Call to Arms

Chapter Twelve

(One)

San Diego, California

0830 Hours, 19 January 1942

The first time Miss Ernestine Sage noticed the young woman was when she drove the LaSalle into the parking lot of the Bay-Vue Super Discount Super Market. The young woman was attractive, if harried-looking, and in what appeared to be the eighth month of her pregnancy. The pregnant young woman seemed to be examining her, or maybe the car, with more than ordinary interest.

But then, as she got out of the car, Ernie's attention was distracted by a Navy airplane, an enormous, twin-engine seaplane, coming in over the ocean and then landing in the bay with two enormous splashes. The sun was shining (it shined just about all the time here), and the bay was blue, and the airplane landing, Ernie thought, was beautiful. It made her think of Pick Pickering, who was learning to fly.

The pregnant young woman was standing in front of the plate-glass windows of the supermarket when Ernie grabbed a shopping cart and headed for the door. She smiled-shyly-at Ernie, and Ernie returned the smile.

Inside the supermarket, Ernie took her shopping list from her purse and went first to the dairy cooler for eggs and milk and butter. As they were driving across the country, and since they had arrived here, she had been astonished at Ken's enormous breakfast appetite. He regularly wolfed down four eggs and as much bacon or ham as she put before him. Once, for the hell of it, she had cooked a whole pound of bacon, and, with the exception of her own three slices, Ken had eaten all of it.

Next she went to the meat cooler and bought bacon and ham and sausage. And then she had the most extraordinary feeling that she was being followed by the pregnant young woman.

Ernie moved from the bacon and sausage display case into one of the aisles. Halfway down it, the pregnant young woman appeared, coming the other way.

Without doing anything that would suggest she was trying to lose the pregnant young woman, Ernie tried to do just that. Fixing an "ooops, I forgot paprika" look on her face, she twice reversed direction, and pushed her shopping cart into another aisle.

And both times the pregnant young woman, whose shopping cart held a loaf of bread and a quart bottle of ginger ale and nothing else, appeared behind her in the same aisle. The second time Ernie reversed direction she moved three aisles away, to the beef section, where she bought a half a dozen T-bone steaks; but that move didn't shake loose the pregnant woman either.

Ken never tired of steak. Which was a good thing, for her culinary skills were just about limited to frying eggs and bacon and broiling steak.

As she maneuvered her cart, Ernie had managed to glance at the young woman (even to study her for a long moment in a curved mirror apparently installed to discourage shoplifters). And by now she was convinced that she had never seen the young woman before. But she was also convinced that whatever the young woman was-and she looked like a nice young woman-she was not a threat.

But she unnerved Ernie. And feeling a little foolish, Ernie cut short her shopping trip. She had steaks for dinner and stuff far breakfast in the shopping cart. She could pick up bread and toilet tissue on the way to the checkout counter. What else she needed she would get tomorrow. Or maybe even later today, if Ken called up and said he would be a little late again.

Ernie didn't see the young woman as she went through the checkout line, but when she pushed the shopping cart out of the supermarket, the young woman was in the parking lot, between Ernie and the LaSalle.

Ernie pushed the shopping cart off the concrete sidewalk onto the macadam and toward the car. The pregnant young woman was now looking at her. Ernie put on a faint smile (the only explanation for her behavior, she suddenly concluded, was that the young woman mistakenly believed that she knew her) and headed for the car.

"Excuse me," the pregnant young woman said, "you're an officer's wife, aren't you?"

Ernie hesitated.

"I saw the Camp Elliott sticker," the pregnant young woman said, making a vague gesture toward a sticker on the LaSalle's windshield. It identified the car as having been registered on the post by a Marine officer.

"The car belongs to a friend," Ernie said.

"Oh," the pregnant young woman said, obviously disappointed, and then added, "I am. A Marine officer's wife, I mean."

"Right now," Ernie blurted, "that's the great ambition of my life. To be a Marine officer's wife."

The young woman smiled. It was a nice smile, Ernie thought, and the young woman was obviously a nice young woman.

