W E B Griffin - Men at War 2 - Secret Warriors Read online

  W E B Griffin - Men at War 2 - Secret Warriors

  FOR LIEUTENANT AARON BANK, INFANTRY, AUS, DETAILED OSS (Later, Colonel, Special Forces) AND LIEUTENANT WILLIAM E. COLBY, INFANTRY, AUS, DETAILED OSS (Later, Ambassador and Director, CIA)

  Alameda Naval Air Station Alameda, California April 4, 1942

  Although there were four passengers aboard the U.S. Navy PBY-5 from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, most of the plane's cargo weight was mailbags regular mail from the fleet, official mail from various Army and Navy headquarters all over the Pacific, some from even as far away as Australia. The Consolidated PBY-5 Catalina flying boat had been designed not as a transport but as a long-range reconnaissance aircraft. It had two 1,200-lip Twin Wasp radial engines mounted on its high wing. Two struts on each side reinforced the wing, the interior of which contained huge fuel tanks. What every Catalina pilot dreaded was landing shortly after takeoff, when the fuel tanks were full-and thus heavy. If the plane could not be greased in, all that weight was likely to tear the wings off. There was little danger of that now.

  The fuel tanks were indicating close to empty. A head wind had been with them all the way across the Pacific from Hawaii. The pilot had even worried for a few rough minutes that he would not have enough fuel to make it to Alameda.

  A few hundred miles from the coast, the navigator had wordlessly laid his calculation on the pilot's lap. His projection was that they would run out of fuel an hour and fifteen minutes short of Alameda.

  At that point the pilot had had two options: He could throw excess cargo out, or he could try fiddling with the engines to decrease fuel consumption, and thus increase range. Since neither the official mailbags nor, obviously, the passengers could be thrown over the side, the only "excess' cargo that could be jettisoned was the fleet mailbags. The pilot was reluctant to throw away several thousand servicemen's letters home, so he elected to try the unusual. He retarded the throttles, thinned the mixture more than he knew he was supposed to, and dropped from 8,000 feet to less than a thousand. The miles he gained by this maneuver would put them that many miles closer to the California coast, and thus increase their chances of rescue if he had to set down in the drink and wait for someone to come looking for them. Since it was daylight and he was forced to fly dead reckoning, he had no reliable means of knowing whether or not what he was trying was working. He was flying on a course of 89 degrees magnetic at an indicated airspeed of 140 knots. Simple arithmetic told him where he should be. But if he was, say, flying into a 30-knot head wind-which, very likely, he was-then he was making only 110 miles an hour over the water. And if the head wind was not coming directly at him, but from the side, he was liable to be far off his intended course. He was genuinely thrilled, as well as enormously relieved, when the radio operator came forward and, without asking permission, switched the frequency, and over his headset he could hear a marvelously unctuous, pure candy-ass voice announce that San Francisco could expect to experience evening temperatures of 68 degrees Fahrenheit with a slim possibility of early-evening fog. "I make it about eighty-six degrees from here, Skipper," the radio operator said.

  Mounted on the wing, between the engines, was a loop radio antenna that, rotated until a signal-strength meter reached a high point, indicated the direction to the radio transmitter. "How far?" the pilot asked as he made the necessary small course correction to 86 degrees. "Don't know,' the radio operator said.

  "I tried to raise Alameda, and couldn't. IT try it again in a couple of minutes." The radio operator went back to his desk. His voice came over the intercom in a moment. "I'd suggest another degree north," he said.

  "To eighty-five degrees."

  "Okay. You try Alameda?"

  "No reply," the radio operator said. Which meant, of course, that they were still at least 150 miles at sea. The commercial broadcast station had a greater range than the shortwave transmitter at Alameda Naval Air Station. But then, minutes later, Sparks's voice came over his cans again. "Got 'em," he announced.

  "They can't read us, but we have them. "Thank you, Sparks," the pilot said.

