In Danger's Path (92 page)

Pick had long before decided that Jim Weston was a really nice guy, even if he, like Williamson, was obviously out of his mind for volunteering for an idiot mission like this one.

I don't want this guy to think I did something really
immoral, like getting caught with some sixteen-year-old girl
.

“I loved, Captain, sir, not too badly, but rather unwisely,” Pick said.

“What does that mean?”

“In hindsight, she wasn't worth getting myself all fucked up like this, but at the time I was thinking with my talley-wacker, not my head,” Pick said. “And she did have magnificent teats.”

“What was wrong with her? You said you weren't serious about her?”

“I was solely interested in carnal pleasure, the sinful lusts of the flesh, as they are known,” Pick said. “The beloved of my life having recently told me that she had no interest at all, thank you, in becoming my blushing bride.”

“You got a Dear John?”

“Delivered in person. She went with me to a hotel—you know the San Carlos, in P'Cola?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“And no sooner had I closed the door and started to open the champagne than she delivered the Dear John in person. And then walked out the door, leaving me with chilled champagne, an untouched bed, and a badly broken heart.”

“You know the other guy?”

“I don't think there was another guy,” Pick said. “That's why it hurt. I think she just didn't like me, period.”

“So you were on the rebound when you met this other woman?”

“I was, in the best traditions of a Marine officer, looking out for the welfare of my men. She was one of the chaperones at a service club dance for the enlisted men, and I went there to thank her for saving my innocent men from the wild women and other sinful pleasures of Memphis.”

Jim Weston chuckled. “And?”

“Out of a sense of duty, I danced with the lady. Whereupon she told me—while rubbing her belly against mine—that, one, her husband was out of town a lot, two, that he was considerably older than she was and, three, that she was lonely. One thing, as they say, led to another.”

“So what happened?”

“She was well-known in Memphis. There was talk. The admiral commanding Memphis NAS placed me under arrest, had me hauled before him, and offered me my choice of volunteering for this, or a court-martial.”

“That's hard to believe,” Weston said.

“Write this down. It is a court-martial offense to have carnal knowledge of any female to whom you are not joined in holy matrimony.”

“If they enforced that, three quarters of the pilots I know would be in the Portsmouth Naval Prison.”

“Not including you, sir! Please don't tell me that, and shatter my impression of you as the perfect Marine officer.”

“That's all you did, diddle this one lady?”

“I diddled her more than once, of course,” Pick said. “But, baring my breast, there were a few other little things, like being out of uniform, et cetera, et cetera, but nothing serious. And you miss the point. I embarrassed the Admiral.”

“Did the Admiral know your father is a general?”

“He said that was the only reason he was giving me a chance to volunteer.”

“Does your father know?”

“By now, I'm sure he does. But he probably thinks I'm doing the noble thing. I'm not sure if I like that or not.”

Turnabout is only fair play
, Jim Weston decided at that moment.
And I'm more than a little sick of people thinking I'm here because I'm being noble. And I think Pickering is entitled to know the real reason why I'm here
.

“Can I tell you something in confidence?”

“That you have had carnal knowledge of a female to whom you are not joined in holy wedlock? I'm shocked to the core!”

“I'm serious, Pick. I wouldn't want this to go any further.”

“Sure. My lips are sealed. Boy Scout's Honor.”

“I didn't volunteer to fly this bus to be noble, either,” Weston said. “But pretending to be noble was the only way I could get Williamson—who really is noble—to take me along.”

“I don't follow that at all, sorry,” Pick said. “You didn't want to volunteer, but you did anyway? What are you talking about?”

“I needed to leave where I was,” Weston said, “and the only way I could get Major Williamson to take me along—he thought I had paid my dues to the Corps with that year in the Philippines; and between you and me, so do I—was to convince him that I was just as noble a Marine officer as he was, eager to sacrifice all for the glory of the Corps. That was pure bullshit, but he swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker.”

“You were at P'Cola, right? They were going to teach you how to fly all over again, was the story I got from Charley Galloway. You didn't want to do that?”

“There was a girl,” Weston said. “Actually two girls.”

“Really? Two at once?” Pick said. There was a tone of admiration in his voice.

“Two. One in Philadelphia, a Navy nurse. I think I'm in love with her.”

“And the other?”

“She was already at Pensacola. And I think I'm in love with her, too.”

“Well, then, you do have a problem,” Pick said. “You were actually dumb enough to propose to both of them at the same time?”

“Actually, they sort of proposed to me,” Weston said. “You know.”

“You mean, you diddled them, and in the morning they smiled sweetly at you and said, ‘When do you think we should be married?'”

“Not exactly like that,” Weston said.

“I've been down that road several times. There is a very simple solution. You let them know that you're diddling someone else. Or two or more someone elses. You get a lot of tears, and on occasion, a slapped and/or scratched face; and they invariably take ten minutes to tell you what an unmitigated sonofabitch you are, but you're off the hook.”

“I'm not so sure I want off the hook,” Weston said. “My problem is that I would like to marry both of them.”

“They have laws against marrying more than one at a time,” Pick said.

“Yeah, I know,” Weston said. “The girl in Philadelphia, the one who got herself transferred to Pensacola to be near me, is really sweet. I'd hate to hurt her feelings.”

“But the one in P'Cola is a great piece of ass, right?”

