by Pat Frank
They had not seen each other since before Korea, and when Jesse walked into the administration building at nine in the morning, showered, shaved, and in fresh uniform, but still groggy after only three hours’ sleep, he was not at first recognized. Conklin sat at a desk in a corner of the exec office, determinedly diminishing a pile of papers before him, reading teletype dispatches, and giving quick decisions on the telephone and intercom system. Busy as he was, his desk was like a small and peaceful island around which surged and eddied a frenzied tide. Hibiscus was in a flap, and had been since Monday. Conklin noted the presence of a strange officer in the room and said, “Yes, Major?”
“General, I’m Jesse Price. Do you remember—”
Conklin got on his feet and stretched out his hand, embarrassed. “Of course. Jesse Price. I’m sorry. Didn’t know—”
Jesse grinned. “It’s the patch, isn’t it? Might as well be wearing a mask.”
“Looks very distinguished. Don’t worry about it. Should have recognized you anyway because I knew you were here. It’s in the morning security report. With a woman. Who is she, your fiancée?”
“No. . . . Yes, of course she is. At least I think so.”
“You aren’t sure?”
“It happened in a hurry. Just yesterday.”
“Well, congratulations, but you won’t find this a very romantic place right now.”
“Didn’t come for romance,” Jesse said. “Came to see General Keatton.”
“Courier run?”
“No. Pentagon business.”
Conklin frowned, no longer boyish or even very friendly. “I’ve got half the Pentagon in here with me now. I don’t advise you to disturb General Keatton today, unless its priority operations. This B-Nine-Nine thing is getting weirder by the minute. Look what came in just a while ago.” He shoved a strip of teletype paper across the desk.
It was the report of the munitions experts at Wright Field. Burns on the clothing of Master Sergeant Lear had been caused by high explosive, probably of a plastic variety sometimes used in mines, shell noses, and bombs. The burns had not been caused by flaming fuel, or by the propellent powder that fired the ejection pod.
What had been in the back of Jesse’s mind, irritating as a forgotten name scratching at the skin of conscious memory, now burst out “I think I’ve got your answers,” he said. “Take me in to Keatton.”
That laboratory analysis from the Wright laboratories was one new factor, among others, that Keatton was considering in his improvised command post at Hibiscus. It was the first tangible fact that definitely pointed to sabotage, and yet it was by no means conclusive. A B-99’s defensive armament included rockets whose warheads contained the same type of explosive that had seared Sergeant Lear’s clothing. Corpus Christi was being asked whether Georgia Peach carried such rockets on its last mission.
At that moment, Keatton’s most troublesome problem centered in Washington. Pressure mounted to ground the B-99. It was reflected in the compendium of newspaper editorials and radio commentary wired nightly from the Pentagon. It assailed his ears as well as his eyes. Within the hour he had been called, long distance, by two influential members of the House Armed Services Committee who were being harassed, in turn, by constituents with sons among the B-99 crewmen. Keatton understood, in full, their concern. The Congress would be back in session again after New Year’s, the Administration majority was thin, and at times non-existent, and there could be a shift in power on such an issue as the B-99. There had been another inquiry, of greater gravity, from the White House. What, if anything, was Keatton planning to do? The general had told a presidential assistant that he could not and would not act until the facts were established. The assistant had said that was all the President wanted, but that time was also a factor. The White House was being buried in mail. The country demanded an explanation.
Now Keatton had a fact—if it was a fact—and yet it was questionable whether the fact, if and when proved, should be made public. Brigadier-General Platt, his public information officer, insisted that the news should be released at once, but Colonel Lundstrom was furious. Lundstrom pointed out that to hint that the B-99’s were being sabotaged would instantly warn off the saboteurs, and compromise his efforts to nail them. Keatton was aware of another possible complication. Announcement that Georgia Peach had been sabotaged would start an outcry for war, and jeopardize activities of which he knew nothing, but which might be going on at any time through the Department of State. A cry for war might stop the latest negotiations on disarmament and endanger the peace.
