by John Boyd
By heavens, Hansen thought.
“… and the IGD’s have been forwarded to Shiloh by General Ware. Incidentally, General, where are they?”
“In your private stores in the bunker. Admiral, in two cases marked candied pineapple rings. Each can is stamped on the bottom with the name of the state it is assigned to.”
The admiral continued: “Once we have completed the remaining states, the Cherokees will be ready for arming. They have neutrino warheads, so our physical facilities will be relatively undamaged.
“Dr. Houston Drexel has been left behind to deliver an ultimatum, signed by the President, to the head of the FEM. It directs the FEM to deliver aboard the hospital ship Gluckstag, now moored at Charleston, South Carolina, one thousand seven hundred uncontaminated and nubile females, between ages seventeen and nineteen, to the dock at Thule by midnight, December twenty. If by that time the shipment has not been received, the Cherokee Cluster will be launched.
“After the launch, troops will board transport planes and be flown to specified re-seeding areas as conventional inseminators.
“If the conditions of the ultimatum are met, the Cherokee Cluster will not be launched. Conventional breeding will be accelerated in the ice bunkers. In eighteen years, I shall return with an army trained to use the bayonet on recalcitrant females. That, gentlemen, is Operation Ultimate Thule in broad outline. Particular details will be found in the folder. You will neither send nor receive personal mail, and Shiloh will maintain radio silence at all times. Official communications will take place only between the Acting Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Beauchamp, and Thule Air Force Base. I am now open to questions from the floor.”
“What if they nuke us first?” Talliaferro asked.
“Dr. Drexel is delaying the delivery of the ultimatum to permit us to arm the Cherokee Cluster with IGD’s for all states. For ten days, they’ll not know where to nuke. Then, if they should attempt to melt the Greenland ice cap, Washington would be up to the Capitol’s dome in water before they could get down to us.”
“Admiral,” Flugel said, “if you’re hitting the Ozark area, you can count me out.”
“We’re hitting the Ozarks,” the admiral said.
“Then, excuse me from this conference,” Flugel said, “because I’ve got me a mine shaft in the Ozarks and a girl to share my shaft.”
Labor, Interior, and the Attorney General decided to return. “But where’ll we land?” Farnsworth asked.
“I’ll take you as far as Arkansas,” Flugel said, “and demonstrate parachuting techniques. I’ll guarantee that you’ll get to the ground.”
“We’ll provide the plane,” the admiral said, “and the President’s pilot. He has already decided to return, but Air Force One will stay with the President.
“The decision will be Carey’s, not ours. If she does choose cremation, which I doubt, it will be a humane death. What cleaner, more antiseptic manner of demise is there than vaporization? No estates to settle, no litigation, no loved ones left to mourn, and no funeral expenses.”
After the meeting, Hansen returned to the press section, his mind troubled. Death was his profession, but the slaughter of millions of his countrymen made his job distasteful. No matter how humane vaporization might be, its advantages were offset by the fact that his wife and daughter would be a part of the vapor. Benjamin Franklin Hansen would die with the women he loved, and he would so inform Admiral Primrose when they reached Thule.
There was no time for another poker session. Already the ship’s compression system was creaking and groaning with their descent, and the players all sat apart, somber. General Ware motioned to Hansen to come and sit beside him.
“Ben, are you staying or going back?”
“General, it’s a hard decision to make. As a military man, I appreciate our situation, but I have a wonderful wife and daughter at point zero.”
“Your wife had not withdrawn, I take it?”
“No, sir.”
“Mine hadn’t either,” the general said. “She was more loving than ever. Ben, I can’t talk freely, and I’m not telling you how to decide, but my advice to you is to stay with Primrose.”
“Do you approve of his plan?”
“I helped formulate it,” the general said. “It’s called the Primrose-Ware hard line. My big bluffs always work.”
Ware lapsed into silence as the plane’s lights flashed the signal for safety belts. As Hansen strapped himself into his seat, he had the definite feeling that Ware had been trying to tell him something without compromising security. He decided to take Ware’s advice and stay with Primrose.
