Air Force Eagles (42 page)

"Good. The lawyers from the investment firm say they've almost completed their due diligence search; there were some questions about the way you value your inventory, but I've got it squared away. They've lined up some potential backers, and think they can take Love's Products public in the fall."

Peterson's voice, earnest, eager, droned on; she understood only half of what he was saying, giving short yes and no answers to his questions. Peterson was handling it for her, and that was enough. At any other time she would have been hanging on every word, asking questions, prodding him for information; now she was too emotionally drained by the changes in John, by the shifts in their relationship.

"Well, as 1 said, Saundra, it looks like you'll wind up with fifty-one percent and enough capital to expand nationally. And it's time to bring some decent managers who'll take some of the work off your shoulders. I've got three people here who would be perfect."

"Whatever you say, and thanks for everything. I'm sorry this is taking my time and attention away from the movement."

"Well, it has to be first things first. The people I'll send to you will give you some time to help me." His deep voice shifted abruptly from its usual clinical business crispness to conspiratorial. "And there are some people coming into town that I want you to meet—they are leaders for the future, believe me. You met one of them at the church the other night. Can you be in my office tonight about seven o'clock? You and John, both, I mean."

"He'll never go. The business with the purse full of money upset him terribly. And now, I couldn't go without him."

"Look, it may be hard to believe, but this is even more important to him than to us. I'm going to come over and talk to him, to see if I can't persuade him to come."

Her tone shifted. "No. You can't do that."

There was a long moment of silence and he asked, "Saundra, are you there?"

The phone had slipped in her hand as she stood staring into the mirror that revealed John leaning forward with his ear pressed against the door. He was as frail as his reflection, his hair nearly white, his tortured body fragile. For a brief moment she remembered him when they were first married, lean, muscular, virile, and full of life.

"I'm sorry, Fred. We can't see you. Just prepare the paperwork as you see fit and I'll sign. Right now I've got a problem here."

She walked quickly into the next room and threw her arms around her husband.

"John, baby, you don't have to listen at doors. I'm not doing anything wrong, just business. We'll get another phone, you can listen in on all the calls, there's nothing going on."

John Stuart Marshall—ace, test pilot, survivor—burst into tears.

"I'm sorry, honey, I'm so goddamn jealous I can't stand it. I know you must have gone to bed with this guy; for all I know you're still going to bed with him. I wouldn't blame you, he's a big success, he can give money away like water, and I can't even get along in the Air Force."

She pulled him to the couch and they sat with his head cradled against her breasts. "John, John, John, what am I going to do with you? I've never gone to bed with him, or anybody else but you, never, not in my whole life. You know that. And you haven't received an assignment because the war's only just over; they're demobilizing people. The Air Force knows you need rest. They'll find a job for you, just give them time. Or better still
don't
wait for them. Get out, come to work with me, I need help."

He didn't even hear the offer; instead, his mood switching with ferocious intensity, he struck his fist into his palm. "The goddamn newspapers are to blame. Nobody will leave it alone, they think we're all traitors."

"It'll pass. The stupid television coverage got them excited, that's all."

Two weeks before a clip of Alan Burkett's newsreel had appeared on the Douglas Edwards show. Edwards had commented sensitively on how obviously badly treated Marshall had been, but his remarks left the clear implication that Marshall had confessed to charges of germ warfare. There had been a deluge of requests for interviews from newspapers and radio stations for almost a week, along with some crank calls and poison-pen letters, most with a racial twist. Saundra had declined all the interviews for him.

Marshall shook his head wistfully. "You may be right. If they'd just send me some orders, get me back to flying, I'd be okay. It's the waiting around, getting paid for doing nothing that's killing me."

"Darling, you always told me that to get anywhere, you had to make things happen."

He nodded. "I used to say that."

"It's still true. You've got to start picking up the pieces, physically and mentally. You've got to get your mind off the way the Air Force is treating you—or the way you think it's treating you."

"How, by being a big civil rights worker like you?"

"Don't sneer at me; I do what I can while I'm making a living. And it's not a bad idea, the movement needs heroes like you. And you've got to start working out, to build your body back up. They hurt you, but they didn't kill you; you can come back."

She sat next to him, quietly watching him compose himself. After a moment, his hand reached out and he said, "Saundra, you're absolutely right. The first thing I've got to do is get back in shape. I'll start today, exercising, running a little; and I'll begin to get active in the movement."

The phone rang again and they both sat still. He smiled and said, "Thanks, honey—sorry I was angry about Peterson. I guess I just don't like rich guys . . . You get the phone, it's probably for you."

He watched her move to the phone, as tiny and as beautiful as always, her little bottom as appealing here in Los Angeles as he had imagined it in prison in Korea. Yet as much and as often as he wanted her, he was not yet performing well. Another reason for exercise.

"Yes, he's here. I'll get him."

He knew from her voice that it was trouble. Putting her hand over the receiver she said, "John, it's somebody named Frazier. From the Office of Special Investigation."

*

Frederick Air Force Base, California/
December 7, 1953

Standing in the back of the darkened room, Stan Coleman watched the briefing, talking softly with Fitzpatrick.

"You should have been at the O-club Saturday night, Fitz, it was a riot."

"Yeah, I heard the Brit was really bird-dogging Williams's wife."

Coleman laughed. "The hell he was, it was the other way around; everytime she went past him you could hear the whistle of her bloomers dropping."

"It never fails—British accent, strange uniform, the broads go crazy."

In the front of the room, an obviously miffed Colonel Williams snapped off the overhead projector as he finished the pre-flight briefing for his British visitor. Wing Commander Penrose yawned broadly and said, "Well, that's all right, then. Looks like flying the B-47 is much like flying our Valiant."

