He looked out to sea. The first boat had reached Koffler and Weston, and Lewis was shoving black plastic-wrapped parcels over the side. Captain Rob-ert B. Macklin, USMC, was kneeling in the center of the boat doing, as far as McCoy could see, absolutely nothing.
The second boat, carrying Zimmerman and two sailors from the Sunfish, was approaching them.
The sun was fully up now. If a Japanese patrol boat appeared, or worse, an airplane, the Sunfish would be in trouble.
McCoy scanned the horizon, and then the skies, with the binoculars. There was nothing.
Zimmerman's boat passed Lewis's and kept coming.
"If they don't go over the side now, it'll turn over in the surf," McCoy mused aloud.
A minute later, his prediction came true. The boat flipped over on its side, dumping the three men and the stack of plastic-wrapped parcels into the sea.
"Come on, we better get those people some weapons," McCoy said, and led Everly to the boat they had dragged off the beach into the jungle. He reached into the boat, pulled a plastic-wrapped parcel of carbines from it, and slit the plastic.
"That's the knife you had in Shanghai, right?" Everly said.
"So what?"
"Just curious, is all," Everly said.
"Let me show you how this works," McCoy said, picking up one of the carbines. "The safety and the magazine release are here on the trigger assem-bly. You flip the little lever horizontal to take it off safety. You push the button and the magazine falls out." He demonstrated. "Fifteen shots. You shove it back in until it clicks. Then you work the action-he demonstrated again-and it's ready to go."
"Pistol cartridges, huh?" Everly said scornfully, taking the weapon.
"Hot pistol cartridges. They'd blow up a pistol."
"Will they kill anybody?"
"Yeah," McCoy said. "If you hit him, and he's not five hundred yards away."
"You know that?" Everly asked dubiously.
"I know that. They're not a real rifle, but they're a lot better than a pistol."
"Most people can't shoot a pistol to save their ass," Everly said.
"That's the whole idea," McCoy said.
"You've got ammo, I hope? We're fucking near out of ammo, ours and Japanese. We're making our own fucking bullets from curtain rods, and load-ing the cases with powder from Jap rounds. I'm down to thirteen rounds for this." He shifted his Thompson on his shoulder.
"There's ammo for these, and a couple of hundred.45 ACP and.30-06 rounds. If we can get it off the sub."
"Grenades? We could really use some grenades."
"Not on this shipment," McCoy said. "Maybe the next."
"Is there going to be another shipment? More submarines?"
"In twenty-one days. If we can keep ourselves from getting killed before then," McCoy said. He slit open a second parcel containing four U.S. Car-bines, Caliber.30 Ml, slung three of them around his shoulder, and started back to the beach.
Lieutenant Chambers D. Lewis, dragging two plastic-wrapped parcels be-hind him, came out of the water.
"Good morning, Mr. McCoy," he said. "I see the Marines have landed, and the situation is presumably well in hand?"
"You weren't supposed to come ashore," McCoy said.
"I knew how important it was to you that Captain Macklin join your beach party," Lewis said. "And I could not, I found, just go sailing away without proving to you that I could paddle a rubber boat as well as you."
McCoy looked over his shoulder. Macklin was moving as quickly as he could through chest-deep water toward the beach. So far as McCoy could see, he was not towing anything behind him.
And then he laughed. "Oh, Christ, look at that."
Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman, water streaming off his body, looking very distressed and annoyed, plodded heavily through the sand toward them, dragging four obviously heavy plastic-wrapped parcels. Behind him came the two sailors, each dragging two plastic-wrapped parcels.
"Why didn't you get out of the boat, the way I told you?" McCoy asked.
"I couldn't see how deep the water was, and I didn't want to drown, for Christ's sake. I can't swim!" He recognized Everly. "Hey! What do you say, Everly? How they hanging?"
"Can't complain. McCoy told me they made you a gunny."
"Yeah. How about that? You going to lend a hand with this crap, or just stand there with your thumb up your ass?"
"You may get stuck here," McCoy said to Lewis. "The place is liable to be crawling with Japs anytime now. The Fertig guy-what's his name, Ev-erly?"
"Weston, Sir," Everly said. "Captain James Weston."
He called me "Sir," McCoy realized, surprised. I'll be damned.
"... Captain Weston took out a four-man Jap patrol as we were coming ashore. Everly thinks other Japs will come looking for them."
"That would be best," Everly said.
"Best?" McCoy asked. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Worst is that they did hear Mr. Weston's Thompson and went off to tell somebody. Best would be if they didn't hear the gunfire, but send a couple of people looking for the first patrol. Better would be we could find the truck they're in-"
"We don't know there's a truck," McCoy interrupted.
"-and take that out, hide the truck and the bodies in the bush someplace where they won't be found for a couple of days. That would make it less likely that the Japs could find the stuff we're going to stash here."
"Or find the truck and take it five miles, ten miles from here," McCoy said thoughtfully.
"Even better," Everly agreed.
"What's wrong with your ankle?" McCoy asked.
"I fell out of a tree and sprained it," Everly said.
"Then how are we going to find the truck?"
"I could get a tree limb, and make a crutch or something."
"You tell me where you think this truck is, Everly, and I'll find the fucker," Gunny Zimmerman said matter-of-factly.
"You're going to have to go with him, Everly," McCoy said. "There's no way around it. We'll get the stuff into the jungle and wait here for you."
"Zimmerman, are those little rifles any good?" Everly asked.
"For what we're going to use them for," Zimmerman said.
"Well, you better give me one, then. All I have is thirteen rounds for the Thompson. Unless... Where's that.45 ammo, McCoy?"
"I don't know where it is right now."
"Then hand me one of them little rifles. We don't have much time."
"There is, of course," McCoy said, looking at Lewis, "one other option."
"You want me to go with them? Why not?"
"That's not what I meant," McCoy said, and then, pointing out to sea, went on. "Captain Weston is almost at the Sunfish. I could radio them to get the hell out of here the second he's aboard and... Maybe that's what I should do."
"The U.S. Navy has gone to considerable expense and effort, Mr. McCoy, to place that vessel where she lies," Lewis said. "I don't think anyone aboard would want to leave until they unload the cargo, or a Jap destroyer appears."
McCoy looked at him thoughtfully.
"Whichever comes first," Lewis added.
"You really are liable to get stuck here with us," McCoy said. "You un-derstand that?"