Chapter 4

Vella La Cava, VMF 214 HQ

The game is afoot

Greg agreed Beans could keep the refrigeration units in the mess operating until the fresh food was gone, providing it didn't take more than a day. With the clock ticking, that evening's meal was a wholesale clean-out of anything that would spoil. The cook outdid himself, creating a smorgasbord his Scandinavian ancestors would have been proud of and while the menu was unusual in both abundance and flavor, the situation cast a pall over the tables.

Although the boys and Kate ate heartily, no one commented on the savory meatloaf, fluffy potatoes with rivers of gravy, the bacon-laced green bean casserole or the buttermilk biscuits. There were even custard pies for dessert. If refrigeration had been available, Beans would have stretched the meat and dairy ingredients frugally, using them to prepare more mundane rations, but with the base poised on the brink of uncertainty, there was no sense holding back.

"Damn. I didn't know he could cook like this," Casey said between mouthfuls. "He's been holding out on us."

" 'The condemned men ate a hearty meal,' " Anderson quipped and everyone glared at him.

After mess, Kate drove to the nurses' quarters—Greg hadn't specifically said she could take the jeep but he hadn't said she couldn't, either—and parked in the evening shadows behind the building. She entered through the back door with the key Dee had given her and paused inside the vestibule. An eerie silence blanketed the building. With most of the medical staff transferred to Espritos and only a skeleton crew of nurses and a few patients remaining, the compound felt like a ghost town.

"Hey, Katie!"

Kate nearly jumped out of her skin as Lieutenant Dee Ryan's dark head popped around the corner. The petite nurse motioned her down a hallway.

"The coast is clear. Delmonte's in her office doing reports. Not sure what she's reporting on. We have exactly two patients in the ward and no new ones coming in." Dee made a face. "We're only allowed to visit the 214 for medical reasons until the restrictions are lifted, so she doesn't even have any misconduct reports to file now. Laura and Ellen are planning a mixer on the beach, just to keep everyone's spirits up."

Laura Halvorson and Ellen Murphy were two of the nurses who stayed behind. Kate appreciated their efforts. Being isolated from the rest of the theatre, combined with a lack of female companionship, meant the boys' morale would drop to dangerous lows in no time. A beach party would lift everyone's spirits, even if it was no more than volleyball and horseplay in the water.

"I'm surprised the guys haven't been showing up with more, um, medical emergencies, since you guys can't come see them," Kate said as she followed Dee down the hall.

"Bob has come in a few times to see Ellen but Delmonte has her beady eyes on us 24/7 since we're not busy with patient care. Idle hands are the devil's workshop and all that. She's got us cleaning and inventorying from top to bottom." Dee stifled a yawn. "We're working harder in an empty hospital than we do when all the beds are full."

She glanced at her watch. "Don't dawdle. We've still got lights and hot water but only because the generators are on to run the oxygen concentrators and comms equipment. They kill the electricity to the nurses' quarters at 2100. Delmonte will crawl out from under her rock and do a bed check then so you'll probably want to be gone by then."

Kate nodded and carried her shower things into Dee's tiny private bathroom. Lieutenant Commander Delmonte knew who Kate was and disapproved heartily. Kate didn't know if she disapproved of journalists in general or women journalists in particular or Kate's own peculiar situation of being a woman journalist who lived on a Marine base. Her encounters with the nursing commander had been few and far between and she intended to keep it that way.

To her credit, Delmonte kept her mouth shut about Kate's identity. She could have blown the whistle, calling attention to the fact the correspondent Col. Lard had embedded with the Black Sheep was not only a gifted writer and photographer but a female as well. Kate had absolutely no knowledge of what was contained between the covers of the Marine Corps Manual but she suspected if on-base fraternization between the sexes was frowned upon, a woman living with an all-male unit would probably make Lard blow his stack.

She wondered if the occasional bottle of the 214's finest Scotch she left anonymously on the lieutenant commander's desk had any influence on her silence. Or maybe Delmonte was a secret feminist who wholeheartedly supported Kate's infiltration of the male-dominated press corps but didn't feel she was in a position to take a public stand.

