Mac wingate 7, p.3
Mac Wingate 7, page 3
Manganaro dropped the kit bag on one of the long wooden benches and turned to a locker. He took out a tunic and held it up against Wingate’s chest with a quick cry of, “So here you go, then, Mac!”
“They gave me a tunic,” said Wingate.
“Hey, Mac,” said Manganaro, already beginning to help Wingate out of his army battle dress, “you wanna take a look at what they gave you? You’ll look like a new recruit in that crap. But this—he held up the tunic from the locker with pride, “this has seen some service. I mean, this isn’t just the junk they send from Washington. This tunic can stay airborne all by itself!”
Wingate didn’t protest. He was still in mild shock from the explosion and he was still troubled by what Erikson had told him. He would have liked to help the poor bastard, but there was nothing he could do.
“There you go!” Manganaro said, putting the finishing touches to Wingate’s appearance. “You’d fool Hermann Goering in that—the goddamn son of a bitch!”
“Thanks,” said Wingate.
“You mind being a navigator and dropping a rank to lieutenant?” asked Manganaro, tapping the insignia on the tunic.
“I’m—er—I’m proud, Brad,” said Wingate, a touch of tired amusement in his voice.
“So you should be!” Manganaro burst out, enthusiastically. Then after a moment he asked, “How’s the head?”
Wingate looked at him. He was a nice guy, the salt of the earth—or the air. It was on guys like this that the whole air offensive depended. If Manganaro was anything to go by, they were going to win the war in the end—despite Washington and Whitehall. He said, “It’s OK. No pain.”
Manganaro looked relieved. He said, “Don’t get me wrong, Mac. I’m asking out of self-protection. I don’t want a guy on the aircraft with me who’s liable to pass out. Nothing sentimental about Manganaro.”
Aircrew came into the room, checked lockers, spoke a few words to one another, then drifted out again. There was a feeling of tension everywhere—tension and waiting. From time to time the loudspeaker crackled and a low-key voice muttered a few incomprehensible words: “Lieutenant Spatz to D-4 ...”
“Evelyn Zero crew to briefing ...”
“What time do we take off?” Wingate asked. The waiting couldn’t go on forever. It was putting the whole station under too much pressure.
“You won’t miss it,” said Manganaro, pulling Wingate’s kit out of the bag and stuffing it into his own locker. “Keep your hand under your ass. The minute you feel air there, that’s takeoff.”
“OK,” said Wingate. “If you can’t tell me that, will you tell me when I should start worrying?”
Manganaro smiled. “Not yet,” he said. He had taken the escape kit out of the bag and was holding it out to Wingate. “This is the only bit of equipment you might find useful,” he said. “You know how to use it?”
Wingate nodded. He took the packet from Manganaro and ripped it open. It contained the usual maps inside silk handkerchiefs, a flexible saw that pushed inside a belt or along the seam of a tunic, a wad of French francs, some Italian lire. He pushed the stuff into various parts of his uniform, and hid a miniature compass inside his field dressing.
Manganaro glanced at his watch. “OK, Mac,” he said, “let’s meet the rest of the gang.” He tossed a heavy, wool-lined flight jacket to Wingate and said, “You’re going to need this out there.”
Wingate followed him out of the room and through the double doors of the lobby onto the flying field. It was a quarter after five now, and almost dark. A few dimmed lights moved slowly about the field where a gasoline tanker was making the last of its refueling stops and the final bomb loads were being rolled toward their loading points. It was a dim and somber scene, cold and misty. Malta and the warm Mediterranean beckoned Wingate as they had never done before. Takeoff couldn’t come soon enough.
Manganaro made for a big Dodge three-tonner that was standing outside the mess with its engine running. He climbed aboard, then reached back and put out a hand to pull Wingate after him. Voices cried, “OK, let’s move it!” and “Brad’s here—so what the fuck we waiting for?”