It was even possible that the Corpus Christi B-99 had blown for one cause, the plane from Lake Charles because of another, and the three lost out of Hibiscus because of still a third.
The commanding general’s suite at Hibiscus was on the third floor of the long, concrete administration building. Its thermopane picture windows, of double thickness with a vacuum to deaden the ear-torturing wail of jet engines and afterburners at full power, overlooked the flight line and the dazzling white runway ribbons that faded into an infinity of white sand in the hazy distance. The building trembled. Jets were firing up. Abruptly Keatton rose from the desk, turned his back on Platt and Lundstrom, and faced the window.
He had never been able to resist the takeoff of aircraft.
One by one, five B-99’s slid from the hard stands out onto the runway. One by one, at two-minute intervals, they took off. They were colossal, and yet their size was minimized by their grace, like heavyweight fighters perfectly proportioned. Their bodies were gray sharks with white underbellies and tapered tails, their wings slender and rakish as fins. Keatton was moved, as when he had sent out his final B-17 mission from Foggia, over the Alps into Austria.
The B-99 was the last of the big boys. They were untried in battle, their electronic insides a national secret, and yet they were already obsolescent, and probably obsolete. In Keatton’s lifetime the airplane had been born, a flimsy kite of sticks and cotton, had grown to maturity, shrunk the world, decided the greatest of wars, and finally developed into this sleek and lethal creature, its size the largest of its genre, like the dinosaur. And, like the dinosaur, it must bow to evolution. The rockets, ten times faster, were upon it. The latest reports from Wright Field, and the testing mats at Patrick Base, on Cape Canaveral, were astonishing. The Intercontinental Ballistics Missile was no longer a dream of the future. Keatton suspected that if he lived to the age of retirement, these hard stands, if used at all, would support only the ICBM, for the twilight of the heavy bomber was at hand. In time, the ICBM might be supplemented by the IBV—Intercontinental Ballistics Vehicle—which would carry a man in place of the heavier mechanical pilots, would drop a bomb instead of itself being a bomb, and was recoverable.
So he watched the flight of the dinosaurs with pride and pity. Impressive anachronisms they were, their cost heavy not only in dollars. Each had cost the taxes contributed in a year by six or seven thousand clerks and mailmen and laborers, or perhaps by one large corporation. In man hours the cost could hardly be computed. Before the first prototype left the ground, there had been years of theory and planning and testing, then the construction of new factories and retooling, and finally the miracle of mass production. Man hours. Years and years of training for the airmen and ground crews so that eventually one man, in his radarscope, could not fail to see the target. Expensive and obsolete they might be, but at this period in history they were worth it. They were the shields of civilization. Their existence insured the peace. So to Keatton they were beautiful, and he was thankful that at this moment he stood where he could watch their flight.
He heard the door open and the voice of Buddy Conklin saying, “General, Major Price is here to see you.”
He turned, unsurprised, to greet Price. He had lived long enough to always expect the unexpected. “Hello, Major,” he said. “What’s the panic?”
Jesse said, “Sir, I know what’s blowing the Nine-Nines.”
“What?” The word
cracked flat and emphatic, like a ruler slapped on the desk.
“Pressure bombs.”
Keatton’s eyes contracted into blue specks. “Pressure bombs?”
“Like the Germans planted on the Cottontails in Italy. Remember, sir?”
“No. I remember hearing that the Cottontails had a lot of trouble, but that was before I was transferred to the Fifteenth. Tell me about those pressure bombs, son.”
Jess looked around the office and noted the blackboard on the rear wall. “Do you mind if I use this to make a sketch?” he asked.
Keatton sat down on the edge of his desk. “Go right ahead.”
“Those bombs,” Jesse said, “were simply explosive devices activated by a simple altimeter. They looked like this.” Jesse drew a foot-long cylinder and divided it in half with a chalk mark. “On this side,” he said, “was an ordinary bellows. In the middle, a battery and fuse. On the other end, explosives. You sneak the pressure bomb into an aircraft. As the plane rises and the outer air grows thinner the air inside the bellows expands. It keeps on expanding until the end of it makes electrical contact with the battery and fuse. It’s as easy as turning on a flashlight. Then up she goes.”