Kate put thoughts of political intrigue aside and turned on the tap. The water was warmer than the boys' solar-heated tanks and the pressure was better. She enjoyed a quick but thorough shower, idly wondering how long the hospital would continue to divert electricity for heating water. If it stopped, that would mean the nurses would petition for permission to come to the base to use the boys' primitive outdoor setup. That could get interesting in a hurry.

"How's it going with your fake news?" Dee asked when Kate exited the bathroom.

"The first story is ready. Anderson's going to read it over an open channel as soon as he and Casey finish tweaking the radio and scrambler."

"Won't the Allies hear the broadcast?" Dee asked. She'd read an early draft of Kate's work. "Admiral Halsey might be surprised to hear he's leading a campaign to dismantle the blockade."

"Casey says he can jam some channels and leave others open. Greg is certain the transmission will be picked up by Japanese intelligence but not the Allies. They just need to hear enough to convince them Uncle Sam is ready to drop the hammer." Kate gathered her things. "How are you guys doing here?"

"We're low on medical supplies but we don't have any incoming patients so it's not critical yet. I guess there's a storage bunker full of C-rations when our fresh food supply runs out." Dee paused, frowning, then brightened. "Ellen's from Maine, so she's been gathering these little crab things at low tide and helping our cook fix them. They're not bad. Laura's been out fishing a few times. Casey loaned her a makeshift rod and hooks. And a couple of the girls are good at foraging for fruit. Maybe this will all be over before we need the C-rations."

"One of these days the Black Sheep are going to invite you guys for a barbecue," Kate said.

"A barbecue? Of what?"

"The boys have it in their head they're going to shoot one of those wild hogs from the herd that's running around the interior. Gutterman and French organized a hunting party but they haven't caught one yet. Their initial idea was to use the planes in a low sweep to drive the herd into a holding pen. Greg put a stop to that pretty fast. You guys better keep going with your crabs."

"That sounds like something Jim would do but Don's a city boy, what's he know about hunting hogs?"

"His family has money, remember?" Kate buttoned a clean shirt and combed out her hair. "Every winter he and his dad would go to some lodge in Montana or Wyoming and hunt elk. He and Jim have been scouting game trails with some help from a couple of the mechanics. They think they can build a pen, drive a hog into it and shoot it."

"I hope they don't end up shooting each other."

"Wouldn't be the first time." Kate glanced at her watch. "I'd better go. Thanks for the hot water." She grinned. "You're welcome to come shower at my place next time."

Dee snorted. "Casey would love that. We'd probably get caught and that would make Delmonte's day. She'd be in her element if she had a misconduct report to write."

Kate slipped out the back of the quarters, fired up the jeep and drove through the gathering nightfall toward the base. She was barreling along a narrow stretch of road where the jungle growth on either side formed a dark, quasi-tunnel when a figure stepped out of the underbrush. In an adrenaline-induced rush, Kate punched the accelerator with no intention of stopping. She doubted any Japanese invasion would begin with a single soldier accosting a lone woman but she wasn't taking any chances. Then the figure waved its arms and jogged after her. Realizing who it was, Kate downshifted and brought the jeep to a halt in a prolonged slide of tires on sandy earth.

"Damn it, TJ! You scared me half to death!"

"Sorry, Katie." The tall pilot climbed into the jeep.

"What are you doing out here?"

He grinned. "Went to see Julie, one of the girls who patched me up after Boyle slugged me the other night. Had to get out of the quarters before Delmonte started bed checks. Besides, we'd already—"

Kate held up a hand. In her experience, the boys were only too willing to share details of romantic conquests. "I don't need to hear it. So you were going to walk back in the dark? TJ, it's three miles from the hospital to the base!"

He shrugged. She put the jeep back in gear and continued down the track.

"Don't tell me you walked all the way there, too?" Kate was mildly fascinated by the boys' ability at getting in and out of the nurses' quarters undetected.

"Bragg dropped me off this afternoon when he went to get that cut on his hand checked out."

"You've been in the nurse's quarters since then?" Kate was incredulous, although nothing TJ did surprised her.

"Yepper, went to borrow Julie's shower, same as you."

"Not same as me! I showered by myself. And I wasn't there for four hours. And I know I didn't do anything like what you did."

TJ's boyish grin was irresistible. "Jules and I were conserving water. You and Greg really ought to—"

"Conserving water, my sweet aunt," Kate cut him off. The last thing she needed was romantic advice from one of the boys. "One of these days you're going to get caught and all hell's going to break loose. Greg can only save your ass from Delmonte for so long."

