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Because a full colonel’s insignia was an eagle.
I went with Pop.
XI
THE 179TH STATION HOSPITAL WASN’T JUST ONE BUILDING. IT WAS A COMPLEX of Quonset huts and frame buildings, and it even had an underground bunker. When Olivia de Havilland had come to Adak in March, she had spent an entire day there, visiting the sick and wounded. There were a few hundred patients on any given day.
But all we needed to do was find the Cutthroat. So I waited outside the main building while Pop went in and charmed whomever he needed to charm to find out what he wanted to know. I was beginning to realize that there were some things, even in the Army, that superseded rank.
When Pop came out again, his hands in his jacket pockets, he tilted his head and started walking around back. I followed him to three Quonset huts behind the main building. He stopped at the lean-to of the first hut and looked one way and then the other as I joined him. There were a few G.I.’s trudging along nearby with no apparent purpose. Maybe, I thought, they were just trying to look busy so they wouldn’t be sent to the South Pacific.
“Do you see anyone you know?” Pop asked. “Anyone who might tell the lieutenant colonel we’re here?”
I tried to take a good look. But the usual gray light was dimming
as evening came on, making all the soldiers appear gray as well.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “But everyone’s starting to look alike to me.”
Pop gave me an annoyed glance. “You sound like the Scout,” he said. He stepped away, moved quickly to the center Quonset, and slipped into its lean-to. I followed. Then he barged into the hut without knocking.
The Cutthroat was in a small open space in the center of the hut, surrounded by shelves packed with boxes and cans. He was sitting on the edge of a cot under a single lightbulb that hung from the ceiling, leaning over a battered coffeepot on a G.I. pocket stove. The smell was not only of coffee, but of old beef stew, seaweed, and mud. My still-knotted stomach lurched.
The Cutthroat looked up, and his slick dark hair gleamed. “You guys.” He didn’t sound surprised. “Did you bring my beers?”
Pop and I stepped farther inside, and I closed the door behind us. There were two folding stools set up on our side of the pocket stove.
“I’ll bring your beers tomorrow.” Pop went to the right-hand stool and sat down. “In the meantime, I want you to know that both the private and I are doing our best to live up to this morning’s agreements. For one thing, we haven’t mentioned your presence on Mount Moffett to anyone else.”
“I believe you,” the Cutthroat said.
“But we have a problem,” Pop continued. “So we may not be able to keep that confidence much longer. There’s a lieutenant colonel who’s trying to use that Navy man’s death to make our lives hell.”
The Cutthroat looked back down at his brew. “Yeah, I know.” He rubbed his right thigh. “Goddamn, my leg is hurting tonight. I better not climb any more mountains for a while.”
I sat down on the left-hand stool. The fumes from the stuff bubbling in the coffeepot were intense.
“What do you mean, you know?” I asked. “How could you know that?”
The Cutthroat glanced up at me. “Because I wasn’t sure I trusted you guys. So I followed you. You didn’t drive fast. I was outside the back wall of the newspaper hut when you got your asses chewed. I couldn’t hear it all, but I got most of it. He’s got it in for both of you. And I recognized his voice.”
Pop’s eyebrows rose. “That was quite stealthy of you.”
The Cutthroat snorted. “I’ve snuck up on Japs in machine gun nests, and they knew I was coming. Buncha desk soldiers who don’t expect me ain’t a challenge.”
“Nevertheless,” Pop said. “I respect a man who can shadow that well. Especially if I’m the one he’s shadowing.”
The Cutthroat reached to a shelf behind him and brought down three tin cups. “You guys want coffee before you start bothering me with more questions?”
“Is that what that is?” I asked.
The Cutthroat gave me a look almost as dark as he’d given me in the ulax. “You need to work on your fucking manners.”
Pop and I both accepted cups, and the Cutthroat poured thick, black liquid into both of them. It was something else that reminded me of what Pop had coughed up that morning.
Then the Cutthroat poured a cup for himself and set the pot back down on the pocket stove. He took a swig and smiled.
“That’s good,” he said. “This stuff will help you think better.”