“Very simple,” Keatton said, “and ingenious. What happened with the Cottontails?”
“The Cottontails,” Jesse said, “were a hard luck B-Twenty-Four group based down on the heel of Italy near Lecce. Everything they did went wrong and the Germans began to harass them. The Luftwaffe always liked to pick on stragglers, whether it was a single plane or a tough luck group. They planted an agent in the Cottontails’ base. Planes began to blow up on the way to target. They usually blew just as the Fifteenth was forming up over the Adriatic, at between eight and nine thousand feet. Finally they caught the spy—I don’t know how. They found one of these pressure bombs. They took the spy out on the end of the runway and shot him. After that, the Cottontails became a pretty good group, but it was really hell on morale when their aircraft were blowing.”
“It’s not very good for morale now,” said Buddy Conklin. They all looked at him but that was all he said.
Keatton asked, “What makes you think pressure bombs are being planted in the Nine-Nines?”
“It’s the time factor mostly. I can’t get it out of my mind. The three planes from this base and the one from Lake Charles all disappeared between eighteen and twenty-five minutes after takeoff. That means they all probably blew up—I am assuming that’s what happened to them—somewhere between eighteen and twenty-eight thousand feet at normal rate of climb. But the one from Texas was up an hour before it blew. It just occurred to me that the Texas plane’s flight plan must have called for low level at the start of his mission—ducking under radar or waiting for escort or something like that. If my hunch is right he blew at the same altitude, too. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Exactly right,” said Keatton.
“Then the analysis from the laboratory at Wright triggered my memory. Same kind of plastic explosive you find in a mine—or a booby trap—and I remembered the Cottontails.”
Buddy Conklin asked a question. “Where did the Kraut spy stick these pressure bombs?”
“In the wheel nacelles, under the wings.”
For a moment they were all silent, a mental picture of the B-24 and the B-99 forming in the mind of each, and each estimating the action he now must take. It was Colonel Lundstrom who spoke first. He addressed his words to Keatton. “I think, sir, that we’d better send a warning to every SAC base.”
“Yes,” said Keatton. “That right now.” The SAC commanding general was back in Omaha, working with his staff on the enormous task of reconverting to B-47’s and B-52’s, if and when the order came. Keatton added: “Authorize SAC to stand down for twenty-four hours. There will be complete inspection of all aircraft. Particularly in the wheel nacelles and other openings accessible to ground crews. You’ll write up the order for me, Lundstrom. I want it circulated out of Omaha immediately.”
Buddy Conklin looked up at the clock over the door as if it had shouted at him. With a single quick movement he stepped to the desk and flipped up a key on the intercom. A voice came out of the little box. “Tower.”
“This is Conklin. Recall the mission!”
“What’s that?” The man in the tower spoke like a southerner, and he spoke slowly.
“This is General Conklin. Recall today’s mission. All five aircraft. Now, damn it!”
“Yes, suh!”
Conklin held the key open and they could hear the man in the tower speaking into the microphone in a clear cadence, an urgent drawl. “Hibiscus Tower to Cornell flight. You are to return to base immediately. . . . Hibiscus Tower to Cornell flight. You are recalled. Return to base immediately. . . . Hibiscus Tower to Cornell One, Two, Three, Four, and Five . . . General says come on home. . . . Hibiscus Tower . . .”
Conklin let the key fall. The administration building was air-conditioned, but sweat beaded his forehead. He looked at the clock again. “Twenty-six minutes from takeoff. That what you make it, sir?”
“I didn’t time it,” said the general. “I saw them off, but I didn’t count time on them.”
They waited, watching the clock. Jess started to fill his pipe, discovered that his fingers wouldn’t behave, and thrust it back into his pocket.
In three minutes Conklin again pressed the intercom key. The voice, shaky, said, “Tower.”