After Flugel’s gentle touchdown at Thule, they were greeted at the airport by a cold blast of air and the youngest general in the Air Force, General Lindenberry. As they shook hands all around, Lindenberry said to the admiral, “My men wish to thank you, sir, for…”
“We’ll discuss personnel later, General. Is Transport Service’s plane number thirty-six ready for immediate departure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. General Flugel will be returning to Uncle Sugar with the Secretaries of Labor and Interior and the President’s personal pilot. What’s the plane taking off now?”
“Naval Air Transport Service’s number twelve. Admiral.”
“Very well. After TS thirty-six takes off, close the airport to all traffic. General Flugel, I’m ordering you to follow Flight Plan A to confuse the FEM’s as to our location. Approach Kennedy from the southwest, giving the call letters for Air Force Two. The Vice President’s returning from the Azores, so the tower will not be suspicious. Use the standard approach to Kennedy, but once you’re over the field, gun the plane through the sound barrier and head wherever you wish. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Flugel answered.
The admiral and general shook hands, and the general’s party boarded a small jeep to be taken to their plane. It was seven in the morning, but it was pitch dark in Greenland.
The President’s group watched from the waiting room window as the blue flame from Flugel’s jet moved down the runway, rose into the darkness, and faded in the east. Primrose, standing apart with Hansen, said, “I knew Porky couldn’t wait six weeks.”
Hansen tried to cheer him up. “Well, sir, he’ll be eating cornbread and black-eyed peas for lunch.”
“No, Captain,” the admiral said. “He won’t last till breakfast. Not a word of this to the President, but Flugel will never reach Kennedy.”
Almost to himself, he continued, “The FEM’s must be shown that we’re in earnest. There’s a lead line connected to Porky’s altimeter, and the line’s connected to a transformer. The transformer’s connected to an electromagnetic plunger, and the plunger will connect to a ball of plutonium. The plutonium’s beneath the deck of the cockpit one foot forward of Flugel’s crotch.”
Hansen stiffened at the implication in Primrose’s words. General Ware had steered him right.
“Flugel will follow my flight plan,” Primrose continued, “because he loves to burst eardrums. He’ll be forty degrees, fifteen minutes, north latitude, seventy-three degrees west longitude when he drops to ten thousand feet. The bomb is self-armed at ten thousand feet, going up, and it is activated at ten thousand feet, coming down. General Flugel is going to solve lower Manhattan’s traffic problems for some time to come.”
Suddenly the admiral turned and walked over to Lindenberry. “General, we’re ready to assume quarters in Shiloh.”
Via jet-propelled snow cab, it was an hour’s drive to the bunker, and after the high-speed elevator had dropped them to the 5,000-foot level, Hansen was surprised at the size of the carpeted wardroom which acted as a reception hall.
From a diagram spread on the wardroom table, General Lindenberry showed them the layout and their accommodations. The wardroom was at the hub of three projecting spokes which radiated under the ice. Along one spoke were aligned the staterooms of the Presidential party. Along another were the administrative offi
ces, communications facilities, and enlisted men’s quarters. The third was designed for rest and recreation, but the R&R spoke ended in a huge storeroom, large enough to house a blimp.
“I hope. General,” the admiral commented, “that your supply sergeant can find my preserved pineapple rings in that hangar.”
“Preserved pineapple rings must be a new fad in the States, sir,” the general said. “Those nurses you sent to celebrate the election with the headquarters crew were…”
“What nurses?”
“Those fifty Navy nurses. Of course, we realized we didn’t need a physical…”
Admiral Primrose, leaning over the chart, broke in. “Your communications room. Ah, here it is.”
General Ware said, “What have Navy nurses to do with canned pineapples?”
“Well, sir, the girls insisted on a can of preserved pineapple rings apiece…” Lindenberry began.
“Did you meet the pilot of NATS number twelve?” the admiral asked.
