Forbidden Area

Eight

STANLEY SMITH reported for duty in the Officers’ Open Mess, midnight to 0800 shift, a few minutes early. By the time Sergeant Ciocci and the others got there he had placed his three new thermos bottles in the rack, closest to the wall. He didn’t want Ciocci to see him bringing in three bottles, because it would seem unusual. But on this first shift of Sunday morning Sergeant Ciocci did notice something.

He looked at the row of containers, counting them. “Ten,” he said aloud. “That’s funny. Last time I looked there were seven. We never had more than a dozen, and we lost five in B-Nine-Nines. That makes seven we should have left, but now we’ve got ten. Stan, what d’you make of that?”

Smith laughed. “They aren’t having pups,” he said. “You know I drink a lot of coffee and so do the other fellows over in Thirty-seven and I had a couple of bottles in the barracks and brought them in tonight. Maybe somebody else, on the last Saturday shift, borrowed the other and just brought it back too.”

“Oh, sure,” said Ciocci. “But I could have sworn we never had more than twelve. I was going to requisition five new ones yesterday. Forgot.”

“We’ve got more than twelve,” Smith said. “Somebody’s always got one or two out.”

“I guess so,” said Ciocci, satisfied.

To Smith it was a bad omen. In all his operations, this was the first time he had come really close to slipping, and it made him feel jumpy, and apprehensive. Perhaps three was too many to do at once, but of course he didn’t know for sure that he’d be able to destroy three. There might be no missions at all, and even if there were missions you never could know how many officers would draw coffee. And he did have his five bombs and he would like to use them, effectively as possible, before Monday, which he felt sure would be the day. D-Day they called it in the U.S. Army, X-Day in the Russian.

Ciocci looked out through the glass in the swinging doors that separated the kitchen from the mess hall. He said, “We’ve got some early customers. Take ’em, will you, Stan?”

During the regular, daylight meal hours the mess hall operated like a cafeteria, with the officers serving themselves, except in the Sky Room. During these hours the long array of steam tables were always filled with hot food. On the midnight to 0800 shift cafeteria service was not practicable, for these were the hours in which all major equipment was scoured and cleaned. So on this shift the cooks and kitchen helpers waited on table. Smith walked into the mess hall.

The good-looking civilian girl who had been around the base for a few days, and who he believed must be an agent for Special Investigations, was seating herself at one of the tables. With her was the big one-eyed major, and Lundstrom, the colonel from Washington, a wheel in security, who never seemed to sleep. They ordered sandwiches and milk.

When they had finished eating the major paid out of his chit book and asked, “How about wrapping up a roast beef to take out? With pickle.”

“Yes, sir,” said Smith.

He cleared the dishes, went into the kitchen, made a sandwich, and brought it to the major. The girl was talking. “Jess,” she was saying, “you’ve been at it all day. Why don’t you get some rest and be fresh in the morning?”

“Can’t,” said the major. “Too much paper work. We’ve got twelve training missions scheduled. SAC says the crews have got to make up for the day they lost. Then the ferry operation starts tomorrow night.”

“All right,” the girl said. “I know there’s no use arguing. I’ll drive you both over to administration.”

And they rose and left. Twelve missions, Smith thought. Twelve missions meant forty-eight officers flying. Certainly three out of forty-eight would want coffee with their flight lunches. It would be a big day, the biggest ever. They’d all be crazy with fear and frustration by this time tomorrow. 2

When Katy dropped them at administration, Jesse Price returned to executive office while Lundstrom continued on down the hallway to the office of the commanding general. Even at this hour, ten minutes to one in the morning, there was a pleasant pulse of activity on the base. The flight crews named for the morning missions were still sleeping, and yet preparations for the missions were underway. Engines were being tested, fuel trucks drinking from enormous underground tanks, armorers drawing rockets and 20 millimeter ammunition, radar maintenance men conducting their endless examination of equipment. Reports were coming in to the executive office, orders flowing out.

At this moment, and until Buddy Conklin arrived to take over, Jesse Price was senior staff officer at Hibiscus. Under him was Captain Challon, the regular duty officer of the night, a lieutenant, two staff sergeants, and three or four airmen, one of whom shuttled between Jesse’s desk and the communications center. It had been a long time since Jesse had been in a post of command. His last command had blown up on the runway at Okinawa. He enjoyed command. He enjoyed making decisions, even when they were routine and trivial. He hoped that the bird colonel who was Buddy Conklin’s regular deputy, and exec, would tarry for a few days in New Mexico. The responsibilities of command divorced a man’s mind from problems and fears about which you could do nothing. Whether you flew a plane or a desk, the commander’s job was definite. It was right there in front of him—a course to steer, a message to send, an order to sign.

At 0140 a strange priority message came over the teletype from SAC headquarters in Omaha: “ATTENTION COMMANDING OFFICERS ALL DIVISIONS AND WINGS—THE FBI REPORTS THAT A CONTACT MAN FOR ENEMY AGENTS BLAMES SABOTAGE FOR THE LOSS OF THE B-99 BOMBERS. HE CLAIMS FOUR MEN ARE RESPONSIBLE. THE INFORMANT, NOW DECEASED, SAID HE MET ONE OF THE MEN, WHOSE NAME IS SMITH. THE FBI HOPES TO HAVE ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS BY MONDAY. MAINTAIN YOUR CONDITION OF ALERT.”

Jesse called Challon to his desk and showed him the message. “Ever see anything like that?” he asked.

Challon, a young man from Chattanooga who had just returned from duty in the Midlands with dashing RAF mustaches, read the dispatch and said, “Never in my born days.”

“How many Smiths do we have on this base?”

Challon laughed. “I don’t know, Major. I had two in my last crew, and I know a couple more right here in administration.”

The message was crazy, all right, Jess thought, and yet the FBI wouldn’t send it along unless they had a few hard facts. A man’s death was a hard fact. Jesse wondered whether “informant, now deceased,” had been killed while escaping, or had killed himself, or been murdered, or simply died of natural causes. It was intriguing as a who-dun-it, but it was no help, and there was nothing he could do about it. All he had to worry about was Hibiscus Base. Somebody else would have to take care of the rest of the world.

Hibiscus Base was running smoothly until Lundstrom poked his head into the office and said, “Major Price, will you come out here, please?”

Jess went to the door. Lundstrom said, quietly, “We may have something downstairs in Air Police. Want to come down with me?”

“Yes.” Jess turned to Challon. “Take over for a while, will you, Captain?”

As they walked down the corridor, Lundstrom said, “Remember that Lieutenant Fischer—rangy, tanned boy at the gate the day you got here? Well, he just brought in a green-and-white Chevvy, an airman, and a suitcase.”

