The bus started and stopped, started and stopped. People got on and off, about half in uniform, most of the uniforms the casual workwear of fatigues. Only two officers rode the bus during the time Parker was on it, and both of them seemed to feel out of place.
There was a great deal of coming and going out there, people walking along the sidewalks, going in and out of the buildings, riding by in cars and trucks. Down the cross-streets where the barracks were, lines of cars were angle-parked, other cars moved slowly in the sunlight.
Parker said, “Is there always this much activity?”
“Sure,” Devers said. “See, the schools run on three shifts. Six in the morning till noon is A shift. Noon to six, B shift. And six to midnight, C shift. So there’s always two-thirds of the students off-duty. And a lot of the permanent party works shifts, too, so some of them are off-duty now.”
The finance office was a hell of a distance from the main gate; Parker counted sixteen blocks, with the bus only having made one right and one left turn.
When Devers said, his voice suddenly just a bit more tense, “That’s it there,” Parker told him: “We’ll wait two blocks, and walk back.”
“Good.”
They got off the bus two stops later. No one else got off with them, and after the bus pulled away Parker said to Devers, “You better stay here. We don’t want your friends inside to look out a window and see you with two guys they don’t know.”
“I was thinking about that,” Devers said. “You’re right. So when you go by, the finance offices are on the second floor. The first floor is the Red Cross on the left and the re-enlistment office on the right. Major Creighton’s office is way to the left upstairs, that’s where the safe is.”
“All right. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”
It was a bright day but cool. It was like walking along the sidewalk in some clean little town, except for the uniforms on so many of the passersby. About a quarter of them were women, some in WAF uniform and some in civilian clothing.
The finance office was in a building like all the rest; two-storey, stucco, rectangular, A-roof, gray-green, casement windows, off-white woodwork. Signs were in the windows flanking the main entrance, which was in the middle of one of the long walls. The signs on the left were dominated by red crosses, those on the right by the word
Parker and Fusco turned the corner, walked around the building, and saw nothing more except that the second-storey windows all across the left side were also screened with mesh and bars. They walked back to Devers, and Parker said, “Does the finance office work on shifts?”
“Hell, no. Eight to five. Eight to noon on Saturday.”
“What about the offices downstairs? The Red Cross open all the time?”
Devers grinned and shook his head. “The Red Cross is shut more than it’s open. There’s only two people in there, an old guy and a nice-looking chick, and half the time they’re down to the snack bar having coffee.”
“What about the re-enlistment office?”
“Same hours as us.”
Parker nodded, stood looking around. This part of the base was laid out in a grid of streets, every block an absolute square, with two long buildings on each side. Parker said, “Is the whole base set up like this? These streets like this?”
“Mostly. Except around the flight line.”
“Can we walk to this other gate?”
“Sure. It’s down that way, to the right.”
The South Gate turned out to be three blocks from the finance office; one over and two down. It was a smaller gate, less pretentious, with no billboard outside. They stood half a block away and watched a few trucks and cars go in and out. There was no pedestrian traffic at all.
Parker said, “Where’s that gate lead to?”
Devers said, “Something called Hilker Road. Down that way it meets up with the road we took out here on the bus. The other way it goes off into the woods someplace. Comes out around Cooks Corners, I think.”
“There’s no bars out there, no diners, nothing like that?”
“Nothing but woods.”
“What about a bus stop?”
“You mean outside? A civilian bus?” Devers shook his head. “The only bus away from here is that one we took out from town, stops at the main gate.”
“So there’s no reason for anybody to walk off the base in that direction.”
Devers looked towards the gate. “I guess not,” he said. “I never thought about it, but you’re right. You’d only go out that way if you were in a car and this was closer than the main gate.”
“What about these trucks coming in?”
“I guess they’re headed for places nearer here than the main gate. Maybe there’s some kind of shortcut in from the highway, I don’t know.”
“We’ll want to know,” Parker said. “We’ll want to know what trucks come in, where they go, which ones are regular arrivers, what times of day they come in. We’ll want to know what route they take to get here.”
Devers said, “That just means sitting and watching for a few days, and then following a couple of trucks away
