“When do you think we’ll be getting to the Flying Fish, sir?” Taylor asked.
“It’s about two hundred twenty miles. The storm is moving southward at about fifteen knots. That should put us off the lighthouse somewhere around 2100. It’ll be dark then, and I think the seas will have subsided.”
“But how would we find Tokchok-kundo in the dark?” McCoy asked. “The original idea was to head for shore in the dark, but to arrive there as it was getting light.”
“And I think we had best stick to that, too,” Taylor said. “I don’t want to try running in the channel in the dark.”
“Then that means we’ll have to arrange things to arrive at the original hour.”
“Three days late,” McCoy said.
“Unfortunately,” Jones-Fortin agreed.
“They’ll be worried about us,” McCoy said. “On Tokchok-kundo and in Tokyo.”
“They’ll know, of course, about the storm,” Jones-Fortin said. “Tokchok-kundo’s been in it.”
“And General Pickering will be worried about that, too,” McCoy said.
“He does have quite a bit on his plate, doesn’t he?” Jones-Fortin said.
There was something in his voice that made McCoy look at him.
“It came out somehow,” Jones-Fortin said. “Fitz—Tony Fitzwater, my brother-in-law—said that Sir William had heard that General Pickering’s son had gone down.”
“That’s right,” McCoy said.
“That’s rotten luck,” Jones-Fortin said. “It must be really tough for a senior officer to lose a son. I mean, more so than for someone not in the service.”
“There’s a chance that Pick—Major Malcolm Pickering, who’s my best friend—”
“Oh, God, I am treading on glass, aren’t I?” Jones-Fortin interrupted.
“—may walk through raindrops again,” McCoy finished.
“Oh?”
“There’s some reason to believe he survived the crash,” McCoy said. “I think he has. He’s done that before. And is running around behind the enemy’s lines waiting for someone to come get him before the North Koreans capture him.”
“And they really can’t go looking for him, can they?” Jones-Fortin said, sympathetically.
“If I wasn’t on my way to Tokchok-kundo, I’d be looking for him,” McCoy said.
“I thought, when we were in Pusan, that you told Dunston to ratchet up the search operation?” Taylor said. “You don’t think that’s going to work?”
“That was a tough call,” McCoy said. “I don’t know who Dunston’s agents are, or who they’re working for. Agents have been known to change sides. Ratcheting up the search also ratcheted up the risk that the North Koreans will learn we’re looking for someone, and they would know we would only be running an operation like this for someone important. All I may have done is ratchet up the search for him by the North Koreans, if they even had one going. Or, if they’ve already caught him, it would let them know they have an important prisoner.”
“And yet you ordered this . . . search?” Jones-Fortin asked.
McCoy nodded.
“I decided if I was in his shoes . . .”
“Tough call, Ken,” Taylor said. “But I’d have made the same one.”
“I rather think that I would have, too,” Jones-Fortin said. “Thank God, I didn’t have to.”
[SIX]
ABOARD HMS CHARITY 37 DEGREES 41 MINUTES NORTH LATITUDE, 126 DEGREES 58 MINUTES EAST LONGITUDE (THE YELLOW SEA) 0405 20 AUGUST 1950
HMS Charity was dead in the water.
Captain the Honorable Darwin Jones-Fortin, RN, in starched and immaculate white uniform, Lieutenant (j.g) David R. Taylor, USNR, and Captain K. R. McCoy, USMCR—both in Marine utilities—were on her flying bridge, looking down to the main deck where, in the glare of floodlights, a work gang was loading the supplies into the two lifeboats bobbing alongside.
The work was being supervised by a wiry chief petty officer, also in immaculate whites, who stood no taller than five feet three and weighed no more than 120 pounds, but whose bull-like “instructions” to his work detail could be easily heard on the flying bridge.
“I’ve always felt,” Captain Jones-Fortin said, “that this sort of thing is best handled by a competent petty officer; that the only thing an officer attempting to supervise the accomplishment of something about which he knows very little does is to create confusion.”
“How about ‘chaos,’ sir?” McCoy replied.
“The voice of experience, Captain?” Jones-Fortin asked dryly.
“Unfortunately,” McCoy said. “I can still remember some spectacular examples from my days as a corporal.”
The chief jumped nimbly into one of the lifeboats, started its engine, motioned for two of the Marines standing on the deck to get into the boat, waited until they were in it, sitting where he thought they should be sitting, and then he nimbly moved to the second boat and—this