Jess looked at his watch. It was two-thirty. In thirty minutes the pilots and airmen would be roused for pre-flight briefing and checkouts. The first mission was due off at 0700. He began to think ahead. 3

The Air Police headquarters on the ground floor of administration included an interrogation room, its windows barred, and equipped with the bare essentials of furniture, including a wire recorder, a line of chairs, a stenographer’s desk with typewriter. A small group of men were already there. They included Lieutenant Fischer, Major Click, the base security officer, a master sergeant of the Air Police with a stenographer’s pad, two airmen with carbines, and the prisoner. On the table lay the oddly shaped suitcase, open.

Jesse Price was astonished. The prisoner, sitting stiffly in a straight-backed chair, blotches on his face purplish under the bright fluorescent rods of light, looked like a high school senior who had been picked up, by accident, in a raid on a juke joint. His mouth was half open, his eyes glazed, and he was dumb with fright. Colonel Lundstrom said, “What’s this—juvenile delinquency week? What’s the story?”

Lieutenant Fischer told what there was to tell. Airman 2/c Cusack claimed that the car didn’t belong to him. He didn’t know anything about the suitcase, hadn’t seen it until he was picked up at the all-night garage in Orlando. He claimed that he had been working in the mess hall Thursday night, midnight to 0800. If that was true he had an absolute alibi, and was not the airman seen by the Marine.

“Shouldn’t be hard to check up,” said Lundstrom.

At first the sight of the five quart bottles nestled in their felt niches made no impression on Jesse, except that it looked like the luggage had been designed as part of an elaborate picnic outfit. Then their shape jostled cells of memory. The shape he had drawn on the blackboard in Buddy Conklin’s office, to illustrate the pressure bomb used by the Germans in Italy, was the shape of a thermos bottle. The pressure bombs that had blown the Cottontails’ old B-24’s out of the sky had also been cylindrical, and a bit more than a foot long. “What’s in those bottles, Lieutenant?” he asked.

“Nothing, Major. Nothing at all. I examined them all. Thought I might find heroin.”

“Lieutenant, have you checked the ownership of the car?” asked Lundstrom.

“The sergeant did, sir,” said Fischer. “It’s listed to Betty Jo Atkins, in Orlando, like this airman said. She doesn’t have a phone.”

Lundstrom turned on the boy. “What’s the name of your commanding officer?”

Cusack’s mouth opened and closed twice before any words came out. “Kuhn, sir,” he said finally. “Captain Kuhn. He’s mess officer.” 4

The orderly pattern of Captain Kuhn’s life had been badly disrupted for the entire week. Ever since Hibiscus lost its first two B-99’s, operation of the Officers’ Open Mess had become disorganized and complicated. There was a sudden influx of civilian technicians and factory men whom he was called upon to feed, and a procession of brass from Washington. His chit book system was in confusion, and he was sure his accounts would show a loss that he might have to make up out of his own pocket. Not a night passed without some panic or flap, such as providing flight lunches for generals, on five minutes’ notice. The whole business was unnerving.

Had Captain Kuhn been the brightest officer in the Air Force, he would not have been a captain, and a mess officer, at the age of forty-three. He wore battle stars from the Pacific and the Air Medal on his tunic, but his age in grade announced that somewhere in his career he had fouled up. When the telephone woke him, he looked at the clock, picked up the instrument, and, instead of saying, “Captain Kuhn,” he shouted, “who in hell’s calling at this hour?”

A cold voice replied, “This is Colonel Lundstrom, Special Investigations. Get your fat ass out of the sack and be in the guardroom in administration in two minutes.”

Before Kuhn could say so much as, “Yes, Colonel,” the phone clicked.

As Kuhn tugged on his shirt and trousers, fingers fumbling, he was sure that SI had discovered a discrepancy in his mess fund. He didn’t make administration in two minutes, but he did make it in five, dishevelled and apprehensive. To Kuhn, Lundstrom’s face looked forbidding and bleak as the glaciers at Thule, Greenland, or the tundras of Alaska, or some other Air Force Siberia,

Lundstrom looked at him. Kuhn started to apologize, but Lundstrom said, “This one of your men?” He indicated Cusack.

“Why, yes, sir. I don’t know his name but he is one of my men. On the swing shift, I think.”

“Was he on duty Friday morning between midnight and oh-eight-hundred?”

“Well, I’m not sure, sir. No, sir, I don’t think that’s his night.”

Cusack spoke. “Sir, it isn’t my regular night, but I swapped with one of the other men so I could have Saturday night off. Sergeant Ciocci said I could.”

“Ciocci’s on duty now,” said Kuhn. “He can tell us.” For the first time Kuhn noticed the open suitcase. “Say, those look like my thermos bottles.”

Until that moment, Phil Cusack had not been sure what crime the Air Police lieutenant, and later all this brass, believed he had committed. All he knew for certain was that one of the most exciting, fascinating evenings of his life had suddenly changed into incomprehensible horror and disaster. But now he was certain that Stan Smith had been stealing mess hall equipment, and specifically these thermos bottles, and that he, Cusack, was suspected. He didn’t want to get Stan in trouble, but he didn’t want to go to the federal pen, either. He said, his words directed at Lundstrom, “Sir, I didn’t steal those thermos bottles. Honest I didn’t.”

“Well, they look exactly like the thermos bottles we send out with the flight lunches,” said Captain Kuhn. “Same color, same size. Colonel, I think you’ve really got something here.”

“I doubt it,” said Lundstrom.

“If there’s any shortage in my equipment there’s been pilfering, that’s what. A man can’t watch everything.”

“Just keep quiet a minute, Captain,” said Lundstrom. He picked up one of the bottles and looked at it closely. On its base was stamped, “Made in U.S.A.” He lifted the suitcase, and inspected its workmanship. The suitcase was new, unscuffed, of top-grade leather, hand-finished, and unquestionably expensive. It was a very unusual piece of luggage. Pressed into the leather Lundstrom saw a name, Brno. “B-r-n-o,” Lundstrom spelled it out. “Ever hear of it? What’s it stand for?”

“B-r-n-o,” Jesse repeated. “Maybe it’s the initials of the manufacturer.” He tried pronouncing it. “Brno,” he said, and repeated, “Brno,” and magically the sound opened a door deep in his memory, and he knew the answer. “Brno isn’t the name of the manufacturer,” he said. “Brno is a town in Czechoslovakia. I’ve seen it—from twenty-five thousand feet. It’s on a river. We used to use it as a check point on some of our long strikes.”

Lundstrom’s fingers were gripping the edge of the suitcase as if it were a throat. “They do make nice leather goods in Czechoslovakia, don’t they?” he said, and looked at Cusack in an entirely different manner.

