For one thing, he had been running Fishbase since Zimmerman had been ordered to Sasebo, even before they thought McCoy had probably been detected and gone missing up north. He had had the Bailout Mission up and ready to go. That was a hell of a lot different than running a perimeter guard around the hangar at K-14.
While Dunwood liked what for lack of a better word was the “informality” of Fishbase, he had to admit that the absolute absence of an official chain of command posed some problems.
There was an unofficial chain of command, of course. Master Gunner Zimmerman, USMC, gave the orders, and Captain Dunwood, USMCR, and Major Alex Donald, USA, obeyed them. In the normal military scheme of things, majors give orders to captains who give them to warrant officers, not the other way around.
At least Alex Donald and the pilots and crews of the Big Black Birds—and now the “borrowed” Beaver, and the two L-19s—knew where they stood. By command of General MacArthur himself they had been transferred to the CIA. By stretching it a little, you could say that Donald was getting his orders from the Army lieutenant colonel, Vandenburg, at The House in Seoul.
But the facts there were that Zimmerman told Vandenburg only what he thought Vandenburg had the need to know, and so far as Dunwood knew, Vandenburg hadn’t even offered a suggestion about what the people at Fishbase should be doing.
Officially, Charley Company, 5th Marines, Captain Howard C. Dunwood, USMCR, commanding, was, by verbal order of the Commanding General, 1st MarDiv, on temporary duty of an unspecified nature for an indefinite period. And there were problems with that.
For one thing, Dunwood very seriously doubted if anyone in the 5th Marines—for that matter, the entire 1st Mar-Div—had any idea where they were. He knew the division had landed at Wonsan.
He knew no one in 1st MarDiv knew what they were doing. Which lately had been practicing insertions and extractions using the Big Black Birds, which nobody was supposed to know about. And practicing for what? The shot-down Marine pilot they had been looking for had been found. Or he had found the Army. Anyway, he didn’t need to be found, so what were they doing with the practice insertions/extractions?
The latest wrinkle in that was the idea of one of his Marines. Instead of jumping out of the door of the H-19s as they hovered several feet off the ground, they made the insertion by half sliding, half climbing down a twenty-foot -long knotted rope from the door of the Big Black Birds.
What the hell were they practicing for, night after night?
When Captain Dunwood had posed, as tactfully as he knew how, that question to Master Gunner Zimmerman, the response had been succinct but not very illuminating: “Because that’s what the Killer said to do.”
There were administrative problems, too. Every other day or so, when the Beaver made a supply run, it carried with it a bag of mail from home, and took out the letters the Marines had written. No stamps were necessary; you wrote “Free” on the envelope where the stamp would normally go.
Among his other duties, Captain Dunwood had been appointed censor for Fishbase, not only for his Marines but for everybody else, including the Army Aviation people. Master Gunner Zimmerman had made the appointment, and his accompanying orders had been brief.
“You read anything about where we are, what we’re doing, or the Big Black Birds, anything, burn the letter.”
Presumably, everybody’s service records were with the 5th Marines. That meant that no one was getting paid. No one had been paid since they went to Sasebo from Pusan, before the Inchon invasion.
It didn’t matter, practically. There was nothing on which to spend money, or for that matter anywhere to spend it. And the Beaver—and trucks—brought in a steady stream of supplies, including creature comforts, cigarettes, cigars, shaving cream, and the like, and of course beer, all of which was free. There had even been a shipment of utilities, underwear, winter clothing, and boots.
In the just over an hour between the heads-up from The House and the arrival of the Beaver, Captain Dunwood made up his mind. The first thing he was going to do when Major McCoy got out of the airplane was ask for a minute of his time.
He didn’t know exactly what he was going to say, but he would think of something.
He could always think of something to say. Being able to think on