Air Force Eagles (44 page)

*

Pine Bluff, Arkansas/February 2, 1954

He pushed the plate away, wondering how the Americans could make such wonderful cars and airplanes on such a rotten diet! Josten, thinner now than when he'd left Germany, glanced out the window at the hills that reminded him of his Luftwaffe flying school days. He'd been stationed at Halle, on the river Saale, quartered with a family who ran a little delicatessen. When weather put a stop to the flying, he'd always been glad to go home to the big ceramic stove and feast on good rye bread and thick slices of sausage. This stuff! Abominable.

He hated cold weather now; it ate into his bones and made walking even more difficult. They'd just finished an overnight exercise with the Storm Klan; it had been miserable, his legs had ached, and the scars of his burns felt as if they were on fire, again.

When he'd been there alone he had not minded the isolation; now he had to endure Baker's company, cheek by jowl in this rustic hovel, with its plain plywood walls and linoleum-covered floors. But the man might have his uses.

Years before Ruddick had looked for an area where the "Invisible Empire" of the Klan could hold their meetings undisturbed. He had enough influence to induce the big paper company to sell him an old farm that included an abandoned Boy Scout camp. Over the years he had refurbished three of the larger buildings. One was a meeting hall; the second an armory; the third was the old camp headquarters, where Josten now lived, a rough wooden building heated by two gasping kerosene stoves.

Across the table, Dick Baker's big hand smeared a rubbery piece of white bread in circles on his plate, spreading the bright orange yolk and the red catsup into rainbow arcs. He'd dyed his hair and started on a beard, but his weight had gone up instead of down.

"You going to eat that piece of Spam?"

"No, take it." Josten watched with disgust as Baker forked the Spam onto his plate, cut it in two, dabbed it daintily in the catsup-egg mixture, and wolfed both pieces down.

"You're sure no one knows where you are?"

"No, I told you that, nobody but Ruddick and Elsie. I just cleaned out my desk, packed my suitcase, and left. Elsie had a trucking outfit come in and haul my trailer away, took it out west and dumped it. I left no forwarding address, no nothing. I did keep a Post Office box I'd set up a year ago. I'll use that when I file my taxes."

"Any reason for anyone to track you? Besides the Air Force, I mean."

"The Air Force ain't going to track me, nor anybody else, either. Why should they?" Baker still insisted, as a matter of practice, that neither he nor anyone else had done anything wrong. It was his story and he stuck with it, no matter who the audience.

"You'd know that better than I. How are you taking the isolation here?"

"I'm going buggy and I ain't been here two weeks yet. But I'll find something to do."

"Don't find it in Pine Bluff or in Little Rock. We stay clear of those two places. If you have to have some excitement, in a few weeks you can go to Dallas, or to New Orleans."

"No problem, I can stand it."

"Do you mind cold weather?"

"Hate it. This place gives me the creeps. Want some hot water for your tea?" Josten shook his head no, watching with morbid fascination as Baker carefully dunked his teabag several times, dropped it in his spoon, then squeezed it dry by wrapping the string tightly around the bag.

"Don't give me that shit. You think I'm one of these dumb Klan guys, walking around in stupid sheets or dressing like they're state troopers, playing soldiers in the freezing rain? What a bunch of jerks."

"Ruddick didn't tell me you were an expert on uniforms, too. What would you suggest for the Klan?"

Baker settled back, always happiest when giving advice. "The old guys, let them keep their robes. You ain't never going to get much out of them, anyway. For the new guys, I'd train them in old GI fatigues, stuff you can crawl around in the muck with. But if I was trying to create a political force—that's what you're doing, isn't it, trying to keep the niggers in line?"

"Something like that."

"Well then, hell, I wouldn't put them in uniform at all. No, I'd let them all be plain-clothed guys, so nobody knows what they're thinking. In time, get them on the school board, make them deputy sheriffs, have them join the Guard, stuff like that, so they'd know what's going on and have some influence."

Josten stared at him in disbelief—here was an idea, a good one from this idiot—and it worked with Dixon's ideas about recruiting some people at the Air Force Base.

"I see what you mean. Not bad. Let me think about that—perhaps we need to have a small force like you describe."

"Sure. 'Course I'm a plain-clothes guy myself, so I'm biased—but think about it. Who's going to pay attention to somebody in Klan robes? It's a joke. And unless you do an awful good job, the Storm Klanners won't be much better. Look what you have to work with."

As Josten thought this over, Baker prodded him. "Now about this trip. I'll go to Omaha, but I want to go by way of Las Vegas, lay over a couple days each way. Okay?"

"You can do that. My wife is in Omaha, with my son. I want you to go and see where they live, where he goes to school, what time he comes home."

"Are you going to snatch him?"

"He's my son; it's not kidnapping."

"That's what you say. What are you, another fucking Bruno Hauptmann? Want me to go up there and make a wooden ladder and drag the kid—"

There was an instantaneous explosion as Josten's pistol fired a bullet into the wall behind Baker's head. Rising, Josten slapped his Smith & Wesson down on the table.

"Shut up." He was leaning forward, his eyes slits, his mouth in a grimace.

Baker squirmed. "I'm sorry, I was just lipping off, just talking. I'll go. You tell me what you want me to do."

"Just what I said. Find out exactly where they live, which room in the house my son sleeps in, what time he comes and goes, what their schedule is. I am his father. I have rights."

"Sure, sure, boss. I understand."

Josten scuttled into the next room while Baker, still shaken, slurped his tea; until the moment of the pistol shot, he had despised Josten as an ugly cripple. Now he thought he could work for him.

