CHAPTER ONE

And that's why an Army Major from the Military Intelligence Division (MID) was on Whittier Boulevard on the night of Friday, 4 June, 43. It would not have taken a hell of a lot of effort to come up with a long list of places I would rather be.

CHAPTER ONE

. . . Baxter and I spotted a group of four Zoot Suiters equipped with their own baseball bats heading in our direction. Presumably, they were attracted by our olive drab Buick staff car with a big white star-shaped target on each rear door.

CHAPTER TWO

. . . we put up in a couple of rooms at the Cecil Hotel on Main Street between Sixth and Seventh. The Cecil is a 13-floor business travelers' hotel approaching its twentieth birthday and beginning to show the effects of negligent maintenance.

CHAPTER TWO

I passed two chromium floor stand ashtrays overflowing with butts among the mismatched lobby chairs and sofas. Nobody was rushing to empty the ashtrays. Nobody rushes to do anything at the Cecil.

CHAPTER TWO

Then, looking out the window, I saw we were entering East LA. I said, "Turn left at the next opportunity."

CHAPTER TWO

The houses looked to be typical southern California bungalows dating back to the 1920s. What wasn't typical for southern California was each house was separated from its neighbors and the street by chain link fences. The next most common qualities shared by these homes were peeling paint, boarded windows, and screen doors with bars rather than screens.

CHAPTER TWO

A beat up five or six year old Ford sedan with a layer of rust around the edges was following along about five car-lengths back. "So I see. Turn left at the next street."

CHAPTER TWO

I pointed the Buick south on California Route One again and found my way to San Pedro and the Municipal Ferry Building at Sixth Street and Harbor Boulevard. There, I drove aboard the auto/pedestrian ferry, Islander, and rode it across the Port of Los Angeles' main channel to Berth 234.

CHAPTER THREE

More from habit than any great need to know the time, I glanced at my Czech Air Force chronometer as I entered the booth. It was 1335. Hell, that meant I had to make two calls.

CHAPTER THREE

"Okay, Darling, but Mister Whiskers is going to be very disappointed."

"So am I."

CHAPTER THREE

For anyone who might be curious why I referred to the General's ship by its civilian name, I did so because it really is a DC-3. The General's ship actually began life as a United Airlines DC-3, not one of the Army's purpose-built C-47 Skytrain transports.

CHAPTER THREE

"Yeah. With all the big brass running around on that island, majors don't carry much weight, so I'm giving you a two grade field promotion to bird colonel. I've got some silver eagles for you in my plane, but don't get too attached to them. Your new rank is strictly temporary."

CHAPTER FOUR

Jack's "rowboat" was a 65-foot patrol boat built during prohibition for chasing down rumrunners. The sturdy little craft was fast, but it achieved its speed through the unorthodox method of bouncing from one wave crest to the next and landing with a bone-jarring smack every time it came back down.

CHAPTER FOUR

I pulled my pistol from its shoulder holster in my B-4 bag. Holding it up, I said, "You might want to see if you can get your hands on one of these. It's a Smith & Wesson caliber 38 Model 1899. Some guys call them the Victory Model. They are mostly carried by Navy and Marine aircrews as survival weapons."

CHAPTER FOUR

"The Saint Catherine pier in Descanso Bay. Most of the hotel is used for Merchant Marine barracks and training, but part of the hotel has been turned into Visiting Officers Quarters. I figured the first thing you would want to do is stash your gear and get settled in."

CHAPTER FIVE

With Jack at the wheel of our battleship gray Coast Guard Chevrolet sedan we wound our way south from the Saint Catherine Hotel on an aptly named road known as Saint Catherine Way.

CHAPTER FIVE

A mountain top seemed an odd place to build an airport. (Future View)

CHAPTER FIVE

Pointing to a crew of ten fellows in dungarees and sailor caps carrying a white rowboat into the surf, Jack said, "There goes a crew of the Coast Guard's finest learning how to launch a lifeboat by the book."

CHAPTER FIVE

Out in front of the temporary HQ building we found a 1941 LaSalle Sedan which had received its paint job from an overzealous fellow who apparently didn't understand the concept of masking tape.

CHAPTER FIVE

By 1400 we were eating Spam and scrambled eggs at the Hotel Atwater on Sumner Avenue a couple of blocks up from the beach. After a close call like we had a few hours earlier, even Spam tastes pretty good.

CHAPTER SIX

The Army's Catalina encampment turned out to be a collection of eight or nine wooden buildings scattered up a hillside on the west side of the intersection where Camp Cactus Road met an unnamed north-south road. If I thought Two Harbors was primitive, Camp Cactus was downright prehistoric.

