The Corp - Counterattack Part 32

When she had gone, Fowler said, "Very nice. Speaking of naive, does Patricia know about her?"

"What the h.e.l.l do you mean by that?"

"Now I know that Patricia has the understanding of a saint, but there are some women whose active imaginations would jump into high gear if they learned their husbands were spending a lot of time in a hotel suite with an attractive-very attractive- female like that."

"d.i.c.k... Jesus! A, I don't run around on Patricia, never have, and you know it. B, she's some kind of a missionary."

"Oh, a missionary! I forgot. Missionaries are neutered when they take their vows. They don't have whoopee urges. The reason your missionary lady looks at you the way she does is because she sees in you a saint who would never even think of slipping it to her."

"You're a dirty old man, d.i.c.k," Pickering said. He walked to the briefcase, picked it up, worked the combination lock, and opened it. He spent a full minute looking at the folders it contained without removing them, and then he handed the briefcase to Senator Fowler.

"In for a penny, in for a pound," he said. "Read what's in there, and then I'll answer any questions."

Fowler handed the briefcase back to him.

"You still don't understand the rules of the game, do you?" he said.

"I guess not."

"Right now I can put my hand on the Bible and swear that you never showed me one cla.s.sified doc.u.ment, and you can swear that you never showed me one. I want to keep it that way."

"So what do you want?"

"I want a briefing," Fowler said. "I want your opinion of what's going on."

"With a map and a pointer?" Pickering asked sarcastically.

"A map would be nice," Senator Fowler said. "You probably won't need a pointer. Have you got a map?"

Pickering saw that Fowler was serious.

"Yeah," he said. "I've got a map. It's in the safe. I had a safe installed in here to make sure people who don't have the need to know don't get to look at my map."

"Why don't you get it, Flem?" Senator Fowler said, ignoring the sarcasm. "Maybe thumbtack it to the wall?"

Fleming went into his bedroom, and returned a moment later with several maps.

"I don't have any thumbtacks," he said seriously. "I'll lay these on the floor."

"Fine."

"OK, what do you want to know?"

"I know a little bit about what's going on in Europe," Fowler said. "And your area of expertise is the Pacific. So let's start with that."

I have a counterpart, maybe in the Army, who's doing this for him for Europe. I'll be d.a.m.ned!

"Where should I start?"

"December seventh," Fowler said. "I know you're not prepared for this, Flem. Would it help if you went on the premise that I know nothing about it?"

"OK," Pickering said, getting on his knees beside the large map. "Here's the way the pieces were on the board on December seventh. The U.S. Pacific Fleet was here, at Oahu, in the Hawaiian Islands. That's about three thousand nautical miles from San Francisco, and four thousand from Tokyo. It's as far from San Francisco to Hawaii as it is to New York. And it's about as far from San Francisco to Hawaii as it is from New York to London.

"Wake Island is here, 2,200 miles from Tokyo and 2,500 from Pearl Harbor. Guam, here, is two thousand miles from Tokyo, and four thousand from Pearl, and it's about two thousand miles from Tokyo to Luzon, in the Philippines, and 8,500 from the West Coast to Luzon."

Pickering sat back and rested on his heels.

"So, Factor One is that distances in the Pacific favor the j.a.panese."

"Obviously," Fowler said.

"Factor Two is protection of the sea lanes. We lost most of our battles.h.i.+ps at Pearl Harbor. How well they could have protected the sea lanes is a moot point, but they're gone. And, obviously, their loss had a large part to do with the decision to pull back Task Force 14 to Pearl, and not to reinforce Wake Island."

"Should we have taken the chance with the aircraft carriers and reinforced Wake?" Fowler asked.

"I think so. We could, in any event, have made taking it far more costly. The j.a.panese do not have a really good capability to land on a hostile beach. They managed it at Wake because there was not an effective array of artillery on Wake. They only had one working rangefinder, for one thing. And not much ammunition. And no planes. All were aboard Task Force 14. I think they should have been put ash.o.r.e."

