Command Decision (7 page)

“Maybe that’s because I don’t try to run his life.”

“It’s in your hands. You don’t have to send him at his age.”

Dennis flinched and looked at his wrist watch.

“I don’t have to send any of them. We could all be secure, under Hitler.”

Instantly he felt ashamed of the retort because he knew that Garnett, too, was deeply troubled. But there was no time for this kind of trouble now. He was relieved at the sight of Kane leading his party into the room again, walking with some of his old assurance as he brought Jenks straight over to them.

“General Dennis, Captain Jenks is obviously the victim of a shock condition induced by the strain of his nineteen missions. This is a clear-cut case of combat fatigue, a medical, not a disciplinary, matter. He needs immediate rest.”

“Sir, did the Captain tell you that he finished ten days in a rest house Thursday and has been medically certified fit for the completion of this tour?”

He saw Kane coloring again, apoplectically, but it did not cool his own fury. This preposterous fabrication was an insult to his investigation. It was probably the idea of Prescott, whose smirk had vanished now. Kane, with a clear head, would never have fallen for such a stupid stratagem. Already he had begun to think of a new way out but Prescott, now under a heightened obligation, spoke first.

“Captain Jenks, did you know of any defect in your plane that would have made such a long flight impossible for it?”

“His copilot took the plane. It hasn’t aborted.” Dennis chopped the words out fast to save Kane from this second, transparent trap. But although he had heard clearly, Kane clutched at the straw.

“We won’t know that till the plane comes back,” he said.

“If it comes back,” said Dennis. He had never seen Kane fumble like this before. There must be serious trouble in London or Washington. Dennis felt doubly guilty that his chief should have to be worried with such a business at the moment. But Kane was regaining a little of his old brusqueness.

“We’ll continue the investigation later, General,” he said.

The guard answered Dennis instantly and they watched through a taut silence while he marched Jenks out.

“General,” said Kane as the door closed, “this is very serious.”

“Every detail will be checked, sir. It happened at five-twenty this morning. I’ve got the rest of the twenty-four hours.”

He wanted to shield Kane from it as long as possible, to make him see that it was not his burden yet, that every resource would be strained to keep it from becoming his burden. But Kane’s perceptions had outraced intermediate consolation.

“Twenty-four hours for what?”

“To charge him, sir.” If Kane wanted to face it that was it.

“What charge are you considering?”

“Unless something new comes up the only possible charge is ‘Desertion in the Face of the Enemy.’”

“Good God, boy! We can’t shoot a man with nineteen missions and a D.F.C.”

Dennis knew. His own mind had recoiled from the implication of this case. But it was out now.

“Do you think we’ll ever have another tough mission if we don’t, sir? At a group briefing this morning when the target map was uncovered I saw five men cross themselves. One fainted. But they went and they know Jenks didn’t.”

He could tell that Kane understood. It simply took time for any mind to face it. Garnett had already taken it in and was digesting it slowly. It was that presumptuous new aide who seemed to feel that speech, any speech, was better than what they were all thinking.

“Couldn’t a quiet transfer be arranged, say to transport or training?” he asked.

“So he could go yellow there and kill passengers or students?”

But Prescott either didn’t want to learn or couldn’t.

“Precautions can be taken, General,” he persisted. “There is such a thing as the end justifying the means. This case would put the honor of the whole Air Forces at stake.”

“It already has. Every man in the Division knows it.”

“I was thinking of the larger picture.”

“You can. I’m thinking of the Division. It doesn’t require your assistance, Major.”

He did not enjoy squelching this worm but Prescott was going to embarrass General Kane with his effrontery sooner or later unless he learned some manners somewhere. Kane himself seemed to be catching up to this now.

“Homer, go talk this over, very thoroughly, with Elmer Brockhurst.”

As the aide closed the anteroom door behind him Kane spoke a little apologetically to Dennis.

“Brockhurst has a remarkable feel for public reaction, Casey. We’ve got to consider every angle of this.”

Dennis picked up the file and extended it to Kane.

