1945 (36 page)

"First time I ever got dealt three aces in my life," Lloyd sighed.

Frank grinned. "Lloyd, you got dealt three aces just last winter. I remember the occasion. . . . Lucky for me that fella called, I guess."

"So what's it about? Better be important since it cost me the whole pot."

"Fella said he was with the FBI. Claims those cop killers from over in North Carolina were out at the airstrip up on Allison Road. Says the FBI caught 'em and there was
a
shootout. Says the bad guys won."

Lloyd shook his head disgustedly. "And you believed that? Hell, next thing you know the Infernal Revenue is gonna ask Congress to do away with the Income Tax, and make shine legal to boot.... I'll bet it's those Lowrie boys again, pulling your leg."

"Should still check it out," the other guest announced, sliding his chair back and coming to his feet. "I'll go with you."

Frank nodded appreciatively. It hadn't sounded like any of the Lowrie boys to him. The voice had been that of someone who had spent time in North Carolina or maybe Virginia, but not in a long while. Upper crust sort of accent too, what was left of it. Definitely not one of the trashy Lowrie boys.

"Alvin,
I
'd appreciate that a whole lot. When we get there you just stay back a ways and keep an eye out, okay?"

Having Alvin York providing cover was the next-best-thing to being someplace else when the shooting started. After thinking a moment, Frank added, "Hey, we're both sheriffs, but you're way out of jurisdiction. Maybe I should deputize you?"

Alvin York grinned. "Okay, I'm a deputy. Now just toss me one of those deputy badges I know you must have stashed around here someplace. I don't much care for card playing anyhow."

Lloyd snorted disdainfully. "I still say it's them damn Lowrie boys throwing you on some trail they think you're onto. Most likely they'll be running a little shine later tonight. Remember the time they called and said that Widow Guthrey had fallen in the creek and was drowned? We fished that damn river for hours, and then come to find that old lady woke up and a-singin' and a-hollerin' in her own spring house, drunk as a coot."

"Lloyd, I do believe your boss is right on this," Alvin broke in. He nodded at the table. "Those three aces are blinding your judgment."

Frame added, "Even if it was one of them damned Lowrie boys, which it wasn't, Alvin's on the money. We gotta go look. If there ain't nothin' there, we'll cut over by the Lowrie place for a look around. That suit you, Deputy Yancy?"

"Damn them Lowrie boys anyhow," Lloyd muttered.

"Oh, they ain't so bad. They're just doing what their pappy and his before him did. They run shine, and me, well, I chase 'em.... like my pappy did their pappy, now l think on it."

"Well, hell, don't you think I know all that, Frank?" Lloyd answered. "They just cost me the
pot,
is all, plus in general making my job about twice as hard as it needs to be."

"I'm telling you, it ain't them this time," Frank said. "That wasn't no Lowrie boy I was talking to, nor no friend of no Lowrie boy neither."

"When you was on the phone just now I heard you say something about calling some general," Alvin asked.

Frank shook his head. "I said it wasn't no Lowrie boy. I didn't say I necessarily believed him. Wouldn't I just look like one horse's ass if I called them up at Oak Ridge and none of it was true? We'll go take a look around first."

Alvin looked at his friend dubiously. "You sure about that, Frank?"

"Oh, all right, Alvin, seeing as it's you." Frank turned back to the telephone, cranked it. "Hello? Connect me to Oak Ridge, please. . . . This is Sheriff Frank Watson in Clinton. I need to speak to a Trevor Harriman in General Groves's office. He's with you folks, right? Or maybe he's with the FBI. . . . You can't tell me that? But I'm the sheriff.... No, I won't leave a—yes, I will leave a message. The country's being invaded by Germans and we're going out to investigate a firefight. I hope the general has your ass, boy." He slammed the receiver into its cradle.

"Well, Alvin, you can't say I didn't try."

"You might have been a little less short with the boy on the other end of that phone, Frank."