The truck rolled around the perimeter track, passed through the main gate, and onto the main road. Manganaro sat back on the side bench facing Wingate and said, “So Mac—meet some of the guys.” He went through a list of rapid introductions: “Curly, Ed McGrady, Dutch ...” Now and again he added a little descriptive color—“a Limey from up north,” “one of the Texas oilmen.” There were nods and handshakes from the darkness under the big tarpaulin cover of the truck.
They drove for twenty minutes, at first down winding side roads where nothing was visible from the back of the truck, later down a major road where there was other traffic and Wingate could finally make out the shapes of houses in the dim light of shaded streetlamps.
“Where we going, Brad?” he asked. “Or is that confidential too?”
“We’re killing time,” said Manganaro. “It’s a ritual. Nobody around here puts his cock on the line without kicking loose once in a while. We’re going to Betty’s place. You do drink—huh?”
“Now and again,” said Wingate. The chill night air had freshened him. His head was clearer.
Manganaro laughed. A couple of others joined him. He cried, “Well, Mac, you’ve just hit one of the ‘now’ times!”
Someone muttered, “You’d be no good as aircrew, Mac. For this game you need a liver the size of a football field.”
Wingate wondered, as they slid through the darkened streets of the city they’d entered, where the hell Hollywood had gotten its ideas of war from. Sure, there was action if you happened to be in the right place at the right time. And there were exotic places to visit—if you ignored the mortar bombs and had a foxhole deep enough to cover you when the strafing began. But there sure as hell were some dull times and some gray, unglamorous places. This looked like one of them.
They dropped down from the back of the three-tonner into the murky evening. When Wingate’s eyes adjusted, he could make out shadowy shop windows and pedestrians groping their way homeward with the help of shaded flashlights. Manganaro took him by the elbow and guided him toward a darkened doorway. A moment later and the whole scene had changed.
Beyond the door, a flight of stairs led downward into a basement. There was dance music playing in the distance and the smell of beer and liquor and tobacco smoke clogged the air.
Manganaro asked, “So what’s your medicine, Mac?”
“D’they have Coke?” asked Wingate, removing his flight jacket.
“Jesus Christ!” Manganaro cried.
“OK,” said Wingate. “I’ll take tomato juice.”
He went over to a table by the far wall and sat down. The place was half full already, though legally it shouldn’t have been open more than fifteen minutes. The British were tough with their licensing laws, though there was always some guy who could find a way around. To his left there was a four-piece band crammed onto a stage the size of a tabletop and in front of it half a dozen airmen pushed girls around an open piece of floor.
Now he came to think of it, all the men were fliers, wearing wings or half-wings or air gunners’ brevets on the breasts of their tunics. There were Poles with their silver eagle insignia, RAF fliers with their embroidered white silk wings, Royal Canadian Air Force officers, and two men in RAF blue with “France” shoulder flashes.
Manganaro came over with a drink for Wingate. “Nearest thing they got to tomato juice,” he said, grinning and putting it down in front of Wingate.
It was Scotch. Wingate took a sip and nodded. He was resigned to anything. However crazy this was, he needed Manganaro and the rest of the crew. He sure as hell couldn’t fly the aircraft himself.
Two others joined Wingate and Manganaro at the table. They put out their hands to him in silence. After a moment one of them said, “Tiny Hazlitt. I’m flying you.” He nodded to his companion and said quietly, “Jack Cowan. Jack’s a gunner.”
Wingate looked at the drink in front of Tiny Hazlitt and asked, “What’s that you’ve got there, Colonel?”
“Gin,” said Hazlitt. He lifted the glass and took a long drink.
“Do you think that’s a good idea, sir? Before a flight? There’s a lot at stake ...”
Hazlitt leaned toward him with a slow smile and hissed, “Shut up.”
Wingate nodded and sat back. If this was what the air war was about, it was no business of his.
None of it was convincing—the scene in the basement, the crew’s behavior, the way Manganaro had dragged Wingate with them knowing he’d had a smack on the head. But what could he do except sit it out?
Cowan was on Wingate’s right, his back to the bar. He had an eager, smiling face and dark red hair, He said to Wingate, “D’you have the time?”
“Ten after six,” said Wingate. “There’s a clock over the bar. How come you didn’t see it?”
