«You heard me correctly, Captain McCoy,» Banning said. «Do you have any problem with that, Captain?»
«No, sir.»
«Splendid! And to answer your first question, Captain McCoy, 'what the fuck is that all about?'—or words to that effect—we are going to do so because Colonel Albright here is under orders to ensure that every
t
in Operation China Clipper is crossed correctly and every last
i
has a dot in the proper place. Have you any further questions, Captain McCoy?»
«No, sir.»
«And you, Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman? Do you have any questions?»
Zimmerman popped to rigid attention. «Sir, begging the Colonel's pardon, sir. What the fuck is Operation China Clipper?»
«You've never heard of China Clipper, Sergeant?» Colonel Albright asked.
«No, sir. Not one fucking word.»
«Well, sit back down, Sergeant, and I'll tell you all about it,» Colonel Albright said.
The firing range of the OSS training facility was not much of a firing range by USMC standards: A U-shaped berm, no more than twenty feet high and perhaps a hundred feet long, had been built of sandbags on what had been the practice driving range before the OSS took over the Country Club. At the open end of the U were six firing positions. There were no pits. Target frames had been made from two-by-fours and plywood. Two were in position, and another four were lying on the ground. The «feet» of the erect frames sat in sections of pipe buried upright in the ground. Life-size silhouette targets had apparently been obtained from the FBI, for they showed a likeness of John Dillinger, the bank robber, clutching a .45 and glowering menacingly. These had been stapled to the plywood of the two target frames in use. Three-foot-long pieces of two-by-fours laid on the ground showed where the shooter was to stand.
The sandbags in the berm behind the targets showed evidence of the projectiles that had been fired downrange. McCoy noticed a lot of holes in sandbags not directly behind the targets.
Three men were waiting for them, standing by a rough table on which was placed two Mauser Broomhandle pistols, two Thompson submachine guns, and a rack holding five 1911 Al Colt .45 pistols with dowels in their barrels. Two of the men were in U.S. Army fatigues and the third was wearing an Army olive-drab woolen uniform.
He's probably the instructor
, McCoy decided,
and the other two are on labor detail
.
The man in ODs—on which McCoy now saw silver first lieutenant's bars and the crossed sabers of cavalry—saw them coming, called attention, and saluted Colonel Albright. «Good morning, sir,» he said.
«Good morning,» Albright said. «These are the weapons they'll be taking with them?»
«Yes, sir. And they've been checked over by both Gunny Zimmerman and myself.»
One of the GIs in Army fatigues handed the lieutenant a clipboard. «These are the hand receipts for the weapons, sir,» he said. «I'll need to have them signed.»
One by one, Banning and the others signed the hand receipts for the weapons. Banning signed for a 1911A1 .45-caliber pistol only; McCoy and Zimmerman both for a pistol and a Mauser machine pistol; and Easterbrook and Rutterman both for a pistol and a Thompson submachine gun.
Both Colonel Albright and Captain McCoy had private thoughts, which they did not express, about the Thompsons: Albright wondered, if it came down to it, how effectively Lieutenant Easterbrook could use his Thompson. Controlling their recoil was difficult even for a muscular man, and Easterbrook was anything but muscular.
McCoy, who had seen Easterbrook running around on Guadalcanal with a Thompson, was not concerned about his skill with the weapon, but with the weapon itself. These were civilian versions of the submachine gun, which he supposed the OSS had gotten from the FBI, like the John Dillinger silhouette targets. They had fifty-round «drum» magazines. In McCoy's opinion, the drum magazines were unreliable.
«How would you like us to do this, sir?» Lieutenant Colonel Banning asked of Colonel A. H. Albright.
«I don't think we have to bother about the pistols,» Albright said, and then changed his mind. He didn't want to have to lie to General Adamson unless he really had to. «But on the other hand, to go by the book, maybe we should. How about a magazine from each weapon at a silhouette? Five out of seven shots from a .45 anywhere in the torso will qualify. And how about one in three shots from the automatic weapons? Say seventeen out of fifty from the Thompsons? How many shots are there in the Mausers?»
«Twenty, sir,» Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman said.
«How about seven shots anywhere in the torso from the Mausers, then?»
«That sounds reasonable,» Banning said. He turned to McCoy. «Captain, you are the range officer. I will relieve you after I have fired.»
«Aye, aye, sir,» McCoy said.
Banning proceeded to the wooden table, examined the pistols until he found the serial number of the one he had signed for, stuck it in his belt, and then charged a magazine from a box of cartridges. «Gunny, would you charge the magazines of the automatic weapons, please?» he said.
«Aye, aye, sir,» Zimmerman said, then went to the wooden table and started loading cartridges into a Thompson fifty-round drum.
Banning walked up to the piece of two-by-four marking the firing line, turned, and looked at McCoy.
«The flag is up,» McCoy ordered. «With one seven-round magazine, lock and load.»
Banning slipped the magazine into the pistol and worked the action.
«The flag is waving,» McCoy said. «Commence firing!»
Everybody but Captain McCoy and Gunny Zimmerman put their fingers in their ears. Colonel Albright looked closely at Zimmerman and saw that he had inserted fired 9mm cartridges in his ears as protection against the noise, then saw that McCoy had done the same thing.
Banning raised the pistol and began to fire. The shots were evenly spaced. When the magazine was empty, he raised the pistol's muzzle.
«Cease fire,» McCoy ordered. «Clear your piece and step back from the firing line.»
Banning turned and walked to the wooden table and laid his pistol on it. Then he followed Colonel Albright to the silhouette target. All seven shots were in John Dillinger's torso.
«I suppose this makes you an expert,» Colonel Albright said.
«Colonel, you ain't seen nothing yet,» Banning said, then turned and raised his voice. «Can I have some target patches, please?»
One of the soldiers trotted out with a roll of black paper adhesive-gummed patches, and covered the holes in Banning's target.
With Colonel Banning serving as range officer, Lieutenant Easterbrook and Master Gunner Rutterman fired next. First they fired their pistols, both of them scattering all seven shots across the torso area of the targets.
When the holes had been patched, they fired the Thompson submachine guns. Colonel Albright was relieved to see that Easterbrook was familiar enough with the weapon not to lose control of it. He emptied the fifty-round magazine in two-and three-shot bursts. But he was actually surprised when he walked forward to count and patch the holes: Easterbrook had put forty-six of his fifty shots into John Dillinger, including three high (into the head) and five low (two in the crotch andthree in the upper leg). master gunner rutterman managed to get only forty-two of his fifty shots into Dillinger, but all but three high and one low were in the torso.