“Yes, sir. Commander Howells.”
“Did the crew pilfer the pineapples for the girls?” General Ware asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“General Lindenberry,” the admiral said, “those were bogus nurses with bogus orders.”
“Sir, I didn’t doubt your orders…”
“But you did doubt the nurses?” General Ware snapped.
“Well, sir, you had to see them to believe them… For a can of pineapples…”
“Never mind, General Lindenberry,” the admiral said, and glanced at his watch. “General Ware, only three persons knew the purpose of Shiloh, you and I and the President. Isn’t that correct. General?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then one of us is responsible for this security leak.”
“Self-evident, sir.”
“Only two persons were aware that the Cherokee Cluster needed inertial guidance devices. Isn’t that true. General?”
“Correct, Admiral.”
“You and I were those two persons, so the President is eliminated as the source of the leak.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Only one person was aware that the IGD’s were being shipped as candied pineapple rings. Correct, General?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You were that person, so I’m eliminated as the source of the security leak.”
“Yes, sir.”
“General, you’re under arrest for treason.”
“Well, I’ll be shot at sunrise.”
If it had been August over Greenland, General Ware would have been approximately correct. His trial took fifteen minutes.
Admiral Primrose did not go topside to observe the execution, but summoned Hansen and Lindenberry to the communications shack where Lindenberry telephoned Thule to get the call letters of NATS number 12.
Over shortwave radio, Admiral Primrose contacted the pilot, and introduced himself. “Commander, will you circle at forty fifteen north, seventy-three west, until you pick up Air Force Two, and provide Veep with an honorary escort into Kennedy?”
“Aye, aye, sir,” came the voice of the NATS pilot.
“Incidentally, Commander Howells, the pilot of the Veep’s plane is a Gyrene. You have my permission to buzz him a couple of times to show him the Navy still has wings.”
“Thank you. Admiral!”
“That’s the spirit, Commander. Report when you sight the Veep.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Twenty minutes later, through a crackle of static that could not conceal the Navy pilot’s enthusiasm, he reported: “I have him on my screen, sir. I’ve got the altitude and the guts, Admiral. I’m going in. Tallyho.”
“Keep transmitting,” the admiral said. “I want to hear this.”
There were three long minutes of static, and then there was silence.
“General, will you send a dispatch to CNO, Washington, reporting that NATS number twelve crashed on arrival at Thule with the loss of all hands?”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
As the general telephoned the base in compliance. Primrose ushered Hansen into the passageway.
“Well, Ben,” he said, “we’ve denied the old girl proof that she got our guidance devices, and when she sees that second sun rising in the northeast, Mother Carey’s going to chicken.”
A subdued group of witnesses returning from the execution greeted them in the wardroom. Each man sat apart, oppressed by what he had seen and by the knowledge that the doom of all had been sealed.
Admiral Primrose shattered their gloom. “I know, gentlemen, that you mourn the regrettable death of General Ware. His execution will not be entered on his service record.
“I mourn General Ware because he loved to bluff, and he’s not here to see us pull the greatest bluff in history. Gentlemen, I’ve just learned that the plane bearing Dr. Carey’s nurses crashed at sea. That old biddy doesn’t know our Cherokee Cluster is not activated, and we’re going to bluff her out of one thousand seven hundred prime pieces of poontang.”
It had been a wedding of champagne and tears. Women whom McCormick had never seen used his marriage to Cora Lee as their last chance at a sentimental binge. After the ceremony, Dr. Carey’s all-girl crew got the yacht away from the dock at Newport News with a minimum of scraped paint and the loss of only one bollard off the dock. They sailed for the West Indies.
While hauling in a tarpon off Martinique, McCormick fell into the sea and caught a cold. The cold grew worse and finally settled in his groin, so McCormick put in for Charlotte Amalie and its naval infirmary.
He put on his uniform to call at the medical facility, which was being phased out, and went in to see the medical officer, an old commander with the air of a family physician.