“There are dubious engineers’ reports on two previous abortions, sir. He apparently got this D.F.C. for happening to be in the lead and bringing a squadron home after the commander had gone down over Brest. But that’s routine. He was made Squadron Commander after his twelfth mission, which is pretty fast for a boy with one questionable abortion at the time, even in a squadron with 72 per cent losses.”

Kane did not take the file. He had not been paying full attention through the recital and his next question shocked Dennis.

“Have you talked to his Group Commander, Casey?”

“You didn’t get yesterday’s reports, sir?”

“No. I was at a meeting in London. Why?”

“Colonel Ledgrave went down yesterday, sir.”

He could see both Kane and Garnett recoil from the news as he had done when he took it over the phone.

“My God,” said Kane softly. “Leddy… any parachutes seen?”

“Two, coming out of the left waistgate, sir. But Leddy was riding with the bombardier and she exploded just as the waist gunners got out.”

“Casey,” said Garnett, “is it necessary for… for our own people… to go so often?”

“Yes.”

Kane spoke again now, wearily but clearly.

“Had Leddy never mentioned Jenks to you?”

“Never, sir.”

“That’s my oversight, Casey. I had meant to tell you as I told him, in confidence, that Captain Jenks’s uncle is on the Military Affairs Committee in the House.”

3

Colonel Haley was not the most perceptive of men but entering just then he could feel the surcharged tension in the room. Garnett and Kane were looking at each other tensely. Dennis was nodding his head slowly over the Jenks file.

He noted that they all looked toward his entrance with a sense of relief for its distraction and he regretted that his errand would add to Dennis’s immediate worries. He would have preferred to report directly to Kane as ranking officer in the room. Haley did not agree with the new regulations on the Visits of Officers from Higher Echelons. He had made a note to write the Adjutant General a strong recommendation for change when there was time, after the war, to get things decently straightened out again. Meanwhile the rules were clear, albeit improper in his view. Ignoring the others he addressed himself to Dennis.

“Two sightings, sir. First from the Royal Observer Corps. Thirty-nine coming over the Channel now.”

“How did they look?”

“Ragged, sir. Five feathered props reported.”

“What’s the other?”

“Two in the Channel, so far, sir. Air Sea Rescue has a good plot on one and Spitfires will cover the pickup.”

Dennis nodded. Haley did his most formal about-face and closed the door quickly behind him.

“How soon will you have a count?” asked Kane.

“About forty minutes, sir. They’ll start landing soon.”

Kane nodded and stepped over to the window for a look at the sky. There was tarnish on the old-style wings he wore but he always forbade his sergeant to polish them.

“Am I right in surmising this sounds bad?” asked Garnett.

“Ted says they plastered the target.”

“I was thinking about losses.”

“That’s one way of thinking of it,” said Dennis shortly.

“Casey, what are you trying to do that’s more important than losses? I’m very familiar with your directive and
this is
your build-up period. Frankly, I don’t know what the United Chiefs will think.”

“When did they start thinking?”

“Casey!” Kane had turned now to regard him sternly.

“Sorry, sir.”

He knew he had that one coming. Kane seldom bothered to rebuke trifles. Now, as if regretting this, he came over to them and made his voice conciliatory.

“Casey, Cliff here has been sent over with some pretty important dope for us. I think I’ll ask him to tell you the story just as he told it to me.”

Dennis composed himself patiently, wondering which of Washington’s multitudinous apprehensions had catapulted his classmate across the Atlantic. He could still remember the solemn minions who had flown in by highest priority to insist that the “nipples and other anatomical portions normally covered” of the young ladies painted on Fortress noses be over-painted with clothing.

Garnett appeared to have sensed his boredom. Instead of opening immediately he digressed for a short demonstration of the strength he represented.

“I’ll tell Casey, of course, sir. But before I do I would like to be briefed on this Operation Stitch.”

“Haven’t you told him, sir?”

Kane thought before answering. “I thought it would be fairer for you to, since it’s so largely your idea, Casey.”

The disavowal was so obvious that it startled Dennis. He decided that he must be touchy today as he always was when Ted was out. The hell with it. He strode over to the Swastika on the wall and tapped it.

“Six weeks ago a German fighter, the one this came from, landed on the Number One Strip out there.” He pointed and Cliff glanced briefly through the window.

