Eagles at War (45 page)

"Well, I'm gonna tell you my side, whether you want to hear it or not."

Lee tossed the letter over to Bandfield. "You can read that later if you want. And since you're playing postman, I'm going to give you a message to take back to him."

He pointed to the letter. "This just tells me I'm a son-of-a-bitch, that I shouldn't have hurt Elsie, and that if it wasn't for her he'd send me to jail. Also that he's going to punch me in the nose."

"I figured that's what it might be."

The raucous noise of the day at Isley Field—engines running up, trucks pounding by, aircraft flying over—had subsided into the normal buzz of night war in the tropics. There was a continuous murmur from the brightly lit flight line, where ground crews were straining to get the aircraft just returned from that day's mission to Japan—only the second mission from Saipan—ready for the next day's takeoff.

"I'm going to level with you, Bandy. I'm no saint. I probably shouldn't have fooled around with Elsie, but she wanted it."

"Frankly, I don't give a damn about Elsie," Bandy snapped. "It was just an infatuation and Henry's probably well out of it. The business with the pitot tubes is something else again."

"Yeah—that's what I wanted to talk to you about. McNaughton had me convinced there was an engineering fix in the works that would take care of things and make the airplane live up to expectations."

"That might wash once, Jim, even though you're supposed to be an engineer. But not twice."

"Elsie suckered me into it. We got, well, friendly, and she began filling me in. The way she told it, Henry was taking money from Troy McNaughton to give to her. She had McNaughton's books, showed me the disbursements."

"She's the bookkeeper, she can cook the goddamn books any way she wants. That doesn't mean that Caldwell took anything."

"Maybe. But that's not the way I read it at the time. Troy's a hell of a salesman, he convinced me the best way I could help Henry was to keep Sidewinders coming down the line until they got them fixed. And I guess they did. The Russians like them now."

"You're switching tracks—we were talking about Henry being on the take, and now you're talking about the Sidewinder's performance. "

"It's all wrapped together. Troy convinced me that if we could keep things quiet until after the war, Henry could retire, and nobody would be the wiser."

"Jesus, if you thought he was guilty, you should have turned him in. If you didn't think he was, you should have turned McNaughton in. What the hell do you think an officer's commission means?"

The light from the unshaded sixty-watt bulb dimmed periodically as more demands were placed on the overstrained generators. Bandfield searched Lee's weary face for some signal that this was somehow just a bad joke, that there was a better explanation.

"Look, Bandfield, you grew up poor. I didn't. I hated it when Dad lost all our money in the Depression. I want to make it big!"

"Shit, that explains everything. No problem. Anybody would understand that."

"Don't bullshit me, Bandy, I'm tired. Well, after the Sidewinder, I was in whether I liked it or not. I really believed I was helping Henry."

"While you were fucking his girlfriend?"

"We hadn't started anything yet. Then McNaughton came to me one night with a bunch of papers, showing the high-drag profiles on the Mamba. Same story. He said he thought they could do some fixes—better wing/fuselage juncture, smoother skin, the usual—but that he needed time. I dreamed up the change to the pitot-static system, and that was it."

"Stop. You could have done that on your own. There was no need to create the paperwork about Caldwell being on the take."

"I didn't know about that at the time. When I found out, it was too late. Elsie and I were mixed up together—and I'd accepted a job offer from Troy for after the war."

Bandfield stood up. "Lee, you really are a shit. If it weren't for Caldwell, I'd knock your block off and then turn you in for a court martial."

"Yeah, I figure you would. Why don't you? Don't tell me I was a patsy for covering for him. You're doing the same goddamn thing yourself, right now. You want purity and justice, you talk about what a commission means, so you turn me in, and him, too."

The characteristic uneven sound of Japanese engines passed overhead, followed by four sharp explosions.

"Uh-oh—looks like we've got visitors. They sent some Zeros down on a one-way mission the other day."

