Forbidden Area

by Pat Frank

  Now Higginbotham was faced with the wildest sort of emergency, covered by no rules or regulations of which he had ever heard. Before him stood a tall young Marine, accompanied by a frightened girl in a wrinkled blue frock, carrying high-heeled shoes in her hand, and they had sworn to him that they had just witnessed what could be an enemy landing on the coast, or rendezvous with an agent. Not only that, but they claimed to have seen something even more fantastic in June of the previous year, involving a submarine, a landing barge, and an automobile. Higginbotham could not tell the Marine to go home and sleep it off. The Marine was undoubtedly sober. He could not tell him to inform the FBI or the police. This had happened at sea, and the sea was Navy territory and business. Besides, there had been a submarine contact reported from New Orleans only the past evening, and everyone was jittery about the disasters to the Air Force bombers, and the Marine claimed that it had been a man in Air Force uniform who had received the suitcase. So Ensign Higginbotham knew that he had to do something, and he had a premonition that whatever he did would be wrong.

  At that moment the only vessels in Mayport were Coral Sea and her escorting destroyers, preparing to take aboard her aircraft at first light and sail back to the Mediterranean to rejoin the Sixth Fleet. The two carriers of Task Force 9.1, nucleus of the Atlantic Fleet’s hunter-killer group, were in the Gulf, co-operating with Air Force in the search for downed B-99’s. As a matter of fact almost everything afloat, in the Atlantic, was engaged in the same mission. In any event, Higginbotham could not order so much as a rowboat to sea. His authority did not extend beyond the sleepy limits of Mayport, and even in Mayport it was confined to those desolate hours when no other officers—he was junior to everyone on the base—were awake. There was only one thing he could do, and the thought appalled him. He would have to get Captain Clyde out of bed.

  Higginbotham’s fingers edged towards the telephone gingerly as if it were a dozing rattlesnake. Even when he had a full night’s sleep, Captain Clyde was terrifying. Clyde was a bitter, bull-necked and bull-throated man who hated short duty and who, having been passed over, was condemned to it for the balance of his service. Higginbotham’s fingers jumped the last few inches and closed on the telephone. He lifted it to his lips and said, “This is the O.D. Let me have Captain Clyde.”

  The base operator said, “What?” He sounded unbelieving.

  “I said give me Captain Clyde. Yes, at his quarters.”

  The captain answered the phone almost at once, as if it were beside his bed. “Well?” Captain Clyde wheezed.

  “This is Higginbotham, O.D., sir. There’s a Marine here who says he’s seen a landing on the coast.” This was a very inadequate way to put it, Higginbotham knew, and he waited for the captain to blow him off the phone.

  Incredibly, the captain simply asked, “What kind of landing?”

  “From a boat, sir. He thinks the boat came from a submarine. He says they gave a suitcase to a man in Air Force uniform.”

  Higginbotham waited for the captain to come fully awake and start screaming. Instead, Captain Clyde said, quite calmly, “I’ll be right over.” Then he hung up.

  Captain Clyde, clad in a skivvy shirt, white trousers, and leather sandals, was in his headquarters building in two minutes. “All right, Marine,” he demanded. “Right smartly, what’s this all about?”

  Henry Hazen told his story again. As he talked, the captain made notes. Twice he looked at the girl for corroboration. Although she was embarrassed, standing there barefoot, and frightened, he managed to tell exactly what he had seen.

  Once the captain interrupted to say, “Higginbotham, has Coral Sea taken on fuel?”

  “Yes, sir. Finished at twenty-three hundred.”

  When Hazen stopped speaking the captain said, “Thanks, Marine, you’ve done well. Even if nothing happens, there’ll be a commendation in your jacket. Now you’d better take your girl home.”

  Before they were out of the office Captain Clyde began to act. He called Mainside, the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, and asked for patrol planes and helicopters. He called the blimp base in Brunswick. He informed the captain of Coral Sea, and the admiral aboard, and suggested that the ship be prepared for anti-submarine action. He called the Eastern Sea Frontier, Norfolk. He called the police in St. Augustine and the State Highway Patrol and the FBI. He even cut across service lines and channels and called Air Force in Washington.

