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tension of men playing with death. It was far removed from the austere gloom of Queen Mother’s Gate.
    Besides, Pringle had the best-looking barmaids in London, and fighter pilots were the glamour these days. Blue Hawk weddings were wild affairs—champagne corks went up like flak for three or four days.
    There was too much information to be gotten around the place by a stranger. They were not permitted. Sean was no stranger; he sat down at Big Nellie’s booth. Nelson Goodfellow hunched like a grizzly bear over his typewriter, pecking out the end of his column over the din.
    “Where’s Tim?”
    “Out looking for poon. He said he’d see you here soon as he makes a connection.”
    “What happened to the last broad?”
    “Married a Canadian sergeant.”
    Sean ordered a couple of drinks. “Tim owe you any dough?”
    “A fin ... a tenner ... I don’t know.”
    Sean paid his brother’s debt. The singers around the upright piano unloaded ...
Oh hallelujah, Oh hallelujah
Throw a nickel on the grass,
Save a fighter pilot’s ass,
Oh hallelujah, Oh hallelujah,
Throw a nickel on the grass,
And you’ll be saved ...
    Big Nellie jerked his story from the machine. “You hear the combined voices of the Fourth Group ... Squadron Ten ...”
    Big Nellie began to blue pencil through his story.
Got flak holes in my wing tips,
And my gas tanks got no gas,
Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,
Got six Messerschmitts on my ass ...
Oh hallelujah ...
    “They’ve got to sing loud,” Nellie’s gruff voice said. “They’re missing three tenors, two baritones, and a bass. Strafing a bridge yesterday, tree-up level. The Krauts were laying up there behind a cloud. It was a turkey shoot. How’s things at Queen Mother’s Gate?”
    “Three casualties. One cut from a stray paper clip, another with dirty hands from carbons, and a third got lost in the fog walking from building A to building B and hit a wall.”
    Nellie’s laugh matched his grizzly-bear appearance. “How do you get along with General Hansen?”
    “Yesterday or today?”
    “Let me tell you something about Hansen, Sean. Very few armies in the world have a dozen generals who are too valuable to be wasted on a fighting command. Yes ... I said wasted. He’s a Jeffersonian in uniform. I remember covering the manpower hearings before a joint committee of Congress. That little son of a bitch looked right at one of the senators from South Carolina and said, ‘We can never fight a just or correct war so long as some of our citizens must fight it as mess-hall boys and ditchdiggers. Our skins may be different color but the blood the Negro offers his country is the same color as yours.’ ”
    “I’d of pulled out of there a long time ago, Nellie, if I I didn’t feel that. A lot of officers like to brag about their men following them to hell. Hansen’s the only one I’d care to make the trip with.”
    “I’m glad you feel that way, Sean. Hansen needs you.”
    “That’s what I like about you, Nellie. You’ve always got information. I got here early on purpose so I could talk to you alone. What is Tim up to?”
    Big Nellie’s wide puss faltered.
    “Come on, Nellie. We’ve got twenty-five counter-intelligence men at Queen Mother’s Gate. Hansen uses them to spy on me. I use them to spy on Tim. There’s been some one-man missions out of his base.”
    Nellie’s big paw engulfed the glass of whiskey. “German rocket bases.”
    “That’s what I thought.”
    “They are well hidden, they’re small, and can send up a snowstorm of flak. We’ve tried several ways to get at them. Right now we’re using Invaders and Marauders. They’re good birds but no hot rods. In elements of threes from medium altitude they’ve got a chance of getting in and out”
    “Go on.”
    “Our success has been limited. Tim talked his C.O. into letting him try a one-plane, low-level sneak attack. He got back from the mission all right. The plane looked like a sieve. But he demolished the target. So, your