Williams laughed. "I hope not. You crashed the first Valiant, didn't you?" Whirling on his heel, he growled to Fitz, "Take the wing commander out to the airplane and get him strapped in. I've got some paperwork to do."

Coleman followed Williams into his office.

"What's the matter, Guy, is this limey cocksucker getting your goat?"

"You mean that two-bit David Niven in there? Thinks he's so fucking superior! The RAF doesn't have a decent airplane in its inventory and he acts like the B-47 is a piece of shit. Well, I'm going to show him just how good it is."

"Too bad you didn't plan a toss-bombing run; he'd probably toss-bomb his cookies."

"I'm going to do better than that. I'm changing the flight plan to include one now, and I'm going to stick his ass in the aisle when I do it."

The B-47's crowded crew compartment was connected by a narrow aisle that ran along the left side of the fuselage from the emergency gear extension installation to the radar compartment. Rightly called the "black hole" it was cold, dank, and hard; no one rode there unless they had to, except instructors, or pilots desperate to earn their flying pay at the end of the month.

Williams settled the Englishman in the front seat and Fitz in the aisle, and Penrose thawed as he began to appreciate the B-47's superb performance. They'd taken off lightly loaded, staying in the pattern to shoot a few landings before rendezvousing with a KC-97 tanker to refuel. Three hours later, after simulated bomb runs on San Francisco, Williams called out, "Fitz, would you swap seats with the wing commander? I want to show him some new tactics. I'm beginning a descent."

Ignoring the. whirlwind noise of the descent as the drag gear came down, Fitzpatrick first safetied the ejection seat with red-flagged metal pins—parachute harness had a way of grabbing the ejection seat handles—then helped Williams struggle out of the cocoon of his lap belt, headset, and oxygen connections. It took another two minutes to strap him in on the chill metal floor. By the time Fitz got himself hooked up in the relative warmth and comfort of the front seat, he heard Williams calling.

"Roger, Tonopah, Nectar Zero One, we'll be entering the bomb range shortly. Request clearance for two low-level toss-bombing runs, with a climb to altitude after the first drop."

The nasal voice of the controller at Tonopah came back, "Cleared on to the range, Zero One, give me a call inbound and at your Initial Point."

In the aisle, Penrose fumbled for his mike button and called, "I say, Williams, you didn't brief me on a toss-bombing run. I'm glad you're going to show me." He didn't sound glad.

"Happy to do it, old chum."

As he removed the pins from the ejection seat, Fitzpatrick felt ill at ease at Williams's violation of procedure and courtesy. They never flew with a fourth crew member on a toss-bombing run unless it was an instructor for the radar operator, and to put a visiting dignitary at risk in the aisle was insulting. He comforted himself that he'd made more than thirty of these runs at Tonopah, and knew every sagebrush and fence line on the way in; he would be able to judge how things were going. But each run held its own hazards, and the aisle was no place to be in an emergency.

"Tonopah, Nectar Zero One inbound, five hundred feet, four hundred twenty-five knots indicated; say winds and weather." Williams surged with elation; the airplane was flying beautifully, 170,000 pounds of streamlined power totally at his command. He'd show the limey bastard what a real airplane was like.

"Roger Zero One; winds variable, three hundred thirty to three hundred sixty, gusting twenty to thirty knots. Visibility forty miles."

Williams keyed his intercom. "Now, WingCo, you might want to hold on down there, this is apt to be a little rough."

Penrose clicked his mike button in acknowledgment as the B-47 flashed its swept-wing shadow across the desert floor, past the initial point, turbulence buffeting it as it hurtled down an invisible corridor marked only on the radar screens in the Tonopah scoring shack.

Fitz was nervous—Williams should have started the pull-up. He delayed another two seconds, and then said, "Start your pull-up!"

"Roger that!" Annoyed, Williams overcontrolled as he yanked back on the control column. The B-47's nose rose rapidly in a swell of G-forces and Fitz yelled, "Watch the G-meter ..."

Fitz's hands were already going through the left-right sequence of the ejection seat handles as the excess Gs multiplied the weight of the B-47 by three, then four, flexing the long slender wings upward like the arms of a ballerina till the relentless forces pulled them from their fuselage roots, metal arms from metal sockets, to explode the now vertical B-47 like an overripe melon. Fitz's seat blasted out of the ball of fire, briefly hurtling parallel to the desert floor. Kicking free from the tumbling seat he felt his parachute deploy automatically, the canopy blossoming an instant before he slammed into the ground. He lay on his back, amazed to be alive, watching the pieces of metal rain down from the black-red ball of fire in the sky that had once been a B-47. A huge piece of a nacelle struck the ground fifteen feet away, bouncing to glance off his helmet before landing across his legs. Unconscious, Fitz didn't feel the misting drizzle of unburned drops of fuel.

*

Tonopah, Nevada/December 7, 1953

Riley had flown down from Omaha in a T-33; Bandfield had come up from Albuquerque in a B-25. Now they sat side by side in a Sikorsky H-19 helicopter en route to the crash site, shouting over the deafening roar of engine and rotor blades, deliberately avoiding any speculation about the crash.

"LeMay happy with your new systems management scheme?" "He's never happy, but the program office is working better. They've cut down on a lot of the communication problems. It may just be that the system's maturing, anyway, but most of the big problems are clearing up, one by one."

"I wish I could say the same about putting parachutes on bombs. The goddamn things either rip right out of the harness, or else they drift off the range. We haven't got the right opening technique for them yet."

"Well, the kids are great. Ulrich's doing well in school, and Gracie is darling, a wonderful child. Lyra loves Omaha and the Air Force, but says I'm away from home too much." He paused, as if hesitant to go on. "But she's absolutely paranoid about Helmut coming to steal Ulrich."