In Danger's Path (77 page)

“You hope,” Banning said.

“We've been stopped,” McCoy said simply, “several times.”

“You don't speak Russian,” Colonel Platt challenged. “What do you do about that?”

“I speak Cantonese, Wu, and Mandarin,” McCoy said. “That seems to be enough.”

“Why did you rent a house?” Banning asked.

“Because the houses here come with outside walls, making the building lot into a little compound, an interior court? You know what I mean. I needed someplace behind a wall to hide our ambulance. We also have a weapons carrier and a couple of water trailers.”

“Where did you get the ambulance? And why?” Banning pursued.

“Where? From a Chinese merchant who had one to sell. I don't know where he got it.”

“He probably stole it from the Nationalist Army,” Captain Sampson said, a trifle indignantly.

“Probably,” McCoy agreed with a smile.

“What are you going to do with it? Drive it to and across the Gobi?” Banning asked, not unkindly, but sarcastically.

“Yes, sir,” McCoy said. “That seems the best way to go, sir.”

“You're serious?” Banning asked, surprised.

“Yes, sir.”

“You're aware, Captain,” Colonel Platt said, “that there is a good deal of bandit activity between here and the Gobi Desert, and all over the desert itself?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“The bandits don't concern you?”

“I think there's a way to handle that, sir,” McCoy said.

“I'd like to hear it,” Platt said.

“So would I,” Pickering said, his eyes on Captain Sampson. “But what I think we should do right now, before that, is ask Captain Sampson to deliver that Opplan briefing again. I'd like to know what McCoy and Zimmerman think of it.”

It took Sampson forty-five minutes this time to lay out again the Chungking station's Opplan. During this time, McCoy didn't ask questions or otherwise interrupt the briefing. Pickering had no idea what he was thinking.

“I'm learning to be a general,” Pickering said when Sampson was finished. “What generals do, when asking for opinions, is ask the junior man first. That keeps their answers from being colored by what someone senior to them has said first. So, Gunny Zimmerman—or should I say Major Zimmerman?—what do you think?”

Everyone but Zimmerman chuckled, and it was a long moment before he finally spoke. “With respect, sir, McCoy's idea makes more sense.”

Is that his considered opinion, or did he say that because he knows McCoy and doesn't know these people?

“You want to expand on that, please, Gunny?” Pickering said.

“Sir?”

“General Pickering wants to know what you don't like about Captain Sampson's Opplan, Ernie,” McCoy said.

“Too many people,” Zimmerman said immediately.

“Perhaps you don't fully understand the threat the bandits pose, Sergeant,” Captain Sampson said.

Pickering happened to look at McCoy, and saw ice come briefly to his eyes.

“Both Captain McCoy and Gunny Zimmerman, Sampson, have had experience with Chinese bandits,” Banning said.

Zimmerman glanced at Banning with gratitude in his eyes.

“You don't think the bandits pose much of a threat, is that it, Zimmerman?” Pickering asked.

“Sir, they only attack when it ain't going to cost them much,” Zimmerman said.

“With that in mind, Gunny,” Banning said, “let me go off on a tangent. What do you think are the chances that the people we think are in the Gobi have had a run-in with bandits?”

“I think we have to take that as a given, Colonel,” Lieutenant Colonel Platt said. “I personally would be very surprised if we'll be able to find them.”

“Meaning, you think they've been killed?” Banning asked.

“I think that's a reasonable assumption.”

“Zimmerman?” Pickering asked.

“Sir, they only attack when it ain't going to cost them much,” Zimmerman repeated doggedly. He turned to McCoy for support. “You know Sweatley, Killer, and he's not dumb enough to go into the Gobi—”

“Who is Sweatley?” Captain Sampson interrupted.

“One of the men whose names we have,” McCoy said. “He was a buck sergeant with the Marine guard detachment at the legation in Peking. I think Gunny Zimmerman is saying that we can
reasonably assume
that the people in the desert are armed.”

“Yeah,” Zimmerman said.

“They may even have machine guns,” McCoy went on. “I know there were four air-cooled Browning .30s in the armory there.”

“How do you know that?” Captain Sampson asked.

McCoy glared at him icily.

“Tell him, Captain McCoy,” Banning said.

“Before I went to work for Colonel Banning, I had the machine-gun section in Baker Company, Fourth Marines in Shanghai,” McCoy said. “I used to maintain the Peking legation guard's weapons.”

“I see,” Sampson said.

“What did the sergeant call you, Captain? ‘Killer'?” Colonel Platt asked.

“Gunny Zimmerman is one of two people who can call Captain McCoy ‘Killer' without running a great risk of severe bodily harm,” Pickering said.

“Oh, really? And who is the other one?” Platt asked.

“I am, Colonel,” Pickering said, and turned to Zimmerman. “To get to the bottom of this, what you're saying, Gunny—and presumably McCoy agrees with you—is that you believe these people in the desert are well enough armed to keep the bandits from thinking they would be an easy target?”

“Yes, sir,” Zimmerman said.

“In other words, you would bet they're out there somewhere?”

“Sir, with respect, I'd say it's fifty-fifty,” Zimmerman said.

“I hope the sergeant is right, of course,” Platt said. “But if I may speak freely?”

“Of course,” Pickering said.

“I don't think we can mount this operation on a fifty-fifty chance that these people are still out there, and an even slimmer chance that we can find them if they are.”

