In Danger's Path (83 page)

“No, sir,” Galloway replied. “Thank you just the same.”

“In that case, good afternoon, Captain Galloway.”

“Thank you for seeing me, sir.”

Captain Charles M. Galloway came to attention, executed an about-face maneuver, and marched out of Dawkins's office.

[SEVEN]
Headquarters, Marine Air Group 21
Ewa Marine Air Station
Oahu, Territory of Hawaii
1915 13 April 1943

The charge of quarters knocked at Dawkins's office door and opened it wide enough to put his head in the crack. “Colonel, there's a Major Williamson out here, says if you're not tied up he'd like to make his manners.”

Dawkins had not finished going through the directives he'd started on after lunch and thrown into the wastebasket. His sergeant major had gone through the wastebasket, salvaged the directives that needed Colonel Dawkins's attention, and put them back in his In basket.

“Aviator type?”

“Yes, sir. Captain Weston is with him.”

“A Captain Weston, Andy, or
our
Captain Weston?”

“Ours, sir.”

Like most everybody else in MAG-21, Sergeant Ward had been impressed with the Marine Aviator who had spent a year as a guerrilla in the Philippines.

“Well, damn, Andy, send them in.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Major Avery R. Williamson and Captain James B. Weston came through Dawkins's door a moment later.

“What brings you two to this tropical paradise?” Dawkins greeted them, as he came from behind his desk with his hand extended.

“Apparently,” Williamson replied, “there's nobody over here who knows how to drive a Cat. We have leapt to fill the breach.”

Dawkins's smile faded. “Weston, tell Sergeant Ward to get you a cup of coffee,” he said.

“Aye, aye, sir,” Weston said, left the room, and, sensing that he was being dismissed, closed the door behind him.

“What the hell's going on, Dick?” Dawkins demanded.

“General Mac came to see me at Pensacola,” Williamson said. “He told me that not enough people had volunteered for this Catalina mission of his; that he considered it a damned important operation; and stood there with the Marine Corps flag in one hand and the colors in the other and waved them at me until I finally—a long couple of minutes later—saw it as my duty to sign on the dotted line.”

“Jesus Christ!” Dawkins said. “Do you know what it is?”

Williamson shook his head, “no.”

“It has been decided that we can't win this war without a weather station in the middle of the Gobi Desert. And apparently the only way we can get one in there is to fly it in—a one-way flight, by the way—on a couple of Catalinas which will be refueled by a submarine a hundred miles off the China Coast in the Yellow Sea.”

“Jesus!”

“We have modified two Catalinas—and two others are in the process of being modified—by fairing over the turrets and the bubbles and installing auxiliary fuel tanks. Somebody apparently thinks that refueling a Cat from a sub on the high seas in the Yellow Sea this time of year may not work so well, and spares may be required.”

“Jesus!” Williamson repeated.

“If I was running this operation, I would go over to VMF-229 and select the worst four of Charley Galloway's ne'er-do-wells and send them,” Dawkins said. “There are better things for you to do, Dick. And Weston, too.” He paused, then went on, “General Mclnerney actually waved the flag at Weston, too? I would have thought he would be entitled to a pass on something like this.”

“That's a fine young man, Dawk,” Williamson said. “A damned good Marine.”

“If not too bright,” Dawkins said, “to volunteer for something like this.”

“He's a Catalina IP. I rechecked him out myself. He can drive one better than I can. And like I said, he's a damned good Marine. He had everything going for him. But he saw this as his duty, when I told him I had been volunteered.”

“He's out of his mind,” Dawkins said. “No one can accuse that kid of being a shirker.”

“You know Admiral Sayre?” Williamson asked. “His daughter?”

“The one who married Culhane? Who we lost at Wake?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Until Weston—he was the best man at their wedding—showed up at P'Cola, they called Martha Culhane ‘the Ice Princess.' One look at Weston and she melted. And the Admiral thinks Jim is the answer to his prayers for the Ice Princess, too.”

“Really?”

“He told me to give him a Cat check-ride, and since I was already going to do that, why didn't I do it by flying up to the Greenbrier—You know about the Greenbrier?”

Dawkins nodded.

“—and give him the check-ride while flying back and forth to P'Cola?”

“Then he really is a goddamn fool!” Dawkins said angrily.

“No, Dawk,” Williamson said. “What he is is a damned good Marine. Duty first.”

Dawkins looked at Williamson for a long moment. “Just because you're right, Dick,” he said, “doesn't mean I have to like it.”

“No, but you have to admire him,” Williamson insisted.

“I admired him already,” Dawkins said sadly, and then raised his voice: “Captain Weston!”

