Marshall put the nose of his Sabre down. "Hemlock Leader will take the second pair, second flight, last section. Hemlock Three, you take the first pair. We'll dive right through them, then turn and head south."
There were no acknowledgments as the four Sabres, yellow stripes on silver skins, dove toward the unsuspecting MiGs.
A look back showed that Menard was right where he should be, protecting him, letting him devote all his attention to the shooting. He was turning out to be a good wingman, a good man.
Taking the classic high-side approach, Marshall closed to two hundred yards and began firing. Shedding pieces from its tail like a molting pigeon, the MiG rolled sharply as the pilot ejected without asking the ground controllers anything.
Tabasco-hot pride surged through Marshall. Shouting "Goddamn, that makes it official, I'm an ace!" he jerked the controls to shift his sights to the next plane, flying straight and level, still unaware that the Sabres were on top of it. As the pipper covered the MiG, Marshall squeezed the trigger, and the violent concentration of hits blew parts from the aircraft, slowing it as if it had thrown an anchor overboard.
As he screamed, "That's six!" his aircraft shook with a jarring thud like a motorboat hitting a submerged log.
"Red Leader's hit!" he called as his power fell off and eye-watering smoke from burning oil and hydraulic fluid poured into the cockpit from his pressurization ducts.
Retarding the throttle, he threw the stick over, blue sky and green-gray earth swapping places as he went inverted, tugging hard on the stick to enter a steep dive. Looking behind, he could see Menard was climbing away with two MiGs on his tail. Where were Coleman and Fitz?
Leveling off at fifteen thousand feet, Marshall eased the throttle back on and the engine responded with power. As he peered through the oil-smeared canopy he realized with relief that he hadn't been hit after all, that the burning fluids he'd smelled had been sucked out of the debris of the MiG to burn in his engine and to blow through the pressurization system into the cockpit.
Climbing back up to rejoin Menard, he looked for MiGs, Coleman and Fitzpatrick—in that order. His neck was chafed and sore from swiveling, but he didn't see the four MiGs attacking until their cannon shells pounded his fuselage. Half-rolling instinctively, he split-S'd away, sticking the powder-blackened Sabre nose straight toward the green-brown hills below, hoping that Menard or Coleman could come to his assistance.
Two of the MiGs stayed with him. They were obviously honchos, patient, content to have him diving toward the north away from the Yalu and the safety of his own lines, knowing that he was already short of fuel and ammunition.
He rolled level, and the yellow-red lines of cannon fire reached out for him. Marshall half-rolled once more, diving for the deck, no longer worried about having enough fuel to get home, or finding Menard, just concentrating on shaking these two implacable enemies. It was his last dive—he was out of altitude and damn near out of ideas. He headed for the coast, jinking at low level below the ridges, the trees just a blur, throttle to the firewall, waiting for the MiGs to finish him off. A black wall of flak opened up ahead of him, shutting off the horizon like a theater curtain dropping.
A glance told him he was passing over the edge of Feng-cheng, a new airfield stocked with MiGs and studded with radar-directed antiaircraft guns. Flying in a filthy black cocoon of flak, he skipped like an airborne Eliza from one smoky, iron-filled cloud to the next.
"Keep on, one more minute, I'll be out of here ..."
An explosion like colliding locomotives shattered the airplane, and the Sabre went slack in his hands as life drained out of it. Choking in the black smoke that filled the cockpit, he eased the canopy partially open, trading the risk of sucking flames into the cockpit for enough visibility to see the instrument panel.
His tailpipe temperature soaring into the red confirmed the fire down below; he could blow up in the next second. Where were the MiGs? He looked behind him, then sacrificed some of his precious speed to roll the aircraft steeply left and right to make sure he was alone. The MiGs were gone, either called home, or confident that he was a goner.
Speed leaked from the Sabre like sugar from a punctured bag as he limped along a river at 160 knots, flying nose up, defenseless. His compass spun mindlessly, but the sun told him he was heading west, toward the Yellow Sea, toward the coast where a Sea-Air Rescue Albatross might come to rescue him. There'd be a chance for rescue off the coast—and he didn't want to eject in Manchuria. "As long as the damn thing keeps flying, I'll fly it."
