It has to be Corporal Steven Koffler, G.o.dd.a.m.n the h.o.r.n.y little AWOL sonofab.i.t.c.h!

I am not going to eat his a.s.s out. It is not in keeping with the principles of good leadership to eat the a.s.s out of an enlisted man just before you ask him to parachute onto an enemy-held island. If he doesn't kill himself in the jump, there is a very good chance he will be killed by the j.a.panese, probably in some very imaginative way.

If I were a corporal, and they left me all alone with the keys to a car, would I take the car and go out and try to get laid? Never having been a corporal, I can't really say. But probably.

Banning couldn't help recalling Kenneth R. "Killer" McCoy, late Corporal, 4th Marines, Shanghai.

If I had set up the Killer in a house like this in China, and told him he would be left alone for a week or ten days minimum, he would have had a nonstop poker game going here in the library, a c.r.a.ps table operating in the foyer, half a dozen ladies of the evening plying their trade upstairs; and he'd be using the Studebaker to ferry customers back and forth to town.

It was not the first time Banning had thought of Corporal Killer McCoy during the past twenty-four hours. He started remembering McCoy just after he and Captain Pickering arrived at The Elms; they were informed then by Mrs. Cavendish that Corporal Koffler had taken the Studebaker at five the previous afternoon, and that he hadn't been seen since. And no, she had no idea where he might have gone. That sounded like something McCoy would have done.

Which did not mean that Corporals McCoy and Koffler were not stamped out of the same mold-far from it. Banning would have been nervous about sending Killer McCoy to jump on Buka, but he wouldn't have had this sick feeling in his stomach. Killer was probably capable of carrying off something like this with a good chance of coming through it alive. Banning did not think that would be the case with Joe Howard and Steve Koffler. The words had come into his mind a half-dozen times: I am about to send two of my men to their deaths.

It was not a pleasant feeling, and his rationalizations, although inarguably true, sounded hollow and irrelevant: I am asking him to risk, and perhaps even give, his life so that other men may live. And: He's a volunteer, n.o.body pushed him into this at the point of a bayonet. And even: He's a Marine, and Marines do what they are ordered to do.

There was really no point whatever in wishing that the Killer was here. For one thing, Killer was no longer a corporal. He was now an officer and a gentleman and would soon find himself ordering some enlisted Marine to do something that would probably get him killed.

And there was no other enlisted man in Special Detachment 14 who could be sent. No one else, not even the Commanding Officer, knew how to jump out of an airplane without getting killed. And that, as applied to Joe Howard, violated a principle of leadership that Banning devoutly believed, that an officer should not order-or ask-someone to do something he would not do himself.

"I think that's him," Banning said, turning from the window to Captain Pickering and Lieutenant Donnelly. He kept his voice as close to a conversational tone as he could muster as he continued, "Maybe I'd better go find Howard and his nurse." They had not been seen, which surprised no one, since they had left the sitting room.

"I'll get him, Major," Lieutenant Donnelly said.

"Good evening, Sir," Corporal Koffler said, coming into the library. Nervously, he looked at Pickering and Banning in turn, and said, "Sir," to each of them.

"Welcome home," Banning said.

"Sir, I didn't expect to see you."

"Well, you're here. Have you been drinking?"

"No, Sir."

Lieutenant Donnelly came into the room.

"They'll be here in a minute," he said.

"You know Captain Pickering," Banning said to Koffler, "and I understand you've met Lieutenant Donnelly."

"No, Sir. I talked to him a couple of times on the phone."

"How are you, Corporal?" Donnelly said.

"How do you do, Sir?"

Banning saw in Donnelly's eyes that he had expected Corporal Koffler to be somewhat older. Say, old enough to vote.

"Something pretty important has come up," Banning said.

"Yes, Sir?"

"There's several if's," Banning continued. "Let me ask a couple of questions. First, would it be possible to drop one of the Hallicrafters sets by parachute? Or would it get smashed up?"

