“That’s okay. I’ll handle it. We’ll consider the twelve planes of today’s mission as our first striking group. I want the whole Five-Nineteenth Wing to go as a second wave by ten o’clock.” He turned to Challon. “Get my staff in here. No, don’t use those phones. Those are going to be busy.” 6
Except for Ciocci’s inquiry about the reappearing thermos bottles, for Smith the first five hours of his shift had been without event. He was thankful that only one more night of strain lay ahead, assuming he was able to get rid of his three bombs this morning. He was glad that it would soon be over, and he began to wonder about plans for the future. If something big happened Monday, as he expected, he must be careful to avoid the chaos. He wondered, without emotion, what would happen to Betty Jo. He would not see her again unless he discovered he needed the car. At five o’clock he went into the kitchen, ran bread through the slicers, and began making up sandwiches for flight lunches.
Ciocci, taking one of the new men at gin rummy across the meat block, said, “Say, Stan, you’re pretty ambitious, ain’t you? What d’you think we’re going to do? Feed the whole Air Force?”
Smith said, “I heard a couple of officers talking. Twelve missions set up for this morning.”
“Twelve? No fooling. I’ll be with you in a minute.” Ciocci turned back to his hand. A few minutes later the phone rang, and he answered it. It was the flight line. Twelve missions, just like Smith said. The detail from the flight line would be over to pick up the lunches at about six. Ciocci quit the gin rummy game and began preparing the cardboard cartons.
At six o’clock the detail had not yet shown up, but at that time Colonel Lundstrom and Major Glick came into the mess hall, seated themselves at the table closest to the kitchen, and asked for scrambled eggs. Ciocci assigned a man to serve them.
At 0603 two jeeps from wing pulled up at the kitchen door, and the lieutenant and two sergeants from the flight line came in for the flight lunches. On this morning there was another lieutenant, dark and stringy, with them. Forty-eight flight lunches would make quite a load, and in Smith’s mind this accounted for the extra jeep and extra lieutenant.
As always, the lieutenant counted the flight lunches and paid for them with the chits collected from the offices of the aircrews. Then he said, “I’m not sure I counted right. You sure there are forty-eight?”
Ciocci began to count the boxes again, and Smith, at his side, checked the count. Neither noticed Colonel Lundstrom and Major Glick peering through the glass in the door to the mess hall.
“I make it forty-eight, right,” said Ciocci.
“Forty-eight,” said Smith.
The lieutenant looked at his list. “Now about coffee,” he said. “Three coffees.” Ciocci noted the the lieutenant’s hands were trembling, as if with morning jitters after a big night.
Smith reached up and selected three bottles from the thermos shelf. He picked the three closest to the wall. “Here you are, sir,” he said. “Good and hot.”
At this point there was a slight variation in the detail’s usual behavior. The second lieutenant, the strange one, stepped forward and accepted the thermos bottles. Two of them he handed to the security officer from wing. The third one he held close to his ear and shook gently, as if to judge its fullness. Then he nodded, as if confirming an unspoken remark, and looked over their heads towards the door. Ciocci turned his head in time to see the colonel from Washington, and Major Glick, charge through the door towards him.
Not until the strange lieutenant waggled the thermos close to his ear did Smith have any intimation of anything unusual, and even this gesture did not cause comprehensive alarm. But when the lieutenant nodded to someone behind Smith’s back, he sensed a dangerous situation, although his mind could not instantly adjust itself to knowledge that he was trapped. Just before he landed from the submarine, in June of the previous year, the high-ranking MVD official had called him and the three others into the captain’s cabin. He had presented each of them with metal-cased capsules, long as the tip of his little finger. “In case you are taken, and interrogation and torture is probable,” the MVD man had told them, “this is an easy and quick and painless way out of it.”
Now he was in deep trouble, but long ago Smith had flushed the capsule down a toilet. To keep it, he had felt, would be an inner admission of the possibility of failure. Besides, if it came to the touch, he had a better and quicker way of dying—and carrying his enemies with him. There were two fuses in the thermos. One could be activated only by air pressure, but the second activated instantly if the top was unscrewed. The second fuse was an obvious precaution. Without it, an airman might unscrew the top before necessary altitude was reached, and find the bottle contained no coffee. With the second fuse, the thermos was not only a bomb, but an ingenious booby trap. Smith reached out his hand and said, casually, “Say, maybe I gave you the wrong bottle. Let’s see it, Lieutenant.”
The lieutenant made no move.
Fingers hard and painful as metal tongs clamped on Smith’s arm and he was spun around to face a wide-shouldered colonel, the one who never slept, with a wild look in his eyes. Smith recognized the look of killing, having seen it several times before. Smith was fascinated by this look, and he never saw the blow coming. His next conscious realization was that he was under the wooden worktable, the left side of his face was numb, and that he was scrambling and clawing to get up. A slap on the ear knocked him to his hands and knees again and set his head to ringing dizzily. He looked around at a fence of braced legs and poised feet. Slowly, certain that a shoe would crash into his face, bracing himself for the blow, he crawled out from under the table.
He heard the colonel say, “All right, stand up, you son of a bitch.”
Smith stood up, shielding his face with his arms, expecting to be hit again. Nobody touched him. Incongruously, his thoughts returned again to the submarine, and the last thing Karl Schiller, the German navigator, had told him. He had asked Schiller about the eight Germans who during the Fatherland War were landed on the same beach, and Schiller had replied, cheerful, gruesome, and truthful, “They were all caught and executed.” It had been a lousy thing to say.
He saw that they were not going to hit him, and he lowered his arms. They simply stood in a circle, quiet and deadly as a noose, and stared at him as if he were not human. He wanted to tell them he was no disgusting traitor. He was an officer of the Red Army, performing his assigned duties. He decided to keep still, at least for the time being. He would not open his mouth. The activities and lives of three others depended upon his silence. Being soft and knowing nothing of total war, the Americans would not torture him. And he might yet escape. Monday was coming. Something big was bound to happen.
The colonel nodded to the tall lieutenant. “Well take this man to the guardroom in administration. He doesn’t believe it, but he’s going to sing like a bird.”
Smith knew what this meant, in American slang. He was determined not to sing, not a note. 7
Buddy Conklin was in his own office, and Jesse was with him, when Lundstrom called from the mess hall. “General,” Lundstrom said, “we nailed him. In the act. With three more gadgets. Know what I’m talking about? Price has filled you in, hasn’t he?”
“Sure. Congratulations.”
“He’ll fry. He’ll fry but he won’t talk. Not yet, anyway. Won’t even answer to his name. I’m bringing him over to the guardroom. I’m going to work on him. Any news from the other bases?”
“Nothing yet. But there’ll be hell in the kitchens,” Conklin said. “Bring that bastard over. When I have time, I want to take a good look at him.”
Conklin put down the phone and Jesse said, “I guess that’s the whistle for the kickoff, isn’t it?”