Air Force Eagles (39 page)

Despite his fury, Marshall pounced on the word.
"Late? Late?
Is Choi dead?"

"As dead as that little rat in the parachute you made for him. He was sure he'd killed you—"

"So was I."

Burkett nodded impatiently; he liked to do the talking. "So after he left you he went on a monumental drunk; he shot another officer, and someone shot him. End of story, end of Choi."

Marshall tried to press him for details, but Burkett wouldn't say more. As he was about to leave he took off his hat and rolled it in his hands.

"I say, Marshall, I do have another bit of news for you. Bad news."

His mind still churning with pleasure at the thought of Choi's death, Marshall looked blankly at the reporter.

"You've noticed that we've been doing a bit of intelligence work on you. The other prisoners, too, of course, but we've concentrated on you. I'm sorry to tell you that your parents were killed in an automobile accident."

Marshall's legs went rubbery and he flopped down on the floor.

"No, it couldn't be."

"I'm sorry, I thought it would be best for you to know. It happened a month ago, on August fifteenth, according to the Cleveland newspaper."

"You're lying, Burkett, you lousy bastard."

"No, I'm not. I don't know any of the details. But what I'm telling you is true. I'm sorry."

The next few days passed in misery. Marshall's emotions rocketed up and down, one moment hoping that Burkett was lying about his parents and the next certain that the news was true. In time he became convinced that they were in fact dead. As he prayed for them, adjusting to his sorrow, he realized that he had overlooked an important element of Burkett's message and began to worry that he might be considered a traitor for having confessed to a pack of nonsense.

*

The Pentagon/September 16, 1953

The cleaning staff had just departed, leaving the polished tile and wood paneling gleaming under the bright fluorescent lights of the office of the Air Force chief of staff. The room was empty except for a four-star general prowling impatiently, examining the paintings he'd seen a dozen times before. It was an unusual situation for LeMay; normally he called other people on the carpet. Not tonight.

The door to the chiefs office opened and a voice, chilled-steel cold, said, "Come in, Curt, let's get this over with. I want you just to sit down, shut up, and listen. For a change."

The two men might have been brothers. Both had similar blocky builds, with strong faces, dark bushy eyebrows, and jutting chins; only Nathan Twining's fine white hair stood in contrast to LeMay's shock of silvered black.

"Mind if I smoke?"

"Yes."

LeMay boiled quietly. Usually soft-spoken, Twining had a reputation for being kindly, a regular Mr. Nice Guy. But he'd had a piece of LeMay before, back in 1945 when Twining had replaced him as CO. of the Twentieth Air Force.

"There's nothing personal in this—we go back a long way. But you're a special case, Curt. You've been bullying and blustering your way for years. Poor old Van couldn't handle you."

"As vice-chief, I worked hard to get the Air Force into the best position it's ever been in in regard to budget share. But now we're in a three-way squeeze—old 'Engine' Charlie Wilson is hacking at the budget with an axe, the Army's trying to grab control of strategic missiles, and the Navy's going for nuclear submarines."

LeMay cleared his throat, ready to speak and Twining said, "Be quiet. I don't want to listen to you—I want you to listen to me.

Curt, you've been fiddling around with the B-47 for six years now. You've only got about six bomb wings ready—and the airplane's still full of bugs. Right?"

"Shut up, Curt." Twining savored the silence. This was how the military survived, on ground-in discipline even at the highest levels. He said shut up, and even Curt LeMay was silent.

LeMay's hand moved instinctively to his pocket for a cigar, then returned to his lap as Twining continued. "I'm going to put Schriever in charge of the Atlas missile program. I've got faith in him. It's going to be a damn expensive business; we don't even know how much it's going to cost ultimately, but we've got to have it."

Twining's desk was immaculate, but he reached forward to adjust a folder, letting LeMay stew over the idea of missiles coming to the fore.

