"You're aware, of course, that we have our own PIO people?"

"Yes, Sir. I tried to make that point to General Frischer. I didn't get very far. And to tell you the truth, Sir, I didn't mind getting shot down. I wanted to come over here."

"You did? Why?"

"I'm a Marine, General," Dillon said.

"I was about to ask about that. I heard you were a Hollywood press agent."

"Yes, Sir. Before that I was a Marine. A China Marine. Then I got in the movie business, and then I came back in the Corps."

"To be a press ag-a public information officer?"

"That was the Deputy Commandant's idea, Sir. I thought, still think, that I could be of more use with stripes on my sleeve."

I like the sound of that. Maybe this character isn't a complete asshole after all.

"Well, Major, I'm sure the Deputy Commandant is right. Now, what can I do for you?"

"Not a thing, Sir. I'm going to try to stay out of your hair as much as possible."

It was an ill-chosen figure of speech. General Harris suffered from advanced male pattern baldness and was somewhat sensitive on the subject. Major Dillon promptly made it worse: "The only thing on my schedule right now is to see your Division PIO," he said. "To assure him that I'm going to stay out of his hair, too. And then I want to see Jack NMI Stecker. Major Stecker."

"I'm acquainted with Major Stecker," Harris said. "What do you want from him?"

General Harris was more than "acquainted" with Major Jack NMI Stecker. Given the chasm between officer and enlisted ranks, they were-as much as possible-lifelong friends. For nearly a quarter of a century, Harris had believed that one of the few mistakes Jack Stecker made in his Marine career was turning down the appointment he was offered to Annapolis in 1918.

At nineteen, Stecker won the Medal of Honor... for really incredible valor in France. With the Medal came the Annapolis appointment. But Stecker turned it down to marry his childhood sweetheart, which meant that he would spend his Marine Corps career as an enlisted man.

It was folklore in the Marine Corps that many senior non-coms were just as qualified to command companies and battalions as any officer. Harris believed that one of the few men of whom this was really true was Jack NMI Stecker. And Harris put his belief in action; he went to Marine Corps Commandant Slocomb to make this announcement-a dangerous deviation from the sacred path of chain of command. Even so, his move resulted in the gold leaf now on Jack NMI Stecker's collar points, and his assignment as a battalion commander in the 5th Marines.

"Jack and I were pretty close when he was Sergeant Major of the 4th Marines in Shanghai..."

If you and Jack NMI Stecker were really close, that means you really aren't an asshole, Major, after all. I'll call Jack and ask him about this guy.

"... and I hope to talk him into letting me send some of my people down to his battalion to see if he can make Marines out of them."

Good thinking. If anyone can turn feather merchants into Marines, Jack Stecker can.

"The PFCs, you mean?"

"No, Sir. Everybody but the PFCs. They at least went through boot camp at San Diego. I mean the sergeants and the lieutenants. Some of them have only been in the Corps a month."

"And they haven't been-the officers-to Basic School? Or the others to boot camp?"

"No, Sir. General Frischer said that since they wouldn't be commanding troops, it wouldn't matter."

"They were commissioned, or enlisted, directly from civilian life, to do this? And they were sent here without any training whatever?"

"Yes, Sir, that's about the size of it."

I don't think I will bother General Vandergrift with the details of this operation. He has enough to worry about as it is; he doesn't need this proof positive that the rest of the Corps has gone insane. He told me to keep this press agent and his people away from him, and I will.

"Thank you for coming in to see me, Major," General Harris said. "Unless you have something else?"

"Just one thing, General. I know that I must look like a feather merchant to you, but to do my job, I have to know what's going on."

"I will see that you are invited to attend all G-3 staff meetings, Major. And anything else I think would interest you."

"Sir, with respect," Dillon said, even more uneasily, "the general doesn't really know what would interest me or wouldn't."

You arrogant sonofabitch!

"What are you suggesting, Major? That you be given carte blanche to just nose around here wherever you please?"

"I'll try to stay out of people's hair as much as possible, General."