CHAPTER SIX

After giving his map the once over, I handed it back to Peterson and said, "I hope there aren't many copies of this treasure map floating around."

CHAPTER SIX

"Well, there are two structures for the radar installation. The most recognizable one is a three-story twenty-foot square wooden tower with an enclosure at the top . . . The second building is offset about fifty feet from the tower and is a wooden two story structure painted olive drab."

CHAPTER SIX

"Bison. There are about twenty of them roaming around this end of the island. Some movie company brought them over here years ago and just left them. The island seems to agree with them. The damned things are huge and they fear nothing. Tick one off and you'll end up on your butt. I think the little ones knock Jeeps around just for fun."

CHAPTER SEVEN

Access to the top of the observation tower was gained via a wooden ladder nailed to the north end of the tower's east side. By the time I'd climbed two stories and reached the top of the tower, my shoulders and thighs were aching and I was certain I would find Sergeant Norris to be a fit fellow.

CHAPTER SEVEN

That's when I noticed something about that Bison. When I first saw him, he was staring out at the ocean, but he was looking in the opposite direction now. Something to the east seemed to be holding his interest.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I knew it was a Type 97 by the short sighting scope mounted far back over the stock, and the folding front tripod support.

CHAPTER SEVEN

In a loud tone of voice which was probably meant for Mister Whiskers as much as it was for me, Susan said, "I DO NOT HAVE ANY MORE CANTELOUPE!"

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Coast Guard vessel I was about to board was an old friend, the Blanche W. She was the tour boat built sometime in the 1920s from which I, along with thousands of other tourists over the years, viewed Catalina's spectacular nighttime flying fish show.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The helmsman turned onto a more southerly heading and we ran past Casino Point at the north end of Avalon.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Our route to Abalone Point, put Avalon and Avalon Bay off our starboard beam. The little mile-square village was just waking up and I could see a few shopkeepers getting ready for the day's customers.

CHAPTER EIGHT

William Wrigley, Junior, founded the tile enterprise in the '20s to produce the brightly painted ceramic tiles used to decorate monuments and storefronts in Avalon. The tiles add considerably to the festive nature of the village and many composite tile murals are considered landmarks in their own right.

CHAPTER NINE

Off Church Rock our helmsman swung the Blanche W's bow northwest to follow Catalina's shoreline along its windward, or western side.

CHAPTER NINE

It looks like about a four-man raft, and it appears to have been deflated by the expedient of a sharp object, like a knife point."

CHAPTER NINE

Then, as if the plane popped into focus, Ensign Stevenson and I recognized what we were seeing. At nearly the same time, we both yelled, "Jake!"

CHAPTER NINE

Then someone else joined the party. Who was not immediately apparent, but they had some serious firepower, including some forty-millimeter Bofors guns.

CHAPTER NINE

I turned in the direction of the pom-pom sound and saw what I later learned was an eighty-foot Coast Guard patrol boat off our stern and heading hell-bent-for-leather to intercept the Jake. They were throwing up a hail of forty millimeter and thirty-caliber lead at the Japs.

CHAPTER NINE

It only took the Blanche W about twenty minutes to bring us within view of the dock at Toyon Bay.

CHAPTER TEN

"It can be. According to my well-worn copy of the Merck Manual, Scrub Typhus symptoms can include everything from fever and chills to mental confusion and enlarged lymph nodes. It's a mean one."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The intriguing part of the airport to most passengers is the taxiway. Even folks who fly often, say they've never seen anything like it. The L-shaped strip of concrete leads from the hangar behind the administration building to a nearly thirty-foot diameter turntable. From the turntable, the concrete taxiway makes a ninety-degree left turn and goes down into the cove.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The ship's twin engines were mounted on a short stubby wing of their own above the main wing, which was mounted over the cabin. The Dolphin's nose was appropriately boat-shaped and a pontoon float was suspended from the outboard end of each wing. The fixed main landing gear reached down from the fuselage below the leading edge of each wing, and the ship's tail sat on a skid, giving the Dolphin a nose-high attitude.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Saint Mary's Hospital's main building was a large four story structure, which made my search for Susan a little daunting.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I spotted a trim butt in white slacks climbing a staircase to my right. Recognizing that trim butt, I hurried after it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Susan found us a table near the cafeteria entrance and took my hand. "Johnny, this is going to just destroy Jack. The Coast Guard is his life. It's been his dream since he was a little boy."

CHAPTER TWELVE

A couple of big artillery guns—six-inchers firing 155 millimeter rounds—were mounted on the point atop sturdy concrete bunkers.

CHAPTER TWELVE

. . . and three of the trucks were pulling two-wheeled mobile 37-millimeter A-A guns.

