me through this. The escort officer will pick you up first, and then me, right?”
“I think that would be best,” General Dawkins said.
When she took her hand from Pick’s arm and headed for the door, Captain McGowan pushed it open and held it open as she passed through it, and then General Dawkins followed. Then he went through it and it swung shut.
Major Pickering stared at it for a long time, until he realized he was holding his arm where Mrs. Babs Mitchell had held it.
Then he said, “Shit!” and went to his bedside table and took out a bottle of Listerine mouthwash, which he had had the foresight to fill with scotch in the Officers’ Club, and took a long pull, and then another.
[SIX]
THE PARADE GROUND MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP JOSEPH H. PENDLETON, CALIFORNIA 1710 2 NOVEMBER 1950
Brigadier General Clyde W. Dawkins, USMC, rose from his chair in the reviewing stand and walked to the lectern at the forward edge. He tapped the microphone with his finger, which caused the loudspeakers mounted on poles to pop loudly.
“Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, Marines,” General Dawkins began. “Two of the officers to be decorated today recently flew together off the aircraft carrier USS Badoeng Strait. One of them is here only in spirit. His decorations will be accepted by his widow.”
There was a sudden, rapidly-growing-in-volume roar of aircraft engines.
Three Corsairs in a V formation appeared low in the sky, and then three more, and then three more.
They flew no more than five hundred feet above the parade ground and then began to pull up. The center Corsair in the third V applied FULL MILITARY EMERGENCY POWER, increased the angle of his climb, and changed course to the right, left the formation, and disappeared into the sky.
General Dawkins again addressed the parade.
“Marines to be decorated, front and center!” he barked.
The band began to play “The Marines’ Hymn.”
[SEVEN]
THE OCEAN VIEW APARTMENTS 1005 OCEAN DRIVE SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA 1850 2 NOVEMBER 1950
“Would you like to come in for a minute, Pick?” Mrs. Babs Mitchell asked as the Marine-green Chevrolet pulled into the driveway.
I would gladly sell my soul to Satan, or whoever else would have it, to go up there with you and never come out.
“Thanks, but no thanks. I’m a little weary. Call me?”
“Of course.”
The escort officer walked Mrs. Mitchell to the lobby, watched through the glass door until she got on the elevator, and then walked back to the staff car and got in beside Major Pickering.
“You all right, sir?”
“No. But I will be just as soon as we get to the bar in the Coronado Beach Hotel and I have a pick-me-up. Or three.”
“Sir, my orders are to make sure you make it safely back to the hospital.”
“Screw your orders,” Pick said. “If General Dawkins finds out—and I can see no reason why he should—I’ll take the heat. Sergeant, the Coronado Beach Hotel.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the sergeant driving said.
[EIGHT]
AIR CARGO TERMINAL TRANS-GLOBAL AIRWAYS LINDBERGH FIELD SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA 2025 2 NOVEMBER 1950
“I’m not sure about this, ma’am,” the assistant station manager said to Mrs. Babs Mitchell. “He said I wasn’t to let anybody in here.”
“It’s all right,” Babs said. “We’re friends.”
“If you say so,” the assistant station manager said, and put his key to the lock in the metal door in the hangar door.
Babs stepped through it.
There were lights in the hangar, but they were mounted high against the roof, and the hangar was crowded with pallets of air freight waiting for shipment—most of it, she saw, addressed to “Transportation Officer, 1st MarDiv, Korea”—and it was some time before she saw him.
He was standing with his hands on his hips—looking oddly belligerent—before a coffin shipping case in a far corner of the hangar.
She watched for more than a minute, and he didn’t move.
She didn’t want him to hear her coming across the gritty concrete, so, standing on one leg at a time, she took off her shoes before she walked to him.
And he didn’t sense her presence—which surprised her—until she touched his arm.
“Hey, Pick,” she said. “How are you doing?”
“How the hell did you find me?”
“Well, I was worried about you, so I went to the hospital and you weren’t in your room, and you weren’t in the Officers’ Club, and then I remembered hearing on the radio that her . . . her . . .”
“Jeanette’s body?”
“Yeah. Jeanette’s body would be formally received, or whatever they said, in the morning. And I thought that maybe it had come in early,