Griffin W.E.B. - Honor Bound 01 - Honor Bound

"Yeah, they do. When I went in the Army, the goddamned boots killed me. I was blisters all over. Then I got used to them, and then I got to wear jump boots, and they're really comfortable, and I felt the same way, barefoot, when I had to start wearing civilian shoes again."

"Well, keep your fingers crossed, and maybe pretty soon you can put your jump boots on again and get back to jumping out of perfectly functioning airplanes."

"Don't knock it 'til you've tried it," Tony said. "I like parachuting."

"I don't," Clete said. "I tried it once and hated it."

"How come you tried it?"

"There was a Japanese pilot who was much better than me," Clete said.

"No shit? You were shot down?"

"They warned us that the Japanese liked to shoot at people in parachutes, and that the thing to do was not pull the handle ..." He made a pulling gesture across his chest.

"The 'D Ring,' " Tony furnished.

"... until you were close to the ground. Or in my case, the water. So there I was," he gestured with his hands, "doing somersaults in the air, and every time I turned around—which seemed like twice a second—I looked at the water and tried to decide how close I was. Finally, I figured fuck it, and pulled the handle ..."

Tony, chuckling, corrected him again: "The D Ring."

"... and all of a sudden, it goes 'bloop,' jars the living shit out of me—I was sore between the legs for weeks—and then there's the water. Water is not always soft. And have you ever tried to swim wrapped in three square miles of parachute silk?"

"You didn't have your harness tight," Tony said. "That's one of the first things you learn, to make the harness tight."

"As I said, I tried it once and didn't like it. But you have fun, Tony. Each to his own."

Jesus, Mary and Joseph,Tony thought. That's a true story. He was out fighting the Japs and got shot down, and jumped, and fucking near killed himself not opening his 'chute in time. He may be a little stuck up, but he's no candy-ass.

"But you came out all right."

"They had PT boats patrolling between Guadalcanal and Tulagi. One of them saw me coming down, and they started firing at the Zero who was strafing me, chased him off, and then fished me out of the water. There was a guy—he commanded one of the other fighter squadrons, VMF-229—who went in the drink and spent twenty-four hours out there, floating around all by himself, before he was spotted and fished out. I don't think I could have taken that."

"Huh?"

"Waiting for the sharks. I think I would have gone nuts." Tony could imagine that. He felt a chill.

"You ever shoot down any Japs?"

There was a moment before Clete replied, ' 'I got lucky a couple of times."

"You going to tell me how many times?"

"Seven."

"You're an ace, then."

"Before I was dumb enough to volunteer for this, the Marine Corps was about to put me and a dozen other aces on display on the West Coast to sucker other innocent young men into volunteering for the crotch."

"The crotch"? What the hell is "the crotch"? Oh! He means the Marine Corps. If I called it "the crotch" he'd shit a brick.

"Was it as bad as they say on Guadalcanal?"

"It was unpleasant, Tony. Hot, humid, filthy, lousy food— much of it captured from the Japs—all kinds of bugs. And flying beat-up, shot-up, worn-out airplanes against Zeroes... a much better airplane, flown by pilots who were better than we were."

They weren't all better than you. Not if you shot down seven of them.

"You never talked about it before."

Clete shrugged. "Most people, civilians especially, don't understand."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"What are we doing here?"

"Hell, I thought you knew, Lieutenant Pelosi. Our contribution to the war effort is going to be to blow up a ship. That is, if people we must presume are far wiser than we are can make up their minds which ship, and tell us where it is, and how the hell we are supposed to blow it up."

Tony chuckled.

"I meant, where we're going?"

"Tomorrow morning, when we dock in Montevideo, we are going to a crude-oil terMi?al and make believe we know what we're doing as we examine the pipes and tanks and look at the books. Then we are going to a gambling casino for the night."

"A gambling casino?"

"You ever hear that line, 'theirs not to reason why, theirs but to ride into the valley of death'? In our case, it's walk into a gambling casino."

"And then what?"

"The next morning, we drive a rented car to a place called Punta del Este, where we take a swim. If Nes—the man who gave me our orders wasn't pulling my leg, the beaches of Punta del Este are crowded with good-looking women. Then, at night, we drive up to the Brazilian border, where they will air-drop your explosives to you."

"How are they going to do that?"

"I would presume from an airplane."

Tony chuckled.

"I meant how are we going to communicate with the drop aircraft?"

"I was told you were the air-drop expert."

"You need a radio to talk to the drop aircraft."

"I wondered about that. I do know that at specified times we are to turn the headlights on and off for sixty-second intervals. Maybe that'll be enough to let the guy flying drop the stuff to us."

"Who gives us our orders?"

"I can't tell you his name, Tony, sorry. But I think he knows what he's doing," Clete said seriously. "And I'm sure he's right about the way they do things. If you don't know his name, you can't tell anybody ... if, for example, we get caught and they start roasting you over a slow fire, or pulling your fingernails out."

"Can that happen?"

"I hope not."

“If everything goes all right, if everything works, and we blow up this fucking ship, then what? What happens to us?"

"I don't know. Maybe they'll want us out of Argentina, and maybe they'll want us to stick around doing something else until we do get caught, or until we win the war, whichever comes first."

"I wish to Christ I was back in the 82nd Airborne."

"And I almost wish I was back on Guadalcanal," Clete said. No, I don't, he thought. There is no Virgin Princess on Guadalcanal. "For what the hell it's worth, Tony. We had Marine paratroops on Tulagi, a battalion of them. They landed by ship, not by jumping. They got shit kicked out of them. More than ten percent killed. I think our odds are a little better than that; and in the meantime, it's clean sheets, steaks, and with a little bit of luck, a piece of ass in Punta del Este."

"I could use a little," Tony said. "I saw the most beautiful girl I ever saw in my life in Buenos Aires. I get a hard-on just thinking about her."

"Much the same thing, oddly enough, happened to me," Clete said.

He flicked his cigar over the rail.

"What do you say we hit the sack?"

"I never slept on a boat before," Tony confessed. "Do you get seasick in your sleep?"

"A ship," Clete corrected him. "A boat is a vessel you can carry aboard a ship. And no, if you were going to get seasick, you would be seasick by now."

[THREE]

El Casino de Carrasco

Montevideo, Uruguay

2000 8 December 1942

"Very nice," Lieutenant Pelosi observed to Lieutenant Frade as he inspected their suite—two bedrooms, plus sitting room and foyer.

"Try to remember you're an officer and a gentleman," Clete said, "and don't piss in the bidet."

"Screw you, Clete!"

Pelosi went to a window and hauled on the canvas tape that raised the heavy blinds over the French doors.

"Hey, the ocean's right out here!" Pelosi said, and then began to raise the other blinds.

"Jesus Christ, it really gets around, doesn't it? The last time I looked, it was in Miami."

"I mean we're facing the ocean, wise guy," Tony said, and opened one of the French doors. "And there's a balcony."