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  PRAISE FOR W.E.B. GRIFFIN’S ALL-TIME CLASSIC SERIES,

  THE CORPS

  W.E.B. Griffin’s bestselling saga of

  the heroes we call Marines…

  “THE BEST CHRONICLER OF THE U.S. MILITARY EVER TO PUT PEN TO PAPER.”

  —Phoenix Gazette

  “A BRILLIANT STORY…NOT ONLY WORTHWHILE, IT’S A PUBLIC SERVICE.”

  —The Washington Times

  “GREAT READING. A superb job of mingling fact and fiction…[Griffin’s] characters come to life.”

  —The Sunday Oklahoman

  “THIS MAN HAS REALLY DONE HIS HOMEWORK…I confess to impatiently awaiting the appearance of succeeding books in the series.”

  —The Washington Post

  “GRIFFIN’S BOOKS HAVE HOOKED ME…THERE IS NO ONE BETTER.”

  —Chattanooga News-Free Press

  “W. E. B. GRIFFIN HAS DONE IT AGAIN!”

  —Rave Reviews

  “ACTION-PACKED…DIFFICULT TO PUT DOWN.”

  —Marine Corps Gazette

  Turn the page for reviews of W.E.B. Griffin’s other bestselling series…

  BROTHERHOOD OF WAR

  A sweeping military epic of the United States Army that

  became a New York Times bestselling phenomenon.

  “A MAJOR WORK…MAGNIFICENT…POWERFUL…If books about warriors and the women who love them were given medals for authenticity, insight and honesty, Brotherhood of War would be covered with them.”

  —William Bradford Huie, author of

  The Klansman and The Execution of Private Slovik

  “Brotherhood of War gets into the hearts and minds of those who by choice or circumstances are called upon to fight our nation’s wars.”

  —William R. Corson, Lt. Col. (Ret.) U.S.M.C.,

  author of The Betrayal and The Armies of Ignorance

  “Captures the rhythms of army life and speech, its rewards and deprivations…A WELL-WRITTEN, ABSORBING ACCOUNT.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “REFLECTS THE FLAVOR OF WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE A PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER.”

  —Frederick Downs, author of The Killing Zone

  “LARGE, EXCITING, FAST-MOVING.”

  —Shirley Ann Grau, author of The Keepers of the House

  “A MASTER STORYTELLER who makes sure each book stands on its own.”

  —Newport News Press

  “GRIFFIN HAS BEEN CALLED THE LOUIS L’AMOUR OF MILITARY FICTION, AND WITH GOOD REASON.”

  —Chattanooga News-Free Press

  BADGE OF HONOR

  W. E. B. Griffin’s electrifying epic series

  of a big-city police force…

  “DAMN EFFECTIVE…He captivates you with characters the way few authors can.”

  —Tom Clancy

  “TOUGH, AUTHENTIC…POLICE DRAMA AT ITS BEST…Readers will feel as if they’re part of the investigation, and the true-to-life characters will soon feel like old friends. Excellent reading.”

  —Dale Brown, bestselling author of

  Day of the Cheetah and Hammerheads

  “COLORFUL…GRITTY…TENSE.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “A REAL WINNER.”

  —New York Daily News

  “NOT SINCE JOSEPH WAMBAUGH have we been treated to a police story of the caliber that Griffin gives us. He creates a story about real people in a real world doing things that are AS REAL AS TODAY’S HEADLINES.”

  —Harold Coyle, bestselling author

  of Team Yankee and Sword Point

  “FANS OF ED MCBAIN’S 87TH PRECINCT NOVELS BETTER MAKE ROOM ON THEIR SHELVES…Badge of Honor is first and foremost the story of the people who solve the crimes. The characters come alive.”

  —Gainesville Times (GA)

  “GRITTY, FAST-PACED…AUTHENTIC.”

  —Richard Herman, Jr., author

  of The Warbirds

  TITLES BY W. E. B. GRIFFIN

  HONOR BOUND

  HONOR BOUND

  BLOOD AND HONOR

  SECRET HONOR

  BROTHERHOOD

  OF WAR

  BOOK I: THE LIEUTENANTS

  BOOK II: THE CAPTAINS

  BOOK III: THE MAJORS

  BOOK IV: THE COLONELS

  BOOK V: THE BERETS

  BOOK VI: THE GENERALS

  BOOK VII: THE NEW BREED

  BOOK VIII: THE AVIATORS

  BOOK IX: SPECIAL OPS

  THE CORPS

  BOOK I: SEMPER FI

  BOOK II: CALL TO ARMS

  BOOK III: COUNTERATTACK

  BOOK IV: BATTLEGROUND

  BOOK V: LINE OF FIRE

  BOOK VI: CLOSE COMBAT

  BOOK VII: BEHIND THE LINES

  BOOK VIII: IN DANGER’S PATH

  BOOK IX: UNDER FIRE

  BOOK X: RETREAT, HELL!