There was a perceptible pause as Harris thought that over. Finally, remembering that Dillon's orders had as much as authorized him to put his goddamned feather merchant's nose into any goddamned place where he goddamned pleased, and that Tony had written that this whole goddamned cockamamie operation was the Deputy Commandant's own personal nutty goddamned idea, he said, calmly and politely, "Very well, Major. I'll have a memo prepared authorizing you to attend any staff conferences that you desire to attend."

(Three) BUKA, SOLOMON ISLANDS.

16 JUNE 1942.

Buka is an island approximately thirty miles long and no more than five or six miles wide. The northernmost island in the Solomons chain, it lies just north of the much larger Bougainville; and it is 146 nautical miles southeast of Rabaul, on New Britain.

In June of 1942 the Japanese had at Rabaul a large, well-equipped airbase, servicing fighters, bombers, seaplanes, and other larger aircraft. There was, as well, a Japanese fighter base on Buka, and another on Bougainville.

When the Japanese invaded Buka in the opening days of the war, an Australian, Jacob Reeves, who had lived on the island, volunteered to remain behind as a member of the Coastwatcher Service. He was commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy Volunteer Reserve and given a radio, a generator, and some World War I small arms. Thus equipped, he was expected to report on Japanese ship and air movement, from Rabaul down toward the Australian continent. Prior to his commissioning, Reeves had no military experience; and he knew nothing about the shortwave radio except how to turn it on and off.

Inevitably-in early June-what he called the "sodding wireless" failed. Following the orders he had been given for such an occurrence, he-actually he and the girls-stamped flat the grass in a high meadow, forming enormous letters thirty feet tall, R A.

He'd been told that if he went off the air, the Coastwatcher Service would fly over his hideout as soon as possible to look for indication that he was still alive and needed help. There were ten codes in all (Lieutenant Commander Eric Feldt, Royal Australian Navy, commanding the Coastwatcher Service, did not believe his men could remember more than that): R A stood of course for radio; P E would indicate his supply of petrol for the generator which powered the wireless was exhausted; and so on.

As he waited for the Coastwatcher Service to act on his stamped-in-the-grass message, Reeves wondered what the response would be.

His reports on Japanese activity, he knew, had been of great value both tactically and for planning purposes. Now that they were interrupted, getting his wireless station up and running again would be a matter of some priority.

He was well aware that they did not have many options. The only way he could see to get him up and running again was to send him another radio. There were a number of problems with that; most notably: The only way to get him one would be to drop it by parachute. But if the airplane was seen by the Japanese, they would certainly launch fighters to shoot it down.

And even if the plane made it to the meadow, the odds that the dropped radio would survive the shock of landing were slim. If, indeed, he could find it at all.

All the same, he was not surprised on 6 June to hear the sound of the twin engines of a Royal Australian Air Force Lockheed Hudson transport. Five minutes later, he saw the Hudson make a low level pass over the meadow. As it passed, four objects dropped from the aircraft. A moment later these were suspended beneath white nylon parachute canopies.

He was surprised when he made out human forms beneath two of the parachutes. He had mixed emotions about that. On one hand, it probably meant they were sending him people who knew something about how the sodding wireless and its sodding generator worked. And that, of course, would be helpful.

But on the other hand, it would mean he would have to care for two men who had probably never in their lives been out of Sydney or Melbourne, much less been in a jungle. How can I feed them? he asked himself. More important, how can I conceal them from the sodding Nips?

And then when he made his way to the first one, what he found was a sodding American Marine-a boy!-wearing, in the American way, the upside down stripes of a sergeant. The other one turned out to be an American Marine officer, a lieutenant. That one managed to go into the trees, breaking his arm in the process. These two were the first Americans Sub Lieutenant Reeves had ever met. It didn't take him long to conclude that they were an odd, childish lot.

When he reached the boy sergeant, Reeves told him there were Nips snooping around the area, and that they would, unfortunately, have to count as lost the one who landed in the trees.

"We're Marines," the boy told him. "We don't leave our people behind."

It never came to a test of wills; for one of the girls found Lieutenant Howard. As far as Reeves was concerned, that was fortunate. For he not only subsequently grew rather fond of the boy, Steve Koffler, but at the time Reeves was reasonably sure that Koffler would have insisted on looking for his lieutenant even to the point of turning his submachine gun on Reeves.

