The Corps II - CALL TO ARMS Page 8

  The first monthly check from the Crocker National Bank had been for four times as much money as he was getting as a supernumerary assistant manager of the Andrew Foster Hotel. He could afford the watch.

  "I'll take it," he said. "If you'll take a check."

  "I'll vouch for the check," Locke said quickly, as a cloud of doubt appeared on the face of the jewelry store clerk.

  "That's a fascinating watch," Locke said, as Pick strapped it on his wrist. "What are all the dials for?"

  "I haven't the foggiest idea," Pick said. "But the Eastern Airlines pilot had one like it. It is apparently what the well-dressed airplane pilot wears."

  Locke chuckled, and then led Pickering into the lobby bar. They took stools and ordered scotch.

  "I really can't offer you the hospitality of the inn for the night, Pick?"

  "I want to get down there and look around," Pick said. "What we Marine officers call 'reconnoitering the area.'"

  "Not even an early supper?"

  "Ah understand," Pick said, in a thick, mock Southern accent, "that this inn serves South'ren fried chicken that would please Miss Scarlett O'Hara herself."

  "That we do," Locke said. "Done to a turn by a native. Of Budapest, Hungary."

  Pickering chuckled. He looked over his shoulder and nodded at a table in the corner of the bar.

  "You serve food here?"

  "Done," Locke said. He reached over the bar and picked up a telephone.

  "Helen," he said. "Edward Locke. Would you have the garage bring Mr. Pickering's car around to the front? And then ask my secretary to bring the manila envelope with 'Mr. Pickering' on it to the bar? And give me the kitchen."

  The manila envelope was delivered first. It contained a marked road map of the route from Atlanta to Pensacola, Florida. It had been prepared with care; there were three sections of road outlined in red, to identify them as speed traps.

  "There's a rumor that at least some of the speed traps are passing servicemen through, as their contribution to the war effort," Locke said. "But I wouldn't bank on that. And on the subject of speed traps, they want cash. You all right for cash?"

  "Fine, thank you," Pickering said. "What about a place to stay once I get there?"

  "All taken care of," Locke said. "An inn called the San Carlos Hotel. Your grandfather tried to buy it a couple of years ago, but it's a family business and they wouldn't sell. They're friends of mine. They'll take good care of you."

  "Just say I'm a friend of yours?"

  "I already called them," Locke said. "They expect you."

  "You're very obliging," Pick said. "Thank you."

  "Good poolside waiters are hard to find," Locke said, smiling.

  (One)

  Temporary Building T-2032

  The Mall

  Washington, D.C.

  1230 Hours, 6 January 1942

  There was a sign reading ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE on the door to the stairway of the two-floor frame building.

  Second Lieutenant Kenneth J. McCoy pushed it open and stepped through it. Inside, there was a wall of pierced-steel netting, with a door of the same material set into it. On the far side of the wall, a Marine sergeant sat at a desk, in his khaki shirt. His blouse hung from a hanger hooked into the pierced-steel-netting wall.

  The sergeant stood up and pushed a clipboard through a narrow opening in the netting. When he stood up, McCoy saw the sergeant was armed with a Colt Model 1911A1.45 ACP pistol, worn in a leather holster hanging from a web belt. Hanging beside his blouse was a Winchester Model 1897 12-gauge trench gun.

  "They've been looking for you, Lieutenant," the sergeant said.

  McCoy wrote his name on the form on the clipboard and pushed it back through the opening in the pierced-metal wall.

  "Who 'they'?" he asked, smiling.

  "The colonel, Captain Sessions," the sergeant said.

  "I was on leave," McCoy said, "but I made the mistake of letting them know where they could find me."

  The sergeant chuckled and then pressed a hidden button. There was the buzzing of a solenoid. When he heard it, McCoy pushed the door in the metal wall open.

  "They said it was important," McCoy said. "Since I am the only second lieutenant around here, what that means is that they need someone to inventory the paper towels and typewriter ribbons."

  The sergeant smiled. "Good luck," he said.

  McCoy went up the wooden stairs two at a time. Beyond a door at the top of the stairs was another pierced-steel wall. There was another desk behind it, but there was no one at the desk, so McCoy took a key from his pocket and put it to a lock in the door.

