“Hey! Halt! What are you doing here?”
They stopped, Alex marching in place with Chuck now, singing with him as loud as she could to drown out her fear:
“From the Halls of Montezuma …” Stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp … “To the shores of Tripoli …”
A short, bullet-headed man and two others with pistols drawn circled around, blinding them with their flashlights. Alex put on the hat and pulled it down to shield her eyes. Then she reached out to steady Jeep.
“From the Halls of Montezuma …” Stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp …
“Shut up! Stop moving!”
Alex stood still.
“Take off his hat,” Bullet Head ordered.
The soldier, a private, lifted it off and held it away from himself as if it were a rotten fish.
“She’s a girl!” he exclaimed. “A kid.”
“Give it back,” Alex cried. “I borrowed it!”
Jeep growled as his ruff went up.
Bullet Head backed away. “You keep a holt of that dog!”
He turned to Chuck. “Who are you? Whaddya think you doing?”
Alex was shaking with excitement, but she wasn’t scared now. It was just like they had planned. She felt like she was watching a play, except that she was also acting in the play and had no idea what her next lines were going to be.
“We-want-to-watch-the-launch,” Chuck declared slowly in a loud, flat voice mocking the loudspeaker.
The private gave him a close look. “He’s crazy.”
“Like heck,” said Bullet Head. “Fronts for commie spies. Pat ’em down!”
“Nothing on either one,” the private said when he finished. “They don’t seem to have a dime between them, Sarge, or anything else.”
“Old commando trick,” Bullet Head said. “Concealing identity. Take ’em over to the bunker.”
“Launch procedure sixty-three. Check.”
Chuck squeezed Alex’s hand. “ ‘Matilda’ this time.”
As they started moving they began marching and singing again, louder than before—
“Waltzing Matilda …” Stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp. Jeep parading along beside them.
The flight control bunker was separated from the gantry by the blast shield. It was crowded with men in military uniforms and others in business suits with name tags and binoculars hung around their necks. Men in fatigues sat at control desks against the wall studying monitor screens and instruments.
As they entered, Jeep balked and looked up at Alex. They both smelled food.
“Launch procedure sixty-five. Check.”
“We got intruders here!” Bullet Head yelled as he motioned to the private to push the captives in.
Everybody turned to stare.
“Launch procedure seventy. Check.”
“Halt!”
As Alex and Chuck marched in place, flakes of caked mud fell onto the floor like they were shedding.
“Stand still!”
The captain looked about their father’s age. He had pens and a slide rule stuck in his khaki shirt pocket. There were sweat stains under his arms. Alex took him for an engineer. He got their names, then studied them so closely Alex could feel his heat.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“We want to watch the launch,” Chuck said louder than he needed to. “We want to see the rocket go up and watch the radar working. I’m a student of space.”
“Me too,” Alex said.
“Where’re you from?”
“Silver Spring, Maryland,” Chuck answered.
“How’d you get here?”
Chuck kept answering. “Sailed down the Potomac from DC, then out to Tangier. This afternoon we caught the mail boat to Crisfield, hitched a ride to Chincoteague, and, uh, got ourselves over here.”
“How?”
“Swam, waded.”
“Sure. Who brought you over?”
Chuck shook his head. “Nobody.”
“So you borrowed or stole a boat,” the captain said, squinting at Chuck as if to understand him better.
“Launch procedure eighty-three. Check.”
The captain shook his head like he was trying to clear it.
“Lieutenant,” he ordered, “radio the Coast Guard to check around the island for the boat these folks used. Then get the FBI to send somebody over to collect ’em.”
FBI! Alex felt a surge of panic. Will they arrest us like spies in the newspapers? She fought to stay calm.
The captain turned back to Chuck.
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“And you?” he said to Alex.
“Twelve.”
“You in school?”
Alex stood at attention and nodded like she’d seen prisoners do in the movies. “Sixth grade, sir! Parkside Elementary, sir! Silver Spring, Maryland, sir!”
The captain puckered back a smile. “Same as my daughter,” he muttered. “And you?” he said to Chuck.
“I finished high school June a year ago. Blair. I started at Tech but had to leave. I’ve done the National Radio Institute course. I want to work with radar.…”
“Have you ever done anything like this before?”
“I’ve been picked up a couple of times for trespassing.”
“Seems to be your habit,” the captain said. “Where?”
“Washington. Climbing the WTOP tower, checking the broadcast waves,” Chuck said proudly. “Then trying out an airplane.”
The captain’s eyebrows went up. “Airwaves to airplanes to rockets. There’s an escalating pattern here. Did you come alone—I mean, you and your sister?”
“Yes, sir,” said Alex, determined to have a voice in things.
The lieutenant was talking on his radio nearby. Suddenly he was speaking louder: “Hart, I said. Hart. H-A-R-T. H-Harry, A-Alpha, R-Romeo, T-Tango. I said, see if you can get anything on them. Yeah, we got ’em here in custody. Come get them.”
Chuck nudged Alex. “From now on,” he whispered, “you’re H-Harry, A-Alpha, R-Romeo, T-Tango.”
Another officer came over to report to the captain. “Discovered where they got in, sir, and Coast Guard reports finding the boat they must have used. They were out looking for it. Belongs to Mr. Brownlowe on Chincoteague, reported missing a couple of hours ago. Folks saw two kids stealing it from Cousin Marge’s.”
“OK,” said the captain. “Well, we’re not going to stop the launch on account of two muddy trespassers. But launch or no launch, I want a work detail out there right now securing that fence!”
“Launch procedure eighty-six. Check.”
Bullet Head started pushing Alex and Chuck into a corner.
“Might as well let ’em watch,” the captain called. “They worked hard enough to get here. And get ’em blankets. Wrap ’em up. Better yet, send ’em to the shower, Sarge. Laundry soap—the strongest you got! They’re filthy! Get ’em to wash the dog too, and give ’em dry clothes.”
Bullet Head’s face fell. The captain read his mind. “You’ve got time, Sarge. Launch won’t be for another twenty, thirty minutes.”
When Bullet Head herded his prisoners back in they looked scrubbed and awkward, shuffling in baggy GI gear and boots too big. Jeep rushed around shaking himself dry in frenzied spasms, rubbing up against posts and table legs.
“Cap’n,” Bullet Head called. “There’s more pairs of those binoculars the contractor folks been passing out? These kids could use them.”
“Go ask the gent over there,” the captain answered, pointing to a man in a business suit. “He’s been handing ’em out as souvenirs.”
“Launch procedure one-hundred-fourteen. Check.”
The food they’d smelled when they came in was set out on a table against the back wall. Jeep went over to it, wagging hard.
Bullet Head called to the captain again. “Dog’s hungry, sir.”
“So feed him. You kids hungry too?” the captain asked.
Alex and Chuck nodded.
“Launch procedure one-hundred-sixteen. Check.”
“So eat.”
The three of them were stuffing down hush puppies, fried oysters, and spicy crab cakes when suddenly Alex stiffened. A big man in coveralls came in with a couple of others. They looked like mechanics. The big one lit a cigarette as the captain joined them.
“Chuck! It’s him!” Alex whispered. “VB’s here.”
Chuck squared his shoulders and took a deep breath.
“Sir!” he bellowed as loud as he could.
The room hushed. Everyone—including the big man—looked over.
“Herr Doktor von Braun! Ebbs sent me!”