Weston came back into the office.

“Yes, sir?”

“Captain Weston,” Dawkins said, “on behalf of the Commander in Chief, Pacific, permit me to thank you for volunteering for this mission. Your selfless dedication to duty is in keeping with the highest traditions of the officer corps of the Marine Corps. That's official. Off the record, Jim, I think you're a goddamned fool, and if you give me the word, I'll do my damndest to get you out of this.”

“With respect, sir, I'd like to fly the operation.”

“You don't even know what it is, for Christ's sake!”

“Sir, I know the operation needs experienced Catalina pilots. I have a good deal of experience in the Cat.”

“So Major Williamson informs me,” Dawkins said. “Okay, Jim. Your decision.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I'm going to send you two over to Muku-Muku…”

“I think you'll like Muku-Muku, Major,” Weston said, smiling.

“…where you will find another heroic Marine who volunteered to fly this operation, immediately after he was offered his choice of doing so or being court-martialed.”

“Really?” Williamson asked, amused. “For what?”

“It's not funny. I know this officer. Seven kills, DFC, flying Wildcats for Charley Galloway on Guadalcanal. Fine pilot. Lousy officer. Did you ever meet General Pickering's son, Jim?”

“No, sir. But I heard about him,” Weston said. “That's who you're talking about?”

Dawkins nodded.

“How did he fuck up, sir?”

“As far as I'm concerned, by failing to do his duty. He was at Memphis, where he was supposed to be training Corsair pilots. The best way to train is by example. The example this Marine ace with the DFC set for the people he was supposed to be training was that it's all right to be grossly irresponsible. But the straw that broke the back, that almost got him court-martialed, was his personal life, his love life.”

“What did he do?”

“He was having an affair with the wrong female. For all I know, more than one. But I do know about one. A prima facie case of Conduct Unbecoming An Officer And A Gentleman.” Dawkins let that sink in a minute. “I believe in a clean sheet,” Dawkins went on. “This is not known to anyone involved with this operation, and I don't want you to let him know I told you about it.”

“I understand, sir,” Weston said.

“Okay,” Major Williamson said.

“The only reason I'm telling you this is because he doesn't have much time in a Catalina—I think thirty hours, something like that. The admiral commanding Memphis got him a quick qualification course just before throwing him off the base. So he's going to need some more Catalina time, as much as we can get him, and you two are the obvious people to give it to him.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“And there may be one more student for you,” Dawkins went on. “One of Charley Galloway's fuckups, according to Charley, has decided to salvage his fucked-up career by volunteering for this idiotic operation. That's not for sure; I'll make up my mind in the morning, after he comes to see me. But you might as well plan on it.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Williamson and Weston said almost in unison.

“This ‘gentleman's' name is Stevenson. First Lieutenant. I had a look at his record again this afternoon. Another sex maniac, apparently, who regards screwing any female—without regard to the consequences—as a sport. This sonofabitch, believe it or not, was screwing two women at the same time, both of whom he promised to marry.”

“Well, there are some guys like that,” Major Williamson said. “They just don't know when to keep their trousers buttoned. And we joke about it, but it's not funny.”

“No, it isn't,” Colonel Dawkins said.

Captain Weston did not comment.

[ONE]
Headquarters, 32nd Military District
Yümen, China
1730 13 April 1943

The aircraft provided by the United States 14th Air Force to transport Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMCR, Brigadier General Sun Chi Lon, Nationalist Army, and their entourages from Chungking to Yümen was a well-worn Douglas C-47. That morning it had been equipped with four airline-type seats, to accommodate the general officers, Colonel Banning, and Major Kee. They were mounted behind the bulkhead that separated the cockpit from the rest of the cabin. The entourages, General Sun's two orderlies, Second Lieutenant George F. Hart, USMCR, and Captain Jerry Sampson, USA, were obviously expected to make themselves as comfortable as they could on aluminum pipe and canvas seats that folded down from the bare walls of the fuselage.

Captain Sampson had been a last-minute and not entirely welcome addition to the party. When General Pickering had told Lieutenant Colonel Platt that he was headed for Yümen to see if he could assist McCoy, Platt took Pickering by surprise and immediately offered to send Sampson with them. “He might prove helpful.”

Pickering was unable to immediately think of a good reason Sampson shouldn't go—he'd already told Platt that Stillwell had arranged for the airplane to take him to Yümen and back—so he smiled and said, “Thank you.” Pickering had no doubt that Sampson might indeed “prove helpful,” but he was equally certain that the primary reason Platt had so generously offered the Captain's services was to make sure he learned what Pickering was up to in Yümen.

