The Captains (41 page)

“I've got the hots for him,” she said. “OK?”

Mr. Ricco put his hands up in front of himself, as if to ward off an attack.

“How long does it take to get a roll of film developed?” Miss Paige inquired.

“Couple of days,” he said. “What kind of film?”

“You can do better than a couple of days,” Georgia Paige said. “Like today, Tony.” She handed him a roll of 35 mm film.

“What the hell is this anyway?” Tony asked. “A picture of Mr. Lucky?”

“Yeah, and they're personal, Tony. Just get them souped and printed and give them to me. Craig's going to be mad enough about that story in the papers.”

“Why should he be mad?” Tony asked, in honest bewilderment.

“You wouldn't understand,” she said.

“Try me,” he replied.

“He's not just a GI,” Georgia said. “He's an officer.”

“I'm glad that wasn't in the papers,” Tony said. “It's better that Mr. Lucky's an enlisted man.”

“What I want you to do,” Georgia said, “is count the people in the pictures, and get them to make me up two 8 × 10s for each one. I promised the kid who took them I'd do that.”

“Whatever you say, baby,” Tony said.

“And get it done today,” Georgia said. “With what I spend on publicity photos, they can do that for me right away.”

“I'll take care of it,” Tony said.

When the first print came off the drum dryer, Tony saw that he had something special. For one thing, dumb luck probably, the pictures were perfectly exposed and focused. For another thing, they were taken right up on the line. There was a sign:
YOU ARE UNDER ENEMY OBSERVATION FROM THIS POINT FORWARD
. And the GIs looked like combat soldiers. They looked like combat soldiers who couldn't quite believe that Georgia Paige was right there with them.

“Marty,” Tony called out, “make me another set. One of each, 11 × 14s.”

Then he picked up the telephone and called the Time-Life LA Bureau.

“Bob,” he said, “how would you like, exclusively, some first-class color shots of Georgia actually on the front line?”

(Three)
Socho-Ri, North Korea
10 September 1951

It wasn't that Major Craig Lowell said that he was on the official business of Major General Harrier. It was simply that it was presumed that he was, when he showed up at the airstrip and announced he had to go find a major over in the XIX Corps area, and that he'd better go in a chopper, in case there would be no landing strip for an L-19.

Half a dozen aviation section pilots were sitting around operations on homemade couches. The only difference between them, Lowell thought (as he often did), and the half dozen GIs who sat around the office in the motor pool was that the clowns who flew the puddle jumpers and whirlybirds had benefitted from an aberration in the system which decreed that people who flew little two-seater $15,000 airplanes and $75,000 choppers had to be officers. M46 tanks, which cost $138,000 and had a crew of four, were commanded by staff sergeants.

Major Lowell had once been heard to say that army aviators had to back up to the pay table. It had not endeared him to the army aviators, but there wasn't much they could do about it. He was both a major and the aide-de-camp to General Harrier.

“Fortin,” the operations officer called to one of the pilots, “take Major Lowell where he wants to go.”

Finding MacMillan wasn't all that difficult. He was an aviator, and they all knew each other. When they touched down at the XIX Corps airstrip, Lowell sent the chopper jockey inside to ask where MacMillan was. He was back out in two minutes.

“He's at a strip on the East Coast, Major,” he said. “But you're supposed to have special permission to land there.”

“You got it,” Lowell said. “Let's go.”

Thirty minutes later, the H23 fluttered down at Socho-Ri. A competent-looking technical sergeant carrying a 12-gauge trench shotgun drove up to the chopper in a jeep and politely informed them that this was a restricted area. If they were broken down, he added, he would relay any messages they had, but they couldn't leave the airstrip.

“I'm here to see Major MacMillan,” Lowell said.

The sergeant, with a perfectly straight face, said that there was nobody named MacMillan around Socho-Ri.

“I don't have time for any of your cloak-and-dagger bullshit, Sergeant,” Lowell said. “I know MacMillan is here. And what happens now is that we're going to get in that jeep and you're going to take me to see him.”

The sergeant examined Lowell closely and thoughtfully for a long moment before he made up his mind, and gestured with the shotgun toward the jeep.

The sergeant drove them to a small village, now surrounded by a double row of concertina barbed wire. There were guards, armed with Thompson submachine guns and the trench shotguns, but they didn't stop the jeep when it passed through the gate in the barbed wire.

They stopped before the largest of the thatched-roofed, stone-walled houses.

“This is where you want to go, Major,” the sergeant said.

Lowell entered the building. There were several enlisted men and a warrant officer inside, and a table with nonstandard communications radios.

“Major,” the warrant officer said, “I don't think you're supposed to be in here.”

“Where's the commanding officer?” Lowell demanded. The warrant officer indicated a closed door. Lowell walked to the door, knocked on it, and then pushed it open without waiting for an invitation.

“I'll be damned,” he said.

“Well, hello, Craig,” Captain Sanford T. Felter said, moving his hand away from the .45 Colt automatic that lay on the desk beside a manila folder imprinted with the words
TOP SECRET
in three-inch-high red letters.

The two men looked at each other without saying anything else for a moment.

“You're not supposed to be here,” Felter said. “But I guess you know that.”

“If I had known you were here, I would have been here sooner,” Lowell said.

“Yes,” Felter chuckled, “I know you would have. That's why I didn't let you know that I was.”

“I never got a chance to really thank you,” Lowell said, “for what you did when Ilse….”

“No thanks are necessary, Craig,” Felter said. “You know that.”

“I owe you,” Lowell said. “Don't forget that.”