"Is there something I can do for you?" Ernie asked.

The pregnant young woman dipped into her purse and came up with a wallet. She took from it a dependent's identification card, which she thrust at Ernie. There was a photograph on it, which made the pregnant young woman look all of sixteen years old. Her name was Dorothy Burnes and she was the dependent wife of Martin J. Burnes, 1st Lt., USMCR.

"Can I talk to you?" Dorothy Burnes said.

"Sure," Ernie said. "Mine is a second lieutenant."

"I've been following you around the supermarket," Dorothy said.

"I noticed," Ernie said. A look of embarrassment crossed Dorothy Burnes's face. "Why don't you sit in the car?" Ernie added.

"Thank you," Dorothy said. She got in the passenger seat. Then Ernie unloaded the groceries from the shopping cart into the LaSalle and pushed the basket to a steel-pipe enclosure. When that was done she walked back to the convertible. The roof was down and the boot snapped in place. The car glistened. Ernie had waxed it, with Simoniz, partly because she had come to understand how important the car was to Ken, and partly because there wasn't much to do with him gone all day.

Ernie got behind the wheel, pulled the door closed, and turned to Dorothy Burnes.

"I'm desperate," Dorothy said. "They put me out of the motel today, and unless I find someplace to stay between now and half-past five, my husband's going to put me on the Lark at half-past six."

"The Lark?"

"The train to Los Angeles," Dorothy explained. "Where you can connect with trains to Kansas City. We're from Kansas City."

"Oh," Ernie said.

"I really thought if I offered them twice as much money, they'd let me stay," Dorothy said. "But the lady said that wouldn't be 'fair to the other girls,' and that I would have to check out."

"Oh, hell," Ernie said.

"So," Dorothy said, trying and failing to sound amusing, "I got this clever idea that maybe if I asked some other officer's wife, who looked like she had some place to stay, maybe she'd know of something. And then I decided the best place to find some officer's wife who had a place to stay was at a supermarket. If she was buying groceries, she would have a place to cook them. So I came here and you came in."

"Good thinking, anyway," Ernie said.

She's just like me. Or, there but for the grace of God and Pick's father, go I.

"But I suppose you're living with your folks," Dorothy said, "and have no idea where I could find a place… anyplace out of rain?"

"I'm living on a boat," Ernie said. "And I don't, I'm afraid, know of any place for rent."

"A boat?" Dorothy asked.

Ernie nodded. "One of those things that goes up and down in the water," she said.

"And you don't have any idea-" Dorothy said.

Ernie shook her head.

"Damn," Dorothy said, and then started to sniffle.

The tears, Ernie knew, were genuine, not a pitch for sympathy. Dorothy Burnes was at the end of her rope. She was pregnant and didn't have a place to stay, and her Marine was about to send her home.

"Sorry," Dorothy Burnes said, wiping her nose with a Kleenex.

"If they threw you out, where's your luggage?" Ernie asked.

"In the motel office," Dorothy said.

"Well, you can stay with us tonight," Ernie said. "And in the morning, you and I will start looking for a place for you."

"Have you got room?"

Ernie nodded.

"I've got money," Dorothy said. "I can pay. I really thought if I offered them twice as much money… I wired my father for money, and I wasn't going to tell Marty-"

"Where's the motel?" Ernie interrupted, as she pushed the LaSalle's starter button.

"I don't know how to thank you," Dorothy said.

"I guess we camp followers have to stick together," Ernie said.

That made Dorothy Burnes giggle. She smiled shyly at Ernie. Ernie was pleased.

Twenty minutes later, Ernie stopped the LaSalle near Pier Four of the San Diego Yacht Club. A hundred yards out on the pier, the Last Time bobbed gently up and down. It was separated from the wharf by five white rubber bumpers the size of wastebaskets, and connected to it by a teak gangplank and electric service and telephone cables.

The Last Time, the property of a San Diego attorney whose firm did a good deal of business with Pacific Far East Shipping, Inc., was fifty-three feet long, sixteen feet in the beam, and drew six feet. She was powered with twin General Motors Detroit diesels.