“Yes,” Jesse said. “Nice leather goods, but they haven’t sold any in this country in a long, long time.”

Cusack didn’t understand what these officers were talking about, but he didn’t like the way they stared at him, like he was a poison snake and smelled bad to boot. He didn’t like the way that major’s one eye bored into him. Once before, in a bar in Morgantown, he had seen two cops look at a man like that. The man had killed another cop. Cusack remembered, in detail, what the two cops had done to the man before they carried him away. “Colonel, sir,” Cusack said to Lundstrom, “if it’s thermos bottles you’re after, I can take you to a whole lot of ’em.”

Lundstrom was puzzled. This interrogation was making less and less sense. “Where?” he asked.

“Right in my room, sir. My roommate always keeps thermos bottles in his closet.” The fear that he might be accusing Stan of something he hadn’t done at all hit him. He added, “You see, he drinks a lot of coffee.”

“Remember the Cottontails,” Jesse said.

“Do you think—”

“Perfectly possible. They’re certainly the right size.”

“All right, Cusack,” said the colonel, “where are you billeted?”

“In Barracks Thirty-seven, sir.”

“Where’s your roommate now?”

“At the mess hall, sir. Working. You see, it was him who wanted me to swap shifts. Usually he’s off Friday and Saturday nights, but this week he wanted Thursday night off—that’s really the graveyard shift Friday morning—and I swapped.”

Lundstrom drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He didn’t, by any chance, have that green-and-white Chevvy Thursday night, did he?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Cusack said. “You see, it belongs to his girl. Betty Jo isn’t my girl. She’s Stan’s. It just so happens that she couldn’t find me a date tonight, and I was over at her house, and she asked me—”

“Never mind,” said Lundstrom. “Let’s go over to Thirty-seven. You come with me, Major Price. And you, Fischer. The rest of you stay here. We don’t want any mob scene.”

They drove in Lundstrom’s staff sedan to the barracks. One airman was awake. Clad in pajama bottoms, and probably suffering from insomnia, he was reading through a stack of magazines in the recreation room. He glanced up, curiously, as Cusack led them upstairs. He started to ask a question, noted the colonel’s eagles, and decided against it. With brass prowling around, it was best to keep your nose in a magazine and hope that the flap was none of your concern.

The closet of Cusack’s roommate, Colonel Lundstrom noted, was immaculate, everything there and everything in its place, as a good soldier’s should be. Dress shirts and jackets were clean and properly hung, chevrons neatly sewed. Trousers properly pressed. The shoes on the floor gleamed and were aligned straight as a squad at right dress. In a corner, behind the shoes and hidden by the shadow of the trousers, stood two thermos bottles. They should not have been there.

Lundstrom said, “There they are.”

Cusack looked and said, “Say, there were five this morning.”

Lundstrom leaned over and picked up one of the bottles. He cradled it gingerly, like a man holding a new-born baby for the first time, in both hands. It was quite heavy, about as heavy as if filled with liquid. He shook it gently close to his ear. Nobody heard any liquid slosh around.

Fischer said, “Don’t try to open it, sir. It could be booby-trapped. Let me take it over to ordnance and go into it from the rear. I had a course in stuff like this. Anti-sabotage.”

“You take this one, I’ll keep the other,” said Lundstrom.

Fischer took the bottle. He understood that the colonel was keeping the other in case something happened to this one, and to him. Fischer said, “I’ll do it as fast as I can, sir, with safety. Then I’ll come back.”

“Okay, Lieutenant,” Lundstrom said. “Don’t trip. Take it easy.”

Jesse looked at his watch: 0415. Between 0530 and six o’clock, he guessed, the flight line would send over to the mess hall for box lunches for twelve morning missions. “How long will it take?” he asked.

Fischer was already out of the door. He turned and said, “Thirty to forty-five minutes, I hope.”

After Fischer was gone Lundstrom turned to Cusack. “All right,” he said, “sit down there on the bed and tell me everything you know about your roommate—what’s his name?”

“Smith, sir. Stanley Smith.”

The name clattered into Jesse’s ears. “Colonel,” he said, “did you see that dispatch about the FBI from SAC, the one just in a while ago?”

“Yes,” Lundstrom said. “I saw it. And I’ve been thinking of it for some time. There’s his name, right there, stencilled on the edge of his blanket.”

For the first time Jesse noticed the blanket. It was, he thought, the difference in training. Thereafter, as Cusack talked, he kept silent. Cusack told everything he knew. That was apparent. It was little, but negative intelligence is also useful.

At five o’clock Lieutenant Fischer returned. There were lines of white close to his nose and under his lips, and his face was strained as if he had been running. Yet he was not breathing hard. In his hands he held a bundle wrapped in an oily length of cloth. He placed this cloth on Smith’s bed, and unfolded it. The thermos bottle was there, in pieces, but there was no glass tubing, and the insides did not look at all as a thermos should look. Among the pieces was a small bellows, a tiny box, two tiny batteries, and a solid cylinder that looked like a roll of Boston brown bread, before baking. “There it is,” said Fischer, touching the cylinder with his fingertip. “About the same explosive power as a one-fifty-five howitzer shell. Maybe a little more.”

Lundstrom said, “We’ll go back to administration. This is going to take a little planning. We’ve got to rig a little plant. I want to nail him in the act. Kuhn can give us his kitchen layout and S.O.P. Jess, you’ll handle communications and the alert, right? Do it in Conklin’s name, or mine, if you want. I’ll take the responsibility.”

“Right,” Jesse said. “Let’s get back. I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

In the staff car, Fischer had to ask Jesse a question. “Don’t you want to see us take him?”

“I certainly do,” Jesse said. “Nothing I’d like better. But I won’t have time. This isn’t the only base in the Air Force.”

“I’d forgotten,” Fischer said. He now knew the difference between a very senior staff major and a very junior lieutenant. 5

By the time Jesse Price was back at his desk he had in his mind a partial priority of calls to make and messages to send, and what subsequent action to take and recommend later. He was aware that the list would expand as the situation developed.

He first called Buddy Conklin and told him, quickly, that something big was happening, and to get down to the office right away. This was all he dared say, through a switchboard. It was not impossible that Smith had an accomplice on the base, perhaps in communications, perhaps in the staff itself. It was now 0505. It might be an hour before Lundstrom made his arrest. He could not risk a leak.

He sat at a typewriter and wrote a message, urgent operational priority, top secret, to SAC headquarters. TO COMMANDING GENERAL FROM COMMANDER HIBISCUS-HAVE DISCOVERED PRESSURE BOMBS IN THERMOS BOTTLES OF TYPE PUT ABOARD STRATEGIC BOMBERS WITH FLIGHT LUNCHES. EXPECT ARREST OF SABOTEUR SHORTLY. SUBMIT THAT ALL BASES BE NOTIFIED TO TAKE PRECAUTIONS.

