“Dad!” the older woman said warningly.
Her daughter smiled.
There came the sound of a siren, and then the squealing of brakes, and finally the faint sound of car doors slamming closed.
A moment later, three men came into the cabin.
One wore the uniform of a rear admiral. Another, an Army brigadier general, was in “pinks and greens”—a green tunic with pink trousers. The third, a colonel, wore an Army olive drab uniform.
The colonel stopped just inside the door to both shake the hand of the young officer, then affectionately pat his shoulder.
“You done real good, Jimmy,” Colonel Robert Mattingly said.
“Thank you, sir,” Second Lieutenant James D. Cronley Jr. replied.
“Admiral,” Kelly said.
“What are you doing here, Kelly?” Rear Admiral Sidney W. Souers, U.S. Navy, demanded coldly.
“Self-evidently,” Kelly announced, “the FBI is here to guarantee the security of the cargo aboard this aircraft until it can be placed in the hands of the Manhattan Project.”
The door to the cockpit opened and a man wearing an airline-type uniform stepped into the cabin. His tunic carried the four golden stripes of a captain.
Admiral Souers turned to him.
“Any problems, Ford?”
The “captain,” who was in fact U.S. Navy Commander Richard W. Ford, came to attention.
“None, Admiral,” he said.
Souers turned to Kelly.
“Thank you for your interest, Mr. Kelly. You and your people may go.”
“Admiral, the FBI will stay here until the cargo is in the hands of the Manhattan Project.”
Souers gestured toward the man in pink and greens.
“This is General Tomlinson of the Manhattan Project, Mr. Kelly. You may report to Mr. Hoover, if you are here at his orders, that you witnessed my turning over of the cargo to the Manhattan Project.”
Kelly, white-faced, didn’t reply.
“Are you going to leave, taking your people with you, Mr. Kelly? Or am I going to have to go down to my car, get on the radio, wake the President up, explain the situation to him and ask him to call Director Hoover and tell him to tell you your presence here is not required?”
Kelly turned on his heels, made an impatient gesture for the man with him to follow, and left the cabin.
Souers shook his head as he looked away from the door.
“How did those sonsofbitches manage to beat us here?” he asked rhetorically. He then quickly added, “Pardon the language, ladies.”
“My daughter-in-law and granddaughter have heard the word before,” Cletus Marcus Howell said.
“Mattingly, do you think Hoover has someone in my office?” Souers asked.
Mattingly shrugged. “Sir, I would not like to think so. But . . .”
“Admiral,” Commander Ford said, “the FBI must have had people at the airport in Miam