"Well, maybe I might have been at that, but he was just purely annoying. Twenty years old if he was a day, and talking down to me, the sheriff, like I was the village idiot. Damned sojer boys think they're God's own gift. Not like when we was serving." Frank stopped, thought it through. "Look, this is strictly a civilian matter. Unless it's a full-scale national emergency those boys in Oak Ridge can't do a thing in my county until I tell them they can, and I'm not going to tell them they can until I've seen for myself, and maybe not then. So let's stop wasting time and go find out if there's anything to all this in the first place."

Alvin followed his friend out onto the porch, casually snagging his battered Springfield rifle from where it leaned by the door on the way by, and proceeded on to Frank's Ford, which conveyance currently doubled as the county patrol car.

"What kind of message would that be to deliver anyway?" Frank muttered to himself as he shifted into reverse. " 'Score zany by air.' If I'd tried to tell him that he really would have thought I was the village idiot."

As they pulled out of the drive the phone inside the house started to ring. The operator, who had just talked to Dottie Hendersons neighbors, confirmed the terrible truth of what had happened, but there was no way for Mrs. Watson to inform Frank; the radio in his car had been broken for a month, and the county commissioners had yet to get around to buying him a new one.

Just as had happened at Pearl Harbor, a final chance warning was lost in bureaucratic fog.

April 21, Easter Sunday, 2:45 A.M. London (April 20,8:45 EST)

Churchill walked back into his office, opened a desk drawer, and pulled out a bottle. He looked up at his head of naval operations.

"Join me?" His voice was thick and raspy after the hours of nonstop smoking.

Rushbrooke nodded and Churchill poured a splash into each of two tumblers, adding a great deal of water to his own, and handed the other one to the admiral. After drinking half of it, he set it down and left his glass-walled office to walk back to the balcony overlooking the plotting table. A redheaded young Wren was leaning over it, edging the markers representing Rommel's fleet farther west. Normally Churchill enjoyed watching young redheaded Wrens leaning over plot boards, but now his eyes saw nothing but the symbols she was manipulating.

"It's coming straight in, somewhere between the Midlands and Edinburgh," Churchill whispered to himself. "We could cut it to ribbons." This delay would cost them ten thousand casualties if it cost them one. Would it cost them England?

He looked back at his office and the red phone sitting on his desk.

April 20,9:00 P.M. Oak Ridge

Pounding the steering wheel with frustration, Martel waited in a fury of frustration as the line of cars at the security gate inched forward. Pulling up to the barrier at last, he flashed his OSS identification card and the security badge that gave him clearance to go to the administrative area.

"Sir, would you step out of the car please?"

"Listen, Sergeant, this is an emergency. I need to get to General Groves's office immediately."

The Sergeant looked into the truck and then suddenly stepped back and pulled his pistol out.

"Put your hands on the steering wheel!"

Jim started to open his mouth and the sergeant cocked his pistol.

"Move and I'll blow your head off!" The sergeant's partner yanked the drivers-side door open.

"Now climb out real slow and keep your hands up."

Jim stepped out and someone reached out from beside the truck. He was spun around and his feet knocked out from under him, slamming him down hard on the pavement. A stab of pain exploding from his wounded shoulder nearly caused him to black out as his hands were yanked back behind his back. Handcuffs slipped over his wrists and snapped shut. He gasped with pain as he was yanked back to his feet.

"You stupid son of a bitch, I'm with the OSS," Jim roared, "I need to see General Groves right now!"

The sergeant who had first stopped him said nothing, pistol still pointed at him.

The corporal who had handcuffed him looked at Jim's shoulder.

"Hey Sarge, this man's been shot."

"That's what tipped me off. Now call headquarters."

"You
idiot! It's a grenade fragment, and I am Lieutenant

Commander James Martel, USN, on detached duty with the OSS!"

The corporal looked at him, wide eyed.