Captain Challon had heard Price’s end of the conversation with General Conklin, and now Challon stood at his side, expectantly. But Jesse did not instantly act. He rolled the message out of the typewriter and reread it, wondering whether he was justified, for the sake of saving a few seconds or even minutes, in assuming Buddy Conklin’s rank and authority and sending it. He had no precedent for such a crisis. Or had he? What did the co-pilot do when a radical decision, involving the safety of the aircraft, was necessary and the pilot was back in the fuselage using the relief tube? The co-pilot made the decision. The worst thing a man could do was freeze at the controls. “Captain,” Jesse said, handing the message to Challon, “you leg this to the communications center yourself and see that it gets off immediately. And wait there until it’s acknowledged.”

Challon read the message on the way to the door, skipped once, awkwardly, and broke into a run down the corridor.

Jesse knew that wasn’t enough. You always had to allow for human frailty. A teletype operator catching a nap in the dead, unpeopled hours before the dawn; a messenger dawdling between offices, unaware of the importance of the slip of paper he carried; a duty officer away from his desk to answer a call of nature—any of these ordinary events, and others, could steal irretrievable minutes. At his hand was the Red Line phone. This was a direct line, equipped with scrambler, to the switchboard of SAC’s command post in Omaha. There was a Red Line phone in the offices of the commanding officer and his deputy on every continental base of the Strategic Air Command. It was for use only in absolute emergency. Jesse picked up this phone. The SAC operator in Omaha, sounding wide awake, put him through without question to the field at Lake Charles, and then to Corpus Christi. He was committed now. His hands were firm on the controls.

He had been in time. The morning missions from Lake Charles were already rolling on the runways. They would be recalled before or immediately after takeoff. In Texas, the morning missions were not scheduled for another hour.

Jesse then flashed the Red Line operator and asked for the SAC duty officer. He was told that his teletype message had been received and was already being relayed to all bases, overseas as well as on the continent. The SAC duty officer, a major like himself, but obviously a bit rattled, wondered whether he should get the SAC commanding general, a man of explosive temper, out of bed.

“I certainly would,” Jesse advised him, “and right now.”

“I guess I’ll have to,” the other man said, and hung up. He sounded unhappy.

At this moment the light on the intercom flashed and a voice said: “Tower to officer commanding.”

“Major Price,” Jesse said. “Go ahead.”

“Sir, we’ve got a request from a private plane to make an emergency landing.”

“Oh, goddamn!” Jesse said.

It would have to happen now. Unauthorized landings of any kind were forbidden on SAC bases. When it happened, passengers and crew were welcomed by the muzzles of machine guns. It was an axiom of airline pilots that it was better to ditch in the sea than crash land on a SAC runway. Hyperbole, perhaps, but it conveyed the general idea. At any other moment, the security detail on the line knew how to handle a stray aircraft, but Jesse realized that Colonel Lundstrom had other plans for his Air Police on this morning. Jesse flicked the key on the intercom and shouted, “Tell him to go away!”

“I did!” said Tower. “I told him to go on to Tampa or Orlando Municipal. He said he couldn’t. He hasn’t got the altitude.”

“Who’s he?”

“He’s a dual-engined Beech. Some oil company job. Pilot, co-pilot, and four big executives. Been down on the Keys, prospecting. For sailfish, I guess. He’s lost one engine and he’s only got eight hundred feet and he says he’s got to land. He’s coming in over the south end of Runway Three now and he says he wants to make it on this pass.”

Whatever happened, Jesse knew he wasn’t going to let the cripple foul up Lundstrom’s arrangements. There wasn’t going to be any alert, and jeeps racing out, and sirens screaming. He wasn’t going to kill the six men in that cripple but he wasn’t going to make it easy for them either. Later they could bitch to the Secretary of Air, but now he was just going to put them on ice. “Tell them they have permission to land, Tower. Then they’re to brake and get off the runway. They aren’t to approach the line, or the hangars. Nobody’s to leave the plane. Anybody steps out of that aircraft, he’s dead.”

Jesse closed the key and opened another, to the security shack on the flight line. A Lieutenant Marble identified himself. “This is Major Price, acting exec,” Jesse said. “There’s a Beech with an engine out coming in on Runway Three. I’ve cleared it for emergency landing. I want you to get two men—just two—out there. People in the Beech have orders to clear the runway and not get out of the plane. I don’t want that plane near the hangars or the line. They’re supposed to have a crew of two and four passengers. Have your two men hold them out on the lot until you hear from me.”

Lieutenant Marble said, “Just two men? That’s dangerous, sir.”

“You heard me.”

“I’d like to have that order in writing.”

“You’ll get it. Now I don’t want any big flap, any alert. I just want two of your men to get that Beech out of my hair.”

“It may be one of those goddamn Special Investigations penetration stunts. I’ll get reamed if they jump my men.”

“You won’t get reamed. I will. Get going.”

Jesse looked at the clock: 0516. That damn’ cripple had cost him at least three minutes. Where was Conklin? What was holding him up? Had this been an ordinary morning, the Beech coming in through the darkness would have absorbed all his thought. He brushed it aside, now, as probably of no importance. Just so, when making your final run on the target, it was possible to forget flak batteries the instant you were past them.

He concentrated on his next move. It was best not to call Operations, or make any changes in scheduled missions. That would come later, but meanwhile he must do nothing to disturb normal routine, lest the man named Smith become frightened or suspicious. Also, Lundstrom would be acting on the assumption that preparations for the morning missions would proceed as scheduled, just as he would assume the flight line’s Air Police would be available.

Now Jesse faced a problem of logistics. He had twelve B-99’s out on the line, their wings packed with fuel, every engine and instrument tested for takeoff, the crews no doubt aboard, and engaged in pre-flight checks. Yet they were as harmless, except for defensive armament, as New York—Miami transports. Within an hour—perhaps in less time—he would know something, one way or another. He looked at the clock again: 0518. Where in hell was Buddy Conklin? How long would it take to bomb up? Two hours, perhaps, and every minute wasted now was an extra minute the twelve 99s would be earthbound. Who had the power to bring out the bombs? Maybe he did. He would find out.

He roused from sleep the elderly colonel in charge of the special weapons magazine. The magazine was simply a concrete bunker, air-conditioned and with internal temperature maintained at a constant level, buried in the ground under a bright green carpet of rye grass behind the ordnance building. Here the bombs slept. In a space no larger than a three-car garage was enough primordial power to sink Florida.