“Doctor,” McCormick apologized, “I don’t usually make a sick call out of a bad cold, but this one keeps hanging on, and it’s settled in my privates. I got a runny nose fore and aft.”
After the inspection, the doctor nodded his head in sympathy and wrote out a prescription. “Now, Commander, I’m writing you a prescription for gonorrhea. If it doesn’t clear up the trouble in two or three days, you come back and we’ll start treating that bad cold.”
“You telling me I got a dose of clap, Doctor?”
“Don’t sound disappointed, Commander. You may go down in medical history as the last case on record.”
McCormick went back to the Miss Vita. The quartermistress on watch told him Cora Lee was sunbathing on the fantail. He gave the girls liberty for the afternoon, cast off all lines, and went to the bridge to set the automatic pilot on a course that would clear the harbor. Then he went below, opened the throttle to flank speed, and unhooked all engine-room fire hoses. He set the auxiliary fire pump going and opened the main sea valve to the fire hoses. The valve was now a scuttlecock. He climbed the ladder to topside and went aft.
Bikinied to the sunlight, Cora Lee had been drowsing on the after deck. She awakened to the throb of engines, and looked up into the angry face of her husband. “What’s the matter, honey?”
“Woman, I trusted you. Pure and undefiled, I came to you and courted you. I gave you flowers. I gave you candy. I gave you love. I gave you my name. Then, you turn right around, Jezebel, and give me a dose.”
“That dose something like the drizzles?”
“It’s something you caught when you let another man do it to you.”
“Honey, no man’s ever done it to me but you.”
Her unfeigned bewilderment drew him up short. She might be a liar, but she was not an actress.
“Cora Lee, are you telling me you’ve never done it with another man?”
“I didn’t say that. I said no man ever did it to me.”
Her remark confused him. “Are you telling me that you did it to a man without him doing it to you?”
“Angus, I’m not certain sure I ever did it to a living man.”
“Cora Lee, you either did or you didn’t. You can be sure of that.”
“No. I can’
t be sure I did it to a living man, and the one I’m sure of, I’m not sure was living.”
McCormick’s anger subsided into confusion. Cora Lee was honestly trying to explain something to him. He could almost see her mind groping for words. He drew up a deck stool beside her chair and forced calmness into his voice. “Let’s take this one at a time. First, who was the living man you’re not sure of?”
“That FBI man, I might have done it to him, but I was all doped up. As I recollect, we were talking in Chaucer. Now that don’t seem right to me, does it you, Angus, for folks to haul off and start talking Chaucer?”
He nodded agreement. It didn’t seem right for two people to start talking in Chaucer when he had never heard of the language, and he’d heard a lot of languages.
“Now, I thought I did it to him,” she continued, “but I could have dreamed it all along. All I can remember of that boy was his eyes. Seems to me I’d remember more than just his eyes.”
McCormick knew how to clear up her puzzlement on the first man very easily. “Tell me, Cora Lee, did this FBI man ever come back?”
“He never did, Angus.”
“If he didn’t come back, you just dreamed him. So we can forget him. Now, how about the man you wasn’t sure was alive?”
“When I was in that monastery where you met me, the nurse told me a dead monk was laid out in the next room. One day I took a shower, and I didn’t have anything else to do so I opened the door and peeked in. There he was, stretched out on some planks and cold as clay. All the time I’d been there, I’d been wondering if them monks wore bloomers under their skirts. I was naked as a jaybird, but he was dead, so I slipped into his room and felt up under his skirt. He didn’t have nary a stitch underneath that skirt, Angus, and when I touched him, Lo and Behold! Part of him was resurrecting. I remembered from the Scriptures how they put a virgin in with King David to see if he was alive or not. There I was, a virgin, with that poor old monk lying there cold and dead, maybe, with nobody to take care of him. So I got up on the plank and squatted. Then I heard somebody coming and I figured I’d better get out of there, so I jumped down. But Brother Johannis jumped up, and he started grabbing at me, yelling, ‘Come back, you angel of Babylon.’