look himself, and decide what was the smart thing to do.
A flash of reflected light struck the solid railing behind which McCoy was concealing himself. He looked and saw Jeanette Priestly, on her hands and knees, crawling toward him from the door to the passageway under the stern. Her Leica, its case open, hung from her neck and dragged along the deck.
“Okay?” she asked when she reached him, and was sitting on the deck, her back against the stern bulkhead.
“Fine. With a little luck, when the shooting starts, you’ll catch a bullet.”
“You don’t mean that,” she said.
“Don’t I?”
“No,” she said, and put the Leica up and took his picture.
“I told you the next time you took my picture without asking, I’d throw your camera over the side.”
“You didn’t mean that either,” she said. “And anyway, you can’t do that now. Anyone on shore would see it.”
He shook his head.
“You looked very thoughtful, just now, before you saw me,” Jeanette said. “Penny for your thoughts, Captain McCoy. ”
“Jesus Christ!” he said, but he realized he was smiling.
“Well?”
“When I was a kid,” he said, “my grandmother had a big plate—from China, I guess—in her dining room. It was painted with pictures of pagodas, and there was a junk, and trees—”
“Willows,” she interrupted. “They were willow trees. They call those dishes ‘Blue Willow,’ I think.”
“If you say so,” he went on. “And I used to look at the damn thing all the time. It fascinated me. Little did that little boy know that one day he would get to ride on a real junk in the Yellow Sea—”
“Maybe you are human after all,” she said.
“—with a crazy lady who’s likely to get herself killed, like the cat, from curiosity.”
“I’m just trying to do my job,” she said.
“Your job is interfering with me doing mine,” he said. “When I stand up in a couple of minutes, you stay where you are until I tell you you can move. If you stand up, I’m going to knock you down. Got it?”
“That, I think you mean,” she said. “Okay.”
A minute later, McCoy gingerly raised his head alongside a stanchion, took a quick look, and dropped quickly back down.
“Remember the cat,” Jeanette said. “What did you see?”
“We’re fifty yards, maybe a little more, from the wharf. Aside from a couple of hungry-looking dogs on shore, I didn’t see any sign of life at all.”
Korean seamen lowered all but one sail.
McCoy waited for Taylor to start the engine, in case they had to make a quick exit.
And waited.
And waited.
“What?” Jeanette asked.
“Taylor said he was going to start the engine,” McCoy said.
He looked down the deck to Major Kim, who met his glance, then shrugged and held both hands, palms up and out. The message was clear: I don’t see anything.
McCoy stood up, as the Wind of Good Fortune scraped against the stone wharf.
Aside from the dogs, who had come from the shore out onto the wharf in curiosity, there was still no sign of life.
“Kim, get your men over the side, get us tied up,” McCoy ordered in Korean, and then switched to English. “Ernie, send four men down the wharf to see what they can see in the village.”
Zimmerman came out of the passageway under the stern in a crouch, carrying his Thompson. He laid it on the deck and tossed a rope ladder over the side. By the time he had done that, two Marines, one armed with a Browning automatic rifle, the other with a Garand, came out of the passageway and knelt behind the rail, training their weapons on the wharf.
Zimmerman, his Thompson slung over his back, started down the ladder and passed from sight. Sergeant Jennings, also with a Thompson, came out of the passageway and immediately went down the ladder. The Marine with the M-1 then slung it over his back and went over the side. He was followed by the Marine with the BAR, who chose to toss his weapon over the side to one of the Marines on the wharf before getting on the ladder.
McCoy was pleased with the way that had gone. Not only did the Marines who had been recruited from the brigade seem to know what they were doing, but they were halfway down the wharf before Kim’s national policemen managed to get the Wind of Good Fortune tied up to the pier.
“Can I stand up now?” Jeanette asked.
“In a minute,” McCoy answered.
An elderly Korean man came out of one of the thatch-roofed stone houses as the