"I thought about that, Sir."

"You did?" Banning replied, surprised.

The door opened again, and Ensign Barbara Cotter and Lieutenant Joe Howard came into the room.

Barbara Cotter averted her eyes and looked embarra.s.sed, confirming Fleming Pickering's early judgment of her as a nice girl. Then he had a thought that made him feel like a dirty old man: Christ, I could use a little s.e.x myself.

"How goes it, Steve?" Joe Howard asked. "We were getting a little worried about you."

"h.e.l.lo, Sir."

"The lady is Ensign Cotter, Koffler," Banning said. "Lieutenant Howard's fiancee."

"h.e.l.lo," Barbara said.

"Ma'am," Koffler replied uneasily.

"Should I be in here?" Barbara asked.

"You don't look like a j.a.panese spy to me," Pickering said. "And it seems to me you have an interest in what's going on."

"Sir ..." Banning started to protest. Ensign Barbara Cotter, whatever her relationship with Joe Howard, had no "need to know."

"Ensign Cotter is a Naval officer," Pickering said formally, "who is well aware of the need to keep her mouth shut about this operation."

Banning had called Pickering as soon as he arrived at the airport in Melbourne. He thought he should know that USMC Special Detachment 14 was about to drop two of its men behind j.a.panese lines. Pickering had been more than idly interested. In fact, he promptly announced that if he "wouldn't be in the way," he would pick Banning up and drive him out to The Elms while the operation was being set up. Banning had wondered then if Pickering was in fact going to get in the way, and now it looked as if he was.

For a moment, Banning looked as if he was on the edge of protesting further, but then reminded himself that Special Detachment 14 wouldn't even exist if it weren't for Pickering.

"Yes, Sir," Banning said finally.

"Corporal Koffler was telling us how he would drop one of the Hallicrafters by parachute," Pickering said. "Go on, please, Koffler."

"You'd need a parachute," Koffler said. "I mean," he went on quickly, having detected the inanity of his own words, "I mean, I think you'd have to modify a regular C-3 'chute. All the cargo 'chutes I've ever seen would be too big."

"I don't understand," Fleming Pickering confessed.

"Sir, the whole set, when you get it out of the crates," Steve Koffler explained, "doesn't weigh more than maybe a hundred and fifty pounds. Cargo 'chutes, the ones I've seen, are designed to drop a lot more weight-"

"The question is moot," Lieutenant Donnelly said. "There are no cargo 'chutes available. Period. You're talking about modifying a standard Switlick C-3 'chute, Corporal?"

Steve nodded.

"How?" Donnelly pursued.

"Do you think I might be able to get you the parachute, parachutes, you need, Banning?" Pickering asked.

"Sir," Donnelly replied for Banning, "I don't think there's a cargo parachute in Australia."

"OK," Pickering said. "You were saying, Corporal Koffler?"

"Sir, I think you could make up some special rigging to replace the harness. Make straps to go around the mattresses."

"Mattress?" Banning asked.

"Mattresses," Steve said. "What I would do is make one package of the antenna and the generator. I think you could just roll them up in a mattress and strap it tight. And then add sandbags, or something, so that it weighed about a hundred seventy-five pounds. Where do you want to drop the radio, Sir?"

"Why sandbags? Why a hundred seventy-five pounds?"

"That's the best weight for a standard 'chute. Any more and you hit too hard. Any lighter and it floats forever. You couldn't count on hitting the drop zone," Koffler said, explaining what he evidently thought should be self-evident to someone who was not too bright.

He obviously knows what he's talking about. Why does that surprise me?

"And then do the same thing with the transceiver itself," Koffler went on. "Wrap it in mattresses, and then weight it up to a hundred seventy-five pounds. It would probably make sense to wrap some radio tubes-I mean spare tubes-in cotton or something, and put them with the transceiver. They're pretty fragile."

