that perhaps Master Sergeant George Withers might be of help. Withers was the NCOIC (noncommissioned officer in charge) of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Detachment on whose boat Buchanan had escaped from Luzon. He was a competent fellow; master sergeants of the Regular U.S. Army are almost by definition highly knowledgeable and resourceful. He had, after all, managed to acquire and hide the boat and bring his detachment safely to Mindanao on it.
Master Sergeant Withers was summoned.
He was obviously uncomfortable, and after some gentle prodding, General Fertig got him to blurt out:
“The truth of the matter is, General, I’m not sure I’m a master sergeant.”
“Would you care to explain that, Sergeant?”
Withers explained that he had been a staff sergeant assigned to an Army ammunition depot on Luzon when he had been suddenly transferred to a Philippine Scout Explosive Ordnance Disposal Detachment.
“There was fifteen Scouts, General . . . we lost ten before we finally got out. Anyway, Sir, two of them was technical sergeants. They didn’t know nothing about explosives, they’d come out of the Twenty-sixth Cavalry with Lieutenant Whittaker when it got all shot up and was disbanded.”
“Lieutenant Whittaker? A cavalry officer? Was he killed, too?” General Fertig asked.
“No, Sir, and he wasn’t a cavalry officer, either. He was a fighter pilot. They put him in the cavalry after they ran out of airplanes, and then they put him to work blowing things up when the Twenty-sixth Cavalry got all shot up and they butchered their horses for rations. He was a fucking artist with TNT . . .”
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know,” Withers said. “The brass on Corregidor sent for him. That’s where we got Captain Buchanan. He was sent to fetch Lieutenant Whittaker, and he talked Lieutenant Whittaker into letting him come with us.”
It made sense, Fertig thought, that a demolitions expert . . . “a fucking artist with TNT” . . . would be summoned to Corregidor to practice his art just before the fortress fell. Poor bastard, if he wasn’t dead, he was now in a prison camp. With a little bit of luck, he could be here, and free. USFIP could use a fucking artist with TNT.
“You were telling me, Sergeant,” General Fertig said, “about your rank.”
“Yes, Sir. Well, Lieutenant Whittaker thought that since I knew about explosives, and the Scouts didn’t, it would be awkward with two of the Scouts outranking me, so he said, right when I first reported to him, that I had been promoted to master sergeant. I’m not sure he had the authority to do that, Sir. I wasn’t even on the technical sergeant promotion list.”
Sgt. Withers looked at General Fertig for the general’s reaction. His face bore the look of a man who has made a complete confession of his sins and has prepared himself for whatever fate is about to send his way.
“Sergeant Withers,” General Fertig said. “You may consider that your promotion in the field, by my authority, has been confirmed and is now a matter of record.”
“The reason I asked you in here, Sergeant,” General Fertig said, “is to ask for your thoughts on a problem we have. We have need of a source of electrical power.”
“What for, Sir?”
“To power our radio transmitter.”
Withers hardly hesitated.
“There’s a diesel on the boat—”
“We sank the boat.”
“We sunk it before on Luzon,” Withers said, undaunted. “The engine’s sealed. I’ll take my Scouts down there and get it.”
“And how will you get it up here?”
“We’ll steal a water buffalo and make a travois . . . like the Indians had? . . . No problem, General.”
“The sooner the better, Sergeant,” General Fertig said.
2
NAVAL COMMUNICATIONS FACILITY MARE ISLAND NAVY YARD SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 5 JANUARY 1943
The radioman second looked to be about seventeen years old. He was small and slight, and his light brown hair was cropped close to his skull. He wore government-issue metal-framed glasses, and his earphones made his head look very small.
But he was good at his trade, capable of transcribing the International Morse Code coming over his Hallicrafters receiver far faster than it was being sent. He had time, in other words, to read what he was typing instead of just serving as a human link in the transmission process.
He raised one hand over his head to signal his superior while with the other, with practiced skill, he took the sheet of paper in his typewriter out and fed a fresh sheet.
The lieutenant junior grade who came to his station