By 1700 hours the storm had subsided enough to be downgraded to Phase One. That made trips to the mess hall possible and life at Thule brightened immediately as a consequence. The Danish supervisor of the messen saw to it that an especially good meal was prepared; the scheduled beef stew was canceled and steaks were set up instead. All hands showed up for the meal and the big hall was well filled. The movie for the evening was announced. The staff librarians prepared for an extra run of business.
Shortly after 1800, Weather advised that the storm could very well intensify and that a Phase Three was possible. Following that grim pronouncement, the dessert bar did a land-office business. Thule ice cream was consumed by the gallon and the iced-tea containers were drained dry.
Immediately after eating, Colonel Kleckner stopped at the library and asked if there were any books available on the air aspects of World War II. The catalog listed several, but for some unstated reason, all of them had been recently checked out.
After selecting some titles off the shelves, the colonel returned to Building 708. There he shed his parka, got out of his arctic footgear, and washed the used cocoa mugs. After that he went upstairs and casually wandered down to the Det. 4 end of the building.
The poker game was already going strong. Lieutenant Mike Turner sat, shirtless, with the relic of what had once been a hat pulled partly over his eyes. He surveyed his cards and found them about as encouraging as a communication from the Internal Revenue Service.
Tom Collins kept changing the order of the cards in his hand, as if by doing so he could either increase their value or encourage them to blush forth in the same suit.
Ron Cunningham opened with a determined effort to appear casual. Major Richard Mulder, one of the two Det. 4 field grade officers, checked.
The colonel surveyed the board with an expert’s eye and then declined an invitation to sit in. Instead he continued down the hall and then paused by the door of Major Forest Kimsey’s room.
The Det. 4 commander got to his feet. “Evening, sir, come in,” he invited. “Have a beer?”
“By all means.”
A cold can was extracted from a refrigerator and popped open. The colonel sat down to enjoy its contents. “Tell me,” he began, “if you were to get a medevac call right now, how would you handle it?”
“First, I’d check with Weather and get all the poop that I could. Then, if it was still Phase One, I’d have all hands report to the hangar on the double. I’d cock one of the birds and get ready for takeoff.”
“Would you go?” the colonel asked.
“Two things would decide that: the exact level of the weather activity and the urgency of the mission. If lives were at stake, and if it was humanly possible to get airborne under the existing conditions — yes, we would go.”
“Off the record, Major, how well is your outfit tuned up right now?”
“We’re in pretty good shape,” Kimsey answered. “I lost two of my best pilots when they rotated back stateside last month. Their replacements are younger men — not quite as sharp. But they’re good boys and they’ll shape up.”
The colonel drank some of his beer. “With you to teach them, I’m certain that they will,” he said. “When the weather lets up, it might be a good idea to put on a good stiff training exercise. A hypothetical rescue off the ice cap, or something like that. I’d like to see you make it as realistic as you can; I never believed in handing a man a broomstick and asking him to pretend that it’s a rifle.”
“Really go out and do something,” the major confirmed.
The colonel checked the fetching dimensions of the young lady posted on the bathroom door and approved. “Sharpen them up as much as you can. Someday, perhaps under severe conditions, they may have a damn important mission to fly.”
“And the Arctic is merciless,” the major added. “I’ll lay something on that will be realistic and make them sweat a little.”
“Good.” The colonel nodded his approval and then finished his beer.
While the storm outside continued its ferocity, another of a different kind was raging inside the mind and body of Lieutenant Scott Ferguson. He could not get The Passionate Penguin out of his head and even thinking that the vital wing root sections might be impossible to bring in was enough to make him break out in an emotional sweat.
There was one more trip for him to make — he still had to get the forward fuselage section. It was automatically the head, the heart, and the torso of the great bomber and careful measurement had proven that it would fit inside the C-130. He was determined that it would fit even if he had to chop a hole in the powerful airlifter to make it possible. Once that major component had been salvaged, virtually the whole aircraft would be safe and secure in Hangar 8, awaiting only the ministrations of skilled and dedicated mechanics. With the help of God, it was possible that they might be able to give her back her life and her glory.
The wing sections — the damn wing sections. .
He paced up and down his room, keeping an ear tuned to the PA system. The inactivity was killing him; he was so anxious to get down to Hangar 8, he could hardly contain himself. He wanted to do something with his hands. Deep within himself he had the solid conviction that the World War II wreck was bis airplane; perhaps it wasn’t by accident that he had found it, alone and abandoned on the ice cap but otherwise apparently in perfect condition.
Once, when he had been a boy, he had gone wandering in the woods near his home. He had been perfectly safe; the woods were familiar territory and he had been in them many times before. Then he had found a trap that someone had left, and there was a tiny animal in it. One of its legs had been cruelly caught in steel jaws and had been lacerated when the little creature had struggled to get away. When he had found it, it had been in obvious agony.
He had had no idea whose trap it was, but he had hated him nonetheless. With some difficulty, because the trapped animal was crazed with pain, he had managed to get his hands into position and pry the trap open.
The little animal he had freed had let out one final cry of heartbreaking hurt and then had limped off, too frightened to spare itself by going more slowly.
He remembered that he had gone home with a strange new feeling in possession of him — he had felt an almost unearthly happiness. He had believed firmly at the time that the Lord had guided his footsteps so that he would rescue the trapped animal, and it had frightened him a little. He had wondered what he was destined to do with his life, because that had seemed like a preview — tiny foretelling of his future. The incident remained fresh and sharp in his mind; he knew that he would remember it to his dying day. It had implanted in him the strong desire to save things — to spare the hurt of living creatures and to forestall the destruction of worthy objects that deserved a better fate.
The same strong, unreal sensation filled him now. For the first time, he saw the whole picture clearly. It had started out only as a visit to an abandoned wreck. After that it had become a souvenir hunt. Somewhere in the process it had been transformed into a recovery project in the form of a challenge or, perhaps, a game to be played.
Not anymore; the game was over. Somehow, some way, those wing sections would be brought in. Then, if he had to do it alone, by God, that airplane was going to be put back together again. And in the process it would be overhauled until every bit of its structure was restored to its original condition and airworthiness. When all of that had been done, he was going to take it out and fly it. He had never said that to himself before, but he had thought it all along. He was going to roll that airplane out of its hangar in perfect condition, fire it up, taxi it out to the end of the runway, and take off.