“This is Conklin. Did they acknowledge?”
“Sir, I can’t seem to raise Cornell two and Cornell three. Others are on the way home.”
“Keep trying,” Conklin said. “Let me know if you get them.” He closed the circuit and for an instant placed both palms on the desk, and swayed and seemed about to fall. Then he straightened. His face was white and wet and suddenly he looked very old.
Jesse wanted to speak to General Keatton. He had to tell Keatton all else that was on his mind. “General,” he began, “the reason I’m here—” He closed his mouth. Keatton wasn’t listening. The general was staring through the window, watching for his aircraft, waiting to count his chicks as they came home to roost. Like England, like Italy.
Conklin said, “Jess, come on into the exec office with me. I’ve got to get air-sea rescue going. Lots of other things. Since you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful.”
When they were out in the hallway Conklin put a hand on Jesse’s shoulder and said, “I think we’d better leave the old man to himself for a while. Every time a plane goes in, he dies a little too.”
5
Since he was still under twenty, Phil Cusack regarded Stan Smith as a man of considerable sophistication as well as mature years. Most of the time Smith was taciturn, but once in a while he opened up and spoke learnedly of women, poker, and the ways of rich civilians in big cities, subjects fascinating to Cusack. So Cusack was careful not to antagonize his roommate, and the one thing that made Smith really sore, in addition to having anyone mess around with the gear in his foot locker and closet, was to be prematurely awakened out of sleep. But on this day the news was so big that Cusack shook Smith’s shoulder and woke him up, although it was not quite two o’clock in the afternoon and Smith rarely arose before three. “Say, Stan,” he said, “guess what?”
Smith stirred and growled, rolled over on his back and opened his eyes, and then, surprisingly, sat up in bed without swearing. “Okay, I’ll guess,” he said. “What?”
“Two more Ninety-Nines are gone, and all planes are standing down.”
Smith came out of bed as if his backbone were a bent spring, suddenly released. “We’re standing down? SAC’s standing down?”
“I don’t know. Hibiscus is.” Cusack had never seen Smith move so quickly.
“So there’s been a mutiny, eh?”
Cusack was puzzled. Who in the world ever gave Stan the notion that the aircrews were about to mutiny? Sure, there’d been a lot of griping, but there was griping when nothing went wrong except you served their eggs over lig
htly when they asked for sunny side up. “No, there hasn’t been any mutiny,” Cusack answered. “All that’s happened is that all missions have been called off for the next twenty-four hours. I hear there’s ape sweat out on the flight line. No off duty for ground crews. They’re practically taking those airplanes apart.”
“Looking for something, I guess. Maybe bombs, maybe sabotage?”
“Yeah,” said Cusack, “maybe bombs. Maybe only a loose nut. How would I know?”
Smith found that he was disappointed. For a moment, there, he had thought his job concluded. He’d thought he wouldn’t have to do another. It was like hearing your number called out in a raffle, only the last digit was wrong. It was a letdown, but still the news was encouraging. It showed the extent of their alarm. To convert alarm to despair or panic, and to ground SAC permanently, perhaps only a few more lost planes were needed. He considered lying low for a while now, and allowing his friends in Louisiana and Texas to finish the job. After all, he had done the bulk of the work, and probably taken most of the risks, thus far. He discarded the thought. Masters, Johnson, and Palmer might not have his freedom of action, and efficiency of operation. He would press on to victory, alone if necessary. The greater his personal effort and risk, the greater his eventual reward. They would make him a marshal of the Soviet Union, no less. He would become the youngest marshal in Russia’s history, perhaps the youngest marshal in all history since Napoleon. With his knowledge of the United States, they might appoint him military governor after the capitulation. He would order the execution of the American war criminals, ride in chauffeured Cadillacs and private planes, possess chic and beautiful women like the one he had seen in the mess with the two majors. He would sit on the Presidium, in later years. If he did his job, and if he lived and received his just reward, he would be at the top, among the rulers. “Phil,” he said, “how would you like Saturday night off?”
