"I'm shocked at your cruel selfishness," McCoy said in mock indignation.
"Neither do you, Killer," Zimmerman said, chuckling. "Be honest."
McCoy smiled.
"You know what I was thinking, though?" Zimmerman asked.
"No."
"What did finding your next day's uniform sitting all pressed and shipshape on your bed last night remind you of?"
"Shanghai, 4th Marines, houseboys?" McCoy responded. "Sergeant Zimmerman and Corporal McCoy?"
"Yeah."
"Hard whiskey and wild, wild women, before we became respectable, married, officers and gentlemen?"
"What I was thinking was we haven't come that far in ten years," Zimmerman said.
"Then, ten years ago, I would have been happy to think I could make staff sergeant in ten years," McCoy said.
So now you're a field-grade officer, and I make as much money as a captain—"
"And own half of Beaufort, South Carolina. . . ."
"—and people are still shooting at us."
“Nobody shot at us yesterday, Ernie."
"With you and that goddamn Russian jeep, we almost got blown away by our own side," Zimmerman said.
The door from the foyer opened and two middle-aged men in mussed and soiled Army fatigues walked in. One of them had a Garand rifle slung over his shoulder; there were two eight-round clips of ammunition on the strap. The other carried a U.S. Submachine Gun, Caliber .45 ACP M-3, in his hand. The weapon, made of mostly stamped parts, was called a Grease Gun because it looked like a grease gun.
Zimmerman glanced up at them, and then in a Pavlovian reflex jumped to his feet and barked, "'Ten'hut on deck!"
McCoy, in another Pavlovian reflex, stood to attention.
"As you were," one of the two newcomers said, then added, "Good morning."
"Good morning, sir," McCoy and Zimmerman said, almost in unison.
Major General Ralph Howe, NGUS, walked to the table and hung his Grease Gun over the back of one of the heavy chairs and sat down. He looked at Zimmerman.
"Ernie," he said. "I thought I told you I'd rather you didn't do that every time I walk into a room."
"Force of habit, sir," Zimmerman said. "Sorry, sir."
The other man, whose sleeves carried the stencil-painted chevrons of a master sergeant, shook his head in resignation, then hung his rifle over the back of another chair and sat down.
General Howe gestured with his hand for McCoy and Zimmerman to sit down.
"To judge by your spiffy appearance, I guess you heard who's due at Kimpo at 0900?" he said.
"I got a message from Hart, sir, to be at Kimpo at 0900," McCoy said. "No names were mentioned."
"El Supremo is going to turn Liberated Seoul back over to Syngman Rhee at about eleven," Howe said. "Maybe it'll really be liberated by then. Some of the North Koreans apparently didn't get the word."
McCoy chuckled.
"And Charley said that if anyone could get us a bath, a shave, and clean uniforms, it would be you two," Howe said.
"And maybe something besides powdered eggs for breakfast?" Master Sergeant Charley Rogers said.
He, too, was a National Guardsman. He had been Captain Howe's first sergeant and had been with him ever since. That meant when President Harry S Truman had ordered—actually asked, "Ralph, I need you"—General Howe to active duty, the first thing General Howe had done was ask just about the same question of Charley Rogers.
Zimmerman got up and went through the door to the kitchen.
"Are you going to have good news for your boss, Ken?" General Howe asked. "I am presuming he will be with the imperial entourage."
"I sent General Pickering a message last night, sir. Pick . . . Major Pickering ... is out there somewhere, within a fifty-mile radius of Suwon. I don't think we missed him by more than a couple of hours, and I don't have any reason to believe he's in trouble."
"He's in trouble—we're all in trouble—until we get him back, Ken."
"Yes, sir."
"What's the problem, Ken? And how do we get around it?"
"The scenario is this, sir. Whenever they can, Colonel Dunn's pilots look for the messages he leaves, ones he stamps out in rice paddy mud. Sometimes they eyeball them, sometimes the photo interpreters pick them out from aerial photographs. So we've had a rough idea where he is ever since he was shot down. Locating him precisely is part of the problem. And then, even if we do that, picking him up will then be the problem. The ideal way to do that is with a helicopter. The problem there—"
"—is that there aren't very many helicopters," General Howe picked up. "And those that exist are being used to haul wounded—"
"—or brass," McCoy began, and corrected himself: "—senior officers— where they have to go. And General Pickering doesn't want to take a chopper away from hauling the wounded to look for Pick or pick him up."
Zimmerman came back into the dining room, followed by the Korean housekeeper, who carried a tray with a silver coffee service on it.
"You were right, Charley," General Howe said. "While we're drinking three-day-old coffee from canteen cups, these two—"
"I told her to make ham and eggs, sir," Zimmerman said. "Will that be all right?"
If that's the best you can do, Mr. Zimmerman, I guess it will have to do," Master Sergeant Rogers said.
Howe chuckled, then said: "We can't afford to have Major Pickering captured, Ken. We may have to borrow a helicopter for a while, General Pickering's feelings aside."
It was an observation more in the nature of a decision, and thus an order. While legally Major General Howe had no authority to order anyone to do anything, he was in Korea bearing orders signed by Harry S Truman, as President and Commander-in-Chief, which ordered that "all U.S. military and governmental agencies provide General Howe with whatever assistance of whatever kind he deems necessary for the accomplishment of his mission."
Howe, who had been a captain with Captain Harry S Truman in France in World War I, and who had risen to Major General in World War II, was in Korea as Truman's eyes.
No one from MacArthur down was going to refuse him anything he asked for.
McCoy didn't reply.
The door opened again, and "Major" William R. Dunston walked in.
"I just heard you were here, sir—" he began.
"Mooching breakfast," Howe interrupted him. "And, I hope, a shower, shave, and some clean fatigues."
"Not a problem, sir," Dunston said.
"If you didn't know that General MacArthur's due at Kimpo sometime around nine, Bill, I'd be very surprised."
"I heard, sir," Dunston said. "Good morning, Charley."
Master Sergeant Rogers nodded and smiled.
"Did your guy get anything out of my guy, Bill?" McCoy asked.
"I was going to ask you to sit in on that," Dunston said. "You and Ernie. They're still in the basement."
"I'm in the dark," General Howe said simply.
"We took some prisoners yesterday, sir, " McCoy began. "We were on our way here, and they just came barreling up the highway. The senior one's a lieutenant colonel. Arrogant sonofabitch. I've got a gut feeling he's somebody important. Ernie and I couldn't get anything out of him. The other four I turned over to 7th Division."
Howe nodded.
"I thought he might react to a senior officer, and Bill has had an ROK colonel interrogating him," McCoy went on.
"I can't believe anyone could get more out of a prisoner than you two can," Howe said.
"I don't think he knows anything about troop dispositions, that sort of thing," McCoy replied. "And if he does, he won't tell us. But I thought he might let something slip when trying to impress a senior officer with his own importance."
"And has he, Bill?" Howe asked.