Conquerors of the Sky

by Thomas Fleming

  Then came a summons from Buchanan’s president. “We’re getting very bad vibes on the Colossus program,” Adrian said. “I want you to fly to Louisiana tonight and find out what’s happening.”

  Dick flew to New Orleans and drove north a hundred miles to Knowlesville, in the heart of Louisiana redneck country. The Buchanan factory was by far the largest structure in the landscape. It loomed above the tree line ten miles away. Dick introduced himself to the plant security manager, got a badge and went for a walk along the assembly line. The fuselage of the Colossus prototype was taking shape—a whale-shaped creature as high as a four-story building. The wings were so large, they were being fabricated on another line and would be lowered through the sliding roof for final assembly.

  “Hey, Clint,” one welder said to the man working next to him as he adjusted his mask, “you think this big sumbitch is evuh gonna fly?”

  “Hell no,” Clint said.

  Beyond the prototype fuselage, Dick did not like what he saw. Workers were standing around shooting the breeze. On the line where they were fabricating the tails, a half-dozen were rolling dice.

  “Where’s your foreman?” Dick said, as a wiry little man with a mean mouth and shifty eyes won the pile of bills in the pot.

  Embarrassed shrugs all around. “Maybe upstairs lookin’ for someone to play some acey-deucey,” the little man drawled. Everyone laughed and threw more money into the pot.

  In the plant manager’s office, Dick found balding, bearded Joe Timberlake, a Buchanan old hand, who had run their Mojave plant with admirable efficiency. Joe looked harassed and wan. Everything was wrong. Louisiana’s unions were corrupt on a scale unknown in California. Everyone wanted payoffs or daily walkouts and slowdowns would begin to occur. The education level of the workforce was low and they did not train well or, for that matter, particularly like factory work. The supervisors and foremen they had brought with them from California hated the place and were going home in droves. The engineers kept getting wind-tunnel data from California that required expensive design changes.

  By the time Dick got to Project Manager Billy McCall’s office, he was braced for bad news. He expected a gaunt grim-eyed ghost of the relaxed test pilot he had seen in California. Instead, Billy was tipped back in his chair, his feet on the desk, exchanging hangar talk about his Korean War days with the colonel who was the Air Force’s plant representative.

  The colonel departed and Dick asked Billy how things were going. “Couldn’t be better,” he said. “We’re a little behind schedule but we’ll catch up with some overtime next week. We’ll have the monster ready to roll on graduation day.”

  “How’s Victoria?”

  “Haven’t seen her in about a week. She’s in New York tryin’ to find out why she can’t get pregnant.”

  “Adrian’s worried about costs. We’ve got to stay inside that bid, you know.”

  “Ah, hell Dick, that contract’s a lot of boilerplate. We’ve had generals down here and I told them we were probably over budget but they said not to sweat about it, we’d figure something out up the line. The important thing is to get the big bitch rolled out. They really need her in ’Nam.”

  “I hope you’re right. How much are we over budget right now?”

  “I haven’t got any idea,” Billy said.

  More than a little stunned, Dick managed to mutter: “Adrian wants some facts. Can I see the books?”

  “Sure. You gonna be here long?”

  “It depends on how long it takes me to get the facts.”

  “We’re not far from New Orleans. Lot of action down there. Some great light-chocolate stuff. I can fly us down there before you can say pussy galore. The old Lustra’s parked out on the runway.”

  “Sorry. I’m married to a girl who wouldn’t appreciate a husband with the clap.”

  “Christ,” Billy said, with a disgusted chuckle. He was the only man Dick ever met who smiled when he was disappointed. “Is there a bachelor left in the goddamn company?”

  “Sam Hardy. But I hear he’s about to get married again.”

  “Buzz always said designers weren’t in touch with reality. That proves it.”

  “Where are you cooking the books?”

  Billy grinned and led him down a corridor to an office presided over by dapper, energetic Paul Casey, one of Buchanan’s best accountants. He had two assistants hired locally and four or five clerical workers. The sight of Dick made all three accountants extremely nervous. Dick retired to Casey’s office and told him he was here to examine the books.

