The Corps 03 - Counterattack Page 4

He did so now. The crank spun, the gear went down, and he locked it in place.

  Then, from memory, he went through the landing check-off list: he unlocked the tail wheel; he lowered and locked the arresting hook, which, if things went well, would catch one of several cables stretched across the deck of the Saratoga and bring him to a safe but abrupt halt

  He pulled his goggles down from where they had been resting on the leather helmet, and then slid open and locked the over-the-cockpit canopy.

  He pushed the carburetor air control all the way in to the Direct position, retarded the throttle, and set the propeller governor for 2100 rpm. He set the mixture control into Auto Rich, opened the cowl flaps, and lowered the wing flaps.

  All the time he was doing this, he was turning on his final approach, that is to say, lining himself up with the deck of the Saratoga.

  The Landing Control Officer was ready for him. Using his paddles, he signaled to Charley Galloway that he was just a hair to the right of a desirable landing path. Then, at the last moment, he made his decision, and signaled Charley to bring it in and set it down.

  Charley’s arresting hook caught the first cable, and the Wildcat was jerked to a sudden halt with a force that was always astonishing. Whenever he made a carrier landing, Charley Galloway felt an enormous sense of relief, and then, despite a genuine effort to restrain it, a feeling of smug accomplishment. Ships and airplanes were different creatures. They were not intended to mate on the high seas. But he had just done exactly that. Again. This made Carrier Landing Number Two Hundred and Six.

  And there weren’t very many people in the whole wide world who could do that even once.

  As the white hats rushed up to disengage the cable, he quickly went through the "Stopping the Engine" checklist, again from memory.

  By the time the propeller stopped turning and he had shut off the ignition, battery, and fuel selector switches, a plane captain was there to help him get out of the cockpit. And he saw Major Verne J. McCaul, USMC, Commanding Officer of VMF-221, standing on the deck, smiling at him. VMF-221, equipped with fourteen F2A-3 Brewster Buffalos, was stationed aboard the Saratoga. Galloway had known him for some time, liked him, and was glad to see him.

  Charley jumped off the wing root and walked to him. "I am delighted," said Major McCaul, who was thirty-five and looked younger, "nay, overjoyed to see you."

  Galloway looked at him suspiciously.

  "The odds were four to one you’d never make it out here," McCaul said. "I took a hundred bucks’ worth at those odds, twenty-five of them for you."

  "You knew I was coming?"

  "There was a radio from Pearl about an hour ago," McCaul said.

  Apparently it didn’t say "arrest on sight," or there would be a Marine with irons waiting for me.

  "Well, that certainly was very nice of you, Sir," Galloway said, not absolutely sure that McCaul wasn’t pulling his leg.

  Proof that he was not came when McCaul handed him five twenty-dollar bills.

  It then occurred to him that he had, literally, jumped from the frying pan into the fire. He had made it this far. But the next stop was Wake Island. The odds, bullshit aside, that Wake could be held against the Japanese seemed pretty remote. He had no good reason to presume that he would be any better a pilot, or any luckier, than the pilots of VFM-211 on Wake who had already been shot down.

  Then he remembered what Big Steve Oblensky had once told him. The function of Marines was to stop bullets for civilians; that’s what they were really paying you for.

  "The Captain wants to see you after you’re cleaned up," Major McCaul said. "In the meantime, I’m sorry to have to tell you, you’re to consider yourself under arrest."

  "Am I in trouble that deep, Major?"

  "I’m afraid so, Charley. The Navy’s really pissed," Major McCaul said. "I’ll do what I can for you, but ... they’re really pissed."

  "Oh, hell," Charley said. And then, not too convincingly, he smiled. "Well, what the hell, Major. What can they do to me? Send me to Wake Island?"

  Chapter Two

  (One)

  Washington, D.C.

  19 December 1941

  As his taxi drove past the White House, Fleming Pickering, a tall, handsome, superbly tailored man in his early forties, noticed steel-helmeted soldiers, armed with rifles, bayonets fixed, guarding the gates.

  He wondered if they were really necessary. Was there a real threat to the security of either the President or the building itself? Or were these guards being used for a little domestic propaganda, a symbol that the nation had been at war for not quite two weeks, and that the White House was now the headquarters of the Commander in Chief?

  Certainly, he reasoned, even before what the President had so eloquently dubbed "a day that will live in infamy," the Secret Service and the White House police must have had contingency plans to protect the President in case of war. These would have called for more sophisticated measures than the posting of a corporal’s guard of riflemen at the White House gates.

  Fleming Pickering, Chairman of the Board of the Pacific and Far Eastern Shipping Corporation, was not an admirer of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States. This was not to say that he did not respect him. Roosevelt was, he acknowledged, both a brilliant man and a consummate master of the art of molding public opinion.

  Roosevelt had managed to garner public support for policies-Lend-Lease in particular-that were, in Pickering’s judgment, not only disastrous and probably illegal, but which had, in the end, on the day of infamy, brought the United States into a war it probably could have stayed out of, and which it was pathetically ill-prepared to fight.

