The Romanov Succession

1.

It was the same as before: the bustling uniformed messengers, the corridor, the sergeant rattling his typewriter outside the door, the sitting and waiting because Colonel Buckner once again was “at the White House” and late for the appointment.

“Look,” Buckner said when he finally appeared, “I don’t do it on purpose. While you’re waiting for me I’m up there cooling my heels waiting for an audience with him. He always runs two hours later than the appointments secretary figured. You know what it’s like to live in a small town that used to have four thousand people and now it’s got eighteen thousand but there’s still only one doctor in town? That doctor’s waiting room—that’s the White House.”

Buckner slid out of his black raincoat and hung it with his floppy fisherman’s hat on the standing rack just inside his door. Then he went to his desk and waved Alex to a seat.

“Next time I’ll remember to come at eleven for a nine o’clock meeting,” Alex said. He smiled to show he was joshing.

“Okay. Tell me about the red epaulets.”

Alex wore khakis with red tabs on the shoulder straps. He said, “They’ve put rank on me.”

“Three pips. Lieutenant General?”

“Major General,” he said. “The ranks are a little different.”

“Yeah,” Buckner said. “The Russian army still has third lieutenants too.”

It had been done that last morning at the villa: Prince Leon had brought out a velvet-lined box made of inlaid woods. The red epaulets were in it together with a collection of medals and yellow citations brittle at the edges. “They were Vassily’s father’s. We are settling a commission on you.”

“In the White Russian Army?”

“Deniken is still the commander-in-chief. It is by his authority.”

“A Major General? That’s absurd. I’m thirty-four years old.”

“Please do not dispute it, Alex, it is a matter of politics. Governments will deal with a Major General at high level where they would force a mere colonel to use the servants entrance.”

“It’s a rank that implies command of at least a combat division—ten thousand men.”

“On paper you will have one. Never mind, it is all politics.”

“The cable from Barcelona was a little cryptic,” Glenn Buckner said. “How did Devenko die?”

“We put it out that it was natural causes. Heart attack. But he was shot—a paid gun.”

“Did you catch the killer?”

“Yes.”

Buckner leaned forward, intent. “What did you find out from him?”

“Nothing. He’s dead.”

Buckner made a face and sank back in the chair. “Crap.”

“He had nothing in his pockets except a forged invitation to the party.”

“Did you fingerprint him?”

“No. I doubt it would have mattered. We didn’t want it reported to the authorities there—and anyway what could we have found out? We might have learned he was a gunsmith from Milan or a greengrocer from Cardiff but that wouldn’t have got us anywhere. It was a paid job. Maybe if we had an army of detectives and a year to poke around we’d have found out who hired him.”

“Shouldn’t you have tried? Don’t you need to know why?”

“We’ve got more important problems.”

Buckner rubbed his mouth with his knuckles. “It must have had to do with this operation. Otherwise it would be too coincidental.” His hand dropped onto the desk. “Now they’ve given you Devenko’s job.”

“That’s right.”

“Which may make you the next murder victim.” Buckner scowled, picked up a pencil and bounced its point on the blotter. “I’m going to put heavy security on you while you’re in this country. We can’t afford to have you taken out.”

“Just don’t restrict my movements.”

“They’ll be Secret Service—they know their jobs, they don’t get in the way.” The American’s wide face broke into a crooked grin. “It isn’t you I have to care about—it’s the goddamned operation. Christ I don’t like wars much.”

“It’s nobody’s favorite pastime.”

“I get a feeling it was Devenko’s.”

“I didn’t know you knew him.”

“I only met him once—in England a little while ago. I got the impression he was a little tilted that way.” Buckner went back to the file drawers and rifled a folder. “Your letter of resignation from the U.S. Army. Need a pen?”

“I’ll use my own.”

Filled with contradictory emotions he bent over the brief document, read it, hesitated momentarily and finally put his signature on it.

“Date it a week ago, while you’re at it. And sign the copy.”

When it was done Buckner took it from him and tossed the two copies carelessly on the corner of the desk. Alex returned to his chair and experienced a momentary cold hollowness: as if he were resigning from reality.

