me. And got away with.

Until now.

The next twenty-nine days are mine.

It's payback time.

As he sat behind his desk, he had another thought that pleased him even more:

If he does accept whatever stripes Eighth and Eye de-cides he's worth, and enlists-and how else can he earn a living?-maybe I could arrange to have him stationed here.

"Reduced to the ranks"? I'd like to see the sonofabitch busted down to PFC.

And with a little luck, I might be able to do just that.

[TWO]

THROUGH WITH ENGINES

NEAR CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA, CALIFORNIA

0905 7 JUNE 1950

As Trans-Global Airways' Flight 637, Luxury Service Be-tween Tokyo and San Francisco, began the last (Hon-olulu-San Francisco) leg of the flight, Fleming Pickering had taken advantage of Ken McCoy's visit to the rest room and had brought up the subject of Through with Engines to Ernie Sage McCoy.

Through with Engines was the more-or-less 110-acre Pickering estate near Carmel. On it was a large, rambling, but not pretentious single-floor house, designed to provide as many of its rooms as possible with the best possible view of the Pacific Ocean; a boathouse; a small airplane hangar; a small cottage for the servants; and a shedlike building used to house the grass-cutting-and other es-tate-machinery and a garage. None of the buildings-or the Pacific Ocean-could be seen from the road.

The land, which at the time had held only what was now the servants' cottage, and the boathouse had been the wed-ding gift of Andrew Foster to Patricia, his only daughter, on her marriage to Fleming Pickering. The house-actually the first four rooms thereof; eight more having been added, often one at a time, over the years-had been the gift of Commodore Pickering to his son Fleming on the occasion of his successful passage of the U.S. Coast Guard examina-tions leading to his licensing as an Any Ocean, Any Ton-nage Master Mariner, his right to call himself "Captain," and his first command of a Pacific and Far East vessel.

It was originally used by the young couple as somewhere they could go for privacy when he returned from a voyage, and Patricia had almost immediately pointed out that, since there were no street numbers, and nothing could be seen from the highway, the place needed a name. And it also needed signs to inform the public that it was private property.

Patricia Foster Pickering had thought her husband's sug-gestion of "Through with Engines"-the last signal sent from the bridge to the engine room at the conclusion of a voyage-was rather sweet, and told him she'd see about having a sign made.

"You'll need a lot more than one sign," he had replied. "I'll take care of it."

She thought that was sweet, too, until, on her next visit to what she thought of as "the beach place," she found the road lined at 100-yard intervals with four-by-eight-foot sheets of plywood signs, painted yellow, red, and black, reading:

PRIVATE PROPERTY

THROUGH WITH ENGINES

NO TRESPASSING UNDER

PENALTY OF LAW

They had come from the painting shop of the PandFE maintenance yard, and consequently were of the highest quality, and designed to resist the ravages of storms at sea.

It had taken Patricia most of Pick Pickering's life to get rid of the signs and replace them with something a little more attractive-and a little less belligerent. One original sign survived, and was now mounted on the wall of what she thought of as "the playroom," and her husband referred to as the "big bar," there being another-the "little bar"-by the swimming pool.

"Honey," Fleming Pickering said to Ernie McCoy, "I just had a great idea. Why don't you stay at Through with Engines while Ken's at Camp Pendleton?"

She smiled at him, but there was an I know what you`re up to look in her eyes.

What the hell, when in doubt, tell the truth.

"It won't be much fun for you down there, Ernie," he said. "And Patricia-if she's not already back-will want to see you."

And want to talk to you, especially after I tell her about Ken being reduced to the ranks. It's absolutely true that she thinks of you as a daughter. And talking to Patricia would certainly be a very good thing for you.

"I go where Ken goes," Ernie said. "But thanks, Uncle Flem."

"Have you considered that he might want you to stay at Through with Engines?"

"Pick said that, when he offered us Through with En-gines," Ernie said. "Your minds run in similar paths." She paused, then repeated, "I go where Ken goes."

"Okay."

"Pick's going to fly us down there in his airplane," she said. "We're going from the airport to Through with Engines, spend the night, fly down to San Diego-North Island Naval Air Station-in the morning. Pick will then run the girls out of his suite in the Coronado Beach, and turn it over to us."

"I didn't know," Pickering said.

"That way, I'll have a little time with Aunt Pat," Ernie went on. "The Pickerings are taking good care of the Mc-Coys, Uncle Flem, and the McCoys really appreciate it."

"Ernie, I don't know how much good I'll be able to do Ken," Pickering said.

"I know you'll do what you can," she said, and then Ken had appeared in the aisle and he changed the subject.

Pick's airplane was a Staggerwing Beechcraft, so called because the upper wing of the single-engine biplane was mounted farther aft than the lower. It was painted bright yellow, and there was a legend painted in script on the en-gine nacelle, "Once Is Enough."

"I'll bite," Ernie McCoy said, pointing to the legend af-ter her husband and Pick Pickering had rolled the aircraft from the hangar behind the main house of Through with Engines. "Once what is enough?"

"Once under the Golden Gate Bridge," Ken McCoy said, smiling at her.

"Mom's father gave me the Beech when I came home from the Pacific," Pick said. "It used to be Foster Hotel's. Now they have an R4D. Together with a long `once is enough' speech. So I had it painted on the nacelle."

"Once what is enough?" Ernie said.

"I told you, baby," McCoy said, smiling at her. "Once under the Golden Gate Bridge."

"He flew this under the Golden Gate Bridge?" Ernie asked, incredulously.

"With poor George Hart with him," McCoy said, chuck-ling at the memory.

"At the time it seemed like a splendid idea," Pick said.

"George had just gone to work for the Boss," McCoy said. "Colonel Rickabee decided the Boss needed a body-guard, so I went to Parris Island and found George in boot camp. He'd been a detective in Saint Louis...."

"Still is," Pick said. "I saw him there a couple of months ago. He's twice a captain, once in the cops, and once in the Corps Reserve. He's got an infantry company."

"I didn't know that," McCoy said. "Anyway, one day George is a boot, and the next day he's a sergeant bodyguard protecting the Boss, and the day after that, the Boss col-lapses-malaria and exhaustion; that was right after he was hit on the tin can leaving Guadalcanal, and they made him a Brigadier-in the suite in the Foster Lafayette in Washing-ton and winds up in the hospital. Rickabee sends George out here to tell the lunatic here that his father's going to be all right, and the lunatic here loads him in this-which he stole from his grandfather for the occasion, by the way-and flies under the Golden Gate. George told me he prayed to be able to go back to the safety of boot camp on Parris Island."

"Hart was with your dad all through the war, wasn't he?" Ernie asked.

"All the way, right to the end. He was even on the plane when the Old Man went into Japan before the surrender," Pick said. "Good man, George."