Not long after that, they found they had to get rid of a Nip patrol who'd heard the Lockheed and probably seen the parachutes; and Koffler did what had to be done then with skill and courage. But the boy threw up when it was over... after he looked down at the corpse of a Japanese he'd wounded, and then, because it was necessary, killed.

Later, when Lieutenant Howard explained the reasons for their coming to Buka, the explanation made enough sense to Reeves that he put aside his earlier fears and objections about them.

According to Howard, Reeves's observation point was considered vital. With the three of them there, the odds that it could be kept operational were made greater.

Meanwhile, some weeks before, a small detachment of U.S. Marines was attached to the Coastwatcher Organization. When word that Reeves's wireless was out reached Commander Feldt, Feldt decided to send two men from the Marine detachment to Buka, together with the latest model American shortwave wireless. Koffler was chosen to go because he was not only a radio operator, he was a highly skilled technician as well (he'd been an Amateur Radio Operator before the War), while Howard had once taught courses in recognition of Japanese aircraft and naval vessels. Because of that, and because Koffler couldn't tell the difference between a battleship and an intercoastal freighter, Howard was asked to join him.

The village looked like a picture out of National Geographic magazine: A clear stream, about five feet wide and two feet deep, meandered through the center of a scattering of grass-walled huts. The village was populated with about twenty brown-skinned, flat-nosed people, most of whom had teeth died blue and then filed to a point. Cooking fires were burning here and there; chickens were running loose; and bare-breasted women were beating yamlike roots with rocks against other rocks. Most of the men and some of the women were armed with British Lee-Enfield rifles; and many carried web ammunition bandoliers.

Sergeant Stephen M. Koffler, USMC, of East Orange, New Jersey, and Detachment A of Marine Corps Special Detachment 14, had been eating bacon and pork chops and ham and sausage for most of the eighteen years and six months of his life; but if it were in his power he would never do so again.

He had never given pork much thought before. It had always been there in the refrigerated meat display of Cohen's EZ-Shop Supermarket on the corner of Fourth Avenue and North 18th Street, ready to be wrapped and taken to the cash register. All you had to do was pay Mrs. Cohen, who worked the register, and then take the bacon home and put it in a frying pan.

He had spent most of the morning watching the conversion of a living, breathing, squealing, hairy, ugly pig into edible meat products; and he hadn't liked what he had seen at all.

The pig had been brought into the village shortly after dawn by a visibly proud and triumphant Petty Officer First Class Bartholomew Charles Dunlop, Royal Australian Navy Volunteer Reserve. Petty Officer Dunlop, who was known as "Charley," was a native of the island of Buka. When he brought in the pig, he was wearing his usual uniform. That consisted of a brassard around his upper right arm, onto which was sewn the insignia of his rank, and a loin cloth. The loin cloth was something like a slit canvas skirt; and the brassard was placed just below two copper rings. His teeth were black and filed into points. And there were decorative scars on his forehead, his cheeks, and bare chest.

Petty Officer Dunlop was carrying a 9mm Sten submachine gun, two Lee-Enfield.303 Caliber rifles, and a two-foot long machete. The rifles belonged to the other two members of the detail, who were actually carrying the pig. They were uniformed like Dunlop, except that they had no insignia brassards. Canvas webbing ammunition belts, however, were slung across their chests.

They carried the pig, squealing in protest, on a pole run between his tied-together legs.

"Roast pork tonight!" Petty Officer Dunlop announced triumphantly. "And would you look at the size of the bugger!"

Petty Officer Dunlop had been educated at the Anglican Mission School on Buka, and spoke with the accent of a Yorkshireman.

Steve Koffler had not seen many pigs, except in photographs, but the one Charley seemed so proud of didn't seem as large as the ones Steve was used to. It was about the size of a large dog.

"It's beautiful, Charley," Steve said.

"Where's the officers?"

Steve shrugged and nodded vaguely toward the jungle.

How the hell am I supposed to answer that? Out there in the bush someplace?

