“I really don’t know, sir,” Sergeant Jennings said, his tone telling McCoy that he knew what Zimmerman was doing but was a wise enough noncom not to be the one who told the new commanding officer.
“Where are we headed, sir?”
“Stop right here and turn the headlights off,” McCoy said. “Before we go to the pier, I need some answers.”
“Yes, sir?”
“You’re going to be part of this operation?” McCoy said.
“Whatever it is, yes, sir.”
“Welcome aboard,” McCoy said. “Did Mr. Zimmerman tell you what we’re going to do?”
“He said you’d get into that, sir.”
“Is there a Navy officer with Mr. Zimmerman? Lieutenant Taylor?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What else is there?”
“There’s a dozen of us, sir.”
“Mr. Zimmerman was trying to recruit ex-Marine Raiders,” McCoy said, but it was a question.
“I was a Raider, sir.”
“And that’s why you volunteered for this?”
“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Jennings said, then added, “Raiders are something special, sir.”
“Yes, we are, aren’t we? Women find us irresistible, and movie stars ask for our autographs.”
Sergeant Jennings chuckled.
“You were a Raider, sir?”
“A long time ago. At the beginning. I was just out of OCS, a really bushy-tailed second lieutenant.”
“There was a Lieutenant McCoy on the Makin Island raid. . . .”
“I was at Makin,” McCoy said.
“I thought . . . ,” Jennings said, and stopped.
“You thought what?”
“That you might be Killer McCoy, sir.”
“Pass the word, Sergeant Jennings, that your new skipper has the nasty habit of castrating, with a dull knife, people who call him that.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Sergeant Jennings said. “But I have to say this. Knowing that makes me feel a lot better about volunteering for this . . . whatever it is.”
“What we’re going to try to do is, dressed up in Korean national police uniforms, take a couple of small islands off Inchon with as little fuss as possible. They’re supposed to be lightly defended by second-class troops.”
Sergeant Jennings considered that, but said nothing for several minutes.
“There’s an army transportation corps major waiting for me in Base Operations,” McCoy said. “He’s actually a CIA agent, actually the CIA’s station chief here. He’s been ordered to give us what support he can. But, I decided in the last couple of minutes, I want him to know as little as possible about what we’re doing. Make sure that word gets passed.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Jennings said, then went on, somewhat hesitantly: “Mr. Zimmerman said you and he have been in Korea for a while, sir?”
“For a while.”
“Why is the Army so fucked up, sir?”
“They didn’t train,” McCoy said. “It’s as simple as that. And they’re not all fucked up. There’s one regiment—the 27th, they call themselves the ‘Wolfhounds’—that’s first class. And there are others. But what it looks like to me is the brass just didn’t expect a war, and just weren’t prepared for this.”
“Nobody thought this was coming?”
As a matter of fact, Sergeant, I told them it was coming. And they tried to get me kicked out of the Marine Corps because they didn’t want to hear it.
“Apparently not,” McCoy said. “Okay, turn the lights on and drive me to Base Operations. Maybe this guy can get us someplace more comfortable to set up shop than a warehouse on the pier.”
[FIVE]
Major Dunston was waiting for McCoy in a Jeep parked beside the base operations building.
McCoy got out of Jennings’s Jeep and walked up to Dunston’s Jeep.
“I have to go to the pier in Pusan,” he announced. “We have to talk, obviously. Talking in the Jeep Okay with you?”
“Fine, get in,” Dunston added. “I know where you’re going on the pier.”
“You’ve got people on the pier?” McCoy asked.
Dunston nodded, started the Jeep, and drove off. McCoy made a follow me gesture with his arm, and Sergeant Jennings pulled his Jeep behind Dunston’s.
“First things first, I suppose,” McCoy said. “Are you a major?”
“I’m a civilian with the assimilated rank of major,” Dunston said. “In War Two, I was an OSS captain in Europe. ‘Major’ Dunston is a convenient cover.”
“I’m a Marine captain who was a Marine major in the OSS during War Two,” McCoy said. “In the Pacific.”
“I know who you are, McCoy,” Dunston said. “What do they say? ‘Your reputation precedes you.’ I’m really looking forward to working with you.”
What is that, soft soap?
What reputation precedes me? The Killer McCoy business? Or that I was sent home from Tokyo and almost booted out of the Corps?
“One of Colonel Dunn’s Corsair pilots was shot down yesterday morning near Taejon, while shooting up a North Korean railroad train. Colonel Dunn flew over the crash site almost immediately