Fowler grunted.

"Again, now a moot point, Wake is gone. So is Guam. On December tenth, the j.a.panese landed two divisions on Luzon. Three weeks later they were in Manila. We are now being pushed down the Bataan Peninsula. It will fall, and eventually so will Corregidor."

"It can't be reinforced?"

"There is a shortage of materiel to load on s.h.i.+ps; a shortage of s.h.i.+ps; and the j.a.panese have been doing a very creditable job of interdicting our s.h.i.+pping."

"And how much damage are we doing to them?"

"MacArthur has slowed down their advance. From our intercepts, we know that the j.a.panese General-Homma is his name; interesting guy, went to school in California, speaks fluent English, and did not, did not, want to start this war-anyway, Homma is under a lot of pressure to end resistance in the Philippines. It's a tough nut to crack. After they finally get rid of Luzon and Corregidor, they have to take Mindanao, the island to the south. We have about thirty thousand troops there, and supplies, under a general named Sharp."

"Why don't they use his forces to reinforce Luzon?"

"Transportation. If they put out to sea, the j.a.panese have superiority: submarines, other vessels. It would be a slaughter."

"And what are we doing to the j.a.panese?"

"Very little. They're naturally husbanding what's left of the fleet: aircraft carriers, cruisers. . . ."

"What about our submarines?"

"Our torpedoes don't work," Pickering said simply.

"What do you mean, they don't work?"

"They don't work. They either don't reach the target, or they do and don't explode."

"I'd never heard that," Fowler said, shocked. "Not all of them?"

"No, of course, not all of them. But apparently many. A h.e.l.l of a lot, maybe half, maybe even more. The submarine bra.s.s, obviously, are not talking about it much. The story goes that submarine captains returning to Pearl Harbor who complained have been ordered to keep their mouths shut. I'm going out there to see for myself."

"I can't understand that," Fowler said. "Didn't they have any idea they wouldn't work?"

"I don't know. I understand it has something to do with the detonators. And since the detonators are the brainchildren of some highly placed admirals, obviously the submarine captains, not the detonators, are at fault."

"How can you hide something like that? In training, I mean. A torpedo that doesn't explode?"

"They didn't fire many of them in training, apparently. I asked that question. It cost too much," Pickering said. "The admiral I asked also made it rather clear that he objected to a civilian, even one wearing a captain's uniform, asking questions like that of a professional sailor."

"How did that go down?" Fowler asked.

"I told him I had been master of a s.h.i.+p when he was still a mids.h.i.+pman."

"You didn't!"

"No, I didn't. I was tempted, Christ, how I was tempted. But I kept my mouth shut."

"I'm impressed, Flem," Senator Fowler said.

"OK. Let's get on with this. The j.a.panese were already in French Indochina. The French-I don't suppose they had much choice, with the Germans occupying France-permitted them to station troops and aircraft in Hanoi, Saigon, and other places, and there was a naval presence as well. From French Indochina, the j.a.ps moved into Thailand. The j.a.panese have been in Korea for years.

"They landed in Malaya and conquered Singapore, our British allies having cleverly installed their artillery pointing in the wrong direction. The British surrendered seventy thousand men. That's the largest Allied surrender so far-Frank Knox told me it was the worst defeat the English had suffered since Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga-but it will lose its place in the history books when the Philippines fall."

"There's no way we can hang on to the Philippines? Not even Mindanao? What about General Sharp and his thirty thousand men?"

"We probably could-hang on to Mindanao, I mean. But Roosevelt has decided the first stage of the war has to concentrate on Europe. That means no reinforcement for the Philippines."

"You sound as if you disagree."

"So far as I'm concerned, we should let the Germans and the Russians bleed each other to death," Pickering said. "But my theories of how the war should be fought have so far not been solicited."

"So what happens now?" Fowler asked.

