“Negative at this time. Ask me again in sixty seconds.”
“Air Force Four Oh Nine, you are clear to land on One Six,” the K-1 tower operator ordered. “Navy Six Six Six, you are number two after the C-54. Acknowledge.”
“Four Oh Nine, understand Number One. Turning on final at this time.”
“Six Sixty-six understands Number Two behind the Air Force.”
“Navy Five Niner Four.”
“Niner Four.”
“Five Niner Four, turn ninety degrees right, climb to five thousand, and reenter the landing pattern after an Air Force C-47. I have a Marine F4-U with low fuel. Acknowledge.”
“Shit,” Lieutenant Commander McDavit said, then pushed the button on his microphone. “Niner Four making a right ninety-degree at this time. Understand climb to five thousand to reenter pattern after an Air Force Gooney-Bird.”
“Marine Double Zero Four, you are number three on One Six after the two transports.”
“Thank you kindly, K-1. And sorry about this, Navy Niner Four.”
“Fuck you, jarhead,” Lieutenant Commander McDavit said, without pressing his microphone button.
Goddamn hotshot jarheads do this all the goddamn time—linger so long looking for something to shoot at that they don’t have the fuel to make it back to the carrier.
It was another fifteen minutes before Lieutenant Commander McDavit was able to land.
Which will make me fifteen fucking minutes late getting back to the Badoeng Strait. Which means that I will probably get back to her just in time to have the sun right in my fucking eyes when I line up on final.
Ground control directed Navy Five Niner Four to the tarmac in front of Base Operations.
Lieutenant Commander McDavit shut the aircraft down and then he and Aviation Motor Machinist’s Mate 2nd Class Richard Orwell climbed down to the ground.
“You start unloading the mail,” Commander McDavit ordered. “And I’ll see about getting us a Jeep or something. ”
“Right,” Orwell said.
The proper response to an order was “Aye, aye, sir,” but Orwell was a good kid, and meant no disrespect, so McDavit decided to let it pass.
Somewhere on K-1 was a small Navy detachment charged with dealing with the mail. It came from San Diego—sometimes San Francisco—on a Navy R5D. R5Ds could not land on “Jeep” carriers such as the Sicily and the Badoeng Strait, so a COD Avenger had to fly to K-1 and pick it up.
Commander McDavit was directed to the fleet post office detachment, told “sorry, no Jeep,” and walked to it, wondering how the hell he was supposed to get the Badoeng Strait’s outgoing mailbags from the Avenger to the FPO, and the incoming mailbags from the FPO to the Avenger, without a Jeep.
There was a Marine captain, in utilities, leaning on an Army Jeep in front of the FPO. A Garand rifle was hanging from its strap, hooked on the corner of the windshield.
The Marine captain stood straight and saluted.
“You’re the COD from the Badoeng Strait?” the Marine captain asked.
“Right.”
“I need a ride out to her, Commander,” the Marine said.
“You’re reporting aboard?”
“Not exactly,” the Marine captain said, and showed McDavit a set of orders from SCAP, signed by some Army three-star general, saying he was authorized to go just about any place he wanted to go.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Captain,” McDavit said. “You help me get the mailbags I brought from the Badoeng Strait here, and the mailbags that are going to the Badoeng Strait out to my airplane, and if I have the weight left, I’ll take you out.”
“I’ll help you with the mail,” the Marine captain said, as he produced another set of orders, this one—Jesus Christ!— signed by the Commander-in-Chief himself, “but if it’s a question of me or the mail going, the mail will have to wait.”
[THREE]
THE USS BADOENG STRAIT 35 DEGREES 60 MINUTES NORTH LATITUDE, 130 DEGREES 52 MINUTES EAST LONGITUDE THE SEA OF JAPAN 1945 4 AUGUST 1950
“Badoeng, Badoeng, Niner Four at 5,000, five miles east. I have Badoeng in sight.”
“Niner Four, Recovery operations under way. You are number two to land after an F4-U on final approach.”
“Roger, I have him in sight. Badoeng, be advised I have aboard a passenger traveling on Presidential orders.”
“Say again, Niner Four?”
“Be advised I have aboard a passenger traveling on Presidential orders.”
Commander McDavit set his Avenger down on Badoeng Strait’s deck more or less smoothly, and the hook caught the second cable, which caused the aircraft to decelerate very rapidly.
Which caused Captain Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, to utter a vulgarity instantly followed by an obscenity, and then a blasphemy.
There were no windows in the passenger/cargo area of the