Jim looked back at the sergeant and took a deep breath. "Listen, soldier, I know you think you're doing your job. Go ahead and call security headquarters. But before you do that, just call Groves s office and ask for Trevor Harriman. Either way, you win. If I'm a bad guy, you're a hero. If I'm not, I swear I'll say you were vigilant for stopping me, and smart for calling. Do it any other way, Sergeant, and by next week you will be a private stationed in the Aleutians."

The sergeant suddenly seemed less sure of himself.

"For Christ's sake! you have me handcuffed! What am I going to do while you make the call? Guide in an air strike? Do it, Sergeant!"

9:00 P.M.
Harry's

Alvin York, rifle in one hand and flashlight in the other, walked back from the still smoldering wreckage of the Piper Cub. "One dead in the plane, Frank."

Watson, features pale, continued to stare at the bodies of Dottie Henderson's brothers and husband.

"Some fight they had here," Alvin added as he looked inside the leading car, and the four charred corpses within. "Automatic weapons tore up that car in the middle of the bridge. The two bracketing it got hit by mortars, or some kind of rocket. There's two bodies down on the creek bed, along with a couple of revolvers and a German machine pistol. Looks like a couple of grenades got tossed as well."

"What the hell was this, some kind of war?" Watson asked softly.

Alvin turned to Frank's deputy. "Lloyd, didn't you say

you have a cousin working at Oak Ridge?"

"Yeah, I do. He said they told him if he ever talked about what goes on there they'd shoot him."

"Well, I don't want to know what they do, just how well the place is guarded."

Lloyd snorted disdainfully. "All they got is a bunch of military police, no better when you come down to it than a bunch of railroad bulls. Guard-duty soldiers, that's all."

The three looked at each other knowingly. All of them had "seen the elephant" up close and personal in the Great War, and all three shared the combat soldier's disdain for anyone who wore the uniform while specializing in something, anything, other than fighting the enemy. Such men might have the potential of becoming soldiers, they might be brave and capable of dying like men, but until they'd stood in harm's way, they weren't
soldiers.

"That's all they got there, Lloyd? MPs?"

"Hell, they won't even let you have a game rifle there, not even a twenty-two. No guns there at all, 'cept for them MPs at the gates and the guards in the factories."

Alvin shook his head. "Our tax dollars at work." He turned to Frank. "Cousin, I think you better make another call to Oak Ridge. And this time don't take 'no' for an answer. And be sure you tell 'em justwhat that fella told you to tell 'em, same exact words."

" 'Score zany by air,'" Frank muttered. "They're gonna think I'm crazy."

"Frank, maybe it's some kind of code. Maybe it will mean more to them than to us."

"If'n you say so, Alvin. Still sounds crazy to me, though."

"And as soon as you've made that call, we should head into town, stop by that Legion post you got here."

"You know, they was fixing to throw you a dinner tomorrow night. Supposed to be a surprise for you. There ought to be a fair number of people there tonight, both folks working on the dinnerparty, and folks there just to have a good time."

"Matter of fact," York decided, "let's call down there right after you get off the phone with Oak Ridge. See just how many we can have waiting for us when we get there. If there's twenty there now, maybe each of them can find ten more. Wake up the county. We might have to go hunt ourselves a couple dozen Germans, tough Germans. There ain't nothin' like fellas who fought and beat 'em once already for a job like that."

A few minutes later the three were back in Frank's car, headed for town.

Lloyd sat in the back, looking thoughtful. Then he spoke up. "Uniforms. We oughta be in uniform."

"Well, we're all in sheriff and deputy uniforms, ain't we?" Frank asked.

"Well," Lloyd continued, "I think we ought to tell our people to spend five minutes digging out their old service uniforms, so we'll know each other. Besides, it's fittin'."

"Maybe you got a point there, Lloyd," Frank admitted while Alvin nodded agreeably. "Come to think of it, I can have Mrs. Watson meet us at the Lodge with my two old uniforms." He looked at Alvin. "You won't mind being a corporal again, will you Alvin?"