"You better watch him." Dorothy laughed. "You would be amazed the kind of trouble that sort of thing can get you into."
"How goes it, Dorothy?" McCoy asked.
"How do you think?" Dorothy replied, patting her stomach. "I'm beginning to think it has to be triplets."
"Well?" Ernie asked.
"Well, what?"
"You want something to eat? Or to drink?"
"That wasn't the original offer," McCoy said.
"It must be something the Corps puts in their food," Dorothy laughed.
"Well?" Ernie pursued.
"What I need now is a shower," McCoy said, and started across the lounge to the passageway to the cabins.
"Why did they give you the afternoon off?" Ernie said. "I thought you were supposed to get transferred today?"
"I was," he said. "And tomorrow they're sending me to Northern California." He saw the look on her face, and quickly added, "Just for a couple of days."
Then he entered the passageway to avoid further explanation.
Ernie was in their cabin when he came naked out of the bathroom. She had a plate in one hand and a bottle of Schlitz in the other.
"Sardines on saltines," she said. "And Schlitz. And I could be talked into anything, too, if that was a bona fide offer."
And then she looked at him, and her face colored, and she laughed, deep in her throat.
"And I see it was," she said.
"You do that to me," he said. "I think it's something you put in the sardines."
"I wish I knew what it was," she said as she put the tray and the beer down on the bedside table. "We could give the formula to my father on a royalty basis and get rich."
She pushed the shorts down off her hips and then pulled the T-shirt over her head.
"Oh, baby," McCoy said huskily as she walked to him and put her arms around him.
"Are you going to tell me what you're going to do in Northern California?" Ernie asked, her face against his chest.
"I've got to call," he said. "You can listen."
"Before, or after?"
"After," he said.
"You don't know how lucky you are you gave the right answer," Ernie said as she pulled him backward onto the bed.
"Colonel Rickabee." The voice came over the telephone flat and metallic.
"Sir, I'm sorry, I asked for Captain Sessions," McCoy said.
"What's the matter, McCoy?" Rickabee replied. "You don't like me?"
Ernie, who was lying half on top of McCoy, giggled, and then she moved higher up so that she could hear better.
When there was no reply from McCoy, Colonel Rickabee said, "What is it exactly that you feel you can tell Sessions and can't tell me?"
"Nothing, sir," McCoy said.
"Good!" Rickabee said, gently sarcastic.
"I went over to the Second Raider Battalion today, sir."
"How did it go?"
"It went smoothly, sir. I was further assigned to Baker Company, as a platoon leader, but that's not what they're going to have me doing."
"What happened, McCoy? Take it from the beginning. Tell me about the red flags, and the a cappella choir singing the Internationale.''
"Nothing like that, sir," McCoy said, chuckling.
"Did you see Colonel Carlson?"
"Yes, sir."
"And Captain Roosevelt?"
"Yes, sir."
"Was either of them howling at the moon?"
Ernie giggled so loudly that Rickabee heard her.
"Is there someone with you?" he asked, now deadly serious. "I presume you are using a secure line?"
"The line is secure, sir," McCoy said.
"Okay, once again. Take it from the beginning."
"The adjutant was waiting for me when I showed up to take the reveille formation, sir. He said he had my orders transferring me to the Raiders, and there was no sense complaining about them, because the battalion commander had already gone to the Second Joint Training Force personnel officer trying to keep me."
"Another of many ways Colonel Carlson is endearing himself to the rest of the Corps," Rickabee said dryly, "is by kidnapping their best people. Go on."
"So they sent me over to the Second Raider Battalion in a truck," McCoy said. "And I reported to the adjutant. And he sent me in to report to Colonel Carlson."
"Roosevelt?"
"I didn't see him until later, sir."
"Go on."
"Colonel, it was just like my reporting in to the Third Battalion," McCoy said. "Colonel Carlson shook my hand and welcomed me aboard. Told me I was joining the best outfit in the Corps, and that it was a great opportunity for me, a great challenge… the usual bullshit."
"I hope Carlson didn't sense your cynicism," Rickabee said. "You are supposed to be bright-eyed and eager, McCoy."
"Colonel, he makes sense," McCoy said. "I wasn't making fun of him. What I was trying to say was that it was like reporting in anywhere else."
"As opposed to what?"
"I read that letter, sir, the one Roosevelt wrote, where he wanted to have 'leaders' and 'fighters' and the rest of that Red Army stuff."
"And there was none of that?" Rickabee asked.
"Not what I expected, sir."
"Explain."
"First, he talked about what the Raiders were supposed to do. I mean, the raid business, shaking the Japs up by hitting them where they didn't expect to get hit. The Commando business. And then he said that the mission was so important that the Corps had given him top priority for personnel and equipment, and that meant the personnel-"
"Let me interrupt," Rickabee said. "Do you think he believes the Corps thinks the Raider mission is so important that he has carte blanche?"
"Sir?"
"That he can have anything, do anything, he wants?"
"He sure sounded like he did. But on the other hand, you could hardly expect him to say anything else."
Rickabee snorted. "Go on."
McCoy mimed wanting a cigarette. Ernie leaned across him to the bedside table and picked up his Lucky Strike package and Zippo. In the process, she rubbed her breast across his face. McCoy wondered if it had been an accident, and realized, pleased with the realization, that it had not been.
"Then he said because he had such high-class enlisted men, it would be possible to treat them differently."
"How differently?" Rickabee asked softly.
"I want to say 'better,'" McCoy said. "But that's not quite it. He said they can be given greater responsibility… Colonel, what I think he was saying is that he thinks you can get more out of the then if they're making the decisions. Or some of the decisions. Or if they think they're making the decisions."
"You sound as if you're a convert," Rickabee said, dryly.
"When Colonel Carlson says it, it doesn't sound so nutty as when I try to tell you about it," McCoy said.
"Anything specific?" Rickabee asked.
"He said that he's been both an enlisted man and an officer, and that what really pissed him off as an enlisted man was when the officers had special privileges and rubbed them in the enlisted men's faces, and that he wasn't going to let that happen in the Raiders."
"Interesting," Rickabee said.
"I think I know what he means, Colonel," McCoy said. "He doesn't want to burn down the officers' club. All he's saying is that if you're in the field, and the then are sleeping on the ground, the officers should not have bunks and sheets."
"Neither do I," Rickabee said. "That doesn't sound like the revolution."
"I'm beginning to think, Colonel, that if Roosevelt hadn't written that nutty 'fighters' and 'leaders' letter-"
"But he did," Rickabee interrupted. "And if he hadn't, there probably would be no Raider battalions."
"Yes, sir."
"Did Colonel Carlson say anything else out of the ordinary? Anything unusual?"
"No, sir."
"How long were you with him?"
"About fifteen minutes, sir. Then he sent me down to the company."
"Baker Company, you said?"
"Yes, sir. Captain Coyte, Ralph H."
"What about him?"
"Looked like a real Marine to me. Seemed to know what he was doing. And like a nice guy."
"And he gave you a platoon?"
"Yes, sir, but I never got mere. He was still feeling me out. I hadn't been there ten minutes, when Captain Roosevelt showed up."