To which Lieutenant Commander Clanton, a stern-faced thirty-five-year-old, replied, “I have the conn, sir. Captain is leaving the bridge!”
The captain, with Colonel Dunn on his heels, headed for the ladder to the flight deck.
On the flight deck, fifty men—a dozen of them in aluminum-faced firefighting suits and another dozen in Corpsmen’s whites, six of these pushing two gurneys— raced toward the helicopter. Through them moved tractors and firefighting vehicles loaded with other sailors.
They all reached the helicopter even before Donald had shut down the engine, and long before he could apply the brake to the rotor.
By the time the captain and Colonel Dunn reached the helicopter, a very thin, very dirty, heavily bearded human skeleton in what was just barely recognizable as a flight suit was very gently removed from the passenger compartment and onto a gurney.
The human skeleton recognized both Colonel Dunn and the captain. His hand, fingers stiff, came up his temple.
“Hey, Billy!” he said, then: “Permission to come aboard, sir?”
“Permission granted, you sonofabitch!” Colonel Dunn replied as he returned the salute. Despite his best efforts, his voice broke halfway through the sentence.
“Make way!” one of the doctors ordered, and the gurney started to roll toward the island.
McCoy climbed down from the cockpit.
The sight of a man in black pajamas in itself attracted some attention, as did the black helicopter with no markings. Eyes grew even wider when, after having crisply saluted the national colors, the man in black pajamas saluted the captain crisply, and barked, “Permission to come aboard, sir?”
The captain returned the salute.
“Good to see you again, Major,” the captain said.
“Where’d you find him, Killer?” Dunn asked.
“The Army found him—actually, he found an Army convoy that got lost trying to get to Wonsan—in the middle of the Taebaek Mountains. We must have flown right over him fifty times in the last ten days.”
“Me, too,” Dunn said. “That’s rough territory. Hard to spot anything from the air.”
Major Alex Donald walked around the tail assembly of the H-19A. Not being at all familiar with the customs of the Naval service, he did not ask permission to come aboard, but instead simply saluted the captain and Lieutenant Colonel Dunn.
“Well done, Major,” the captain said.
“He needed some help, as soon as we could get it for him,” Donald replied.
“I presume, Major,” the captain said to McCoy, “that’s why you felt the risks in bringing him here were justified?”
“Yes, sir. That and because I knew you have the communications facilities I need.”
“Well, Colonel Dunn will see that you have what you need,” the captain said. “And when you’re finished, perhaps you would be good enough to come to the bridge and tell me what you can to satisfy my curiosity.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” McCoy said.
[FOUR]
COMMUNICATIONS CENTER USS BADOENG STRAIT (CVE 116) 37.9 DEGREES NORTH LATITUDE 129.56 DEGREES EAST LONGITUDE THE SEA OF JAPAN 1315 14 OCTOBER 1950
The communications officer on duty answered the buzz to unlock the port himself. When he saw Lieutenant Colonel Dunn and a man wearing what appeared to be black pajamas, he opened his mouth to say something, but Dunn cut him off.
“This officer has a message to dispatch,” Dunn said.
“Yes, sir?”
“You want to let us in, please?” Dunn asked.
“Yes, sir,” the commo officer said, and stepped out of the way.
“May I have the message, sir?” the commo officer said.
“I’ll have to type it out,” McCoy said.
“One of my men will be happy—”
“I’ll type it myself, thank you,” McCoy said. “Lieutenant, this is one of those messages that the fewer people see, the better. There will be no copies. Can you handle a Top Secret encryption yourself?”
The commo officer looked between McCoy and Dunn, then said, “That’s unusual, but yes, sir.”
“Can I have that typewriter a moment?” McCoy asked a white hat seated at a work table.
The commo officer nodded his approval and the white hat stood up.
McCoy sat down, rolled the carriage to eject a standard message form made up of an original and three carbons, then rolled a single sheet of paper into the machine.
He typed very rapidly, then took the message from the typewriter and handed it to Dunn, who read it.
“Two things, Ken,” he said, somewhat hesitantly. “Considering the addressees, isn’t that ‘dirty, unshaven, and very hungry’ business a little informal?”
“If I just said, ‘in pretty good shape’ or something like that, everyone would wonder what I wasn’t saying,” McCoy said.
“And can you do that? Ask somebody ‘not to disseminate’ Top Secret information, and then give it