  Casey began talking very fast to explain why the books were not up to date. The engineers were so busy revising the plans they were always weeks behind with their cost estimates. They were hiring and firing over two hundred workers a week and it was impossible to do more than estimate the obligations to state unemployment insurance, medical plans and the like. They kept getting bills from trucking companies they never heard of—about three months late.

  Around midnight, as exhaustion bleared his eyes, Dick began to get some idea of the Colossus’s finances. He wiped his glasses and set them firmly on his head again, as if he needed to achieve maximum clarity. “Based on these figures,” he said, “estimating all the overtime costs in the past two months, you could be two hundred million dollars over budget.”

  Casey sighed like a defeated philosopher.

  “That’s half the fucking net worth of the company!”

  Casey groaned like a man undergoing surgery without an anesthetic.

  “If the pattern continues, by the time we build a hundred and twenty-four of those things, we’ll be two billion dollars over. Two billion!”

  Casey gurgled like a drowning man.

  “You could buy the whole fucking state of Louisiana for two billion dollars.”

  “I wish we could—and then sink it,” Casey said.

  “These are just estimates. I’m going to stay here until we get exact figures, if I have to start reading labels on packing cases and calling up suppliers personally.”

  “Billy kept telling me not worry about it,” Casey moaned.

  Dick called Cassie from his motel the next morning to tell her he would not be home for at least a week. She said it was perfectly all right, even though she was starting to wonder what would happen if she tried to stay married to him and divorced the aircraft company.

  The joke was no longer thin. “I’m sorry Babe. I really am,” Dick said.

  Dick called Adrian next. When he gave him the figures there was a long silence, which Dick presumed was astonishment. “I’ll call Mike Shannon in Washington and tell him to go to work on damage control,” Adrian said. “If this stuff gets out, McNamara will crucify us. He’s never forgiven us for the brawl over the Warrior. Can we bury the costs in our budget for the time being?”

  Adrian was asking him to cook the books. Dick reluctantly agreed to do it. “Eventually we’ve got to get the money back or find someone richer than Rockefeller to finance us for the rest of the century,” he warned.

  “I’m betting on Shannon to get the money. But it may take time. What’s Billy got to say for himself?”

  “Not a hell of a lot. He doesn’t think there’s anything to worry about. I suggest you give him an assistant who can get tough with the unions, the suppliers, the whole goddamn Mafioso circus that runs this state.”

  There was a long pause. Then Adrian said: “I’m inclined to do something much more drastic.”

  “Wait a minute, Adrian. You’ve got some responsibility for this mess. You sent Billy down here without an iota of advice, as far as I can see.”

  “I thought he was a mature, responsible executive,” Adrian said. “Are you defending someone who’s in danger of costing us two billion dollars?”

  “I see no point in crucifying him. Why the hell didn’t you let him go on testing planes? Flying’s the only thing he likes to do.”

  “Dick—may I remind you that I make the decisions on who should—and should not—be
crucified? That’s part of my job. Maybe the most important part.”

  Dick found the choice of words—remind you—and the metaphor—singularly repugnant. He began to realize something was going on here more important—to Adrian, at least—than the two-billion-dollar overrun.

  “I’m sending someone absolutely trustworthy down to help you straighten out this mess,” Adrian said. “Cliff Morris will be on a plane in two hours.”

  Dick drove to the plant in Knowlesville, wondering if he should talk to Billy before Adrian started setting up the cross and handing out the nails. As he went past the project manager’s door on the way to the accounting department, he heard Billy call: “Hey, Dick.”

  Billy had the usual smile on his face. Dick felt a spear of guilt. “Dick,” Billy said, still smiling. “I thought we were friends.”

  “We are.”

  “Does a friend call the biggest prick in California and tell him his buddy’s fucked up?” Billy said. “I just got off the phone with God, otherwise known as Daddy, and more widely as Adrian Van Ness. He dumped about a ton of shit on my head, most of which came from you.”