Jesse identified himself and said, “I am speaking for General Conklin. Colonel, this is a war alert. Can you break out twelve supers?” The supers at Hibiscus had a plutonium trigger, hydrogen core, and natural uranium casing. The trigger alone was a bomb with five times the power of that first one, the one that levelled Hiroshima. The yield of the supers at Hibiscus was fifteen megatons, about the same as the one tested in the Pacific in 1954. Blast and heat would destroy everything within fifteen miles of ground zero. Used above land, the supers would spread lethal radioactivity over an area of at least seven thousand square miles. Used on a seaport, the effect might be considerably greater, because salt water would be converted into radiosodium and radiochloride, and this deadly mist would shroud an area larger, but not exactly calculated. These were considered nominal supers.

The colonel said, “I can break out the supers. How soon do you plan to bomb up?” He asked the question as casually as if he had been invited to cocktails, and wished to know the hour.

“Can you have them ready in an hour?”

“They’re ready now. But my crew is sleeping. I think I can make it in an hour, all right. By the way, is this really it?”

“It is either it, or close to it. We’ll know soon.” Jesse put down the phone and told Captain Challon, “Call General Conklin’s house. See if he’s on the way.”

He was adjusting his mind to his next move when the colonel in charge of special weapons called back. The colonel said, “Just checking. Just wanted to be sure it wasn’t a hoax. I’ll have the supers on the flight line in an hour. Loaded on dollies. On the hard stands.”

“Thanks, Colonel,” Jesse said. When the chips were down, all of SAC could move in a hurry. It was always like that. Even an old colonel could behave like he had a rocket in his tail. What next? Men. For maximum effort, Hibiscus had not enough crews. Many pilots had been dispatched to New Mexico and Arizona to bring in the second-line aircraft. He was reasonably certain, now, that the older planes would not be needed. The B-99 was proved a sound aircraft. The missing aircrews would be needed, and soon. He sent messages to the reserve bases ordering the Hibiscus men home at once.

Challon said, “The general’s wife said he left home at least ten minutes ago.”

So something must be wrong with Buddy. Maybe Buddy Conklin had moved too fast. Maybe Buddy was on the way to the base hospital. Jesse decided not to call the car pool, or Air Police. Everything must proceed as usual. No rumors of unusual activity must reach the mess hall. He started replanning the morning mission. The crews, already briefed for a milk run to southern California and back, would have to change their thinking in a hurry. Whatever happened, he was sure they would be flying east, not west. The moment for which they had been trained and conditioned for years—for some, ever since graduation from high school or college—was close. For the crewmen, the change would not come as too radical a shock. A day rarely passed during which they were not reminded that they could expect it that day, or the next. It would simply mean a shift of map cases, a new flight plan, reconsideration of load, course, and distance, and a real bomb instead of a concrete dummy. Of course it would also mean anticipation of sudden death, but for this they had been conditioned also, as deeply as men could be.

For their wives it would be different. If their wives had awakened when their men woke, they had already kissed them goodbye, not without fear, because of the previous B-99 disasters, but still fairly confident that their men would be home for a late dinner. Sometime later in the day, when the news broke, the wives would know that their men might never come home at all.

Now what? He messaged Limestone, Maine, asking them to prepare to load tankers for possible rendezvous with 99’s from Hibiscus. The people at Limestone would have seen the first message from SAC, and very likely would soon get orders from SAC, but he wanted to be certain that the Hibiscus bombers, which had a chance to be first away from the continent, would not lack fuel if it was decided to send them on to enemy targets. At least Limestone would know what was being planned, although they would have to get the execute signal from higher headquarters later.

He looked up at the clock: 0522. He swung in his chair to call Challon, and Buddy Conklin came into the office, hatless, hair uncombed, no insignia of rank on his open shirt, dripping sweat and with his hands and face smudged with grease. “The damn’ car!” he said. “Sorry it took me so long. Choked gas line. That damn’ car is a lemon.”

Jesse told him what had happened, and what he had done thus far, realizing as he spoke how much authority he had assumed, for an acting executive officer. Even with Lundstrom’s backing, he wondered whether he had gone overboard.

Conklin said, “Good going, Jess. As soon as we hear from the mess hall I want this base out of bed. Condition One alert. Have you told the A-2 to break out the assigned target maps?”

“Damn it, no,” Jesse said. “I forgot.”

“That’s okay. I’ll handle it. We’ll consider the twelve planes of today’s mission as our first striking group. I want the whole Five-Nineteenth Wing to go as a second wave by ten o’clock.” He turned to Challon. “Get my staff in here. No, don’t use those phones. Those are going to be busy.” 6

Except for Ciocci’s inquiry about the reappearing thermos bottles, for Smith the first five hours of his shift had been without event. He was thankful that only one more night of strain lay ahead, assuming he was able to get rid of his three bombs this morning. He was glad that it would soon be over, and he began to wonder about plans for the future. If something big happened Monday, as he expected, he must be careful to avoid the chaos. He wondered, without emotion, what would happen to Betty Jo. He would not see her again unless he discovered he needed the car. At five o’clock he went into the kitchen, ran bread through the slicers, and began making up sandwiches for flight lunches.

Ciocci, taking one of the new men at gin rummy across the meat block, said, “Say, Stan, you’re pretty ambitious, ain’t you? What d’you think we’re going to do? Feed the whole Air Force?”

Smith said, “I heard a couple of officers talking. Twelve missions set up for this morning.”

“Twelve? No fooling. I’ll be with you in a minute.” Ciocci turned back to his hand. A few minutes later the phone rang, and he answered it. It was the flight line. Twelve missions, just like Smith said. The detail from the flight line would be over to pick up the lunches at about six. Ciocci quit the gin rummy game and began preparing the cardboard cartons.

At six o’clock the detail had not yet shown up, but at that time Colonel Lundstrom and Major Glick came into the mess hall, seated themselves at the table closest to the kitchen, and asked for scrambled eggs. Ciocci assigned a man to serve them.

At 0603 two jeeps from wing pulled up at the kitchen door, and the lieutenant and two sergeants from the flight line came in for the flight lunches. On this morning there was another lieutenant, dark and stringy, with them. Forty-eight flight lunches would make quite a load, and in Smith’s mind this accounted for the extra jeep and extra lieutenant.

As always, the lieutenant counted the flight lunches and paid for them with the chits collected from the offices of the aircrews. Then he said, “I’m not sure I counted right. You sure there are forty-eight?”

Ciocci began to count the boxes again, and Smith, at his side, checked the count. Neither noticed Colonel Lundstrom and Major Glick peering through the glass in the door to the mess hall.

“I make it forty-eight, right,” said Ciocci.

“Forty-eight,” said Smith.

