Griffin W.E.B. - The Corps 08 - In Dangers Path

«Before we get into that, General, you don't notice anything different about me?»

Pickering studied him, then shook his head, «no.»

«I never thought you were very bright, but I did think you were capable of counting as high as two,» Mclnerney said.

Pickering now understood. There were two stars on each of Mclnerney's collar points, and on each epaulet. Mclnerney was now a major general.

«Well, when did that happen? Damn, Mac, it's long overdue!»

«This morning,» Mclnerney said. «Loudly complaining that the Corps is going to hell, the Commandant pinned them on himself.»

«Well, congratulations!»

«Thank you, Flem,» Mclnerney said. «Who would have believed, at Chateau-Thierry?»

«I would have,» Pickering joked. «Anyone as ugly as you was sure to get to be a major general, if he stuck around long enough, and didn't get shot by a jealous husband first.»

«You can go to hell, General.»

«When I come back, we'll have a party,» Pickering said.

«That's what we're going to do tonight,» Mclnerney said.

«I'm on my way to Pearl Harbor.»

«You're on your way to Memphis,» Mclnerney corrected him. «And I'm driving the pumpkin, Cinderella. Unless, Flem, you wanted to be alone with your boy?»

«Don't be silly,» Pickering replied automatically, and then thought it through, and added: «Actually, Mac, I'm delighted. You can keep the grand farewell from getting maudlin.»

«You're sure?»

«Absolutely. But let me call ahead and make sure we have a hotel room for you.»

«Something wrong with the visiting Flag Officers' Quarters?» Mclnerney asked.

«Pick's living in a hotel in Memphis…«

«I should have guessed,» Mclnerney said.

«And what was that I heard about wise officers keeping their indiscretions as far from the flagpole as possible?»

«It's 'a hundred miles from the flagpole,' actually,» Mclnerney said. «But you're right. A hotel would be better.»

«George,» Pickering ordered, «call the Peabody in Memphis and get a suite for General Mclnerney and me. You and Sylvester can bunk with Pick and Dunn.»

«Aye, aye, sir.»

«And while Hart's doing that, Tony, you get our passengers loaded.»

«Aye, aye, sir.»

«You learned how to fly, I seem to recall?»

Pickering nodded. «P&FE has a Staggerwing Beech,» he said. «I've got a couple of hundred hours in that.»

«You think you could get the wheels up on a Gooney Bird? And then back down again? If so, you can ride up in front with me.»

«I think I might be able to do that,» Pickering said. «But are you sure it will be all right?»

«What do you mean?»

«I didn't know the Corps let old men like you fly by themselves,» Pickering said, straight-faced.

«You sonofabitch,» Mclnerney said. «If memory serves, and mine always does, you're eight months older than I am.»

The Douglas R4-D was parked right outside base operations. A ground crew of Navy white-hats was standing by. Several of them manned a fire extinguisher on wheels. One of them had been stationed in the cockpit. The moment he saw General Mclnerney his responsibility was to stick his arm out the pilot's side window and place a small red flag with the two stars of a major general in a holder.

When Mclnerney saw Pickering staring at the flag, he said, «That's the Navy.

I have passed the word in the Corps that any Marine AOD found hanging a flag on any airplane I'm flying will have to wash the airplane.»

«You've earned the prerogatives, Mac,» Pickering said, meaning it. «Enjoy them.»

Mclnemey waved him onto the airplane. A number of packages were strapped to the deck of the cabin. «That's your weather station gear,» Mclnemey said. «No package weighs more than sixty-five pounds, most of them no more than fifty.»

«You're not going all the way with us, are you, Mac?»

«No. Sylvester is. We're going to draft a copilot for him at Memphis. I'm taking one of the Memphis MAG's Corsairs back here in the morning.»

«You can fly a Corsair?» Pickering asked, genuinely surprised.

«Don't start that crap again, Flem,» Mclnemey said.

«Sorry,» Pickering said.

Spectowski and Damon were already strapped into BuAir versions of airline seats. Pickering smiled at them as he followed Mclnemey into the cockpit. A moment after he sat down in the copilot's seat and strapped himself in. Mclnemey handed him the major general's flag.

«Stick this in your ear, or some other suitable bodily orifice. General,» Mclnemey said.

«Aye, aye, sir,» Pickering said. He took the flag and found a place for it behind his seat.

Lieutenant Sylvester stuck his head in the cockpit door.

«Anytime you're ready, General,» he said.

«Okay, Tony. Find yourself a seat,» Mclnemey said, and reached for the plastic-coated checklist. «Ordinarily, the guy in the right seat reads this off for the pilot,» he said. «But I realize that the eyes of an old fart like you can't handle the small print.»

Three minutes later, Anacostia Departure Control cleared Marine Oh Oh Six for immediate take off on Runway Two Six, and Mclnemey reached for the throttle quadrant and advanced the throttles to takeoff power.

He was about to reach for his microphone when he heard Pickering's voice in his earphones: «Anacostia, Marine Double Oh Six, rolling.»

Thirty seconds later, Mclnemey eased back on the wheel and the rumble of the wheels stopped.

«Wheels up,» he ordered.

«Wheels up,» Pickering parroted, and then a few seconds later added, «Wheels up and locked.»

Mclnemey looked at him. «Well, maybe I'm wrong,» he said. «Maybe you're not as useless as teats on a boar hog.»

When they had reached cruising altitude and Mclnemey had trimmed the Gooney Bird up, he turned to Pickering. «What do you want first, the good news or the bad?»

«Let's start with the good,» Pickering said. «I haven't had much of that lately.»

«For once, the phones worked, and I got through to Dawkins at Ewa. You know the Dawk, don't you?»

«He had the MAG on Guadalcanal,» Pickering said. «Very good guy.»

«Yeah. Well, I had an idea. Big Steve Oblensky has forgotten more about Catalinas than most people ever leam. Before his heart went bad, he picked up a lot of time flying them. And he's one hell of a mechanic, too. Airframe

and

engine. So I asked the Dawk if he would mind lending him to this project of yours. For the first of the bad news, Dawkins seemed to know a lot about it. One of the Navy's pilots involved in the first refueling attempt ran off at the mouth.»

«There seems to be an epidemic of that,» Pickering said.

Mclnemey looked at him curiously but didn't pursue it. «Anyway, Dawk told me that Big Steve is already working on the Catalinas with your pal Jake Dillon.»

«Thank you,» Pickering said. «I should have thought of that.»

«Then the Dawk asked me a question, which brings us to Part Two of the bad news. He wanted to know if I was thinking of volunteering Charley Galloway to fly the mission. He obviously hoped I would say no firmly, which I did.»

«I didn't even think that Charley would volunteer.»

«You know how many volunteers we did get?»

Pickering shook his head, «no.»

«Two,» Mclnemey said.

»

Two

?» Pickering parroted incredulously.

«One of them is up on charges for writing rubber checks all over the West Coast, and the other is facing a Flight Evaluation Board. According to his commanding officer, the Board is almost certain to take his wings for gross incompetence.»

«I'm surprised,» Pickering confessed. «Only two.»

«Almost nobody wants to fly a Catalina in the first place,» Mclnemey said. «And most of the people who are flying them want to get out of Cats. Long-over-water flights are (a) dangerous and (b) boring, and that's what you do when you fly Catalinas, day after day. If I was flying fighters, I damned sure wouldn't volunteer to fly Catalinas. I wasn't all that surprised, but I did think we'd get maybe six, maybe more, volunteers.»