"Jesus, that was good!"
"Another, old sod?" Feldt asked.
"No, thanks."
"You haven't told us what you're doing here, Jake," Banning said.
"Well, I'm on my way home. I thought maybe you'd want me to call your wife-" Dillon stopped abruptly.
Too late, Dillon remembered that Mrs. Edward F. Banning did not get out of Shanghai before the Japanese came. She was a White Russian refugee whom Banning had married just before the Fourth Marines were transferred from Shanghai to the Philippines.
You're an asshole, Dillon, and don't blame it on the booze.
"-Shit! Ed, I'm sorry!" he went on, regret in his voice. "That just slipped out."
"Forget it," Banning said evenly.
"Or get you something in the States," Dillon went on somewhat lamely.
"Send us Pickering back," Feldt said. "If you want to do something useful."
"Amen," Banning said, as if anxious to get off the subject of Mrs. Edward F. Banning. "The minute he left, the assholes in MacArthur's headquarters held a party, and then they started working on us."
"That figures," Dillon said. "I'll make a point to see him, talk to him."
"I don't think it will do any good," Banning said.
"I don't know. It sodding well can't do any sodding harm," Feldt said. "That would be a service, old sod."
"Consider it done," Dillon said. "He still works for Frank Knox. Hot radios from the Secretary of the Navy often work miracles. Is there anything in particular?"
"Ask him to get that sodding asshole Willoughby off our back," Feldt said.
Newly promoted Brigadier General Charles A. Willoughby, USA, was MacArthur's intelligence officer. He was one of the "Bataan Gang," i.e., the men who escaped by PT Boat with MacArthur from the Philippines.
"Since he is the theater intelligence officer," Banning said, "Willoughby feels that all intelligence activities should come under him. In his shoes I would probably feel the same way.
But it really isn't Willoughby who's the problem so much as the people he has working for him."
"Willoughby," Feldt insisted, "is a sodding asshole, and so are the people working for him."
"They want us to route our intelligence through SWPOA," Banning said. (MacArthur's official title was Supreme Commander, South West Pacific Ocean Areas.) "So Willoughby can look important," Feldt said.
`Do you?" `Yes and no," Banning said. "When possible, the Coast watchers communicate with CINCPAC Radio directly. We monitor everything, of course. So if our people can't get through to them, we relay to CINCPAC. If that happens, we send a copy to SWPOA." (CINCPAC: Commander in Chief, Pacific, the Navy's headquarters at Pearl Harbor.) "Willoughby wants our people to communicate with SWPOA, and he'll pass it on to CINCPAC," Feldt said. "We have been ignoring the asshole, of course."
"So far successfully," Banning said. "But, oh how we miss Captain Pickering. He could get Willoughby off our back."
"Speaking of `our people,"' Dillon said, remembering the two boys on Buka. It was one thing, he thought, to have your ass in the line of fire in a line company on Guadalcanal-having your ass in the line of fire was what being a Marine was really all about-and something entirely different to be one of two Marines on an enemy-held island with no chance of being relieved.
"Good lads," Feldt said. "Every time I want to say something unpleasant about you sodding Marines, I remind myself there is an exception to the rule."
"So far they're all right, Jake," Banning said. "All right being defined as the Japs haven't caught them yet. Buka, right now, is probably the most important station."
"How are they?" Dillon asked. When neither Feldt nor Banning immediately replied, he went on: "I'm headed for the Fourth General Hospital. Barbara's there. She'll ask me about Joe."
"Lie to her," Feldt said. "That would be kindest." Lieutenant (J.G.)
Barbara T. Cotter, NNCR, was engaged to First Lieutenant Joseph L.
Howard, USMCR, who Was now on Buka with Sergeant Steven M. Koffler.
"Why are you going to the Fourth General?" Banning asked.
"I have four wounded heroes; I need two more. I'm going to hold an audition at the hospital to fill the cast. Don't change the subject. Tell me about Joe and Koffler. I don't want to lie to Barbara."
"They are on the edge of starvation," Feldt said. "They are almost certainly infested with a wide variety of intestinal parasites. The odds are ten to one they have malaria, and probably two or three other tropical diseases. They have no medicine.
For that matter they don't even have salt. They are already two weeks past the last date they could possibly be expected to escape detection by the Japanese."
"Jesus!" Dillon said.
"Tell Barbara that if you like," Feldt said in a level voice.
"What about getting them out?"
"Out of the sodding question, old sod," Feldt said.
"Well, what the hell are you going to do when they are caught?" Dillon asked angrily. "You just said-Banning just said-that Buka is, right now, the most important station."
"When Buka goes down, Jake," Banning said, "we will start parachuting in replacement teams. The moment we're sure it's down, we start dropping people. Giving Willoughby his due, he has promised us a B-17 within two hours when we ask for one."
"A B-17? Why a B-17?"
"Because when we jumped Joe and Koffler in there-Christ, two Jap fighter bases are on Buka-we used an unarmed transport. It was shot down. Fortunately, after Joe and Koffler jumped.
"And nothing can be done?"
"I don't know. We haven't given it much thought," Feldt said, thickly sarcastic. "But perhaps someone of your vast expertise in these areas has a solution we haven't been able to come up, with ourselves."
"Eric, I'm sorry you took that the wrong way," Dillon said.
Feldt didn't reply; but a moment later he stood up and leaned over to refresh Dillon's glass of scotch.
"What makes you think you ran get a replacement team on the ground?"
Dillon asked after a long silence.