“Is that right?” Cowan asked, grinning broadly and turning to take a look.
As he did so, Manganaro moved right up to Wingate on Wingate’s other side and whispered, “There’s a men’s toilet, next floor up. Be there—exactly ten minutes.”
Wingate turned to him, but Manganaro had already turned away. He was saying to Colonel Hazlitt, easily, “Where you figure on going after this, Tiny?”
The place was filling up. More aircrew were coming down the stairs into the smoky atmosphere. Beer was flowing across the long oak bar in glass pint mugs. A couple of civilians were sitting alone at the bar. One was reading the evening paper, every now and then raising his eyes a couple of degrees and viewing the scene through the mirror behind the bar. The other made no pretense about his curiosity. He was half turned toward the dance floor on his stool, one elbow resting on the bar and the other hand on his knee, watching the scene through heavy tortoiseshell glasses.
A girl came up to the table and smiled at Wingate. She said, “You’re new. I’d have noticed someone like you if you’d been in before. Would you care to buy me a drink?”
Wingate eyed her for a moment. She was in her mid-twenties, tall, very slim. She had jet black hair that he concluded must have been dyed, with a dramatic bleached streak in it. She had a style that he didn’t associate with a place in the provinces like this and he wondered whether she hadn’t come up from London. He smiled and shook his head. “No,” he said.
She wasn’t going to be put off that easily. She came up to Manganaro and put a hand gently on the back of his neck and began caressing his ear with one of her fingers, but she continued to look at Wingate. “If you don’t care to buy me a drink,” she said, “maybe you’d care to dance?”
It was quite a temptation, Wingate conceded. The simple navy blue dress she was wearing showed every curve of her body. Her neck was long and slender and her breasts were clearly defined. Despite the low-key lighting of the dive, he could make out the shape of the nipples. She held her hips at a little angle so that one of her hip bones showed clearly. Below the hem he could see her legs from way above the knees. Under different circumstances he would have welcomed her invitation. But he felt that if the rest of the crew was going to stack up on liquor, someone had better stay clearheaded for the mission ahead. These guys seemed to have no idea what depended on it.
Before Wingate could speak, Hazlitt leaned across the table and said, “He’s shy. Of course he’d like to dance. He needs a little encouragement, that’s all.”
Wingate looked at him. Hazlitt was South African, a man around six feet six inches tall and weighing more than 250 pounds. He had taken his cap off now to reveal a shaven head that glistened under the lights. His face had a roughhewn texture to it that reminded Wingate of Mount Rushmore. There was a half-smile on Hazlitt’s lips, but there was no amusement in his eyes. He wasn’t ribbing Wingate. He was giving him an order, without actually putting it into words.
Wingate looked back at the girl. She cocked an eyebrow at him provocatively and said, “Maybe I can teach you something you ought to know—something they didn’t teach you down on the farm.”
Wingate hesitated. Did she know more about him than she was saying with that reference to his farming background? He dismissed the idea. He was five thousand miles from Sawyer County. For Christ’s sake—it was just a figure of speech she had come out with. The whole place had gotten him edgy and his head was beginning to ache again. He gave a little shrug and stood up. “Hell,” he said, “who could refuse that kind of invitation?”
Wingate led her through the jostle of men and girls now pushing back from the bar toward the middle of the room, and turned her toward the band. The music was soft and slow, the guy on the muted sax gently stroking the sounds out of the instrument.
“They call me Rita,” she said, moving her body close up against him and putting her cheek against his. “Rita Gautier.”
“They call me Mac,” said Wingate. “Among other things.”
She gave a soft little laugh and he took her through a quick double turn. She danced easily, professionally. She wasn’t just another talented amateur—this was her living. He got the impression that even as they danced together she was scanning the dim recesses of the dive for someone else—her pimp, perhaps, or another potential customer.
“What do you do, Mac?” she asked, lifting her head from his shoulder and looking at him. He was trying to figure her accent. She was English, but she wasn’t local. He didn’t know enough about the dialects the British spoke to be able to place her, but he’d heard enough to know she wasn’t a northerner. It came back to London. Everything about her had a panache that had to be metropolitan.