  Fleming Pickering was considerably more aware than most Americans of what an absolute disaster Pearl Harbor had been. He and his wife had been in Honolulu when the Japanese struck. They had witnessed the burning and sinking battleships at the Navy Base, and the twisted, smoldering carnage at Hickam Field.

  Despite his personal misgivings about Roosevelt, less than an hour after the last Japanese aircraft had left, as he watched the rescue and salvage operations, he had understood that the time to protest and oppose the President had passed, that it was clearly his-and everyone’s-duty to rally around the Commander in Chief and make what contribution he could to the war effort.

  Fleming Pickering had come to Washington to offer his services.

  He had two additional thoughts as the taxi drove down Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House.

  First, a feeling of sympathy for the soldiers standing there in the freezing cold in their steel helmets. A tin pot is a miserable sonofabitch to have to wear when it’s cold and snowing and the wind is blowing. He knew that from experience. Corporal Fleming Pickering, USMC, had worn one in the trenches in France in 1918.

  And second, that with a little bit of luck, when the American people learned the hard way what that sonofabitch in the White House had gotten them into, he could be voted out of office in 1944. If there was still something called the United States of America in 1944.

  The taxi, a DeSoto sedan painted yellow, turned off Pennsylvania Avenue, made a sharp U-turn, and pulled to the curb before the marquee of the Foster Lafayette Hotel. A doorman in a heavy overcoat liberally adorned with golden cords trotted out from the protection of his glass-walled guard post and pulled open the door.

  "Well, hello, Mr. Pickering," he said, with a genuine smile. "It’s nice to see you, Sir."

  "Hello, Ken," Pickering said, offering his hand. "What do you think of the weather?"

  Once out of the cab, he turned and handed the driver several dollar bills, indicating with his hand that he didn’t want any change, and then walked quickly into the hotel and across the lobby to the reception desk.

  There was a line, and he took his place in it. Four people were ahead of him. Finally it was his turn.

  "May I help you, Sir?" the desk clerk asked, making it immediately plain to Fleming Pickering that the clerk had no idea who he was.

  "My
name is Fleming Pickering," he said. "I need a place to stay for a couple of days, maybe a week."

  "Have you a reservation, Sir?"

  Pickering shook his head. The desk clerk raised his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  "Without a reservation, Sir . . ."

  "Is Mr. Telford in the house?"

  "Why, yes, Sir, I believe he is."

  "I wonder if you could tell him I’m here, please?"

  Max Telford, resident manager of the Foster Lafayette Hotel, a short, pudgy, balding man wearing a frock coat, striped trousers, and a wing collar, appeared a moment later.

  "We didn’t expect you, Mr. Pickering," he said, offering his hand. "But you’re very welcome, nonetheless."

  "How are you, Max?" Pickering said, smiling. "I gather the house is full."

  "Yes, indeed."

  "What am I to do?" Pickering said. "I need a place to stay. Is there some Democrat we can evict?"

  Telford chuckled. "I don’t think we’ll have to go that far. There’s always room for you here, Mr. Pickering."

  "Is Mrs. Fowler in town?"

  "No, Sir. I believe she’s in Florida."

  "Then why don’t I impose on the Senator?"

  "I’m sure the Senator would be delighted," Telford said. He turned and took a key from the rack of cubbyholes. "I’ll take you up."

  "I know how to find it. Come up in a while, and we’ll have a little liquid cheer."

  "Why don’t I send up a tray of hors d’oeuvres?"

  "That would be nice. Give me fifteen minutes to take a shower. Thank you, Max."

  Pickering took the key and walked to the bank of elevators.

  Max Telford turned to the desk clerk.

  "I know you haven’t been with us long, Mr. Denny, but you do know, don’t you, who owns this inn?"

  "Yes, Sir. Mr. Foster. Mr. Andrew Foster."

  "And you know that there are forty-one other Foster Hotels?"

  "Yes, Sir."

  "Well, for your general information, as you begin what we both hope will be a long and happy career with Foster Hotels, I think I should tell you that Mr. Andrew Foster has one child, a daughter, and that she is married to the chairman of the board of the Pacific and Far Eastern Shipping Corporation."

  "The gentleman to whom you just gave the key to Senator Fowler’s suite?" Mr. Denny asked, but it was more of a pained realization than a question.

  "Correct. Mr. Fleming Pickering. Mr. Pickering and Senator Fowler are very close."

  "I’m sorry, Mr. Telford, I just didn’t know."

  "That’s why I’m telling you. There is one more thing. Until last week, we had a young Marine officer, a second lieutenant, in the house. His name is Malcolm Pickering. If he should ever appear at the desk here, looking for a room, which is a good possibility, I suggest that it would behoove you to treat him with the same consideration with which you would treat Mr. Foster himself; he is Mr. Foster’s grandson, his only grandchild, and the heir apparent to the throne."

  "I take your point, Sir," Mr. Denny said.