  He pushed the door open and was having trouble getting his key out of the lock when a tall thin officer saw him. The officer was bent over a desk deeply absorbed with something or other. He was in his shirtsleeves (with the silver leaves of a lieutenant colonel pinned to his collar points), and he was wearing glasses. Even in uniform, and with a snub-nosed.38-caliber Smith Wesson Chief's Special revolver in a shoulder holster, Lieutenant Colonel F. L. Rickabee, USMC, did not look much like a professional warrior.

  He looked up at McCoy with an expression of patient exasperation.

  "The way it works, McCoy," Lieutenant Colonel Rickabee said, as if explaining it to a child, "is that if you're unavoidably detained, you call up and tell somebody. I presume you were unavoidably detained?"

  "Sir," McCoy said, "my orders were to report no later than oh-eight-hundred tomorrow morning."

  Rickabee looked at Second Lieutenant McCoy for a moment. "Goddamn it," he said. "You're right."

  "The sergeant said you were looking for me, sir," McCoy said.

  "Uh- huh," Colonel Rickabee said. "I hope you haven't had lunch."

  "No, sir," McCoy said.

  "Good," Rickabee said. "The chancre mechanics flip their lids if you've been eating."

  "I had breakfast," McCoy said.

  "Don't tell them," Rickabee said.

  "I had a physical when I came back, sir," McCoy said. "That was just a week ago."

  "You're about to have another," Rickabee said.

  He bent over the desk again, shuffled the papers he had been looking at into a neat stack, and then put them into a manila envelope stamped with large red letters SECRET. He put the envelope into a file cabinet, then locked the cabinet with a heavy padlock.

  "Wait here a moment, McCoy," Lieutenant Colonel Rickabee said. "I'll fetch Captain Sessions."

  He went down the corridor and into an office. A moment later, Captain Sessions, USMC, appeared. He was a tall, well-set-up young officer, whose black' hair was cut in a crew cut. His brimmed officer's cap was perched on the back of his head, and he was slipping his arms into his blouse and overcoat. He had obviously removed the blouse and overcoat together.

  "Hey, Killer," he said, smiling, revealing a healthy set of white teeth. "How was the leave?"

  "As long as it lasted, it was fine, thanks," McCoy replied. Captain Sessions was about the only man in the Corps who could call McCoy "Killer" without offending him. Anyone else who did it seldom did it twice. It triggered in McCoy's eyes a coldness that kept it from happening again.

  Captain Sessions was different. For one thing, he said it as a joke. For another, he had proved himself on several occasions to be McCoy's friend when that had been difficult. Perhaps most importantly, McCoy believed that if it had not been for Captain Sessions, he would still be a corporal somewhere-in a machine-gun section or a motor transport platoon. McCoy looked on Sessions as a friend. He didn't have many friends.

  "Major Almond," Captain Sessions said as they went back down the stairs, referring to the Administrative Officer, "is looking forward to jumping your ass for reporting back in late. If he sees you before I see him, or Colonel Rickabee does, you tell him to see one of us."

  "Yes, sir," McCoy said.

  "With a little bit of luck, you'll be out of here before you run into him, and he won't learn that I made a fool of myself again. I really thought you were due ba
ck at oh-eight-hundred this morning."

  "Yes, sir," McCoy repeated. He didn't understand the "you'll be out of here" business, but there was no time to ask. Captain Sessions was already at the foot of the stairs, reaching for the sergeant's clipboard to sign them out.

  "The car's outside?" Sessions asked.

  "No, sir," the sergeant said. "Major Almond took it, sir. He went over to the Lafayette Hotel, looking for Lieutenant McCoy."

  "My car's in the parking lot, sir," McCoy said.

  "Why not?" Sessions said, smiling. He turned to the sergeant. "When Major Almond returns, Sergeant, tell him that Lieutenant McCoy was not AWOL after all, and that I have him."

  "Yes, sir," the sergeant said, then pushed the hidden switch that operated the door lock.

