Wilt on High

Chapter 14

'I got the whole place wrapped up, sir, and he's still inside,' said Lieutenant Harah when Glaushof finally reached Lecture Hall 9. Glaushof didn't need telling. He had had enough trouble himself getting through the cordon the Lieutenant had thrown up around the hall and in other circumstances would have expressed himself irritably on the Lieutenant's thoroughness. But the situation was too serious for recrimination, and besides he respected his second-in-command's expertise. As head of the APPS, the Anti Perimeter Penetration Squad, Lieutenant Harah had been through training at Fort Knox, in Panama and had seen action at Greenham Common disguised as a British bobby where he had qualified for a Purple Heart after being bitten in the leg by a mother of four, an experience which had left him with a useful bias against women. Glaushof appreciated his misogyny. At least one man in Baconheath could be relied on not to lay Mona Glaushof and Harah wasn't going to play footsy with any CND women if and when they tried breaking into Baconheath.

On the other hand, he seemed to have gone too far this time. Quite apart from the six hit-squad men in gas masks by the glass fronted door to the lecture hall and a number of others crouching under the windows round the side a small group of women were standing with their heads up against the wall of the next building.

'What are those?' Glaushof asked. He had a nasty suspicion he recognized Mrs Ofrey's Scottish knitwear.

'Suspected women,' said Lieutenant Harah.

'What do you mean "suspected women"?' demanded Glaushof. 'Either they're women or they aren't.'

'They came out dressed as women, sir,' said the Lieutenant, 'doesn't mean to say they are. Could be the terrorist dressed as one. You want me to check them out?'

'No,' said Glaushof, wishing to hell he had given the order to storm the building before he had put in an appearance himself. It wasn't going to look too good spread-eagling the wife of the Chief Administrative Officer against a wall with a gun at her head, and to have her checked out sexually by Lieutenant Harah would really foul things up. On the other hand even Mrs Ofrey could hardly complain about being rescued from a possible hostage situation.

'You sure there's no way he could have got out?'

Absolute,' said the Lieutenant. 'I got marksmen on the next block in case he makes the roof and the utilities tunnels are sealed. All we got to do is toss a canister of Agent Incapacitating in there and there's going to be no trouble.'

Glaushof glanced nervously at the row of women and doubted it. There was going to be trouble and maybe it would be better if that trouble could be seen to be serious. 'I'll get those women under cover and then you go in,' he said. 'And no shooting unless he fires first. I want this guy taken for interrogation. You got that?'

'Absolute, sir,' said the Lieutenant. 'He gets a whiff of AI he wouldn't find a trigger to pull if he wanted to.'

'Okay. Give me five minutes and then go,' said Glaushof and crossed to Mrs Ofrey.

'If you ladies will just step this way,' he said, and dismissing the men who were holding them hurried the little group round the corner and into the lobby of another lecture hall. Mrs Ofrey was clearly annoyed.

'What do you mean' she began but Glaushof raised a hand. 'If you'll just let me explain,' he said, 'I realize you have been inconvenienced but we have an infiltration situation on our hands and we couldn't afford the possibility of you being held hostage.' He paused and was glad to see that even Mrs Ofrey had taken the message. 'How absolutely dreadful,' she murmured.

It was Captain Clodiak's reaction that surprised him. 'Infiltration situation? We just had the usual class no problem,' she said, 'I didn't see anybody new. Are you saying there's somebody in there we don't know about?'

Glaushof hesitated. He had hoped to keep the question of Wilt's identity as a secret agent to himself and not have news of it spreading round the base like wildfire. He certainly didn't want it getting out until he had completed his interrogation and had all the information he needed to prove that the Intelligence Section, and in particular that bland bastard Colonel Urwin, hadn't screened a foreign employee properly. That way the Colonel would take a fall and they could hardly avoid promoting Glaushof. Let Intelligence get wind of what was going on and the plan might backfire. Glaushof fell back on the 'Eyes off' routine.

'I don't think it advisable at this moment in time to elucidate the matter further. This is a top-security matter. Any leak could severely prejudice the defensive capabilities of Strategic Air Command in Europe. I must insist on a total information blackout.'

For a moment the pronouncement had the effect he had wanted. Even Mrs Ofrey looked satisfactorily stunned. Then Captain Clodiak broke the silence. 'I don't get it,' she said. 'There's us and this Wilt guy in there, nobody else. Right?' Glaushof said nothing. 'So you bring up the stormtroopers and have us pinned against the wall as soon as we walk out and now you tell us it's an infiltration situation. I don't believe you, Major, I just don't believe you. The only infiltration I know of is what that bastard sexist lieutenant did up my ass and I intend to formalize a complaint again Lieutenant Harah and you can pull as many phoney agents out of your pinhead imagination as you like, you still aren't going to stop me.'

