She said, “All right, Felix. I’ll take them away in the car Sunday morning. When I find a place I’ll wire you. But where?”
“Care of the consul-general. I’ll have to check in there.”
That’s the way he had left his family. It wasn’t until too late, when he was aboard the night non-stop for Havana, that he began to wish he had told Sarah to follow him to Cuba instead of driving off, with the children and the responsibility, into the unpredictable countryside. 4
General Keatton and Colonel Lundstrom had taken over the base commander’s working space at Hibiscus, and so Brigadier-General Charles Conklin was using his exec’s office when Jesse Price arrived to check in, as courtesy required. An officer without orders does not come to live in somebody else’s bailiwick without making his presence known, particularly when that bailiwick is approximately in a state of siege.
Conklin was only four years older than Jesse, and but for the caprices of two wars their rank might have been identical. In 1943, as lieutenants, they had flown B-24’s to Africa, wingtip to wingtip. Conklin’s curse was a snub-nosed, freckled face that refused to age, and golden hair that refused to gray and insisted on curling no matter how closely cropped. His nickname was Buddy, after Buddy Rogers, the actor who for two generations had managed to remain a juvenile film star. That Buddy Conklin was a brigadier-general at thirty-nine, in spite of these manifest handicaps, attested to his courage as a pilot, his great skill as a tactician, his executive ability, and his luck.
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.