  McCoy's car, a 1939 LaSalle convertible coupe, was covered with snow, and the windows were filmed with ice.

  "I hope you can get this thing started," Captain Sessions said as he helped McCoy chip the ice loose with a key.

  "It should start," McCoy said. "I just put a new battery in it."

  "You didn't take it on leave?" Sessions asked.

  "I went to New York City, sir," McCoy said. "You're better off without a car in New York."

  "You didn't go home?" Sessions asked. He knew more about Second Lieutenant McCoy than anyone else in the Marine Corps, including the fact that he had a father and a sister in Norristown, Pennsylvania.

  "No, sir," McCoy said.

  Sessions found that interesting, but didn't pursue it.

  The car cranked, but with difficulty.

  "I hate Washington winters," McCoy said as he waited for the engine to warm up. "Freeze and thaw, freeze and thaw. Everything winds up frozen."

  "You may shortly look back on Washington winters with fond remembrance," Captain Sessions said.

  "Am I going somewhere, sir?"

  "Right now you're going to the Bethesda Naval Hospital," Sessions said. "You know where that is?"

  "Yes, sir."

  The outpatient clinic at the hospital was crowded, but as soon as Sessions gave his name, the Navy yeoman at the desk summoned a chief corpsman, who took them to an X-ray room, supervised chest and torso and leg X rays, and then led them to an examining room where he ordered McCoy to remove his clothing. He weighed him, took his blood pressure, drew blood into three different vials; and then, startling McCoy, pulled off the bandage that covered his lower back with one quick and violent jerking motion.

  "Jesus," McCoy said. "Next time, tell me, Chief!"

  "You lost less hair the way I done it," the chief said, unrepentant, and then examined the wound.

  "That's healing nicely," he said. "But there's still a little suppuration. Shrapnel?"

  McCoy nodded.

  "That's the first wound like that I seen since World War I," the chief said.

  A younger man in a white medical smock came in the room. The silver railroad tracks of a Navy full lieutenant were on his' collar points.

  "I'm sure there's a good reason for doing this examination this way," he said to Sessions.

  "Yes, Lieutenant, there is," Sessions replied.

  The Naval surgeon examined McCoy's medical records, and while he was listening to his chest, the chief corpsman fetched the X rays. The surgeon examined them, and then pushed and prodded the line of stitches on McCoy's lower back.

  "Any pain? Any loss of movement?"

  "I'm a little stiff sometimes, sir," McCoy said.

  "You're lucky you're alive, Lieutenant," the surgeon said, matter-of-factly. Then he grunted and prodded McCoy's upper right thigh with his finger. "Where'd you get that? That's a small-arm puncture, isn't it?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Not suffered at the same time as the damage to your back? It looks older."

  "No, sir," McCoy said.

  "Not very talkative, is he. Captain?" the surgeon said to Sessions. "I asked him where he got it."

  "In Shanghai, sir," McCoy said.

  "That's a Japanese twenty-five caliber wound?" the surgeon asked doubtfully.

  "No, sir," McCoy said. "One of those little tiny Spanish automatics… either a twenty-five or maybe a twenty-two rimfire."

  "A twenty-five?" the surgeon asked curiously, and then saw the look of impatience in Session's eyes. He backed down before it.

  "That seems to have healed nicely," he said, cheerfully. "You don't have a history of malaria, do you, Lieutenant?"

  "No, sir."

  "Nor, according to this, of social disease," the surgeon said. "Have you been exposed to that, lately?"

  "No, sir."

  "Well, presuming they don't find anything when they do his blood, Captain, he should be fit for full duty in say, thirty days. I think he should build up to any really strenuous exercise, however. There's some muscle damage, and-"

  "I understand," Sessions said. "Thank you, Doctor, for squeezing him in this way."

  "My pleasure," the surgeon said. "You can get dressed, Lieutenant. It'll be a couple of minutes before the form can be typed up. I presume you want to take it with you?"

  "If we can," Sessions said.

  When they were alone in the treatment room, McCoy put his blouse back on and fastened his Sam Browne belt in place. Then he looked at Sessions.

  "Are you going to tell me what's going on?" he asked.