Glaushof gulped. He could see he'd been right to describe the Captain as a feisty woman and entirely wrong to have allowed Lieutenant Harah to act on his own. He'd also been fairly wrong in his estimation of the Lieutenant's antipathy for women though even Glaushof had to admit that Captain Clodiak was a remarkably attractive woman. In an attempt to save the situation he tried a sympathetic smile. It came out lopsided. I'm sure Lieutenant Harah had no intention of' he began.

'So what's with the hand?' snapped the Captain. 'You think I don't know intentions when I feel them? Is that what you think?'

'Perhaps he was doing a weapon check,' said Glaushof, who knew now he would have to do something really astonishing to regain control of the situation. He was saved by the sound of breaking glass. Lieutenant Harah had waited exactly five minutes before taking action.

It had taken Wilt rather more than five minutes to unravel the bandage and slide it down his trouser leg and reassemble the box in a position where it would afford him some measure of protection from the spasmodic antics of his penis. In the end he had succeeded and had just tied the entire contraption together rather uncomfortably when there was a knock on the door.

'You okay, Mr Wilt?' asked the engineer.

'Yes, thank you,' said Wilt as politely as his irritation allowed. It was always the same with nice idiots. The sods offered to help in precisely the wrong way. All Wilt wanted now was to get the hell out of the base without any further embarassment. But the engineer didn't understand the situation. 'I was just telling Pete how I had an uncle in Idaho had the same support problem,' said the engineer through the door.

'Really?' said Wilt, feigning interest while actually struggling to pull his zip up. A thread of bandage had evidently got caught in the thing. Wilt tried pulling it down.

'Yea. He went around for years with this bulky thing on until my Auntie Annie heard of this surgeon in Kansas City and she took my Uncle Rolf down there and of course he didn't want to go but he never did regret it. I can give you his name if you like.'

'Fuck,' said Wilt. A stitch on the bottom of his zip sounded as though it had torn.

'Did you say something, Mr Wilt?' asked the engineer.

'No,' said Wilt.

There was a moment's silence while the engineer evidently considered his next move and Wilt tried holding the bottom of the zip to his trousers while wrenching the tag at the same time.

'As I see it, and you've got to understand I'm not a medical man myself I'm an engineer so I know about structural failure, there's muscle deterioration in the lower'

'Listen,' said Wilt. 'Right now where I've got a structural failure is in the zip on my trousers. Something's got caught in it and it's stuck.'

'Which side?' asked the engineer.

'Which side is what?' demanded Wilt.

'The...er...thing that's stuck in it?'

Wilt peered down at the zip. In the confines of the toilet it was difficult to see which side anything was. 'How the hell would I know?'

'You pulling it up or down?' continued the engineer.

'Up,' said Wilt.

'Sometimes helps to pull it down first.'

'It's already bloody down,' said Wilt allowing his irritation to get the better of him. 'I wouldn't be trying to pull the fucking thing up if it wasn't down, would I?'

'I guess not,' said the engineer with a degree of bland patience that was even more irritating than his desire to be helpful. 'Just the same if it isn't right down it could be the thing...' He paused. 'Mr Wilt, just what is it you've got in the zip?'

Inside the toilet Wilt stared dementedly at a notice which not only instructed him to wash his hands but seemed to suppose he needed telling how to. 'Count to ten,' he muttered to himself and was surprised to find that the zip had freed itself. He'd also been freed from the unwanted helpfulness of the engineer. A crash of breaking glass had evidently disturbed the man's blandness. 'Jesus, what's going on?' he yelled.

It was not a question Wilt could answer. And by the sound of things outside he didn't want to. Somewhere a door burst open and running feet in the corridor were interspersed with muffled orders to freeze. Inside the toilet Wilt froze. Accustomed as he had recently become to the hazards seemingly inherent in going to the lavatory anywhere outside his own house, the experience of being locked in a cubicle with a hit squad of Anti Perimeter Penetration men bursting into the building was new to him.

It was fairly new to the engineer. As the canisters of Agent Incapacitating hit the floor and masked men armed with automatic weapons broke through the door he lost all interest in the problems of Wilt's zip and headed back into the lecture hall only to collide with the navigator and the PX clerk who were dashing the other way. In the confusion that followed Agent Incapacitating lived up to its name. The PX clerk tried to disentangle himself from the engineer who was doing his best to avoid him and the navigator embraced them both under the illusion he was moving in the other direction.