Buckner watched him quietly. “You’re on your own now—if anything goes wrong it’s your own neck. We had nothing to do with it.”

“Understood.”

“Okay, now I’m dealing with you as the official representative of an Allied military operation. You’ve got the same status as the Free French and the Free Poles. Which is to say however much status we choose to grant you. It makes things a little precarious for you. But I guess you can see it’s the only way we can do it. All right—brass tacks now. What are you going to need from us?”

By “us” Buckner meant the government from which Alex had resigned less than two minutes ago; it gave him a very strange feeling—as if suddenly he were in an alien capital.

“Right away I’ll want two men.”

“Americans?”

“Yes.”

“That’s sticky.”

“I want them for training and organization. They won’t go in with us.”

“I’ll see. Who are they?”

“Brigadier General John Spaight for one. He’s in command of-”

“I know who he is. Who’s the other one?”

“An Air Corps squadron commander by the name of Paul Johnson. They call him Pappy. It’s a heavy bomber squadron -the Thirty-fifth I think.”

Buckner was writing the names down. “Major? Colonel?”

“Actually I think he’s only a captain.”

“The Air Corps works in mysterious ways,” Buckner muttered as he scribbled. He looked up. “I’ll try. They may not want any part of it—it could cost them their commands.”

“Not if you put them on temporary detached duty with the assurance they’ll return to their current posts.”

“How long are you going to need them for?”

“Not more than ninety days.”

“What do you need these two particular guys for?”

Alex shook his head.

Buckner didn’t press it. “I take it you had time to get the details of the plan from Devenko before he died.”

“No. But it isn’t his plan. It’s my own.”

Buckner showed mild surprise. “They’re going along with that? They set a lot of store by Devenko, didn’t they?”

“I didn’t give them much of a choice.”

Buckner thought about that and nodded. “They haven’t exactly got a surplus of qualified commanders to choose from. Which makes your security all the more vital. If you get knocked off who else have they got?”

“I don’t know. Most of my generation hasn’t gone in for anything more serious than steeplechasing.”

“Uh-huh. So what are you going to man your force with—jockeys and playboys?”

“My brother and I had a White Russian outfit in Finland. I expect to recruit out of that pool.”

“Aren’t they scattered to hell and gone by now?”

“No,” Alex said. “I know where to find them.”

“There’s one thing more. The timetable.”

“I’ll have it as soon as I can.”

“I didn’t mean yours. I meant Hitler’s. Inside a month it’s going to start raining in Russia. Another month and that’ll turn to snow. It’s September now—by November it may have been decided. If Hitler takes Moscow you can forget your pipedream.”

“Hitler won’t take Moscow. Not that fast.”

“You have a private line to the Reichschancellery that tells you this in confidence?”

“I spent some time in China,” Alex said. “The Japanese are being absorbed there.”

“What’s that got to do with the price of vodka?”

“Stalin’s got some of his best divisions on the China border waiting for a Japanese strike. The Japanese aren’t going to turn that way. Zhukov has already put in requests for those troops to be transferred to the Moscow front. Stalin will sign the authorizations—maybe a week from now, maybe a month; it depends how close Guderian comes to Moscow.”

“The timetable still applies. Stalin’s ahead of the game once it’s decided for sure. Your object is to knock him over while he’s off balance—while the war’s still undecided. That gives you your deadline.”

“It’s not a deadline,” Alex said. “It’s only a gamble. You know how military ops go. You can’t predict a thing. You go by the odds. I think Stalin’s on a tightrope and I think he’s going to stay on it for quite a while.”

“But the longer he has the better his chances. To fall off or to reach the safe end.”

“Of course.”

“Then don’t let any grass grow under you.”

“I’m already in motion,” Alex said.

2.

He found the two of them standing awkwardly beside a grey Plymouth at Andrews Field—John Spaight in a well-cut grey summer suit, Pappy Johnson in baggy seersucker. Alex stepped out of the Ford and the asphalt underfoot gave way softly in the heat. The two Secret Service men stepped out vigilantly.