Cannon shells shook the Sabre again as a flight of two North Korean Yak 9s closed behind him. Piston-engined fighters from the Second World War, resembling a cross between a Mustang and a Spitfire, they were far faster than his crippled F-86. Scared as he was, he knew the glee the two Yak pilots felt, sitting there, pumping cannon shells into his Sabre, knowing that even crippled, he'd count as a kill. The F-86 sagged as every emergency light on Marshall's instrument panel lit up. Ahead, the river's delta land looked reasonably flat. He blew the canopy and cut the throttle, deciding to belly in before they blew him up.
Touching down at 120 knots, the nose bulldozed into the river's edge, sending aircraft tumbling end-over-end like a tossed boomerang. With a suction pump squash, it plopped down, disappearing right-side up in a geyser of debris. The F-86 surfaced like a marsh-mallow in a cup of chocolate, and Bones sat in the cockpit, not certain if he were still alive, hoping that the plane didn't burn, that his ejection seat wouldn't fire.
Reaching up to grab the cockpit side to crawl out, a blinding pain from his left arm told him he was alive and badly hurt. With agonizing effort, he pushed himself upright with his legs alone, steadied himself, then slid over the cockpit side to fall face down into the mud welling up over the wing, wishing desperately that it was a dream, that he was really home in bed with Saundra.
The two Yaks turned in, guns spitting, the ground erupting in four lines, a mud picket fence rising and falling from the muck-sucking explosions of the cannon shells. Bones hugged the wet earth face down, the pain in his arm as excruciating as the terror in his heart.
Satisfied, the victorious Yaks came back one last time, a hundred meters in the lead. Marshall peeked up to see the first Yak do an impeccable victory roll just over his head, the pilot's head briefly visible in the cockpit as it snapped past him. The second Yak pilot, probably an excited kid just out of flying school, came in a little lower on his pass and forgot to keep forward pressure on his stick at the top of the roll. Dishing out at the three-quarter point, he went nose down into the river bed, punctuating the end of his short life with a magnificent explosion of gas, oil, and mud.
Bones let the silence descend for the second time in five minutes, wondering despite his pain if he could claim the Yak as his third kill of the day.
*
Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska/ September 22, 1952
"Sit down, Riley. Do you know why you are here?"
General Curtis E. LeMay was only forty-six, but a decade of war and responsibility had chiseled his perpetually unshaven face into a harsh mask. His voice was low and slickly abrasive, a well-lubricated grinding wheel honing every word razor sharp.
"No, sir. Except that I flew with the 27th Fighter-Escort Wing."
"What's that mean?"
"The 27th is a SAC outfit—"
"For Christ's sakes, Colonel, don't tell me who the 27th belongs to!" Exasperated, LeMay shuffled some papers on his desk. "Larry Gunter tells me you are a first-rate operator and a fine pilot. Is that right?"
Answers whipped through Riley's mind, and he picked the safest. "Yes, sir."
"Well, I don't need first-rate operators, and I've got a lot of fine pilots. What I need are some wing commanders who'll come in and kick some ass. I've got a lot of outfits that are nothing but flying clubs still celebrating VJ Day. I want hard-nosed, mean sons of bitches who'll get done what I want done when I want it, which is right now."
LeMay's cigar wasn'
t drawing and he ground it out. He glared up at Riley, then carefully prepared another one, biting off its end, rolling it between his fingers, and lighting it. Riley debated what he'd do if LeMay offered him one. The option didn't arise.
"The biggest problem I have right now is changing SAC over from a piston-engine air force to a jet air force. The B-47s are finally starting to come off the production line, but they're loaded with problems, big problems. Still, we've got four wings converting right now. By this time next year, I want to have ten operational wings and three more in training. You're going to help me."
"Yes, sir, but I've been a fighter pilot all my life."
"Yeah, tell me about it. How about that little probationary stint flying C-54s in the Berlin Airlift?"
"That was an exception, sir."
