"The plane that dropped Howard and Koffler on Buka was shot down on its way home," Rickabee said.
This Mongolian Operation, obviously, is just about as risky for the people involved as Ferdinand Six, Pickering thought. And one of the reasons McCoy is so matter-of-factly willing to go on it is that he believes, as a matter of faith, that if he gets in trouble, somebody else in The Corps will do all that's humanly possible to get him out.
I'm right about this! Even if Rickabee, and probably Sessions, think I'm a goddamned fool "We could solve that problem, too," Pickering said. "Who's `they,' McCoy? Where are they working on this land-on-sand business?"
"At an Army Air Corps airfield in Florida, General. On the Florida panhandle, up near the Alabama border."
"That's where Jimmy Doolittle trained for his B-25 Shangrila mission on Tokyo," Pickering thought aloud.
"Eglin Field, I think, Sir," McCoy said.
"No. It's probably an auxiliary field, between Eglin and Pensacola. I was there a while back. Is there any reason you can't go down there and find out something for sure?"
"I can go down there, yes, Sir."
"Then go."
"General, if I could have Lieutenant Moore and Sergeant Hart... having them with me might be helpful."
"OK. Whatever you think you need," Pickering said, and went on: "We have concluded that the extraction of Joe Howard and Steve Koffler is not impossible..." You have the fantasy that it's not impossible, Rickabee thought. Jesus Christ, landing an airliner on a beach, right under the nose of the Japanese! Fifty, sixty miles from a Japanese fighter base!
"We will now deal with your statement, Colonel, that my going to Australia is `out of the question."
"Admiral Leahy would not give you permission, General", Rickabee said. And then, anticipating Pickering's response to that, he went on. "And if you were to go without permission, he would order you home as soon as he heard about it. Among other things, that would serve to call attention to this operation, which is the last thing you want to happen."
"Jesus!" Pickering said bitterly.
It was clear to Rickabee that he had made his point.
"Lieutenant McCoy," he said, "carrying a letter of instructions from you, General, to Major Banning, would, I suggest, be all that's needed."
"I don't think so," Pickering said. "McCoy is a lieutenant, Banning a major. What I have been thinking is that Jake outranks Banning." Goddamn it, I should have known he would pick up on that, Rickabee thought. Dillon came back into The Corps as a major while Banning was still in the Philippines as a captain.
"Flem, for Christ's sake," Jake Dillon said uncomfortably, "I'm a press agent wearing a major's uniform. I don't know anything about this sort of thing."
"You're a Marine, Jake," Pickering said. "And all you have to do is go there and report to me that Banning is or is not doing what you tell him to do. And what you tell him to do is what McCoy tells you he wants done."
"General, that puts me in a hell of a spot," McCoy said.
"There is a limited access communications channel available to us. Moore is familiar with it..." Pickering said.
Jesus, he's talking about the MAGIC channel, Rickabee thought. He shouldn't even think of using that for this harebrained scheme of his! But Jesus, except for Admiral Leahy or the President himself there's no one to tell him he can't.
"We will utilize that to keep in touch with day-to-day developments. As Rickabee just pointed out, the less attention paid to this operation, the better. The question, John, is whether you feel up to going back to Australia."
"Yes, Sir. I feel fine."
"General, he's walking around with a cane!" Rickabee protested.
"You're sure?" Pickering asked Moore.
"Yes, Sir, I'm sure," Lieutenant Moore said.
"OK. We're under way," Pickering said. "Now we start with the administrative details. I've got some letters to write. Can I have a typewriter sent over here, Rickabee?"
"I'll send you a secretary, Sir."
"I asked for a typewriter," Pickering said.
"Aye, aye, Sir."
"You can start on getting orders cut," Pickering said. "And McCoy and Moore and Hart will need plane tickets right away." "Sir," Lieutenant McCoy said, "the overnight train to Miami-`Seacoast Airline' they call it for some reason I never understood comes through Washington at half past six. If we could get on that, we could get a good night's sleep. We could get off in Tallahassee and catch the Greyhound bus to Eglin."
"See if you can get them a compartment-compartments- on the train," Pickering ordered. "And see if you can't arrange to have somebody from Eglin pick them up at Tallahassee."
"Aye, Aye, Sir," Sessions said. "No problem, we have an officer there in connection with Operation CHINA SUN." In the car on the way back to the Mall and Temporary Building T-2032, Captain Edward Sessions turned to Colonel F. L. Rickabee and asked, "Do you think they'll be able to pull this off, Colonel?"
"It isn't my place to think about my orders, Captain. I'm a Marine officer; when I am given an order, I do my best to carry it out. But since you asked, no, I don't think so. Do I hope they can? Yes, I do."
"Why do you suppose McCoy wanted to take Moore and Hart with him to Florida?"
"I have absolutely no idea," Rickabee said, "my mind being otherwise occupied with such mundane questions as under what authority we are going to be able to transport Major Dillon to Australia. He is assigned to Public Affairs, after all.
... And on the subject of Major Dillon, did it occur to you that Dillon has been made privy to Operation CHINA SUN?"
"I think Dillon can be trusted to keep his mouth shut, Colonel. "
"I hope so," Rickabee said. "Jesus Christ, I hope so!" Second Lieutenant John Marston Moore waited until they were in suite 614 of the Foster Lafayette Hotel before asking the question Captain Sessions asked: "Exactly what are we going to do in Florida, McCoy?"
"I'm going to talk to an Air Corps guy I met down there. He knows all about the kind of sand you need to land airplanes on.
And, more important, he invented a gimmick... you stick a cone, sort of, just far enough into the sand to make it stand up.
Then you drop a ten-pound weight on it from exactly twenty
four inches. How far that drives the cone into the ground tells you how much weight the sand will support."
"Fascinating," Moore said.
"I want to talk to him and talk him out of a couple of the cone things-as many as he'll give me," McCoy said. "That'll probably take the better part of an hour. Two hours if he buys us lunch in their officer's club. That reminds me, Hart, you're going to have to wear civilian clothes."
"Yes, Sir," Hart said.
"And what else?"
"The beach along the Gulf Coast there is as pretty as any in Hawaii," McCoy said. "And the seafood is great. With a little bit of luck, we'll have twenty-four hours, maybe thirty-six, before Sessions gets us seats on the courier plane out of Pensacola back here."