“I’m quitting,” Spaight said by way of greeting. “The only reason I came was to get out of the heat at Bliss. This is ridiculous.” There were sweat stains on his suit.

“It’s a volunteer thing,” Alex said. “You can both go back right now if you want.”

“Not until you clear up the mystery.”

Alex shook his head. “If I explain it to you then you’re in. I’m sorry but it has to be that way.”

Spaight sighed theatrically and threw up his hands. “Look, we’re here.”

Alex consulted his watch. “We’ve got time before takeoff. Let’s get under some shade.”

In the flying officers’ dayroom a huge ceiling fan revolved slowly and Pappy Johnson settled himself under it hipshot on the corner of the billiard table. Spaight brought three open bottles of Coca-Cola inside with him and handed them around and chose a place on the leather couch.

They had the place to themselves; it was two in the afternoon. Alex said, “How much did Buckner tell you?”

“Enough to whet our appetites,” Spaight said. “A clandestine operation—commando—vital to the war effort, all that kind of crap. He give you the same spiel, Captain?”

“Something like that. He sort of hinted I might end up in command of some uninhabited island in the Arctic Ocean if I didn’t volunteer.”

Alex said, “Disregard that. There won’t be any penalty if you decide to pass it up.”

“What’s my job supposed to be?”

“Training pilots and bombardiers.”

“Where?”

“In Scotland.”

Johnson gave his toothy smile. “That’s a lot closer to the war than I am now.”

Alex turned to Spaight. “I asked for you for my chief of staff—for training and preparations. But it means I’ll rank you.”

“I did tell you they’d promote you, didn’t I?”

“It may go against the grain. Does it?”

“Come off it, Alex. I don’t mind taking orders from a man so long as I respect his brains. I’m a little flattered you picked me.”

“You’re only along for the ride. There won’t be any glory in it—you’ll both be left behind when this thing goes into operation.”

Spaight thumbed the Coca-Cola bottle shut, shook it up and spouted foam into his mouth from eight inches away. “Can we at least watch from the bleachers?”

“I doubt it. Buckner wouldn’t allow it.”

“Buckner’s a colonel,” Spaight said. “I’ll pull rank on the son of a bitch.”

“I doubt that too, John.”

Spaight nodded reluctantly. They both knew what neither had voiced: Buckner spoke with the voice of the White House.

Some of it was going over Pappy Johnson’s head. “Where’s that put me, then? Bottom of the totem pole again—the story of my life?”

“That’s what you get.” Spaight told him archly, “for wanting to fly a damn fool airplane instead of pushing a pencil like the rest of us cunning ambitious bastards.”

It was going to work out, Alex thought. His two key staff officers were hitting it off.

A flight sergeant in fatigues put his head in the door. “Looking for General Danilov, sir….”

“I’m Danilov.”

“Told me to tell you your plane’s ready to go, sir.” The sergeant saluted nervously, muffled his curiosity about the three men in civilian clothes and went.

When they were passing outside through the doorway Spaight said, “I notice how cleverly you’ve avoided telling us anything about what’s really going on.”

“There’ll be time to talk on the plane,” Alex said, tightening his eyes against the hot blast of afternoon haze.

The Secret Service watchdogs emerged from the shadows and crowded into the front seat of the waiting staff car beside the driver, two professionals in dark grey suits and hats. They had become an irritant to him in the past week; it would have been nearly impossible for a tail to keep up with Alex’s movements because he had been on the run the whole time-Washington to Ohio, Michigan, back to Washington, New York, Washington yet again, now Andrews Field. If anyone was going to take a shot at him it would most likely be in Scotland after he came to rest. In the meantime these two had become as ponderous as excess baggage.

The plane was an Army C-39, the military version of the DC-2 passenger liner; inside the fuselage were sixteen seats in single rows on either side of an aisle in which Alex had to stoop when he made his way forward. Pappy Johnson had a word with the two-man flight crew and when the engines began to chatter Johnson came back to his seat and remarked, “That guy trained half the kids in my squadron. It’s him you want for this job, not me.”

