In Danger's Path (91 page)

[FOUR]
Somewhere in the Gobi Desert
Mongolia
1500 2 May 1943

For the past several hours, people had been removing all the supplies stored inside the ambulance—and lashed all over its outside—and then distributing them among the wagons and carts of the caravans. Doing all that had converted the ambulance into the radio room of what, if everything went well, would be known as Station Nowhere. The single radio in the rear of the ambulance at the moment was one of the two small portable radios designed and built by Collins Radio to be transported on camelback. It was connected by a cable to a stationary bicycle-driven generator set up just outside the rear doors of the ambulance.

A long wire antenna came out of the passenger window, the other end fastened to the three-quarter-ton weapons carrier. It was a jury rig, but it worked. Proper, collapsible antenna masts and more powerful radios were aboard the Catalinas. According to their last contact with Pearl Harbor, these had left Pearl Harbor just before midnight the day before.

It was now time to find out if they had found the
Sunfish
a hundred miles off the coast of China in the Yellow Sea, had landed, and more important, had taken off again, and when.

So far as McCoy was concerned, there were entirely too many people crowded into the ambulance. He had considered ordering everybody but Jerry Sampson out, but decided against it, partly because he understood their interest and partly because he was aware that most of the gypsies had already decided he was a prick. While he really didn't care what they thought of him, that might get to be a problem.

McCoy was sitting in the driver's seat. Chief Motor Machinist's Mate Frederick C. Brewer, Fleet Reserve, USN, sat in the passenger's seat. As McCoy saw it, the chief had a right to be in the ambulance. He was the ranking man, and the gypsies were accustomed to doing what he told them to do. Captain Jerome Sampson sat on the floor of the rear of the ambulance. He was the radio operator, and obviously had to be there.

The man sitting beside Sampson didn't need to be there. He was the gypsies' radioman, a radioman first who had transferred off the gunboat
Panay
into the Fleet Reserve when McCoy was in the fifth grade. The radio he had somehow managed to cobble together from parts “borrowed” from another Yangtze River patrol gunboat had allowed him to transmit the few messages announcing the very existence of the gypsies. His delight at seeing the Collins radio, and his awe at the tiny little radio's capability to so easily communicate with Pearl Harbor, had been almost pathetic. McCoy didn't have the heart to tell him to get out of the trailer.

Technical Sergeant Moses Abraham, USMC, who had retired from the 4th Marines; and Staff Sergeant Willis T. Cawber, Jr., who had retired from the US Army's 15th Infantry; and Sergeant James R. Sweatley, USMC, were also in the back of the trailer and had no business there, except for the positions of authority they had given themselves.

McCoy had immediately disliked Cawber; and Technical Sergeant Abraham had immediately made it apparent he didn't like taking orders from a youngster who was a corporal in the machine gun section of Baker Company of the Fourth two years before and now thought he was really a captain of Marines. Though McCoy was sure he had put Sweatley in his place, he had no doubt that Sweatley considered it a great injustice to a longtime Marine such as himself to take orders from Zimmerman, who was a corporal when he knew him before, and was now a gunnery sergeant.

The truth was that this was one of those situations where people had to do what they were told, when they were told, and not ask questions. McCoy knew there was going to be a confrontation sooner or later, but decided that provoking one now by ordering Cawber, Abraham, and Sweatley out of the trailer didn't make any sense.

“Okay, McCoy?” Sampson asked.

“Go ahead,” McCoy said.

Sampson raised his voice, and one of the Chinese “soldiers” they had brought with them started to pump the generator. Sampson put earphones on and, when the needles on the dials came to life, started to tap his radiotelegrapher's key. “Got 'em,” he announced thirty seconds later. And a moment after that, he began to recite numbers, which McCoy wrote on a small pad. There were not many numbers. “That's it. They want an acknowledgment,” Sampson said.

McCoy translated the numbers from Signal Operating Instruction Number Three.

Four Able meant that the Catalinas had successfully completed their rendezvous with the
Sunfish
and taken off again with the meteorologists and their equipment aboard. Two Fox gave the time of their departure. Two X-Ray gave the estimated time—six hours and thirty minutes—it would take them to reach the gypsies.

“Acknowledge, Jerry,” McCoy ordered. “Tell them to monitor continuously, and sign off.”

“Gotcha,” Sampson said, and began to tap on his key.

“What do they say, McCoy?” Technical Sergeant Abraham demanded.

I can either tell him to call me Captain, or I can ignore the old sonofabitch
.

“Captain Sampson, starting in thirty minutes, send SN for ten seconds once a minute.”

McCoy hoped that Sampson would reply, if not “Aye, aye, sir,” then “Yes, sir.”

“Gotcha,” Sampson said.

“Captain,” the old radioman said. “I could do that.”

“Have you got a watch?” McCoy asked.

“No, sir.”

McCoy unstrapped his. “I'll want this back,” he said, and handed it to him.

“Yes, sir.”

“Captain Sampson, why don't we go check on the fires?” McCoy said.

Sampson finally caught on. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“And you, too, Chief,” McCoy said to Chief Brewer.

“Aye, aye, sir,” Brewer said.

McCoy looked at Technical Sergeant Abraham. “The aircraft are due in here from forty-five minutes to an hour. You are in charge of keeping everybody away from them when they land. I don't care how you do it. I don't want anybody chopped up by a propeller, or the aircraft damaged by excited people.”

“What difference does it make if you're going to destroy them anyway?” Abraham replied.

“What did you say?” McCoy said.

“I think you heard me,” Abraham said.