  BADGE OF HONOR

  BOOK I: MEN IN BLUE

  BOOK II: SPECIAL OPERATIONS

  BOOK III: THE VICTIM

  BOOK IV: THE WITNESS

  BOOK V: THE ASSASSIN

  BOOK VI: THE MURDERERS

  BOOK VII: THE INVESTIGATORS

  BOOK VIII: FINAL JUSTICE

  MEN AT WAR

  BOOK I: THE LAST HEROES

  BOOK II: THE SECRET WARRIORS

  BOOK III: THE SOLDIER SPIES

  BOOK IV: THE FIGHTING AGENTS

  BOOK V: THE SABOTEURS

  BOOK VI: THE DOUBLE AGENTS

  PRESIDENTIAL AGENT

  BOOK I: BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT

  BOOK II: THE HOSTAGE

  BOOK III: THE HUNTERS

  HONOR BOUND

  W. E. B. GRIFFIN

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

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  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  HONOR BOUND

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Jove mass-market edition / November 1994

  Copyright © 1993 by W.E.B. Griffin.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 978-1-44
06-3233-4

  Visit our website at www.penguin.com

  JOVE®

  Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  JOVE is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “J” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  I would like to thank Mr. William W. Duffy II, of the United States Embassy in Buenos Aires, and Colonel José Manuel Menéndez, Cavalry, Argentine Army, Retired, who both went well beyond the call of duty in helping me in many ways as I was writing this book.

  W. E. B. Griffin

  Buenos Aires 10 August 1993

  Contents

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  I

  [ONE]

  Henderson Field

  Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands

  0645 1 October 1942

  Three Grumman F4F Wildcats approached Henderson Field from the west in a shallow descent from 15,000 feet.

  These three single-engine fighters represented one hundred percent of the aircraft available to Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-221—which put them at thirteen planes short of the sixteen they were authorized. The Cactus Air Force, and ultimately the United States Marine Corps, obviously had to do something.

  The remaining pilots of VMF-221 had heard two fairly credible rumors about what they would do.

  According to the most pleasant rumor, any day now they would return to Henderson and find the taxiways and sandbag revetments crowded with sixteen glistening, new, well-maintained Wildcats of a Marine fighter squadron flown in from an aircraft carrier to replace VMF-221.

  To those who desperately wished to believe this rumor, it didn’t make much sense to send replacement aircraft and pilots to a squadron that had already suffered a loss of two hundred twenty percent of its original aircraft and seventy percent of its original complement of pilots. The only sensible solution was to bring in a fresh squadron.

  The other theory attempted to account for the reason why VMF-221 had neither received enough aircraft and pilots to replace operational losses, nor had been relieved and replaced by a fresh Marine Fighter Squadron. According to this rumor, the plan was to replace all Marine aircraft with planes, pilots, and maintenance personnel of the U.S. Army Air Corps.

  It was almost a matter of faith among Marines on Guadalcanal that somewhere in the rear areas was a vast cornucopia of U.S. Army Air Corps matériel and personnel perfectly suited for service on the island; all that had to be done to start this wealth flowing to Guadalcanal was for the Army brass—in particular General Douglas MacArthur—to belatedly recognize that the Army and the Marine Corps were on the same side in this war.

  Those who were looking for proof of the Army Air Corps’ matériel wealth and their ability to send some of it to Guadalcanal seemed to find it whenever Boeing B-17 “Flying Fortresses”—huge four-engine bombers with an eight-man crew—appeared at Henderson Field. The squadron of Bell P-40 fighters stationed at the field offered further proof…to those looking for it.

  True, the B-17s didn’t hit Japanese warships with any notable consistency, and the P-40s had arrived without the proper oxygen systems and thus couldn’t operate above 12,000 feet. But that did nothing to dissuade the We Will Be Relieved By The Army Air Corps theorists of VMF-221. The B-17s bristled with .50-caliber Browning machine-gun turrets, carried 500-pound bombs, and were larger than any planes the Marines or Navy had, while the Bell fighters mounted a through-the-propeller hub cannon larger than any weapon in the Marine Corps arsenal and were more effective in a ground-support role than the Wildcats.

  As soon as the big brass came to their senses and realized how the Cactus Air Force was hanging on to Henderson Field by their fingernails (just as perilously as the Marine Corps was holding on to Guadalcanal itself), a finger would be snapped and a vast aerial armada of Army Air Corps aircraft would appear. Or so went the rumor.

  The leader of the three-plane flight of VMF-221 Wildcats was unconvinced by both theories. He was First Lieutenant Cletus Howell Frade, USMCR, a lanky—hundred fifty-five pounds, just over six feet tall—dark-haired twenty-two-year-old.

