The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [14]
The clerk showed a sign of life. "Sure do—the football All-American? Ever see him play? I bet he didn't even have to run, he could just walk through the other team."
"Tell him the moving target is back." Ben glanced at the orderly-room runner waiting edgily to escort him to the headquarters building. "Lead on, Moses."
As if some signal had been given, East Base began to hum with activity while the runner led him through the military maze of buildings. Fire engines trundled to their ready spot near the end of the runway, followed by the medical corps ambulance, known on every air base as the meat wagon. Next, the flight line went from empty to maximally busy in a matter of minutes. A spate of P-39s took off one after another and headed north, leaving their chorus of roar behind. Other fighter planes, likely the checkout flights, were being rolled out of the big hangar he had blundered into. Ben watched it all; another day in the war, of the six hundred and some he had been through. Back here, he could tell time by the sun, and he aligned the other zones around the world with it now. The clock of war was in his head every waking minute. It was close onto noon here, so in England the day was drawing down and Moxie Stamper would be in a supper chow line on a secure bomber base if he was lucky. Carl Friessen would be in a foxhole listening to the night noises of the New Guinea jungle. On the destroyer zigzagging in the Pacific, Nick Danzer already was in tomorrow; Danzer, with his taste for any advantage, would like that. Member by member of the Supreme Team, Ben memorized anew the time difference from here to there, adjusting himself toward the schedule of teletype messages that followed him from base to base.
The one-star officer in charge of East Base evidently had been building up a head of steam while waiting for the TPWP interloper. Base commanders generally did. Ben sometimes wondered if that's why they were called generals.
Ben's salute still was in the air when this one, an obvious old ranker with a face like he'd been eating fire, started in on him. "So you're here to make us famous. I'm not sure I like that."
Nice even-tempered base you run here, General—everybody pissed off all the time. Ben stood his ground by standing at attention until the personage behind the desk was forced to say, "At ease, shit's sake, man." The general peered at the lieutenant down all the rungs of rank between them. "Well? Why us? Why can't we get on with what we're doing without your outfit, whatever it is"—he glanced with abhorrence at the Threshold Press War Project patch on Ben's shoulder—"poking its nose in?"
"Somebody cut me the orders, sir. Confidentially, I'd prefer to be doing something else in the war."
The confidentially did not go down well with the general. "Then tell me this. Are you here to play up the women pilots?"
The presence of WASPs and the hangarful of female mechanics had come as definite news to Ben when he blundered into it all. The commander's resistance sharpened his instinct some more. "It depends, sir."
The commander dug a finger in his ear. "On what?"
"What you mean by 'play up.' Just so you know, General"—Ben had a moment of panic; he had been in front of so many of these one-star lifers in charge of obscure bases that he'd lost track of the name here—"General Grady," he picked it up from the nameplate on the desk and plunged on, "I'm an accredited correspondent as well as a soldier. Those hats don't always fit the way other people would like to see them, but I'm stuck with wearing both. You have to understand, sir, I'm assigned to write about things of interest to—"
"These females were wished onto me, and so were the Russkies," the commander blared; for a moment Ben wondered if the man was deaf from too much prop wash. "That doesn't mean everybody and his dog has to read about them." He shot a non-negotiable look across the desk. "Those Supreme Team write-ups of yours, bunk like that, that's all right. Good for the war effort. Lieutenant Eisman has a wild hair up