  He called for coffee and sandwiches and prepared to stay up the rest of the night.

  Then he turned to Higginbotham and said, “Ensign, can you navigate a crash boat?”

  Higginbotham said, “I think so, sir.” He had actually been at the wheel of the crash boat several times, on fishing expeditions, but he had never taken it out of sight of land.

  “Well, rout out a crew and take out the crash boat. I relieve you of O.D.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Higginbotham. Sensibly, he didn’t ask where to take the crash boat or what to do when he got there. The crash boat carried no armament but it did have a good radio. It was a million-to-one chance that he would find the submarine, or whatever it was, and if he did see something all he could do was call for help. But he was elated. For the first time since being commissioned, he had a real command, and the possibility of action.

  An hour later, conning the crash boat through the jetties, he found time to marvel at the captain’s astonishing behavior. He did not know, of course, that Captain Clyde, then a gunnery officer aboard the battleship Nevada, had been sleeping soundly in the Moana Hotel, Honolulu, on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. Clyde had heard gunfire, but it had sounded like target practice, and Clyde had covered his aching head with a pillow and gone back to sleep. When he finally did get up, his ship had sortied from her berth in Pearl Harbor. The Navy officially had forgotten this, Captain Clyde could not. But he could see that nothing like it ever happened to him again.

  At 4:34 A.M. a teletype alarm went out to stations of the Florida State Highway Patrol and was relayed to what few cars and officers were on duty at that hour of lightest traffic. It read:

  LOOK OUT FOR AND ARREST MAN DRESSED IN AIR FORCE UNIFORM, RANK UNKNOWN, DRIVING LATE MODEL GREEN AND WHITE CHEVROLET HARDTOP. SUITCASE IN TRUNK OF CAR. NO OTHER DESCRIPTION. THIS MAN IS WANTED BY FEDERAL AUTHORITIES AS A POSSIBLE ENEMY AGENT. HE IS PROBABLY DANGEROUS AND MAY BE ARMED.

  The alarm was heard by Officer Huidekoper, a bulky road patrolman of middle years, who was sitting in his fast scout car, its lights on and engine idling, outside an all-night drive-in on the outskirts of Deland, a quiet college town south of Orlando. Huidekoper was eating a double pork barbecue roll, with French fries on the side, and washing it down with an extra rich chocolate frostee shake.

  The alarm had a bizarre ring to it. He had never been asked to look out for an enemy agent before, and had never even imagined such a thing. The dispatcher repeated the broadcast. Huidekoper took another bite out of his barbecue and decided that headquarters in Tallahassee had been taken in by a practical joker. Anyway, it was hopeless looking for a car unless you knew the license number. He laughed out loud. A green-and-white Chewy! He saw at least a dozen every day. Why, he had seen one pass only five or ten minutes before, with its left tail light out. He had almost gone after it to warn the driver, but just then the car hop was bringing his snack. Certainly it was nothing to report. He hadn’t noticed whether the driver wore an Air Force uniform or a pink kimono. It would only cause confusion, and possibly get him laughed at, if he called the dispatcher. Of course if he did call it would be a cinch to intercept the Chewy he’d seen. Twenty cars could converge on it before it hit the outskirts of Orlando, if you included the county and city police. Huidekoper finished his frostee, dropped the container to the ground, yawned and decided to drive Route 11 to Daytona, where he knew he could get breakfast for free.

  6

  Stanley Smith drove the Chevrolet quietly into the carport alongside Betty Jo’s house and left the lights on while he unlocked the luggage compa
rtment and brought out the suitcase. For the first time, he noticed that the left rear tail light was smashed, and not burning. He swore quietly. The woman was careless. Because of that light, he could have been stopped by the police. Anything that attracted attention was dangerous.

  He took the suitcase into the house, peered into the bedroom, and saw Betty Jo was sleeping, her flaccid face looking grained and misshapen against the pillow. She was no doll without her makeup, he thought, but she had been useful, and would be useful again. He undressed, crawled into bed without waking her, and was soon asleep.

