In Danger's Path (37 page)

The other general did not have many ribbons. Colonel Warren decided he was probably another administrative officer of some kind. He looked like an administrative type. And he was carrying a battered briefcase.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Colonel Warren said. “How can I be of service?”

“How are you, Dick?” Stecker said, offering his hand.

“Long time no see,” Warren said.

After introducing the others, Jack (NMI) Stecker said, “You're going to love this, Dick.”

General Rickabee opened the briefcase and came out with a service record jacket. He handed it to Colonel Warren.

“Those are the records of Technical Sergeant Harry Rutterman,” General Rickabee said.

“Yes, sir,” Colonel Warren said.

“We want to have him promoted to master gunner,” Rickabee said.

“I don't think I quite understand, sir,” Warren said. “Has the sergeant been recommended for promotion? I've got to tell you, the promotion board has been rejecting just about all recommendations for people who aren't master sergeants.”

“Well, I really don't care about any promotion board,” General Pickering said. “We need to pin master gunner's bars on Sergeant Rutterman right away.”

“Sir, I'm afraid I don't understand.”

“Where Rutterman is going, he can perform his duties better if he has a bar on his collar,” Pickering said. “This has to do with the efficiency of the mission. Not that Rutterman isn't fully qualified to be a master gunner.”

“May I ask what that mission is, sir? What this man will be doing?”

“No. You don't have the need to know, Colonel,” Rickabee said.

“Sir, without some sort of special justification, I don't think that it's going to be possible to promote Sergeant Rutterman,” Warren said uncomfortably, looking at Stecker, who seemed to be amused by the exchange.

“There's always a waiver,” Rickabee said. “What we need from you, Colonel, is to tell us who can grant a waiver in this case.”

“Sir, a request for a waiver of this type has to go up through channels. I'll have to check. But, unless I'm mistaken, it has to be approved by the post commander where the sergeant is stationed, and then by both the G-1 and the deputy commandant.”

“How about the Secretary of the Navy?” General Pickering asked. “Could he grant such a waiver?”

The Secretary of the Navy? Personally? What the hell is going on here?

“That would be very unusual, sir, for the Secretary of the Navy to become personally involved in something like this.”

“If the Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy told you it was the Secretary's desire to promote Sergeant Rutterman, would that do it?” General Rickabee asked.

“Yes, sir, of course.”

“May I use your telephone, Colonel?” Rickabee asked.

“Of course, sir.”

Rickabee dialed a number from memory.

“David, Fritz,” he said. “We're at Eighth and I. I'm going to put you on the line with Colonel Warren. He's the enlisted personnel guy in G-1, and he needs the Secretary's authority to promote Rutterman.”

He handed the telephone to Colonel Warren.

“Captain David Haughton, USN, is Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy,” Rickabee said.

Colonel Warren took the telephone.

He said “Yes, sir” five times; “I understand, sir” twice; and then “Glad to be of service, sir” once.

[FOUR]
Office of the Deputy Director, USMC Aviation
Building F
Anacostia Naval Air Station
Washington, D.C.
1115 9 March 1943

“General,” Brigadier General D. G. McInerney's aide-de-camp announced, “there is a General Pickering and a Colonel Stecker to see you, sir.”

“Tony, that's
the
General Pickering and
the
Colonel Stecker,” McInerney said. “‘A' suggests there's more than one of each, and that's just not the case.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Send them in, and then lock up the silver. I don't think they're here just to say hello.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” the aide said.

He turned and opened the door.

“Gentlemen, General McInerney will see you.”

They walked into the office.

“To what do I owe the honor of such distinguished visitors to my humble abode?” McInerney greeted them, coming from around his desk.

“You want the truth, Mac?” Pickering asked, as their handshake turned into a hug.

“If possible, that would be very nice,” McInerney said, as he gave Stecker an affectionate hug.

“We want to pick your brains,” Pickering said, “and eventually steal things.”

“Tony, am I flying today?” McInerney asked.

“No, sir.”

“In that case, a little nip is called for. Bring in the cheap stuff.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

First Lieutenant Anthony I. Sylvester had not been General McInerney's aide for long. He was still on limited duty following hospitalization for injuries to his neck suffered in a bad arrested landing. But he had been around long enough to know that these two officers were somehow special to McInerney. He had never heard of General Pickering, but wondered if Colonel Stecker could be the near-legendary Colonel Jack (NMI) Stecker.

A moment later, Sylvester returned to McInerney's office with two bottles, one of scotch, the other of bourbon, the best available in the lower filing case in the office.

“I said the cheap stuff, Tony,” McInerney said. “I had the great misfortune to serve with these two in what used to be called The Great War—I was one of Sergeant Stecker's corporals, believe it or not. They wouldn't know good booze if they were drowning in it.”

My God, that is Colonel Jack (NMI) Stecker!

“And even then, Lieutenant,” Pickering said, “he was known for his peculiar sense of humor. That liquor will do very nicely, thank you.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Lieutenant Sylvester—Tony—just came to me from Philadelphia,” McInerney said. “And to answer your question, yes, he knows Dick. I asked him, and he confirmed what I'd heard, Dick's doing all right.”

“You're Lieutenant Stecker's father, sir?” Lieutenant Sylvester asked.

Stecker nodded.

“We had therapy together,” Sylvester said.