The lieutenant looked at his list. “Now about coffee,” he said. “Three coffees.” Ciocci noted the the lieutenant’s hands were trembling, as if with morning jitters after a big night.

Smith reached up and selected three bottles from the thermos shelf. He picked the three closest to the wall. “Here you are, sir,” he said. “Good and hot.”

At this point there was a slight variation in the detail’s usual behavior. The second lieutenant, the strange one, stepped forward and accepted the thermos bottles. Two of them he handed to the security officer from wing. The third one he held close to his ear and shook gently, as if to judge its fullness. Then he nodded, as if confirming an unspoken remark, and looked over their heads towards the door. Ciocci turned his head in time to see the colonel from Washington, and Major Glick, charge through the door towards him.

Not until the strange lieutenant waggled the thermos close to his ear did Smith have any intimation of anything unusual, and even this gesture did not cause comprehensive alarm. But when the lieutenant nodded to someone behind Smith’s back, he sensed a dangerous situation, although his mind could not instantly adjust itself to knowledge that he was trapped. Just before he landed from the submarine, in June of the previous year, the high-ranking MVD official had called him and the three others into the captain’s cabin. He had presented each of them with metal-cased capsules, long as the tip of his little finger. “In case you are taken, and interrogation and torture is probable,” the MVD man had told them, “this is an easy and quick and painless way out of it.”

Now he was in deep trouble, but long ago Smith had flushed the capsule down a toilet. To keep it, he had felt, would be an inner admission of the possibility of failure. Besides, if it came to the touch, he had a better and quicker way of dying—and carrying his enemies with him. There were two fuses in the thermos. One could be activated only by air pressure, but the second activated instantly if the top was unscrewed. The second fuse was an obvious precaution. Without it, an airman might unscrew the top before necessary altitude was reached, and find the bottle contained no coffee. With the second fuse, the thermos was not only a bomb, but an ingenious booby trap. Smith reached out his hand and said, casually, “Say, maybe I gave you the wrong bottle. Let’s see it, Lieutenant.”

The lieutenant made no move.

Fingers hard and painful as metal tongs clamped on Smith’s arm and he was spun around to face a wide-shouldered colonel, the one who never slept, with a wild look in his eyes. Smith recognized the look of killing, having seen it several times before. Smith was fascinated by this look, and he never saw the blow coming. His next conscious realization was that he was under the wooden worktable, the left side of his face was numb, and that he was scrambling and clawing to get up. A slap on the ear knocked him to his hands and knees again and set his head to ringing dizzily. He looked around at a fence of braced legs and poised feet. Slowly, certain that a shoe would crash into his face, bracing himself for the blow, he crawled out from under the table.

He heard the colonel say, “All right, stand up, you son of a bitch.”

Smith stood up, shielding his face with his arms, expecting to be hit again. Nobody touched him. Incongruously, his thoughts returned again to the submarine, and the last thing Karl Schiller, the German navigator, had told him. He had asked Schiller about the eight Germans who during the Fatherland War were landed on the same beach, and Schiller had replied, cheerful, gruesome, and truthful, “They were all caught and executed.” It had been a lousy thing to say.

He saw that they were not going to hit him, and he lowered his arms. They simply stood in a circle, quiet and deadly as a noose, and stared at him as if he were not human. He wanted to tell them he was no disgusting traitor. He was an officer of the Red Army, performing his assigned duties. He decided to keep still, at least for the time being. He would not open his mouth. The activities and lives of three others depended upon his silence. Being soft and knowing nothing of total war, the Americans would not torture him. And he might yet escape. Monday was coming. Something big was bound to happen.

The colonel nodded to the tall lieutenant. “Well take this man to the guardroom in administration. He doesn’t believe it, but he’s going to sing like a bird.”

Smith knew what this meant, in American slang. He was determined not to sing, not a note. 7

Buddy Conklin was in his own office, and Jesse was with him, when Lundstrom called from the mess hall. “General,” Lundstrom said, “we nailed him. In the act. With three more gadgets. Know what I’m talking about? Price has filled you in, hasn’t he?”

“Sure. Congratulations.”

“He’ll fry. He’ll fry but he won’t talk. Not yet, anyway. Won’t even answer to his name. I’m bringing him over to the guardroom. I’m going to work on him. Any news from the other bases?”

“Nothing yet. But there’ll be hell in the kitchens,” Conklin said. “Bring that bastard over. When I have time, I want to take a good look at him.”

Conklin put down the phone and Jesse said, “I guess that’s the whistle for the kickoff, isn’t it?”

“That’s it. I’m going to call Operations and order the first wave to start bombing up. They ought to be off by oh-eight-hundred. What about the Five-Nineteenth Wing?”

“They’ll be ready by ten,” Jesse said. “They’ve already started pre-flight briefing.”

For the first time in many days Conklin smiled. Uncertainty and fear had been routed. Now everyone knew what to do. “The first wave will go with target maps but without orders,” he said. “They keep on heading north until they reach Gander. If they don’t get orders sooner they’ll get them there, I hope. Anyway, a dispatch came in from Limestone saying they have authority to give us in-flight refuelling, anywhere along the route. I’m going to ask Limestone to have their tankers rendezvous with our Nine-Nines at Gander, so if any of our planes malfunction in fuelling they’ll have a place to light. If nothing has happened by the time they get to Gander I’ll send them on to Thule, and they can top off from tankers there. Whatever happens we’ll have a striking force, loaded, in the air, and in the north. That’s as good a break as anybody could ask, starting cold like this.”

Conklin called a sergeant and dictated a message to SAC. The saboteur at Hibiscus, Airman 2/c Stanley Smith, had been caught with three pressure bombs in his possession. By 1000, one whole wing plus twelve planes, armed with thermonuclear weapons and briefed for targets long ago assigned, would be in the air.

Now SAC’s commander was on the job. Almost at once his reply dropped on Conklin’s desk. “YOUR ACTION AFFIRMED. CONGRATULATIONS.”

At 0757 Jess was watching from Buddy Conklin’s double picture windows as the first of the twelve B-99’s, originally scheduled for the milk run to California, took off. The muted thunder of their engines, and the grace of their lifting wings, set his heart to pounding. War could be exciting, and even beautiful, if you could black out the end result. This would be no milk run. If they were sent on all the way—and Jesse was quite certain they would go all the way—they would encounter fighters, flak batteries, a whole family of inhuman guided missiles to be repulsed only by inhuman means, and perhaps weapons of which they had heard nothing and against which they could present no defense. But there was also a chance that they would all get through. If these twelve all got through, they alone would likely be enough. They would turn a sizable fraction of earth into a segment of hell. There was no past war in history that they alone could not have decided in an hour.