"Right, and so is this. A permanent exception. Your first job is recruitment. I want you to use your knowledge of hotshot fighter pilots and recruit one hundred of them for me to fly B-47s."
"Yes, sir, but can I ask why?"
"The old days of flying formation for mutual defense are over. The B-47 flies more like a fighter than a bomber, and one of them can carry more destructive power than all the World War Two bombers combined. I want three-man crews who can go in alone to Moscow, Kiev, wherever, and flatten them. I want to infuse the fighter-pilot spirit into my bomb wings. You're the guy who's going to spearhead that infusion."
"When do I start?"
"I'm having orders cut for you to go to Wichita to take the B-47 course. When you're finished there—it'll take about four months—I'll either assign you to a newly equipped bomb wing or drag you back here. I'll let you know. That's all for now."
LeMay picked up another file as Riley saluted and marched smartly out of the room, preoccupied with the assignment. It was only later, when he went to phone Lyra, that a thought occurred to him: SAC guys stay put pretty much; maybe she'll marry me now.
*
Los Angeles, California/September 22, 1952
The whole process with Peterson—exciting, dangerous, and guilt-laden—had started one week before, when she'd gone to the downtown public library in the hope of finding a book that would tell her how to get out of the rut she was digging for herself. Her business had grown swiftly and then leveled off. She was still just breaking even, just able to meet the payroll for the staff of thirty working for her. Every time her sales went up, so did her expenses. The problem was, she had to pay for the expenses faster than people paid for the sales.
Sales had hit a plateau in Los Angeles, but when she tried to expand in San Francisco and San Diego, there was a negative return—the market simply hadn't developed yet. Her first fervent dreams of a national sales organization were replaced by nightmares of not having enough money to pay the bills. She'd already resorted to things she'd never thought she'd do—postdating checks, "forgetting" to put the check in the envelope, cashing checks on one bad account to cover another one. If John Stuart Marshall had known what she was doing, he'd have had a fit.
The librarian's eyes had flashed with warning at Saundra's scream of delight at the article she was reading. Embarrassed, she sat down, holding the copy of Advertising Today as if it were a tablet from Mount Sinai. The article said that seventeen of the biggest U.S. cities had Negro populations from 15 to 42 percent, and that the Negro market in the United States was worth over fifteen billion dollars—twice as big as the total consumer market in Greece or Belgium. It was incredible; she had no idea of the possibilities inherent in products tailored to Negro needs.
She reread the article again and found a brief squib on the author. His name was Fred Peterson and he lived in Los Angeles.
She walked back to her car, happy for the first time in weeks, wishing that John was there so she could tell him about it. As she put her hand on the car door, she made a decision to write two letters that night. The more important one would be to John, telling him that they could work things out, somehow. She laughed to herself, thinking how pleased he'd be when he got her letter.
The other letter went to Peterson, who called almost immediately to give her the appointment for this morning. Saundra had immediately begun to do research on him and was pleased with what she discovered. According to the dozen articles she'd read about him, Peterson had started his career with a thousand borrowed dollars and unlimited gall. He'd sprung his magazine, OBSIDIAN—black and sharp, on an unsuspecting public and had become an overnight success. OBSIDIAN—black and sharp had unashamedly taken features from Life, Time, The New Yorker, and The Saturday Evening Post and converted them to a racy style that reached to the soul of a broad cross-section of the Negro population. Critics sniped that his magazine was a steal from John Johnson's Ebony, but the hard fact was that it was a roaring commercial success on its own merits.
In the process, Peterson had accomplished the impossible—persuaded white manufacturers to advertise in a Negro magazine. And he did it by demanding the unthinkable—the use of Negro models to sell their products.
His office was dazzling, perched atop his own four-story building on Sunset Boulevard. He'd arranged parking for her, and a beautifully dressed young Negro woman was waiting to escort her directly into his office. Erupting out of his chair, he strode around to meet her, and she was, quite simply, overwhelmed.
