The tip of the Baby Fairbairn punctured the Italian marine's chest at the lower extremity of the ribs. McCoy felt it grate over a bone, and then immediately sink to the handguard. The knife was snatched from his hand as the Italian marine continued his plunge.
The man grunted, fell, dropped the bicycle chain, rolled over, sat up, and started to pull the Baby Fairbairn from his abdomen. He gave it a hearty tug and it came out. A moment later, a stream of bright red blood as thick as the handle of a baseball bat erupted from his mouth. The Italian marine looked puzzled for a moment, and then fell to one side.
Jesus Christ, I killed him!
One of the three remaining Italian marines crossed himself and ran away. The other two advanced on McCoy, one of them frantically trying to work the action of a tiny automatic pistol.
I can't run from that!
McCoy picked up the Baby Fairbairn and advanced on the two Italian marines.
He made it to the one with the gun and started to try to take it away from him, or at least to knock it out of his hand. The other one tried to help his friend. McCoy lashed out with the Baby Fairbairn again. The blade slashed the Italian's face, but that didn't discourage him. He got his arms around McCoy's arms and held him in a bear hug.
The other one managed to work the action of his tiny pistol.
McCoy remembered hearing that a.22 or a.25 will kill you just as dead as a.45, it just takes a little longer-say a week-to do it.
With a strength that surprised him, he got his right arm free and swung it backward at the man who had been holding him. He felt it cut and strike something, something not anywhere as hard as the ribcage, but something. And it went in far enough so that he couldn't hang on to it when the man fell down.
Then, free, he jumped at the man with the pistol. The pistol went off with a sharp crack, and he felt something strike his leg hard, like a kick from a very hard boot. And then he knocked the pistol from the Italian marine's hand and, when it clattered onto the cobblestones, dived after it.
He picked it up and aimed it at the Italian marine. Then he followed his eyes. What he had done when he had swung his knife hand backward was stick it in the man's groin. The man was now holding his groin with both hands. The handle of the Baby Fairbairn was sticking out between his fingers. The man was whimpering, and tears were on his face.
Down the street, McCoy could hear the growl of the hand-cranked siren at the compound.
This is going to fuck up my promotion, he thought. Goddamn these Italians.
(Two)
Captain Edward J. Banning, USMC, was S-2, the staff Intelligence Officer, of the 4th Marines. He was thirty-six years old, tall, thin, and starting to bald. And he had been a Marine since his graduation from the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina: a second lieutenant for three years, a first lieutenant for eight years, and he'd worn the twin silver railroad tracks of a captain for four years.
There were four staff officers. The S-1 (Personnel) and S-4 (Supply) were majors. The S-3 (Plans and Training) was a lieutenant colonel. As a captain, Banning was the junior staff officer. But he was a staff officer, and as such normally excused from most of the duties assigned to non-staff officers.
He took his turn, of course, as Officer of the Day, but that was about it. He was, for instance, never assigned as Inventory Officer to audit the accounts of the Officers' or NCO clubs or as Investigating Officer when there was an allegation of misbehavior involving the possibility of a court-martial of one of the enlisted men. Or any other detail of that sort. He was the S-2, and the colonel was very much aware that taking him from that duty to do something else did not make very good sense.
So Banning had been surprised at first when he was summoned by the colonel and told that he would serve as Defense Counsel in the case of the United States of America versus PFC Kenneth J. McCoy, USMC. But he was a Marine officer, and when Marine officers are given an assignment, they say "aye, aye, sir" and set about doing what they have been ordered to do.
"This one can't be swept under the table, Banning," the colonel said. "It's gone too far for that. It has to go by the book, with every 't' crossed and every Y dotted."
"I understand, sir."
"Major DeLaney will prosecute. I have ordered him to do his best to secure a conviction. I am now ordering you to do your best to secure an acquittal. The Italian Consul General has told us that he and Colonel Maggiani of the Italian marines will attend the court-martial. Do you get the picture?"
"Yes, sir."
The picture Banning got was that he was going to have to spend Christ alone knew how many hours preparing for this court-martial, participating in the court-martial itself, and then Christ alone knew how many hours after the trial, going through the appeal process.
About half of the total would have to come from the time Banning would have normally spent with his hobby. His hobby was Ludmilla Zhivkov, whom he called 'Milla.'
Milla was twenty-seven, raven-haired, long-legged and a White Russian. And he had recently begun to consider the possibility that he was in love with her.
Banning was a Marine officer-even worse, a Marine intelligence officer-and Marine intelligence officers were not supposed to become emotionally involved with White Russian women. It had not been his intention to become emotionally involved with her. He had met her, more or less, on duty. There had been an advertisement in the Shanghai Post: "Russian Lady Offers Instruction in Russian Conversation." It had coincided with an unexpected bonus in his operating funds: two hundred dollars for Foreign Language Training.
There were supposed to be fifteen thousand White Russian refugee women in Shanghai. They made their living as best they could, some successfully and some reduced to making it on their backs. He had somewhat cynically suspected that the Russian Lady offering Russian Conversation was doing so only because she was too old, or too ugly, to make it on her back.
Milla had surprised him. She was a real beauty, and she was the first White Russian he'd met who was not at least a duchess. She was also devoutly religious, which meant that she was not going to become a whore unless it got down to that. Milla told him her father had operated, of all things, the Victor Phonograph store in St. Petersburg. They had come from Russia in 1921 with some American dollars, and it had been enough, with what jobs he had been able to find, to keep them while they waited for their names to work their way up the immigration waiting list for the United States.
And then he had died, and she hadn't been able to make as much money as she had hoped, even working as a billing clerk in the Cathay Mansions Hotel and teaching Russian conversation. When he met her she was down to living in one room. The next step was to become somebody's mistress. After that she'd have to turn into a whore. Becoming a whore would keep her from going to the States.
The first thing Banning had done was pay her the whole two hundred dollars up front. Then one thing had led to another, and they had gone to bed. Soon he had helped her get a larger place to live.
But the ground rules established between them were clear: It was a friendly business relationship and never could be anything more. When he went home, that would be the end of it. She understood that. She had lived up to her end of the bargain. And she would, he believed, stick to it.
Her powerful character, he sometimes thought, was one of the reasons he was afraid he was in love with her. And sometimes he wondered if she wasn't playing him like a fish (she was also the most intelligent woman he had ever known) and nobly living up to her end of the bargain because she had figured that was the one way to get him to break it.
But what he nevertheless knew for sure was that if he married her, he could kiss his Marine career good-bye; and that he could not imagine life outside the Corps; and that he could not imagine life without Milla.