  Lieutenant Colonel Clyde W. Dawkins, USMC, Commanding Officer, Marine Air Group 21, had told him (and Frade believed him) that the Corps was not only fully aware that the First Marine Division and MAG-21 were indeed hanging on to Guadalcanal by their teeth, but was doing everything humanly possible to get them reinforced. With a little luck, it might be possible to find some planes somewhere, and an aircraft carrier to ferry them within flying distance of Guadalcanal. In the meantime, they would have to fight with what they had. It was not the first time in the history of the Marine Corps, Dawkins had reminded him, that Marines had been out on a limb fighting a nasty war in some miserable location without adequate supplies. And it would not be the last.

  This information had led Cletus Frade to strongly suspect that he would not be going home from Guadalcanal in one piece. Or alive. The odds were against it. So far he had been lucky. Very lucky. But luck inevitably runs out. The odds increase to a point where, following the laws of probability, you lose.

  He tried to avoid such thoughts, but that was impossible. So he tried to keep in mind what his uncle Jim had told him over and over: “There’s no point worrying about things you can’t control.” Uncle Jim had raised him; but before that he’d been a Marine in France in World War I. So whenever Clete started to think about the growing probability that he would either be killed or badly injured, he tried to force his mind off the subject by imagining more attractive things.

  Sometimes conjuring up the meal he intended to eat when he got home to New Orleans worked. But most often he turned to his memories of undraped female bodies. Recently, however, when he forced his mind off the unpleasant possibilities, he found himself turning more to food than to women. He supposed this was because he was undernourished and debilitated by the climate, like every other Marine on the ’Canal.

  He weighed right at one-eighty when, fresh from Pensacola, he joined VMF-221—in time for the Battle of Midway. On 10 August, three days after the 1st Marine Division invaded the island, he was down to one-seventy. That was the day he flew a Wildcat off the ferry-carrier USS Long Island onto the airfield the Japanese had started and the Marines had made marginally operational. This had since become famous—or infamous—as Henderson Field (named after a Marine aviator who’d died at Midway).

  He was now down to one fifty-five. His ribs showed under skin that was dotted and pocked with the festering bites of tropical insects. When he brushed his teeth, the brush came away bloody; and his tongue could move both his incisors and some of his other teeth.

  Every one of the original F4Fs was gone—some shot down in daily combat, some crashed on landing or takeoff, and some destroyed by Japanese naval artillery bombardment, or by Japanese bombers or Zeroes strafing the field. Sixteen of the original nineteen pilots were also gone—some lost in combat, some killed or injured in aircraft accidents, and three killed by Japanese twelve-inch naval artillery shells—while they were cowering like rats in holes in the sandy soil. And gone, too, were all but three of the replacement aircraft, and many of their pilots.

  It was difficult to believe that he would be luckier than the others. It was much more likely that the name Frade, Cletus H., 1/LT would appear on some After Action Report followed by the letter
s KIA, or MIA, or WIA (Killed In Action, Missing In Action, Wounded In Action).

  When Henderson Field appeared below, Clete reached up and pulled his goggles down over his eyes, then looked out his open cockpit to his right, at his wingman, who three days before had reported aboard VMF-221 as a replacement pilot. The new man’s eyes were on him.

  Clete made two gestures: He tapped his own goggles to order the new guy to put his goggles on. After that he pointed downward, then made a circular motion, signaling that they were to make a circular descent to the airfield. The new guy, with an exaggerated bobbing of his head, signaled that he understood his orders.

  Clete then looked to the left and repeated the circular descent signal to the pilot of the F4F flying twenty-five feet off his wingtip, and who already had his goggles in place. There was another exaggerated nodding of the head to signal his readiness to comply with his orders.

  Clete took a final look at his instruments. Everything was in the green. He was sure that he had taken a couple of hits—indeed, there were fresh eruptions in the aluminum skin of his right wing—but apparently nothing important had been hit.

  He pushed the nose of the Wildcat down and to the right, retarded the throttle, adjusted the prop, and began his descent.

  A thousand feet indicated off the deck, he put the F4F into a much sharper turn, simultaneously pulled back on his stick, and released the cog that held his wheels in place. The forces of gravity came into play, pulling the wheels from the retracted position. The manual crank one was supposed to use for this spun rapidly and more than a little dangerously, but the wheels came down. The forces-of-gravity technique was specifically prohibited by U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics regulations, but BuAir regulations seemed irrelevant on the ’Canal.

  He leveled off, headed out to sea, turned, and made a straight-in, shallow approach to Henderson. Several B-17s were parked near the Pagoda—the control tower—and three F4Fs were on the taxiway by the threshold of the runway, waiting to take off.