Pickering was not exactly eager at the moment to make that information available. Because McCoy and Zimmerman were running around Yümen in Chinese uniforms, Pickering was very much afraid that the whole mission was likely to go down the toilet.

General Sun, Major Kee, their two orderlies, and a dozen pieces of luggage were waiting for them at the Chungking airfield when they arrived—Pickering, Banning, and Hart had one piece each. Sun greeted Pickering courteously but did not mention the McCoy problem, and Pickering decided this was not the time to bring it up.

It turned out to be a long flight.

Before they took off, the pilot explained to Pickering that while Yümen was within the C-47's range, flying directly there was unwise. If the field was socked in—very possible this time of year—there was no alternative airfield they could reach with the remaining fuel aboard.

So they flew to Lanchou, a six-hundred-mile leg that took them almost four hours, refueled there, and then taken off for Yümen, which was a slightly shorter leg.

Twenty minutes out of Lanchou, General Sun turned to Pickering and offered him a cigarette from a gold case.

“No, thank you,” Pickering said. “I'm a cigar smoker.”

“I have been giving some thought to our problem with your Captain McCoy,” Sun said, tapping a Chesterfield on the case.

Pickering nodded and waited for him to go on.

“The most difficult situation will be if he has been discovered,” Sun said. “That's also the most likely. I don't really think he can successfully masquerade as a White Russian officer. And, because of its location, the counterintelligence services in the Thirty-second Military District are very thorough.”

“If they have been discovered, what will that mean?”

“That there is no chance they will be allowed to accompany a supply convoy into the desert. Or, in the remote chance that they were, someone would be sent along to report on their activities, and I doubt very much if they would be permitted to leave the convoy.”

“Yeah,” Pickering agreed.

“I could have arranged all this, had I known about it in time,” Sun said. “What we are doing now is reacting, not taking action, and we don't know to what we are reacting.”

“I understand,” Pickering said.

“It is entirely possible that they will have been subjected to a rather intensive interrogation,” Sun said.

I don't even want to think what's behind that euphemism
.

“In that case, it seems to me inevitable that they would disclose their purpose. That would make it even more difficult for them to go into the desert—even after their story is verified by me.” He caught Pickering's eye. “Still, I don't think the commanding general would conduct an
authorized
execution without making his superiors aware of the situation. He would want them to know his counterintelligence was working. We'll have to wait until we arrive to see what the situation is.”

“Yeah,” Pickering grunted. “Would they tell you of an incident like this?”

“I think so. They would regard it as a worthy accomplishment,” Sun said. “But let's look at the other side. Defying the odds, your men have somehow managed to reach Yümen and have
not
been arrested. I suggest in that case that I immediately inform General Chow that they are in his area, dressed in the uniform of Chinese officers—”

“We have another expression,” Pickering interrupted. “Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“I know that one,” General Sun. “But how does it apply here? I'm the gift horse? And you disagree with me?”

“If you tell General—Chow, you said?”

“Major General Chow Song-chek,” Sun furnished.

“If you tell General Chow, he will very likely be annoyed that he wasn't previously advised that a pair of American agents are working in his area of responsibility. And even if he's sympathetic, I think we would lose any chance of keeping this operation quiet.”

“And if we don't tell General Chow, and fifteen minutes after we arrive he learns that two spurious White Russians have been arrested in the uniforms of Chinese officers?”

“Then you tell him you didn't know. I didn't tell you.”

Sun thought that over for a long moment. “On the odd chance that your men are in Yümen, and have managed to avoid General Chow's counterintelligence, have you given any thought about how you are going to find them?”

“A good deal of thought, and come up with no better answer than I'll just have to look for them.”

“There is one possibility,” Sun said. “And that is this. I will tell General Chow that you have been sent by General Stillwell to have a look at his operation. He will brief you. It's too late to do that today. He would schedule a briefing for tomorrow morning. If we can find your men between the time we land and the time of the briefing—which seems a very long shot indeed…”

“If we can't find them when we see General Chow in the morning, you can tell him I just told you about my men.”

“He will consider that he has been deceived by you. There would be repercussions.”

“I think it's worth the chance,” Pickering said.

General Sun thought that over a moment. “Are you familiar, General Pickering, with the phrase ‘no good deed goes unpunished'?”

“Yes, I am.”

“If we can't find your men by eight o'clock tomorrow morning, I will tell General Chow that I sent your men, in Chinese Army uniform, into his area of responsibility.”

“That's putting your neck on the chopping block.”

“It isn't exactly what I had in mind when I agreed to use my good offices with General Chow, but I think it is what's called for.”