"Says the girl sneaking around in the middle of the Marine Corps."

"I'm not sneaking. Lard knows I'm here."

TJ pulled a face. "But he doesn't know you're a girl! You've been on Espritos twice, masquerading as a nurse. You even had dinner with him and convinced him you're a Navy nurse. If that's not sneaking, I don't know what is."

Kate took the high ground. "I was on official Black Sheep business both times."

TJ laughed out loud. "Yeah, that's what Greg said, too, but I know for a fact the two of you were doing more than squadron business on that second trip. Jim told me all about—"

Kate didn't care for the direction this conversation was taking. Jim and Casey knew entirely too much about what happened on that second trip to Espritos and apparently they'd shared their knowledge. "You don't know anything of the sort, TJ Wiley. Be quiet or I'll make you walk."

XXX

At 0800 the next day, Kate carried her steaming mug of coffee into into the comm shack. Greg, Casey, Bob Anderson and Jim were already there.

"Did you read it?" she asked Bob. She'd given both him and Greg a copy of the final draft the previous night—Greg, so he could tweak any details, and Bob, so he could practice his delivery before reading the story over the airwaves.

"It's journalistic hoodwinking perfection, Katherine," the latter said. Kate couldn't help smiling at his use of her full Christian name.

"I hope this works," she said, still unable to push the lingering doubt out of her mind. "This war is crazy enough without making up campaigns that don't exist."

"It's perfect, Cameron," Greg said. "Casey tuned the radio for a shortwave transmission that should reach the Japanese base on Bougainville. Even if they don't believe it at first, it'll lay the groundwork for the next story."

The next story. How many stories would it take before someone high enough up the Japanese chain of command felt compelled to do something about the perceived threat? What if their response was the opposite of what Greg intended and instead of breaking up the blockade, they redoubled their efforts to drive the American bases to their knees?

"If this is our ticket out of living like castaways on fish and coconuts, I'm all for it." Jim pushed off the desk. "Come on, Casey, fire this contraption up and get on with it so I can go lie down. Breakfast wasn't anything to write home about."

Kate commiserated with him. Beans had decreed the boys fix their own breakfasts, freeing him to focus on crafting edible meals from the remaining hodgepodge of dry goods and canned meat for lunch and dinner.

Boyle's first KP assignment had not been received with resounding applause. He stretched the powdered eggs and oatmeal to the breaking point, resulting in eggs the consistency of oatmeal and oatmeal that was a sorry mess without milk. The coffee, however, remained hot and black. Kate wrapped her hands around her mug and bit her lip in anticipation.

Bob read a few sentences as a warm up. His experience with a college drama troupe held him in good stead for this masquerade and he affected a clipped speech pattern with just a hint of English dialect. K.C. Cameron was American but had, after all, made a name for himself while reporting from Great Britain for several years before coming to the South Pacific.

Greg perched on the edge of the desk and nodded to Casey, who flipped levers and dialed in a frequency amidst a chorus of electronic squeals. Jim stradled a nearby chair, his face set in a mask of concentration. The air in the room hummed like a taut wire. Kate paced the length of the shack. This was insane. She'd written a story that was a complete untruth and now it was going out on the wire for all the world to hear. Well. No. It wasn't going out on the wire. Only a select part of the world would hear it. And it wasn't a complete untruth. The Japanese blockade was real enough but from there, it spiraled down a rabbit hole of creative deceit.

What if Casey got the radio frequencies crossed and the damn thing ended up going out on the AP wire after all, winging its way straight into Stateside news rooms with her byline plastered on it? Assuming it went out on the correct frequency, what if the Japanese weren't paying any attention? Greg said this story would lay the groundwork for the next one but what if the enemy brushed it aside without a second thought? Or worse yet, laughed it off as the pseudo menacing propaganda it was? She reached the wall, turned and started back across the room.

This was worse than the evening she'd shared a dinner table in the Espritos Marcos officers' club with Col. Lard. How in the world did the boys pull off this kind of subterfuge on a regular basis without having chronic high blood pressure and ulcers? The tension was going to kill her if Boyle's cooking didn't do it first.