“Shot up?”

“No. The pilot was a Czechoslovakian engineer and test pilot. He’d been forced to work for them but when they sent him to the Baltic with this job for testing he flew it here instead. The weather was ten tenths and this was the first field he saw when he broke through.”

“Accommodating,” said Cliff. “What kind of fighter was it?”

“Focke-Schmidt One.”

“Focke-Schmidt One?”

“Remember the dope we got out of Lisbon on a new jet-propelled fighter… Messerschmitt wing, the new Serrenbach propulsion unit… forty-eight thousand service ceiling and six hundred at thirty thousand?”

“Yes,” Garnett nodded, “but Wright Field said it was impossible.”

“I know. This is what it does.”

Walking over to the board, Dennis stripped back another section of curtain mask, wondering, as he did, how long it had been since Cliff had studied a performance curve. Garnett followed him to the board and ran a swift, expert finger along the co-ordinate lines of the big graph, inked on in different colors, while Dennis watched approvingly.

“These are the tests,” said Dennis, indicating rapidly the red, green, yellow, and blue curves. “Thunderbolt, Mustang, Lightning, and Spit 12.” Then as he saw Garnett beginning to gape with comprehension he lifted his hand to the heavy black curve so obviously in a class by itself. “And this is the Focke-Schmidt One.”

“Jesus Christ!” said Garnett. Then he caught himself and spoke accusingly. “Oh, I see, the German job’s in kilometers.”

“No it isn’t. That’s miles, too.”

Garnett wheeled from the incontrovertible evidence of the curve.

“Who made these tests?”

“Ted Martin and I.”

“You two?”

“Three turns apiece.”

Garnett traced the black curve with an incredulous finger.

“You did that in your… at your age?”

Dennis had prepared himself for this. It was not widely known, even among regulars, that he had been forbidden both speed and oxygen under the bluntest medical warning. His friends were always careful, when something brought it up, to remind him that it was an honorable deficiency. He had burnt out his capacity for extremes in the service. But it still hurt to be less than he had been, to see reservations about himself in other eyes.

In combat command it had been downright awkward. Kane had advised him to permit issuance of a public statement about why he never flew missions as most generals occasionally did. Dennis knew it was stupid but he had stonily replied that unless his superior believed that it affected the Command’s morale adversely he regarded his physical condition as a private matter. Kane had not forced him; he knew, as did the whole service, that in his present condition Dennis could work most men into the ground.

“You shouldn’t have done it, Casey,” said Garnett.

“I wanted to be sure. It gave me a week in the hospital to think things over afterward.”

He was making a mental note to swear Cliff to silence about this when he saw Cathy on his return, but in the midst of it he remembered that he did not yet know whether Cliff was returning. Garnett was tracing the curve again with an awed, rueful finger.

“Well, of course the new Mustang will be a big improvement…”

“This is not an improvement, Cliff. It’s a revolution.”

“Yeah. But with enough Mustangs, and the new Thunderbolts…”

“Can you arrange an armistice until we get ’em?”

“When will the Germans get these?”

“They’ve got three factories in line production now. Or rather,” he added with a brief smile, “they had day before yesterday. The Czech thinks they already have one group on conversion training. Our Intelligence has lost that group for a month.”

“Have you lost any planes to it?”

“Lost planes don’t report, Cliff. We’ve had no sightings from the bombers. But last week we wrote off three reconnaissance planes for the first time in months. They were stripped to the ribs and flying at forty thousand but something got them.”

Kane spoke now with a petulance that Dennis understood. He had tried to resist this information himself.

“Of course we don’t
know
it was this plane that got them.”

“It wasn’t mice.”

“What about this Czech, Casey? Could this be a double cross?”

Garnett’s mind, too, was following the protesting pattern. He was begging for a denial of that curve. Grimly, Dennis went on to explain the other steps of his investigation. He told Garnett how with Kane’s permission he had gone down to Whitehall itself, where the gray-faced men worked deep underground behind doors behind doors behind doors. He had a deep respect for Intelligence, the men who dropped into darkness by parachutes, who counterfeited their way into faraway hangars and headquarters. He had come out graver than when he entered.