"Curt, you know that no matter how big a share of the budget we get, there's only so much money in the pot. I don't have to tell you that I've been a big supporter of jet aircraft, everything from the F-86 to the B-52. I've tried to make this an all-jet Air Force, even though Congress thought we ought to stick with piston engines."

He stood and leaned forward. "But I'm telling you, if you don't get the B-47s fully operational, ready to go to war, I'm going to cancel them. I don't mean ready to go in an emergency, and I don't mean one-way missions. I mean an operating command, with decent serviceability percentages and a good safety record."

LeMay stared at him, stony-faced, aware that no one had talked to him like this since flying school.

"And get this, if I cancel the B-47s, I'll cancel the B-52 program, too, and spend all the money on Atlas missiles."

LeMay shot to his feet and leaned across the desk, his face inches from Twining's, brows knotted together, mouth twisted. "You'd be a fool to do that, Nate! The Atlas is in R and D—no one knows if it'll work or not. If you cancel the jet bombers, and Atlas doesn't work, we'd be defenseless."

Twining raised his voice. "Goddamn it, that's the point! The goddamn B-47
isn't
working right now. The ramps are covered with an aluminum overcast of grounded B-47s; the accident rate is high and the crews are scared. We'd be better off keeping the B-36s and B-50s in the fleet until the Atlas is deployed."

Straightening, he held up a finger to silence LeMay, and went on, his tone moderated, "Unless you can prove me wrong. I was behind the B-47 from the start, and you sold me on the B-52—but by God, I've got to have some results. And I want them this year, not in '55 or '60! Now what the hell do you say to that?"

"General, I'm going to prove you very wrong. I'll have the B-47 program in shape by the end of the year."

"You're dismissed."

LeMay exploded from the office mumbling, "Dismissed, eh, dismissed like some fucking second lieutenant. I'll show that son of a bitch. Wait till I got ahold of Riley."

*

Seattle, Washington/September 17, 1953

Bandfield had never been to Seattle, but Boeing Field was familiar from the hundreds of photos he'd seen over years. The two parallel north/south runways were bordered on one side by tatty-looking factory buildings and on the other by a line of green hills overlooking the farther runway. It was here that they'd rolled out the prototype B-17, all shiny silver and covered with the Plexiglas blisters that made it a Flying Fortress; and it was here that endless lines of bombers had poured out the factory doors during the war.

Boeing hospitality was legendary for being frugally adequate; last night they'd taken him to dinner at Ivar's Acres of Clams, and this morning a battered station wagon had picked him up at the Windsor, a hotel run-down just enough to be affordable on a government per diem and still be respectable.

He was waiting at the Boeing Field security desk, where a professionally cheerful young man was making out a pass boldly marked "Escort Required," when Riley walked up.

"Glad you're here early, Bandy. I just had a royal ass-chewing from LeMay himself. He's under the gun from the chief, and when LeMay's under the gun, everybody suffers." He grimaced and went on. "I need to give you a little prebriefing before our nine o'clock with the Boeing brass."

"First thing—LeMay is spooked. He says the whole B-47 program is in jeopardy; the chief might stop production tomorrow and shove all the dough to the Atlas program. It would wipe out the B-52 as well."

"Holy Christ, who knows if the Atlas will work?"

"That's it. And Bandy, I want you to know that we're not talking just about the Boeing B-47—we're talking about Weapon System 100A."

Bandfield shrugged. "What's the difference?"

"The difference is in the spread of the problems we've got to solve. The B-47 alone is an enormous task; the weapon system is everything—the airplane, bomb-nav systems, gunnery, maintenance, bombs, spares—all designed for this aircraft. There are problems everywhere."

"So what's new? Every airplane in the past had the same components, the same problems."

"No, it's a change in management philosophy; instead of plugging standard equipment in, everything is specially designed. It reflects how advanced the airplane is—most equipment from the past is too big, or too heavy, or too slow to work in the B-47. Bandy, this is one hot son of a bitch—it's a world-beater, if we can just get it operating right."