  "Keep us advised." The pilot looked at the copilot to make sure he was awake, then pushed himself out of his seat. He was now going to make the required airline pilot-type speech to the passengers. Thank you-for-flying Transpacific Airways; we hope you have found our food and beverage service to your liking, and that you will give us the favor of your air travel business in the future. The four passengers were all captains.

  Three were Navy four-stripers from BUS HIPS' in Washington, sent to Pearl to see what could be done to speed up the repairs to U.S. Pacific Fleet battleships damaged and sunk during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor four months before. Their party had originally been made up of three BUS HIPS captains and one BUS HIPS commander; but, over howls of outrage from the BUS HIPS captains, the BUS HIPS commander had been bumped from the flight by the fourth captain now aboard the PBY-5. The PBY pilot found this one very interesting. The fourth captain was an Army captain, which meant that e was two grades junior to the BUS HIPS commander he had bumped. But he was also an aviator, and seeing a fellow airman bump the Engineering Corps commander had not displeased the pilot. And, although the Army captain was wearing wings on his ill-fitting, dirty, and mussed tropical worsted uniform, he was also wearing the crossed sabers of cavalry. The pilot had wondered about that. The crossed cavalry sabers had the numerals 26 affixed to them, identifying an officer of the 26th Cavalry. The 26th had not long before been caught in the Philippines and apparently wiped out on the Bataan Peninsula. But this captain clearly hadn't come out of the Philippines, because no one had come out of the Philippines. The poor bastards had been deserted there, "Navy Bureau of Ships.

  No one, of course, except General Douglas MacArthur, his wife and child, the child's nurse, and some brass hats, who had escaped from Corregidor on Navy PT boats. The pilot decided it was possible, though unlikely, that the Army captain was somehow connected with MacArthur.

  That seemed even more possible to the pilot when he considered the captain's travel priority. The end of the shouting session in Pearl Harbor over whether or not he was to go on the Catalina came after the admiral summoned to resolve the dispute read his orders and announced to the BUS HIPS senior brass hat, "Captain, it's not a question whether this officer is going with you or not, but whom you wish to send in the available space on the plane with him. The pilot had planned to have a chat with the Army officer once they were airborne. But the first time he'd gone back into the fuselage, the captain was sound asleep. He had made himself a bed of mailbags in the tag of the aircraft, wrapped himself in three blankets, and was sleeping the sleep of the exhausted-and more, the sleep of the ill. His eyes were shrunken, and he was as skinny as a rail. He clearly needed rest, and the pilot didn't have the heart to wake him. Though there was evidence he had eaten the box lunches provided every time the pilot had gone back the Army officer had been asleep There was also proof that the captain was traveling armed. An enormous old-fashioned World War I Colt revolver lay on one of the mailbags beside him. No holster, which meant that the captain had been carrying the pistol under his blouse, stuck in his waistband. Steadying himself by holding his hand flat against the fuselage skin above him, the pilot now made his way down the fuselage to the senior of the BUS HIPS captains and made his airline pilot's speech. The other two Navy captains leaned forward in their seats to hear what he had to say. The Army captain did not wake up, "Sir," he said, "we have just picked up Alameda. I thought you'd like to know.

  "We're running late, aren't we?" the captain said. "We've had a head wind all the way across," the pilot said. "Is that so?"
the captain said.

  "Thank you, Lieutenant." Inasmuch as the captain's tone of voice clearly implied that the head wind was obviously the pilot's fault, a dereliction of duty that was inconveniencing him and seriously interfering with the war effort, the pilot did not, as he had intended to do, inform him that they would land in about an hour and fifteen minutes. Instead, he walked aft and leaned over the Army pilot, frowning sympathetically at his sick pallor and sunken eyes. He touched and then shook his shoulder, The man did not stir. Then he caught the Army pilot's breath. He chuckled, and felt around the mailbags until he found what he was looking for. It was a quart bottle of Scotch. And it was empty. The pilot reburied the bottle and then, smiling, made his way forward to the cockpit. "Charley," he said, "we may have a small problem at Alameda, unloading our passengers."