Her owner had been delighted, when approached, to offer it, via the chairman of the board of Pacific Far East Shipping, to the daughter of the chairman of the board of the American Personal Pharmaceutical Corporation for as long as she wanted it. Not only for the obvious reasons, but also because her normal three-man crew, carried away on a wave of patriotism, had enlisted in the Coast Guard, leaving the Last Time untended.

"Oh, my God!" Dorothy Burnes said when she stepped down into the lounge. "I've never been on one this big. What is it, a Bertram?"

Which question indicates, Ernie decided, that you are not entirely unfamiliar with yachts. And it follows from that, and from other things you have said, that while you obviously are a homeless and pregnant waif, you are probably not a poor homeless waif.

"No," she said. "It's a Mitchell. It was made in Florida and sailed here."

"It's yours?"

"It belongs to a friend of a friend," Ernie said. "We're boat-sitting. The crew went off to the Coast Guard."

"I just hope I'm not dreaming," Dorothy said. "I can't tell you how grateful I am."

"I'm glad to have the company," Ernie said. And she realized then that although they would certainly look around the next day, and diligently, for some place for Dorothy Burnes and her husband to live, they almost certainly were not going to find one.

Which means they will stay here. Which, on balance, may be a pretty good idea. It'll give me company. And we are, in a sense, sisters.

"Maybe I should have told you this before," Ernie said. "I think the phrase for what my Marine and I are doing on here is 'shacking up.'"

There was a look of embarrassment in Dorothy Burnes's eyes. "You didn't have to tell me that," she said, softly. "That's none of my business."

"Ken doesn't think that Marine officers, about to be sent overseas, should be married," Ernie said.

"Do you love him?"

"Oh, yes," Ernie said.

"Isn't that all that's important? I mean, really?"

"So my reasoning goes," Ernie said.

"Maybe, when he sees Marty and me, it will be contagious," Dorothy said.

"That's a nice thought," Ernie said. "Come on, I'll show you your room… cabin."

By four o'clock, Ernie Page and Dorothy Burnes had become friends. They were of an age, and of roughly comparable background. Dorothy's father operated a large condiment-bottling business (pickles, relish, horseradish, et cetera) founded by his grandfather. She had gone to Emma Willard, and then on to Vanderbilt College, where, as a junior, she had married Marty, then a senior. Marty had gone to Quantico for the Platoon Leader's Course when he graduated.

"Ken went through Quantico," Ernie offered, "with my childhood sweetheart. That's how we met. And my childhood sweetheart's parents fixed it for us to live on the boat."

"They know?" Dorothy asked. The rest of the sentence, "that you and Ken are living together on this boat?" went unsaid.

"They know," Ernie said. "My parents know, too, but they pretend not to. I mean, they know I'm out here with Ken. They don't know about the boat."

"Where did Ken go to school?" Dorothy asked.

"He didn't," Ernie replied, with a sense of misgiving. "He's what they call a mustang. He came up from the ranks."

"Oh?"

"He's very bright," Ernie said. "And the Marine Corps saw it, and they sent him to officer's school."

"He must be," Dorothy readily agreed.

A clock chimed four times.

"Time to get him," Ernie said, and then, "what do we do about yours? What will he do, go to the motel?"

Dorothy nodded.

"Well, then, I'll drop you off there and go fetch Ken," Ernie said. "You bring him here."

Ken, who was wearing dungarees, looked tired when Ernie picked him up behind the orderly room at Camp Elliott. When he was tired, he looked older. Sometimes, she thought, he looked like a boy. And in his dungarees, he did not much resemble the Marine officer in the recruiting posters.

She pushed the door open and then slid halfway across the seat to let him get behind the wheel.

"Been waiting long?" she asked.

"No," he said simply.

"Don't I get a kiss?"