Because of head winds, the flight from Lanchou to Yümen took them just over another four hours. When they landed at sunset, a light snow was just beginning to fall. The commanding General of the 32nd Military District, a tall, stern-looking man in his fifties, was there to meet them. He had with him several senior officers and four vehicles—an ancient Packard touring car, a 1941 Packard Clipper, a 1941 Ford, and a Dodge weapons carrier for the luggage.

As General Sun's orderlies loaded the luggage into the weapons carrier, Sun introduced Pickering as an officer on Stillwell's staff whom Stillwell wanted familiar with the operation of the 32nd Military District.

“If we had only known you were coming, General Pickering,” General Chow said in excellent English, “we would have been honored to prepare a more detailed briefing than I can offer you on such short notice.”

“I didn't want you to go to any special effort, General,” Pickering said. “General Sun has been telling me what a busy man you are.”

“I will arrange with my staff to have a briefing prepared for you in the morning. Would ten o'clock be convenient for you?”

“It has been a long flight, General,” Pickering said. “But whatever is convenient for you.”

“I understand completely,” General Chow said. “Perhaps you will take lunch with me tomorrow, with the briefing to follow?”

“That would be splendid,” Pickering said. “Thank you very much.”

“And now we will take you to your quarters,” General Chow said. “Where we will have a drink and then dinner.”

“You are very kind, sir.”

General Chow gestured toward the ancient Packard touring car. Its canvas roof was already covered with snow, and there were no side curtains. But General Chow obviously regarded it as the most prestigious of his vehicles, and was honoring Pickering and Sun by inviting them to ride in it.

Pickering looked at his watch. It was five minutes to six. Presuming everybody was wrong—including Generals Stillwell and Sun—and McCoy had somehow managed to make it here, that gave him eighteen hours to find him.

That seemed like a very long shot, indeed.

Ten minutes after leaving the airport, they drove past a building with an adjacent parking lot. It was full of military vehicles. One of them was a Dodge ambulance with the normal red crosses not entirely painted over, and another was a Dodge three-quarter-ton weapons carrier. Both had five-hundred-gallon water trailers attached to them. Three Chinese soldiers armed with rifles were guarding them—and keeping themselves warm by standing beside a fire blazing in a cutoff fifty-five-gallon drum.

Pickering nudged General Sun with his elbow, but by the time Sun looked at him curiously, they had passed the opening to the parking area.

And Sun wouldn't know what I was showing him anyway
.

And there are probably fifty weapons carriers towing water trailers in Yümen
.

“Excuse me,” Pickering said.

“Certainly,” General Sun said.

Their quarters turned out to be a large and comfortable house. Inside General Chow led them into a room off the foyer that had been turned into a bar. There he began to offer a series of champagne toasts to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, President Roosevelt, General Stillwell, and—Pickering thought with growing impatience—every general officer, Chinese and American, in China.

Though he was fully aware that the ambulance and weapons carrier he had seen en route to the house were almost certainly not the ones McCoy and Zimmerman had driven to Yümen, in the absence of any other alternative, he was perfectly willing to grasp at a straw. The moment General Chow and his officers left the house—or sooner, if he could get General Sun alone for a moment—he was going to tell him he may have seen McCoy's trucks, and wanted to go looking for him.

General Chow failed to leave General Sun's side, and showed no interest in dinner. He did show every sign of too much drink, which meant the cocktail hour could go on forever, with dinner to follow.

“Sir, may I speak to you a moment?” a voice said in Pickering's ear.

“What's on your mind, Sampson?” Pickering asked, not entirely cordially.

“Not in here, sir.”

What the hell does he want?

Sampson gestured toward the door to the foyer of the house. Pickering marched out of the room into the foyer.

“Sir, I was hoping that General Chow would leave—”

“What is it, Sampson?”

“Sir, on the way here from the airport, I believe I saw Captain McCoy's vehicles.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, sir. I'm sure it was the ambulance he drove to the OSS house in Chung king. The paint didn't quite obliterate the white of the red cross markings—”

“There's probably fifty ambulances with bad paint jobs in Yümen,” Pickering said.

“The door of the ambulance Captain McCoy drove to the OSS house had a longitudinal scar on it, sir. So did the ambulance I saw before. And both vehicles here were towing five-hundred-gallon water trailers. Sir, with respect, I think having a look makes sense.”

“So do I,” Pickering said. “Go back in there and as discreetly as possible have Colonel Banning come out here.”

Banning came into the foyer a moment later, and on his heels was Major Kee Lew See, with a curious, concerned look on his face.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” Banning said.

“Sampson and I both think we know where McCoy is. Or at least was,” Pickering said.

“Where?”

“We saw the ambulance and the weapons carrier in the parking lot of a building—”