The transport landed them at Logan Field at four in the afternoon and Alex came down the stairs ahead of the others and saw the three winged behemoths parked in a row beside a trio of C-47S at the end of the runway. Spaight and Johnson emerged from the passenger door and Pappy Johnson said, “Dear sweet Jesus.”
John Spaight said, “They look like alligators with wings.”
“You wait till you see them in the air. That B-Seventeen’s the best combat aircraft ever built.” Johnson came down the four metal steps eagerly and all but plucked at Alex’s sleeve. “Those for us?”
“Yes.”
“You mean it? All six of them?”
“That’s our Air Corps.”
Johnson stared at the three majestic aircraft with disbelieving awe. They dwarfed the Dakota transports beside them. “You do know how to make a man happy, Skipper.”
Alex saw John Spaight wince. The two Secret Service men came down onto the concrete and Alex said, “This is where we leave you two.”
“Not until you’re airborne, General. That’s the orders.”
A civilian DC-3 was taking off, lifting and turning toward the south, beating up through a patchwork of clouds that hung out over Cape Cod Bay. Spaight said, “Let’s don’t gawk all day, Captain.” He prodded Johnson’s elbow and the five of them walked into the terminal.
An officious Army major had all the paperwork laid out in the airport ops room. Alex had to put his signature on a dozen documents. The major kept talking in a clipped angry voice: “I’m not sure where you gentlemen get your drag but that’s nearly a million and a half dollars’ worth of airplanes. Every air squadron in the country’s screaming for up-to-date bombers and the War Department in its wisdom decides to send these to goddamn England. Okay, I’ve put up six copilots and six flight engineers and five pilots out of the Ferrying Command pool-I gather one of you gentlemen will be lead pilot on the formation?”
“Me,” Pappy Johnson said.
The major’s acidulous attention flicked across him. “You’d better meet your crews then-Mister…?”
“Colonel,” Alex lied gently. “Colonel Johnson.”
The major didn’t turn a hair. “Okay then Colonel. They’ll want you to file a flight plan upstairs while you’re at it-but meet your crews first.”
Johnson ducked out of the room and the round-shouldered major came back to the desk and glanced through the papers Alex had signed. “I supposed it’s all in order. But it’s understood that you people are personally responsible for these aircraft. It’s damned irregular.” He turned stiffly past Alex and around behind the desk; reached forward and stacked the signed documents neatly. Finally he said, “Just take care of those Flying Forts. We haven’t got a whole lot of them to spare.”
They waited in a private lounge behind the ticket counters. The two Secret Service men drank coffee and read newspapers. Spaight was smoking a cigarette. “Alex, you can’t just leave me in midair with my ass upside down.”
“I can’t make exceptions. I’m sorry.”
“Then you’ll have a lot of people indulging in speculations. Putting the pieces together I come up with a bombing attack on the Kremlin. Is that the plan?”
“No. That would wipe out some artwork and a few upstairs flunkies.”
“Then I don’t follow it. How can you get at Stalin from the air?”
“I’m sorry John. It’s on a need-to-know basis.”
“You’re a pill, you know that?”
“Yes.”
Johnson came in wearing a flattened Mae West over his flight jacket. It was a leather jacket with a big mustard fur collar lying open across his shoulders. Under the straps of the life jacket his pilot’s wings could be seen. He tramped his lambskin-lined boots against the floor and beamed through his sweat. “Let’s get some altitude before I swelter to death.”
Spaight stubbed out his cigarette; Alex reached for his grip.
Pappy Johnson said, “Thanks for that impromptu promotion.”
“I’ll see if I can make it stick.”
“No need. I don’t care that much about rank-I fly airplanes is what I do.” He pivoted toward the door, talking over his shoulder: “We’ll refuel at Gander, be in Inverness tomorrow afternoon. Coffee and sandwiches on board. You’ll have to ride the nose seats in my plane-those Dakotas are jammed with stinking big crates of stuff, they took all the seats out. All that junk belong to us?”
“That and more coming by convoy,” Alex said.
The Secret Service guards went outside ahead of him. When he came through the doorway something chipped splinters out of the jamb beside him and something whacked his thigh like a sharp small hammer and then he was down and sliding.