“What do I do?” Wingate repeated. “I fight wars. That accounts for the uniform.”
“Sounds thrilling,” she said, moving away from him to the beat of the music, then twisting back into his arms. As she did so, he caught sight of the thin gold chain and locket that she wore around her left ankle.
“It’s a living,” said Wingate.
He was acutely aware of the situation. Drink was flowing like tap water. The place was packed with operational aircrew. There must be more vital information in this room than anywhere outside Churchill’s study. Yet there were civilians here listening, and girls to persuade guys to relax and confide in them. Girls like Rita. He wasn’t the only one who had considered the problem. There were half a dozen cautionary posters on the walls making the same point: “Careless talk costs lives!”; “Do what Dad does—keep Mum!”; and a picture of Hitler disguised as a bellhop with the caption, “You never know who’s listening!” For Christ’s sake, he wondered, why didn’t they simply close the place or put it off limits?
Rita was asking, “How long are you going to be around, Mac?”
“As long as they pay me, I guess,” Wingate parried. As they turned, he caught sight of the guy with the paper. He was still at the bar, but he was leaning forward now, listening intently to a couple of girls. The man with the glasses had moved over to join them.
“Are you in the Air Corps?” she asked, suddenly, losing the close contact with his body for a moment and leaning back so that she could see him.
“Hey, Rita,” said Wingate. “What the hell do you think this is I’m wearing?”
She looked at him for a moment, sizing him up. “You don’t—feel like an airman,” she said.
He laughed. Jesus, he thought, what a cute way to identify a guy. He asked, “And just how does an airman feel?”
“Tense,” she said. “You can feel it in his shoulders, in the way he moves. You haven’t got it.”
It bothered him vaguely that she should be so perceptive. He said, easily, “Put it down to experience. I’m way past the tense part.”
As he turned her again, he saw the civilian with the glasses get up from the bar and begin to work his way quickly across the crowded floor. When he reached the stairs, he pushed past a couple of RAF policemen surveying the scene below them and disappeared through the double doors at the top.
“I don’t get this place,” said Wingate. “If it’s a public bar, how come I see only a handful of civilians?”
She shrugged. “You know men,” she said. “They go with the crowd. Most men out of uniform—they’d just be embarrassed in here. People wonder why they’re not fighting.”
He caught sight of Jack Cowan, the gunner, swaying in the arms of some blond on the other side of the band. Jesus, he thought, if they ever managed to get airborne it was going to be some flight! All he could hope was that the German night fighter crews were behaving the same as these guys.
Rita asked, “Are you free tonight, Mac?”
He looked at her for a moment. She was very stylish, very sexy. It was a very attractive idea. He wondered why with all the higher-ranking guys in the room, she’d picked on him. “What did you have in mind?” he asked.
“I’ve got a flat just around the corner,” she said. “I thought we might ...”
“Honey, I’m flattered,” he said, beginning to ease himself out of the situation. “But, maybe ...”
She broke in on him. “Mac,” she said. “Don’t go. Stay with me. I like you. I can give you ...”
“Go where?” he interrupted, suddenly irritable. She was pumping him too hard. “Where am I supposed to be going—and what the hell is it to you anyway?”
She wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was looking toward the bar. She had stiffened and stopped dancing.
“Rita?” he said, wondering what it was that suddenly changed her.
She pushed him away and said, “Excuse me ...”
“Rita!” he called, but she was already pushing her way across the room. A moment later and he had lost sight of her amid the smoke and the throng of blue and khaki uniforms.
He shrugged. What the hell, he thought. The world was full of beautiful women trying to pick up a little information. She wouldn’t be the last he would meet. He turned and pushed across to the stairs and made his way past the police and up to the toilets.
Wingate didn’t make it to the toilets. Hazlitt was waiting for him at the turn in the upstairs corridor. He grabbed Wingate by the arm the minute he appeared and pushed him through the fire exit and up the metal stairway leading to the roof.