He graciously offered the side of his face. It wasn't what she had had in mind, but she knew that it was all she was going to get. The official excuse was that there was a Marine Corps regulation-yet another regulation-that proscribed the public display of affection by officers and gentlemen. The real reason was that Ken was made uncomfortable by public displays of affection; the regulation just gave him the excuse he needed to treat her, when in public, like a sister.

Sometimes, as now, this annoyed Ernie.

She moved her hand and quickly groped him.

"Jesus Christ!" Ken said, knocking her hand away.

"There's a time and place, right?" she teased. "And this isn't it?"

He looked at her and shook his head.

"You're something," he said.

"Uh- huh," she agreed.

For just a moment, he touched her cheek very gently with the back of his hand.

"Watch out!" she said in mock horror. "Someone will see, and they will cut your buttons off and drum you out of the Corps in disgrace!"

He laughed softly and smiled at her.

"How was your day?"

"Noisy," he said. He dug in his shirt pocket and handed her a brass cartridge case.

"What's this?"

"Look at the stamp," he said. "On the bottom."

"I'm looking," she said. "What do I see?"

"See where it says 'FA 15'?" She nodded. "That means it was made by the Frankfurt Arsenal in 1915; before the First World War."

They were at the gate then. A Marine MP saluted crisply as he waved them through.

"Do you think he'd do that if he suspected that you and I are carrying on?" Ernie said innocently after Ken had returned the salute. "Or do you think he'd turn you in? 'Sir, I saw an officer today I just know is carrying on with a female civilian.'"

He laughed again and smiled at her.

"You just don't give up, do you?"

"Does it still work?"

"Does what still work?"

"Bullets made before the First World War," Ernie said.

"The bullet is the pointed thing that comes out the barrel," Ken said. "The round consists of the case, the powder, the primer-and the bullet."

"Sorry," she said, mockingly.

"And the answer is most of the time," he said. "It's really surprising."

"What happens if it doesn't work?" she asked.

"Colonel Carlson came to see me today," McCoy said, changing the subject.

"What?" she asked, confused. It wasn't the answer she expected.

"Colonel Carlson came out to the machine-gun range," McCoy said. "Looking for me."

"What did he want?"

"He spoke to me in Cantonese," McCoy said, and smiled. "You should have seen the looks on the kids' faces when he did that."

"What did he want?" Ernie repeated.

"Well, I guess he wanted to have a look at me, and to see if I really spoke Chinese."

"And?" she asked, impatiently.

"He wanted to know if I had heard of the Chinese Route Army, and if so, what I thought about them."

"What did you tell him?"

"What I thought he wanted to hear," McCoy said. "That they do a pretty good job."

"That's all?"

"Oh, he asked me the usual questions; he was feeling me out," McCoy said. "And then he told me he was forming a battalion, and asked if I was interested in joining it."

"And you, of course, said yes," Ernie said.

"That's why they sent me out here," McCoy said. "You know that. The whole idea was to get him to recruit me."

He suddenly pulled out of the line of traffic and stopped before a commercial laundry. He went in and came out a minute or two later carrying two enormous bundles of paper-wrapped laundry. He threw them in the back and got behind the wheel.

"What's for supper?" he asked.

"Steak, for a change," she said.

He nodded his approval.

"Well, are you going to tell me, or not?"

"Tell you what?"

"Did he 'recruit' you, or not?"

"He fed me a line about how he wanted to compare me against other volunteers," McCoy said. "But that was just bullshit. He'll take me. I'm a young old China Marine."

"What does that mean?"

"He wants old China Marines, people who may think like Orientals. And he wants young officers and men. He'll take either. I'm both."

"Well, is he crazy, or not?"

"I liked him," McCoy said. "Ain't that a kick in the ass?"

"He's not crazy?"

"No, he's not crazy, and he struck me as a damned good officer. He's obviously smarter than hell, and his ideas about making raids with highly trained people make sense."

"What about the other thing, his being a Communist?"

"He didn't talk politics," McCoy said. "And I could hardly ask him."

"So what happens now?"

"I call Captain Sessions and tell him," McCoy said.

"I mean, to you?"