  "How's that?"

  "The Army guy? He' dead drunk. I found an empty quart of Scotch. S "No shit?"

  "We didn't really have a fuel problem," the pilot said.

  "We could have got him to breathe into the tanks. We could make it to Kansas City on alcohol fumes."

  "The brass know?"

  "No. I don't think so."

  "Let's keep it that way," the copilot said. "Yeah," the pilot said.

  "I was thinking the same thing."

  An hour and twenty minutes later, the Catalina touched down, none too smoothly, on San Francisco Bay. "I'm glad we were a little light on fuel," the copilot said. "Fuck you, Charley," the pilot said. Two boats met the seaplane, a glossy motor launch for the passengers, the other a less ornate work boat to take the mail and tow the aircraft to its mooring. The BUS HIPS brass, as they obviously thought was befitting their station in life, were sent ashore alone in the motor launch. The pilot told them that since the Army officer was ill, he would take care of him. When the brass had motored away, he went back to the Army pilot.

  He was awake, sitting up on the mailbags with blankets wrapped around his shoulders and wearing an aviator's leather jacket over his tunic.

  He was shivering.

  Malaria, the pilot decided. "Where are we?" the Army captain asked.

  "Alameda Naval Air Station," the pilot said.

  "San Francisco. "Well, I guess we have cheated death again," the Army captain said. "As soon as we get these mailbags loaded in the boat, we'll take you ashore. "Where's the brass?"

  "They're gone," the pilot said. "Good," the Army captain said.

  "I somehow got the feeling they didn't approve of me."

  "Is there anything I can get you?" the pilot asked. "You wouldn't happen to have a bottle around here anywhere, would you? "No, but I know where we can get you one once you're ashore," the pilot said.

  "Where are you headed in the States?"

  "Washington," the Army captain said. "I'll take you to base cps and arrange for another flight," the pilot said.

  "I gather you've got a priority?"

  "Do I ever," the captain said. "Can I ask you a question?"

  "Why not?"

  "How come the pilot's wings and the cavalry insignia?" The captain looked coldly at him for a moment. "Nosy bastard, aren't you? " "Curious," the pilot said with a smile. The Army officer was drunk.

  People got belligerent when they were drunk. "The way they're running this war," the captain said, "is that when you run out of airplanes, they put you on a horse. And then, when you have to eat the horse, they find something else for you to do."

  "You were in the Philippines? The captain nodded. "Bad?"

  "Very bad, Lieutenant, very bad indeed," the Army captain said.

  The pilot gave him his hand and pulled the captain to his feet.

  "I'd like to keep the blankets for a while," he said.

  "Okay?"

  "Sure," the pilot said.

  They loaded the Army captain into the work boat. Then he sat huddled under the blankets while the mailbags were loaded aboard and the plane was towed to its mooring. After that the work boat delivered them to the amphibious ramp, where a pickup waited. When they walked into base ops, the Army captain made an effort to straighten up, but he did not remove the blankets from his shoulders. Then he spotted a pay telephone. "Can I mooch a nickel?" he asked. "I think they would prefer you report in," the pilot said. "Fuck 'em," the captain said matter-of-factly.

  "They can wait. I have a call to make."

  "Then why don't you give me your orders?" the pilot asked as he handed the captain a nickel." I'll get the bureaucracy working." The captain went into his hip pocket for his orders. As he did so, the pilot saw that he had the old revolver in his waistband. "Thanks," the captain said.

  "The call is important." The pilot was handed only one sheet, instead of the stack of mimeograph copies he expected. He gave in to his curiosity as he approached the Continuing Passengers counter unfolded it, and read:

  SUPREME HEADQUARTERS SOUTHWEST PACIFIC OCEAN AREA BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA Office of the Supreme Commander 28 March 1942

  SUBJECT: Letter Orders TO: Captain James M. B. Whittaker 0 1 97644 A-AC (Det CAV) office of the Supreme Commander, SWPOA a n 1. Verbal orders of the Supreme Commander re your relief from 105th Explosive Ordnance Disposal Detachment, Philippine Scouts, in the field, and assigning you to Supreme Headquarters are confirmed and made a matter of record 2.

