Air Force Eagles (17 page)

McNaughton watched Bush nodding sagely, as even wise men do when their own thoughts are played back to them. The scientist spoke: "You're right; for one thing, we don't have the guidance capability for that sort of trajectory."

"Exactly!" Beaming, Coleman went to the next chart.

"This is North American's MX-770. They call it the Navajo. It has a five-hundred-mile range—totally useless, unless we're going to war with Canada or Mexico. They are talking about a five-thousand-mile-range missile—but they say that it will need a nuclear power plant. We think this is pie in the sky."

"We want you to cancel the Manta bomber program, and substitute for it the Manta guided missile—five-thousand-mile-range, six-hundred-mile speed, and virtually invisible to the enemy radar."

As he spoke, the curtain lifted and a battery of lights flashed on the jet-black Manta, mounted on a slowly rotating circular platform.

"We can build a fleet of these at one-half the cost of Boeing's B-47 bomber, and one-tenth the cost of Convair's proposed ICBM program."

Bush hopped up on the turntable and walked along the length of the Manta.

"This is extraordinary, Mr. McNaughton. You were supposed to be developing a manned bomber. What happened to change your mind?"

"Don't misunderstand me. We could easily develop this into a manned bomber, if that's what the services demand. But we think a flying-wing guided missile makes more sense from both the performance and the economic standpoints."

Coleman interjected on cue. "We don't think there will ever be enough money to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile. Too many problems of guidance and weight—how are you going to carry a ten-thousand-pound nuclear warhead?"

Bush nodded in agreement—he'd been saying the same thing for years.

"The Manta's mission is one-way; it doesn't have to carry fuel for the return flight. That means we can carry a five-ton bomb load. We can build two of them for every B-47 they are going to buy, and you won't need any funding for crews."

Bush turned to him. "What about guidance? Why should this be any more accurate than a ballistic missile?"

"We're planning a redundant guidance system. The main system is brand-new—it will use the stars to navigate by, just like a human navigator, but much more accurately. The backup system will be to fly it by remote control. The Manta's radar will transmit its position back to B-29s or B-50s standing well off the Russian borders; they'll make any course corrections by radio. Not as accurate as the main system, but if you are carrying a forty-kiloton bomb it won't make any difference."

Excited, Bush unconsciously sucked his teeth, a vulgarism that would have dismayed him if he'd been aware of it. "Does Milo Ruddick know about this?"

"Yes, sir. I briefed him on it. We are personal friends, as you may know, and I generally keep him posted."

"I'll bet you do. Let me caucus with my people for a few minutes." All the McNaughton people streamed out into the hallway to wait.

Coleman slapped Troy on the back. "You handled him just right, Chief; he was all set to rip our knickers."

"Yeah, but I know how he thinks. I figure with Ruddick and Bush lined up, I can shove this down the Air Force's throat, no matter what guys like our pal Varney say."

***

Chapter 4

South Korea/August 5, 1950

Four F-51s burst out of the overcast to dance their dolphin shadows across the sun-silvered clouds. The targets lay ahead, dispersed like a handful of seed sowed along the muddy river's bank. A yellow-ochre blur of North Korean troops, their artillery, and a column of the wicked Soviet-made T-34 tanks were paused at Hamchang, ready to push on to Pusan and throw the Americans into the sea.

Sweat burning his razor nicks, throat dry as beef jerky from the oxygen, the rotted-rubber G-suit constricting his legs, Marshall felt short-circuited by time as he fumbled for once familiar knobs and switches in dreamlike frustration. His last attack in a Mustang had been six years ago, in Italy, against an arched stone bridge crawling with retreating German troops.

The pretty little fighter, supreme over Europe, was sadly obsolete now. Scruffily maintained, it was a poor vehicle for this re-baptism in conflict, and absolutely the wrong weapon for ground attack, for a single rifle bullet through the radiator would cook the in-line twelve-cylinder engine to a melted mass of steel within minutes.

They would have been better off with Thunderbolts, the big, radial-engined Republic tank of a fighter. But there were no Thunderbolts, just as there were no jet fighters that could operate out of the rough Korean fields. There were only Mustangs, and they would have to do.