  The sunlight was streaming into the room when he awoke. Betty Jo was dressed and standing at the side of the bed, a tray in her hands. “Orange juice, hot cakes, maple syrup, bacon, marmalade, and coffee,” she said. “How would you like this kind of service every morning?”

  “I’d like it fine,” he said. The woman was marriage-crazy.

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if you were here all the time? Have you ever thought about getting out of the Air Force, Stan?”

  “Lots of times. But I’ve still got a year and a half to do.”

  She set the tray at the foot of the bed, saw the suitcase on the floor within reach of his hand, and said, “Is that yours?”

  “No. Belongs to one of the fellows I drove to Jacksonville. He forgot it. I’ll get it to him when he comes back.”

  “Oh. Do you have to go back to the base today, dear?”

  Smith sat up, drank the orange juice, and said, “Yes. I’m on twenty-four-hour pass.”

  “What about tomorrow?”

  “Can’t see you tomorrow. Have to work Saturday night. I swapped nights with Cusack. You know, my roommate. Maybe I’ll see you Sunday.”

  She kissed him, and turned to the mirror to use her lipstick. She had to leave for work. He said, “Say, Betty Jo.”

  “Yes?”

  “You’ve got a busted tail light.”

  “Oh, have I?” she said. “I didn’t see it.”

  He could tell she was lying. “You sure have. Get it fixed.”

  “Okay, I’ll get it fixed today, dear,” she said. She started to kiss him again, remembered her lipstick and barely brushed his hair with her mouth, and left.

  It was a relief to have her out of the house. He finished breakfast, put the tray on a chair, and lay back on the pillow, staring at the ceiling, thinking. Getting the stuff off the submarine had been simple. Getting it on to the base was quite another matter. They were examining everything that went through the gate. He suspected that they would even be fluoroscoping all incoming mail and express parcels.

  So the plan to follow was the one he had conceived first, the simple and open way, so matter-of-fact and meshed with routine that suspicion would be impossible. Every Friday afternoon Ciocci came to the city to requisition supplies for the mess. When Ciocci returned to Hibiscus this Friday afternoon he would have a passenger, and an extra package. Even if the package was inspected, which seemed improbable, its contents would appear normal. He got out of bed, opened the suitcase, and counted the bombs. Five, as before.

  At ten o’clock Smith took a taxi downtown, and went shopping. He bought what he needed, five standard one-quart thermos bottles covered with imitation leather, and made sure they were packed in their original cartons. He returned to Betty Jo’s house and opened the store’s package carefully, for it would have to be rewrapped. He removed the five thermos bottles, each heavy as if filled with fluid, from their padded niches in the suitcase. He compared them with the bottles he had just bought. They looked identical. A thermos bottle was a thermos bottle. Whether you bought them in Stockholm, Sweden, or Orlando, Florida, they were the same. Only minute examination of their bottoms would show any difference. It was necessary that the thermos casing of the bombs not be airtight, for their trigger was the weight of air. The five from the submarine he dropped into the store’s cartons, and carefully rewrapped them. The five empties he placed in the suitcase.

  At one o’clock that afternoon Smith appeared at the parking lot, opposite the courthouse, that Ciocci always used. The blue Air Force pickup truck was there, as usual. Smith climbed into the front seat, put his package in the back with the other bundles, and waited for Ciocci. In an hour Ciocci returned to the lot, arms laden. Smith got out and helped him and said, “Saw your truck. How about a ride back to the base, Sergeant?”

  “Sure,” said Ciocci. On the way back to the base Smith listened to the latest poop on the missing bombers. The concensus of opinion, based on what the mess attendants and cooks had been hearing at meals, was that all of SAC would soon be back flying the old 47’s and 52’s. Most of the command pilots believed there was something radically wrong with the 99. “What makes it worse,” Ciocci said, “is that they can’t figure out what it is. That’s why they’re shook.”

  At Hibiscus main gate the guards stopped them and they showed their passes and ID cards and Ciocci exhibited his requisition list. “Been buying crockery and junk for the mess,” he said. “Want to look?”