Both men raced outside the tent as the base defense antiaircraft was opening up. A few searchlights were tracking aimlessly about the sky. Two B-29s on the nearby hardstand were already burning, and the Japs—Bandfield couldn't tell what the planes were, they were too slender-looking to be Bettys—came in at low level, strafing. One swerved as it approached the end of the runway and hit the ground flat. It skipped like a rock, its remaining bombs blowing up on the second bounce, the blast knocking down Lee and Bandfield. The other intruder roared directly overhead, racing out toward Magicienne Bay.

The two B-29s were burning fiercely now, their fuselages collapsed in the center, wings poking up, noses forlornly cast in one direction, tails dumped in another. The blazing bombers were surrounded by a tightly packed ring of B-29s around them, all fully fueled with high octane aviation gas and loaded with bombs for the next day's mission.

Bandfield yelled to no one in particular, "Christ, they're going to go up like firecrackers on a string!" He ran to where the ground crews were frantically trying to push the sixty-ton monsters away, moving the outermost ones to clear a path for the inner circle of planes. Some particularly gutsy mechanics braved the intense heat to climb into the cockpits, trying to get at least two engines started to taxi.

Lee ran in the opposite direction. At the edge of the hardstand, he climbed into a bulldozer left idle for the night and within seconds had the engine running. With the blade lowered, he drove directly at a river of burning fuel streaming toward the next B-29 in line. Scooping dirt as he went, he smashed directly into the center of the first B-29, pushing a section of the flaming carcass off the hardstand into the adjacent gully, away from the other airplanes.

Bandfield had a clear view of him from the cockpit of the B-29 he'd climbed into, amazed that Lee could breathe and function in the firestorm of heat. Lurking like monsters in the raging mass of flame and aluminum were the next day's supply of five-hundred-pound bombs. If they went off, they'd blow the rest of the B-29s to bits—and take Lee and everyone on this end of the island with them.

Twice Lee charged back into the flames, each time scooping the fiery debris over the side of the embankment. The third time he whirled around, he saw that the construction engineers had arrived with three more bulldozers, all heading for the second B-29. Lee turned once again and began packing dirt over the first airplane, still burning, still bomb-laden, riding back and forth until the fires had subsided and the fire trucks were at last on hand, pouring water on the wreckage.

Still unbelieving and more than a little ashamed of his own ineffective action, Bandfield walked over to where a cheering bunch of engineering personnel were slapping Lee on the back, joking and laughing.

A giant of an engineer had grabbed Lee around the chest and was waltzing him around in a circle. "Little Colonel, where the hell did you learn to drive a 'dozer?"

Lee, his red hair singed, skin blistered and totally black with soot, his teeth gleaming in the still glowing fires, replied, "My daddy had a little road construction outfit in Virginia. I worked summers, drove everything. You never know what will come in handy, do you?

While Lee was being cleaned up and his burns dressed, Bandfield re-created the scene in his mind, trying to understand how Lee could have been such a bastard to Caldwell—and such an instinctive hero here. It was a cinch that he'd get put in for a Silver Star for this, maybe the Medal of Honor. He deserved it.

How complex people were! One minute Lee had admitted to being a crook poaching his superior and friend's girl. The next minute he was doing the most heroic thing Bandfield had ever seen. It was one thing to be brave in an airplane, in combat—Christ, that's what you were trained for. But to ride that 'dozer into the flames was incredible.

As he waited, he thought about other people and other changes. Who could have believed that iron-ass Henry Caldwell, the real genius of American airpower, could be led around by his dick by a woman who was "No better than she should be," as Clarice would have said. And Hadley, gruff old Hadley, ignoring Clarice all her life, and now pining away for her.

General Hansell came down later to the dispensary, saying, "Lee, maybe after this I'll forgive you for your idiot ideas about area bombing." It was three hours before they got back to Lee's tent, recounting the night, each man nursing one of the clutch of bottles of medicinal whiskey—Four Roses miniatures—the jubilant flight surgeon had given Lee. He didn't get to treat heroes too often, and Lee was clearly a special case.

Now, inevitably, their talk came back to the main agenda. "Look, Bandy, no matter what you think of me, no matter what Caldwell thinks, I've got something to tell him. It's purely professional—and I hope he listens."

