"Yes, sir," the liaison officer repeated.
"McCoy," Major Dunston said, "he wouldn't admit ever having heard your name until I showed him my credentials."
"What made you think he would know my name?" Mc-Coy asked.
"This is what I do for a living, Captain," the major said. "Figure things out. I figured you would be using K-l, and probably be dealing with the Marine liaison officer here."
"Captain," Billy Dunn said. "Let me explain your role in this."
"Yes, sir?"
`Tomorrow, probably before eleven hundred, a COD Avenger will land here. The pilot will hand you a sealed envelope. You will treat that envelope as if it contains Top Secret material, and secure it appropriately until either Captain McCoy or Master Gunner Zimmerman, only, re-peat only, either of those two officers relieves you of it. You will not, repeat not, log the envelope-or any message from McCoy going out to me on the Badoeng Strait-in your classified-documents log."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"If I have to say this, you will not comment on the mys-terious envelopes from and to the Badoeng Strait to any-one. Clear?"
"Aye, aye, sir."
"The idea is the fewer people who know about this, the better. Clear?"
"Understood, sir."
"That about take care of it, Captain McCoy?" Dunn asked.
"Yes, sir."
"Then I'd better be getting back to the Badoeng Strait," Dunn said.
"I'll walk you out to the plane, sir," McCoy said. "I'll be with you shortly, Major."
"Thank you, Billy," McCoy said when they were standing at the wing root of the Avenger, outside Base Operations, where he was sure no one could hear them. "That helped, and I appreciate it. I really need those pictures. I don't want to paddle up to those islands and find half the North Korean army waiting for us. But I really didn't want to have to show that captain the White House orders."
"I think he was sufficiently dazzled by that CIA fellow's badge," Dunn said. "And the message from Pickering."
"More by Colonel Dunn," McCoy said.
"Ken, what if there are more North Koreans on those islands than you think are there? Then what?" Dunn asked.
"I guess we'll have to play that by ear. With a little luck, your pictures will let us know, one way or the other."
"Ken, we have some pretty good photo interpreters on the Badoeng Strait. Maybe they'd be better at looking at the photos than you are."
"Maybe, hell," McCoy said. "But they'd have to be told what we're looking at, and for."
Dunn nodded. "I understand. I noticed you didn't tell that CIA guy much. What's his role in this?"
"I don't know. I wish the general hadn't done that. I know his intentions were good...."
"But?"
"I'm afraid he's clever and will be able to figure things out from what I ask him to get for me. And I'm afraid of who he will tell what's he's thinking."
"But, Christ, he's a CIA agent-an intelligence officer. He's not liable to talk too much, is he?"
"From the tone of the radio teletype, he's obviously sub-ordinate to the Tokyo station chief, which means he would like to prove how clever he is to his boss."
Dunn considered that for a moment, then touched Mc-Coy's shoulder.
"Take care of yourself, Ken," Dunn said. "If you hear anything... you'll let me know?"
"Absolutely," McCoy said.
"Get the bastard back for me," Dunn said. "I really want to burn him a new anal orifice."
"I'm sure as hell going to try," McCoy said, and then: "I'm glad you brought that up. I can turn the CIA guy onto that, and maybe away from what we're going to be doing."
Dunn squeezed McCoy's shoulder with his fingers, and then hoisted himself onto the Avenger's wing root.
McCoy waited until Dunn had started the Avenger's en-gine and was taxiing after the follow me Jeep to the run-way, then started back toward Base Operations, looking for the sergeant Zimmerman had sent to meet him....
Technical Sergeant Jennings found him first. He pulled a Jeep behind McCoy and flashed the headlights on and off to get his attention. McCoy got in beside him.
"Where did you say Mr. Zimmerman was?" McCoy asked.
"In a warehouse on the pier, sir."
"What's he doing there?"
"I really don't know, sir," Sergeant Jennings said, his tone telling McCoy that he knew what Zimmerman was doing but was a wise enough noncom not to be the one who told the new commanding officer.
"Where are we headed, sir?"
"Stop right here and rum the headlights off," McCoy said. "Before we go to the pier, I need some answers."
"Yes, sir?"
"You're going to be part of this operation?" McCoy said.
"Whatever it is, yes, sir."
"Welcome aboard," McCoy said. "Did Mr. Zimmerman tell you what we're going to do?"
"He said you'd get into that, sir."
"Is there a Navy officer with Mr. Zimmerman? Lieu-tenant Taylor?"
"Yes, sir."
"What else is there?"
"There's a dozen of us, sir."
"Mr. Zimmerman was trying to recruit ex-Marine Raiders," McCoy said, but it was a question.
"I was a Raider, sir."
"And that's why you volunteered for this?"
"Yes, sir," Sergeant Jennings said, then added, "Raiders are something special, sir."
"Yes, we are, aren't we? Women find us irresistible, and movie stars ask for our autographs."
Sergeant Jennings chuckled.
"You were a Raider, sir?"
"A long time ago. At the beginning. I was just out of OCS, a really bushy-tailed second lieutenant."
"There was a Lieutenant McCoy on the Makin Island raid...."
"I was at Makin," McCoy said.
"I thought...," Jennings said, and stopped.
"You thought what?"
"That you might be Killer McCoy, sir."
"Pass the word, Sergeant Jennings, that your new skip-per has the nasty habit of castrating, with a dull knife, peo-ple who call him that."
"Aye, aye, sir," Sergeant Jennings said. "But I have to say this. Knowing that makes me feel a lot better about volunteering for this... whatever it is."
"What we're going to try to do is, dressed up in Korean national police uniforms, take a couple of small islands off Inchon with as little fuss as possible. They're supposed to be lightly defended by second-class troops."
Sergeant Jennings considered that, but said nothing for several minutes.
"There's an army transportation corps major waiting for me in Base Operations," McCoy said. "He's actually a CIA agent, actually the CIA's station chief here. He's been or-dered to give us what support he can. But, I decided in the last couple of minutes, I want him to know as little as pos-sible about what we're doing. Make sure that word gets passed."
"Aye, aye, sir," Jennings said, then went on, somewhat hesitantly: "Mr. Zimmerman said you and he have been in Korea for a while, sir?"
"For a while."
"Why is the Army so fucked up, sir?"
"They didn't train," McCoy said. "It's as simple as that. And they're not all fucked up. There's one regiment-the 27th, they call themselves the `Wolfhounds'-that's first class. And there are others. But what it looks like to me is the brass just didn't expect a war, and just weren't prepared for this."
"Nobody thought this was coming?"
As a matter of fact, Sergeant, I told them it was coming. And they tried to get me kicked out of the Marine Corps be-cause they didn't want to hear it.