than one man on it. Same thing when you’re under way with the engine. There’s one propeller, mounted forward of the rudder. All the power of the engine is directed at the rudder. If you can hold the rudder, you can make really sharp turns.”
“I don’t see any engine controls, or a compass,” McCoy said.
Taylor walked to the forward rail and pulled backward on what McCoy had thought was a sturdy support for the railing. Inside was a control panel for the Caterpillar diesel engine, and a compass. They were chrome-plated, and completely out of place on the junk.
“Like I said, McCoy, Macao shipbuilders know what they’re doing,” Taylor said.
He reached down into the small compartment and threw several switches. The compass and the engine instrument dials lit up and became active. There was a red light—obviously a warning light of some kind.
McCoy was about to ask what it was when it went out. Taylor reached into the compartment again and pressed a button. There was a rumble, and then the diesel engine started.
“I’ll be damned,” McCoy said. “Very nice.”
Taylor shut the engine off again.
“You’re confident we can use this to make the landings? ” he asked.
“Hell no, I’m not,” Taylor replied, shaking his head. “I don’t know much about the waters off Yonghung-do and Taemuui-do, but I’ve never seen a junk tied up at a pier either place. That makes me think the adjacent waters are too shallow, even at high tide, to take a junk’s rudder. We’re going to have to get boats somewhere.”
“Jesus!”
“I was thinking we could get some from the Navy,” Taylor said. “A couple of shore leave boats would be perfect.”
“And asking for them would make the Navy very curious about what we planned to do with them. . . .”
“And we’d have to tow them from Kobe or Yokohama or someplace.”
“We have to think about that,” McCoy said. “Goddamn it!”
Taylor shrugged.
“I’m going ashore to see if I can find out where Zimmerman and that goddamned woman are,” McCoy said. “And we better start loading everything we’re taking with us. You tell Kim.”
Taylor gave a thumbs-up sign, and McCoy started down the ladder to the main deck.
[SIX]
EVENING STAR HOTEL TONGNAE, SOUTH KOREA 1625 5 AUGUST 1950
Master Gunner Zimmerman drove right to the pier, followed by a Jeep with a WAR CORRESPONDENT sign mounted below the glass of its windshield. Zimmerman got out of his Jeep, and collected his Thompson and a canvas musette bag from the Jeep.
Miss Jeanette Priestly of the Chicago Tribune, who was dressed in U.S. Army fatigues much too large for her and had her hair tucked up inside her fatigue cap, got out of her Jeep, then leaned over the rear seat and took a notebook and a Leica camera from a canvas bag and walked toward McCoy, who was leaning on a pier piling.
“What’s going on, McCoy?” she greeted him, stopped, opened the Leica’s leather case, and raised the camera to take a picture of him with the Wind of Good Fortune in the background.
McCoy put one hand, fingers extended, in front of his face, then extended the fingers of the other hand in an obscene gesture.
“You sonofabitch!” she said. There was a tone of admiration in her voice, then, smiling, she asked: “How long are you going to stand there with your hand in front of your face?”
“Until you put the camera away,” he said.
After a moment, she closed the Leica’s case and he took his hand from his face.
“Tell me about Pick Pickering,” she said.
“If you take that camera out of the case again without permission, I’ll take it away from you,” he said.
“Jesus Christ!”
“Having said that, I think I can guarantee you some pictures for your newspaper,” he said.
“Are you going to tell me about Pickering, or not?”
“Once we get under way,” he said. “Get on the junk.”
“The hell I will!”
“Suit yourself,” he said, and started to walk down the pier.
After a moment, she went back to her Jeep, took a carbine and a musette bag from it, and trotted after him. When she caught up with him, he mockingly bowed, and gestured that she should climb the ladder ahead of him.
When she had started up the ladder, McCoy signaled for Zimmerman to get the rest of her things from her Jeep.
The Marines lining the rail of the Wind of Good Fortune watched the female war correspondent climbing the ladder with great interest.
When—not without effort, she had the carbine, the Leica, and her musette bag all hanging