In the Corps, Macklin's efficiency report was lethal.
"Jesus, I wonder what the hell he did?" the major repeated.
"The endorsing officer is Chesty Puller," the captain said. "Puller's a hardnose, but he's fair. And you saw how he endorsed it."
" "The undersigned concurs in this evaluation of this officer,' " the major quoted.
"So what do we do with him?" the captain asked.
"Maybe he got too friendly with some wife?" the major asked.
"I think he got caught writing a false report," the captain said.
"In which he tried to shaft somebody…"
"Somebody who worked with him, you saw that remark about 'shifting blame to subordinates?' "
"And got caught," the major agreed. "That would tee Chesty Puller off."
"So what do we do with him?"
"Six months ago, I would ask when he planned to resign," the major said. "But that's no longer an option, is it?"
"No, sir."
"What's open?" the major asked.
"I gave you the list, sir."
The major consulted the week's listing of actual and projected billet vacancies for company-grade officers.
"It says here there's a vacancy for a mess officer at the School Battalion at Quantico. I thought we sent that kid from the hotel school at Cornell down there? Ye Olde Round Peg in Ye Olde Round Hole?"
"He developed a hernia," the captain said. "They sent him to the Navy hospital at Norfolk. It'll be more than ninety days before he's fit for full duty, so they transferred him to the Detachment of Patients."
"I would hate to see someone who has graduated from the Cornell Hotel School assigned anywhere but a kitchen," the major said.
The captain chuckled.
"I've sort of penciled in when he's available for assignment, assigning him to the Marine Barracks here. He'd make a fine assistant officers' club officer."
"Don't let him get away," the major said. "And in the meantime, I think we should send Lieutenant Macklin to Quantico, at least for the time being. All a mess officer does anyway-Cornell Hotel School graduates excepted-is make sure nobody's selling the rations."
"Aye, aye, sir," the chief of company-grade officer assignments said. And then he thought of something else: "We've got another one, sir."
"Somebody else with an efficiency report like that?" the major asked, incredulously.
"No, sir. Another hotelier. Is that right?"
The major nodded.
"One of the kids starting the Platoon Leader's course listed his current occupation as resident manager of the Andrew Foster Hotel in San Francisco. That sounded a little odd for a twenty-one-year-old, so I checked on it."
"And he really was?"
"He really was. And not only because he's Andrew Foster's grandson."
"Our cup runneth over," the major said. "Don't let that one get away, either. Maybe something can be done about the quality of the chow after all."
"Aye, aye, sir," the captain repeated with a smile.
Chapter Nine
(One)
U.S. Marine Corps Schools
Quantico, Virginia
29 August 1941
The man at the wheel of the spotless Chevrolet pickup truck was Master Gunnery Sergeant Jack (NMI)( No Middle Initial) Stecker, USMC. Stecker was a tall, muscular, tanned, erect man of forty-one who looked the way a master gunnery sergeant, USMC, with twenty-five years in die Corps, was supposed to look.
He was in stiffly starched, impeccably pressed khakis. A vertical crease ran precisely through the buttons of the shirt pockets to the shoulder seam on die front of the shirt. There were four creases on the rear One ran horizontally across the back of his shoulders. The other three ran down the back, one on each side, and one down the middle. There were a total of six pockets on his khaki shirt and trousers. Two were in use. Stacker's left hip pocket held his wallet; and his right shirt pocket held a small, thin notebook and a silver-plated Parker pen-and-pencil set. The other pockets were sealed shut with starch, and would remain sealed shut.
The keys to his office, to his quarters, and to his personal automobile, a 1939 Packard Phaeton, as well as a Saint Christopher medal, were on a second dogtag cord worn around his neck.
Stecker did not think it fitting that the uniform of a master gunnery sergeant, USMC, should bulge in any way. There was a handkerchief in his left sock. Sometimes, not often, when he knew he would be away from another source of smoking material for a considerable period of time, he carried a package of Lucky Strike cigarettes and a book of matches in his right sock. Mostly, he kept his smoking material in various convenient places-the glove compartment of the pickup, his desk drawer, and sometimes (if he knew he was not going to have to remove his campaign hat) in the crown of the hat.
Master Gunnery Sergeant Jack Stecker, USMC, turned off the macadam Range Road and slowed the Chevrolet pickup as he approached the barrier, a weighted pole, barring access to the ranges.
As it often is in Virginia in late August, it was hot and muggy, and Jack Stecker had rolled the driver's-side window down. But as he approached the Known Distance Rifle Range close enough to hear the firing, he rolled the window up. The crack of.30-caiiber rifle fire does more than make your ears ring; it permanently damages your hearing if you get enough of it.
A large red flag hung limply from a twenty-five-foot pole, signaling that the range was in use. A young Marine had been assigned to bar access to the range by unauthorized personnel, and to raise the barrier to pass authorized personnel. He was about twenty-one, his nose was sunburned, and he wore utilities, a World War I-style helmet, a web cartridge belt (from which hung a canteen and a first-aid packet), and had a U.S. Rifle, Caliber.30, Model 1903A3, slung over his shoulder by its leather sling.
When Master Gunnery Sergeant Jack Stecker first saw him, the young man with the sunburned nose was standing five feet from the flagpole. And Jack Stecker had no doubt that the young man (who looked like a boot about to graduate from the Recruit Depot at Parris Island, but who was in fact an officer candidate about to graduate from the Platoon Leader's Course and become a commissioned officer, second lieutenant, in the Marines) had probably been leaning on the pole. He had also probably propped the Springfield against the flagpole.
Stecker was not offended. What was important was that he had not caught him failing in his duties as a guard. He would have burned him a new asshole if he had caught him doing what he damned well knew he had been doing, but he had not.
When the trainee, recognizing Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker's Chevrolet pickup, had quickly raised the weighted pole barrier, he was rewarded for his efforts by a slight but unmistakable nod of Stecker's head. The trainee nodded back, and smiled shyly-and with some relief. He had been forced to make a decision, and it had turned out to be the right one.
When he first recognized the pickup as Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker's, he hadn't been sure whether Stecker expected him to raise the barrier immediately, or to bar Stecker's path until he had satisfied himself that Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker indeed had official business on the range.
He had decided in the end that the safest course was to presume that whatever Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker wanted to do on the Quantico reservation was official business and that it was not his role to question him about it.
It had not been difficult to differentiate Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker's pickup from the perhaps fifty identical 1940 Chevrolet pickups on the Quantico reservation. Stecker's personal pickup was very likely the cleanest, most highly polished pickup in the Marine Corps, perhaps in the world.