Command Decision Read Free Page A

Scotch?”
    Brockhurst leaned forward gravely, confidentially.
    “Listen, Sarge, Dennis is washed up. Trouble with the press, record losses yesterday and probably again today, a hero in the guardhouse; he’s a ruptured duck, boy. But a couple of angles on this deal would be worth some good bourbon to me.”
    “What angles?”
    “What became of that German Dennis had in the guardhouse?”
    “Bonded bourbon?”
    “Bottled in bond.”
    “How much?”
    “Four bottles.”
    Evans face darkened with indignation. “You give Rafferty in the guardhouse two cases, just for having his girl in the village make that phone call that got you out.”
    “I did like hell. I gave Peterson one case…” Brockhurst shut his mouth, too late. He had set too many verbal traps himself not to feel the click of this one. “Okay, call it a case—for the whole story, though.”
    Evans looked cautiously at both doors, removed the cigar from his mouth, and leaned forward. Brockhurst’s ears stretched.
    “Dennis kept him there till last night. But yesterday they was a snafu at the Quartermaster’s and he run clean out of Spam. The General he said by God he’d promised the men meat for breakfast and if they wasn’t no other meat we’d just have to use that Kraut. If you could have heard them boys at breakfast bitching about the meat packers’ profiteering….”
    Brockhurst arose, livid. “Okay, you got your joke and I still got my whiskey.”
    Evans waited until the anteroom door banged shut on the correspondent. Then he jumped for the black phone on the General’s desk. “Guardhouse…. Rafferty, give me Peterson… Peterson, this is Evans. Bring six of them twelve marbles you just found to General Dennis’s anteroom in a musette bag.” He locked his lips over the cigar and revived the ember before cutting off the paean of protest that battered his eardrums. “You heard me… in twenty minutes. Well, Jesus Christ, I’m giving you half of ’em, ain’t I?”
    He hung up the phone and stretched his long arms with tingling satisfaction. His instinct had been right. Now, for a little patience, he not only had six immediate bottles of whiskey, he had discovered an operating procedure. It always took time to get onto a new job but he had the war under control again now.
    Evans decided to give Joan outright to Eddie Cahill. Eddie had a tough time, as all dopes did, and Joan was good, if monotonous. He would give them a bottle of bourbon for a dowry, to end the thing without hard feelings. The feeling of magnanimity, expanding with his new riches, was so pleasant that Evans extended it to Dennis. He was on easy street now, even if Dennis did get canned and this Garnett drank milk. War had many privations but there was no shortage of fools who wanted to talk to generals. He was thinking of them tenderly when the door opened and General Dennis walked in.

Chapter 2
    General Dennis returned to work that afternoon feeling a little better than usual. He had had nearly five hours of sleep—two troubled and fitful until they awoke him with the strike signal, then three of deep and blessed oblivion. His powdered-egg omelet had been no worse than usual and the arrival of a new consignment of canned grapefruit juice had brightened his meal after the Sergeant assured him there was enough for noncombat messes.
    On the way over to the office he had noted that six of yesterday’s crop of minor repairs were already restored to serviceability and practicing formation. It was a modest but tangible backlog against tomorrow.
    But as his mind came fully to life again returning anxiety dispelled his momentary relief. It would be forty-odd minutes before he would know about his losses, either in the abstract or about Ted himself. In the meantime he had to get on with the Jenks case and whatever else had come up while he slept.
    He noted the Sergeant’s flustered jump to attention and noted also that the man had been smoking with his feet on the desk. That