Jesse was still at work an hour later, and the B-99’s of the 519th Wing were being towed to the runways, one by one, when another message came in from SAC. An airman named Johnson had been caught with pressure bombs in his possession at Lake Charles, had crushed a metal vial filled with cyanide between his teeth, and had died before he could be questioned. At Corpus Christi another, Masters, had been taken. Masters had tried to kill himself in the same manner, but his guards had prevented it. Why Masters’ guards were alert was not explained. Masters was now engaged in making a confession. He had already implicated a fourth man, whose name he gave as Gregg Palmer. All bases were urged to be on the lookout for Palmer, to comb their rosters and their kitchens. All four men, according to Masters’ confession, were officers of the Red Army or Air Force.

As Jesse read this message, his eye felt jumpy. He could not focus it properly on the yellow teletype paper. His eye wouldn’t steady, and neither would his mind. He could not force himself to concentrate. When you possessed one eye only, it could get badly overworked. It was likely to rebel, and since it was the only eye you had, it was necessary to coddle it. He laid his head in the crook of his arm to relax for a moment. Four men, he thought. Four men fitted that warning from the FBI.

It could have been a minute later, or an hour, that he realized someone was shaking his shoulder. Conklin’s voice said, “Come on, Jess, wake up.”

Price lifted his head and opened his bloodshot eye.

“What about that private plane sitting out on the field?” Conklin asked. “Security wants to know when the passengers can get out. Security says they’re fuming. Any reason to keep ’em out there, Jess?”

“No. No reason at all,” Jesse said. He shook his head to make his brain come to life, as you shake a stopped watch. “I’m sorry. Forgot all about them.”

“I guess you’ve had it for a while,” Conklin said. “I’ll take care of them. You get some rest because I’m going to need you later. My driver will take you to the BOQ.”

“Okay,” Jesse said. “A little nap and a shower and I’ll be fresh.” He walked down to the first floor of administration and noticed a knot of airmen in front of the Air Police guardroom. The prisoner would be in there. He had to take a look at the man. He wasn’t too tired for that.

Jesse pushed his way through the group of curious airmen, a guard came to attention and saluted, and he walked inside. The man was under the floodlight in the interrogation room, seated. He was being questioned by Lundstrom and Fischer. Jesse recognized the blond, handsome, gray-eyed airman who several times had served him since he had been on the base. This was Smith. Except for a purpling eye, the man was unmarked.

Excessive fatigue can act as a drug. It can relieve a man of his senses. Perhaps it was the fatigue, or perhaps he thought again of Dinky, his friend whom this man had murdered. Jesse interrupted the interrogation by attempting to strangle Smith. Later, he could remember the whole episode only vaguely. He could not remember saying anything, or doing anything except that he walked into the circle of light and grasped Smith’s throat in his hands.

Lundstrom and Fischer pulled him off, with difficulty. They held Jesse against the whitewashed wall until they felt him relax, and he said, “Okay, okay. Lost my head.”

“I’d like to feed him to you, Jess,” Lundstrom said, releasing his arms, “but right now he’s mine.”

“Talk yet?” Jesse asked.

“Won’t even tell us his name.” Lundstrom turned on the prisoner. “Will you, Mr. Smith?”

Smith looked up, woodenly, one hand over his throat. His windpipe was bruised, and he was gasping. Momentarily, he had felt fear. It would be a shame to die now, Smith thought, almost on the eve of the attack certain to come. If he could only hold them off until Monday, everything might change. It would be smart, now, to feign serious injury. That crazy one-eyed major had done him a favor. Still holding to his throat, Smith pitched face down on the floor.

Lieutenant Fischer bent down and rolled him over on his back. “Hadn’t I better get a medic, sir?” Fischer asked.

“Yes,” said Colonel Lundstrom. “Right away.” He looked down at Smith’s face and smiled. He reached over, picked Smith up by the armpits, and lifted him back into the chair. “You’re going to get medical attention, all right, Mr. Smith, but it won’t be exactly what you expect.”

Smith closed his eyes and groaned and swayed. He didn’t like the sound of the colonel’s voice.

“You fellows don’t think that you invented confessions, do you?” the colonel went on. “I understand that sometimes, in Russia, it takes a week to ten days to get a confession out of a man. But we’re going to have a confession out of you about forty-five minutes after the doctor gets here. Oh, we could follow the Russian method. We could strip you naked and slap you around and prevent you from sleeping, but we haven’t got time for that. Ever hear of sodium pentathol, Mr. Smith?”

Somewhere, Smith knew, he had heard of sodium pentathol, but he didn’t exactly remember what it was. He would have to put on a good act, when the doctor arrived. He coughed, and tried to fall from the chair again, but the colonel’s hand forced him back.

“Sodium pentathol is also called truth serum, Mr. Smith,” Lundstrom said. “It’ll make you feel wonderful. You’ll soar like a bird, and you’ll sing like one.”

Smith opened his eyes and looked up, to search the colonel’s face and see whether he was serious. This was wholly unfair, something worse than torture. The thought of being unable to control his tongue appalled him. So long as he could control his tongue he had a chance of living until Monday. He could stretch out an interrogation. He could lead this inhuman colonel into a hundred rhetorical cul-de-sacs. But he knew what would happen under an injection of truth serum. He would tell everything, quickly. Once he had told everything, somebody might decide to kill him, quickly. Smith spoke for the first time. “It is contrary to the laws of war to do anything like that. I am an officer of the Red Army.”

They were silent.

“I demand to be treated as an officer!”

“Well, no,” Lundstrom said. “You’re either a traitor, or a spy, maybe both. You’re in the wrong uniform, buster, to be treated as a Red officer.”

A young flight surgeon came into the interrogation room. “I hear you’ve got a saboteur, and he had an accident,” he said, smiling.

“Yes,” Lundstrom said, “his neck got caught in Major Price’s hands. He needs about seven and a half grains of sodium pentathol, and damn’ fast. He wants to talk, but we haven’t got time for lies or political lectures. Stick him, Doctor!”

Smith watched the flight surgeon bring a packet of hypodermic needles out of his bag. He felt dejected. Perhaps he was wrong about the Americans. Perhaps they knew more about warfare than a man would realize. Either that, or they were so lucky you could think they were smart. His sleeve was being rolled up, and he gritted his teeth as the needle thudded into his arm, not gently.