"In a couple of days, maybe a week, I think they'll transfer me," McCoy said.

He turned off the highway through the gates of the San Diego Yacht Club and drove to the water's edge.

A Pontiac coupe with Missouri license plates was parked with its nose against the Pier Four sign. There was a Marine officer, in greens, sitting behind the wheel, and Ernie could see the back of Dorothy Burnes's head.

"Oh, good," Ernie said. "They're here."

" 'Oh, good,'" Ken McCoy parroted, "who's here?"

Oh, my God! I should have told him before we got here!

"We have houseguests," Ernie said, as she opened the door of the LaSalle and got out.

The door of the Pontiac opened and Dorothy Burnes, grunting, pushed herself out of the car. She smiled warmly and gratefully at Ernie. Her husband got. out from behind the wheel, looking a little uneasy.

Then he saluted. Ernie wondered why he had done that, and then realized he was returning Ken's salute. And then she understood why. There were silver bars on Martin J. Burnes's epaulets; he outranked Ken, and Ken had saluted him.

"Well, I see you found each other all right," Ernie said. She turned and saw Ken walking up. "This is Ken," she said. "Ken, this is Marty Burnes."

"How do you do, sir," Ken McCoy said formally. Ernie did not like the look on Ken McCoy's face.

"And this is Dorothy," Ernie plunged ahead.

"Hi," Dorothy said.

"Dorothy and I are old pals, and she's having a hard time finding a place to stay, so they'll be staying with us for a couple of days."

"I hope we're not going to put you out too much," Marty Burnes said to McCoy.

"It's her boat," Ken said simply.

Oh, God! He doesn't like this at all. Why not? What's wrong with him? He could easily be in Marty Burnes's place. And then she understood. He's not here as just one more lieutenant; he's going to spy on that Colonel Whatsisname, and he's afraid that the Burneses being on the boat will get in the way of that. And, damnit, maybe he's right.

"Well, let's go aboard," Ernie said, trying to be bright and cheerful. "Dorothy and I have spent the afternoon making hors d'oeuvres."

"And then there'll be steaks," Dorothy chimed in.

"And I'm sure you both could use a drink," Ernie said. She stole a glance at Ken. His eyes were cold. But not angry, she thought. Disappointed, resigned, as if he had expected her to do something dumb like this.

McCoy forced a polite smile on his face.

"I could use a drink," he said. "After you, Lieutenant."

"Can't we forget the Marine Corps?" Ernie said. "Just for an hour or two? What I mean is can't you two use your names?"

"Sure," Marty Burnes said. He smiled and put out his hand to McCoy. "I'm Marty."

McCoy took the hand and forced another brief smile. "Ken," he said.

"You two unload the cars," Ernie ordered. "By the time you're finished, we'll have drinks made."

When the drinks were made, Ernie proposed a toast. "I think, for the Burneses, that this is the proverbial any old port in a storm," she said. "Welcome aboard, Burneses."

McCoy chuckled and raised his glass, and this time his smile was genuine.

"Welcome aboard," he said.

He sat slumped in the largest of the four upholstered chairs in the cabin. He was still in dungarees with his rough-side-out field shoes stretched out in front of him. And for the first time (probably because Marty Burnes was in a green uniform, she thought) she noticed how incongruous a Marine dressed that way looked in the plush cabin.

Ernie and Dorothy passed the tray of hors d'oeuvres. McCoy helped himself to several chunks of cheddar, and then gulped down his drink.

"Now that I am refueled," he said, "I think I'll scrape off some of the barnacles."

He went down the passageway to the master cabin.

In a minute, they could hear the shower start, and a moment after that, faintly, the sound of McCoy singing.

Thank God, he's over the mad.

"He does that, too," Dorothy Burnes said, nodding fondly at her husband.

Ernie made Marty Burnes another drink.

When the sound of the shower stopped and McCoy did not appear in a reasonable time, she excused herself and went to their cabin.

If there's going to be a fight, I might as well get it over with.

She got to the cabin as Ken, naked, lay back on the bed with the telephone in his hand.