“How are you doing, Craig?”

“All right,” Lowell said. “Actually, how I'm doing is that I'm in love with a movie star named Georgia Paige. But I don't think now is the time to tell you about that.”

“Craig,” Felter said, “you really shouldn't be here. You shouldn't even know about this place.”

“Funny,” Lowell said, “I thought we were on the same side of this war.”

“You don't understand,” Felter said.

“I understand you're a spy,” Lowell said. “But don't worry. I have a Top Secret clearance myself.”

“It would be better if I came to see you,” Felter said.

“I'm here to see MacMillan,” Lowell said. “You're an unexpected bonus.”

“What do you want with him?” Felter asked, rather coldly.

“A friend of mine is up before a general court-martial,” Lowell said.

“And you think that MacMillan will be able to come up with some clever little trick to get him off?” Felter asked, sarcastically, almost angrily.

“Yeah. That's what I hope,” Lowell said. “MacMillan is the best guardhouse lawyer in the army.” He was growing annoyed with Felter.

“I know what you're going to think, and say, before I say this, Craig,” Felter said, “but you're going to have to do without MacMillan.”

“You want to tell me why?”

“Because what we're doing here is more important than your friend in trouble,” Felter said. “And you know me well enough to know I wouldn't say that unless I had to.”

“If I wasn't desperate, I wouldn't be here.”

“I'm sorry, Craig,” Felter said. “It's a matter of priority.”

“What my friend is accused of is shooting an officer who refused to fight. You know how that happens sometimes.” The look in Felter's eyes was frightening. They locked eyes for a long time.

“You can talk to MacMillan,” Felter said, finally; and it was, Lowell realized, the voice of command, a decision beyond argument. “But you are not to involve him. I don't want any attention directed to us through him. You understand that?”

Felter called in one of the sergeants and told him to take Lowell to MacMillan. MacMillan was aboard one of the junks Lowell had seen as the H23 prepared to land. From the air, it looked like any other junk. Up close, he saw what it really was. There were mounts for .50 caliber machine guns bolted to the deck, foreward and aft. There were radio antennae mounted to the masts, and through an open hatch, Lowell saw large diesel engines.

MacMillan himself was sitting on the deck of the aft cabin with three Koreans, all of them carefully inspecting belts for .50 caliber machine guns. MacMillan seemed neither pleased nor surprised to see Lowell, although he got to his feet when he saw Lowell and broke out a bottle of 12-year-old scotch. And he said, after a moment, what he was thinking: “Jesus Christ, what are you, twenty-three?”

“Twenty-four,” Lowell said. “Me being a major bothers the shit out of you, doesn't it, Mac?”

“Yeah, I guess it does,” MacMillan said. “You're a long way from the golf course at Bad Nauheim, aren't you, PFC Lowell?”

“I would never have guessed that you, Captain MacMillan, sir,” Lowell said, a little annoyed, “would end up as a pirate.”

“I don't think this is really auld lang syne time,” MacMillan said. “What do you want, Lowell?” But before Lowell could start to reply, MacMillan said something else. “Felter told me what happened to your wife. Sorry about that, Lowell. What did you do with the kid?”

“He's in Germany. His grandfather came home from Russia.”

“I wrote Roxy and told her, and she wrote back and said I should send her your address. I never got around to it, but what Roxy wants to do is offer to help. You need anything?”

“Not for the boy,” Lowell said. “But a friend of mine is in trouble. You remember the big guy I ran around with at Knox?”

“Man Mountain Coon, you mean?”

“They're going to put him before a general court-martial,” Lowell said.

“Charged with what?”

“In the early days over here, he blew away an infantry officer when he wouldn't fight.”

MacMillan sipped deeply at his drink before replying. “I heard of that happening,” he said, “to people you wouldn't believe.”

“I need some help,” Lowell said.

“For openers,” MacMillan said, “You start by saying, he
is accused
of blowing this guy away. You don't admit it if he did it on the White House lawn with the President watching.”

“The first thing I thought about,” Lowell said, “was getting on the telephone and having a criminal lawyer sent over from the States. But then I thought that might make him look guilty. And then I thought of you.”

“You don't need a high-priced lawyer for the trial,” MacMillan said. “That pisses the court off. Later, on appeal, is when you need the real shysters.”

“You sound pretty sure they'll find him guilty.”

“Is he?”

“He did what they say he did.”

“That doesn't necessarily mean he'll get convicted of it,” MacMillan said. “But the thing you have to keep in mind is that general courts generally know what the convening authority wants done. If the general who convened the court wants your friend hung, he'll probably be found guilty.”

“Shit!” Lowell said.

“Well, it's no big deal,” MacMillan said. “Even if they sock him with a death sentence, it won't be carried out; aside from rapists and criminal types, the army has executed only one man since the Civil War. What will probably happen, the worst that will happen, is that the court-martial will find him guilty, sentence him to death, or life, to make the point that you aren't supposed to go around shooting people, and the general, on review, will commute death to life, or life to twenty years, and he would be out, with good behavior, in maybe five, six years.”

“How do we keep him out of jail at all?” Lowell asked. “I don't care what it costs, Mac.”

“Money won't do you any good here,” MacMillan said. “Maybe later. The best thing you can do is check around and find some reserve judge advocate officer, who's really pissed about being called back in the service and doesn't give a shit for his army career or efficiency report. Get him to defend your friend. He may be lucky. But even if he's not, a good civilian lawyer can generally get anybody off on appeal. Somebody is bound to fuck up something in the paperwork.”