“Colonel,” McCoy said, “Marines don't abandon their own because there's a good chance they might be dead.”

“That's a very noble sentiment, Captain, but I would suggest this is a question of priorities.” He looked at Pickering, obviously seeking support.

“How do you see the priorities here, Colonel?” Pickering asked.

“It seems to me that getting this weather station up and operating is the obvious priority.”

“May I speak freely, sir?” McCoy asked.

“That's what this is all about,” Pickering said.

“The priority is to have a weather station operating over a long period of time, not just get it up and running,” McCoy said.

“Of course,” Platt said. “That's understood.”

“This place is crawling with Japanese spies, or maybe more accurately, Chinese selling information to the Japs,” McCoy said. “There's no way you could send a convoy carrying two companies of Nationalist infantry into the desert without the Japs learning about it. They would wonder what was going on.”

“They have radio intercept capabilities, as I'm sure you know, Captain,” Colonel Platt said, his tone making it clear that he felt McCoy did not know. “Once the weather station begins to transmit data, they'll know something is going on.”

“The station will be on the air no more than ten minutes a day,” McCoy responded. “It will probably take the Japanese some time to figure out what's being transmitted, and even when they do that, they'll have to find the transmitter.”

“Finding a transmitter using triangulation isn't at all difficult,” Captain Sampson said.

“It's not as easy as it sounds, either,” McCoy said. “Have you seen the SOI for the weather station?”

“No,” Sampson said.

“A different time every day, a different frequency, a different code. I don't think they'll be able to locate the station by triangulation easily, and if we move the station, it will be even harder for them.”

“How are we going to move the station?”

“In the ambulance,” McCoy said. “Send it twenty, twenty-five miles from the radio station, in a different direction, every day.”

“Where are you going to get the gasoline to do that, Ken?” Pickering asked.

“That's one of the things I haven't figured out yet,” McCoy said. “One possibility is to have caches of it, and another is having it flown in by the Catalinas. I figure it would take five gallons of gas a day, a hundred and fifty gallons a month, to send the ambulance twenty-five miles away from the weather station every day.”

“Caches of gasoline?” Colonel Platt asked. “Where would you get those?”

“I think it's time,” Pickering said, “that we hear Ken's ideas on this operation. Start at the beginning, Ken.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” McCoy said. He paused, obviously collecting his thoughts. “Well, when we started to ask questions, we heard about the bandits—which was not exactly news—and we heard that the Nationalists are sending patrols into the deserts. Long range patrols, on camels and Mongolian ponies.”

“We're aware of those patrols,” Sampson said. “In addition to their intelligence-gathering function, they are supposed to suppress the bandit activity.”

Pickering looked at McCoy, who was staring at Sampson with a strange look in his eyes.

Is he annoyed at the interruption? Pickering wondered. Or is he amused? Or disgusted? Or maybe all three?

“More likely,” McCoy said, “they're holding hands with the bandits.”

“I don't think I understand,” Pickering said.

“Sir, it's more than likely that, in exchange for letting the bandits operate, the patrols—or at least the patrol's officers—get a cut of what the bandits have stolen, and the bandits provide intelligence about the caravans, and maybe even about the Japanese.”

“Or, Ken,” Banning said thoughtfully, “maybe about a group of westerners running around out there.”

“We are regularly furnished with intelligence reports from the Chinese about what those patrols have turned up,” Colonel Platt said. “We have specifically requested information about any Americans. There has been nothing, absolutely nothing.”

McCoy ignored him.

“The Nationalist Chinese, on patrol and off,” he went on, “have to live a lot off the land. They have to, or starve. Which is one of the reasons Mao Tse-Tung's Communists are so popular; they don't steal from the peasants the way the Nationalists do.”

“You sound as if you approve of the Communists, Captain,” Colonel Platt said.

“I don't, sir, but if I were a peasant, and the Communists didn't steal my last pig, and the Nationalists did, I probably would.”

“What's your point, Ken?” Banning challenged.

“The first thing I thought was that I would get in touch with these Nationalist patrols, to see if they had heard anything about Westerners that they hadn't sent up through channels.”

“If they had heard something, why wouldn't they have reported it?” Colonel Platt asked.

“Because, sir, they might get orders to investigate further,” McCoy said. “If I was a Nationalist lieutenant, I wouldn't want to get an order like that. Life is tough enough as it is without me almost volunteering to stick my neck out to look for a bunch of Westerners.”

“You said that was the first thing you thought of, McCoy?” Pickering asked.

“Yes, sir. Then I realized that there is no way that a long-range patrol can live off the land in the Gobi. There's nothing to steal out there except from caravans. And caravans would not have enough food to feed forty men for long. Which meant that the patrols would have to be resupplied. And I found out they run regular truck convoys out there, to preestablished rendezvous points. Sometimes it's just rations, and sometimes they take troops, even horses, out there to replace lost horses and bring back the sick, lame, and lazy.”

He stopped and took a thin cigar from his pocket and lit it. Then he went on.

“That's when I started to think that if Zimmerman and I could hook up with one of these motor supply convoys, we could go as far as they go, then take off on our own. With a little bit of luck, maybe we could get them to tell me what they've heard about a group of Westerners.”

“What makes you think they'd tell you something they haven't reported through the appropriate channels?” Captain Sampson asked.

McCoy looked at him coldly, then decided the question was a request for information rather than a challenge.

“I'd pay them,” McCoy said. “They aren't getting paid by whoever sends them out there.”