The Captains (33 page)

He had smiled on learning from the XIX Corps (Group) aviation officer that the first thing MacMillan had scrounged on behalf of the 8045th Signal Detachment was an H23 helicopter to go with the Beaver.

“Otherwise known as ‘MacMillan's Floating Circus,'” Colonel Hanrahan said.

“You know Mac, don't you, Colonel?” General Black said, smiling. “I didn't have the heart to send him home. So I sent him over there.”

“I found it very interesting, General Black,” the UNC said, dryly, “that I knew virtually nothing about the little operation of yours until Colonel Hanrahan brought it to my attention.”

“It was hardly worth bringing to the general's attention,” General Black said. “A couple of officers, a handful of men, who when they were not otherwise occupied with a radio relay mission, were helping, I guess, now that I see him here, Colonel Hanrahan.”

“‘Helping Hanrahan,' as you put it, E. Z.,” the UNC said, “is not all they've been up to.”

“I'm afraid you've lost me, sir,” Black confessed.

“You mean you don't know about the blowing up of railroad tunnels, the knocking down of bridges?”

“No, sir,” Black said. Goddamn that MacMillan! He should have known that MacMillan's silence was proof that he had not quietly accepted an assignment that put him on ice.

“What about the PT boat, E. Z.?” the UNC asked, obviously enjoying his discomfiture. “Did you know about that?”

“I knew he got a boat from the navy,” Black said, somewhat lamely. Before he had asked for a transfer, MacMillan had asked for permission to scrounge a boat from the navy, to “make it easier to get around.”

Hanrahan was smiling broadly.

“I didn't know it was a PT boat,” General Black went on. “I thought maybe an LCI, or an admiral's barge, or something.”

“But you did know about Task Force Able, didn't you, E. Z.?” the UNC asked.

“Yes, sir. That was explained to me as a logistic convenience. If the Signal Detachment and the Koreans were under a joint command, they'd have an easier time getting logistic support.”

“Persuasive chap, this Major MacMillan, isn't he?” the UNC said, dryly.

“I didn't hear about that, either,” General Black confessed. “The last I heard he was Captain MacMillan.”

“That just came through, General,” Hanrahan said. “Mac doesn't know about that yet, either.”

“I plead guilty and throw myself on the mercy of the court,” General Black said. He sensed that he was in over his head here, and wondered what the hell it was all about; what MacMillan had done to get all this attention.

“General,” Black said, deciding to get it all out in the open, “I have probably indulged MacMillan more than I should have.”

“Indeed?” the UNC said, with a strange smile.

“Yes, sir. Hell, what he is is an old-time regular army sergeant. He's a good officer, but I suspect that he would really be happier to be first sergeant at Scofield Barracks. Sending him home to be a hero on display at the White House would kill him. What the hell, he was in a kraut prisoner cage with Porky Waterford's son-in-law. He won the Medal going in, that and a commission, and he won the DSC breaking out. He got another Silver Star, his third, the day this war started. If I've given him special consideration, I plead guilty. But I'd probably do it again for him tomorrow. What I don't understand is how this got all the way back to you.”

“What about the Chinese junks, E. Z?” the UNC asked. “Do you know about those, too?”

“I know about one of them,” Black said. “Until just now, I thought it was a supply vessel for the Koreans.”

“He has two, Colonel Hanrahan informs me,” the UN Commander said. “And has a third under construction. He has paid for them with gasoline. Do you have any idea where MacMillan could lay his hands on enough gasoline to buy three oceangoing, very fast, multiple-engined, diesel-powered junks?”

“No, sir, I don't.”

“I am really impressed, General,” the UNC said, “with this demonstration of your firm hand on the logistics pipeline.”

“As General Black is aware,” Colonel Hanrahan said, “the Koreans are running an intelligence operation out of Socho-Ri. The point is, that the intelligence operation is really a diversion for another intelligence operation.”

“I don't understand that at all,” General Black said.

“Under cover of infiltrating low-level operatives, General, we have been inserting, and withdrawing, more important people.”

“I still don't understand,” Black admitted.

Hanrahan thought it over before replying.

“I don't think there is any harm in telling you that we're dealing with the Chinese, via their forces in North Korea,” Hanrahan said. “I really can't go any further than that, General.”

“OK,” Black said. “I get the picture.”

“So MacMillan was one of those things that sometimes happens,” Hanrahan said. “When I found him over there, the first thing I thought was to get him out of there as quick as I could. I've known Mac a long time, General. I knew there was no way he was going to sit there and fly rations back and forth for long.”

“No, that's not exactly his style, is it?” General Black said.

“And then it occurred to me to let him run a little wild,” Hanrahan said. “The more trouble he caused, the more activity there was, the greater chance that our people could be concealed in the general confusion. You follow me, sir?”

“Yes,” General Black and the UNC said together. Black was not sure to whom Hanrahan had addressed his remark.

“So I'm responsible for a good deal of MacMillan's success,” Hanrahan said. “I got him the PT boat, for example.”

“I see,” the UNC said.

“What has happened now,” Hanrahan said, “is that things are getting a little out of hand.” He was obviously choosing each word with care. “At a time when our operation is in a critical place.” He paused, and then went on: “We sent a submarine offshore to pick up one of our agents. They sent a team in rubber boats. They had just about reached shore when MacMillan blew up a railroad tunnel about a hundred yards away.”

“And your people got hurt?” General Black asked.

“No, they weren't hurt,” Colonel Hanrahan said. “The agent we were picking up had enough sense to go back in the bushes when the tunnel went up. And there was, of course, an alternative pickup plan. But when the sub went back, they weren't sure if they were going to have to fight off the North Koreans or what the sub commander referred to as ‘pirates.'”

