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

"And not as step one in an amphibious invasion of In-chon," Ernie McCoy said, agreeing with him. "Ken?"

"I could probably talk General Craig out of enough Marines to train these people.... You're talking about training them right on those islands, right?"

"Right."

"Killer, there're South Korean marines," Zimmerman said.

"Yeah, we saw them on the pier in Pusan, right?" Mc-Coy replied. His tone made it clear that he didn't want to employ South Korean marines in this operation.

"They wouldn't need anything heavy," Taylor said. "Carbines and.30-caliber air-cooled machine guns. Maybe a couple of mortars."

"The problem is going to be getting this past Whitney and the other clowns on the SCAP staff. From painful per-sonal experience, I know they don't think much of opera-tions like this."

"But you think it would work?" Taylor asked.

"Well, hell, it's worth a shot. But Ernie-the Ernie with the beard-is right. We'll have to take a look at these is-lands ourselves."

"The question, Killer, is what are you going to say when the boss asks you what you think of the idea?" Zimmer-man said.

"It makes sense," McCoy said. "It's worth a shot. Any-thing that will change the odds at Inchon in our favor is worth a shot."

"How are you going to get to those islands?" Ernie Mc-Coy asked.

"I don't know yet. We must have some Navy vessels op-erating in that area that could sneak us in at night."

"They don't have PT boats anymore, do they?" Zimmer-man asked.

"No. They'd be ideal, too," McCoy said. "There must be something."

"There's some junks around with diesel engines in them," Taylor said.

"That would do it," McCoy said. "How do we get one?"

"Have the South Korean Navy commandeer one," Hart suggested.

"No. That would attract too much attention. Maybe we could buy one."

"Buy one?" Taylor asked.

"Now, that opens a whole new line of interesting thoughts," McCoy said. "If the boss would go along, we could run this as a CIA operation, and we wouldn't have to ask SCAP's permission. Just, when the time is right, hand them the islands."

"I'm new to all this," Taylor said. "Would there be money for something like this?"

"Oh, yeah. The one thing the CIA doesn't have to worry about is money. I'm going to go to the boss and see if he can't give me some money to buy information about Pick. Money is not a problem."

"He won't want special treatment for Pick, honey," Ernie said.

"I'm going to tell him he doesn't have any choice," Mc-Coy said. "I'd like to get Pick back before the North Kore-ans find out his father is the Assistant Director for Asia of the CIA."

"I didn't think about that," Ernie said.

"You sound as if you're pretty sure he's alive," Taylor said.

"Yeah. Probably because I do," McCoy said. "Okay. If we have to show this to the boss and General Howe by sev-enteen hundred, we're going to have to get off the dime. There's a typewriter here, honey, right?"

"Yes," Ernie said, simply.

"You make coffee, and I'll type, okay?"

"You think Pick's alive?" she asked.

He met her eyes and nodded.

"George," she said, "I'm a delicate woman. You can carry the typewriter."

[FOUR]

THE DEWEY SUITE

THE IMPERIAL HOTEL

TOKYO, JAPAN

1905 3 AUGUST 1950

"I'd like a word with General Pickering," Howe said.

Captains McCoy and Hart, Master Gunner Zimmerman, Lieutenant Taylor and Mrs. Kenneth McCoy started to get up from their chairs at the table of the dining room.

"Keep your seats," General Howe said. "This won't take long. Can we use your bedroom, General?"

"Of course," Pickering said, got up, and led the way out of the dining room.

Howe closed the door of Pickering's bedroom behind them, walked to the desk against the wall, and leaned on it.

"There wasn't much-damned near nothing-in the CIA reports I read in Washington about these islands," he said. "Is there any more that you know of?"

Pickering shook his head, "no."

"I've been going damned near blind since I got here, reading the files," he said. "I didn't see anything. It looks like all we know about them is what Taylor is telling us."

"We can't go on that alone, Fleming," Howe said.

"I don't know what you mean by `go,' Ralph," Pickering said.

"Earlier today, I messaged the President that I thought the Inchon invasion was idiotic," Howe said. "The phrase I used was `from my understanding of its feasibility, the risks involved would seem to make the invasion inadvis-able.' If I had had him on the phone, I would have said, `It looks like a dumb idea to me, Harry.'"

Pickering didn't reply.

"And then we had our afternoon with General MacArthur," Howe said. "After which I tried to call the President. He was not available. So I left a message with his secretary. `Last judgment Inchon premature. Sorry. More follows soonest.'"

"MacArthur changed your mind?" Pickering said.

"He should have been a door-to-door salesman," Howe said. "He could have made a fortune selling Bibles to athe-ists."

Pickering chuckled.

"When he's in good form, he's really something."

"If you don't want to answer this, don't," Howe said. "What did you message the President?"

" `I have concluded that despite the obvious problems, the Inchon invasion is possible, and the benefits therefrom outweigh the risks,'" Pickering said. It was obvious he was quoting himself verbatim.

"You think he can carry it off?"

"I've seen him in action, Ralph. That military genius business is not hyperbole."

"What do you think of Taylor's idea?"

"I think the bunch around MacArthur-and maybe MacArthur himself, if it ever got that high-would reject it out of hand-"

"Maybe not `out of hand,'" Howe interrupted.

Pickering looked at him a moment.

"You're right," he said. "They would `carefully con-sider' the proposal, such careful consideration lasting until it would be too late to put it into execution."

"As I understand the role of the CIA, Fleming," Howe said, "it is an intelligence-gathering operation."

"So I understand."

"Taylor suggested that the people on the islands are pos-sessed of knowledge of intelligence value..."

"He did say that, didn't he?"

"And unless I'm mistaken, the Assistant Director of the CIA for Asia doesn't need MacArthur's approval to con-duct what could be considered a routine intelligence-gathering operation...."

"As a matter of fact, I don't even have to tell El Supremo what I'm doing," Pickering said. "Or have done."

"How annoyed do you suppose he'd be if-when-he found out later?" Howe asked.

"If we can take those bottleneck islands quietly, with McCoy and a dozen or so Marines in the next couple of weeks, MacArthur will thereafter refer to it as `my clan-destine operation.' If this blows up in our faces-which would, obviously, signal the North Koreans that we plan to land at Inchon-Whitney and Willoughby would recom-mend public castration, prior to my being hung by the neck until dead, and he'd probably go along."

"You don't sound particularly worried."

"I have the gut feeling that Taylor knows what he's talk-ing about, and I know McCoy is just the man who could organize and execute an operation like this."

Howe met Pickering's eyes for a moment, then nodded.

"Okay," he said. "How about this? `Have just learned Pickering is conducting a clandestine operation, which, if successful, will remove my primary objection to an inva-sion at Inchon. I believe the operation will be successful. More follows.'"

"That's what you're going to send?"

"I'm afraid if I call again, he'll take my call," Howe said.

"And if President Truman calls you?"

"By then, I suspect, Captain McCoy and Lieutenant Taylor and Mr. Zimmerman... is Zimmerman going?"