“Has he ever dropped a bomb on a mocked-up tank?”

Johnson gave him an interested look. “No…”

“Then you’re the one I want.”

3.

The transport landed them at Logan Field at four in the afternoon and Alex came down the stairs ahead of the others and saw the three winged behemoths parked in a row beside a trio of C-47S at the end of the runway. Spaight and Johnson emerged from the passenger door and Pappy Johnson said, “Dear sweet Jesus.”

John Spaight said, “They look like alligators with wings.”

“You wait till you see them in the air. That B-Seventeen’s the best combat aircraft ever built.” Johnson came down the four metal steps eagerly and all but plucked at Alex’s sleeve. “Those for us?”

“Yes.”

“You mean it? All six of them?”

“That’s our Air Corps.”

Johnson stared at the three majestic aircraft with disbelieving awe. They dwarfed the Dakota transports beside them. “You do know how to make a man happy, Skipper.”

Alex saw John Spaight wince. The two Secret Service men came down onto the concrete and Alex said, “This is where we leave you two.”

“Not until you’re airborne, General. That’s the orders.”

A civilian DC-3 was taking off, lifting and turning toward the south, beating up through a patchwork of clouds that hung out over Cape Cod Bay. Spaight said, “Let’s don’t gawk all day, Captain.” He prodded Johnson’s elbow and the five of them walked into the terminal.

An officious Army major had all the paperwork laid out in the airport ops room. Alex had to put his signature on a dozen documents. The major kept talking in a clipped angry voice: “I’m not sure where you gentlemen get your drag but that’s nearly a million and a half dollars’ worth of airplanes. Every air squadron in the country’s screaming for up-to-date bombers and the War Department in its wisdom decides to send these to goddamn England. Okay, I’ve put up six copilots and six flight engineers and five pilots out of the Ferrying Command pool—I gather one of you gentlemen will be lead pilot on the formation?”

“Me,” Pappy Johnson said.

The major’s acidulous attention flicked across him. “You’d better meet your crews then—Mister…?”

“Colonel,” Alex lied gently. “Colonel Johnson.”

The major didn’t turn a hair. “Okay then Colonel. They’ll want you to file a flight plan upstairs while you’re at it—but meet your crews first.”

Johnson ducked out of the room and the round-shouldered major came back to the desk and glanced through the papers Alex had signed. “I supposed it’s all in order. But it’s understood that you people are personally responsible for these aircraft. It’s damned irregular.” He turned stiffly past Alex and around behind the desk; reached forward and stacked the signed documents neatly. Finally he said, “Just take care of those Flying Forts. We haven’t got a whole lot of them to spare.”

They waited in a private lounge behind the ticket counters. The two Secret Service men drank coffee and read newspapers. Spaight was smoking a cigarette. “Alex, you can’t just leave me in midair with my ass upside down.”

“I can’t make exceptions. I’m sorry.”

“Then you’ll have a lot of people indulging in speculations. Putting the pieces together I come up with a bombing attack on the Kremlin. Is that the plan?”

“No. That would wipe out some artwork and a few upstairs flunkies.”

“Then I don’t follow it. How can you get at Stalin from the air?”

“I’m sorry John. It’s on a need-to-know basis.”

“You’re a pill, you know that?”

“Yes.”

Johnson came in wearing a flattened Mae West over his flight jacket. It was a leather jacket with a big mustard fur collar lying open across his shoulders. Under the straps of the life jacket his pilot’s wings could be seen. He tramped his lambskin-lined boots against the floor and beamed through his sweat. “Let’s get some altitude before I swelter to death.”

Spaight stubbed out his cigarette; Alex reached for his grip.

Pappy Johnson said, “Thanks for that impromptu promotion.”

“I’ll see if I can make it stick.”

“No need. I don’t care that much about rank—I fly airplanes is what I do.” He pivoted toward the door, talking over his shoulder: “We’ll refuel at Gander, be in Inverness tomorrow afternoon. Coffee and sandwiches on board. You’ll have to ride the nose seats in my plane—those Dakotas are jammed with stinking big crates of stuff, they took all the seats out. All that junk belong to us?”