Greg caught her the third time she paced past him.

"You're going to wear out the floor, sweetheart." He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Relax. You've done the hard part. Let Bob and Casey take it from here."

"Relax? Easy for you to say. It's not your career on the line if this goes south," she muttered, then instantly regretted it. If this scheme didn't work, the future of her career was going to be the least of their problems. She exhaled, forcing clenched muscles to loosen.

Greg nodded to Casey. "Go."

The tow-haired pilot pressed a lever on the handset. "Vella La Cava calling Associated Press office on Espritos. Come in AP."
Static crackled on the line, then cleared. A man's voice replied in a distinct hill-country twang, "AP desk, Espritos, read you Lima Charlie."

"How's the weather over there?"

The room held its collective breath. This was the moment that would define if Casey and Bob's wrangling of the transmitter had indeed connected them to Greg's contact in the Gilbert Islands or put them through to the real press office on Espritos.

"Clearer than my granny's Kentucky moonshine."

Those were the pre-arranged code words. Greg flashed a thumbs up. Kate closed her eyes and focused on breathing.

"What can I do for you, La Cava?" the voice on the other end of the line drawled, still following the predetermined script.

"K.C. Cameron needs to file a story since there's no courier pickup out here for the foreseeable future," Casey said.

"Roger that. We're ready when he is."

Bob adjusted a second set of headphones, then Casey passed him the hand unit. Bob adopted a look of intense seriousness, cleared his throat and began reading. He read slowly and with excruciating diction, as if giving the recipient time to transcribe. Kate felt the weight of each word. It wasn't just the Black Sheep's future at stake—units from New Britain to New Caledonia were feeling the same pressure. What she did for one of them, she did for all.

She shot a sideways glance at Greg. His profile was a study in concentration, as if he, too, was measuring the impact of each sentence. His arm stayed around her shoulder, his fingers tight. And he'd told her to relax. Casey glared at the dials on the radio set as if he could will them into compliance by his stare. Jim chewed a toothpick.

Within minutes, it was over. Anderson ended the transmission with, "In conclusion, officials remain tight-lipped about Operation Eagle Talon but the mood here is one of cautious optimism amidst one of the war's darkest hours. This is K.C. Cameron, reporting from the Solomon Islands. Out."

"Thanks, Cameron, transmission received. We'll take it from here," the male voice returned. "AP Espritos, out."

Casey flipped a series of levers and the radio powered down with an electronic whine. Anderson pulled off the headset and tossed Kate's carefully scripted story onto the desk. Nobody spoke.

"Operation Eagle Talon?" she said finally.

"Greg gave me permission to add that," Bob said. "He thought it gave the story some clout."

Now they'd given a fake operation a fake name. In for a dime, in for a dollar.

Greg looked at his watch. "Let's go. A Flight lifts off at 0900."

"Dunno why," Jim grumbled. "All we're gonna do is fly 10 clicks up and down the Slot, wave at the sharks and land again."

His summation of the squadron's recent missions was spot on. For the last week, they'd done little more than take their birds up for exercise, as Micklin put it. Patrol parameters had been so reduced the boys hadn't even seen the enemy from a distance, let alone engaged them.

"Get the rest of A Flight out of the rack and on the line in 10 minutes," Greg told Jim. "We're at least going through the motions."

"Now what happens?" Kate said as they left the shack.

"I take my bird up for a spin and you start the next story, amp it up a little," Greg said and left for the flight line.

Kate stood in the morning sunshine. Amp up the next story? In for a dime, in for a dollar indeed.

XXX

Meanwhile, on a small Japanese outpost off the coast of Bougainville

Imperial Navy communications officer first class Atsuya Mikumo stared at his radio console in disbelief.

"Enji, you hear that? American journalist broadcast on open channel."

His morning partner on comms, Enji Notsuda, found monitoring American broadcasts a monumental waste of time and as a result, hadn't been paying attention. He looked up from the magazine he was reading.

"Ha. Those Americans not as smart as they think," he said. "Scrambler must be broken. American junk, always broken. What he say? Uncle Sam ready to surrender?"

Atsuya frowned. "U.S. planning action, going to move on blockade. Major Ikeda tell us blockade stay in place for weeks, maybe months. Give our forces time to take back what is ours. But now Allies coming?"

