In Danger's Path (86 page)

“McCoy wouldn't pull rank about something like that,” Easterbrook said with absolute confidence.

Well, he's got McCoy figured correctly
, Pickering thought.
There really is more to the Easterbunny than at first meets the eye
.

“There have been no messages for me, Bob?” Pickering asked.

“There's one, sir. I thought I'd wait until we got in the car, out of the wind. Will you drive, George?”

“Sure,” Hart said.

That was an order
, Pickering thought.
It was phrased as a question, but it wasn't even a request, it was an order
.

“I don't think you're going to like it very much, sir,” Easterbrook added.

When they were in the backseat of the Studebaker together, and Pickering had read the two Special Channel messages, Pickering realized that Easterbrook was right. He didn't like what the Special Channel message said.

I have not yet recovered from my emotional reaction to watching Ken McCoy and Zimmerman—and Sampson—driving off into the Gobi—with that cheerful
“Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits”
tooting of the horn—and now this
.

What motivates these young men? Don't they want to live?

“Bad news, sir?” Hart asked from the front seat.

“I'm trying to make up my mind,” Pickering said. “Dillon sent us the names of the pilots who will fly the Catalinas.”

“Something wrong with them?”

Good question. Yeah, there's something wrong with them. They're all crazy, the regulars, the Old Breed, McCoy, Zimmerman, and Weston, and probably this Major Williamson, and the amateurs, my son and his Harvard classmate, Sampson. They are perfectly willing, perhaps because they are Marines, and Marines are supposed to do heroic things, or perhaps because they consider that voluntarily taking enormous chances with their lives—this would apply to Pick and Sampson—is what is expected of them as members of the social elite. Or maybe just to prove to themselves that they are not only men but a special kind of men
.

“There's a Major Williamson, from Pensacola, I don't know who he is.…”

“General, I don't know how I know this,” Hart said. “But I think he's a pal of Captain Galloway,” Hart offered. “He's probably all right.”

That figures, both that he's a pal of Charley Galloway and “all right
.”

“And a fellow named Stevenson, who's in Galloway's squadron,” Pickering went on.

Which means by definition
…“One of Galloway's misfits?” Hart asked, surprised.

…
one of Galloway's misfits
.

“I don't think Galloway would volunteer this fellow for this to get rid of him,” Pickering thought aloud. “Or that Colonel Dawkins, for that matter, would permit him to do that. So he's probably all right.”

“Yes, sir,” Hart agreed. “They both know how important this is.”

“The other two officers, George, are Captain James B. Weston—”

“Our Captain Weston?” Hart asked incredulously.

“Our Captain Weston,” Pickering confirmed. “And the fourth one is Pick.”

“My God!” Hart said. “He didn't say anything to me when we were in Memphis.”

“Or to me,” Pickering said.

“You didn't say anything about Operation Gobi to him in Memphis, did you, George?”

“No, sir.”

“Then I guess he just saw General McInerney's request for volunteers,” Hart said. “And volunteered.”

“What I can't understand is why they took him,” Pickering thought aloud again. “I don't think he knows how to fly a Catalina.”

He doesn't. That explains that business in Jake Dillon's Special Channel
…Pickering picked up the Special Channel and read the last paragraph again.

…
They know Pick does not have the “extensive experience” flying the Catalina that the other three have. What Jake is doing is telling me that Dawkins is doing all he can to give Pick the training he needs
.

“They know what a hell of a pilot he is, General,” Hart said. “That's why they took him. It won't take him long to learn how to fly a Catalina.”

“And the same is presumably true of Jim Weston,” Pickering said. “He was selected because he was the best man available for the job.”

“Yes, sir.”

And the selector was Mac McInerney. Who would base his decision on that alone. With no consideration of fairness, of sending someone who hadn't spent a year as a guerrilla in the Philippines instead of someone who did. Or sending someone who has never been in combat at all—or hasn't already flown an incredibly hazardous mission like Pick did with Galloway to Buka—in place of someone who has
.

A general officer cannot permit himself to let his personal feelings interfere with his decisions, even when his decisions may send men to their deaths. Mac really likes Weston, and he showed at Memphis—again—how much he likes Pick. But he's a Marine General, and he can't let anything get in the way of his responsibilities
.

So what does that make me?

The Easterbunny is getting next to me in the backseat of this staff car because I arranged it so that he wouldn't get himself killed storming some beach in the Solomons
.

It makes me—because I would trade my life for a senior officer somewhere who would make the emotion-based decision to send someone else in place of Pick and Weston—a lousy general officer
.

“Pick will be all right, General,” Hart said, reading Pickering's mind. “And so will Weston. They walk between raindrops.”

“Well, we'll soon find out, won't we, George?” Pickering said.

[FOUR]
The White House
Washington, D.C.
2315 16 April 1943

The President was sitting in his wheelchair in his dressing gown, lighting a fresh cigarette from the butt of another, when Admiral William D. Leahy, General George C. Marshall, and Colonel William J. Donovan were shown in.

He looks tired
, Donovan thought.

“Good evening, Mr. President,” Admiral Leahy said.

“What do we have here?” Roosevelt said, as he stuffed his fresh cigarette into an ivory holder and flashed his famous smile. “The Army, the Navy, and he who hears all evil, sees all evil, and speaks all evil?”

“Is that how you think of me, Mr. President?” Donovan asked.

“A poor attempt at humor, Bill,” the President said. “I tend to tell terrible jokes when I am forced to make decisions I would rather not make.”

There was no reply.

“Would anyone like coffee?” he asked. “Or something stronger?”

There was a chorus of “No, thank you, Mr. President.”

“Let me see it, please,” the President said.

Donovan reached into his interior pocket and handed the President a white, blank, unsealed, letter-size envelope.

Roosevelt took two sheets of typewriter paper from it. He glanced quickly at both of them. “Oh, we've heard from Halsey, too?” he asked.

“I thought we should wait for Admiral Halsey's recommendation before coming to see you, sir,” Admiral Leahy said.

Roosevelt carefully read the messages.

“Douglas does have a way with words, doesn't he?” the President said, and turned to the second message, which was considerably shorter than MacArthur's.