So far today's mission had been a milk run, but in the next second a black cloud of flak might blow him to bits. Things happened as suddenly as the war itself; on June 24th, he'd just finished a mission in a F-80 at Clark Field in the Philippines; the next day the North Koreans had begun their massive invasion of South Korea. Two days later, President Truman authorized the use of U.S. forces to support the South Korean forces, and the next thing he knew, he was here, fighting a war no one really understood.

Sheer habit made him scan the sky—there'd been no fighter opposition since the early days of the invasion, but you could never be sure, and he didn't want to miss a chance.

The C.O.'s voice, crisp and cool, crackled through the radio: "Dallas flight, cleared to attack."

Major Seville's F-51 peeled off, the five-hundred-pound general purpose bombs under his wing marring the fighter's crisp lines. Marshall thought: Should have napalm and rockets—that's what we need. But even as he prayed for better armament, Marshall followed Seville effortlessly, his hands and feet caressing the controls, flowing to the attack like a bow on a violin string, sky tumbling upward as the ground flew toward him, concentrating on following the cross shape now pulling up below. Marshall saw a single black explosion where one of Seville's bombs had detonated, felt the gratified lift of his aircraft as his own two bombs released, then pulled the stick back hard, fighting against the dimming blackout of G-forces to lead the other F-51s back to the perch.

He was pleased with himself, and with his comrades. Like riding a bicycle, you never forget, he thought. Two weeks before, at Clark Field, they had all been hotshot jet pilots flying F-80s and kidding that jets were so fast that you had to say "Rog" instead of "Roger." Now, without any transition training at all, they were back in beat-up Mustangs, trying to halt the rampaging North Koreans and prevent an Asian Dunkirk. Jets couldn't operate from the rough Korean fields—the Mustangs could

Seville's voice, taut with exasperation, came back over the radio.

"Shit. One of my bombs hung up. We'll make a strafing run and I'll try to pickle it off."

Marshall inserted his finger in his oxygen mask's damp sump to let the sweat drip out. Bad idea—they'll be waiting. The four Mustangs dove again, twenty-four lines of bullets reaching out to scythe down the brownish-yellow-clad troops manning the antiaircraft batteries. Marshall saw the bomb fall away just as Seville's airplane staggered from a burst of flak.

This time only three aircraft pulled up. Seville was below them, slowing down, the black smoke boiling from his engine merging gray with the phosphorescent coolant fluid streaming from the belly. There was no radio call. He simply turned and dove with all six .50-caliber guns firing, a fragile stream of ejected cartridges trailing behind to dot the path to his death. Seville crashed straight into the flak battery, disappearing in a massive explosion that shot flames and debris two hundred feet into the sky.

Sweet Jesus. He was good and now he's gone.

Marshall called, "This is Dallas Two. Form up. Nothing we can do for him now."

The sorrow-laden trip back to the field took only twenty minutes, Marshall telling himself all the way that they'd better get used to casualties. After landing, he put on his maintenance officer hat and toured the flight line, talking with the mechanics, estimating how many planes they'd have ready for the next sortie, offering advice, permitting them to cannibalize parts from other aircraft only when it was absolutely necessary, and yelling on the field phone at the supply people. He liked maintenance work—smear on enough grease and there were no color barrriers. It fitted in with his basic philosophy: You received the respect you earned, no more, no less. It was all he ever asked for, all he and Saundra had ever thought about asking for. He wondered how her application for the bank loan was coming. She'd long since closed the little retail store and was busy planning an expansion. He was glad Patty was there to guide her.

Less than an hour to the next mission briefing remained when he trotted back to exactly the same type of ten-man tent he'd used in Italy, its tired canvas sagging despite the rope lashings. He wondered how it was able to intensify the Korean summer's heat just as it used to amplify the Italian winter's cold.