  "Well, from here we go to my place," Captain Sessions said. "Where my bride at this very moment is preparing a sumptuous feast to honor the returned warrior, and where there is a bottle of very good scotch she has been saving for a suitable occasion."

  "In other words, you're not going to tell me?"

  "Not here, Ken," Sessions said. "At my place."

  McCoy nodded.

  "Colonel and Mrs. Rickabee will be there," Sessions said.

  McCoy's eyebrows rose at that, but he didn't say anything.

  (Two)

  Chevy Chase, Maryland

  "The second house from the end, Ken," Captain Sessions said. "Pull into the driveway."

  McCoy was surprised at the size of the house, and at the quality of the neighborhood. The houses were large, and the lots were spacious; it was not where he would have expected a Marine captain to live.

  "Well, thank God that's home," Sessions said when McCoy had turned into the driveway. "Jeannie's getting a little large to have to drive me to work."

  McCoy had no idea what he was talking about, but the mystery was quickly cleared up when Jean Sessions, a dark-haired, pleasant-looking young woman, came out of the kitchen door and walked over to the car. She was pregnant.

  She kissed her husband, and then pointed at a 1942 Mercury convertible coupe.

  "Guess what the Good Fairy finally fixed," she said. "He brought it back five minutes ago."

  "I saw," Sessions said, dryly. " 'All things come to him who waits,' I suppose."

  Jean Sessions went around to the driver's side as McCoy got out. She put her hands on McCoy's arms, and kissed his cheek, and then looked intently at him.

  "How are you, Ken?" she asked.

  It was more than a ritual remark, McCoy sensed. She was really interested.

  "I'm fine, thanks," Ken said.

  "You look fine," she said. "I'm so glad to see you."

  She took his arm and led him to the kitchen. There was the smell of roasting beef, and a large, fat black woman in a maid's uniform was bent over a wide table wrapping small pieces of bacon around oysters.

  "This is Jewel, Ken," Jean said, "whose hors d'oeuvres are legendary. And this is Lieutenant McCoy."

  "You must be somebody special, Lieutenant," Jewel said, with a smile. "I heard all about you."

  McCoy smiled, slightly uncomfortably, back at her.

  "Colonel Rickabee called and said you were to call him when you got here," Jean Sessions said to her husband. "So you do that, and I'll fix Ken a drink."

  She led him into the house to a tile-floored room, whose wall of French doors opened on a white expanse that after a moment he recognized to be a
golf course.

  "This is a nice house," Ken said.

  "I think it is," Jean said. "It was our wedding present."

  She handed him a glass dark with scotch.

  "How was the leave?" she asked.

  "As long as it lasted, it was fine," he said.

  "I heard about that," Jean said. "You were cheated out of most of it, weren't you?"

  "I made the mistake of telling them where they could find me," he said.

  "How'd the physical go?" she asked. "You going to be all right?"

  "It's fine," he said. "The only time it hurts is when they change the bandage. Most of the time it itches."

  "Curiosity overwhelms me," Jean said. "Ed says you've got a girl. Tell me all about her."

  The answer didn't come easily to McCoy's lips.

  "She's nice," he said finally. "She writes advertising."

  He thought: Ernie would like Mrs. Sessions, and probably vice versa.

  Jean Sessions cocked her head and waited for amplification.

  "For toothpaste and stuff like that," McCoy went on. "I met her through a guy I went through Quantico with."

  "What does she look like?" Jean asked.

  McCoy produced a picture. The picture surprised Jean Sessions. Not that McCoy had found a pretty girl like the one hanging on to his arm in the picture, but that he'd found one who wore an expensive full-length Persian lamb coat, and who had posed with McCoy in front of the Foster Park Hotel on Central Park South.

  "She's very pretty, Ken," Jean said.

  "Yeah," McCoy said. "She is."

  "The colonel will be here in half an hour," Captain Ed Sessions announced from the doorway.

  "So soon?" Jean asked.

  "He wants to talk to Ken before his wife gets here," Sessions said. "And he asked if we could set a place for Colonel Wesley."

  McCoy saw that surprised Jean Sessions.

  "Certainly," she said. "It's a big roast."