The Green Eagle Score

7

This was the bad moment, walking up the blacktop toward the gate. Devers went first, a little ahead of Parker and Fusco. They were all in their normal civilian clothing, which Devers had told them would cause no comment. “Most guys are in civvies any time they’re off duty,” he’d said. He’d also explained that because the base was full of technical schools, which ran on shifts, it wasn’t unusual to see men off-duty at any time of the day or night.

They were coming to the main gate rather than the one nearer the finance office because here the traffic was heaviest and they were the least likely to get any kind of close study. Parker in particular had an ID card with a picture far from his own appearance, though the relationship between Fusco’s face and that on his card was also slight. “They won’t look,” Devers had said. “You just open your wallet and wave it at them as you go by.” He’d demonstrated, holding his wallet open at arm’s length.

Parker had thought they would go in Devers’ car, but the boy had been against it. “We’ll be noticed,” he said. “There’s a bus out from town, it’s always full of guys. We take that, get off with them, everybody goes through the gate in a bunch.” So they’d driven downtown, parked the Pontiac a block away, and boarded the civilian-operated bus out to the air base. It was about half-full, and as Devers had said, most of the passengers were in civilian clothes.

Now they’d reached the base. The three of them were in the middle of the straggling group of twenty-five or so walking up to the gate in the sunlight. The two APs stayed inside heir shack, looking through the window at the IDs held up for their inspection, nodding, their expressions bored.

You could only go by the shack in single file. Devers went first, Fusco second, Parker third. Parker noticed that most of the men ahead of him barely glanced at the APs on their way by, so he did the same. Their bored expressions didn’t change as they looked at his card, and a second later he was inside, putting his wallet away.

“We’ll take the bus,” Devers said. “This is a damn big base, the office is way to hell and gone over there.”

“There’s a special bus just for inside the base?”

“Sure. Run by the Air Force. Actually there’s three routes, but they all come by here. We want a number one.”

“They run all night?”

“Yeah.” Devers looked at him. “You thinking of something?”

“I’m just asking questions,” Parker told him.

It was true. He didn’t know whether a bus would work into this heist any more than he’d known whether or not they’d use a plane when Fusco had asked him about it back in San Juan. He wanted to know about transport, vehicles everything that moved and traveled and had reasonable justification for being on this base. What he could use and what not he’d find out later on.

The first bus that came they didn’t want, but most of the others waiting with them did. As they all climbed aboard, Devers said, “That’s the bus goes to the transient barracks area. Those are all our scholars.”

“What kind of schools?”

Devers shrugged. “Everything. Everything from Personnel Technician to A & E mechanic.” “Translate both of those.”

“Okay,” Devers said, grinning. “A Personnel Technician is a clerk typist in the orderly room. A & E is aircraft and engine. A greasemonkey.”

“What about military police? Do they have a school here?”

Devers looked surprised, and said, “Be damned! That’s one they missed.”

”Good.”

Fusco said, “Here comes our bus.”

The bus was dark blue and rickety, with the engine in front, like a truck. The driver was wearing fatigues, with Airman First Class stripes on his sleeve. There were only about ten people in the bus, scattered here and there. Parker sat by a window on the right side, about halfway along. Devers sat beside him and Fusco slid into the next seat back and leaned forward to listen.

Devers gave them a running commentary as they went along, pointing out the PX, the mess hall, the NCO club, building after building. They were all similar, as though one set of plans had been used for every structure with only very slight alterations made for the different requirements of each. Even the base theater, lacking a marquee, had only a row of glass doors across the front to distinguish it from all the other buildings. They were uniformly stucco, painted grayish green, surrounded by neat narrow strips of grass and neat pale squares of concrete sidewalk.

The bus started and stopped, started and stopped. People got on and off, about half in uniform, most of the uniforms the casual workwear of fatigues. Only two officers rode the bus during the time Parker was on it, and both of them seemed to feel out of place.

There was a great deal of coming and going out there, people walking along the sidewalks, going in and out of the buildings, riding by in cars and trucks. Down the cross-streets where the barracks were, lines of cars were angle-parked, other cars moved slowly in the sunlight.

Parker said, “Is there always this much activity?”

“Sure,” Devers said. “See, the schools run on three shifts. Six in the morning till noon is A shift. Noon to six, B shift. And six to midnight, C shift. So there’s always two-thirds of the students off-duty. And a lot of the permanent party works shifts, too, so some of them are off-duty now.”

