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E P A T I
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E N S E S
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O O N A A
"Nathaniel Willseep At?" Reeves asked. "What the bloody hell is `ienses'?"
"Nathaniel will see Patience soon," Howard said.
"There's no `C' in Patience," Steve said.
"Same thing. You use what you have, in this case an `S.' The question is, who is Nathaniel? And what the hell does it mean?" They found Miss Patience Witherspoon washing Steve's spare utility trousers on a rock in the stream. Nathaniel Wallace turned out to be one of her friends when she was at the Mission School.
"Do you know where he is now?" Reeves asked.
"Yes, Sir. He was sent to Australia just before the war to enroll in King's College. Nathaniel is very intelligent. He did very well in school."
"And did Nathaniel know you were going into the bush with me?" Reeves asked very carefully.
"I sent him a note with the St. James, " Patience said. "Asking him to pray for us."
"What?" Howard asked.
"The St. James was the last ship to leave here before the Japanese came," Reeves said. "It wasn't a ship, really, more like a powered launch."
"Bingo," Howard said. "We are about to be reinforced." He'd caught himself just in time. He was about to say "relieved."
"Is that what you think?" Reeves asked.
"They must know our radio is on its last legs," Howard said.
"And that we need supplies."
"But why take the risk of letting us know someone's coming?"
"So we'll be on the lookout for parachutes, prepared to receive them."
"You think they'd do that again?"
"There's no other way."
"And the Japs know it," Reeves said. "And they're looking for parachutes. And when they break that child's code of yours, they'll really be looking."
"That child's code isn't going to be as easy to break as you think," Howard said. "It'll take them a couple of days... when they start on it. And then they have to guess the meaning."
"Submarine," Steve Koffler said. "They could send people in by submarine."
"I don't think so, Steve," Howard said. "I think we should start looking for an airplane, and parachutes. Even, if they could talk the Navy out of a submarine, and they managed to land somebody safely, how could he get here? Especially carrying replacement radios and equipment?"
"He's from here," Steve said. "This Nathaniel is."
"Nathaniel is very intelligent," Miss Patience Witherspoon said. "And very strong."
[Five]
ROYAL AUSTRALIAN NAVY COASTWATCHER ESTABLISHMENT
TOWNSVILLE, QUEENSLAND
1 OCTOBER 1942
"We'll get into specific details later," Major Edward F. Banning said to open the first briefing session for Operation PICKLE, "so please don't start asking questions until I'm finished." Just over twenty people were sitting around the tables of the mess hall, Australians of the Coastwatcher Establishment and Marines of Special Detachment 14. Some were drinking coffee and eating doughnuts. The majority were drinking beer.
"The RAN is going to provide us with a submarine, HMAS Pelican. It will take a replacement team to this beach...." He turned and pointed to a map of Buka with an eighteen-inch ruler.
"... According to Chief Wallace, it's approximately fifty yards wide at low tide and has a relatively gradual slope. And again according to Chief Wallace, it is a twenty-four- to thirty-six-hour march from Ferdinand Six, which is about here. I asked him to err on the side of caution. Carrying that equipment in that terrain is going to be a bitch.
"Getting it ashore in rubber boats is going to be a bitch, too.
The shallow slope of the beach results in pretty heavy surf under most conditions. We won't know what those conditions are until we get there."
"We?" Sergeant George Hart thought, somewhat unkindly.
What's this we crap? We're not going. These guys are going.
"At that time-when the Pelican surfaces-a decision will have to be made," Banning went on, "whether to try to land the entire team and all the equipment. If the surf or other conditions make that too risky, then we'll put just Chief Wallace and three other men ashore.
"That decision will be made by Lieutenant McCoy. Lieutenant McCoy's something of an expert on rubber-boat landings.
The last one he made was on Makin Island with the Marine Raiders." Heads turned to look at Lieutenant K. R. McCoy.
That was probably necessary, George Hart decided, to impress these people. But McCoy sure didn't like it.
"If it turns out we can only put four men ashore safely, two will immediately start out for Ferdinand Six. Two will remain on the beach. The two on the beach will have two missions. The first is to conduct tests of the beach, to see if the sand there will support the weight of an airplane. That information will be sent to the submarine and then relayed here. After that the submarine will immediately depart the area; it will return the following day. Their second mission will be to tell the submarine, after its return, whether or not it is safe to land the full team.
"Repeated attempts to land the replacement team and its equipment will be made until they are successful or the tests have indicated that the beach will take an aircraft.
"If that proves to be the case, then the aircraft will land there with the second replacement team and its equipment. That will of course solve both the insertion and extraction problems, since the aircraft will take the present team out with it, as well as the two people we insert onto the beach.
"The problem-at least in my judgment-is that the aircraft plan is not likely to work. If it doesn't, then the insertion of the replacement team and the extraction of the people now operating Ferdinand Six will be by submarine."