  “Billy—I was sent down here with the responsibility for finding out where we are on this job. You’re putting the whole fucking company at risk, do you realize that?”

  “Oh, ain’t that awful. Puttin’ you and Adrian and all the other fuckin’ front office paper shufflers at risk. Now they’re sendin’ the number one asskisser in the aircraft business, Mr. Supersalesman Cliff Morris himself down here to straighten things out. You gonna stay around to help him shove the shaft up my butt?”

  “I’ve got work to do,” Dick said. “I hope you and Adrian discussed how to get these costs under control.”

  “As a matter of fact, I told him it was impossible, if he was gonna have this goddamn thing ready for Lyndon Johnson to inspect on October nineteenth. That’s rollout day. I’ll bet you a hundred dollars Big Cliff, so well-known for his courage, decides I’m right—after he fires me.”

  “He isn’t going to fire you. Nobody can fire you.”

  “I can quit. That’s what I’ll do before I take a single order from that shitheel. Jesus Christ, Dick, couldn’t you have come to me first and talked this over? Don’t you know Adrian and Cliff and his English bitch of a wife have been tryin’ to hang my scalp out to dry since the day I married Victoria? Where’ve you been?”

  Score another one for Amalie Bourne, Dick thought. He had lost touch with what was happening all around him in Buchanan Aircraft. “Maybe you’re right, but two billion dollars is still a hell of a lot of money.”

  “Shit. The missile division blew three billion on that Crusader rocket for the Navy and no one got the firing squad. That fucking thing never even flew. At least we’ll have a plane—a great plane—to show for the money.”

  “But we’ll be in hock for a hundred years to pay it off.”

  “Dick—you should’ve kept flyin’. You’re only two degrees away from turning into Adrian Van Ness.”

  For a man who seemed indifferent to office politics, Billy had an uncanny ability to deliver a kick to the solar plexus. More kicks were coming. By the time Cliff Morris arrived in Knowlesville that night, Dick had received a call from Frank Buchanan, defending Billy and blaming most of the cost overrun on the Air Force, which kept changing its mind about the plane.

  Cliff could not have looked more grim as he stalked into Dick’s temporary office. But the moment he closed the door, a gloating smile appeared. “It looks like the son-in-law has finally fucked up,” he said.

  Again Dick had the unpleasant sense of discovering he was not on the inside of what was happening. He was a passenger, an employee, performing a function.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe get the son of a bitch indicted—if you can get us the evidence. Gross malfeasance, that sort of thing.”

  “You’re not getting any help from me.”

  “Dick—Adrian told me your cooperation was guaranteed,” Cliff said.

  Ignoring that ugly threat, Dick told Cliff why impaling Billy McCall would not work. Frank Buchanan was backing Billy 150 percent. He asked Cliff to imagine Frank testifying at a congressional hearing. Buchanan would never get another government contract.

  “If you’re trying to knock Billy out of the race for the top job, you’ve already done it. The board of directors will have to be told about this eventually and they’ll blame him. Push him too far and we’ll all be looking for new jobs—and maybe indicted in the bargain.”

  Cliff denied trying to knock Billy out of the race for anything. He was down here to straighten out a mess, that was all he had on his mind. But there was no more talk about indicting Billy—or firing him. After touring the plant and talking to Billy for an hour, Cliff flew black to Los Angeles. Dick spent the next ten days in Knowlesville, grappling with financial chaos. Grimly applying a cost-per-pound analysis to the plane based on the current production pace, he verified the probability of a two-billion-dollar overrun. Each night he called Cassie, who told him it was still perfectly all right. Throughout the ten days, Billy McCall never said another word to him. He stalked past Dick as if he were invisible.

  Back in California, Dick went to work on revising the budget for the current fiscal year to hide the overrun. Adrian’s smile was almost beatific as he surveyed the result. “A beautiful job,” he murmured. “What would we do without you, Dick?”

