"I've got some Sen-Sen, Sir," Koffler said. "A little one, please."
"Now that you've taken those apart, can you put them back together again?" Pickering asked, indicating the carbines. "What are you doing, any-way?"
"Working on the sears," Stecker said.
Pickering was aware that the carbines were almost certainly in perfectly functioning order as they came out of their crates. But he was not at all sur-prised that Stecker and McCoy felt it necessary to fine-tune them. They were not only Marines, nor even only Marine marksmen-both had drawn extra pay as enlisted men for being Expert Riflemen-but weapons experts.
"I think we can get them back together, General," McCoy said. "And if the Colonel can't, Sergeant Koffler can."
Stecker chuckled.
"And you're determined that's what you want to take with you?" Picker-ing asked.
"I'd rather take a Garand," McCoy said.
"I thought I'd explained why we... why you should take the carbines," Stecker said.
"That's not what the General asked, Colonel," McCoy said, smiling at Stecker. "The General asked me what I'd rather take. I will take one of these, but I'd rather take a Garand."
"He was a sea lawyer the first time I ever met him," Stecker said, smiling at Pickering. "Wiseass little China Marine corporal in a handmade uniform. Knew everything. Had Expert medals pinned all over him. But when he went on the KD range, he couldn't hit anything but the butts. It looked like a Chinese fire drill, with all those Maggie's drawers flying." (The KD range was the known distance small-arms range, while Maggie's drawers was a red flag waved from the target butts to signal a complete miss.)
"Christ." McCoy chuckled. "I forgot about that. Until I figured out what that bastard was doing to me, I thought I was losing my mind."
"Until what bastard was doing what to you?" Pickering asked.
"General," Stecker said, "I know you'll find this hard to believe, but there were a number of officers who didn't think Corporal McCoy should be an officer and a gentleman."
"There was a Master Gunny who didn't think so either, as I remember it," McCoy said.
Before being called to active duty as a reserve officer, Stecker was the senior master gunnery sergeant at Marine Base, Quantico, Virginia.
"I didn't say that," Stecker said. "I said that if by some miracle you got through OCS, you would probably be the worst officer in the history of The Corps. And time seems to have proved me right."
"Are you two going to explain what you're talking about?" Pickering said.
"As I was saying, General, before this impertinent sea lawyer interrupted me," Stecker said, "there was a lieutenant who was sent right up the wall by the prospect of this young man putting on an officer's uniform-"
"Macklin," McCoy interrupted. "Robert B. Macklin. That was the sonofabitch's name!"
"That's the man," Stecker said. "What happened, General, was that he tried to get the sea lawyer here kicked out of OCS."
"Why?" Pickering asked.
"I had a run-in with him in China," McCoy said, "when I was working for Ed Banning. He was-is, if he's still alive, and I suppose it's too much to hope that he isn't-a miserable, lying sonofabitch. Banning wrote him an effi-ciency report that should have gotten him kicked out of The Corps, and would have, if the war hadn't come along."
Whatever happened in China, Pickering decided, if Ed Banning sided with McCoy, the officer in question was dead wrong.
Stecker saw the confusion on Pickering's face.
"I didn't know any of this at the time," he explained. "Ken being too proud, or too dumb, to ask for help."
"What was I supposed to say, 'Gunny, this lieutenant doesn't like me, and is being mean to me'?"
"Yeah," Stecker said. "Exactly. That's exactly what you should have done. And told me why he didn't like you."
"You would have laughed me out of your office," McCoy said.
"Anyway," Stecker said. "I heard that McCoy wasn't qualifying on the KD range. That didn't seem right, so I went and had a look, and found this Lieutenant Macklin in the pits, scoring McCoy's targets himself. He was scor-ing every third shot as a Maggie's drawers. Then I did some snooping around and got the rest of the story."
"In other words, General," McCoy said, "if it wasn't for the Gunny here sticking his nose in where it didn't belong, I would now be a buck sergeant in some nice, safe mess-kit-repair platoon somewhere."
Instead of, Pickering thought, getting ready for the third time to climb into a rubber boat and paddle it ashore from a submarine onto a Japanese-held island. First the Makin Island raid, then Buka to get Howard and Koffler out,
and now the Philippines.
"There's a word for someone like you, Lieutenant," Stecker said. "It's spelled ungrateful sonofabitch."
"I didn't think full bull colonels, Colonel, were supposed to swear at inno-cent junior officers like me," McCoy said piously.
"Speaking of sonsofbitches," Pickering said, having decided that it was time to get to what he'd come to tell McCoy. He waited until both Stecker and McCoy were looking at him, and then went on.
"I ran into Phil DePress," he said. "And learned from him that Fertig is a light bird, or was, before he promoted himself."
"How does that make Phil a sonofabitch?" Stecker asked.
"The sonofabitch is the unnamed brigadier general, Army type, on El Su-premo's staff who certainly knew this and elected not to tell me."
"Why not, General?" McCoy asked.
"Aside from his being an all-around sonofabitch, you mean? Here's what I'm thinking. For one thing, Fertig, who came on active duty as a captain, was twice promoted for outstanding performance. By whom? If not by El Supremo himself, then by somebody high up in the palace guard. Two promotions-in what, six months?-means that he was doing an outstanding job."
McCoy nodded, and made a motion of his hand toward Colonel Stecker. The meaning was obvious. Here's the proof of what you just said: When the 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal, Stecker landed on Tulagi-across the channel from Guadalcanal-as a major, commanding 2nd Battalion, Fifth Marines. Shortly after that, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel on Guadal-canal. And earlier today, there was a Special Channel Personal message to Pickering from the Secretary of the Navy. A paragraph of that informed him that Stecker was shortly going to be transferred to Washington, and was pro-moted to full colonel.
Colonel Stecker took McCoy's meaning, and grew uncomfortable. His promotion and transfer meant that he would not be going into the Philippines. Two things were wrong with that. Personally, he'd rather go to the Philippines than to Washington. He thought he might be of some genuine use there; he wasn't at all sure that would be true in Washington. And secondly, although he would have been happy to publicly announce that Ken McCoy was one hell of a Marine officer, he thought that by sending him in alone to the Philippines, Pickering was placing more responsibility on his shoulders than he should re-ally ask of a twenty-two-year-old.
Pickering nodded. "Precisely," he said. "And Fertig being an outstanding officer does not fit in with the picture El Supremo, and especially Willoughby, want to paint of him now."
"You've lost me, Flem," Stecker said.
"It is their official position that setting up guerrilla activities in the Philip-pines is impossible. Unless, of course, they set them up, at some unspecified time in the future. And here comes this guy, a reservist, who announces that he has recruited people, set up U.S. Forces in the Philippines, and appointed him-self as commanding general; then says that as soon as we can get him the materiel to do it with, he will commence guerrilla activities against the Japa-nese. Since it wasn't their idea, obviously it's bad, and so is this guy. And if he succeeds, he will make Willoughby, and by inference El Supremo himself, look foolish."