«Thank you, sir,» Pluto said.
«About half past seven?» MacArthur asked.
«Whenever it's convenient for you, sir.»
«Then seven-thirty,» MacArthur said. «Thank you, Pluto.'
note 9
Espiritu Santo Island
New Hebrides, Southern Pacific Ocean
1620 8 February
At 1130 that morning, Rear Admiral Jerome J. Henton, USN, the commander of US Navy Base (Forward) Espiritu Santo, summoned Captain Howell C. Mitchell, Medical Corps, USN, who commanded the Navy hospital, to his office. Henton told him that he was about to receive six patients, U.S. civilians, four of them female, all in need of urgent medical attention.
«Sir?» Mitchell was confused.
«They were evacuated by submarine from Mindanao, and a Catalina picked them up at sea,» Admiral Henton explained.
Mitchell's eyes widened—Mindanao was in the hands of the Japanese—but he said nothing.
«It's part of a hush-hush Marine Corps operation,» Henton went on. «And the man running it, Brigadier General Pickering, will probably be on the beach to meet the Cat. A very interesting man. Hell of a poker player. And—forewarned is forearmed, as they say—he has friends in very high places.»
«I will treat the gentleman accordingly.»
Six patients in need of urgent medical attention translated to three ambulances. Captain Mitchell ordered four ambulances to the beach, plus four doctors, four nurses, and twelve corpsmen.
When he himself arrived at the beach, he found that the ambulances were already lined up in a row, backed up to the beach. He looked around to see if General Pickering had arrived, and decided he hadn't. Neither of the two staff cars on the island used to transport flag and general officers was in sight. Nor did he see any sign of a general officer's aide-de-camp, or of a vehicle adorned with the silver star on a red tag that proclaimed it was carrying a Marine brigadier. The only other vehicles around were a three-quarter ton truck, carrying the ground crew who would guide the Catalina ashore, and a jeep. Both were parked at the far end of the line of ambulances. Only one man was in the jeep. Captain Mitchell decided the man in the jeep was probably a chief petty officer sent to supervise the beaching of the Catalina.
Before he took another look at the lone man in the jeep, Mitchell worked his way to the end of the line of ambulances, chatting for a moment with each of the doctors, nurses, and corpsmen while simultaneously checking to make sure everything was as it should be.
But when he came close enough to see who was in the jeep, he realized he'd guessed wrong. The man sent to supervise the beaching of the Catalina wasn't a chief petty officer. Pinned to the collar points of his somewhat mussed khakis were the silver stars of a brigadier general.
He walked up to the jeep and saluted.
«Good afternoon, General.»
The salute was returned.
Mitchell's next thought was that General Pickering had intelligent eyes; but, more than that, he also had that hard to define yet unmistakable aura of command. This man was used to giving orders. And used to having his orders carried out.
«Afternoon, Doctor,» General Pickering said, and offered his hand. And then he pointed up at the sky.
Mitchell followed the hand. The Catalina was in the last stages of its amphibious descent. And together they watched as it splashed down and taxied through the water toward the beach.
Pickering got from behind the wheel of the jeep and walked to the edge of the water.
«I'll be damned!» he said, a curious tone in his voice.
«Sir?»
«I just saw one of my men,» Pickering replied. «I really didn't think any of them would be on that airplane.»
«Killer, General Pickering's on the beach,» the tall, solid, not-at-all-bad-looking man peering out the portside bubble of the Catalina announced to the man standing beside him. The man who was standing kept his balance by hanging on to the exposed framing of the Catalina's interior.
The insignia pinned to the khaki fore-and-aft cap stuck through the epaulets of the khaki shirt of the man in the bubble identified him as a Navy lieutenant. His name was Chambers D. Lewis III, and he was aide-de-camp to Rear Admiral Daniel J. Wagam, who was on the staff of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific.
«Goddamn you, don't call me that,» the other replied, and then the even-featured, well-built, fair-skinned young man leaned far enough into the now-water-splattered bubble to confirm Lewis's sighting. He did not look old enough to be entitled to the silver railroad tracks and Marine globe on his fore-and-aft cap that identified him as a captain, USMC. His name was Kenneth R. McCoy, and he had recently passed his twenty-second birthday.
McCoy and the other two Marines in the Catalina, Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman and Staff Sergeant Koffler, were assigned to the USMC Office of Management Analysis. All four men had just been exfiltrated by submarine from the Japanese occupied Philippine island of Mindanao.
When Mindanao had fallen to the Japanese early in 1942, Lieutenant Colonel Wendell W. Fertig, a reserve officer of the Corps of Engineers, had refused to surrender. Instead, he'd gone into the hills, proclaimed himself to be a brigadier general in command of U.S. forces in the Philippines, and commenced guerrilla activities against the Japanese. When he'd finally managed to establish radio communication with the United States and asked for supplies, there was some question about his bona fides. For one thing, General Douglas MacArthur had firmly stated that guerrilla operations in the Philippines were impossible. For another, Army records showed only a Lieutenant Colonel Fertig, not a brigadier general. In order to better explain these irregularities, President Roosevelt ordered the mounting of a covert operation. This would infiltrate into Mindanao to determine whether Fertig was actually commanding a bona fide guerrilla organization that could do harm to the Japanese, or a pathetic and deluded poseur who, after somehow eluding the Japanese, now had convinced himself that he was a general. Responsibility for the covert operation had been given to Brigadier General Pickering, who had sent McCoy, Zimmerman, and Koffler into the Philippines. They had infiltrated onto Mindanao on a submarine.
Lieutenant Lewis had been assigned to accompany them on the submarine— carrying with him his admiral's authority—and at the very last minute had decided to stay on Mindanao with McCoy and the others.
«Jesus!» Captain McCoy said, then turned from the bubble to a stocky, barrel-chested, ruddy-faced man who had planted himself precisely on the centerline of the fuselage floor. «That's the general, all right, Ernie. I wonder where the hell we're going now.»
Ernest W. Zimmerman, who was twenty-six but looked older, grunted. The man—the boy—beside Gunny Zimmerman looked very much as if he should be in high school and was, in fact, just a few weeks past his nineteenth birthday. But he was also, in fact, Staff Sergeant Stephen M. Koffler, USMC.
«McCoy,» he asked, in a still-boyish voice. «You think maybe the General's got a letter for me?» Mrs. Daphne Koffler, Sergeant Koffler's Australian wife, was in the terminal days of her first pregnancy.
«We're back in the world, asshole,» Gunny Zimmerman said. «You better get back in the habit of calling the Killer 'Captain' and 'Sir.' «