"I have some parachute riggers, Corporal," Lieutenant Donnelly said. "Civilian women. They have some heavy sewing machines. Could you show them, do you think, how to make such a replacement for the harness?"

"Yes, Sir," Koffler said. "I think so."

He looked uncomfortable.

"Speaking of civilian women, Sir, I've got a lady outside in the car. Could I take a minute to talk to her? I was about to take her home."

"Sure," Banning said. "Go ahead."

When he was gone, Fleming Pickering said, "Well, what do you think, Ed?"

"I don't know what to think, Sir. He doesn't seem to think there will be much of a problem. More important, he seems to know what he's talking about."

"I was thinking, for a moment, that he seems so young for something like this. But then I remembered that I was a Corporal of Marines when I was his age; it's probably not that he's so young, but that I'm so old."

Steve Koffler didn't have to go out to the Studebaker to find Yeoman Daphne Farnsworth; she was standing in the foyer, just outside the corridor to the library.

"I had to go to the ladies'," she said.

"You found it all right, I hope?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Something's come up," Steve said.

"I heard, I went looking for you."

"I don't know how long this will take," Steve said. "I'm sorry, I should have taken you home first."

"Are you in some kind of trouble? About taking the car, maybe?"

"No, I don't think so. I thought I would be when I saw that Captain Pickering was here, but I think they want me to jump in with the radio. Otherwise, I think my a.s.s would have been in a crack."

"You're sure?"

He nodded. "I'm sorry you have to wait. I was going to tell you to wait in there," he said, pointing toward the sitting room. "There's couches and chairs and a radio."

"All right," Daphne said. "You're sure you didn't get in trouble coming out to see me?"

"I'm fine," he said, smiling. "No trouble. Things couldn't be better."

He turned and went back down the corridor. Daphne walked into the sitting room. She sat down on a couch and picked up a magazine, and then threw it down angrily.

That American Navy captain and Steve's major and lieutenant and Donnelly didn't come here on a Sat.u.r.day evening to discuss a training mission. I know what the Marines are doing here with the Coast.w.a.tchers. If they're going to parachute him anywhere, it will be onto some island in j.a.panese hands. And the only reason they would do that is because there's some sort of trouble with the Australian already there.

She looked impatiently around the room. Her eyes fell on several bottles, one of them of Gilbey's gin. She walked over to it, looked over her shoulder nervously, and then took a healthy pull at the neck of the bottle.

" 'Otherwise,'" she quoted bitterly, " 'I think my a.s.s would have been in a crack!' Oh, Steve, you b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.s!"

Then she capped the Gilbey's bottle and walked down the corridor to the library door, where she could hear what was being said.

"I'll try to get to the airfield to see you off, Steve," Captain Fleming Pickering said, "but if something comes up ... good luck, son."

"Thank you, Sir," Steve said.

They were standing on the porch of The Elms. All that could be done tonight had been done. The officers, except Lieutenant Howard and his girlfriend, were leaving.

"You've been taking some kidding, I'm sure, about being a corporal, as young as you are," Pickering went on.

"Yes, Sir. Some."

"Well, it's going to get worse," Pickering said. "As of this moment, you're a sergeant."

"Sir?"

"I think, Ed," Pickering said to Banning, "that between us we should have the authority to make that promotion, shouldn't we? I'm not going to have to trouble the Secretary of the Navy with an administrative problem like that, am I?"

"No, Sir," Banning chuckled. "I don't see any problem with that."

"Then good luck again, Sergeant Koffler," Pickering said, and patted Steve, a paternal gesture, on the arm. He went down the stairs and got in the Drop-Head Jaguar.

"I will see you and Lieutenant Howard at half past six, Sergeant, right?" Lieutenant Donnelly said. "At the airfield."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"Don't get carried away with your girlfriend tonight, Sergeant, " Banning said softly. "Have fun, but be at the airport at 0630."

"She's not my girlfriend, Sir," Steve said.