Air Force Eagles (16 page)

Behind Ruddick was Troy McNaughton, smiling down at Bandfield.

Roget separated them and hurried Bandfield to one of the ambulances standing by the crash site. It took them almost an hour to get off the field through the surging, crash-maddened crowd. At the hospital, the X-rays found no fracture, and a young intern asked endless questions about the race as he used twenty-two stitches to sew up the cut on the side of Bandfield's head. In the cab on the way back to the hotel, Bandfield asked, "Ruddick must be crazy. What was he saying about loving Jews and niggers?"

"I don't know, Bandy, he was out of his mind with grief. You can sue him for everything he's worth, you know that."

"Christ, I don't want to sue him. Did you ever hear who won the race?"

"Yeah, Cook Cleland in the Corsair. But the bad news is Odom—he lost control on the second lap and crashed into a house. Killed him and a woman and her little baby. I doubt if there'll be any more racing at Cleveland."

*

Little Rock, Arkansas/October 1, 1949

The shades were always drawn, now. Milo Ruddick sat despondently at his desk, unshaven, shoelaces untied.

A four-by-eight-foot blown-up photograph of Bob Ruddick standing in front of the Viper hung on the wall. It had been taken immediately after the Ohio Trophy race, and Bob was grinning as he held the huge cup. Ruddick was glad he had the photo now, regretting only that it was not the Thompson Trophy. But that was life.

And so was revenge.

He turned back to the file of papers on his desk. The report had been compiled by Troy McNaughton's chief of security, Dick Baker. It confirmed the material Ruddick had gathered from his military intelligence sources. His suspicions had been absolutely correct. Not only had Bandfield recommended the jungle bunny Marshall for the test pilot's job, he'd gotten him another job in Salinas. Bandfield's wife was no better; she was one of those pushy women always wanting to do a man's job. And she had brought this Communist woman, a Jewess no less, into the country with her brat.

But these were only externals. The most damning thing in Bandfield's criminal past was his flying for the Reds during the Spanish Civil War. He'd shot down eleven of Franco's planes. And the Air Corps had actually let him back in to fly!

"I wonder how much damage he's done over the years. He sabotaged the McNaughton supersonic program, hiring that nigger, that's for sure. Well, I'll get him. I'll get him."

*

Salinas, California/October 15, 1949

Saundra Marshall did what she'd done every morning for the past six months—rolled down the striped awning, pushed the tables out to the front, brought the boxes of fruits and vegetables out, sprinkled them down with a fine spray of water, swept the floor—and then waited.

The waiting had been horrible at first; sometimes not a single customer had come in all day. Her initial reaction was that it was because she was Negro; there weren't many colored people in the area, and the Marshalls were the only ones with a store. But bit by bit, business had improved so that she felt a little better. Today was Saturday, and usually the weekends were better, with tourist traffic stopping for soft drinks or directions.

It had puzzled her for a long time that the majority of her customers were male Mexican laborers. Invariably, they would come in alone, poke deferentially around the store, buy one or two little items, gum or a candy bar—and then shyly buy some of the cosmetics she had prepared. Then a few Mexican women started coming in. They were far more direct, going directly to the counter, and pointing to the bottles they wanted.

She had created a simple line of homemade cosmetics—face cream, hand cream, and a general purpose lotion, all based on her sweet old Aunt Mary's recipes. No one had called her Mary—she was "Aunt Love" to everybody, and Saundra had called her line "Love's Lotions."

The ingredients were simple—regular cold cream, tinted with food coloring and perfumed with Evening in Paris, then mixed with aloe vera and glycerine. She'd designed the label herself and had them printed at the small shop on Olvera Street.

but the "s" in Love's had been looped around the "L" in Lotion, so that it looked like

Love'

When she'd finally figured it out, she felt she had to change the label, but John wouldn't let her. "Honey, it's not like you were selling fake medicine that couldn't cure them. This is good stuff. And if some of your customers happen to think it's a love potion, it might just work for them. Besides, it's the only thing that's getting us any business. Raise the prices!"

This morning Patty Bandfield and Lyra were coming over to test her products. The three of them, from such vastly different backgrounds, had wonderful times together. In the beginning, part of it was that Lyra and Saundra were mutually exotic to each other. Saundra had never met a foreigner before, and Lyra had never talked at length to a Negro. But more important, all three of them were strong, independent women, all wanting to get more out of life than just a living.

Lyra and Patty came in laughing and spent the next twenty minutes experimenting with the cosmetics.

Lyra, ever the pragmatist, said, "John was right. These are good products; I'll use them myself. You don't have to care what people do with them—if they think they work as love potions, more power to them. Maybe I'll take an extra bottle for that myself."

Patty shot her an approving glance. "And John's right about pricing, too—you're way too low. You're not charging for all the time it takes to make them. I'll bet if you raise prices, you'll sell even more."

Enthusiastically, Patty squeezed her arm. "I think you might have something here. Why don't you think about expanding? I could help you with the finances. I'll bet you'd find a big market in Los Angeles."

The words were a reprieve. Business had picked up, but Saundra had already decided that unless things improved dramatically in the next sixty days, they were going to have to go somewhere else. She'd opened their little variety store with $4,000 in savings—blood money, John called it, from his flying for Israel. He had protested long and hard about a store, but finally, as always, had given in to her. But when she needed another $4,000 to keep going, she found that he had spent the rest of his savings on his little racer.

She whirled on him. "Don't be foolish. You worked hard instructing, taking charter flights. You earned your keep. Patty's talking about
investing
in me, not giving me anything. She could make a great deal of money.

