closest field for large aircraft, and has a pretty good off-the-tanker-and-into-the-airplanes fueling setup. K-1, you saw that, doesn’t. They don’t even have a decent tank farm for avgas. . . .”
“You are a fountain of information I really don’t give a damn about, aren’t you, Mr. Taylor?”
“You care about this, Mr. McCoy, because the aircraft that fly from K-1 to Sasebo to take on fuel are very often empty. That means Jennings will be able to find space for himself, the other jarheads, the camouflage nets, the rations, the medical supplies, and whatever else he stole from the Army aboard one of these empty airplanes headed for Sasebo.”
“I stand corrected, sir,” McCoy said.
“And I don’t think Her Majesty’s Navy’s going to give us any trouble about taking Jennings, et cetera, aboard the Charity with us,” Taylor said. “But let’s say they do. . .”
“In which case we’re fucked. The Brits are going to give us lifeboats. You can’t hide a lifeboat on Tokchok-kundo.
And that means the North Koreans will learn sooner or later, probably sooner, that there’re two lifeboats on Tokchok-kundo and start wondering why.”
“In which case—I admit this is a desperate measure— we get General Pickering to get us an airplane to fly the stuff back to Pusan, and ship it to Tokchok-kundo on the Wind of Good Fortune.”
“I thought about that. There’s a few little things wrong with it. If Pickering asks for an airplane, they’ll want to know what for, and this is supposed to be a secret operation. And who would sail it?”
“Her. Sail her. Either of those two Koreans we had aboard is capable of sailing her to Tokchok-kundo.”
“Okay. Let’s say we did that, and it worked. The Wind of Good Fortune couldn’t make it to Tokchok-kundo until we’d been there—which means the lifeboats would have been there, exposed to the curious eyes of every sonofabitch in the Flying Fish Channel—three or four, maybe five days—”
“Hi,” someone said. “I’m Howard Dunwood.”
McCoy turned and found himself looking at the smiling face of one of the Marine officers he’d seen waiting in the shade of the hangar at Haneda.
Three weeks before, Howard Dunwood had had a reserved parking spot for his top-of-the-line DeSoto automobile— identified as being reserved for “Salesman of the Month”— at Mike O’Brien’s DeSoto-Plymouth in East Orange, New Jersey.
He had been just about to leave the dealership for an early-afternoon drink at the Brick Church Lounge & Grill—he was actually outside the showroom, about to get in his car—when there came a person-to-person long-distance telephone call for him.
A week after that, Captain Howard Dunwood, USMCR, had reported to the Replacement Battalion (Provisional) at Camp Joseph J. Pendleton, California. On 9 August, Dunwood had been given command of USMC Platoon Aug9-2.
High above the Pacific Ocean seventy-four hours later, as Trans-Global Airways Flight 1440 was nearing the end of its journey to Tokyo, Captain Dunwood had had the foresight aboard to slip into his utilities jacket pockets eight miniature bottles of Jack Daniels’ sour mash whiskey.
You never know, he had reasoned, when a little belt would be nice.
He had consumed four of the miniatures at Camp Drake, two of them in the darkened auditorium during the motion picture portion of the chaplain’s presentation. He had consumed two on the bus to Haneda, and the last two while in the shade of the hangar, waiting for the big shots to come so they could take off.
What the hell, the veteran of four World War II amphibious invasions—including Tawara and Iwo Jima—had reasoned, why not? I suspect they’re going to be shooting at me in Korea, and you don’t want to be half-shitfaced when people are shooting at you.
There were, of course, no refreshments of any kind aboard NATS Flight 2022, except for a water Thermos mounted on the wall. But there was an illuminated FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign, and when, several minutes into the flight, he had seen the light go off, Captain Howard C. Dunwood, USMCR, the commanding officer of USMC Platoon Aug9-2 (Provisional), had unfastened his seat belt and walked down the short aisle to the seats in which the two candy-asses in their neatly pressed uniforms were sitting.
He squatted in the aisle, smiled, and put out his hand.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Howard Dunwood.”
“How are you?” McCoy said.
“You don’t look like you’re going to Korea.”
“No, we’re not,” McCoy said.
“I sort of didn’t think so,” Dunwood said. “No weapons, and the wrong kind of uniform.”
McCoy didn’t reply.
“Stationed in Japan, are you? I couldn’t help but notice