To repair it would mean removing it from the boat, heat-ing it, beating it with hammers until it was straight again, and then putting it back in the boat. Taylor was not at all sure it could be done, and told McCoy so.
"We can't tow this with the other boat?" McCoy asked.
Taylor shook his head, "no."
"Maybe in the open sea," he said. "But not with the tides in the channel."
"Then I guess we'll have to fix this one," McCoy said.
When they heard the sound of aircraft engines, they had gotten as far as removing the bent shaft from the boat, and building a makeshift forge and anvil, both from rocks. The shaft would have to be heated first until it was glowing red before an attempt could be made to straighten it.
There was considerable doubt that the shaft could be heated hot enough on the wood fire, and neither Taylor nor the Korean, who had some experience with rudimentary metalworking, could even make a guess as to how often the heating/hammering process would have to be repeated, if, indeed, the heating could be done at all.
Two Corsairs appeared where the Corsairs had appeared the day before, coming down the Flying Fish Channel from the lighthouse. But today one of them was much lower, not more than 300 feet off the water, and with his landing gear down.
"Jesus," McCoy said, softly, to Taylor and Zimmerman, "do you think he's going to drop us a radio?"
"He's going to drop something," Zimmerman said.
McCoy stared intently at the approaching airplane, but could see nothing but ordnance hanging from the hard-points under its wings.
And then something did come off the aircraft, some-thing small, at the end of what looked like a ribbon.
The moment the object started to fall, the landing gear of the Corsair started to retract into the wings, and the air-craft banked to the left to avoid the hill and began to pick up altitude.
The object dropped from the Corsair lost its forward ve-locity and then dropped straight down, landing ten yards from the wharf and twenty yards from the shore. The rib-bon, or whatever it was, now lay on the surface of the mud left by the receding tide. Whatever it was attached to was buried in the mud.
McCoy turned to look at Zimmerman. He was sitting on the ground, pulling his boondockers and socks off. Then he stripped out of the black pajama shirt and trousers and then his underpants.
Zimmerman started wading out through the mud toward the ribbon. He sank over his ankles in the mud, and once, for a moment, it looked as if he was stuck in the mud and about to fall. But he regained his balance, and finally had his hand on the white ribbon. He started to pull on it, and then met more resistance than he thought he would. So he waded farther out, to where the ribbon's end entered the mud. He carefully began to haul upward on the ribbon. Thirty seconds later, he was holding something in his hand.
"It's a fucking flashlight!" he called in disgust.
"Bring it ashore," McCoy called, and Zimmerman started to wade back toward the shore, winding the ribbon around the "flashlight" as he moved.
He finally came ashore, puffing from the exertion.
"How'm I going to get this stinking fucking muck off my legs?" he asked, and tossed the "flashlight" and the muddy ribbon around it to McCoy.
The ribbon, McCoy immediately saw, was parachute silk. He unwound it from around the "flashlight," and saw that it was indeed a flashlight, a big four battery-size one from some mechanic's tool kit. The twenty-foot-long strip of parachute silk had been attached to the flashlight's cylinder with heavy tape.
He moved the switch. There was no light.
He unscrewed the head and saw that one of the batteries had been removed, and that there was a piece of folded pa-per where it had been. He carefully removed it and un-folded it. It was a message written in grease penciclass="underline"
From Pickering
"Radio on the way.
Hang In There.
Semper Fi
Dunn
Lieutenant Taylor, Major Kim, and Master Gunner Zim-merman-who was still naked, and had both hands cov-ered with the mud he had tried unsuccessfully to wipe from his legs-walked up to McCoy.
"What the hell is it?" Taylor asked.
McCoy handed the note to him. Taylor read it and started to hand it to Zimmerman, changed his mind, and held it in front of Zimmerman's face so that he could read it.
"Mr. Zimmerman, if you don't mind my saying so," Mc-Coy said. "You smell of dead fish and other rotten things I don't even want to think about."
"Fuck you, Killer," Zimmerman said, but he had to smile.
Taylor handed the note to Major Kim.
" `On the way' doesn't tell us when," Taylor said. "Or how."
"If General Pickering says a radio is on the way, a radio is on the way," McCoy said. "That's good news."
"And what do we do until the good news arrives?" Zim-merman asked.
"You, Mr. Zimmerman, will make every effort to make yourself presentable," McCoy said. "The rest of us will try to fix the boat, meanwhile hoping that nobody goes sailing by and wonders what the hell the natives here have con-cealed under that camouflage net by the wharf."
"With the tide out like this," Taylor thought aloud, "we can't get it ashore, either."
"Let's get started on the boat," McCoy said. "Major Kim, would you put a couple of people out on the wharf to give us warning if we're going to have visitors?"
[SEVEN]
ABOARD WIND OF GOOD FORTUNE
37 DEGREES 38 MINUTES NORTH LATITUDE,
126 DEGREES 57 MINUTES EAST LONGITUDE
THE YELLOW SEA
1500 25 AUGUST 1950
Captain George F. Hart, USMCR, now attired in black cot-ton pajamas, with a band of the same material around his forehead, nodded when Captain Kim pointed at a landmass on the horizon. Then he mimed making his radio report by holding an imaginary microphone in front of his mouth. Captain Kim nodded, and either cleared his throat or grunted.
Hart went down the ladder to his cabin, turned on the light, took out his notebook, and went through each step necessary to turn the radio on. Then he put on the headset and picked up the microphone.
"Dispatch, Dispatch, H-l, H-l," he said.
There was an immediate response, which this time- Hart having acquired faith in his ability to control the vol-ume in his headset-did not hurt his ears.
"H-l, Dispatch, go."
"One Seven Three," Hart said into the microphone. "I say again, One Seven Three."
"Dispatch understands One Seven Three, confirm," the voice in Hart's earphones said.
"Confirm, confirm," Hart said into the microphone.
"H-l, Dispatch. Stand by to copy."
That was the first time he'd heard that order, and he had absolutely no idea how he was supposed to reply.
"Okay, Dispatch," he said into the microphone.
"Message begins, Proceed your discretion with great caution. Report immediately. Godspeed. The Boss, Mes-sage ends. Acknowledge."
"Acknowledged," Hart said, without really thinking about it.
"Dispatch clear."
The hiss came back to Hart's earphones.
Hart laid the microphone down, took off the headset, and then shut the radio down.
He went back on deck.
Captain Kim looked at him with a question in his eyes.
He wants to know if I've finished.
Hart nodded.