He looked at her but said nothing, and he did not react to the way she raised her eyebrows approvingly at his nakedness.

"Collect for anyone, operator, from Lieutenant McCoy to Liberty seven, oh nine five six in Washington, D.C. I'll hold."

"Ken, she had no place to stay. He was going to send her home," Ernie said.

He held the telephone away from his head as if to explain why he couldn't talk to her, and then he put it back. Although she knew that it was not his intention, Ernie chose to interpret the gesture as an invitation to lie down beside him and listen to the conversation. For a moment he stiffened, and she was afraid he would roll away from her, or get up. But then he relaxed.

"Liberty seven, oh nine five six," a none-too-friendly male voice came on the line.

"I have a collect call for anyone from a Lieutenant McCoy," the operator said. "Will you accept charges?"

"We'll accept," the male voice said.

"Go ahead, sir," the operator said. "Your party is on the line."

"How are you, Sergeant?" McCoy said to the telephone. "Is Captain Sessions around?"

"I'll buzz for him. I know he wants to talk to you. How's things in the boondocks?"

"I'm looking for a sergeant who knows how to take a 'Seventeen A-Four apart," McCoy said.

The sergeant chuckled, and then another voice came on the line.

"Captain Sessions."

"Lieutenant McCoy is on the line, sir," the sergeant said.

"Oh, good. Ken?"

"Yes, sir."

"I was about to call you. I was going to wait until I was sure you were home. What's on your mind?"

"Colonel Carlson looked me up today," McCoy said. "I was on the machine-gun range, and he found me there."

"And?"

"He checked to see if I really speak Cantonese, and then pumped me for what he could get."

"What did he get?"

"He wanted to know what I thought of the Mao Tse-tung tribe of slopeheads," McCoy said. "So I told him what he wanted to hear."

"Anything about the Raiders?"

" 'Raiders'? Is that what they're going to call them?"

"Yeah, it looks that way. The Commandant is going to order the formation as of four February, of the Second Separate Battalion, there at Elliott. The same day, a reinforced company-about two hundred fifty people-is going to be transferred from the First Separate Battalion at Quantico to the Second at Elliott. Our friend Zimmerman, who is now a gunnery sergeant, will be one of them. On nineteen February, the Second will be redesignated as the Second Raider Battalion. That's one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you, to tell you that."

"Maybe you better not spread this around, sir," McCoy said. "But I think he's got a good idea."

"He talked to you about it?"

"Yes, sir. And what he said made sense."

"Did he say anything about you joining up? The reason I ask, is that unless you can get into the Second Battalion out there, Colonel Rickabee's going to transfer you back to Quantico, assign you to the First Separate Battalion, and then send you back out to Carlson when they transfer the company from the First Battalion out there."

"He gave me the usual bullshit about comparing me against other volunteers, but I would be damned surprised if he didn't have me transferred."

"Good. Then we'll leave it that way. If you're wrong, if he doesn't pick you… any suggestion that he questioned your neatly doctored service record?"

"No, sir."

"If he doesn't pick you, we'll worry about that then."

"Captain, can I talk to you man to man?"

"Of course not, said the officer to the officer who saved his life," Sessions said. "What's on your mind, Ken?"

"I don't like this job," McCoy said. "I feel like a real slimy sonofabitch, spying on Colonel Carlson. I like him. He's a good officer, and I think the commandos are a good idea."

"Raiders," Sessions corrected him automatically, and then fell silent.

"I went too far, huh?" McCoy said, after a long moment.

"No, no," Sessions said. "I was trying to frame my reply. I think I know how you feel, Ken. The only thing I can really say is that it has to be done, and you're the fellow to do it. I don't think anyone is going to be happy if you find out he is either unbalanced or a Communist."

"I do. I've had a chance to think about this a lot. It looks to me that a lot of the brass want to stick it to Carlson because he's got a direct line to the President."

"There's some of that, sure," Sessions said. "But I also think that if he actually goes off the deep end, he could do the Corps a lot of damage. More damage, Ken, than I think you can fully appreciate."

