Pat Frank - Forbidden Area

Higginbotham’s fingers edged towards the telephone gingerly as if it were a dozing rattlesnake. Even when he had a full night’s sleep, Captain Clyde was terrifying. Clyde was a bitter, bull-necked and bull-throated man who hated short duty and who, having been passed over, was condemned to it for the balance of his service. Higginbotham’s fingers jumped the last few inches and closed on the telephone. He lifted it to his lips and said, “This is the O.D. Let me have Captain Clyde.”

The base operator said, “What?” He sounded unbelieving.

“I said give me Captain Clyde. Yes, at his quarters.”

The captain answered the phone almost at once, as if it were beside his bed. “Well?” Captain Clyde wheezed.

“This is Higginbotham, O.D., sir. There’s a Marine here who says he’s seen a landing on the coast.” This was a very inadequate way to put it, Higginbotham knew, and he waited for the captain to blow him off the phone.

Incredibly, the captain simply asked, “What kind of landing?”

“From a boat, sir. He thinks the boat came from a submarine. He says they gave a suitcase to a man in Air Force uniform.”

Higginbotham waited for the captain to come fully awake and start screaming. Instead, Captain Clyde said, quite calmly, “I’ll be right over.” Then he hung up.

Captain Clyde, clad in a skivvy shirt, white trousers, and leather sandals, was in his headquarters building in two minutes. “All right, Marine,” he demanded. “Right smartly, what’s this all about?”

Henry Hazen told his story again. As he talked, the captain made notes. Twice he looked at the girl for corroboration. Although she was embarrassed, standing there barefoot, and frightened, he managed to tell exactly what he had seen.

Once the captain interrupted to say, “Higginbotham, has Coral Sea taken on fuel?”

“Yes, sir. Finished at twenty-three hundred.”

When Hazen stopped speaking the captain said, “Thanks, Marine, you’ve done well. Even if nothing happens, there’ll be a commendation in your jacket. Now you’d better take your girl home.”

Before they were out of the office Captain Clyde began to act. He called Mainside, the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, and asked for patrol planes and helicopters. He called the blimp base in Brunswick. He informed the captain of Coral Sea, and the admiral aboard, and suggested that the ship be prepared for anti-submarine action. He called the Eastern Sea Frontier, Norfolk. He called the police in St. Augustine and the State Highway Patrol and the FBI. He even cut across service lines and channels and called Air Force in Washington.

He called for coffee and sandwiches and prepared to stay up the rest of the night.

Then he turned to Higginbotham and said, “Ensign, can you navigate a crash boat?”

Higginbotham said, “I think so, sir.” He had actually been at the wheel of the crash boat several times, on fishing expeditions, but he had never taken it out of sight of land.

“Well, rout out a crew and take out the crash boat. I relieve you of O.D.”

“Yes, sir,” said Higginbotham. Sensibly, he didn’t ask where to take the crash boat or what to do when he got there. The crash boat carried no armament but it did have a good radio. It was a million-to-one chance that he would find the submarine, or whatever it was, and if he did see something all he could do was call for help. But he was elated. For the first time since being commissioned, he had a real command, and the possibility of action.

An hour later, conning the crash boat through the jetties, he found time to marvel at the captain’s astonishing behavior. He did not know, of course, that Captain Clyde, then a gunnery officer aboard the battleship Nevada, had been sleeping soundly in the Moana Hotel, Honolulu, on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. Clyde had heard gunfire, but it had sounded like target practice, and Clyde had covered his aching head with a pillow and gone back to sleep. When he finally did get up, his ship had sortied from her berth in Pearl Harbor. The Navy officially had forgotten this, Captain Clyde could not. But he could see that nothing like it ever happened to him again.

At 4:34 A.M. a teletype alarm went out to stations of the Florida State Highway Patrol and was relayed to what few cars and officers were on duty at that hour of lightest traffic. It read:

LOOK OUT FOR AND ARREST MAN DRESSED IN AIR FORCE UNIFORM, RANK UNKNOWN, DRIVING LATE MODEL GREEN AND WHITE CHEVROLET HARDTOP. SUITCASE IN TRUNK OF CAR. NO OTHER DESCRIPTION. THIS MAN IS WANTED BY FEDERAL AUTHORITIES AS A POSSIBLE ENEMY AGENT. HE IS PROBABLY DANGEROUS AND MAY BE ARMED.

The alarm was heard by Officer Huidekoper, a bulky road patrolman of middle years, who was sitting in his fast scout car, its lights on and engine idling, outside an all-night drive-in on the outskirts of Deland, a quiet college town south of Orlando. Huidekoper was eating a double pork barbecue roll, with French fries on the side, and washing it down with an extra rich chocolate frostee shake.

The alarm had a bizarre ring to it. He had never been asked to look out for an enemy agent before, and had never even imagined such a thing. The dispatcher repeated the broadcast. Huidekoper took another bite out of his barbecue and decided that headquarters in Tallahassee had been taken in by a practical joker. Anyway, it was hopeless looking for a car unless you knew the license number. He laughed out loud. A green-and-white Chewy! He saw at least a dozen every day. Why, he had seen one pass only five or ten minutes before, with its left tail light out. He had almost gone after it to warn the driver, but just then the car hop was bringing his snack. Certainly it was nothing to report. He hadn’t noticed whether the driver wore an Air Force uniform or a pink kimono. It would only cause confusion, and possibly get him laughed at, if he called the dispatcher. Of course if he did call it would be a cinch to intercept the Chewy he’d seen. Twenty cars could converge on it before it hit the outskirts of Orlando, if you included the county and city police. Huidekoper finished his frostee, dropped the container to the ground, yawned and decided to drive Route 11 to Daytona, where he knew he could get breakfast for free. 6

Stanley Smith drove the Chevrolet quietly into the carport alongside Betty Jo’s house and left the lights on while he unlocked the luggage compartment and brought out the suitcase. For the first time, he noticed that the left rear tail light was smashed, and not burning. He swore quietly. The woman was careless. Because of that light, he could have been stopped by the police. Anything that attracted attention was dangerous.

He took the suitcase into the house, peered into the bedroom, and saw Betty Jo was sleeping, her flaccid face looking grained and misshapen against the pillow. She was no doll without her makeup, he thought, but she had been useful, and would be useful again. He undressed, crawled into bed without waking her, and was soon asleep.

The sunlight was streaming into the room when he awoke. Betty Jo was dressed and standing at the side of the bed, a tray in her hands. “Orange juice, hot cakes, maple syrup, bacon, marmalade, and coffee,” she said. “How would you like this kind of service every morning?”

“I’d like it fine,” he said. The woman was marriage-crazy.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if you were here all the time? Have you ever thought about getting out of the Air Force, Stan?”

“Lots of times. But I’ve still got a year and a half to do.”

She set the tray at the foot of the bed, saw the suitcase on the floor within reach of his hand, and said, “Is that yours?”

“No. Belongs to one of the fellows I drove to Jacksonville. He forgot it. I’ll get it to him when he comes back.”