“That and more coming by convoy,” Alex said.

The Secret Service guards went outside ahead of him. When he came through the doorway something chipped splinters out of the jamb beside him and something whacked his thigh like a sharp small hammer and then he was down and sliding.

4.

He caromed against the backs of the Secret Service man’s legs; the man went down and his automatic pistol fell from his hand. His partner was down on one knee with his pistol extended at arm’s length, looking for a target.

Spaight and Pappy Johnson went belly-flat on the pavement. There was no cover except back through the doorway and the sniper had that zeroed in. He was somewhere across the runway in the tangle of scrub; there was a road beyond that, parallel to the runway, and then the Bay.

The guard was scrambling for his dislodged gun but it was close to Alex’s hand and he picked it up by instinct because it was there: he put four fast shots into the scrub a hundred yards away, spraying from left to right, not because he expected to hit anything but because he wanted to rattle the sniper and throw off his aim. The .38 automatic bucked mildly against his palm, slipping on the sweat. He couldn’t see where the bullets went; he hadn’t expected to.

The other guard was sprinting left, breaking and zigzagging, angling toward the litter of weeds and shoulder-high scrub. It was probably his run that flushed the sniper: there was a quick crashing in the brush and then it all went still. The running guard was halfway across the runway and still zigzagging; the first man was drawling in Alex’s ear, “You all right sir?” and reaching for his pistol. Alex handed it to him.

They heard the roar of an automobile and the sickening grind when its gears jammed into first; the screech of tires and then Alex had a glimpse of the moving black roof of the car. The guard beside him fired the last two out of his pistol and went into his pocket for a new magazine. His partner was pounding into the scrub across the field but the car had gathered speed; it wheeled inland to be absorbed into the Boston traffic.

“Shee-yit,” said Pappy Johnson.

It took five hours and a telephone call to Washington before the Boston police allowed them to take off and even then all of them had to sign affidavits. A nervous doctor wanted to put Alex into hospital for observation but he managed to veto that. A big splinter from the doorjamb had gone straight through the fleshy outer part of his right thigh, drilling a subcutaneous tunnel and shredding the skin on the way out; the doctor ran an alcohol swab clear through it to cauterize the wound and taped it up with heavy bandaging. It hadn’t bled much; there weren’t many blood vessels in that part of the anatomy. Nor were there many nerves. A muscle had been frayed. It was more stiff than painful when he moved it.

The doctor said, “Best thing to do is sit on it. Tourniquet effect. Wad something up and put it under the bandage. Move it every ten minutes or so. An hour or so you’ll go into minor shock—don’t worry about it if you spend the next twelve hours asleep. But keep as warm as you can. Have you got heat in that plane?”

Pappy Johnson said, “No. We’ll be using electrically heated flying suits.”

“Set his up as high as it’ll go.”

They had dug the bullet out of the wall inside. It was a jacketed .30’06—the standard hunting and military caliber; they’d been sold by the millions in war-surplus ever since 1919. The police were sending it to the FBI lab along with whatever other clues their technicians had discovered in the sniper’s shooting position but that was seacoast sand and it hadn’t held footprints or tire tracks. They weren’t going to learn anything.

It was still daylight when they drove him down the runway to the hardstands. Pappy Johnson chinned himself up into the forward hatch of the leading B-17 and reached down for the luggage and then Spaight was boosting Alex up inside the cramped forward cabin of the bomber. He had to go under the pilots’ seats into the Plexiglas nose of the plane where the bombardier and navigator usually sat. It was a matter of picking a path across a tangle of boxes and cables and fire extinguishers and the exposed inner structurings of the airplane. Spaight gripped his elbow but Alex said, “All right, I can walk,” and climbed forward slowly; he’d been injured enough times to respect the practicalities.

Above him he saw Johnson hunch into the austere cockpit, splashed with its hundred droplets of glittering instrument faces. The copilot was a young man with gangly grasshopper legs and red hair; he was reaching for a clipboard. “Six-tenths stratocumulus at five thousand feet, Captain.”