CHAPTER TWELVE

At that precise moment the world around us erupted in chaos. The Jake's bomb shook the ground under us and a thunderous roar passed mere feet above our heads.

CHAPTER TWELVE

General Davis knew all about the Army Air Force's Curtiss pursuit ships. They were no longer our most sophisticated fighter, but they were certainly capable of shooting down a lumbering Jake.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The shark mouth fit the air intake below the propeller of a P-40 perfectly. Shark art was first used by the British Commonwealth squadrons flying Tomahawks—their name for the Warhawk C variant—during the 1941 North African campaign. More recently, however, the design has become a symbol of General Chenault's American Volunteer Group in China. The AVG is getting a lot of press these days and newspapers love the dramatic nose art on their P-40s.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Anders said, "Then it would probably be a good idea to park them someplace more secure. What about that hangar over there?"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I was on a road running along the crest of a north-south ridge fifteen minutes later when a movement to my left caught my eye. I turned to look and saw Lieutenant Darnell in his Warhawk about fifty yards off looking back from eye-level. The P-40s were flying nose to tail through a gorge that paralleled my road. The evil grin on Darnell's face matched the one on his Warhawk.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The road I took to get there passed an impressive ranch calling itself El Rancho Escondido. That name dragged up some memories of Philip Wrigley raising Arabian horses out here. Do not ask me what Arabian horses were doing 25 miles off the coast of California. That's their business.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The road they were guarding was no more than a quarter mile long and ran just about due west. At its end, the road looped back on itself around the big gun emplacements.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I found my decent chow at John's Café in the arcade on Crescent, an Avalon landmark going back many years.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The highest public road you could get to up there is Wrigley Road, so named because it took you to Mount Ada, the Wrigley's 22-room summer home on the summit behind me.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Doctor Owen opened the book to a bookmark and showed me a picture of ugly little thing that looked a little like a worm with legs. He definitely was not a critter with whom I wanted to share my body.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The cupola was a 12-foot cube stuck atop the hotel's center section roof. With windows on all sides, the cupola offered views of the hotel grounds in all directions. As I studied the grounds for potential espionage targets, Bert Inman lit a pipe he produced from one of his pockets.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

At 1730 hours I closed myself into a public telephone booth off the Saint Catherine's lobby and called my boss.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I rounded a bend and darn near ran into an Army six-by-six two-and-a-half ton truck blocking the road.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The personnel I could have so easily picked off from my earlier position consisted mostly of what I thought might be a Navy Construction Battalion crew along with a few older fellows in civilian suits watching them and doing a lot of gesturing.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

When I pulled to Saint Mary's parking lot in the Plymouth sedan I borrowed from the Terminal Island Coast Guard motor pool, I hit the jackpot. Susan's yellow Pontiac convertible wasn't hard to spot among the more mundane vehicles in the lot.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Somewhere along the line, she managed to get a red C gas sticker. The C sticker had a list of occupations below the letter where you were supposed to check the occupation which entitled you to twice as much as those with A stickers were allowed—eight gallons per week. The occupation checked on Susan's sticker was "Public Health Nurse."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

That's not cheating in my book. You are helping the war effort by helping me. If anything, you deserve an unlimited X card like I have.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

In my experience most airplanes are eager to do what their pilots ask of them, but the Dolphin asks, "Do I have to?" every time its pilot moves the wheel—yeah, the Dolphin has a steering wheel just like a car, and only one of them. The wheel is on an arm that pivots from the center of the instrument panel so the ship can be flown from either seat in the cockpit.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

On that note the P-40 pilots gave us a nod and took off like bats out of hell. Ahead of us, they closed ranks, banked right, and angled right toward Catalina's isthmus.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Watching the dot for another few seconds, I said, "No. I recognize it now and we need to out of here. That's the Jap Jake that's been harassing the island."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was one of the new Lucky packs—the white ones with the big red circle with the words "Lucky Strike" printed in it.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Apparently the owners of the hotel had trouble thinking up a suitable name for the joint when it was built back in the 1920s, so they made up a name based on the streets bordering the hotel, Broadway and Linden Avenue. Thus, the place became the Rosalind Hotel.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

She swapped the slacks she wore on Friday, for a royal blue dress with some white embroidery on the fronts of her shoulders. If angels wear dresses, this was one they would choose.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It was what Studebaker called an Express Coupé, and the thing looked as if someone grafted a small truck bed onto the back of a coupé.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The views from the beach there are terrific, but to continue south requires backtracking half a mile or so on Ocean, and then going inland to get around an oddly shaped bay to a bridge spanning the river.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Picking up the pistol, I noticed it was stamped "US Navy" on one side of the slide. That meant there might be more to this guy than met the eye.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

We drove west on Ocean Boulevard, Long Beach's swanky tourist area, and parked in a circular drive in front of the Hilton Breakers Hotel at Ocean and Collins.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

. . . a French dip sandwich served with French fries and a slice of pineapple for me.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"Villa Riviera, huh? Sounds expensive."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Susan immediately spotted a Dodge Army field ambulance sitting next to the aircraft parking area.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Five minutes later my B-4 bag and I were aboard Stu's AT-7, and I was strapping myself into the copilot seat. I'd been there before and knew the drill.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

There, I rented us a gray Chevrolet Master DeLuxe 4-door sedan

CHAPTER TWENTY

The new bomber would be appropriately known as the Super Fortress and made its first flight less than a year ago.

