Second Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, had been First Lieutenant William C. Dunn's wingman, in VMF-229, flying Grumman Wildcats off of Fighter One, on Guadalcanal. They had become aces within days of one another. Dunn had gone on to become a double ace. The Navy Cross, the nation's second-highest award for valor in the Naval service, topped Dunn's four rows of fruit salad.
Dunn freed himself from Pickering's embrace.
"You're a disgrace to the Marine Corps," Dunn said, fail-ing to express the indignation he felt was called for, but did not in fact feel. "My God, you're not even wearing socks!"
"I don't have a loving wife and helpmeet to care for me," Pick said. "How's the bride?"
"About to make me a father for the fourth time," Dunn said, "and unaware I'm on this side of the country."
"What are you doing here-on this side of the coun-try-and here?"
"Here," Dunn said, gesturing to indicate the airfield, or maybe southern California, "because I need to borrow, beg, or, ultimately, steal Corsair parts from our brothers in the Navy, and here here"-he pointed at the ground- "because when I landed I called the Coronado to see if you might be in town, and they said you were expected about now. So I checked with Base Ops to see if they had an inbound Corsair. The AOD was all upset about some civilian airplane about to land. I knew it had to be you."
"As a token of the Navy's respect for the Marine Corps re-serve, I have permission to land here in connection with my re-serve duties," Pick said. "It's all perfectly legal, Colonel, sir."
"I've heard that before," Dunn said.
"Ken's reporting into Pendleton," Pick said. "We all just came from Japan-and on the way over, immodesty com-pels me to state, I set a new record...."
"The most violently airsick passengers on one airplane in the history of commercial aviation?" Dunn asked, innocently.
McCoy laughed.
"Those who have nothing to boast about mock those who do," Pickering said, piously. "But since you ask, there is a new speed record to Japan."
"Inspired, no doubt, by a platoon of angry husbands chasing the pilot?" Dunn said.
McCoy laughed again.
"You understand, Ernie," Pickering said, as if sad and mystified, "that these two-Sarcastic Sam and Laughing Boy-are supposed to be my best friends?"
"The way I heard it, they're your only friends," Ernie said.
"Et tu, Brutus?" Pick said.
Dunn laughed, then turned to McCoy.
"What are they going to have you doing at Pendleton, Ken?" Dunn asked.
"I really don't know, Colonel," McCoy replied.
Dunn didn't press McCoy. As long as Dunn had known him-and he had met him on Guadalcanal-he had been involved in classified operations of one kind or another that couldn't be talked about.
"Captain McCoy," Pick said. "If you would be so kind, go into Base Ops and call us a cab while the colonel and I tie down the airplane. We have to eat, and the food is much better at the Coronado Beach than in the O Club here."
Pickering walked around the nose of the Staggerwing to where Dunn was really stretching to insert a tie-down rope into a link on the wing.
"Bill, so you don't say anything in innocence.... What the Killer's going to do at Pendleton is make up his mind whether he wants to go back to the ranks."
"Jesus Christ!" Dunn said, in surprise. "I thought he at least would be the exception to the rule...."
"What rule?"
"Commissioned officers have to have a college degree," Dunn said. "I've lost four pilots in the last three months to that policy. But I thought they'd make an exception for somebody like McCoy."
Pickering had not heard about that policy.
But if I let Wee Willy think that's the reason the god damn Corps is giving him the boot, I won't have to get into the Killer's "There Will be a War in Korea in Ninety Days or Less" theory. Which, of course, I can't anyway.
"I guess not," Pickering said.
"Is he going to take stripes? Or get out?"
"I don't know. I don't think it would bother him to be a gunny, but Ernie..."
"Well, at least they don't have any kids to worry about," Dunn said.
"No, they don't."
Dunn looked at him thoughtfully.
"Pick, I can easily get a field-grade BOQ. If things would be awkward at the hotel."
"Don't be silly. There's plenty of room, and I think hav-ing you around will be good for both of them."
"What the hell is McCoy going to do outside the Corps? It's all he knows."
Pick Pickering threw up his hands in a gesture of help-lessness.
Then the two of them started to walk toward Base Ops.
Lieutenant Colonel Dunn was having thoughts vis-a-vis Major Pickering he did not-could not-share with him.
I love Pick, I really do. But the cold truth is that he is a lousy field-grade officer. A superb pilot-a natural pilot- and as far as courage goes, he makes John Wayne look like a pansy.
But, my God, he's a Marine major, and he lands at a Navy field barefooted and dressed like a Hawaiian pimp in an airplane that he once flew under the Golden Gate Bridge-I got that incredible tale from George Hart, so it's absolutely true.
I will, therefore, not tell Major Pickering that we have an old comrade-in-arms at Camp Pendleton who just might be able to turn the G-l around about reducing Mc-Coy to the ranks, and failing that, will certainly make his passage through the separation process at Pendleton as painless as possible.
If I told Pick, he'd hop in a cab, go out to Pendleton, in his Hawaiian pimp's shirt and bare feet, march into the general's office, and begin the conversation. "Clyde, you won't believe what a fucking dumb thing the Corps has done this time..."
Well, maybe it wouldn't be that bad, but it would be out-rageous and thus counterproductive, and therefore I will not tell him what I'm going to do.
Not, of course, that there's much chance that I will be able to do anything at all.
[FOUR]
OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY COMMANDING GENERAL
CAMP PENDLETON, CALIFORNIA
1520 8 JUNE 1950
Captain Arthur McGowan, USMC, aide-de-camp to the Deputy Commanding General, a tall, slim, twenty-nine-year-old, put his head inside the general's door.
"General, Colonel Dunn's on the horn," he said.
"I was getting a little worried," Brigadier General Clyde W. Dawkins, USMC, replied. He was a tall, tanned, thin, sharp-featured man who had just celebrated his fortieth birthday.
He signaled with his index finger for Captain McGowan to enter the office, close the door behind him, and listen to the conversation on the extension telephone on a coffee table.
General Dawkins waited until McGowan had the phone to his ear before he picked up his own.
"I was getting a little worried, Bill," General Dawkins said. "Your ETA was noon. Where are you?"
"At the Coronado Beach, sir."
"I sort of thought you would be at Miramar," General Dawkins said.
The Miramar Naval Air Station was the other side of San Diego-about fifteen miles distant.
"Bill," the general went on before Dunn could answer, "you're not going to tell me Pickering's involved in this lit-tle operation of yours?"
"No, sir. But I'm in the suite. So's Pick. And until three minutes ago, so was Killer McCoy. And his wife."
General Dawkins was familiar with "the suite" in the Coronado Beach Hotel. Its fifteen rooms occupied about half of the fourth floor of the beachfront hotel, and was permanently leased to the Trans-Global Airways division of the Pacific and Far East Shipping Corporation.