  You will proceed (Priority AAA-A-1) via first available U.S. Government, Allied Powers, or civilian air, sea, rail, or motor transportation from Brisbane, Australia, to Washington, D.C." for the purpose of personally delivering to the Commander in Chief certain documents herewith placed in your custody.

  3. Commanders of U.S. military installations are directed to provide to you whatever facilities and services are needed for the expeditious discharge of your mission, 4. After you have personally delivered the documents now in your custody to the Commander in Chief, you will report to Headquarte U.S. Army, Washington, D.C." for further assignment.

  BY ORDER OF GENERAL DOUGLAS MacArthur:

  C4ilx4 A. W@4-ty Charles A. Willoughby Brig. General, USA Official:

  Sidney L. Huff Lt. Colonel, GSC "What have we got? Who's the guy wrapped in the blankets?" the officer on duty behind the counter asked the pilot of the Catalina. The pilot handed him the well-worn set of orders.

  "Jesus Christ!" he said when he had read them.

  TWO I Chicago, Illinois April 4,194a The City of Birmingham, a Douglas DC -3 of Eastern Air Lines' Great Silver Fleet, could accommodate twenty-one passengers, two rows of seven seats against the right fuselage wall and a single row against the left. When Mrs. Roberta Whatley, a brunette with 110 pounds arranged attractively about her five feet four inches, boarded the airplane, only an aisle seat halfway up the cabin was unoccupied. Although Mrs. Whatley was pleased to be on the airplane at all-she had a B-3 priority, which meant she had to wait for her boarding pass until all those with higher priorities had been boarded- she was displeased to see that the adjacent seat was occupie y a man. She had hoped to be assigned one of the single seats or, failing that, something next to another woman. Mrs. Whatley carried in her purse a just-issued bill of divorcement and was not at all interested in masculine companionship. But there was nothing to be done.

  ANNE She would sit in the one remaining seat and politely but firmly discourage any attempt by the young man to engage her in conversation.

  She slipped into the seat, carefully avoiding looking at the man. That went Well, she thought. He didn't even glance at me. Out of the corner of her eye, Roberta saw that the man-he was a young man, and not at all bad-looking-had a briefcase and a folded newspaper in his lap and was working on something like a crossword puzzle. It was some kind of code, she recalled, where you had to guess a famous quotation. With a little bit of luck, the puzzle will keep him busy for a long time.

  The stewardess moved down the aisle making sure everyone had seat belts fastened. The young man ignored her, too. She had to touch his shoulder to get his attention. With a look of annoyance on his face, he raised his briefcase enough for her to see that hi
s seat belt was fastened.

  Lowering it, he returned his attention to his puzzle.

  He really was sort of good-looking, Roberta decided.

  Then she realized that he looked familiar somehow. She had a vague suspicion that she had known him-or at least seen him-at Pensacola. Or maybe Alameda? It will be just my damned bad luck to run into some brother naval officer of Tom's on the damned airplane. But then she decided she was wrong. For one thing, now that the war was on, officers were required to wear their uniforms; and for another, the hair on this nice-looking young man was much too long for a Naval officer. Naval officers were careful about things like that. Still, this young man was of military age and looked somehow military. Or at least athletic. I wonder why He's not in uniform? The plane began to move. The young man's interest in the puzzle didn't wane until they had taxied to the beginning of the runway, where the pilots tested the engines, or whatever. The noise was bad, and the airplane shook. When the pilot did that, the young man beside Roberta Whatley lifted his eyes from his puzzle, cocked his head, and listened carefully. Then he turned his attention back to the puzzle and kept it there, not even looking up when the plane started to move down the runway. it was only when they were up and making a sharp turn-a bank, Tom had called it-that he raised his head to the window and quickly looked out.