"Well, we try to keep the j.a.panese from taking both Australia and New Zealand, which are obviously on their schedule. And we try to establish bases in Australia and New Zealand from which we can eventually start taking things back. It's six thousand five hundred miles from San Francisco to Brisbane. At the moment that sea lane is open. MacArthur has already been asked, politely, to leave the Philippines and go to Australia."

"What do you mean, 'asked'?"

"I mean asked. If he doesn't go, I suppose Roosevelt will eventually make it an order. General Marshall's been urging him to do it right away. MacArthur and Marshall hate each other, did you know that?"

"I'd heard rumors."

"When George Marshall was a colonel at Fort Benning, MacArthur was Army Chief of Staff. He wrote an efficiency report on Marshall, saying he should never be given command of anything larger than a regiment. MacArthur thinks Marshall- who's now in MacArthur's former position, of course-was returning the compliment when he recalled MacArthur as a lieutenant general."

"I don't understand."

"MacArthur retired as a general, a full four-star general, when he was Chief of Staff. Then he got himself appointed Marshal of the Philippine Armed Forces. When Roosevelt called MacArthur back from retirement to a.s.sume command in the Philippines, he called him back as a lieutenant general, with three stars-junior to a full general, in other words. MacArthur thinks Marshall was behind that. I frankly wouldn't be surprised if he was. Anyway, their relations.h.i.+p is pretty delicate.

"So the idea is that MacArthur will go to Australia. And that we will stage out of Australia and New Zealand. That's presuming we can hang on to New Zealand and Australia. There are no troops there to speak of. They're all off in Africa and England defending the Empire.

"And the j.a.panese know they can take it unless we can maintain a reasonably safe sea route to Australia and New Zealand, and they have already made their first move. On January twenty-third-which is what, three weeks ago?-they occupied Rabaul. Here."

He pointed at the map, at the Bismarck Archipelago, east of New Guinea.

"They've already established forces on New Guinea, and if they can build an air base at Rabaul, they can bomb our s.h.i.+ps en route to Australia and New Zealand. And, of course, they can bomb New Zealand and Australia."

"And we're doing nothing about that, either?"

"In that briefcase you won't look at-"

"I told you why."

"-there is just about the final draft of an operations order from Admiral King. Unless somebody finds something seriously wrong with it, and I don't think they will, he'll make it official in the next couple of days. It orders the soonest possible recapture of Rabaul. To do that, we'll have to set up a base on Efate Island, in the New Hebrides."

"Where the h.e.l.l is that?"

Pickering pointed to the map. Fowler saw that fate was a tiny speck in the South Pacific, northwest of New Caledonia, which itself was an only slightly larger speck of land east of the Australian continent.

"Why there?"

"It's on the s.h.i.+pping lanes. Once they get an airfield built, they can bomb Rabaul from it. And again, once the airfield is built, they can use it to protect the s.h.i.+pping lanes."

"Have we got any troops to send there? And s.h.i.+ps to send them in?"

"Army Task Force 6814, which isn't much-it's much less than a division-is already on the high seas, bound for Efate," Pickering said.

"Not even a division? That's not much."

"It's all we've got, and it's something."

"What about the Marines?"

"What about them?"

"Where are they? What are they doing?"

"The day the j.a.panese landed at Rabaul, the 2nd Marine Brigade landed on Samoa, reinforcing the 7th Defense Battalion. The 4th Marines, who used to be in China, are on Bataan. They're forming Marine divisions on both coasts, but they won't be ready for combat until early 1943."

"This is all worse than I thought. Or are you being pessimistic?"

"I don't think so. I think ... if we can keep them from taking Australia, or rendering it impotent, we may even have bottomed out. But right now, our a.s.s is in a crack."

"I heard ... I can't tell you where . . ."

"Can't, or won't?"

"Won't. I heard that Roosevelt has authorized the launching of B-26 bombers from an aircraft carrier to bomb j.a.pan."

"B-twenty-fives," Pickering corrected him. "The ones they named after General Billy Mitch.e.l.l. They're training right now on the Florida Panhandle."

"What do you think about that?"