Eagles at War

by Boyne, Walter J.

  "I never took a dime from you or anybody else."

  "No, but the records say you did. You might be able to convince a jury that it's a fraud, but I doubt it. Not after we go into all the times you came down here when you were supposed to be going somewhere else, when you used our guesthouse. We kept pretty good tabs, Henry, we even have some photos. Remember that mirror over the dresser in the bedroom? Well, it's one of those one-way jobs. I hated to do it, especially to you and Elsie, but business is business."

  "You rotten bastard. Did Elsie know?"

  "Of course not. What do you think she is? She's just a woman crazy in love with you, that's all. Everything she's done has been to help you. I've taken advantage of the situation, but I had to."

  He paused dramatically, his manner changing again. "Believe it or not, Henry, I was trying my damnedest to build good airplanes for the war effort. Things didn't go like I planned, but I was trying."

  Caldwell groaned out loud. Jesus. What a fool he'd been to trust this con man! And what a fool to play footsie on the Army's time. How often had he signed out an airplane to fly from Wright Field to Scott Field and then "diverted" to Nashville? Everybody was doing stuff like that all the time, nobody cared as long as you got some time on the airplanes, burned up the fuel allotment. But in a trial, it would be presented as defrauding the government, a court-martial offense by itself. And if they knew about that, who would believe that he hadn't taken the money, hadn't agreed to the fraud about the performance? Nobody, not in the government, for sure, and absolutely no jury. He was cooked! The image of Elsie and the prison matron suddenly flared in his mind and he lunged at McNaughton.

  "You dirty bastard, you've sold the government a bunch of junk, and you've ruined me!"

  McNaughton moved calmly around the desk, aware that he held a winning hand.

  "It hasn't been junk. These aren't the first airplanes the government's bought that haven't met their performance figures, and they won't be the last. Look at what Scriabin said. The Russians are glad to have the Sidewinder, and the Mamba will make a great fighter trainer. Don't lose your head."

  "Where's Elsie now?"

  "She's at home, waiting for you. She's sick about what's happened. Let her tell you herself. She was doing it all for you. It's the war, Henry."

  The argument was over. McNaughton had won.

  It took almost an hour of fast talking to convince Hadley Roget that the best course was to remain silent on the whole business until "after the war." Roget had agreed only reluctantly, with a sadder-but-wiser look on his face which told Caldwell that they were no longer really friends.

  Now he drove recklessly down the dusty farm road, squealing to a stop in the gravel of the circular drive in front of Elsie's new house. She met him with a flood of tears, begging his forgiveness, begging him not to let her go to jail, telling him how much she loved him, how much she needed him.

  "Henry, forgive me. And forgive how I look, I haven't slept a wink all night. I only did this for you because I thought it was for the best, like Troy told me. You know I wouldn't do anything to hurt you.

  Gratefully, he let her embrace him. As angry as he was, it was heaven to feel her arms around him, to smell her sweet scent.

  "Honey, you know how funny I was acting. It was because I was worried."

  Amid his anger there was a surge of joy. She hadn't been thinking of Bruno, she'd been worried about him! Yet they argued on, and the more they argued, the more she cried, and the more excited he became. Clinging to him, kissing him passionately, she pulled him with her to the floor. He forgot his anger as they made greedy, forgiving love on the knotted rug.

  Later, at two in the afternoon, they were comfortable in her bed, Elsie sleeping deeply, her head on his chest. Caldwell knew that he was hooked on her like an addict on heroin. No matter what happened, no matter how angry she made him, he loved her without reservation. He wasn't going to do anything to harm her, this woman he loved, now lying so trustfully in his embrace. He'd die before he'd let her go to prison.