CHAPTER TWENTY

At the 16th Street address we found an older motor lodge converted to the River View Apartments.

CHAPTER TWENTY

We were both looking straight ahead as we passed the River View Apartments, but we got a peek at a rusty beat-up Ford panel delivery truck.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Ultimately, we followed the panel delivery in a right turn onto King Street and the next thing I knew we were at the King Street railroad depot, where the panel truck pulled to the curb near the waiting room entrance.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Instead, we headed into something called the Colman Dock, or Pier 52, or the Seattle Ferry Terminal.

CHAPTER TWENTY

"What the hell is that? Looks like a damned floating dirigible!"

CHAPTER TWENTY

I walked toward the stern and enjoyed a receding view of the Seattle skyline. I wouldn't describe the view as breathtaking, but it's close.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Still on the waterfront, we had downtown Bremerton on our right, docks and warehouses on our left and the panel truck three cars ahead of us.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The herd thinned out a little more when we followed the Ford through a right turn on Warren Avenue, which took us north along a street with lots of trees and tiny wood houses I guessed might have been built for the Navy yard's civilian workers.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

As a matter of fact, the only moving thing in sight was a fishing boat about a quarter mile out into Oyster Bay. It was running north.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

When we were abeam downtown Seattle, Stu put the ship on a more northerly course and we flew right up the middle of Puget Sound toward Whidbey Island at an altitude of 1,000 feet.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Upon reaching the southern end of Whidbey, Stu turned back to a northwest heading that took us in the direction of Port Townsend. The route we took from Boeing Field was a little longer than a straight line, but I didn't want to miss any part of the route the Jap fishing boat would take, assuming we had their route figured correctly. By 1600 hours we were over the arm of Puget Sound the Japs would use to reach the open sea.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

That's when I spotted what we were looking for. Using my binoculars I grabbed from the rental Chevrolet before we took off, I double checked. Yup, the Fisshushīkā was dead ahead, about halfway between Clallam Bay and Neah Bay on the US side.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Apparently, it was my day for panel trucks. The MID security team arrived in a shiny dark green Chevrolet panel delivery.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

"We have four Winchester Twelves, Sir."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

My sketch was a simple plan view of the River View Apartments oriented with the street in front of the property across the bottom of the drawing. Essentially, the place consisted of thirteen units in two buildings. The building on the left was shaped like an inverted L and contained seven units. The remaining six units were in a straight building on the right side of my drawing. It was the same length as, and ran parallel to, the long stem of the inverted L. The central area between the buildings was an asphalt parking area.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Along with the face was a hand holding a Nambu 8-mm pistol.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The spotlight lighting up the River View Apartments parking area was attached to a black 1941 Chevy Sedan with gold King County Sheriff's stars painted on the front doors.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Fifteen minutes later, Stu and I pulled up next to a public telephone at a Texaco Gas Station on 14th Avenue, a block from the South Park Bridge.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

By 0615 the sky to the northwest was blacker than night with storm clouds and we were roaring down Runway 14 Right.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Stu dropped me at Building 100, MID's West Coast Headquarters . . .

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

. . . making the already shiny dove gray paint on a Chrysler business coupé even shinier.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I checked in and picked up my B-4 bag Stu left there for me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I was standing next to a huge glass window, like the ones lining the Wilshire Boulevard side of Bullocks' Department Store.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Around 1130 hours, my stomach was telling me lunch was in order, so I stopped in the tiny burg of Buellton, a little north of Santa Barbara, for some Anderson's split pea soup.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The clinic's owner, Doctor Ham Rothenberg, calls the place Casa Sobre El Mar, which literally translated means house on the sea.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Promising to visit Jack in the morning, we left Jack to his dinner and headed for Susan's apartment by way of a pretty decent Chinese takeout joint a block from her apartment.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

. . . and then Susan turned on the Sammy Kaye show on her Zenith table radio and we settled in on the couch with Susan in the middle, me on her right, and Mister Whiskers on her left.

THE END

It's amazing what five-minutes with an Angel will do for a guy.