"You're going to be on those islands, are you?" Dunn asked.
McCoy didn't reply.
"The colonel asked you a question, Captain," Lieutenant Colonel Unger said, unpleasantly.
"Which question, obviously," Dunn said, "Captain Mc-Coy is not at liberty to answer. Easy, Charley."
"I don't like diverting aircraft from the brigade for any purpose," Unger said.
"And I know Captain McCoy doesn't like it any more than you do," Dunn said. "You said you wanted to see me privately, McCoy?"
"Yes, sir, I do."
"Why don't we go to my cabin?" Dunn suggested. "And get out of the captain's sea cabin?"
He gestured for McCoy to precede him into a passageway.
The Badoeng Strait-and the Sicily-on which the Ma-rine air wing had been transported from the United States and from which the wing was now operating, were offi-cially "escort carriers," often called "Jeep carriers." They were smaller than "a real carrier," and everybody believed they were in service because they were far cheaper to oper-ate than "real" carriers.
While they were perfectly capable of doing what they were doing now, they were smaller all over, which also meant "the creature comforts," such as officers' state-rooms, were fewer in number and less spacious than those on a "real carrier."
Even senior officers often had to share their staterooms with another officer. There was a cardboard sign in a slot on the door of the stateroom to which Dunn led McCoy, white letters stamped on a blue background. It read:
Lt Col W. C. Dunn, USMC
Maj M. S. Pickering, USMCR
Dunn pushed the door open and motioned for McCoy to precede him inside, then gestured for him to sit in one of the two chairs in the stateroom. He closed the door and leaned against it.
`Taking care of his gear is another little task Pick left behind for me to take care of," Dunn said, pointing to a packed canvas bag sitting on one of the bunks.
McCoy didn't reply.
"It has been decided that Major Pickering will become a Marine legend," Dunn said. "An ace, a hero of Guadalcanal and other places, a reservist who rushed to the sound of the guns when they blew the trumpet, who flew the first Ma-rine combat sortie of this war, and died nobly in the glori-ous traditions of the Corps while engaging a target of opportunity. The sonofabitch should have been court-martialed for disobeying a direct order, and I'm the sono-fabitch who should have court-martialed him."
McCoy looked up at him.
Tears were running unashamedly down Lieutenant Colonel Dunn's cheeks.
"What happened?" McCoy asked.
Dunn went to the desk and took from it an envelope and handed it to McCoy. There were three eight-by-ten-inch color photographs in it. At first glance, McCoy thought they were three copies of the same photograph, but then he saw there were differences. In each, Pick, smiling broadly, was pointing up at the cockpit of his Corsair. But Pick was dressed differently in each photo. In one of the photos, he was wearing a.45 in a shoulder holster; in the others he was not. And he was wearing different flight suits. Then McCoy saw what he was pointing at.
Below the cockpit canopy track there was the legend "Major M. S. Pickering, USMCR," and below that, nine "meat balls," representations of the Japanese battle flag, each signifying a downed Japanese aircraft.
And then, on one photograph, below the meatballs, there was a rather clever painting of a railroad locomotive blow-ing up.
There were two blowing-up locomotives painted on the fuselage in the second picture, and three in the third.
"The sonofabitch told me he was going to be the first `locomotive ace' in the history of Marine aviation," Dunn said. "He even wrote a letter to the Air Force asking if they had kept a record of who had blown up how many locomo-tives in the Second War."
"Jesus Christ!" McCoy said.
"He was like a fourteen-year-old with a five-inch fire-cracker on the Fourth of July after he got the first one," Dunn said. "The first time, debris got his ADF, and there were holes all over his wings. That should have taught him something. It didn't."
"That's what he was doing when he got shot down?"
"In direct disobedience of my order not to go locomo-tive hunting. Said direct order issued after he got his sec-ond locomotive, the debris from which took out the hydraulics to his left landing gear, which made it necessary for him to crash-land on the deck. I ordered him (a) not to go locomotive hunting-"
"You don't consider them important targets?" McCoy asked.
"There's plenty to shoot at out there. The idea, McCoy, is to fly over the area, and establish contact with the ground controller. He knows what needs to be hit. If he doesn't have an immediate target you wait-they call it `loiter'- until he has a mission. If the controller didn't have a mis-sion, Pick then went locomotive-hunting."
McCoy didn't reply.
"Sure, locomotives, trains, are legitimate targets. We regularly schedule three-plane flights to see what's on the railway. When three planes attack a train, their antiair-craft fire, ergo sum, is divided between the three air-planes. A single plane gets all the antiaircraft, which multiplies the chances of getting hit by three. Pick knew all this, and..." He stopped. "I (a) ordered him not to go locomotive hunting; (b) if he happened on a train, he was not to attack it without permission, and not try himself. The train's not going to go anywhere in the time it would take to have a couple of Corsairs join up...."
"I get the picture," McCoy said. "It sounds like Pick."
"My God, Ken, he's not twenty-one years old anymore, fresh from Pensacola, thinking he can win the war all by himself. He was a goddamn major, a squadron com-mander, supposed to set an example for the kids. He set an example, all right. When he didn't come back, the pilots in his squadron were ready to take off right then and shoot up every locomotive between Pusan and Seoul. Remember that football movie? Ronald Reagan? `Get one for the Gipper!' Now they want to `Bust one for the skipper'!"
Dunn exhaled audibly.
"I don't know how the hell I'm going to stop that," he went on. "What we are supposed to do here is provide close air support, on demand, for the brigade. Not indulge some childish whim to see a locomotive explode, as if Ko-rea is a shooting gallery set up for our personal pleasure."
"You said `was,' Billy," McCoy said. "You think he's dead?"
Dunn shrugged.
"I don't know," he said. "As he himself frequently an-nounced, `God takes care of fools and drunks, and I qualify on both counts.'" He paused again. "I think he probably survived the crash. When I thought about it, that was the seventh Corsair he's dumped. What happened afterward, I don't know. The North Koreans obviously went looking for him. If they found him..."
"If he survived, and was captured alive, they might want to see what they can find out about Marine aviation from a Marine major," McCoy said. "What worries me is that they might make the connection between Major Pickering and Brigadier General Pickering..."
"I didn't think about that," Dunn said.
"... who is the Assistant Director of the CIA for Asia," McCoy went on. "I don't think there are many North Ko-rean agents reading The Washington Post for their order of battle, but the Russians certainly do. That information was in Moscow within twenty-four hours of the time that story was printed. Did the Russians already pass it on to the North Koreans? I don't know."
"Is there some way you can find out? If he's a prisoner, I mean. An extra effort?"