  An Air Police sergeant checked the license plate and base number on the truck and examined the requisition list. He peered into the back of the truck, and estimated the time it would take his detail to go into each one. Behind the truck a line of vehicles began to grow. The sergeant waved Ciocci on.

  The bombs were on the base.

  Smith helped Ciocci unload at the mess hall, and set his own package aside. “That one yours?” Ciocci asked.

  “Yes,” Smith said. “This one’s mine.”

  7

  While Smith was carrying his package from the mess hall to Barracks 37, General Keatton was holding his sixth or seventh conference of the day—he had lost count. This one was with Jesse Price and Katharine Hume, and it was bizarre as a meeting of California flying-saucer fans. Keatton knew Miss Hume vaguely, from the Pentagon. He knew she represented the AEC on the Intentions of the Enemy Group and therefore, despite her sex and age, must be of some stature. Since she had arrived at Hibiscus with Price he also assumed she was the major’s girl. The girl was doing most of the talking. She spoke with the detachment and technical knowledge, and in the military jargon, of a skilled staff officer presenting a problem to a class in the National War College. She was telling him that an attack on the United States was already in motion and that it was up to him, Keatton, to save the country.

  Keatton would have called this melodramatic nonsense, except that he was all but convinced that the girl and Price were right. After a man has witnessed the explosion of a hydrogen bomb, and the performance of the new guided missiles, he can never look upon the world in the same way again. To Keatton, no prophecy could be more melodramatic than what he had already seen.

  Keatton’s day had progressed from seeming trivia—a report of a suitcase being brought ashore, mysteriously, on the north Florida coast—to this apocalyptic forecast from the full red lips of a striking blonde—and yet he was aware that there could be a link between the two. He had joined with the Chief of Naval Operations in a request to press and radio that the Marine’s story not be made public. Lundstrom had said, “If we can keep it quiet for a while, that airman in the green-and-white car is going to try to get on this base, or maybe Mac Dill or Pinecastle, with that suitcase. When he does, we’re going to know it.” Press and radio had agreed, and the incident was not being publicized.

  Now Price was urging him to keep the B-99 in operation, for when the attack came, the 99 would be the only aircraft certain to get through. “So long as you don’t ground the Nine-Nines,” Price was saying, “they can’t win, and if they can’t win they won’t strike.”

  “You may be completely right,” Keatton said, “but the decision is not entirely in my hands. I can be overruled. I am giving orders to SAC to resume normal operation tonight. But if we lose one more plane, I’m afraid I’ll have to start replacing the Nine-Nines with reserve aircraft. After all, we know what’s happening to the Nine-Nines, we’re only guessing about the Russians.”

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p; “It has to be sabotage—pressure bombs,” Jesse said. He realized that he had overextended his credit with the general. He had been able to present the group’s theory—this alone had seemed impossible only a few days before—now he was pressing his case too hard. Now he was bankrupt of influence.

  “No, it doesn’t, son,” the general said. “You aren’t aware of all the facts. That Nine-Nine from Corpus Christi was carrying air-to-air rockets. Explosives in the warheads are like that which burned Lear’s clothing. Maybe the rockets were defective. Ordnance is working on it now. And we’ve examined every aircraft in SAC. Thus far, no pressure bombs, no tampering.”

  Jesse knew that the interview was over. He said, “Yes sir. There’s just one more thing. Can I remain here for a while on detached duty?”

  “Yes,” Keatton said. “I’m sure you can help Buddy Conklin.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Jesse said. When he and Katy were outside he said, “Well, at least I’m still in the Air Force.”

  8

  As protocol required, Felix Fromburg, upon his arrival in Havana, had gone first to police headquarters to express an interest by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the robbery of Robert Gumol, banker from Upper Hyannis, Pennsylvania. He was introduced to the chief of police, and passed down the chain of command to José González, a lieutenant of detectives who had been placed in charge of the case, a man of much humor who could no longer be surprised at the lengths to which the American turistas would go to achieve disaster.