Gwen was in the shower. He could hear the water running. When he went to her bedroom door, she called out, "Vernon, is that you?" Even competing with the shower, her voice---with its flawless English accent, which he liked so much---sounded mellow and exciting. He thought: Small wonder Gwen had so much success with passengers. He had seen them appear to melt---the men especially---when her natural charm was turned toward them.
He called back, "Yes, honey."
Her filmy underthings were laid out on the bed---panties, sheer nylons; a transparent bra, flesh colored, with a girdle of the same material; a French silk, hand-embroidered slip. Gwen's uniform might be standard, but beneath it she believed in expensive individuality. His senses quickened; he moved his eyes away reluctantly.
"I'm glad you came early," she called again. "I want to have a talk before we leave."
"Sure, we've time."
"You can make tea, if you like."
"Okay."
She had converted him to the English habit of tea at all times of day, though he had scarcely ever drunk tea at all until knowing Gwen. But now he often asked for it at home, a request which puzzled Sarah, particularly when he insisted on it being correctly made---the pot warmed first, as Gwen had taught him, the water still boiling at the instant it touched the tea.
He went to the tiny kitchen, where he knew his way around, and put a kettle of water on the stove. He poured milk into a jug from a carton in the refrigerator, then drank some milk himself before putting the carton back. He would have preferred a Scotch and soda, but, like most pilots, abstained from liquor for twenty-four hours before a flight. Out of habit he checked his watch; it showed a few minutes before 8:00 P.M. At this moment, he realized, the sleek, long-range Boeing 707 jet which he would command on its five-thousand mile flight to Rome, was being readied for him at the airport.
He heard the shower stop. In the silence he began humming once again. Happily. 0 Sole Mio.
07
THE BLUSTERING, biting wind across the airfield was as strong as ever, and still driving the heavily falling snow before it.
Inside his car, Mel Bakersfeld shivered. He was heading for runway one seven, left, which was being plowed, after leaving runway three zero and the stranded Aéreo-Mexican jet. Was the shivering due to the cold outside, Mel wondered, or to memory, which the scent of trouble a few minutes ago, plus the nagging reminder from the old injury of his foot, had triggered?
The injury had happened sixteen years ago off the coast of Korea when Mel had been a Navy pilot flying fighter missions from the carrier Essex. Through the previous twelve hours (he remembered clearly, even now) he had had a presentiment of trouble coming. It wasn't fear---like others, he had learned to live with that; rather, a conviction that something fateful, possibly final, was moving inexorably toward him. Next day, in a dogfight with a MIG-15, Mel's Navy F9F-5 had been shot down into the sea.
He managed a controlled ditching, but though unhurt himself, his left foot was trapped by a jammed rudder pedal. With the airplane sinking fast---an F9F-5 had the floating characteristics of a brick---Mel used a survival-kit hunting knife to slash desperately, wildly, at his foot and the pedal. Somehow, underwater, his foot came free. In intense pain, half-drowned, he surfaced.
He had spent the next eight hours in the sea before being picked up, unconscious. Later he learned he had severed the ligaments in front of his ankle, so that the foot extended from his leg in an almost straight line.
In time, Navy medics repaired the foot, though Mel had never flown---as a pilot---since then. But at intervals the pain still returned, reminding him that long ago, as on other later occasions, his instinct for trouble had been right. He had the same kind of instinct now.
Handling his car cautiously, being careful to retain his bearinp in the darkness and restricted visibility, Mel was nearing runway one seven, left. This was the runway which, the tower chief had indicated, Air Traffic Control would seek to use when the wind shifted as was forecast to happen soon.
At the moment, on the airfield, two runways were in use: one seven, right, and runway two five.
Lincoln International had five runways altogether. Through the past three days and nights they had represented the front line of the battle between the airport and the storm.
The longest and widest of the five was three zero, the runway now obstructed by Aéreo-Mexican. (With a change of wind and an aircraft approaching from the opposite direction, it could also be runway one two. The figures indicated compass headings of 300 and 120 degrees.) This runway was almost two miles long and as wide as a short city block; an airport joke claimed that one end could not be seen from the other because of the earth's curvature.
Each of the other four runways was half a mile or so shorter, and less wide.
Without ceasing, since the storm began, the miles of runways had been plowed, vacuumed, brushed, and sanded. The motorized equipment---several million dollars' worth of roaring diesels---had stopped only minutes at a time, mainly for refueling or relieving crews. It was work which air travelers never saw at close hand because no aircraft used a fresh-cleared runway until the surface had been inspected and declared safe. Standards were exacting. Half an inch of slush or three inches of powdery snow were maximums allowable for jets. More than that would be sucked into engines and endanger operation.
It was a pity, Mel Bakersfeld reflected, that runway snow teams were not more on public view. The sight was spectacular and stirring. Even now, in storm and darkness, approaching the massed equipment from the rear, the effect was impressive. Giant columns of snow cascaded to the right in arcs of a hundred and fifty feet. The arcs were framed in vehicle searchlights, and shimmered from the added color of some twenty revolving beacons---one on the roof of each vehicle in the group.
Airport men called the group a Conga Line.
It had a head, a tail, a body, and an entourage, and it progressed down a runway with the precision of choreography.
A convoy leader was the head. He was a senior foreman from airport maintenance and drove an airport car---bright yellow, like all other equipment in the Line. The leader set the Conga Line pace, which was usually fast. He had two radios and remained permanently in touch with the Snow Desk and Air Traffic Control. By a system of lights, he could signal drivers following---green for "speed up," amber for "maintain pace," red for "slow down," and flashing red for "stop." He was required to carry in his head a detailed map of the airport, and must know precisely where he was, even on the darkest night, as now.
Behind the convoy leader, its driver, like an orchestra's first violinist, was the number one plow---tonight a mammoth Oshkosh with a big main blade ahead, and a wing blade to the side. To the rear of number one plow, and on its right, was number two. The first plow heaved the snow aside; the second accepted the load from the first and, adding more, heaved both lots farther.
Then came a Snowbiast, in echelon with the plows, six hundred roaring horsepower strong. A Snowblast cost sixty thousand dollars and was the Cadillac of snow clearance. With mighty blowers it engulfed the snow which both plows piled, and hurled it in a herculean arc beyond the runway's edge.
In a second echelon, farther to the right, were two more plows, a second Snowblast.