As they fell to the ground Lieutenant Harah loomed over them large and quite extraordinarily sinister in his gas mask.

'Which of you is Wilt?' he yelled. His voice, distorted both by the mask and by the effects of the gas on their nervous systems, reached them slowly. Not even the voluble engineer was able to help him. 'Take them all out,' he ordered and the three men were dragged from the building gurgling sentences that sounded as if a portable recorder with faulty batteries was being played under water.

In his cubicle Wilt listened to the awful noises with growing apprehension. Breaking glass, strangely muffled shouts and the clump of boots had played no part in his previous visits to the airbase and he couldn't for the life of him imagine what they portended. Whatever it was he'd had enough trouble for one evening without wishing to invite any more. It seemed safest to stay where he was and wait until whatever was happening had stopped. Wilt switched off the light and sat down on the seat.

Outside, Lieutenant Harah's men reported thickly that the hall was clear. In spite of the eddies of gas the Lieutenant could see that. Peering through the eyepiece of his gas mask he surveyed the empty seats with a sense of anti-climax. He had rather hoped the infiltrator would put up a show of resistance, and the ease with which the bastard had been taken had disappointed him. On the other hand he could also see that it had been a mistake to bring in the assault dogs without equipping them with gas masks. Agent Incapacitating evidently affected them too. One of them was slithering about the floor snarling in slow motion while another, in an attempt to scratch its right ear, was waving a hindfoot about in a most disturbing manner.

'Okay, that's it,' he said and marched out to question his three prisoners. Like the assault dogs they had been totally incapacitated and he had no idea which was the foreign agent he was supposed to be detaining. They were all dressed in civilian clothes and in no state to say who or what they were. Lieutenant Harah reported to Glaushof. 'I think you better check them out, sir. I don't know which son of a bitch is which.'

'Wilt,' said Glaushof, glaring at the gas mask, 'his name is Wrilt. He's a foreign employee. Shouldn't be any difficulty recognizing the bastard.'

'All Limeys look the same to me,' said the Lieutenant, and was promptly rewarded with a chop across his throat and a knee in his groin by Captain Clodiak who had just recognized her sexist assailant through his gas mask. As the Lieutenant doubled up she grabbed his arm and Glaushof was surprised to see how easily his second-in-command was swept off his feet by a woman.

'Remarkable,' he said. 'It's a genuine privilege to witness'

'Cut the crap,' said Captain Clodiak, dusting her hands and looking as though she would like to demonstrate her expertise in karate on another man. 'That creep said a sexist remark and you said Wilt. Am I right?' Glaushof looked puzzled. He hadn't recognized 'son of a bitch' as being sexist and he didn't want to discuss Wilt in front of the other women. On the other hand he didn't have any idea what Wilt looked like and someone had to identify him. 'Maybe we'd better step outside to discuss this, Captain,' he said and went out the door.

Captain Clodiak followed him warily. 'What do we have to discuss?' she asked.

'Like Wilt,' said Glaushof.

'You're crazy. I heard you just now. Wilt an agent?'

'Incontrovertible,' said Glaushof, pulling brevity.

'How so?' said Clodiak, responding in kind.

'Infiltrated the perimeter with enough radio transmitting equipment hidden in his car to signal our position to Moscow or the moon. I mean it, Captain. What's more it's not civilian equipment you can buy in a store. It's official,' said Glaushof and was relieved to notice the disbelief fade from her face. 'And right now, I'm going to need help identifying him.'

They went round the corner and were confronted by the sight of three men lying face down on the ground in front of Lecture Hall 9 guarded by two incapacitated assault dogs and the APP team.

'Okay, men, the Captain here is going to identify him,' said Glaushof and prodded the PX clerk with his foot. 'Turn over, you.' The clerk tried to turn over but succeeded only in crawling sideways on top of the engineer, who promptly went into convulsions. Glaushof looked at the two contorted figures with disgust before having his attention distracted even more disturbingly by an assault dog that had urinated on his shoe without lifting its leg.

'Get that filthy beast off me,' he shouted and was joined in his protests by the engineer who objected just as strongly though less comprehensibly to the apparent attempts the PX clerk was making to bugger him. By the time the dog had been removed, a process that required the efforts of three men on the end of its chain, and some sort of order was restored on the ground Captain Clodiak's expression had changed again. 'I thought you said you wanted Wilt identified,' she said. 'Well, he's not here.'