“Let me tell you something, Sergeant,” McCoy said. “The moment I got here, you were recalled to active duty for the duration of the war plus six months. That means you're back in the Corps. And that means when you get an order, all you say is ‘Aye, aye, sir.' You don't question the order. Do you read me, Sergeant?”

After a moment, Sergeant Abraham said, “Aye, aye, sir.”

McCoy opened his door and stepped out of the ambulance. Chief Brewer got out on the other side, and a moment later Sampson came out the back door.

Earlier, McCoy and Zimmerman had driven over an area of the desert long enough to serve as a runway. Once they'd determined a suitable place for it, they'd walked all over it, carefully searching for holes or rocks that would damage the Catalina's landing gear. When the “runway” had been marked off, he ordered the building of two fires, to be ignited on order, marking the ends of the runway. When—if—the Catalinas appeared, they would be lit and made as smoky as possible. This would indicate to the Catalina pilots not only the position of the runway but the direction of the wind, which would tell them the direction to land.

Because material for building fires was scarce, there was a good deal of resentment when the gypsies were ordered to part with material to build them.

Furthermore, McCoy suspected (a suspicion Milla confirmed) that he was going to be looking at more resentment as soon as most of the women—and even some of the men—realized that their long ordeal was far from over the minute he showed up.

McCoy had some new ideas about how to get the women, the children, and even some of the men out of the desert, but that wasn't going to happen now. What was going to happen now was that once the Catalinas had off-loaded their cargo and anything on them that might be useful, thermite grenades would be set off on the wing, over the fuel tanks, and the aircraft destroyed.

Then they'd leave the burned aircraft where they were, and take the wagons, the carts, and the two vehicles as far away as they could get as quickly as they could go. The hope was that if reports of two aircraft flying into the desert triggered aerial reconnaissance of the area, the reconnaissance pilots would think both had crashed and burned. If people were then sent in to check on the “crashed and burned” aircraft and no bodies were found, it was hoped that it would be deduced that the aircrews had bailed out. Thus any subsequent search would look for airmen, not a caravan of pony- and camel-drawn wagons.

There was going to be disappointment and resentment when the aircraft were destroyed. According to Milla, as soon as the women were informed that aircraft were coming, some of them immediately decided they'd be able to fly out on them. That wasn't going to happen.

[FIVE]
Aboard Sea Gypsy Two
Somewhere Above the Gobi Desert
Mongolia
1525 2 May 1943

Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, climbed into the cockpit of the Catalina with the call sign “Sea Gypsy Two,” slipped into the copilot's seat, and strapped himself in. Moments before, he had been sleeping in the fuselage. Lieutenant Pickering and the pilot-in-command, Captain James B. Weston, USMC, had alternated flying the aircraft and sleeping during the long haul from Pearl Harbor. They didn't actually follow a schedule. Instead, one or the other kipped out when he felt the need to take a nap.

“Anytime, Jim,” Pick said.

Weston took his hands off the control wheel in an exaggerated gesture. “You've got it,” he said, as Pick put his hand on the wheel. For some time they'd been flying the airplane without the assistance of its autopilot. Though it had worked well on the eleven-hour leg from Pearl Harbor to the rendezvous with the
Sunfish
, it had gone out either during landing at the rendezvous, or while taking off. At near takeoff velocity, they had run into a large swell that had really shaken the bird.

“Where are we?” Pickering asked.

“I would estimate that we are perhaps two hundred feet above and three hundred feet behind that airplane out there,” Weston said, indicating the Catalina with “Sea Gypsy One” as its call sign.

“In other words, you have no idea?”

“I just told you where we are,” Weston said.

“There's not much down there, is there?”

“If there was something down there, there would probably be fighter strips to protect it,” Captain James B. Weston, USMC, replied. “You have to learn to look on the brighter side of things.”

“Do you have any idea where we are in relation to where we are supposed to be?”

“We should be where we're going in about an hour, God willing, and if the creek don't rise. I have faith in Major Williamson.”

“And if the sainted Major Williamson has fucked up somehow?”

“He's not the sort to fuck up, Pickering,” Weston said loyally.

“Excuse me,” Pick said sarcastically.

“On the other hand,” Weston said, a smile at the edge of his mouth. “You are a bona fide—capital
F
—fuckup, having been caught in carnal dalliance.”

“Fuck you, Captain, sir.”

“You know where that word comes from, don't you, Mr. Pickering?”

“I have no fucking idea.”

“England. When the cops locked up some guy for what you were doing, they wrote ‘F.U.C.K.' in the blotter, standing for: For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.”

“My education is now complete,” Pick said. “Thank you so much!”

“Was she worth it, Mr. Pickering?”

“I am under orders, sir,” Pick said sarcastically, “as you well-know, not to discuss the reasons I ‘volunteered' for this.”

“We're no longer at Ewa,” Weston said. “And we're friends, right?”

Pick didn't reply.

“I'm curious, that's all,” Weston said. “If you're uncomfortable talking about the lady who got you in so much trouble, don't. Your silence will, of course, confirm my worst suspicions.”

Pick looked at him. It had been decided from the first day that Major Williamson would train Lieutenant Stevenson as his copilot, and Weston would train Pickering as his. They had spent a lot of time together, both in the cockpit of the Catalina and at Muku-Muku.

During that time, Weston did not join Major Williamson and Lieutenant Stevenson on their frequent tours of the various officers' clubs on Oahu. Soon Pick had come to the conclusion that Weston was depriving himself of that pleasure because he was aware that they were off-limits to him, and didn't want to leave him alone. Even though being left alone at Muku-Muku was not the same thing as being locked in a basement with nothing to eat and drink but bread and water.