*

Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska/February 9, 1954

Leaving the World War II factory building that now held SAC Headquarters always reminded Bandfield of the old sunken submarine movies, where the crew put on their Momsen lungs and bubbled their way to the surface. The air seemed to get fresher and the lights brighter every step away from LeMay's office.

"Spending ten minutes with that guy is like going ten rounds with Rocky Marciano."

Riley nodded. "He's brutal, but he's getting the job done. It's his style that makes systems management work." Riley rubbed his eyes, sunken and dark-shadowed. "What do you think of the accident investigation team's reports?"

"One of them's right—one may be wrong."

"Which is which?"

"I think that Williams just jerked the airplane apart; that's what Fitzpatrick says, and he's a professional pilot, no matter what else he is. But the other airplane, at Pinecastle, I don't know. It may be pilot error, too, but it might be material failure. I'm going to go down and have a look at the wreckage myself."

Both accident investigating teams had come up with the same conclusion: pilot error. At Frederick, Williams had simply placed too much stress on the airplane in the toss-bomb maneuver. In the Pinecastle accident the report said that the pilot had stressed the airplane beyond its design limits by making a high-speed high-G turn at low altitude.

Bandfield stopped to tie his shoe. "I thought they might recommend dropping the idea of toss-bombing."

"They can't—the War Plan calls for fusion weapons that can't be delivered any other way and have the crew survive the radiation. They've even got a new acronym for it—LABS, for Low Altitude Bombing System. Your guys are going to have to come up with something pretty fast with the parachute-retarded bombs."

"We're about a year away, I think. The AEC is hell to deal with, and the problem is a hell of a lot more complex than it looks."

"What ain't?"

*

Pinecastle Air Force Base, Florida/
February 14, 1954

Bandfield followed the line-chiefs instructions, letting the T-33 nose-wheel edge around the yellow stripe that marked the parking slot, his eyes squinting in response to the glare from the acres of concrete ramp bleached white in the Florida sun. As he shut down he was furious with himself—on his way to investigate an accident, and he was almost one himself.

The problem was preoccupation—between trying to get the parachute-retarded bombs to work, help Riley with the investigations and keep Patty happy with an occasional visit home, he worried that Hadley had gone off the deep end with their fire-bomber program. In the past year they had re-manufactured six old TBM torpedo bombers, modifying them to carry both borate and water—and couldn't sell a one. Now they had a B-17 nearing completion, and no takers for that, either. The PBY sat in a corner of the hangar, flyable, but with no demand for its capability. Hadley tried to get the Forest Service let him give a demonstration, but they weren't interested—they were developing their own system.

But none of this excused the sloppy way he had planned the flight, nor the poor execution of his penetration. He'd arrived over McCoy with his tanks running dry; if Orlando Approach Control hadn't noted the urgency in his voice and given him an immediate clearance, he'd have had to declare an emergency. Then, in the descent the canopy had fogged up, and despite the bright Florida sun he'd had to have a GCA to help him on to final approach, like leading a blind man across the street. What a balls-up!

The 86th's Flying Safety Officer, Major Darby, was overage in grade and none too happy to see him; all crashes immediately reflect on the safety officer's past work, and he didn't feel any good could come of Bandfield's visit. The decision was pilot error and he was satisfied with that, especially since the pilot had just transferred in, and no blame was going to attach to Darby.

The B-47's wreckage was in a secured hangar; the charred and battered parts were laid out as closely as possible to the way they'd been when the aircraft was whole.

"Thanks, Major Darby. No sense in you hanging around; I'll be poking around for a while, and then call Base Ops for a ride back."

The last thing in the world Darby was going to do was let this s.o.b. from out of town run around unsupervised. He snorted, "No, sir; I'll stay here in case you need me. Or in case you find something."

Bandfield methodically checked the charred wreckage of the aircraft as if he were pre-flighting it, moving from the mangled cockpit around the exterior in a clockwise manner, threading in and out of the jumble of parts. Some, blown clear by the explosion, were only moderately damaged; others were so burned beyond recognition that only an expert could have guessed what they were.

After one circuit of the wreckage, Bandfield homed in on the fuselage center section. The wings extended in stubs from either side, broken off about ten feet from the fuselage.

Bandfield wandered around the wreckage as they waited; it was hard to believe that something so potent as a B-47 could be reduced to rubbish like this in an instant. After about forty minutes, a truck with two crew chiefs and their tools showed up. They were eager to please, but it took almost two hours to shore up the fuselage center section safely enough for them to work on it. Once they got the fuselage secured, it took them another forty minutes to pull away enough panels for Bandfield to inspect the wing-fuselage juncture. He straddled the center section like a cowboy riding a horse and, using a big six-cell flashlight, peered into the triangular openings.

"See anything, sir?" Darby's tone clearly implied that there was nothing to see.

"I don't see anything that might be connected to this crash,

Major, if that makes you feel better. But I'd like you to have your men pull both the milk-bottle pin assemblies from this aircraft, tag them left or right, and send them both to me."

"Colonel, that's a
lot
of man-hours you're asking for."

*

Omaha, Nebraska/April 12, 1954

"Bear, wake up! Listen to that noise!"

Riley sat bolt-upright. "Goddamn it, Lyra, don't do that to me. You must have been dreaming. I got a quart of adrenalin circulating now; I might as well get up."

"Shush. Don't talk to me like that. Just be still and listen."

He waited patiently, then he heard it, a soft scraping sound, coming from the kitchen or the garage.

He slipped out of bed, put his shorts on, then crept down the hall to Ulrich's room. Ulrich was sleeping, and Bear picked up his stepson's baseball bat.

The old floors squeaked badly, and he moved down the hallway next to the wall, one foot in front of the other, finally easing through the open door into the kitchen. There was no one there.