«I've been thinking along the same lines,» Brewer said. «My wife and me, and some other people. My wife is a Mongolian. She knows all about the Gobi Desert.»
«No shit?»
«We're thinking of crossing it in horse-drawn, rubber-tired wagons,» Abraham said.
They were doing more than thinking about it: Three days before, Brewer had sent Doto-Si to Peking in the Oldsmobile, with the kids and one of the bouncers, to go to Baotou to buy wagons.
«And you don't think you're going to stand out as a white man in Mongolia?»
«I've got a Nansen passport,» Brewer said. «It's phony, but I can't tell the difference between it and a real one. I can pass myself off as a White Russian.»
«Uh.»
Brewer's smarter than I thought
, Sweatley thought. I
didn't even think about getting a phony Nansen passport
.
«And I got a Mongolian wife and kids,» Brewer went on. «If I stay in the wagon and let her do the talking, I might not even have to show anybody my Nansen passport.»
«So what do you want from me?» Sweatley asked.
Brewer looked at Abraham, who nodded. Then Brewer took the chance and told Sweatley. «There's ten Yangtze sailors, including me, who stayed here when we went into the Fleet Reserve. All of us are married. Mostly to Chinese, but there's a German wife, and a White Russian. There's two Marines, Abraham and a guy named Brugemann, who used to be the finance sergeant in the Fourth. And, all told, twenty kids. I have also been talking to some soldiers who took their retirement here. There's maybe six, seven of them in Tientsin.»
«Like I said, what do you want from me?»
«We could be useful to each other,» Brewer said.
«You tell me, Sergeant Abraham, how is—what did you say, twelve?—twelve wives and twenty kids going to help me get to India.»
«You know how to navigate?» Chief Brewer asked.
«I know what a compass is,» Sweatley said.
«A compass won't be much help in the middle of the Gobi Desert,» Abraham said. «There's only a few roads, and the Japs will be watching them. You're goingto have to cross the gobi desert the same way you cross an ocean, by celestial navigation, by the stars.»
Sweatley understood that he was being told the truth. And navigating across the Gobi Desert was something else he hadn't given much thought to. Brewer and Abraham obviously had.
«For the third time, what do you want from me?»
«You've seen the wagon train movies,» Chief Brewer said. «Women and children and fanners, protected by cavalry. That's what you're going to be. The Marines, and maybe some of the 15th Infantry soldiers, would be the cavalry. In exchange for that, we'll feed you, and hide you from the Japs and Chinese bandits.»
Sweatley, thinking it over, did not immediately respond.
«The only way to get across the desert is by wagon train,» Abraham argued reasonably. «Or camels. You got any money to buy wagons? You think you could ride a camel?»
«I got some horses,» Sweatley replied. «Including spares. Pack animals.»
«Listen to me. I know what I'm talking about,» Abraham said. «There's no way you can cross the Gobi like you're on some cavalry patrol fighting Indians in the movies. It has to be crossed very slowly, maybe five miles a day. When the weather gets really bad, you don't move at all.»
Brewer joined in the attack. «We're going to have to take our meat with us, on the hoof. When we find water, we'll fill up our water barrels, because we may not find any more for another hundred miles. You getting the picture?»
Sweatley shrugged. «Your wife's a Mongolian?»
«Yeah, and she speaks it, too. Which—correct me if I'm wrong—is something else you don't have, somebody who speaks Khalkha, which is what they call their language. In case you need to ask directions, for example.»
«How do you plan to get from here to the Gobi?»
«By car from here to Baotou…« Abraham said.
«That's where we have the horses,» Sweatley blurted.
»… and then by wagon from there. Across the mountains into Mongolia and into the desert.»
Sweatley grunted, then asked: «How many of the others have Nansen passports? Can you get them for us?»
«Three of us have Nansens,» Brewer replied. «And I've got one more. Blank. All it needs is a picture.»
He means
, Sweatley thought,
that I can have the blank passport. If I join up with him. Him meaning him and the Chink women and half-breed children
.
«How do you know your horses are going to be there when you need them?» Chief Brewer asked.
«Because I got two Marines with Thompson submachine guns up there, living with them in the stable.»
«How are you going to get from here to Baotou when the time comes?» Abraham asked.
«We have two trucks, International ton-and-a-halfs.»
«Two trucks for how many Marines?»
«Nine, not including me. With the two at Baotou, that makes a dozen of us.»
«Supplies?»
«Yeah, we got supplies. That's why we need two trucks.»
«And if one truck breaks down between here and Baotou?»
«Then we move our stuff from the one that broke down to the one that didn't.»
In turn, Chief Brewer was more favorably impressed with Sergeant Sweatley than he expected to be.
For a Marine
, Brewer thought.
Sweatley isn't too slow
.
«What about weapons?» Abraham asked.
«That's a problem,» Sweatley confessed. «All we have, in addition to our individual weapons, is the Thompsons and an air-cooled Browning .30. In Baotou.»
«You can't get any more from the legation?»
«There aren't any more at the legation. We got the Thompsons and the Browning from the Fourth Marines in Shanghai.»
«You heard they've been ordered to the Philippines?» Abraham asked.
Sweatley was surprised. He shook his head, «no.»
«And the Yangtze River gunboats,» Brewer chimed in.
«You know that?»
«One of our guys was a radioman first on the
Panay
,» Brewer said. «He was aboard her—'visiting'—when the word came. He's working on getting us a shortwave radio.»
A shortwave radio
, Sweatley thought,
is something else I didn't think about
.
«Do you know when they're going?»
«It has to be soon,» Brewer said.
«Then we don't have much time to get our wagon train on the road, do we?» Sweatley observed, extending his hand to first to Abraham and then to Brewer.
They left Peking, independently, on 7 December 1941, within hours of hearing of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Taking off was much harder for Sergeant Sweatley than he thought it would be.
It wasn't even going over the hill. Over the hill meant fuck it, I'm going to party until my money runs out or the Shore Patrol finds me, whichever comes first.
What I'm doing is fucking deserting. In time of war, which means they can shoot me if they catch me.
And shoot everybody I'm taking with me.