"Sir, I understand there's a shortage of pilots," Captain Arthur McGowan, a tall, slim twenty-nine-year-old, who wore the ring of the United States Naval Academy, said with a smile.
Dawkins saw Pick's face.
"Not funny?"
"No, sir."
Dawkins nodded.
"How are you, Pick?" he asked, putting out his hand. "It's good to see you."
"It's good to see you, sir," Pick said, shaking it.
"That doesn't answer my question."
"Sir, as of today, I have been promoted to Loony Category Two, which means I no longer have to give the nurse a list of what I need from the Ship's Store. And they are going to give me a partial pay."
"You look like hell," Dawkins said. "But your legendary fast lip is obviously still functioning well."
"No disrespect was intended, sir."
"I wish you'd sit down," Dawkins said.
"Aye, aye, sir," Pick said, and sat down.
"Art," Dawkins said as he turned the folding chair around and sat backward in it. "Flash your smile at the nurse and see if you can't get us some coffee."
"Yes, sir," McGowan said. "How do you take yours, Major?"
"Black, please," Pick said.
McGowan left the room.
"Billy Dunn tell you I was here?" Pick asked.
"Actually, the news came from a little higher up in the chain of command. How is Billy?"
"He was fine, the last time I saw him. More than a little disgusted with me— and justifiably so—but fine."
"I have no idea what you're talking about, Pick," Dawkins said.
"Just before the bosun's chair moved me from the Badoeng Strait to the destroyer Mansfield—"
"You mean while you were under way?" Dawkins asked.
"Yes, sir."
"I've seen that, but I've never done it," Dawkins said. "I don't like the notion of being dangled over the ocean like that. How was it?"
"Not very pleasant, sir. Sir, may I go on?"
"Sorry, Pick. You were saying?"
"I was saying that Colonel Dunn told me what he thought of me," Pick said. "What he said was that I was a self-important showboating sonofabitch whose current troubles were my own fault, that I had put the necks of a lot of good people at risk because of my showboating, and that I have never really understood that I'm a Marine officer."
Dawkins looked at him for a moment in surprise.
"My first reaction is that Billy must have had a very bad day," Dawkins said.
"Just before I got in the bosun's chair, Billy handed me a letter to mail from Japan he'd written to the wife—correction, the widow—of one of his guys who had just plowed in," Pick said. "Dick Mitchell. Writing those letters is always tough for Billy. But that wasn't what was bothering him."
"What was?"
"Me. Everything he said about me was absolutely true."
"You want to explain that?"
"What I was doing when I went in was shooting up locomotives," Pick said.
"So what?"
"I was doing this because it amused me," Pick said. "I thought it would be amusing to become the first Marine Corps locomotive ace in history."
Dawkins looked at him without saying anything.
"I had three steam engines painted on the fuselage of my Corsair," Pick went on, "under the impressive row of Japanese meatballs from War Two. I even wrote the Air Force asking if they had a record of how many steam engines had been shot up in War Two, and if so, by who, to see who and what I was competing against."
"Jesus!" Dawkins said.
"Billy, of course, thought this was bullshit, dangerous bullshit, and told me to stop. And of course I ignored him, a senior officer. Proving his point that I have never understood that I am a Marine officer."
"What happened when you went in?"
"You mean, what put me on the ground?"
Dawkins nodded.
"I made a run at a train," Pick said. "Came in over the end of it, right on the deck, and worked my fire up the length of it. Sometimes, if there's gas on the train, you can set it off with tracer rounds; we were loading one tracer in five rounds. I don't remember any gasoline explosion, but I saw the locomotive go up just before I passed over it and began my pull up. Immediately, large and small parts of the locomotive punctured my beautiful Corsair in Lord knows how many places. I lost power, hydraulics, et cetera, et cetera. There was a rather large rice paddy convenient, so I set it down, got out, and got maybe one hundred yards away—maybe a little farther—before it caught on fire and blew up. The landing wasn't really all that bad. I dumped a Corsair on Tinian just before the war was over—couldn't get the right gear down—that was really a hell of a lot worse."
The door opened and Captain McGowan returned with three china cups of coffee.
"Be careful," he said. "It's hotter than hell."
"Thank you, Art," Dawkins said, then turned back to Pick. "Were you on fire?"
"No, sir."
"I thought maybe the antiaircraft, tracers, or exploding shells might have got you."
"No, sir. No ack-ack."
"And you're sure you weren't on fire?"
"Yes, sir."
"How badly were you hurt in the crash?"
"Not at all, sir."
"How close did you come to the village?"
"Sir?"
"Was there a village where you went in?"
"No, sir."
"Give me the citation, Art," Dawkins ordered. McGowan went into his tunic pocket and came out with an envelope. Dawkins took a sheet of paper from it and read it.
"Where were the Marines—the grunts—when all this happened?" Dawkins asked.
"I was nowhere near the lines, sir. I guess I was four, maybe five miles into enemy territory."
"And the weather? What was the weather like?"
"It was good weather, sir."
"Just about everything you have told me, Major Pickering," Dawkins said, "is inconsistent with this."
"What is that, sir?"
"It's the citation to accompany your Navy Cross," Dawkins said, meeting his eyes.
"What Navy Cross, sir?" Pick asked, visibly confused.
"The one the President is going to pin on you," Dawkins said. "Or if he can't fit you into his busy schedule, and the commandant is similarly occupied, and the commanding general of Camp Pendleton can't make it, I will pin on you."
"May I see that, sir?"
Dawkins handed it to him, and Pick read it.
As he did, he shook his head and several times muttered an obscenity.
"This- is somebody else's citation," he said, finally, as he handed the sheet of paper back to Dawkins. "It has to be. The weather—I told you—was good. Ceiling and visibility were unlimited. I was not flying close support for the grunts. There was no antiaircraft. I was not on fire, and if there was a village or a school, I didn't see either. Jesus, what a fuckup!"
"I don't think there's more than one Major Malcolm S. Pickering in the Corps, Pick, and that's the name on the citation," Dawkins said.
"General, that's not my citation. I did nothing to deserve any kind of a medal. I probably should have been court-martialed for what I was doing."
"I'll look into this," Dawkins said. "In the meantime—this is an order, Pick—I don't want you saying anything to anybody about this."
"Aye, aye, sir," Pick said. "If that got out, the Corps would look pretty goddamn stupid."
"The order to give you the Navy Cross, I am reliably informed, came from the President, personally," Dawkins said. "Anything to say about that?"
"Only that I really don't understand any of this, sir," Pick said.
"Okay. I'll look into it and get back to you," Dawkins said. He smiled at Pick. "This Chinese fire drill aside, I'm really glad that you made it back, Pick. You were gone so long that we were all really getting worried."
"Thank you, sir."
"As soon as they'll let you, my wife wants you to come out to the base for dinner."