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

Rutterman looks old enough to be Easterbrook's father

, Banning thought.

«Sorry to be late, sir,» Easterbrook said to Banning. «I was in the commo section.»

«Problem with the radios?» Banning asked.

«No, sir. We were testing the packaging.»

«How?»

Easterbrook looked uncomfortable.

» '

How'

?» Banning repeated.

«Actually, sir, we disassembled one of them—took the tubes out, like that— packed everything in the bags with foam rubber, and then I stood on a table and dropped all the bags onto the floor a half-dozen times. Then we put the radio back together to see if it would still work.»

«Did it?»

«Yes, sir.»

«At the Signal Corps Laboratories at Fort Monmouth, Lieutenant,» Colonel Albright said, «we call the 'drop it on the floor and see if we can bust it' testing technique, 'simulated extensive field use testing.' It's really the only way to do it.»

«Yes, sir,» the Easterbunny said.

Christ, he actually blushed!

«That's why I was late, sir,» the Easterbunny blurted. «I just had to see if it would work when I put it back together.»

«No problem, you're here,» Banning said. «Harry, you want to check the doors, please?»

Rutterman locked the door he had just passed through, then checked the other two doors to make sure they were locked, and finally drew blinds across the windows, after making sure the windows themselves were closed.

«This won't take long,» Banning began. «Making reference to Section Two, Paragraph Five(a) of Opplan China Clipper, you may consider that as of this moment, you are alerted for overseas movement. You will depart the United States by military aircraft from Newark, New Jersey, sometime in the morning of 17 March—that's Wednesday—for service in the China-Burma-India theatre of operations.»

Colonel Albright heard Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman mutter, in Wu,» 'China Clipper'? What the fuck is that?»

«Having been so alerted,» Banning went on, «you are advised that under the Articles for the Governance of the Naval Service, any failure to appear at the proper place at the proper time in the properly appointed uniform until you have physically departed the Continental Limits of the United States will be regarded not as Absence Without Leave, but as Absence Without Leave With the Intent to Avoid Overseas and/or Hazardous Service, and will make you subject to the more severe penalties for that offense as a court-martial may prescribe.»

Colonel Albright heard Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman mutter in Wu, «What the fuck is that all about?» to which Captain McCoy hissed, in muttered Wu, «Put a fucking cork in it, Ernie!»

«Colonel Albright is in charge of the movement, which he will now explain to you, following which we will all go to the firing range and qualify with the weapons with which we will be armed.»

«What the fuck is that all about?» Captain McCoy asked in English.

«Did you say something, Captain McCoy?» Lieutenant Colonel Banning asked.

«Sir, did the Captain correctly understand the Colonel to say, sir, that we are going to the range to qualify with the weapons with which we will be armed?»

«You heard me correctly, Captain McCoy,» Banning said. «Do you have any problem with that, Captain?»

«No, sir.»

«Splendid! And to answer your first question, Captain McCoy, 'what the fuck is that all about?'—or words to that effect—we are going to do so because Colonel Albright here is under orders to ensure that every

t

in Operation China Clipper is crossed correctly and every last

i

has a dot in the proper place. Have you any further questions, Captain McCoy?»

«No, sir.»

«And you, Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman? Do you have any questions?»

Zimmerman popped to rigid attention. «Sir, begging the Colonel's pardon, sir. What the fuck is Operation China Clipper?»

«You've never heard of China Clipper, Sergeant?» Colonel Albright asked.

«No, sir. Not one fucking word.»

«Well, sit back down, Sergeant, and I'll tell you all about it,» Colonel Albright said.

The firing range of the OSS training facility was not much of a firing range by USMC standards: A U-shaped berm, no more than twenty feet high and perhaps a hundred feet long, had been built of sandbags on what had been the practice driving range before the OSS took over the Country Club. At the open end of the U were six firing positions. There were no pits. Target frames had been made from two-by-fours and plywood. Two were in position, and another four were lying on the ground. The «feet» of the erect frames sat in sections of pipe buried upright in the ground. Life-size silhouette targets had apparently been obtained from the FBI, for they showed a likeness of John Dillinger, the bank robber, clutching a .45 and glowering menacingly. These had been stapled to the plywood of the two target frames in use. Three-foot-long pieces of two-by-fours laid on the ground showed where the shooter was to stand.

The sandbags in the berm behind the targets showed evidence of the projectiles that had been fired downrange. McCoy noticed a lot of holes in sandbags not directly behind the targets.

Three men were waiting for them, standing by a rough table on which was placed two Mauser Broomhandle pistols, two Thompson submachine guns, and a rack holding five 1911 Al Colt .45 pistols with dowels in their barrels. Two of the men were in U.S. Army fatigues and the third was wearing an Army olive-drab woolen uniform.

He's probably the instructor

, McCoy decided,

and the other two are on labor detail

.

The man in ODs—on which McCoy now saw silver first lieutenant's bars and the crossed sabers of cavalry—saw them coming, called attention, and saluted Colonel Albright. «Good morning, sir,» he said.

«Good morning,» Albright said. «These are the weapons they'll be taking with them?»

«Yes, sir. And they've been checked over by both Gunny Zimmerman and myself.»

One of the GIs in Army fatigues handed the lieutenant a clipboard. «These are the hand receipts for the weapons, sir,» he said. «I'll need to have them signed.»

One by one, Banning and the others signed the hand receipts for the weapons. Banning signed for a 1911A1 .45-caliber pistol only; McCoy and Zimmerman both for a pistol and a Mauser machine pistol; and Easterbrook and Rutterman both for a pistol and a Thompson submachine gun.

Both Colonel Albright and Captain McCoy had private thoughts, which they did not express, about the Thompsons: Albright wondered, if it came down to it, how effectively Lieutenant Easterbrook could use his Thompson. Controlling their recoil was difficult even for a muscular man, and Easterbrook was anything but muscular.

McCoy, who had seen Easterbrook running around on Guadalcanal with a Thompson, was not concerned about his skill with the weapon, but with the weapon itself. These were civilian versions of the submachine gun, which he supposed the OSS had gotten from the FBI, like the John Dillinger silhouette targets. They had fifty-round «drum» magazines. In McCoy's opinion, the drum magazines were unreliable.

«How would you like us to do this, sir?» Lieutenant Colonel Banning asked of Colonel A. H. Albright.

«I don't think we have to bother about the pistols,» Albright said, and then changed his mind. He didn't want to have to lie to General Adamson unless he really had to. «But on the other hand, to go by the book, maybe we should. How about a magazine from each weapon at a silhouette? Five out of seven shots from a .45 anywhere in the torso will qualify. And how about one in three shots from the automatic weapons? Say seventeen out of fifty from the Thompsons? How many shots are there in the Mausers?»