"Bah. K.C. Cameron, that American newspaper man," Enji said dismissively. "I read his stories in American rags. He think he know so much."

Atsuya shook his head. "Cameron big-time writer living on Marine base, not sitting in officers' club swilling booze. I read his stories, too. He know what going on. He have sources who tell him things. We should tell Major Ikeda what we heard. Maybe there something going on he want to know about."

"You tell Ikeda you think you hear maybe Americans are coming? He tell you go away unless you have facts." Enji returned to the article he was reading about big game hunting in Africa.

Atsuya didn't want to go to his CO with nothing more than a flimsy rumor based on a journalist's story accidentally broadcast on an open channel. Especially not while his over-indulgence in rice wine and the subsequent debacle last week was still fresh in Major Ikeda's memory. Atsuya's credibility wasn't at an all-time high right now. Dancing around the compound while wearing only his skivvies and belting out the lyrics to a popular American tune about a virtuoso bugle player who got drafted had seemed like a good idea at the time. Major Ikeda hadn't been amused.

"Okay," he muttered and slumped back into his chair. "You right. It probably nothing to worry about."

XXX

In the days that followed, it became clear how dependent the outlying bases were on the supply chain that snaked its way across the South Pacific, from the States to Hawaii and then to rear-area naval and air stations where goods from apples to ammunition were redistributed to the Allied outposts.

Only now they weren't.

"We're doing fine. We just need to stay frosty and let this work itself out," Greg told the boys. Kate focused her writing on the increasing certainty of a coordinated Allied launch against the Japanese forces holding the supply line hostage. Her creativity was taxed to the limit as she fabricated a tapestry of half-truths and outright lies woven with just enough elements of accuracy to keep any reader—or in this case, listener—off balance.

Greg, Casey and Jim helped her, the four of them consulting maps and collecting stats from battle reports. Casey made off-the-record calls to an underling with COMSOPAC who appraised him of recent fleet movements. Bob Anderson broadcast her second story four days later. To Kate's ear, the final product carried more than a hint of aggression. Too bad it wasn't her ear that counted.

When the boys weren't flying lukewarm missions that did little more than establish their continued presence, Greg kept them busy on what Jim disparagingly called hunter/gatherer detail. Progress on scouting trails for the hog hunt became the squadron's main diversion. The wild hogs refused to cooperate. The closest the boys came to capturing one happened when TJ fell out of a tree and nearly landed on one. The hog escaped unharmed. TJ spent a night in the hospital. Kate was fairly sure he hadn't stayed in his bed in the ward.

Don French proved to be an unlikely but competent naturalist. He led a daily detail to forage for edible plants, collecting a variety of roots and leaves he and Beans turned into creative side dishes for the repetitive meals involving spam—fried, grilled, boiled or roasted—and other tinned meats. These were received with varying degrees of enthusiasm, depending on how hungry the boys were.

Casey fished with more enthusiasm than success while Boyle and Bragg carted several bushels of fresh-caught mussels back to camp. Beans stewed them but they met with a less than resounding welcome.

"I ain't eatin' something that looks like it got scraped off the bottom of my boot," Jim declared.

"Then you're not hungry enough yet," Greg said, but he didn't eat them either.

Beans used the camp's dwindling supply of flour and sugar, plus beer for starter yeast, to develop a rudimentary sourdough bread. This was met with more appreciation than the mussels and even though there wasn't any butter, Don created a sweet, tart marmalade from a combination of fruits he found while the boys were scouting—still futilely—for hogs that didn't want to be found. In light of fresh bread and jam to offset the questionable vegetation accompanying the meals, the boys generally forgave Don for his insistence the roots and greens were not only edible but nutritious.

Greg sent Anderson to inventory the supply of trade goods occupying half of Kate's tent. The resulting list included cartons of toilet paper, cooking oil, corn meal and some outdated canned peaches.

"Them peaches are gonna be looking pretty good after a few more servings of French's mystery vegetables," Jim grumbled. "I don't know where he got the idea that just 'cause you can fry it, you can eat it. You could fry my shorts, too, but that don't make them edible."

"Everything's edible," Anderson quipped. "Some of it, only once."

Beans kept the coffee pot on and Kate started writing her third story.

To be continued . . .