"The Commandant seems to feel, Ellie, that someone who has put as many years into The Corps as you have is entitled to a little special treatment."
When he telephoned Walter Reed with Vandergrift's message, the Commandant's precise words were, "You seem to have a lot of influence, Pickering. Why don't you use some of it to get Jack's wife out to Hawaii to be with her boy?"
"Oh, I don't know how I could-"
"Nonsense," Pickering said. "This won't be the first time you've picked up and gone somewhere on no notice at all." She looked at him.
"No," she said finally, "it won't. I'll throw some things in a bag."
[Six]
MOST URGENT
RAAF MORESBY 0410 9TH OCTOBER NUMBER 21
FROM OFFICER COMMANDING RAAF MORESBY
FOR ADMIRALTY MELBOURNE FOR VICE ADMIRAL SOAMES-HALEY
VIA RAAF MELBOURNE
MOST SECRET
START
PART ONE
REFERENCE YOUR 212 7OCT PART THREE SUB D: 0315M RPT 0315M
END
FELDT LT COMM RANVR
It began to grow light a little after five. Captain Charles M. Galloway, who was flying, reached over and touched the sleeve of his copilot, who was dozing. His arms were folded on his chest; his head was tilted to one side.
He woke startled.
"Go back and find somebody to come up here," Galloway ordered.
Pickering nodded, unstrapped his seat and shoulder belts, and went back into the cabin. He returned with the Marine sergeant who had given the Aussie Naval officer all the trouble during the briefing. He looked-and was-more than a little hung over.
Galloway waited until Pickering had strapped himself back in.
"You have the aircraft, Mr. Pickering," he said, and then unstrapped himself and got up, Pickering looked over his shoulder to see what Galloway was up to.
Galloway unfolded the step that let you stand and take navigational observations through the Plexiglas dome on top of the fuselage. Then he installed the hung over sergeant on it, facing to the rear.
He returned to his seat and strapped himself back in.
"What was that all about?"
"I don't know what I'll do if it happens," Galloway said.
"But if we are spotted by a curious Japanese, I think it would be nice to know it before he starts shooting."
"I'm sorry I asked," Pickering said.
[Seven]
APPROXIMATELY 40 MILES SOUTH OF CAPE HANPAN
BUKA, SOLOMON ISLANDS
0550 HOURS 9 OCTOBER 1942
The call came in loud and clear over Pickering's earphone. He even recognized the voice: "Greyhound, Greyhound, this is Greyhound Base. Over."
"I'll be damned," Captain Charley Galloway said.
Pickering picked up his microphone.
"This is Greyhound. Read you five by five. Over."
"Greyhound, I have you in sight. You are approximately two miles south. Over."
"Shit!" Charley Galloway said and pushed the nose of the R4D down.
"Understand two miles. Winds, please? Over."
"The wind is from the north. About ten knots. Over."
"Understand north, ten knots. Over."
"I suppose if there was something wrong with the beach, he would have said so," Galloway said as he began to retard the throttles.
"Yeah, I think he would have," Pickering said. "But let's check."
"How's the sand down there, Killer? Over."
"Condition Two. Repeat Condition Two. Over."
"Thank you, Killer. Please make a piss call before boarding." Galloway glanced at him and smiled before ordering, "Twenty degrees flaps. Put the wheels down." A moment later Pickering said, "Twenty degrees flaps. Gear extended."
"OK, here goes," Galloway said.
Just before he eased back on the stick to put the tail wheel on the ground, two men with -arms waving jumped out of the foliage onto the beach. By the time Charley Galloway very carefully stopped the R4D, turned it around, and taxied back to them, they had been joined by what looked like twenty others; most of them wore loincloths and had bushy hair.
Less than five minutes later, Lieutenant K. R. McCoy came into the cockpit.
"Everybody is aboard, Sir," he said to Galloway, "and the door is secure."
"How goes it, Killer?" Lieutenant Pickering asked.
"Fuck you, Pickering, you know how I feel about that Killer shit!"
"I guess you two know each other," Charley Galloway said, as he put his hand to the throttle quadrant and shoved them forward to TAKEOFF POWER.
[Eight]
U.S. ARMY AIR CORPS B-17E TAIL NUMBER 11354 17,500 FEET
OFF WEST COAST, BOUGAINVILLE, SOLOMON ISLANDS
0805 HOURS 9 OCTOBER 1942
"What the hell is that down there?" Second Lieutenant Harry Aaronson, the bombardier, inquired over the intercom.
"Down where, for Christ's sake, Aaronson?" First Lieutenant Joseph Wall, the Aircraft Commander, replied.
"At maybe eight, nine thousand, two o'clock."
"I can't see it," Wall replied.
"It looks like a C-47," First Lieutenant Thomas Killian, the copilot, said.
"What the fuck would a C-47 be doing up here? That must be a Jap bomber or something." Wall banked the airplane to the right and put the nose down so that he could see.
"That's a C-47," he pronounced with finality and straightened the airplane up.
"Then it would have to be a Japanese C-47," Killian argued.
"Nobody on our side could be that lost. And the Japs don't have any C-47s."
"The Japanese have L2Ds," Lieutenant Wall announced.
"They stole the C-47 blueprints and they build them in Japan."
"Bullshit," Lieutenant Harry Aaronson said. "You couldn't get all the blueprints for an airplane in a boxcar."
"Well," Lieutenant Wall said slowly, having never considered that before, "the Japs had L2Ds that are C-47s, and that's one of them."
"Let's go shoot the sonofabitch down," Lieutenant Aaronson said.
Lieutenant Wall's orders-for the flight the day before yesterday, for the flight today, and probably for the flight the day after tomorrow-were to conduct an aerial observation of the west coast of Bougainville Island. During these observations they would take aerial photographs of a list of topographic features and of any naval activity in the waters adjacent thereto. They were not carrying any bombs-which frankly struck Lieutenant Wall as a pretty goddamned silly way to make war.
On the other hand, shooting down an unarmed Japanese airplane didn't seem right.
Fuck it, Remember Pearl Harbor!
"I don't want one shot fired until I say so, you got that?"
He put his hand to the throttle quadrant to take power off and pushed the nose of the airplane down.
"The sonofabitch is lost," Lieutenant Aaronson "That's one of ours. Shit! It says `Marines' on the fuselage."
"I didn't know the Marines had C-47s," Lieutenant Killian said.
"They don't, that's a mirage, you asshole."
"Tom, see if you can raise them on the radio," Lieutenant Wall said to Lieutenant Killian.