“They do amazing things at Philadelphia,” Stecker said. “For a while…” He decided not to pursue that thought. “But now,” he continued, “thank God, Dick's walking around with only a cane.”

“He told me he'd been pretty badly banged up,” Sylvester said.

“Young Stecker and young Pickering were in VMF-229 on the 'Canal,” McInerney said. “So this is sort of a family gathering. With that in mind, Flem, should I tell Tony to pour himself a drink? Or is this visit official?”

Pickering looked uncomfortable. “I'd rather you decide later, Mac, how much Lieutenant Sylvester should know about what we're going to talk about,” he said finally.

“Okay, Tony. Out. Bar the door. Nobody but the Commandant.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Lieutenant Sylvester said, and left the office.

“What the hell is going on?” McInerney asked.

“What I said. I need to pick your brains.”

“About what?”

“What follows is Top Secret,” Pickering said.

McInerney nodded. “Understood.”

“We're going to set up a weather station in the Gobi Desert,” Pickering said.

“Who is ‘we'?”

“The OSS,” Pickering said.

“I saw that in the paper—I mean, you going over there. You, too, Jack?”

“Jack is my liaison to the Corps,” Pickering said. “Unofficially.”

“When is Vandegrift going to take over? Any word on that?”

“He wants to stay with the First Marine Division until he gets it back in shape. Whenever he decides it is, he'll take over,” Stecker said.

“So you're going to have to wait awhile for your star?”

“If that ever happens,” Stecker said.

“It'll happen. Vandegrift told me it would,” McInerney said firmly, then looked at Pickering. “Okay, tell me about your Gobi Desert weather station. I heard the Army Air Corps was going to set one up in Russia. Same idea?”

“The Russians won't let the Air Corps in. Nimitz and Leahy want a weather station as soon as possible. Leahy gave the mission to the OSS, and Nimitz got Leahy to ‘suggest' that I be given the job.”

“Which means Leahy and Nimitz think you're the guy who can do it,” McInerney said. “Proving once again that I was wrong when I told you you couldn't do the Corps any good.”

“You told me that because you believed it, Mac,” Pickering said. “And that's why I'm here. I want you to tell me what you believe, not what you think I'd like to hear.”

“Okay. I don't think you can do it. That blunt enough? The Gobi Desert is in the middle of nowhere, a long way from anything we control. How the hell are you going to put people in there? On camels?”

Stecker chuckled. “That's one of the options, Mac, but what Flem wants to ask you about is airplanes.”

“I don't need a map and a compass to measure the distance. I can tell you the Gobi Desert is beyond the range of any airplane in the inventory—Marine, Navy, or Air Corps. You didn't know that?”

“When you speak of range, you're talking round trips, right?” Pickering asked.

McInerney thought that over for a minute.

“A one-way mission, huh? Who are you going to find to fly it? More important, where will it go?”

“There's reliable information that a group of Americans is somewhere in the Gobi Desert, some of them Marines from the Legation Guard at Peking who didn't surrender. Most of these people are supposed to be retired from the Fourth Marines, the Yangtze River patrol, and the Fifteenth Infantry.”

“You're in contact with them?”

“Not reliably. We're working on that.”

“We're going to send decent radios to them, Mac,” Stecker said. “On camels.”

McInerney's eyebrows rose in either surprise or disbelief.

“We also have somebody who's been all over the Gobi desert,” Pickering said. “A gunnery sergeant who used to be in the Fourth in Shanghai. He tells us that a good deal of the Gobi Desert is not sand but flat rock. In other words, an airplane could land there.”

“Erring on the side of caution, how about ‘crash-land'?” McInerney said sarcastically.

“Okay. Crash-land,” Pickering said. “As long as it delivers the weather station equipment in workable condition, we can write off the airplane.”

“If it gets that far, and I have serious doubts that it will, this weather station would be secret, right?”

“It would be better if it were,” Pickering said.

“If you sent an airplane on a one-way mission, the wreckage would stick out like a sore thumb in the desert,” McInerney said.

“Yeah, I guess it would,” Pickering said. “Let's fly an airplane there first, and then worry about concealing the wreckage. What should we use for an airplane?”

“That would depend on where the airplane is going to fly
from
,” McInerney said. “You have two choices. Russia, and you say that's out of the question. Or India.”

“Tell me about India,” Pickering said.

“The Air Corps is flying Curtiss C-46s from Sadiya—something like that, anyway. God, I'm not sure what I'm talking about.”

McInerney picked up his telephone. “Tony, bring me maps of India and China,” he said, hung up, and then went on: “They call it ‘Flying the Hump.' Meaning they have to climb to sixteen thousand feet to fly over it, most of the way on oxygen. They fly supplies over the Himalayas into Kunming, China.”

“Kunming is in the south of China,” Stecker said. “The Gobi Desert is in the north, the far north.”

“I'll have to check the map, but I'm thinking, Jack, that the distances are about the same. A C-46 would have the range, especially if it wasn't planning to make a round trip.”

“Correct me if I'm wrong,” Pickering said. “But wouldn't you say that even if the Japanese can't shoot these planes down—”

“They shoot them down,” McInerney interrupted.

“—they keep track of them. Either themselves, or with informants, spies, on the ground?”

“Sure.”

“And wouldn't they notice if one of these C-46s routinely flying to Kunming suddenly went in the other direction?”