Next came the hoods, black cotton bags made from dyeing pillow cases and cutting out eyeholes. Each man stuffed his hood under his sweater, to keep it out of the way until it was needed.
Last were an Air Force fatigue cap and fatigue jacket. Webb put these on, everybody else sat out of sight on the floor, and Webb started the engine. He drove out of the parking lot and made his way slowly across the base.
It was ten minutes to one when he came to the finance office. The street was fairly well lit, and empty. There were lights on the second floor of the building, and an AP in a white helmet was marching back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the building with a carbine on his shoulder.
Devers, peeking out the window, whispered, “Is that a dumb way to guard a place? If they had him stand in front of the door they’d make a lot more sense.”
Webb whispered back, “That isn’t the Army way, my boy.”
They were almost even with the marching AP now. When they reached him, Webb hit the brakes. The building and the AP were on the right side of the bus. Webb opened the door from the handle by the steering-wheel, leaned far over, and called, “Hey, buddy! Which way to the Motor Pool Receiving Depot?”
There was no such thing. The AP looked, saw a blue bus — like any Air Force bus, if somewhat brighter and cleaner than most — saw a driver in Air Force fatigues leaning over toward him, gripping the steering-wheel for balance, and saw nothing else to make him wonder or question. Still with the carbine on his shoulder, he took a step closer and said, “What was that?”
“The Motor Pool Receiving Depot,” Webb said, slurring the last words. “I got to deliver this goddam thing sometime tonight. The stinking snowtop at the gate gave me the wrong directions.”
“Snowtop?” That was a slang word for Air Policemen, because of the white helmets they wore, and most APs didn’t like it. This one was no exception. Taking the carbine off his shoulder and holding it at a loose port arms, he came another step closer, almost to the curb, and said, “Maybe you heard him wrong, my friend. The motor pool isn’t anywhere around here.”
“I don’t want the motor pool,” Webb said, being angry now. “You as dumb as that other one? I want the Motor Pool Receiving Depot.”
The AP was now bridling. Coming all the way to the bus door, he said, “You got any orders on you, smart guy?”
Parker was out of sight just beside the door. Now, softly, he said, “I’ve got one. If you’re smart, you’ll step up into the bus.” As he spoke, he extended his hand out so the AP could see the revolver in it, aimed at his forehead.
The AP blinked. “What?”
“Come up here,” Webb said, speaking more quietly himself now. “Just like there’s nothing wrong.”
“This isn’t the war to be a hero in,” Parker said.
“I don’t—” The AP was squinting, trying to see up the arm past the gun. “What is this?”
“Just money,” Webb told him, “We’re just taking the payroll. Don’t worry about it, we’re not spies or saboteurs or anything.”
“The payroll? You’re going to steal— You’ll never get away with it!”
“If you raise your voice again,” Parker said, “your buddy on the other side of the building is going to hear a car backfire. Now get in here.”
“But—”
“One,” said Parker. “Two.”
The AP didn’t know what the top number was. He put his foot up on the bus step before Parker could say three.
Webb said, “Hand me the rifle.”
The AP came up the steps, and anger was struggling with fear in his eyes. He was being humiliated, and he hated it, and he suspected that if he tried to do anything about the humiliation he would lose his life, and he hated the cowardice that weighed those factors and opted for cooperation. He was calling it cowardice now, in his mind, but what it was was intelligence.
Webb took the carbine from him, and Parker prodded him to move on down the aisle into the bus. His uniform was stripped off him, and Devers put it on, took the carbine from Webb, and got out of the bus.
“Thanks, buddy,” Webb called, and shut the bus door, and started away.
Devers began to march up and down in front of the building. He looked bulkier than the other AP because, although he was about the other man’s size, he was wearing another complete set of clothing under the borrowed uniform, complete to a snub-nosed .32 revolver in the hip pocket of the trousers. But to anyone passing by, or to either of the APs inside the building upstairs who might decide to look out a window, he would pass.
Webb drove straight for a block and a half, turned right for one block, turned right again, and parked. Meanwhile the AP had been put down in the aisle in his underwear and tied and gagged.
Stockton, wearing his hood and carrying his Sten gun, got out of the bus and moved away in the darkness like a long thin shadow. Three strides from the bus he was out of sight, these side streets being lit only by overflow from the lights at the intersections with the main avenues.
There was a second guard on duty behind the building, and this was who Stockton had gone after.
He brought him back three minutes later, a young scared boy, his face almost as white as his helmet. Stockton held the Sten gun in his right hand, butt braced against his hip bone, with the boy’s carbine hanging loose in his left hand.
They tied and gagged number two, left him in the bus with the first one, and they all moved off except Webb, who was to stay with the bus, move it if it seemed necessary and keep an eye on the two APs.
Parker led the way through the darkness. The sky was clear and full of stars, but they were only three days from the new moon, so that only a thin curved sliver, like a fingernail clipping in light, showed to mark where the moon would be a few nights from now.
They came at the finance office building from the rear, moved around it on the side between it and the other building on that block, and at the front corner waited, the others strung behind Parker, who watched Devers marching back and forth out there with the same stoop-shouldered fatalistic tread as the boy he was replacing.
Parker stepped around the corner, stood against the front of the building. He showed there as a dark man-shaped shadow against the stucco wall. His hood was on, the only pale thing about him were the rubber gloves on his hands. He moved these back and forth in front of himself, fingers splayed, until Devers saw the motion. Then he stopped marching, yawned, stretched, and walked over to the building entrance in the middle of the long front wall. He stood there and lit a cigarette, the signal that it was all right to come on.
Parker had Devers’ bootleg keys in his hand when he reached the door. He unlocked it and stepped through, stood just inside holding the door, and felt the other three slide in behind him. Devers, who had said nothing and who had looked ashen-faced beneath the helmet, field-stripped his cigarette and went back out to march up and down on the sidewalk some more.
Devers had given them complete maps of the building. Parker and the others moved without hesitation through the darkness to the stairs and up, their shoes silent on the metal stairs.
The door to the left at the head of the stairs had glass in the upper half. Through it, Parker could see two overhead globes lit, both down at the far end of the finance office; the one inside Major Creighton’s office and the first one on the right on this side of the Major’s office. The two APs on guard here were sitting at a desk under this second light, playing cards. They were about twenty-five feet from the door where Parker was standing, and the area between was lined with two rows of desks up to a chest-high counter which stretched across the room about six feet in from the door. To the left of the door was a bench for people who had to wait.