“The best I've ever had,” Weston confessed.

“Then dump the nurse and marry the good piece of ass,” Pick said. “Sex is what makes the world go around.”

“I don't mean to give the impression that the girl in Pensacola is a tramp or anything like that.”

“Of course not,” Pick said. “But fucking is like golf. The more you do it, the better you get at it.”

“The one in Pensacola was married,” Jim Weston said. “Maybe that has something to do with that. She really likes to do it. I mean, if you're married, you get to like it, and then if you don't get it anymore you really miss it, right? Once we…started—”

“You mean began to screw?”

“Yeah. Once we began to screw, she couldn't seem to get enough. Once we did it in her father's quarters with her parents not fifteen feet away.”

“They call that condition ‘hot pants.' In my experience it is a condition to be carefully nurtured. You said she was married?”

“Was,” Weston said.

“You ever happen to ask her what happened to her husband? What did she do, fuck him to death? That's not a bad way to go—better than getting shot down, for example—but it is something you should think about.”

“That's what happened to her husband. He got shot down at Wake Island. He was my best friend. Greg Culhane. I was his best man at their wedding.”

Weston looked over at Pickering. There was something very odd in Pick's expression.

“I told you, Pick, she's a nice girl.…”

“When we get on the ground, I'm going to kill you!” Pick said.

“Excuse me?”

“When I get you on the ground, you miserable sonofabitch, you're going to wish the Japs had caught you on Mindanao!”

“What the hell's the matter with you?”

“Get out of here, or I'll kill you right now!”

Captain Weston considered his options and finally decided that the best thing to do under the circumstances was leave Pickering alone until he calmed down. “I'm going to take a leak,” he said. “If you need me up here, wiggle the wings.” He unstrapped himself and went back into the cabin.

[SIX]
Aboard Sea Gypsy One
Somewhere Above the Gobi Desert
Mongolia
1635 2 May 1943

During preparations for the flight back in Hawaii, it was decided that one of the meteorologists who had some knowledge of radio and navigation would ride with Major A very Williamson on Sea Gypsy One. While at Ewa, Lieutenant Stevenson had trained him in the use of the radio direction finder, even though he suspected that the instrument wasn't going to work very well when they reached the Gobi.

The radio direction finder, a loop antenna that could be rotated through a 360-degree arc, was mounted on top of the fuselage toward the rear of the aircraft. When a radio signal was detected, the direction of the transmitting station could be determined by a signal-strength meter. When the meter indicated the strongest signal, the position of the antenna showed the direction of the transmitter.

Lieutenant Stevenson's expectation that there'd be problems proved to be correct: First, Station Nowhere was transmitting a signal for only ten seconds in each minute. And second, the signal was so weak that the needle on the signal-strength gauge hardly flickered.

The meteorologist aligned the antenna as best he could during the ten seconds Station Nowhere transmitted “SN SN SN” over and over again, then made his way forward to the cockpit to give Major Williamson the course toward it.

Williamson nodded his acceptance of the information, saw there was no reason to alter the course he was flying, and said, “Thank you.”

A voice came over his earphones: “Column of smoke on the horizon.”

There was no need for the person calling to identify himself. There was no other aircraft within hundreds of miles with an English-speaking pilot.

Williamson looked at the horizon. After a moment he was also able to make out what Pickering was seeing from Sea Gypsy Two, two hundred feet above him. It was dead ahead, no more than two degrees off the course they were flying.

Williamson dipped the wings of the Catalina to show Sea Gypsy Two that he had received the message, and decided that Pickering would know he, too, had seen the smoke when he changed course just slightly, but perceptibly, then lowered the nose just a tad and headed toward it.

Three minutes later, he saw two fires sending smoke into the air. A moment after that, he could see that the smoke was blowing directly toward him. He lowered the nose a tad more, retarded the throttles, and a moment later, ordered, “Gear down.”

Lieutenant Stevenson put the gear down.

“This will be a very low-and-slow approach,” Williamson announced.

“I can't see anything down there but snow,” Stevenson said. “Where's the people?”

“I don't know, but there's the wind sock, sort of, I was hoping to find,” Williamson said. “The trouble with this kind of snowy area is you can't tell how high off the ground you are.”

“Yeah,” Stevenson agreed.

Ninety seconds later, Stevenson said, “I can see what looks like snow-covered buildings down there. And there's some horses, and people. Off to the left.”

“If we run into a rock, remind me to cut switches,” Williamson said.

“Aye, aye, sir,” Stevenson said.

Twenty seconds later, the Catalina flew ten feet over the nearest fire. Three seconds after that, Williamson flared it out, and the wheels touched down.

“That was a greaser,” Lieutenant Stevenson said.

“It will have been a greaser if I can stop this thing before I run over the other fire,” Major Williamson said.

Lieutenant Stevenson was not at all surprised that the Catalina stopped smoothly and in a straight line well short of the second smoky fire.

Williamson turned the aircraft and very carefully taxied off the runway. When he was at right angles to it, he saw Sea Gypsy Two making its approach.

“Jesus, look at that,” Stevenson said. “Here comes a Chinese officer on a horse that's not much bigger than he is.”

Two minutes later, when he had shut the engines down, Williamson walked through the fuselage and pushed open the fairing that had replaced the Catalina's right bubble.

The Chinese officer on the horse saluted.