'Not here? You mean...'Glaushof looked suspiciously at the broken door of the lecture hall.

'They're the men the Lieutenant told us to grab,' said one of the hit-squad. 'There wasn't anyone else in the hall I saw.'

There's gotta be,' yelled Glaushof. 'Where's Harah?'

'In there where you'

'I know where he is. Just get him and fast.'

'Yessir,' said the man and disappeared.

'You seem to have got yourself a problem,' said Captain Clodiak.

Glaushof tried to shrug it off. 'He can't have broken through the cordon and even if he has he's going to burn on the fence or get himself arrested at the gate,' he said. 'I'm not worried.'

All the same he found himself glancing round at the familiar dull buildings and the roadways between them with a new sense of suspicion as though somehow they had changed character and had become accomplices to the absent Wilt. With an insight that was alarmingly strange to him he realized how much Baconheath meant to him; it was home, his own little fortress in a foreign land with its comfortable jet noises linking him to his own hometown, Eiderburg, Michigan, and the abattoir down the road where the hogs were killed. As a boy he had woken to the sound of their squeals and an F111 screaming for take-off had the same comforting effect on him. But more than anything else Baconheath with its perimeter fence and guarded gates had been America for him, his own country, powerful, independent and freed from danger by his constant vigilance and the sheer enormity of its arsenal. Squatting there behind the wire and isolated by the flat reaches of the Fens from the old crumbling villages and market towns with their idle, inefficient shopkeepers and their dirty pubs where strange people drank warm, unhygienic beer, Baconheath had been an oasis of brisk efficiency and modernity, and proof that the great US of A was still the New World and would remain so.

But now Glaushof's vision had shifted and for a moment he felt somehow disassociated from the place. These buildings were hiding this Wilt from him and until he found the bastard Baconheath would be infected. Glaushof forced himself out of this nightmare and was confronted by another. Lieutenant Harah came round the corner. He was clearly still paying for his sexist attitude to Captain Clodiak and had to be supported by two APPS men. Glaushof had almost been prepared for that. The garbled noises the Lieutenant was making were something else again and could hardly be explained by a kick in the groin.

'It's the AI, sir,' one of the men explained, 'I guess he must have loosed off a canister in the lobby.'

'Loosed off a canister? In the lobby?' Glaushof squawked, appalled at the terrible consequences to his career such a lunatic action seemed certain to provoke. 'Not with those women'

'Affirmative,' ejaculated Lieutenant Harah without warning. Glaushof turned on him.

'What do you mean, affirmative?'

'Absolute,' Harah's voice hit a new high. And stuck there. 'Absolute absolute absolute absolute...'

'Gag that bastard,' shouted Glaushof and shot round the corner of the building to see what he could do to rescue the situation. It was beyond hope. For whatever insane reason Lieutenant Harah, perhaps in an attempt to defend himself against a second strike from Captain Clodiak, had wrenched the pin from a gas grenade before realizing that his gas mask had come off in his fall. Gazing through the glass doors at the bizarre scenes in the lobby, Glaushof was no longer worried about Mrs Ofrey's interference. Draped over the back of a chair with her hair touching the floor and happily obscuring her face, the wife of the Chief Administrative Executive resembled nothing so much as a large and incontinent highland ewe which had been put rather prematurely through a Fair Isle knitting machine. The rest of the class were in no better shape. The astro-navigation officer lay on her back, evidently re-enacting a peculiarly passive sexual experience, while several other students of British Culture and Institutions looked as though they were extras in some film depicting the end of the world. Once again Glaushof experienced the ghastly sensation of being at odds with his environment and it was only by calling up reserves of approximate sanity that he took control of himself.

'Get them out of there,' he shouted, 'and call the medics. We got a maniac on the loose.'

'Got something,' said Captain Clodiak. 'That Lieutenant Harah's going to have a lot to answer for. I can't see General Ofrey being too pleased with a dead wife. He'll just have to play three-handed bridge with the Commander.'

But Glaushof had had enough of the Captain's objective standpoint. 'You're responsible for this,' he said with a new menace in his voice. 'You talk about questions you're going to have to answer some yourself. Like you deliberately assaulted Lieutenant Harah in the execution of his duty and'

'Like the execution of his duty includes getting his hand up my...' interrupted the Captain furiously and then stopped and stared. 'Oh my God,' she said and Glaushof, who had been preparing for another demonstration of karate, followed her gaze.

In the broken doorway of Lecture Hall 9 a hapless figure was trying to stand up. As they watched, it failed.