He glanced at his watch. "Let me just rattle off the main problems, so you can track the meeting. First, the airframe. We've got four main contractors working—Boeing, Douglas, and Lockheed actually building the airplanes, and McNaughton building big components, center sections."

Bandfield snorted at the name McNaughton.

"Yeah, you said it. Then we've got a shit-load of changes, more than two thousand major engineering change proposals. It's driving the quality control and production planning guys crazy."

Bandfield stretched and looked closely at Riley. The man was obviously tired, with dark circles under his eyes. "How are you handling it?"

"Just like World War Two—pump them off the production line into modification centers, and there they sit, mostly at Grand Central in Tucson."

"Looks like a procurement foul-up."

Riley rubbed his eyes. "Exactly. LeMay is going off his rocker because the components to build the airplanes—radars, gunnery systems, ejection seats—are all out of phase with production."

"But from what you say, the airframe and the engines are on schedule? No problems with them?"

"I wish! The damn thing's gross weight has crept up, and that's just for starters. The canopy's not safe, already taken one poor guy's head off, and you can't bail out of them."

A feeling of weariness swept over Bandfield; this sounded worse than the early days of the B-29 program, and the stakes were even higher. Then it was a question of bombing Japan; now it was a question of deterring Russia from atom-bombing the United States.

"What about the ejection seats?"

"The early planes don't have any; the E models just coming off the line have them built in, and we're going to try to retrofit the early ones. But for the time being, we're just doing without."

Bandfield whistled. "Christ Almighty, that must make the crews happy! What else?"

"Fuel leaks! This thing gets so cold at altitude that the metal shrinks and it leaks like a sieve. There's a problem with fuel boil-off, too; we're losing thousands of gallons out the vents."

"Maybe Twining's right—maybe they ought to just cancel it."

Riley shook his head vigorously. "Hell no, it's the hottest thing around, Russian interceptors can't touch it. And it can carry the H-bomb. Right now the Air Force has ordered almost two thousand of them—when they're in service, the Commies won't be able to do a thing. If they make a move anywhere, Europe, Asia, wherever, we'll bomb them right back to the Stone Age."

Meditative, Bandfield poured more coffee, then said, "Yeah—if we can get any of them off the ground."

"Ah, we'll do that, Bandy, you and me, and a bunch of other guys. But it'll take work. One thing, the Boeing guys are first rate—they're trying as hard as we are. Part of the problem is that they're too good—they designed an airplane with more capabilities than the Air Force knows how to use right now."

Bandfield went on probing, trying to see if there was a central issue, something they could focus on first. "Eisenhower's cutting the Air Force back to a hundred-twenty wings—what's that going to do to the program?"

"Could be the killer. We could wind up with an Air Force without any strategic bombers."

There was a knock on the door and the Boeing team came in, arms laden with charts. A big man in a Western-style sport coat led them, his string tie and turquoise clasp contrasting sharply with the inexpensive suits and drab, neatly knotted ties of his teammates. Their breast pockets were crammed with pencils, and each man carried a leather-covered slide rule at his side like a gunslinger's holster.

Riley smiled and said, "Just one moment, gentlemen; I want to finish up with my colleague, then we'll get busy."

Whispering, he said, "Bandy, the problem is in the management. We've got systems to manage, but no management system. You and I are going to go down to Los Angeles and talk to Bernie Schriever and hammer out some new techniques. I've been working on some ideas for years—I call it 'systems management.' I want to brief you on it later."

Bandfield nodded. "Sounds good. Listen, Bear, you and me, we'll make it work."

*

Nashville, Tennessee/October 2, 1953

It wasn't really cool enough for a fire, but Baker, too fat even for his old sweater and sweat pants, took a special pleasure in enjoying all the luxuries of Troy McNaughton's house—and he had some papers he had to burn.