Oh, God!
`Mademoiselle, " Johnny Moore interrupted her chain thought by handing her his empty bottle of beer, "if you would be so kind?"
"Avec grand plaisir, mon cher, " Ernie said, and went to the beer buckets and got him one.
"What did they do to the Germans?" Beth asked. "The ones they caught from the submarine?"
"I don't know," McCoy said. "I didn't see the file, just heard the scuttlebutt. If they were in uniform, they were just put in POW cage. If they were in civilian clothing, that makes them spies. Then they could be shot. Or maybe hung."
"What would the Japanese do if they caught Americans?" Ernie asked.
"How did we get onto this subject?" McCoy said.
That means, Ernie decided, that the Japanese would do nothing quite as civilized as shooting someone they caught trying to land somewhere from a submarine-these three, for example.
There was a knock at the door. Not nearly as imperious as the previous knock. This one, in fact, was somehow furtive.
"Do you think the guardian of the beach has summoned the local vice cops?" Moore asked.
"I hope not," McCoy said as he turned the lights off, unlocked the door, and opened it.
When the lights came back on, Lieutenant Mainwaring and Captain Al Stein, the Army Air Corps officer-now that she saw him, Ernie remembered his name-and two Air Corps enlisted men were entering the small room. They had two wooden crates with them, rolling them on what Ernie thought of as a furniture man's dolly.
"Room service," Stein said.
"Why did you bring them here?" McCoy asked.
Ernie tried to read what was stenciled on the crates. Whatever had been stenciled there had been obliterated, and very recently, for the paint was still wet.
"Because I don't have the faith everybody else seems to have in this colonel of yours to fix this."
"Everything will be all right, Al," Mainwaring said.
"He said as Stein was led off in irons, destination Leavenworth U.S. Army prison."
"Help yourself to a beer," McCoy said to the Air Corps sergeants. "Or there's booze if you'd rather."
"I think maybe we'd better get the truck back," the older of the two Air Corps sergeants said.
"Have a beer," Stein ordered.
"OK, Captain, thank you."
"Have all the beer you want," McCoy said. "We really appreciate this."
"Ah, what the hell, Lieutenant," the sergeant said.
"I am sure, Captain Stein," Moore said, propping himself up against the headboard, "that an officer of your demonstrated logistical genius is aware that these crates won't fit in that Chevrolet staff car?" Stein looked at Moore and laughed.
"I'm surprised that you're still able to talk."
"Hell, he's been quoting the Bible to us," McCoy said. "An amazing man is our Lieutenant Moore."
"We'll bring the truck back at oh six hundred, Lieutenant," the Air Corps sergeant said. "That'll give us just over an hour to make it to Pensacola. Plenty of time. We just didn't want to try to get these crates through the gate at the field in the morning."
"You have three seats on the seven A.,M. courier flight and authorization for six hundred pounds of accompanied baggage," Lieutenant Mainwaring said.
"That's what these weigh?"
"Pray they don't weigh them," Stein said.
"What about the extra cone sets?"
"I've got those in the car," Mainwaring said. "All I could get you was three."
"Plus the one we have?" McCoy asked.
"Including the one you have," Stein said.
"Beggars can't be choosers," McCoy said. "Thank you."
"I won't see you in the morning, McCoy," Stein said. "So I'll say this now. In no more than seventy-two hours-probably within forty-eight-somebody's going to miss this stuff. I would deeply appreciate it if you will do whatever you can to keep Mrs. Stein's little boy from ending his Air Corps career making little rocks out of big ones at Leavenworth."
"Did you talk to the Colonel, Mainwaring?" McCoy asked.
Mainwaring nodded.
"There's supposed to be TWX on the way down here."
"That ought to do it, Stein," McCoy said. "But I'll check on it myself as soon as we get to Washington."
"Good enough," Captain Stein said. He looked at his two sergeants. "Take enough of those bottles to sustain you throughout the journey, gentlemen, and then let us be on our way. "Thanks, Stein," McCoy said. "We owe you one."
"You owe me a good deal more than one," Stein said, putting out his hand. "Good luck, McCoy. Be careful. You two, too," he said, waving at Hart and Moore.
"May the peace of God which passeth all understanding," Moore proclaimed from the bed, "go with you and yours."
"Oh, shit!" Stein said, laughing, and snapped off the lights.
Just before the door slammed shut after them, Stein called out, "Mazeltov, you all!"
"Why do you think Moore got so drunk?" Ernie asked as she made a halfhearted attempt to clean up the room when the others had gone.
"I think he was in pain," McCoy said.
"What kind of pain?"