[FIVE]
Officers’ Club Jackson Army Air Base Jackson, Mississippi 1745 5 August 1943
The officers’ club was almost the opposite of elegant. It occupied the lower floor of a simple wooden two-story building. Twelve Transient Bachelor Officers’ Quarters—cubicles of plywood furnished with two beds, two tables, and two chairs—were upstairs and had a common latrine.
There were two virtually identical buildings on either side of the officers’ club, all four devoted to housing transient officers—almost always instructor pilots and their students—who for one reason or another had to spend the night at the auxiliary field.
There were two parts to the club, The Mess and The Lounge. The mess was a cafeteria serving Army-style food. Two tables, each seating four, had white tablecloths and bore signs lettered FIELD GRADE OFFICERS, which meant majors and up.
They had waiter service. Everybody else walked the cafeteria line while holding a Masonite tray on which they loaded food selected from steam trays, then carried their tray to one of the thirty four-place tables covered with oilcloth.
When Hughes and Frade walked into the officers’ mess, Major Frade, who was a field-grade officer in another life, took one look at the field-grade officers’ tables and motioned for Hughes to get into the cafeteria line.
There was a small problem after they had selected their dinner and tried paying for it. Hughes attempted to pay the cashier—an Air Forces sergeant—with a crisp hundred-dollar bill, one of a sheaf of hundred-dollar bills he had in his shirt pocket.
“I can’t cash something like that, for Christ’s sake!” the sergeant said.
Cletus Frade, likewise, had nothing smaller than hundred-dollar bills in his wallet. He also had some Argentine, Brazilian, and Mexican currencies, but the Air Forces sergeant quickly rejected these as well, asking, “For Christ’s sake, does this look like a fucking bank?”
Five minutes later, the cashier returned from The Lounge and counted out and handed to Howard Hughes his change. It came in the form of bills, nothing larger than a five, and several rolls of nickels, dimes, and quarters—a total of $99.30, the cost of each of their meals being thirty-five cents.
By then, there were perhaps twenty officers, almost all of them pilots and lieutenants, backed up behind them in the line, each holding their Masonite tray of dinner.
The food was surprisingly good.
Afterward, they went into The Lounge. It was somewhat dimly lit. There was a bar with a dozen stools and twelve or fifteen four-man tables, these covered with festive bright red oilcloths. The bar stools were all occupied, as were all but two tables at the far end of the room.
Clete and Howard headed for these. They sat at one of them and almost immediately were able to deduce that the tables had not been occupied because they were right in front of an enormous wall-mounted fan that sucked the outside Mississippi midsummer’s humid air into the building and forced it through The Lounge in the hope that it would cool.
Five minutes after that, Clete concluded there was no waiter service.
“I think we have to go to the bar,” he announced.
“Go see if they’ll sell us a bottle, Cletus. We can take it to our room.”
“I don’t have any money they’ll take.”
“And after all I’ve done for you today!”
Hughes walked to the bar, patiently awaited his turn, and returned to the table holding two glasses, each holding what looked like a single ice cube.
“They won’t sell us a bottle, and you can’t take glasses out of the room,” he reported.
“What is this?” Clete said after sipping his drink.
“Rye whiskey.”
“No bourbon?”
“Stupid question, Little Cletus.”
“Mud in your eye, Howard!”
“Fuck you, Little Cletus!”
They tapped glasses.
Five minutes later, three Air Force officers—two captains and a lieutenant, all wearing wings—approached the table.
“Oh, shit . . .” Hughes and Frade muttered almost simultaneously.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” the captain said.
“Good evening,” Frade and Hughes replied almost simultaneously.
“Could you spare a moment for the Army Air Force?” the shorter of the two captains said.
“Certainly,” Hughes said.
They’re half in the bag, Frade thought. And belligerent.
How do I handle this?
Show them my Marine major’s identification?
Or my OSS badge?
Either one will raise more questions with these guys than it will answer.
“You came in with that big airplane, am I right?” the short captain went on.
“Yes, we did,” Hughes said.
“I never saw one of those before. What is it?”
“It’s a Lockheed C-69. They call it the Constellation,” Hughes said.
“You were flying it, were you?”
“Yes. He and I were flying it,” Hughes said, indicating Frade with a nod of his head.
“Had a little trouble, did you? That’s why you set down here?”
“We erred on the side of caution,” Frade said.
“You ‘erred on the side of caution’? You mean, you were just being careful?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Frade said.
“Where’d you come from? In other words, where are you based?”
“At the Lockheed plant in Burbank,” Hughes replied.
“And where are you headed? Where were you headed, before you erred on the side of caution and landed here?”
“I’m afraid that’s classified,” Frade said.
The short captain’s chest seemed to puff out. “What did you say?”
“I said, I’m afraid that’s classified,” Frade repeated.
“You’re a civilian, right?”
“That’s right.”
"But you do recognize this uniform? You understand I’m a captain in the Army Air Force?”
“Of course,” Frade said.
“So here you sit, a goddamn civilian in an Army Air Force officers’ club on an Army Air Force field, into which you flew an Air Force airplane—”
“Excuse me, Captain,” a voice said somewhat sharply.
Frade turned and in the dim lighting saw an Army MP officer, a major, in full regalia, MP brassard, and a white leather Sam Browne belt with a .45 ACP pistol in a white holster.
What the hell is this all about? Clete thought, then took a closer look at the military police officer. Jesus, am I losing my mind?
“All I was doing, Major,” the Army Air Force captain said, suddenly not so cocksure, “was asking this civilian—”
“You didn’t get the word that no one was to attempt to speak to these gentlemen? To communicate in any way with them?” Second Lieutenant Leonard Fischer, Signal Corps, demanded rather nastily.
“Huh?”
“The response I expect from you, Captain, is ‘Yes, sir’ or ‘No, sir.’ Now, which is it?”
“No, sir. I didn’t hear anything about anything like that.”
“Well, now you have,” Fischer said.
“Yes, sir.”
“I suggest that on your way to your quarters, you spread the word.”
“Yes, sir.”
The two captains and the lieutenant made a beeline for the door.
Fischer turned to Hughes and Frade.
“Now, what are you two doing in here? You were told to be as inconspicuous as possible.”
"We were going to have a drink in our room, Major,” Clete said. “But they wouldn’t sell us a bottle or let us take glasses from the bar.”
“Well, if you insist on drinking, you’ll have to do it in your quarters,” Fischer said. “Go to them now. I will bring you something to drink. You understand I’ll have to tell the colonel about this.”
Five minutes later, the MP major, carrying a bottle of rye whiskey, glasses, and a small tin bucket full of ice, walked into BOQ Room 7, which was being shared by Frade and Hughes.