"I didn't go with them," Steve said, explaining: "I've got to make the 1115 net call. They weren't sure they'd be back in time."

"Well, we'll have a jolly little surprise for them when they do come home, won't we?"

The women of the village, beaming, quickly appeared and watched as the pig was lowered to the ground and the pole between its legs was removed. A length of rope appeared, and this was tied to the pig's rear feet. The pig was then hauled off the ground under a large limb.

A woman produced a large, china bowl and carefully placed it under the pig's head. It looked to Steve like one of those things people put under their beds before there was inside plumbing.

Then with one swift swipe of his machete, Charley cut the pig's throat. The squealing stopped, and arterial blood began to gush from the pig's throat as the pig jerked in its death spasms.

It was only with a massive effort that Steve managed not to throw up. He had to tell himself again and again that he could not humiliate himself, the Marine Corps, and the white race by tossing his cookies.

The butchering process was performed by the women (hunting was a male responsibility; everything else was women's business). It was worse than even the throat-cutting. Intestines (steaming, despite the heat) spilled from the carcass. The hide was peeled off. The carcass was cut into pieces.

And at one point Steve realized with something close to horror that one particularly obscene-looking hunk of sickly white stuff was what he knew as bacon.

Next fires were built; then large steel pots full of water were either suspended over them or set right onto the coals. In one of them, eventually, they dropped the pig's head. Once the water started boiling, the head turned over and over.

By the time the officers returned, just before 1100, the butchering was just about finished. The bacon and hams (they were too scrawny to be real hams, Steve thought, but that's what they were) had been suspended over a smokey fire; and the rest of the meat was either being slowly broiled over coals or boiled and rendered. Nothing, Steve saw, was going to be wasted.

Both Reeves and Howard looked exhausted when they arrived. Without a word, Howard dropped his web belt and his Thompson by the creek; and fully clothed, except for his boondockers, he lowered himself into it, carefully holding his splinted arm out of the water. Reeves ordered tea for himself and slumped onto the ground, resting his back against a tree.

They had nothing to report about their patrol-a case of no news being good news: They'd detected no signs of the Japanese looking for them.

Steve took his wristwatch from his pocket, and then from the condom where he stored it. There were two watches in the village, his and Lieutenant Howard's. Since there was no chance of getting replacements, and since there were two times each day that were critical-1115 and 2045-it was crucial that the watches be protected.

The dial read 1059. If he was lucky, the watch was accurate within five minutes. He went in search of Petty Officer Second Class Ian Bruce. He found him in the grass commo shack, already in place on the generator, his skirt spread wide (it wasn't hard to tell that he was a man), ready to start pumping the bicycle-like pedals of the device that provided power for the Hallicrafters shortwave transceiver.

The watch hands now indicated 1102. Steve made a wind-it-up motion with his hand. Ian started pumping the pedals. In a moment, the needles on the Hallicrafter came to life. It was now 1103.

Fuck it, close enough.

Steve put his fingers on the telegraph key.

FRD1.FRD6.FRD 1.FRD6.FRD1.FRD6.

Royal Australian Navy Coastwatcher Radio, this is Detachment A, Special Marine Detachment 14.

Today, for a change, there was an immediate response: FRD6.FRD1.GA.

Detachment A, this is Coastwatcher Radio, Townesville, Australia, responding to your call. Go ahead.

FRD1.FRD6.NTATT.

Coastwatcher Radio, this is Detachment A. No traffic for you at this time.

FRD6.FRD1.NTATT.FRD1 CLR.

Detachment A, this is Coastwatcher Radio. No traffic for you at this time. Coastwatcher Radio Clear.

"Fuck!" Sergeant Koffler said, and signaled for Ian Bruce to stop pedaling. He had hoped-he always hoped-that there would be some kind of message. And he was always disappointed when there was not.

He got to his feet and walked out of the hut. Lieutenant Reeves was nowhere in sight, and Lieutenant Howard was asleep on the bank of the stream. There was no point in waking him up; there had been no traffic.

He walked to one of the charcoal fires. The pig's ribs were getting done. They looked like spareribs now, Steve thought, not like parts of a dead animal.

And they smelled good. His mouth actually salivated.