by Pat Frank
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.