  He paused and shuffled papers on his desk, always a signal for an announcement. “The next thing I want is a report clearly stating in layman’s language—in fact, in language a woman can understand—Billy’s gross incompetence on this job.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s a particular woman I want to read it. Eventually, I’ll want the board of directors to read it too. It’s an odd combination of personal and company business. But you understand how those things happen, Dick.”

  So much for Dick’s noble defense of his friend Billy in Knowlesville. Adrian was applying the screws in person now, while Amalie Borne stood in the distance, smiling. The report was as impersonal as a tombstone in a veteran’s cemetery. It simply stated the facts, the dates, the figures, comparing what the costs had been predicted to be in the TPP contract and what they turned out to be under Billy McCall’s supervision.

  “Another beautiful job,” Adrian said, the day after Dick handed in the report. He sat Dick next to him at lunch and began telling him his plans for the future. “We’re going back into the commercial airliner market. Between the Thunderer and the Colossus, if we can recover those cost overruns, we can finance a new jet to fill a hole in the market—a medium-sized wide body that will make Boeing’s humpbacked Seven-forty-sevens look like aborted whales who forgot to die. I’d like you to talk it up to Frank Buchanan.”

  Again, Dick sensed Adrian was reaching out to him, trying to enlist him as a loyal follower. But Dick was not ready to forgive Adrian for forcing him to betray Amalie Borne and Billy McCall. “Do we need another billion-dollar loss leader right now?” he said.

  Hubris faded from Adrian’s eyes. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. They did not exchange another word for days.

  Planning for the rollout of the Colossus soon gathered manic intensity. Rumors about the cost overrun were loose in the Pentagon. A civilian employee had turned whistle-blower and was testifying in secret to the subcommittee on government operations, run by penny-pinching Senator William Proxmire with their old senatorial enemy, the Creature, as his right-hand impaler.

  Mike Shannon flew in for a conference with Adrian, Cliff Morris, and Dick. “I want Amalie Borne down there for Johnson,” Shannon said. “He’s looking for consolation these days.”

  In the face of massive protests against the war in Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson had abandoned another run for the presidency. Cassie, a passionate admirer of Tennessee’s James K. Polk, who won the Mexican War in spite of similar criticism, called LBJ the greatest coward in American histo
ry.

  “Amalie’s getting harder and harder to handle,” Cliff said.

  Amalie had turned into a cost overrun in her own right. She was supposed to work with Shannon in Washington or with the Prince in Europe. She frequently balked at doing either. When she showed up, she often coolly said good night to her escort at the door of her room without even making a decent excuse.

  “We’ll send Billy to New York to fly her down in style,” Adrian said.

  His cold eyes asked Dick what he was going to say about that idea. It was a perfect way to make it clear to everyone how low Billy had fallen—from project manager to company pilot. Dick said nothing. It was none of his business, he told himself for the twentieth time. He was just a spectator at this crucifixion.

  Knowlesville had never seen anything like the Colossus rollout. All day, Air Force jets roared in with VIP’s, climaxed by Air Force One itself, with the President. The Secret Service alone filled every local motel room and most of the high and mighty were booked into New Orleans hotels, which they undoubtedly preferred.

  Cassie did not make the trip. She was still nursing their nine-month-old daughter. Frank Buchanan sat next to Dick on the plane, denouncing the way Adrian was abusing Billy, hoping to recruit Dick as an ally. Cliff Morris sat across the aisle reading a magazine, avoiding all Frank’s attempts to draw him into the discussion. Next to him sat Sarah of the wide smile. When she lost the smile she looked haggard.

  And you, of course, are deliriously happy? sneered a savage voice in Dick’s head. It unmistakably belonged to Amalie Borne. She was among the last to arrive, sauntering from Billy’s green Lustra in a green suit precisely the same color as the plane. Billy, defiantly wearing his flight jacket and fifty-missions hat, escorted her to the VIP grandstand where she was greeted by Mike Shannon and led to a seat in one of the rear rows.