He put his arms around her. "Honey, I don't want to make you feel bad, but for her to make a great deal of money, you'd have to make a great deal of money. And I just don't see that happening."

She shrugged him off. "You were willing to put up with a job as an instructor, taking peanuts for pay, and you resent me having any success."

Stung, John retaliated,
"Our
money?
Our
money? I earned that fighting in Israel. You blew half of it on this store; I blew half of it on a racer. Fair enough."

"We should have listened to your father, and stayed in Cleveland."

"Sure, I could have stayed in Cleveland, sweeping floors. That's insulting. Hell, I've been an officer and a test pilot."

"Well, maybe you'd be better off back in the Air Force."

"You mean it? Could you stand it?"

She turned away. "No. I mean without me. I'm holding you back. Somehow we've drifted apart since Tuskegee. You expect too much out of life, you demand too much of yourself. I'd be content married to you if you were just a factory hand—as long as you came home every night."

He threw his arms around her, pressing his cheek against hers. "Don't talk like that, Saundra, don't ever talk about us splitting up. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't have made it through pilot training if I hadn't had you to think about. If you left me, I wouldn't be worth anything." He tightened his embrace.

"I'm serious, John. I love you, and I know you love me. You just don't love me as much as you love flying."

"Not so, not so at all. It's different, that's all. A man has to work at what he likes."

"No, he
doesn't.
Most men don't. If you love your wife, and love your family, you work at whatever you can get. But I'm not trying to argue with you—you go ahead, try the Air Force again."

"Not if you're serious about splitting up."

"We won't split up. I'll go to Los Angeles and try to work my little business into something. We'll see what happens. If the Air Force takes you back, maybe they'll send you someplace where we can be together, where there won't be any trouble."

Marshall snuggled his face into her neck.

"Honey, I don't know if the Air Force is taking anybody back in now—but I'm going to write and find out. Maybe they'll send me someplace in California. There's lots of bases here. You've been reading how President Truman is pushing integration in the military—maybe it will be better this time."

She closed hex eyes and whispered, "Maybe." But she knew it would not be.

*

Nashville, Tennessee/December 14, 1949

In the growing recession, the first thing to dry up were defense appropriations, and the manufacturers were reeling under the Secretary of Defense's ruthless cuts. Even Milo Ruddick hadn't been able to save McNaughton's missile development contracts, and they had had to close the San Diego plant.

But behind a huge theater curtain inside the cavernous tomb of McNaughton Aircraft's main assembly bay, a sleek new shape had emerged, a half-scale version of what was supposed to be the Manta jet bomber. There was a cockpit for flight tests, but so far only Troy McNaughton and a handful of McNaughton engineers knew that the Manta was intended to be a winged missile, unmanned, and capable of carrying a large atom bomb.

There was a quiet murmur at the arrival of Dr. Vannevar Bush and his six-man delegation from the Joint Research and Development Board, the group that was trying to manage the unruly rivalry developing among the services for the control of missile programs. The Army asserted that missiles were simply artillery; the Air Force had begun alluding to missiles as "unpiloted aircraft"; and the Navy said it needed both artillery and aircraft, and thus missiles, of its own.

Bush was dressed in a gray three-piece suit straight out of the Roaring Twenties. He moved with a birdlike quickness, his suit lapel pulled back so that the Phi Beta Kappa key in his vest pocket showed. Slicking back his silver hair with one hand, he took in the huge curtain and the battery of charts and graphs, all covered and marked top secret. Suspicion glittered in his eyes; he knew that damn Milo Ruddick was a strong supporter of McNaughton Aircraft, and that was enough to make him wary.

Bush turned to peer closely through wire-rimmed glasses at McNaughton. "Mr. McNaughton, I think I should warn you that we don't like surprises."

McNaughton, usually the consummate soft-soap salesman, knew that with academics like Bush a good offense was better than a weak defense.

"Then I'm in for a bad morning, Dr. Bush, for I do have a surprise for you. But I think you'll like it."

The lights were dimmed and McNaughton began the briefing himself, detailing the familiar facts of the appropriations allocated to the development of the McNaughton Manta jet bomber. Bush's eyes glazed, and he signaled for some coffee to keep him awake.

"We've been able to outstrip Northrop's efforts because we are using the German research on flying wings done by the Horten company that began in 1931. And, to make sure that we have a complete understanding, we've hired the top Luftwaffe test pilot to help us. Helmut Josten is our Dr. Von Braun, so to speak. Helmut, would you come forward and meet Dr. Bush, please."

Josten stepped from behind the screen, almost, but not quite, clicking his heels. The patrician Bush had difficulty controlling his shock when he saw the pilot's burned face.

McNaughton resumed, "Today we are going to show you the half-scale version of the Manta, which is scheduled to fly in six weeks. Then we are going to recommend that you cancel the program."

Bush was so amazed that he started to rise and knocked over his coffee. "What's that?"

Now in his element as a briefer, Stan Coleman stepped forward, took the pointer from McNaughton's hand, flashed his customary winning smile and said, "First, however, let me show you some improbable claims."

He flipped the first chart; it showed a sketch of the Convair MX-774, an advanced version of the old German V-2.

"As you know, after spending millions of dollars, this program was cancelled. The MX-774 was intended to lead to an intercontinental ballistic missile, to be shot out of the atmosphere to fly for five thousand miles, then descend and strike a city-size target in Russia. We think the concept is a failure—no one will be able to get that sort of performance from a ballistic missile for twenty years."