"Shoot."

"So far the planning on the B-29 has been brilliant, from the design, to getting coolies to build airfields in China, to capturing this godforsaken rock and stuffing it with airplanes. There's just one problem."

He drank down his whiskey and opened another, tossing the metal cap on the floor.

"The problem is that our bombing isn't worth a shit, and it's not going to get better. We can bomb Japan for the next forty years, the way we've been doing, and they'll laugh at us. With the winds we're running into, the airplanes are coming across the target at maybe four hundred forty miles an hour—too fast for our equipment to drop with any accuracy. The bombs are being sprayed all over. The reconnaissance photos show that we're barely touching the factories, and high explosives don't do much damage to residential areas."

He leaned forward, red hair tousled, the grease from the medication shining in the light, eyes burning intensely. "Now here's what we've got to do. We've got to strip out all the weight of the airplanes, take out the guns and the gunners, load them up with as many incendiaries as they'll carry, and hit Japan at night, at low altitude. We can burn Tokyo out in two raids—I mean every goddamn house in it. But it means that we've got to forget about doctrine, and forget about pride."

"Have you told General Hansell this?"

"Yeah, you heard him in the sickbay. He threatened to take my squadron away from me if I kept pushing it. Hansell's committed to daylight precision bombing. It's a religion with him. He's the most brilliant planner I've ever met—but he's dead wrong about this."

"What can Caldwell do?"

"Christ, he's got Hap Arnold's ear. And Hap Arnold runs the Twentieth Air Force personally—it's the only one that's not under a theater commander. Caldwell's got to get Arnold to let us at least experiment, try it out, see what happens. Otherwise, the mines and the submarines are going to sink the entire Jap fleet and the Navy's going to wind up winning the war."

"I'll do it. I don't expect he'll be receptive to any messages from you, but I'll do it."

"Old Henry doesn't care where an idea comes from if it's good. And about that stuff I talked about—a job at McNaughton. That's just between us, right?"

"Jim, before you got on that goddamn bulldozer, I told you to go fuck yourself, that I was going to turn you in. But not now. I don't approve, not at all. But I figure that anybody with your balls deserves a chance to straighten some of this mess out. I just wish I knew where the hell it was all going to end."

*

Over Holland/January 1, 1945

By God, there was a sight no one had seen for a long time!

Oberst
Helmut Josten lifted his hand and pointed. His wingman in
Kampfgeschwader
51,
Leutnant
Hans Langner nodded enthusiastically. Dawn was just breaking behind them, the scarlet sun glinting off the wings of the eight hundred Luftwaffe fighters skimming the snow-covered fields to avoid enemy radar. Josten and his precious handful of jets followed the 109s and 190s in great curving arcs, trying not to overrun them. The beautiful scenery below—frozen canals reflecting the sunlight, rows of trees covered with snow—meant nothing to Josten, aware only that the low temperatures meant denser air, which meant his engines would run better.

It was the "Great Blow," at last—a year after Galland had planned for it—and just fifteen days too late for the Ardennes offensive. They'd been ready, but weather had intervened. Now the Luftwaffe, with the biggest force of fighters it had ever sent on a single mission, was going to strike Allied fighter bases in Belgium and Holland. The Allied pilots would all be in bed with hangovers . . . they hoped!

There were no German hangovers—Goering had sent down specific instructions that there would be no drinking at all on New Year's Eve. To compensate, the cooks had come up with a decent breakfast, roast beef, some pork cutlets, and a pudding. Yet the meal at the base at Hespe had been dreary: too many empty chairs. Josten had been with
Kampfgeschwader
51 only a few weeks, and already Langner was almost the only one remaining of those he started with. The bomber group was another of the Luftwaffe's last-ditch improvisations—using bomber pilots to fly the Messerschmitt Me 262. It was laughable. They thought a steep turn was thirty degrees of bank, a steep dive, eight degrees! The Turbo intimidated them, and many more had died trying to learn to fly it than had been killed in combat. Langner was an exception, quick off the mark and a good pilot.