Harm's Way by James E Bassett

Author:James E Bassett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2015-10-14T00:00:00+00:00

Around him, in the semi-cylindrical GHQ building, Torrey had gathered the officers upon whom he must now depend for carrying out his orders in the critical weeks ahead. He himself sat at the head of the rough plywood table that almost filled one end of the chart-walled, blackboard-laden room. He was sweating, and the unaccustomed heat had even generated a thin film of moisture beneath the crystal of his waterproof wrist watch. Eddington flanked him on the right, Egan Powell on the left, and beyond them were McConnel and Neal Owynn. Admiral Balder’s original staff, nine very weary and thoroughly disillusioned men, ranging in rank from lieutenant commander to captain, slumped moodily in their canvas camp-chairs at the far end of the conference board. Five of them had been asked to stay on. But they seemed quite unimpressed by their good fortune as they waited for Admiral Torrey to explain how he proposed to salvage a campaign which everyone else from Oahu to Brisbane had apparently written off as hopelessly ill-conceived, ill-mounted, and ill-managed—and therefore unworthy of further massive support.

Neville Balder occupied a chair that had been placed discreetly behind The Rock’s, as if he wanted it plainly understood that he had disassociated himself completely and without regret from the melancholy affairs of Mesquite-Skyhook.

Purposefully erasing all expression from his raw-boned face, Torrey surveyed them quietly, and for a moment the only sounds audible within the crowded shack were the metallic whirring of a pair of electric fans, the mournful croon of a harmonica being played softly in a nearby Quonset, the tentative drip-drip-drip from the overhanging palm trees that hinted heavier rain tomorrow, and the expectant breathing of the officers themselves.

Behind his contrived mask, The Rock’s brain teemed with urgent thoughts, all bearing upon their appallingly difficult situation, and none of which was calculated to provide him much comfort. What had seemed so amenable to logical solution at Pearl Harbor a week ago had become a thing of intimate complexity—no longer a geographically removed abstraction to be pondered in safety and resolved at leisure. It was the very magnitude of the challenge that forced him to maintain this façade of competence, lest his personal doubts become evident to these men who were looking to him for guidance.

He regarded Balder’s staff with fresh curiosity. Men of certain authority themselves, they had in one fashion or another advanced in their specialties until they had developed stature and know-how enough to be called for this exacting duty.

Take Captain Forrest Tuthill, pensively doodling over there on a sheet of scratch-paper, with his cadaverous cheeks and dark-baggy eyes. He was Operations. His job was arranging the paltry pieces on the checkerboard so they’d appear to be a lot more than they really were, and then move them around fast, before the enemy discovered he’d been duped. The Rock had known Tuthill for twenty years. Hell. Take the wraps off and he’d make a damned good checker player.

Torrey ticked off the four others he intended to retain, as he remembered them, around the table.

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