W E B Griffin – Men at War 4 – The Fighting Agents

More of it came out after they had rearranged the block and tackle and dragged him onto the car. Fulmar felt nauseated, tried to fight it down, and failed.

The foreman laughed at him and said he could tell that he was a city boy who had never lived on a farm.

After they got the donkey carcass into the car and closed the side, they went down the line of donkeys and shoveled the donkey shit into the car. By the time they were finished, you couldn’t see the donkey carcass.

And then they hooked a donkey to the car to drag the car to the elevator.

Fulmar had another unpleasant thought. He didn’t know how long he had been in jail and working in the mine, and therefore did not know how much longer he would be in the mines. He thought he was a damned fool for not having made a scratch on his cell wall once a day. Then he would have known.

Then he thought it really didn’t matter. Long before his ninety-day sentence was up, they would find out that he wasn’t a black marketeer.

And soon after that, some other prisoner would roll his dead body off somewhere in a cart, just as he was doing with the donkey. The donkey. Fulmar thought, was actually better off than he was. The donkey had not had the ability to stand around imagining what was going to happen to him.

VII

lONE]

Headquarters, Commander-in-chief, Pacific Pearl Harbor Naval Hase

Lieutenant Commander Stuart J. Collins, United States Navy, Cryptographic Officer, Headquarters, CINCPAC, was aware that the lieutenant commander in

the crisp white uniform in the outer office of CINCPAC was looking askance at his uniform. Commander Collins’s khaki uniform was mussed and wilted, and there were sweat stains under the armpits.

The cryptographic section, in the basement of the neatly white-painted, red-tile-roofed headquarters office building, was of course air-conditioned. But it had been air-conditioned in 1937, when no one could have guessed how many people and how much equipment it would be necessary to stuff into the three small rooms. It was hot down there, and people sweated.

If the commander in the crisp white uniform in the admiral’s cool and spacious office didn’t like his sweaty, shapeless uniform, fuck her. Goddamn women in the Navy, anyway.

“The Admiral will see you, Commander, “the WAVE Lieutenant Commander said, quite unnecessarily. Commander Collins was not deaf; he had heard the Admiral tell her, over the intercom, to send him in.

Commander Collins walked into the CINCPAC’s office.

“Good afternoon, Sir,” he said, and extended a clipboard to the Admiral, who scrawled his name on the form, acknowledging receipt of Top Secret Incoming Message 43-2-1009. Commander Collins then handed him the message, hidden beneath a top secret cover sheet.

CINCPAC read it:

PROM CHIEF OF KAVAL OPERATIONS WASHINGTON DC

TO [EYES ONLY) COMMANDER IN CHIEF PACIFIC, PEARL HARBOR

TERR HAWAII

DP YOU WILL MAKE AVAILABLE GATO CLASS SUBMARINE FOR SUCH

TIKE AND FOR SUCH MISSION AS SPECIFIED BY C.J. CHENOWITH

OP THE OFFICE OF STRATEGIC SERVICES. CHENOWITH AMD PARTY

OF THREE [3 EH ROUTE BARBERS POINT NAS ABOARD NATS FLIGHT

232 ETA 1530 HOURS 14 FEBRUARY. CARGO ACCOMPANYING

CHENOWITH PARTY OF APPROXIMATELY TWO [2] TONS GROSS WEIGHT

IN THIRTY TWO 132] WOODEN CRATES WILL REQUIRE TREATMENT AS

TO? SECRET MATERIEL. OCNO DOES NOT DESIRE TO DISCUSS THIS

ORDER. OCNO WILL BE ADVISED IN DETAIL BY MOST EXPEDITIOUS

MEANS OF REASONS FOR INABILITY TO COMPLY WITH THIS ORDER.

BY DIRECTION: SOLOMON VICE ADMIRAL.

CINCPAC looked up at It. Commander Collins.

“No reply, Commander,” he said.

“Yes, Sir,” Collins said, and started to do an about-face.

“Collins?” CINCPAC said.

Collins faced CINCPAC again.

“Hot in the basement?”

“You talk to the engineer about it?”

“And what did he say?”

“He said that the ambient temperature is within the operating range of the equipment, Admiral, and there’s no way he can authorize more air-conditioning.”

“Collins,” CINCPAC said.

“There’s a Chief Kellerman over in Civil Engineering.

We were aboard the old Des Moines together. You go see him, tell him I sent you, and ask him to cool your shop down.”

“Yes, Sir,” Commander Collins said.

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