  "Don’t look so stricken," Telford said. "They’re all very nice people. The boy, they call him ‘Pick,’ worked two summers for me. Once as a sous-chef at the Foster Park in New York, and the other time as the bell captain at the Andrew Foster in San Francisco."

  (Two)

  Washington, D.C.

  1735 Hours 19 December 1941

  When Senator Richardson S. Fowler walked in, Fleming Pickering was sitting on the wide, leather-upholstered sill of a window in the Senator’s sitting room. A glass of whiskey was in Pickering’s hand.

  Senator Fowler’s suite was six rooms on the corner of the eighth floor of the Foster Lafayette, overlooking the White House, which was almost directly across Pennsylvania Avenue from the hotel.

  "I had them let me in," Fleming Pickering said. "I hope you don’t mind. The house is full."

  "Oh, don’t be silly," Senator Fowler said automatically, and then, with real feeling, "Jesus, Flem, it’s good to see you!"

  Senator Fowler was more than a decade older than Fleming Pickering. He was getting portly, and his jowls were starting to grow rosy and to sag.

  He looks more and more like a politician,Flem Pickering thought, aware that it was unkind. Years ago, as a very young man, Pickering had heard and immediately adopted as part of his personal philosophy an old and probably banal observation that to have friends, one must permit them to have one serious flaw. So far as Pickering was concerned, Richardson Fowler’s flaw was that he was a politician, the Junior Senator from the Great State of California.

  Flem Pickering had a habit of picking up trite and banal phrases and adopting them as his own, ofttimes verbatim, sometimes revising them. So far as he was concerned, Richardson Fowler was the exception to a phrase he had lifted from Will Rogers and altered. Will Rogers said he had never met a man he didn’t like. Pickering’s version was that-Richardson Fowler excepted-he had never met a politician he had liked.

  He had tried and failed to understand what drove Fowler to seek public office. It certainly wasn’t that he needed the work. Richardson Fowler had inherited from his father the San Francisco Courier-Herald, nine smaller newspapers, and six radio stations. His wife and her brother owned, it was said, more or less accurately, two square blocks of downtown San Francisco, plus several million acres of timberland in Washington and Oregon.

  If Fowler was consumed by some desire to do good, to lead people in this direction or that, it seemed to Pickering that the newspapers and the radio stations gave Fowler the means to accomplish it. He didn’t have to run for office-with all that meant-for the privilege of coming east to the hot, muggy, provincial, small Southern town that was the nation’s capital, to consort with a depressing collection of failed lawyers and other scoundrels.

  But, oh, Flem Pickering,he thought, what a hypocrite you are! Right now you are delighted to have access to a man with the political clout you pretend to scorn.

  Senator Fowler dropped his heavy, battered, well-filled briefcase at his feet and crossed the room to Pickering. They shook hands, and then the Senator put his arm around the younger man’s shoulders and hugged him.

  "I was worried about you, you bastard," he said. "You and Patricia. She here with you?"

  "She’s in San Francisco," Pickering said. "She’s fine."

  "And Pick?"

  "He’s at Pensacola, learning how to fly," Pickering said. "I thought you knew."

  "I knew he was going down there," the Senator said. "I had dinner with him, oh, six days, a week ago. But he never came to say good-bye to me."

  There was disappointment, perhaps even a little resentment, in his voice. Senator Fowler had known Pick Pickering from the day he was born.

  "If you were a second lieutenant and they gave you two days off, would you spend them seeing an aging uncle-politician, or trying to get laid?" Pickering asked with a smile.

  The Senator snorted a laugh. "Well, he could have tried to squeeze in fifteen minutes for me between jumps," he said. He turned and walked to an antique sideboard loaded with whiskey bottles. "I have been thinking about having one of these for the last two hours. You all right?"

  Flem Pickering raised his nearly full glass to show that he was.

  Senator Fowler half-filled a glass with Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch, added one ice cube, and then sprayed soda into it from a wire-wrapped soda bottle.

  "This stuff," the Senator said, raising his glass, "is already getting in short supply. Goddamn German submarines."

  "I have four hundred and eleven cases," Fleming Pickering said. "If you treat me right, I might put a case or two aside for you."

  Fowler, smiling, looked at him curiously.

  "Off the Princess, the Destiny, and the Enterprise, " Pickering explained.

  The Pacific Princess, 51,000 tons, a sleek, fast passenger liner, was the flagship of the Pacific and Far Eastern Shipping Corporation. The Pacific Destiny and the Pacific Enterprise, 44,500 tons each, were
sister ships, slightly smaller and slower, but, some said, more luxurious.

  "Is that why you’re here?" Senator Fowler asked. "The Navy after them again? Flem ..."

  Pickering held up his hand to shut him off. "I sold them," he said.

  "When rape is inevitable, etcetera, etcetera?" Fowler asked.

  "No," Pickering said. "I think I could have won that one in the courts. The Navy could have commandeered them, but they couldn’t have forced me to sell them."

  Senator Fowler did not agree, but he didn’t say so. "And it wasn’t patriotism, either," Pickering said. "More like enlightened self-interest."