The finance office was a hell of a distance from the main gate; Parker counted sixteen blocks, with the bus only having made one right and one left turn.

When Devers said, his voice suddenly just a bit more tense, “That’s it there,” Parker told him: “We’ll wait two blocks, and walk back.”

“Good.”

They got off the bus two stops later. No one else got off with them, and after the bus pulled away Parker said to Devers, “You better stay here. We don’t want your friends inside to look out a window and see you with two guys they don’t know.”

“I was thinking about that,” Devers said. “You’re right. So when you go by, the finance offices are on the second floor. The first floor is the Red Cross on the left and the re-enlistment office on the right. Major Creighton’s office is way to the left upstairs, that’s where the safe is.”

“All right. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

It was a bright day but cool. It was like walking along the sidewalk in some clean little town, except for the uniforms on so many of the passersby. About a quarter of them were women, some in WAF uniform and some in civilian clothing.

The finance office was in a building like all the rest; two-storey, stucco, rectangular, A-roof, gray-green, casement windows, off-white woodwork. Signs were in the windows flanking the main entrance, which was in the middle of one of the long walls. The signs on the left were dominated by red crosses, those on the right by the word bonus. The last two second-storey windows on the left were covered by wire mesh and vertical bars.

Parker and Fusco turned the corner, walked around the building, and saw nothing more except that the second-storey windows all across the left side were also screened with mesh and bars. They walked back to Devers, and Parker said, “Does the finance office work on shifts?”

“Hell, no. Eight to five. Eight to noon on Saturday.”

“What about the offices downstairs? The Red Cross open all the time?”

Devers grinned and shook his head. “The Red Cross is shut more than it’s open. There’s only two people in there, an old guy and a nice-looking chick, and half the time they’re down to the snack bar having coffee.”

“What about the re-enlistment office?”

“Same hours as us.”

Parker nodded, stood looking around. This part of the base was laid out in a grid of streets, every block an absolute square, with two long buildings on each side. Parker said, “Is the whole base set up like this? These streets like this?”

“Mostly. Except around the flight line.”

“Can we walk to this other gate?”

“Sure. It’s down that way, to the right.”

The South Gate turned out to be three blocks from the finance office; one over and two down. It was a smaller gate, less pretentious, with no billboard outside. They stood half a block away and watched a few trucks and cars go in and out. There was no pedestrian traffic at all.

Parker said, “Where’s that gate lead to?”

Devers said, “Something called Hilker Road. Down that way it meets up with the road we took out here on the bus. The other way it goes off into the woods someplace. Comes out around Cooks Corners, I think.”

“There’s no bars out there, no diners, nothing like that?”

“Nothing but woods.”

“What about a bus stop?”

“You mean outside? A civilian bus?” Devers shook his head. “The only bus away from here is that one we took out from town, stops at the main gate.”

“So there’s no reason for anybody to walk off the base in that direction.”

Devers looked towards the gate. “I guess not,” he said. “I never thought about it, but you’re right. You’d only go out that way if you were in a car and this was closer than the main gate.”

“What about these trucks coming in?”

“I guess they’re headed for places nearer here than the main gate. Maybe there’s some kind of shortcut in from the highway, I don’t know.”

“We’ll want to know,” Parker said. “We’ll want to know what trucks come in, where they go, which ones are regular arrivers, what times of day they come in. We’ll want to know what route they take to get here.”

Devers said, “That just means sitting and watching for a few days, and then following a couple of trucks away when they leave.”

“That’s what we’ll do, then,” Parker said. He looked around. “Is there any building overlooking this that we could get into without any static?”

Devers considered, and then pointed to a building off to the left, the second rank in from the fence. “There’s some kind of technical library in there,” he said. “You could hang around in there without anybody paying any attention, as long as you kept a book in your hand.”

“Good. All right, let’s go back.” They started walking, and Parker said, “Does that number one bus make a belt? If we get on it, can we go completely around and come back where we started?”

“Sure,” said Devers. “They’re all belts.”

“I want to look at the base,” Parker said.

They walked back to the bus stop where they’d gotten off, and when the next bus came along in the same direction they boarded it and sat as before. Devers kept up a low-voiced running description as they went, with Parker asking an occasional question.

It took twenty minutes to get back to the main gate. They got off the bus there and Devers said, “Anything else you want to see?”

“Not today. Let’s go back and talk.”

“Fine.”

They went through the gate without trouble, and there was a civilian bus waiting out by the road. They climbed aboard and a few minutes later the bus started for town.