“OK,” General Black said, “I get the picture. Colonel, you can take my word for it that as soon as I can get to a radio, MacMillan's private army will be disbanded, and Captain…
Major
…MacMillan will be on the next plane to the States.”

“That isn't what we have in mind, General,” Colonel Hanrahan said.

“Oh?”

“There has been a good deal of resistance from State, the State Department, about our using submarines. World opinion is apparently against submarines. They seem to be afraid that the other side can stage a sinking which would make us look bad.”

“Go on,” General Black said.

“After the incident where the submarine extraction party arrived precisely at the moment MacMillan was blowing up a tunnel, State managed to convince the…State has been successful in having us forbidden the use of submarines in any further operations of this nature.”

“I see,” General Black said.

“Which leaves us with MacMillan, and his junks, as our only asset,” Colonel Hanrahan said.

“So you're going to take over MacMillan, and his junks, and presumably whatever else you need?” the UNC asked.

“We're going to take over direction of the MacMillan operation, General,” Colonel Hanrahan said. “The operation will continue, much as it has, but under our supervision. He will go on doing very much what he has been doing, with this major change in priority. Inserting and withdrawing our people takes priority. It's as simple as that.”

“I understand,” General Black said.

“Now that I've been faced with the fact that submarines are no longer available to us,” Hanrahan said, “I think maybe State is right. MacMillan can, for example, go in with twenty people, and come out with nineteen, leaving an agent on the shore—or pick one man up at the same time he's blowing a bridge—with a much lesser risk of being discovered, or even suspected, than if we use a sub. The Chinese are clever. They know you don't use subs unless what you're doing is very, very important.”

“You think MacMillan is capable of handling this for you?” General Black asked.

“That's where Captain Felter comes in,” Hanrahan said.

General Black had been wondering about the role of the little Jew with the West Point ring.

“We've got a radio crew coming in from the States with some really fancy radioteletype cryptographic equipment,” Hanrahan went on. “We'll have a direct link between Washington and Captain Felter, and Felter can give the word to MacMillan.”

“I have a rude question to ask,” General Black said. “And there's nothing personal in this, Captain, believe me. But if this operation is as important as you tell me it is, isn't Captain Felter a little junior for all that responsibility?”

“Washington wants one of their own men on the scene, General,” Colonel Hanrahan said.

“What's he doing in an army uniform if he's one of yours?” General Black said.

“Captain Felter thinks of himself as a soldier, General,” Colonel Hanrahan said, somewhat tartly. “Like myself, he has declined an offer of civilian employment with the agency to which we are attached. I had Captain Felter sent from Germany. I can think of no other officer as well qualified to handle this operation. Captain Felter was with me in Greece.”

“E. Z.,” the UNC said, cutting off the exchange, “the real purpose of this meeting, my presence here, is to impress on you the importance of Hanrahan's mission. And to tell you that the word I got, when Colonel Hanrahan was ‘attached' here, was that what Hanrahan wants, Hanrahan gets.”

“Yes, sir,” General Black said. “I understand, sir.” He turned to Felter. “Anything we've got you can have, Captain,” he said. “And if you run into any trouble with MacMillan, as you're liable to, you come to see me.”

“I can handle Major MacMillan, sir,” Captain Felter said, matter-of-factly.

(Three)
Kwandae-Ri, North Korea
30 August 1951

Captain Sanford T. Felter, wearing the crossed flags of the Signal Corps (and without his Combat Infantry Badge, his parachute wings, and his West Point Class of 1946 ring) went to Korea with Lt. General E. Z. Black at the conclusion of the general's R&R leave. General Black's L-17 Navion met them at K16 in Seoul and flew them to the XIX Corps (Group) airstrip.

General Black's aides-de-camp met the Navion. General Black's junior aide was instructed to have Captain Felter equipped with field uniforms and to have him standing by the General's office no later than 1600. General Black's senior aide was told to contact Major MacMillan at the 8045th Signal Detachment and have him at the general's office no later than 1530.

Then General Black went to his quarters and changed into his fatigue uniform. He had—wondering if it made him some sort of a pervert—stolen a handkerchief from his wife. He sniffed its perfume and then carefully wrapped it in plastic and slipped it into his breast pocket. He wondered how long the perfume would last.

He then underwent a two-hour briefing by his G-3 on what had happened in his absence. When it was finished, MacMillan was waiting for him. When they walked through the outer office of General Black's personal office, Captain Felter was already there, dressed in mussed fatigues, brand-new combat boots, and looking, General Black thought, like the Israeli version of Sad Sack.

“You miserable sonofabitch,” General Black said to MacMillan, “not only did you make a three-star horse's ass out of me in front of the Supreme Commander, and in front of a professional spook named Hanrahan, but you broke your word to me. You gave me your word you wouldn't go within five miles of the MLR.”

Very lamely, MacMillan explained: “I said I wouldn't
fly
within five miles of the line.”

“You're a goddamned guardhouse lawyer, that's what you are. That's a bullshit excuse and you know it is. I meant, and you know I meant, that you were not to stick your ass in the line of fire.”

“Goddamnit, General,” MacMillan said, now shamed that he had been caught, “I'm paid to be a soldier. Take the fucking Medal back and let me go to a line outfit.”

General Black was wholly unaccustomed to having that sort of language directed to him by a very junior major, who didn't even know he was a major. His face whitened, but in the end he concluded that not only was there something wrong with a personnel system that ordered an officer out of combat solely because he had performed superbly in combat previously, but that, under identical circumstances, he would have done exactly what MacMillan had done. Probably not as well, General Black decided. But he would have tried.