“Okay. Wind ’em up if you’re done with the preflight.”

Spaight helped Alex into the wired jump suit and the parachute pack; they settled into their seats while the engines hacked and wheezed and came alive one by one. Spaight handed him the flying helmet and he put it over his head: stiff leather chin cup, fur-lined visor, throat mike, earphones, goggles strapped up against the forehead. Now he could hear the pilots’ chatter again and presently the tower said, “Army Seven Nine Six, runway four, you’re cleared for takeoff,” and the airplane began its ponderous roll, bouncing on its tail wheel. He felt the tremors against the raw wound in his thigh.

The Flying Fortress roared down the runway. Tugged upward by the vacuum created above its cambered wing surfaces it lifted off, banking steeply; the city of Boston tilted and swayed beneath him and then they were climbing out to sea with the long arm of Cape Cod curving away like a crab’s claw.

They ran up the Maine coastline with cloud tendrils slipping past the wings. The synchronized engines sent smooth tremors through the plane at rhythmic intervals. Pappy Johnson came on the headset:

“We’ll do this lap at ninety-five hundred feet. You won’t need oxygen. How’s the patient?”

“Still respirating,” Alex said.

Spaight reached over to check the dial of the thermostat on his suit. Alex was still sweating from the ground-level heat and he pushed Spaight’s hand away. Spaight switched off his throat mike and leaned forward to be heard above the racket:

“That had to be the same people that killed Devenko.”

Alex nodded.

Spaight said, “They won’t quit after one bad try, Alex.”

“Next time we’ll give them a little bait, I think.”

“What?”

“Let’s take the next one alive, what do you say? I’d like to hear the answers to a few questions.”

“You can’t hear much if you’re dead.”

He felt near it by the time they came down over the lakes of Newfoundland into the barrens of the wilderness base at Gander. He was awake again but only just; all his joints were stiff with cramp. When the engines died out the silence left him with a lightheaded sensation of nightmare unreality.

There wasn’t much feeling in his fingertips but he got the parachute pack unbuckled and stumbled to the hatchway. They lowered him gently to the gravel and he started walking aimlessly in the dawn with Spaight at his shoulder trying to conceal his troubled concern. “Should you be walking on that?”

“If I don’t I’ll have bedsores,” he said drily.

“I hope you were kidding about baiting them into another try.”

Alex shook his head, trying to clear it. The air was cool and sharp with a damp chill; the sky was half clouded with a band of red spreading above the dreary eastern horizon. He shivered a little. “If they’re going to try anyway I’d just as soon have it on my terms.”

“They could be sighting in on you right now.”

“In Labrador?”

“Who knows who they are, Alex? Who knows how many they’ve got? They reached Devenko in the Pyrenees—they reached you in Boston. They’ve got a hell of a net.”

“Or a handful of people with good sources of intelligence.”

“We need to know where to look for them. Haven’t you got any ideas at all?”

“The field’s too wide. I haven’t got time to waste on it. The other thing comes first.”

“Not if you’re killed it doesn’t.”

“We’ve been around that bush before. We’ll just have to see to it that I don’t get killed, won’t we.”

Spaight said morosely, “Isn’t that a little like asking the sun not to come up in the morning?”

The rest of the planes trickled down to base within the next ten minutes and it took nearly an hour getting them all ready for the long nonstop transatlantic jump. Alex went into the ops shack and sat by the round metal stove in the middle of the room. The place had the flavor of a pioneer camp but air traffic roared in and out incessantly: it was the intermediate stop for aircraft to and from England—British planes, Americans, Royal Canadian Air Force. Pursuit planes came in and out with wing- and belly-tanks for extra fuel range; some of them could make the jump and some of them had to fuel again in Greenland and Iceland. Convoy patrols and sub-chasing PBY amphibian Catalinas chugged across the field at steady close intervals and there wasn’t a ninety-second silence between any of the takeoffs and landings. On top of the ops shack a radar dish swiveled and six radio controllers kept moving up and down the tower steps with coffee and cigarettes. They had grey weary faces like combat veterans who’d been too long in the front lines.

