Dawkins regarded the suite as a time bomb about to explode. The final evolution had been into where the Marine Reserve aviators stayed when in the area, at the invitation of Major Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR.
Although it had not come to General Dawkins’s official attention, he had no reason to doubt the rumors that, especially during the two weeks of summer training many Marine Corps Reserve aviators attended in the San Diego Area, considerable quantities of intoxicating spirits were consumed by them in the suite, in the company of young ladies who, despite their beauty, were not the type one took home to meet one’s mother. Or one’s wife.
“No kidding?” General Dawkins said. “Give him my best regards. McCoy, I mean.”
“Actually, sir, I’m calling about McCoy.”
“First things first, Bill,” Dawkins said. “There is at this moment in Hangar 212 at Miramar eight crates. . . .”
“Yes, sir, I know.”
“I don’t know, and don’t want to know, what they contain. ”
“Sir, they will be picked up first thing in the morning. My Gooney-Bird lost the oil pump in the port engine, and was delayed in Kansas City. Its ETA here—North Island— is 0500 tomorrow morning. Figure an hour to fuel it, and I’ll have it on the deck at Miramar at 0630, and with any luck at all, I’ll be wheels-up from Miramar at 0730.”
“ ‘I’ll be wheels-up’?” Dawkins parroted. “You’ll be flying the Gooney-Bird?”
The Gooney-Bird was R4D, the Navy/Marine version of the Douglas DC-3 twin-engine transport.
“Yes, sir. I came out here in a Corsair. One of my kids will take that back.”
“And you don’t think anyone will wonder why a light colonel is flying a R4D?”
“I thought the Navy might be less prone to question a lieutenant colonel, sir,” Dunn said.
That’s probably true. But the real reason, Wee Willy, that you’ll be flying the R4D is because you don’t want one of your officers catching the flak if this midnight requisition of ours goes awry; you’ll take the rap. You’re a good officer, Dunn.
“If you’re not wheels-up by 0830, give me—or Art Mc-Gowan—a heads-up, and I’ll start the damage control.”
“General, I really appreciate—”
“Save that until you’re back at Beaufort,” Dawkins said. “Save it until two weeks after you’re back at Beaufort.”
“General, even with cannibalizing, I can only get fifty-five percent of my Corsairs in the air—”
“I seem to recall, Colonel, your mentioning this before,” Dawkins interrupted him. “And, to save a little time here, ensuring that you will be wheels-up at Miramar with these crates aboard by 0830 tomorrow, let’s change the subject.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me about the Killer,” Dawkins said.
“He’s being reduced to the ranks,” Dunn said.
“That goddamn college-degree nonsense again?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, Jesus, Bill.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I’ve had a shot at it, but I don’t think I’ll be able to do much good. All I get is the same speech—there’s no money, we have to reduce the number of officers, and one of the elimination criteria is education.”
“Yes, sir. And actually, I think it’s too late to help the Killer. He was ordered home from Japan, to Pendleton, for separation not later than 30 June.”
“We’re going to wind up with an officer corps consisting mainly of college graduates who can’t find their ass with both hands,” Dawkins said, bitterly.
“General, what I was hoping you could do is spare the Killer as much of the separation nonsense as possible. It has to be a humiliation for someone like the Killer to be told the Corps doesn’t want him as an officer anymore.”
“What the hell is he going to do as a civilian?” Dawkins asked, rhetorically.
“Well, in the sense he doesn’t need a job, he’s a lot better off than some of the people caught in the reduction.”
It took Dawkins a moment to sort that out.
“Oh, yeah, that’s right. His wife has money, doesn’t she?”
“Her father is chairman of American Personal Pharmaceutical, ” Dunn said. “I understand there are two majority stockholders: Ernie McCoy’s father, and Ernie McCoy.”
“That much, huh? I’d heard something, but I had no idea she had that kind of money.”
“And even if that wasn’t true, the Pickerings, father and son, would make sure the Killer doesn’t go hungry.”
“And I think we can presume that when General Pickering heard the Corps was giving the Killer the boot, he did his best to see that it wouldn’t happen.”