the operation with Boat Two.
“If you see a boat while they’re doing their thing, you will signal, but they will finish loading the boat and covering it with the camo net before getting out of sight. Any questions?”
“No, sir,” the sergeant said.
“Let’s do it,” McCoy said.
The sergeant took off in a fast trot for the wharf, and then down it.
Twenty minutes later, both boats were in the water, loaded, and covered with camouflaged netting.
McCoy signaled for the sergeant at the end of the wharf to come back.
“To answer the questions you’re afraid to ask,” McCoy said. “You went through that mimicry business so that it would be second nature when you actually did it. And we didn’t do the real thing until now. It’s almost dark. Even if a boat did show up, I don’t think they could see the lifeboats at the wharf unless they came into the harbor. Any questions?”
There had been no questions.
“Are you ready, Captain McCoy?” Lieutenant Taylor called.
“Ready.”
The sound of the engine in Taylor’s boat changed as he put it in gear.
McCoy saw that the two Marines holding the lines holding the boat to the wharf were looking at him.
“Let loose the lines,” McCoy called. “Shove us off.”
Both Marines pushed the boat away with the wharf with their feet.
McCoy pulled the transmission lever away from him, into forward.
There was immediately the screech of tortured metal.
He had no idea what it was, but it was obviously time to put the transmission in neutral. He pushed it forward, and the screaming stopped.
“What the fuck was that?” someone in the boat said.
Taylor made a tight circle with his lifeboat, pulled up beside McCoy’s boat, and nimbly jumped into it.
“I don’t know what the hell . . . ,” McCoy said.
Taylor moved the transmission control into forward, and then immediately back out as the screeching started again.
“You got the shaft, I think,” Taylor said. “I hope that’s all that’s wrong.”
“Is it serious?”
“It means we’re not going anywhere this morning,” Taylor said. “I can’t even look at it until it’s out of the water and there’s light.”
[SIX]
TOKCHOK-KUNDO ISLAND 0725 25 AUGUST 1950
Boat Two was now on the shore, upside down, with the camouflage net suspended over it from the wall of the generator building.
Boat One was still in the water, loaded and under a camouflage net. It had been a gamble lost. McCoy—and Taylor, too, although he kept it to himself—desperately had hoped that whatever was wrong with the boat would be able to be fixed quickly, so the operation could go on. That seemed to justify the risk of leaving Boat One in the water, where it might—almost certainly would—look very suspicious to anyone coming close to Tokchok-kundo.
By the time they had gotten Boat Two unloaded, so that it could be brought ashore, the predawn darkness had given way to dawn, and that meant the operation had to be scratched. There was no way to sneak past Taemuui-do and Taebu-do in daylight.
Neither was the damage to Boat Two something that could quickly be repaired, if it could be repaired at all. The shaft, coming through the hull to the propeller, had somehow been bent.
To repair it would mean removing it from the boat, heating it, beating it with hammers until it was straight again, and then putting it back in the boat. Taylor was not at all sure it could be done, and told McCoy so.
“We can’t tow this with the other boat?” McCoy asked.
Taylor shook his head, “no.”
“Maybe in the open sea,” he said. “But not with the tides in the channel.”
“Then I guess we’ll have to fix this one,” McCoy said.
When they heard the sound of aircraft engines, they had gotten as far as removing the bent shaft from the boat, and building a makeshift forge and anvil, both from rocks. The shaft would have to be heated first until it was glowing red before an attempt could be made to straighten it.
There was considerable doubt that the shaft could be heated hot enough on the wood fire, and neither Taylor nor the Korean, who had some experience with rudimentary metalworking, could even make a guess as to how often the heating/hammering process would have to be repeated, if, indeed, the heating could be done at all.
Two Corsairs appeared where the Corsairs had appeared the day before, coming down the Flying Fish Channel from the lighthouse. But today one of them was much lower, not more than 300 feet off the water, and with his landing gear