Pat Frank - Forbidden Area

An elderly lieutenant-general, his face gray with overwork or poor health, spoke. He was Chief, Matériel Command, and he sat at Keatton’s elbow. “It can’t happen to the B-Nine-Nine,” he said. “We wrung them out for years before the first wing was formed. They don’t have bugs any more. They’re sturdy as the Four-Sevens. Sturdier, I think. And, sir, these three aircraft apparently were lost at between twenty and thirty thousand feet, long before they reached optimum altitude. They’ve bombed from sixty-five thousand. We’ve never had a pressure failure. The Nine-Nine is tight!”

Lieutenant-colonel Polk, standing beside Price, could not restrain himself. “All from that one base, too, sir!”

“I realize that,” said the general, “but we can’t take any chances. We’ve got a hundred tech reps and factory men flying to Hibiscus tonight. Suppose they do find structural failure? Where are we? We’re without a strategic air force. Begging pardon of the Navy, we’ve had it. So we’ve got to prepare a reserve SAC to take over. We’ve got two thousand Fifty-Twos and Forty-Sevens mothballed, lined up on every desert in Arizona. How long will it take to bust ’em out?”

They all looked at the elderly lieutenant-general, whose name Price could not recall, for he was one of those plodding rear echelon generals, whose name never appeared on orders or in Time or Newsweek, who kept the airplanes flying. “On a crash program,” said the lieutenant-general, “using everything I’ve got and some things I haven’t got but I’ll get, I can have a hundred Forty-Sevens flyable in a week, two hundred more and two hundred Fifty-Twos flyable in two weeks, and the whole reserve fleet unzipped in sixty to eighty days.”

“Well, get going on it. Not tomorrow morning. Now.”

“Yes, sir,” said the lieutenant-general. He got out of his chair, with definite physical effort, and left the room. Jesse Price thought, I’d hate to be in that old man’s shoes. A gallant old man, a tired old man with troubles he had not brought to the meeting.

“So I guess that wraps it up for tonight,” said the general. “I don’t know of anything else we can do.” He stood up, and the meeting was over, and those of lower rank, that is, brigadiers and under, began to file out. Jesse stayed, hoping that the knot of brass around the desk would part and disperse. He wanted to be alone with Keatton for just thirty seconds. He wanted to urge Keatton to read the Intentions Group’s forecast. Then he realized how silly it would sound, at that moment. The general had solid troubles aplenty. He had no time to read a Russian war plan, hypothetical and nebulous, really no more than fantasy. And yet—

Lieutenant-colonel Polk came back into the general’s office and touched Price’s elbow. “The list is just now coming through,” he said. “Want to see it?”

They walked together through the reception room and into the message center annex where a row of teletype printers clattered out dispatches, in clear, from the commands. Price watched the names march out in neat oblong groups, just like flight assignments for the next morning’s mission, except that for these names there were no more mornings. Price read: “ LT.COL.HOWARD DINK (PILOT).” He said aloud, “Dinky!”

“Know him?” asked Polk.

“Yes. Italy.” This was all he said, in no way indicative of all he felt, the quick, sick emptiness, as if part of his own life had been removed. For six months their cots had been side by side in the same faded brown tent. Every morning they swung their feet into the same cold mud, oozing out from under the duckboards. They played poker across the same blanket, shared their combat whisky ration, took their leave together in Bari, tried to make the same girls, and on mission after mission flew in the same seven-plane box and faced the same death, which makes men brothers.

“Too bad. Know any of the others?”

Jesse forced himself to read the other names. “No.” He turned away, although he knew he was being impolite, and trudged back towards his own office.

He sat down at the desk and tried hard not to think about Dinky.

Wasn’t there someone else he knew in the 519th? The wing was just back from England. Somebody’s brother was in the 519th. Of course, Katy’s! Thank God the name Hume wasn’t on the list too.

Whenever Jesse Price thought of Katy he thought of the round curve of her thigh next to his at the conference table, of her smooth fingers and changeable eyes, and of his desire and need for her. He did not think of it as love, for when you admit you love a woman, even in your secret mind, you have committed yourself. As a consequence, you must try to possess her, and thus expose yourself to failure and rebuff. This was a risk he preferred not to take. He was sensate of his liabilities, his seared face, the insecurity of being a one-eyed major, his small hope of promotion or advancement in the future. Also, he was pretty sure there was some sort of a liaison between Katy and Raoul, and he was not a poacher. So long as he was not in love with Katy he could enjoy the warmth of her company, the stimulus of her intellect, and the pride of having her at his side in public places, which he recognized as salve to his ego. He had never been one for platonic friendships, but now he was fearful of staking what he had for something he probably could not attain. They dined together several times each week, and sometimes he took her dancing or to a movie or the ballet. On two Saturdays they had flown to New York together to see a show, but they had returned on the midnight plane.

He wondered whether he should call her. She would know, by now, that the missing bombers were out of the 519th and he doubted that the names of the crews had yet been released. In that case she would be very worried. Worry wasn’t the right word. There is no torture like uncertainty.

He dialled her number and she answered instantly, as if she had been sitting by the phone, poised to pounce at its ring. She said, “Yes?” Her voice was strained.

“Katy? Jess.”

“Yes?”

He sensed her fear and phrased his words carefully. “It’s all right, Katy. Everything’s all right. Your brother didn’t go in. He wasn’t on the list.”

He could hear the choked sob. She said, “I was so scared!”

He said, “I still am.”

AMONG THE passengers who landed at Havana Airport Tuesday morning was Robert Gumol. December was a tourist month, but it was obvious that he had come on business. He wore a blue suit of expensive texture, cannily cut to minimize his girth, and he carried a heavy brief case. He bustled down the ramp of the DC-8, and shouldered his way to the front of the line of those moving into the air terminal from Gate 7. At the gate an olive-skinned girl wearing a chic, powder-blue uniform was serving Bacardi cocktails, free. It was not yet ten o’clock, and most of the others refused, but Gumol accepted one and drank it at a gulp. Although it was not unseasonably warm, a rivulet of sweat ran from his sparse, crinkled sideburns, and overflowed the fatty canyons in his neck. His stiff white collar was collapsed and sodden. A lush, the girl thought, getting drunk before breakfast. The truth was that Gumol was quite nervous.

Ordinarily he was the most careful and methodical of men, but now he wondered whether he might have forgotten something. There is always a certain hazard in bringing a large amount of cash into a foreign country. His passport, which he always kept up to date and in the top drawer of his desk, was no worry. Cuba required no visas from North Americans. But if your luggage consists solely of a brief case, a certain curiosity is invited. Customs, finding a stack of cash and noting that he was a banker, might jump to a faulty conclusion, and tip off the American authorities in hope of a reward. The bank examiners would find everything correct in Upper Hyannis, but Treasury agents might inquire about the taxes on such a large sum of money. But even as he considered the hazard, Gumol thought of a way to avoid it. If an explanation was necessary, he would tell Customs that the money was for deposit in the Bank of Cuba to finance a certain transaction in which higher officials of their government were interested. That would grease his way, quickly. Gumol was satisfied. The rum glowed within him, and he took his place in the line waiting for inspection.