Marshall glanced at the shaving mirror hanging at an angle on the tent pole above the potbelly stove. His wide-set, hazel-flecked eyes were bloodshot, and he needed a haircut—and maybe one of Saundra's dye jobs, he thought. She was always playing with her cosmetics line, experimenting on both of them, and he couldn't deny the traces of silver in his curly black hair. Rubbing the lines left by the oxygen mask, he lay down on the mildewed mattress with its sour-smelling khaki blanket. The narrow tubular-metal cot listed in the mud, threatening to dump him in the dirty stream of water running in the door of his tent and out the hole he'd dug in the rear.

The unpalatable GI rations kept Marshall lean, while the long hours kept him hard. Reaching into the chipped, olive-drab foot locker that was all he had of home, he pulled out a fifth of pinch-bottle Haig. He sipped straight from the bottle, rinsing his mouth, holding the whiskey as long as he could against its bite before spitting it out to disappear in the swelling rivulet. He didn't really like the taste, and regarded the scotch only as an antibacterial mouthwash. You needed all the help you could get to fight bacteria in Korea.

The morning's scene played before his eyes—Seville diving, his bomb-laden wing low, the stream of flak—37-mm probably—that reached out from a clump of trees to smash into the airplane, and then the sickening dive into the target.

He must have been wounded—knew he couldn't make it back.

He wondered it he would have the courage to do the same.

It had been nice in the Philippines, eating crisp lumpia in native restaurants, the hot flaky rice crepes stuffed with God knew what. At the officer's club they had played tennis on "Whites Only" courts, a term that always made him uncomfortable, even though he knew it referred only to the approved clothing. Everybody took Wednesday afternoons off for "athletics"—whatever they chose, from baseball to a romantic rendezvous, and the weekends were leisurely when the guerrillas—"Huks" they called them—weren't shooting.

He liked Clark Field even though Coleman had led a small group that evidently resented his being a Negro. He'd learned to eat early and quickly in the club, and never to visit during happy hour, when booze might get the better of some Southerner's discretion. And—most important lesson of all—he'd learned to keep his face impassive if an attractive woman, American or Filipino, walked into the room.

He found Korea a strange and bitter country where even the maps were wrong by a matter of miles and pilots flew missions out of airfields whose names they couldn't pronounce. Home base was called K-10, an old Japanese field at Chinae on Korea's southern coast, with short sod runways and derelict buildings. American bombs had twisted the hangar's I-beams into spaghetti in 1945; the caved-in roof still threatened to fall, and the long hangar doors slanted out on broken rails like a dead vulture's wings. A tent city not much different in layout from that of a Roman army stretched out behind the hangar, dust-blown or mud-sunk depending on the weather.

The irony was that they were here fighting for a people they'd never met and knew nothing about. They came in contact with no one but the acquiescent native help, whose apparent mission was to please and to steal. They had no idea why they were there, except that President Truman had decreed that they would be. No one protested—it was enough if the President said it. But it would have been nice to come to know the Koreans, to find out what they thought about the war, Communism, the United States, whatever. As it was, they fought the war in a mental vacuum, accepting that Communist aggression had to be contained wherever it appeared.

Four tents away from Marshall, Stan Coleman put down his headset and turned to the pilot next to him. Lieutenant Fitzpatrick was a prototypical Irishman, blue-eyed; his thin red hair mirrored the tint of the freckles that covered his face and arms. Only five-feet six-inches tall, and weighing 165 pounds, he was built like a "how-to-draw" artist's illustration, in stout swirling cylinders of leg. thigh, belly, and chest, conveying not so much mass as an energy-charged force. He'd earned his way through college playing the piano on Grace Line cruise ships between Honolulu and San Francisco. A natural mimic, he could dance like Astaire, bluster like Cagney, and charm like Grant, and it had been a rare cruise when he did not bed down one or more of the happy travelers, usually older women ready for a fling. His stubby fingers were agile, and he was adept at parlor tricks, with which he diverted both attention and serious conversation. His irreverent manner was deceptive. His eyes betrayed him as he calculated the angles on every event, trying to exploit everything to suit his interests to get the comparative advantage. He was patient, and often seemed to extend himself, but his quick mind ran a continuous accounting of favors given and favors received.