The straight Scotch steadied—if only a little—Tugwell’s nerves, and he realized he was playing at the top table—here the President of the United States was making a brief study that would please even Niccolò.
“So Berlin is clearly the first winner, but Tokyo also gains if those dozy northern cunts take umbrage. But we really do not need the ball-less wonders.” (Tugwell was reminded of the President’s frequent conjecture that “All—no, that’s not fair—let’s say 97%—of Canadian men were born without testicles.”)
The President chuckled, “We live in interesting times.”
How could he change so quickly the two men wondered?
21: A Fine Social Contract
THE RAIN SQUALLS HAD STARTED a little after ten that evening. By midnight, the wind had picked up and the rain was so heavy a man could not see more than 30 yards in front of him, and with the rain and wind came the cold. To Harrison, who had served in Minneapolis, this was mild weather. But still he did not like it—give him Galveston any time. Now there was a sweet town: warm, lots of booze, and lots and lots of girls who just loved a good time—a good time that almost always ended in what he liked most, what he called a “bed whacking.” But this cow town out West, you could take it, and you could keep it.
As the leader of the hourly patrol, he was strongly considering a slight variation in procedure, namely, a quick whip around the fuel tanks to ensure that no Mexicans had loaded them onto their donkeys and had stolen them. Then, over to the garage, which was always warm, dry and quiet. True, there was none of what he most liked, but poontang would be in abundance when he got he got his 48-hour liberty on Tuesday. Down by the docks, he loved to entertain the girls who had made their way up from Baja. To compete with the local girls, these Mexican senoritas were always cheaper, hotter and, most important, younger—many looked like innocent virgins. While it was true none of them were tight—after all, they were hard-working girls—they did get (or seemed to get, he could never quite tell) more excited than the local girls. And excitement and noise and wetness, as the girls all know, are what excite all men the most.
Harrison left with a two-man squad, “This will be a cursory and summary inspection.”
The two soldiers in the squad looked at each other, not understanding his words.
Slightly exasperated, Harrison explained, “We will look at Tank 1, then go to the garage. I doubt the Mexicans will be stealing the tanks tonight.”
Both men smiled and nodded.
Five minutes later, they got to the garage. It was typical—dark, bottle-green and over-painted, with signs dispensing such nonsense as “Let’s Prevent Noise By Ourselves” and the ubiquitous “No Smoking While Dispensing Fuel.”
The three men opened the side door. From the outside floodlights, they could see the dark shadows of the pool’s trucks and jeeps and they could smell the stale grease. They walked to the drivers’ inner waiting room and sat down. The small room was a sanctum of quiet. Scattered about were copies of Life and the Saturday Evening Post, and a few magazines that his mother back home would call “rude” with smiling ladies all beaming at the reader, nipples brazenly erect, occasionally with a hint of pubic hair.
The drivers’ waiting room was not the cleanest place in the world, but there was a two-burner electric stove, an icebox, and most important of all, hidden behind the wood paneling above the icebox, a fifth of bourbon. The established protocol was: Drink It, Replace It. But for a fifth of a gallon of the best southern bourbon, this was a fine social contract.
The three sat down, and three glasses were found. Not that the glasses were the cleanest, but—what the hell—the whiskey would kill all the germs.
Outside, under the cover of the driving rain storm, ten men emerged from a hole in the chain wire fence at the top of the compound. All were wearing Navy uniforms. The rain was the last thing on their minds. At the last moment, the idea of carrying mock wooden rifles had been discarded, not because the rifles did not look real, but rather because they would be of no benefit if the men were captured. All ten entered through the hole in fence at the north of the compound—the highest point—as the Swede had explained that, “This gives us a small advantage in case of discovery—the opposition will have to run up hill, and this will slow them, especially while carrying rifles.”
The troops nodded and appreciated his thoughtfulness about their well-being—their Spanish commanders in their civil war could have learned from the Swede’s thoughtfulness and planning and consideration for his troops.
The rain was a godsend but had they not rehearsed for the week prior back in Nogales, they would all have been lost. And, Holy Maria, these tanks were huge—in training, the men could not believe the circles of lime the Swede had marked on the four soccer fields in Nogales. But now they could see these monsters for themselves, each wider than a soccer field’s width and higher than a ten-story building; inside each, enough fuel for one of the giant American aircraft carriers for a month of cruising. And there were ten of these monsters.
Each man half walked, half ran to his designated monster. Placing the first of the two limpets on the uphill side of the tank, he then moved to the opposite side—this was the dangerous part as now the man was in the lights.
In far less time than they dreamed of, all ten men reunited at the hole in the fence. In reality, it was just four minutes. The ten scrambled through the fence back to bus. Once they reached the bus, they scrambled on board, like very nervous and frightened school boys who had successful robbed a candy store for the very first time at the start of their promising young criminal careers. The inside of the bus was dark—just three red bulbs dimly glowed, just enough dull glow to not trip over the steps. All ten stripped off their uniforms and placed them in two cream calico bags. While they were doing this, the bus had jumped into life and had slowly and carefully started on its slow journey back to the safety of Mexico. Two hours out on the highway, they stopped and dumped the two calico bags on the side of the road into a ravine. They all talked about the mission and their rewards for four minutes of pure, breathtaking exhilaration—imagine actually being paid to do this.
In the drivers’ small waiting room, the two electric burners glowed red and while their glow was somewhat feeble, the room was very small, and soon it was warm. In addition, the bourbon was having its effect. Harrison and his tiny army were all feeling no pain. Harrison rose and was starting to say they should make some coffee and get going back to the barracks. Just as he made this slightly garbled announcement they heard a muffled noise from the top end of the tank farm, then a second later, another, then the sounds of six more. Startled, all three looked at each other.
Two seconds later, the pool garage and the inner sanctum of the drivers’ waiting room were swept away by a flood of nine million gallons of heavy fuel oil. Enough fuel oil—as the quickly convened inquisition, the “Naval Review of the Loma Fuel Farm Attack,” pointed out—to fuel the US Navy’s entire aircraft carrier fleet for 74 days.
Or as one slightly more astute analyst pointed out: with the loss of Loma and the Hawaiian Islands oil farms, the American carriers best use would soon be to be scuttled as artificial coral reefs; Yamamoto pondered this as he thought about the time his Emperor had mentioned to him the need for more coral reefs for his Emperor’s son’s beloved fish.