Six feet four and weighing 220 pounds, Peterson seemed to be all angles and power, as sharply dynamic as a Georges Braque painting. She felt herself immediately attracted to the geometric juxtaposition of his face, a square from the eyebrows up, transitioning to triangles of cheekbones and jawbone below. As they talked, she found herself entranced by his almond eyes, constantly moving, changing expression from friendliness to skepticism to conspiratorial understanding, their animation relieving the energy-charged power of his face. His black skin had such a lustrous, wine-colored velvety look that she yearned to reach out and pat his face, to stroke his closely cropped black hair.
They sat on a long leather sofa, sipping coffee as he quizzed her closely on her business and her prospects, asking her incisive questions about sales, marketing possibilities, and her willingness to work. They talked easily, the conversation quickly moving from stiff business questions to an easy informality that implicitly acknowledged their strong mutual attraction. At one point he reached out to take her hand, shook himself, and abruptly got up to go sit behind his desk.
When he sat down he furrowed his brow and said, "Whew, that was close, wasn't it?" She laughed and he asked, 'Td like to try to help your business. Are you married?"
"Yes, my husband's a pilot; he's flying combat in Korea." She told him about John's career as a Tuskegee airman, of his victories in Italy, and his work at McNaughton.
As she talked she watched his expression change from anticipation to disappointment and then to resolution. Finally he said, "Good for him! We'll do a story on him—on both of you—in OBSIDIAN. We need all the black heroes and heroines we can get."
When she left, she knew she'd made a friend. She was afraid that she might have found a lover.
*
Nashville, Tennessee/September 22, 1952
A storm had moved through the night before, cracking the long spell of summer heat, and making it pleasant to walk by the lake. When the plant had been built, the engineers had designed a combination runoff basin and water storage pond for use in case of a fire. The first year, wild ducks had stopped over, charming Troy so that he'd uncharacteristically invested a few dollars to create a park for his employees. Simple, with some swings, picnic benches, barbecue pits, lots of white pines, and gravel paths, it was always filled on the weekends.
It hadn't been long before a few domestic ducks showed up, abandoned pets or sick animals from one of the local farms. Now the lake had a stable population of cheerfully interbred fowl, ranging from pure white domestic through mottled oyster mixed-breed to genuine mallard, all of them quacking for a handout.
Elsie, wearing an old flight jacket and slacks, handed Ginny a bag of stale
bread to feed the ducks. It had been an odd meeting so far, with Ginny desperately trying to talk about something, and never being able to come to the point. Had Stan done something stupid, like confessing to their affair?
Ginny picked her way along the path in her high-heeled shoes, her manner strained. "Did Stan visit the plant before he went overseas?" .
"Yes, of course, you know he did. Is that why you're here?"
Emptying the crumbs from the bag into the lake, Ginny turned and burst into tears, moaning, "I needed to talk to someone. Stan and I are breaking up."
Nonplussed but still cautious, Elsie said, "Maybe it's just a quarrel? How long have you been married?" Elsie knew the answer very well—Stan had kept moaning about the best eight years of his life.
Biting back her tears, Ginny said, "Eight years. The best eight years of my life."
Broth-er! Elsie thought, they're a pair, all right.
"And you don't want to break up?"
"No, not because I made one little mistake."
Elsie was instantly relieved. Stan had not confessed; she had misjudged him. Then she asked, "He caught you screwing somebody?"
Ginny lowered her head and nodded.
"Did he know the man?"
"Yes."
"You want to tell me who it was?"
"You wouldn't know him."
Elsie thought she was lying. It's probably Troy, she thought, More power to him, poor man. Or maybe Fitz, Coleman's buddy.
"It doesn't matter. What can I do to help?"
"Elsie, you know that Troy and my father have a special relationship."
"Are you talking about bribery or blackmail?"
Ginny laughed for the first time. "You're terrible! No, I just mean that they have some special understandings about how business works with the government. Is Troy well?"
Elsie's tone was brusque. "No. He's dying of cancer. They've operated twice now, first on his lip, then on his jaw. It's spread to his throat. Troy isn't kidding himself, and I won't kid you. He's probably got six months or a year, but he won't take it."
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