Jesse left them, reeling. He was too exhausted to call Katy. 8

Had it not been for one man, or rather one man’s confidence in another man, the course of events and even the final result might have been different. The one man was Admiral Kitteredge, aboard the Coral Sea. When the admiral was ordered to load helicopters and sub-killing dive bombers instead of conventional jet bombers and fighters, and steam north, the admiral sensed a deeper disquiet in the Navy Department than the message text conveyed. To convert a powerful attack carrier, capable of strategic action against the enemy in distant waters, into an anti-submarine vessel was a drastic move. Kitteredge knew that a regular hunter-killer task force was just around the horn of the Florida Keys. What was the big rush? While the new loading was going on, the admiral went ashore to confer with Captain Clyde, the Mayport facilities commander. He especially wanted Clyde’s opinion of the queer story told by a Marine of the landing a few miles down the coast. The admiral knew Clyde, who had served with him in battleships, as a level-headed, sagacious man. The admiral was aware that except for one slip, on the day of Pearl Harbor, Clyde might have been an admiral also.

Captain Clyde was convinced that the Marine was telling the truth. It was no hoax, he insisted. So the admiral also was convinced. They discussed other matters, going all the way back to the Swedish report of submarines clearing the Skaggerak. Assuming that this force was headed his way, and also assuming that the radar sighting of what could have been a flotilla of subs had been accurate, and the real thing, the admiral visualized where those submarines would be on the curve of the Atlantic at the moment. Then he returned to his ship and wordlashed his force into a loading frenzy. As a result, Coral Sea and escorting destroyers were able to sortie from Mayport three hours ahead of the Navy Department’s optimum hour for sailing. Once in the open ocean, Kitteredge had the Coral Sea’s captain work up his ship to emergency speed, a most uneconomical effort not called for in his orders.

At first light on that Sunday, at a point three hundred miles off the Capes, he launched his helicopters. Thereafter the carrier and its destroyers and helicopters were able to probe an enormous swathe of ocean, more than a hundred miles wide, its length limited only by the ships’ speed.

The helicopters, in a scouting line stretching fifty miles on each flank of the carrier, behaved like bees darting from flower to white-capped flower, seeking nectar. Hovering close to the swells, they lowered a long proboscus of sound gear into the sea, listened for a few seconds for the stealthy beat of propellers beneath, and flew on to another sector.

Two hours after dawn one of the helicopters heard a new sound, something that should not have been there at all, the unmistakable murmur and hum of a submarine’s props whirling under electric or atomic power, deep, very deep, and quite fast. This helicopter called Coral Sea, and the carrier launched four more of what the Navy calls eggbeaters or whirlybirds, and the less romantic Army calls choppers. Soon these, too, buzzed the area, dipping, listening, triangulating, obtaining an exact fix, exact course, exact speed.

With the contact confirmed and pinpointed, the admiral assigned one destroyer and two dive bombers to the kill, and did not tarry. Without being informed by Washington, he was aware that if this was an all-out attack, the largest enemy concentration would lie still to the north, closer to the industrial heart of the country. He was also aware that if such a concentration existed, he had caught it off base, a day and a night’s run from the coast. But he must be quick. With darkness, his most efficient hours for killing would end.

At almost the same time that Coral Sea radioed news of its first contact to Washington, the accounts of what had happened at Hibiscus, Lake Charles, and Corpus Christi exploded in the Pentagon. The Navy was convinced. The plan for defense against submarine attack, involving all ships and naval planes and blimps on both coasts, went into effect. The search for B-99 survivors was abruptly dropped. Now it was proven that the bombers had been blown up, further search for survivors seemed hopeless. Besides, in wartime, casualties can be accepted, and this was already regarded as war. 9

On Sunday morning it was Katharine Hume’s custom to sleep late and breakfast on waffles, and it was the same in the Gresham household, and this Sunday was no different. Still in pajamas, she joined Margaret Gresham in the kitchen at ten o’clock. “Red’s not here,” Margaret said. “I don’t know what happened to him. He wasn’t due to fly today. If there was an alert, or anything, they’d call him, and I didn’t hear the phone ring.”

“I did,” Katy said. “At least I think I did. I didn’t get up because I only heard it ring once.”

“Red must have answered,” Margaret said. She looked around the kitchen. There were no dirty dishes beside the sink, or crumbs on the table. She lifted the silvered percolator. It was cold, and empty. “He didn’t eat any breakfast. Maybe he had an early golf date and ate at the O Club.”

Katy knew that Margaret was expressing a hope rather than a belief, and she was glad Jess was no longer a pilot. It must be hell to wake up in the morning and not know whether your husband was playing golf, five minutes drive away, or a thousand miles out over the Atlantic, fifty thousand feet up, and sitting thirty feet from an H-bomb. “Maybe,” she said, but Margaret wasn’t listening. Her ears were tuned to something else.

The cluster of houses for married officers, alike as the aircraft they flew except for roof colors and shrubbery, was three miles from the flight line, and outside the glass-shattering takeoff zone, and yet the sound of air activity was always with them. After a time the ear grew calloused to the distant din of multijets, and sealed off the sound entirely, just as the city dweller’s ear ignores traffic noises, and the farmer never hears his own chickens. Now, Katy was aware of a change in the sound from the runways, a change in intensity, in volume, in urgency. Katy didn’t know what it meant, but Margaret did.

“A whole wing is going off,” Margaret said. “I guess I won’t see Red today.” She plugged in the waffle iron and began to mix batter. “You know what they do to us sometimes? They scramble the whole wing, or even the whole division, and the men don’t know whether it’s the real thing or not until they’re up in the air.” She looked at Katy. “You don’t think this could be the real thing, do you?”

“I don’t know,” Katy said, and thought of her brother, Clint, who would be with Red Gresham. She had no doubt, now, that there had been an alert, but she could not say this to Margaret, without also giving the reasons for her belief.

The radio in the kitchen was on, giving out Sunday music, more subdued than weekday music. The bright Florida sun stained the table, and outside the window poinsettias nodded their gaudy heads against the screen, as always at Christmas. The radio, like the thrum of the jets, ordinarily was an unobtrusive background. You were never aware of it until it changed its pattern. The music faded and the pattern changed. An announcer’s voice uttered that inevitable preamble to news of disaster, “We interrupt this program…”

They stood perfectly still, Margaret with a pitcher in one hand, spilling a trickle of batter on the smoking griddle.

“…to bring you a news flash from Washington. General Thomas Keatton, Chief-of-Staff of the Air Force, has just announced that the mysterious loss of nine B-99 bombers of the Strategic Air Command has been solved. According to General Keatton, all were destroyed by acts of sabotage committed by officers of the Red Army and Air Force. Three saboteurs have been captured. One of these has killed himself. Two others are now making a full confession. We will bring you further details as soon as they are received.”

Margaret Gresham turned off the electric waffle iron and set down the pitcher. There was no doubt at all, now, of the whereabouts of her husband. “Please excuse me, Katy,” she said. “I don’t feel hungry.”

“Neither do I,” Katharine said. Having a brother out there was bad, too.