WASHINGTON - Gov. Mark Sanford and an entourage of mayors made a final trip Monday to the Pentagon to plead for any S.C. military base that the top brass might consider closing.

The Pentagon's goal in 2005 is to eliminate up to a quarter of the nation's 425 bases. Still unknown is the vulnerability of any of South Carolina's more than a dozen military facilities.

"They're the masters of the poker face," Sanford said after two hours of back-to-back meetings with four Pentagon officials, including Geoffrey Prosch, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for installations and environment.

S.C. Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom, co-chairman of a task force charged to protect the state's bases, came away guardedly optimistic.

From "indirect indications," he said at a Capitol Hill news conference, "things seem to be going well."

Still, Sanford could not reassure any S.C. community its base is safe.

"It would be a mistake for anybody to become complacent."

A decade ago, Sanford said, the Charleston Naval Base was thought invulnerable. When that base closed, 30,000 people lost their jobs.

This time, thousands more jobs and billions of dollars are at stake - the state's bases together add $7 billion a year to the economy and are responsible for 120,000 jobs.

And the time left for persuasion is growing short.

On May 16, the Pentagon will release a list of bases for BRAC - Base Realignment and Closure. A base on the list has a 15 percent chance of survival.

Added together, S.C. military, political and business officials have made at least a dozen trips to the Pentagon to make their cases for the indispensability of S.C. bases. The state has spent more than $1.3 million on "save-the-base" campaigns.

Together with local governments and chambers of commerce, it has hired a bevy of Washington consultants. In the Midlands alone, base supporters have collected thousands of signatures to send to the Pentagon.

Those who made the trip Monday are: Columbia Mayor Bob Coble, Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, retired Brig. Gen. Thomas R. Mikolajcik, Beaufort Mayor Bill Rauch, North Charleston Mayor Pro Tem Kurt Taylor and Sumter Mayor Pro Tem William Randolph.