"Aye, aye, sir," McCoy said.

"Excuse me, Ken?" Sessions asked.

"That means I understand the order and will carry it out," McCoy said. "Didn't you ever hear that before, Captain, sir?"

"Don't be a wiseass, you're only a second lieutenant," Sessions said, and then his voice grew serious. "For what it's worth, Ken, I think what you're doing has to be done."

"I knew that," McCoy said. "It's the main reason I'm doing it."

"I just had another patriotic, flag-waving, hurrah-for-the-Corps thought," Sessions said. "You want to hear it?"

"Sure."

"When they get both of the Raider battalions up to strength and trained, Ken, I don't think there will be fifty people in them, officer or enlisted, who have ever heard the sound of a shot fired in anger. Even though nobody will know about it, with your doctored service record, you'll be one of the most experienced officers around. Certainly the most experienced lieutenant. The only test that counts for an officer is how he behaves when people are shooting at him. And you've passed that test twice, Killer, and with flying colors."

"Shit," McCoy said.

"No shit, Ken. I'm a living witness to how well you conduct yourself under stress. If you do nothing else with the Raiders, you'll probably be able to keep some of the kids alive."

Ernie had moved on the bed, so that she could rest her head on McCoy's shoulder while she listened to the conversation. Now she raised her head so that she could see Ken's eyes.

He shrugged his shoulders, as if embarrassed by what Captain Sessions had said.

"You said you had a couple of things to tell me," McCoy said.

"Oh, yeah. I'm glad you reminded me. One of them was about Zimmerman."

"He doesn't know what I'm doing out here, does he?"

"No, and don't tell him," Sessions said. "Let him think it's because you both speak Chinese, or because Carlson likes China Marines."

"Yes, sir," McCoy said. "What else?"

"You didn't happen to see Captain Banning, did you?"

"Captain Banning? Our Captain Banning?"

"Banning was evacuated from Corregidor by submarine. He passed through Diego today on his way here. There was a chance he might have bumped into you. I had to ask. The worst possible case would have been for him to greet you like a long-lost brother within Carlson's hearing. Even worse, to have him thank you for saving his life. That would have blown your new service record out of the water, and told Carlson that he's being watched."

"I didn't see him," McCoy said. "What's going to happen to him?"

"Well, for one thing, he's going to be told that he never heard of you in his life, and aside from that, I can't tell you."

"Can you give him my regards?"

"Sure, Ken," Sessions said.

"I guess that's about it," McCoy said.

"How's your love life, Ken?" Sessions asked.

"None of your business."

"I was just going to say to give her my regards."

McCoy didn't reply.

"You better check in every day from now on, either with me or Colonel Rickabee."

"Aye, aye, sir."

McCoy sat up, taking Ernie with him, and put the phone back in its cradle on the bulkhead behind him.

"He knows about us?" Ernie asked. McCoy nodded. "What did you tell him?"

McCoy smiled. "That you're the best piece of ass I ever had in my life," he said, and then put his arms up to defend himself from the blows he was sure would follow.

They did not. Ernie waited for him to put his arms down, and then said, "Well, I'm glad you told him the truth."

Then she got out of the bed and went back to the main cabin.

McCoy put on a pair of khaki trousers and a T-shirt, then went out and made himself another drink.

"I understand," Lieutenant Marty Burnes said, "that you're in a heavy-weapons company."

"That's right," McCoy said. "What do they have you doing?"

"At the moment I'm assigned to S-Three," Burnes said.

"At the moment?" McCoy asked.

"You've heard about the Raiders?" Burnes asked.

"A little," McCoy replied. He was aware that Ernie had picked up on the conversation and was watching them.

"Well, I've applied, and I think I'm going to be accepted," Burnes said. "I talked to Captain Roosevelt-the President's son?-and he said I would probably qualify."

"It's a very good way to get your ass blown away," McCoy said.

"Ken!" Ernie said.

"Sorry," McCoy said. "I shouldn't have said that."