Finally Pappy Johnson came in and took a seat beside him, wrapping his hands around a hot coffee cup. “Copilot’s filing the flight plans. How you making it, Skipper? You look a little like a ghost right now.”

“I feel a little like one.”

“You going to be all right?”

“I’ll sleep my way over. I should be all right by the time we get to Scotland.”

“That thing going to leave you a limp?”

“No.”

“I reckon you’re a little more used to getting shot to pieces than I am. I mean those scars all over your neck and all.”

“You’ve never flown combat, then.”

“Naw—I got into this lunacy from flying airmail. I started out with air shows and then got work doing the mail. In those days we got our weather reports by phoning the next airfield and finding out if it was raining there.” Johnson grinned. “More reliable than the met forecasts we get now.”

Alex knew them all over the globe—the barnstormers and bush pilots who made their livings walking the wings of fabric-and-wood biplanes and slept out under the wings of their Jennies. “I’m surprised you opted for bombers then.”

“No future in single-seaters, Skipper. The war ain’t going to last forever. When it’s over they’re going to need cargo pilots, not peashooter jockeys. Old Pappy’s always thinking ahead, see.” He shook his head. “Besides I’ll tell you something else—if I’m going to get shot at while I’m up there I’d just as soon be in one of these babies.”

“It’s a big slow target for the enemy.”

“But a Fort’s damn near impossible to shoot down with anything less than a direct artillery hit. You can knock out three of the four engines and the son of a bitch will still fly. You can knock off half a wing and still keep it airborne. That’s a forgiving airplane, it ain’t like a lot of these slapped-together military designs—the thing about a Fort, it wants to fly. There’s never been an airplane like that B-17. Probably never will be again. And you’ve got ten machine guns poking out of those turret-blisters all over the airplane from nose to tail and top to bottom. I’d hate to be the Nazi peashooter that had to go up against a flying gun platform.”

Tickle Johnson in his enthusiasm and he was off like a candidate on the Fourth of July. Alex listened with half his attention and soaked up the warmth of the cozy rustic room.

Then Alex said, “All right, Pappy, suppose I give you a target about nine feet wide and eighty feet long moving at anywhere from twenty to sixty miles an hour—on the ground, in a straight line. Suppose I paint a big bright X on top of it. Can you hit it with bombs?”

“Skipper, I could drop a doughnut into a coffee cup from ten thousand feet with a B-Seventeen and a good bombardier. What is it you want me to hit? Sounds like a bus.”

“Something like that. But it’s not a matter of hitting it two out of three or nine out of ten. You’ve only got one crack at it. What gives you the best odds of destroying it?”

Spaight came in and sat down on the bench, listening with interest. Pappy Johnson said, “Just one bus, right? Not a whole convoy of them.”

“We’ll start with one. What’s your opinion?”

“Well ideally you’d want a squadron of planes. That way you’d cancel out the chance of error.”

“You know how big our bomber force is, Pappy.”

“Three planes. Well that’s plenty, what the hell, one target? One lousy bus?”

“You’ve got to train my people to hit that target, Pappy. That’s your job.”

“Then I’d go in treetop and set delay fuses on the bombs. Armor-piercing noses on the bombs so they’ll penetrate the roof of the bus instead of bouncing off.”

“Treetop?” Spaight said. “In a four-engine bomber?”

“Skipper wanted to know the best odds. I’m giving them, General. I didn’t say it was the only way to do it. But it’s the best.”

He came awake just once. The sun was drilling right down through the nose perspex. Hard silver reflections shot back against his eyes from the ocean far below. John Spaight said, “Christ look at all that water.”

“That’s only the top of it.”

Pappy Johnson’s voice crackled on the intercom:

“You want to get out and walk back to Texas, General?”

“I wouldn’t mind. I’m beginning to get the feeling I’ve signed on with a pack of lunatics.”

“Just keep that in mind,” Alex said. “It’ll probably help explain some of the things you’re going to have to do.” Then he went back to sleep.