Why couldn't I have just said "Thank you" ? Am I looking for an excuse to fight with him?
"The best barrel cleaner is mercury," McCoy said matter-of-factly. "Next is Hoppe's Number Nine."
Mercury? What the hell is he talking about, mercury?
"Mercury?"
"You stop up one end of a barrel, fill the barrel with mercury, let it stay a couple of minutes, and then pour it out. Takes the barrel right down to the bare metal. I guess it dissolves the lead, and the primer residue, all the crap that fouls a barrel."
Unfortunately, I suspect he knows what's he's talking about. I will not challenge him on that. There probably is some chemical reaction, vis-a-vis steel, copper, lead, and mercury.
And then he heard himself say, "What you're saying is that the man at Griffin and Howe doesn't know what he's talking about?"
"Not if he said that stuff is best, he doesn't."
"Daddy," Ernie said. "Ken knows about guns. Why are you arguing with him?"
"I wasn't arguing with Ken, honey. I was just making sure I understood him correctly." He fixed a smile on his face. "The next step in the sacred traditions of hunting around here is the ingestion of a stiff belt. How does that sound, Ken?"
"That sounds fine, Sir."
Ernest Sage put the side-by-side Parker 12-bore together, and then put it in a cabinet beside perhaps twenty other long arms. He turned and smiled at his daughter.
I've been around guns all my life, but your Ken knows about guns, right?
"Into the library, honey? Or shall we go in the kitchen and watch your mother defeather the birds?"
"The library," Ernie said. "Mother hates plucking and dressing birds; al-ways prays that you'll never get any pheasant."
"I've never eaten a pheasant," Ken McCoy said.
"Really?" Ernest Page said.
They went into the two-story-high library. The front of what looked like a row of books opened, revealing a bar, complete to refrigerator.
Sage took two glasses and started to put ice in them.
"Yes, Daddy," Ernie said. "Thank you very much, I will have a drink. Whatever you're having."
"Sorry, honey," her father said. "Excuse me. I'm not used to you being a full-grown woman."
"Make her a weak one," McCoy said. "One strong drink and she starts dancing on tabletops."
Sage turned in surprise, in time to see Ernie sticking her tongue out at McCoy.
"Don't believe him, Daddy."
He made the drinks and handed one to each of them.
"What shall we drink to?" he asked. "The fallen pheasants?"
"What about Pick?" McCoy replied. "I feel sorry for him."
"Why do you feel sorry for him?" Sage asked.
"He's going on display on the West Coast right about now."
"I don't understand."
"A War Bond Tour. All the aviation heroes from Guadalcanal. Modesty is not one of his strong points, but I suspect the War Bond Tour will cure him of that."
"Pick is a hero?"
"Certified. Got the DFC from the Secretary of the Navy himself last week."
"I hadn't heard that."
"For doing what he did with you?" Ernie asked. It was a challenge.
"For being an ace. More than an ace. I think he has six kills. Maybe seven."
"What did she mean, Ken, 'for doing what he did with you'? You saw Pick in the Pacific."
"Yes, Sir. I saw him in the Pacific."
"If he got a medal, why didn't you?" Ernie demanded.
"Because I didn't do anything to deserve a medal."
"Huh!" Ernie snorted.
"What exactly is it that you do in the Marines, Ken?" Ernest Sage asked with a smile.
He knew that McCoy worked for Fleming Pickering. He didn't know what Pickering did for the Marine Corps-Pickering had told him he was the general in charge of mess-kit repair-and he thought he probably was going to find out right now.
"Well, right now, I've been trying to make sure that the Navy doesn't steal everybody who speaks an Oriental language from the Draft Board for the Navy; that The Corps gets at least a few of them. I've spent the last week at the Armed Forces Induction Center in New York."
"I mean, ordinarily."
"Whatever General Pickering tells me to do."
"You're his assistant in charge of repairing mess kits, right?"
"Yes, Sir. That's about it."
"You're wasting your time, Daddy," Ernie said. "I live with him, and he won't tell me anything either."
You had to say that, 'I live with him," didn't you ?
Maintaining a smile with some difficulty, Sage said, "I don't mean to pry, Ken. Would asking you how long you're going to be around be prying?"
"No, Sir. I'll be around a long time, I think. Four, five, maybe even six months."
Well, I suppose, if you're young, and in uniform, five or six months is a "long time."
"And then?"
"They haven't told me."
"And if they had, he wouldn't tell us," Ernie said, adding intensely, "I really hate this goddamn war!"
"You are not too big to be told to watch your mouth, young lady."
"What would you prefer, that I call it 'this noble enterprise to save the world for democracy'?"
"That has a nice ring to it," McCoy said.
"Oh, go to hell!" Ernie said.
Ken McCoy did, in fact, know where he would be going in four to six months-he'd been told the week before; it was classified TOP SECRET. And he had been really impressed with what he would be doing, and with the long-range planning for the war the upper echelons of the military establishment were now carrying on.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff intended to bomb the home islands of the Empire of Japan. Though the islands from which the planes would fly to attack Tokyo and other Japanese cities were now firmly in Japanese hands, the big brass was so sure that the war in the Pacific would see their capture that they had turned their attention to the details.
One of the details was weather information. Without accurate weather pre-dictions-including something called "Winds Aloft," which McCoy had never heard of before last week-long-range bombing of Japan would not be possible.
The ideal place to locate a weather-reporting station would be as close to Japan as possible. Since locating a weather station near Japan was out of the question, the next-best place-for reasons not explained to McCoy-was the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.
Until he had time to think about it, he was genuinely surprised that United States military personnel were presently in the Gobi Desert, which was about as far behind the enemy lines as it was possible to get. Though there were a few soldiers and sailors, the majority of them were United States Marines who had been stationed in Peking and elected not to surrender to the Japanese when the war began. They had made for the Gobi Desert for reasons that were not en-tirely clear but that certainly included avoiding capture.
They had taken with them a number of ex-China Marines, Yangtze River Patrol sailors, and members of the Army's 15th Infantry who had taken their retirement in China and considered themselves recalled from retirement. There were supposed to be sixty-seven of them.
They had established radio contact through American forces in China, and were now in direct contact with Army and Navy radio stations in Hawaii, Aus-tralia, and the continental United States. They were ordered to maintain contact and to avoid capture, but not informed of the plans being made for them.