was processing the film, and made extra copies,” McGrory said.
“What am I looking at, Mac?” he asked.
McGrory pointed.
Dunn looked again, and shook his head.
“In the rice field, Colonel,” Chief Young said. “It looks like it was drained. They bombed the hell out of that bridge, and it looks like they broke the dam, or whatever keeps the water in.”
Dunn looked again.
“Have we got a magnifying glass, or whatever?”
Chief Young picked the picture up, took it to a desk, laid it down, and set up over it a device on thin metal legs.
“That’s stereo,” he said. “But it helps even when it’s an ordinary picture.”
Dunn bent over it. With some difficulty, he managed to get the picture in focus.
“I’ll be damned,” he said.
“Yeah,” McGrory said. “That’s no accident. Somebody stamped that out in the mud with his feet.”
Dunn bent over the viewing device again.
And then he put his hand out to steady himself. The Badoeng Strait was turning sharply. She was turning into the wind.
“All hands, prepare to commence launching operations,” the loudspeaker blared. “Pilots, man your aircraft. All hands, prepare to commence launching operations. Pilots, man your aircraft.”
“Has anyone seen this?” Dunn asked.
“No, sir.”
“Let’s sit on it until I get back,” Dunn said, and then asked a sudden question. “Which way is south on this?”
McGrory pointed.
“He’s going the wrong way,” Dunn said.
“It looks that way,” McGrory agreed.
“You haven’t told anybody about this?”
“No, sir. I figure if the word got out, everybody in VMF- 243 would be out there looking for him.”
“Keep it that way, please, Mac. Until I get back.”
McGrory nodded, then appeared to be waiting for additional orders.
And if you don’t come back, Colonel?
“I should be back about 1500. If I’m delayed, give this to Captain Freewall.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” McGrory said. “I’ll see you about 1500, then, sir.”
“Right.”
“How’s things over there?”
“Would you believe a doggie regiment took the wrong fork on a road and wound up holding the wrong hill?”
“Jesus H. Christ!”
Dunn left the photo lab and rapidly climbed what seemed like endless steep ladders, ultimately reaching the level of the flight deck. He went, already starting to sweat a little, onto the flight deck itself, and saw that his Corsair, the engine running, was first in line to take off.
He stood at the wing root as his airplane captain told him about the airplane, and simultaneously helped him properly fasten the personal gear—the Mae West inflatable life preserver, the survival gear pack, and a .45 ACP pistol—he had unfastened when he landed.
He climbed up onto the wing, then into the cockpit. The airplane commander strapped him into his parachute, gave him a thumbs-up, handed him a small brown paper bag, and then got off the airplane.
Then Dunn waited to take off.
But he wasn’t thinking about flying the aircraft.
It has to be Pick, he thought. Who the hell else would stamp out “PP” and an arrow in the mud of a ruptured Korean rice field?
And who else but that dumb sonofabitch would be headed away from our lines?
Not quite forty-five seconds later, he was airborne.
XVI
[ONE]
ABOARD WIND OF GOOD FORTUNE 37 DEGREES 44 MINUTES NORTH LATITUDE, 126 DEGREES 59 MINUTES EAST LONGITUDE THE YELLOW SEA 1155 7 AUGUST 1950
“That looks like a lighthouse,” Captain Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, said to Lieutenant David R. Taylor, USNR.
“God, you’re a clever chap, Mr. McCoy,” Taylor replied, in his best Charles Laughton Mutiny on the Bounty accent. “That indeed is a lighthouse, marking the entrance to the Flying Fish Channel.”
Jeanette Priestly laughed.
"That makes it three for Captain Bligh and two for Jean Lafitte,” she said.
“A question, Captain, sir,” McCoy said. “May I dare to hope that we will soon be at our destination?”
“I would estimate, Mr. McCoy, that we should be there within the hour, perhaps a little less.”
The preceding twenty-four hours had passed slowly and uneventfully. The landmass of South Korea had always been in sight to starboard, but Taylor’s course was far enough out to see so the Wind of Good Fortune would be practically invisible to anyone on the shore.
The flip side was that the people on the Wind of Good Fortune couldn’t see anything on the shore. It was quiet and peaceful, and Jeanette Priestly had observed that it was hard to believe a war was going on.
They had seen a dozen small ships—probably fishing boats—but they had been far away, just visible on the horizon, and none had come close. They had seen no larger vessels, and if the naval forces of the United Nations Command were patrolling the