  As for Lee, he'd been a fool—loyal, but a fool. He should never have gone along with McNaughton's scheme to change the pitot-static system design, to fake the test results, no matter how much he believed the airplane's performance could be improved. If he was really trying to save Caldwell, as McNaughton had said, it was still outrageous. Caldwell knew that Lee owed him a lot, but this was too much. He shifted his position and thought that, like most of this mess, it had been his own fault—he'd brought Lee along too quickly. Some people couldn't handle higher ranks.

  But at least he'd tried to help. Some people might have stabbed him in the back.

  She stirred. It moved him just to look down at her slender body, curled like a child, her full breasts pressed against him and her lovely red hair spilling across his chest. He reached out and, with his fingertip, traced the smooth, melding curves of her body. Her eyelids fluttered and she burrowed against him, stifling a yawn against his flesh, then raising her face sleepily to be kissed. He responded at once, murmuring over and over in a frantic litany, "I love you, Elsie, I love you, I love you."

  She responded in a groggy voice, "And I love you." Sleepily, she half-turned to begin kissing his belly, circling him with her hand, moving him gently.

  "I love you, and I really love little Robert E. Lee Junior here, too—" Elsie sat bolt upright. "I mean, little John Henry Junior." Caldwell was already out of bed. That son-of-a-bitch, Lee!

  *

  Isley Field, Saipan/November 27, 1944

  With a graceful, unexpected move, the American forces had pivoted and sent a smashing body blow to the Japanese by seizing the Marianas. Everyone—even their Allies—had expected the U.S. forces to chew the Japanese up, island by island. Instead, the Japanese forces at Truk and Palau had been isolated and now offered only the threat of an occasional bombing raid as their ground forces withered on the vine.

  The B-29 bomber offensive against Japan was doing its own withering, at the end of an overextended vine of supplies, still unable to justify the mammoth cost that had gone into its creation. Operating out of Chinese bases had proved to be exactly the unproductive nightmare Jim Lee had predicted—it was too difficult to get the fuel and bombs to the bases.

  But the worst problem was the poor bombing results. The whole doctrine of high altitude precision bombing was at risk, because the B-29s were not getting bombs on the target. And now the horrendous cost in men and materiel for invading the Marianas to establish a B-29 base had to be added to the overall program cost.

  Saipan had been invaded on June 15th—a week later, the first American aircraft landed. By the 15th of August, Saipan, Tinian, and Guam had begun the typical American transformation from primitive to wartime-luxurious. It was not until late November that the super bomber operation was at last in place—but it was on Saipan, not twelve hundred miles away beyond the Himalayas. It was from Saipan that Brig. Gen. Hay wood S. "Possum" Hansell's XXI Bomber Command would give high altitude precision bombing another chance.

  Colonel James Lee, his usually mobile face impassive, sat up on his cot, carefully folded the letter, and put it back in its brown manila envelope.

  "Did you read it, Bandy?"

  "No—but he's talked to me about Elsie and you, and about McNaughton. Doesn't sound too good, from his point of view, anyway."

  "Not from mine, either. Did he send you all the way here just to deliver a goddamn letter?"

  "Probably. It's not something he could send through the censors. I've got a day job, of course, same old range-extension stuff, this time for the P-47N. With two external tanks you can get almost twenty-three hundred miles range out of it—if you know what to do."

  "Well, I'm gonna tell you my side, whether you want to hear it or not."

  Lee tossed the letter over to Bandfield. "You can read that later if you want. And since you're playing postman, I'm going to give you a message to take back to him."

  He pointed to the letter. "This just te
lls me I'm a son-of-a-bitch, that I shouldn't have hurt Elsie, and that if it wasn't for her he'd send me to jail. Also that he's going to punch me in the nose."

  "I figured that's what it might be."

  The raucous noise of the day at Isley Field—engines running up, trucks pounding by, aircraft flying over—had subsided into the normal buzz of night war in the tropics. There was a continuous murmur from the brightly lit flight line, where ground crews were straining to get the aircraft just returned from that day's mission to Japan—only the second mission from Saipan—ready for the next day's takeoff.

  "I'm going to level with you, Bandy. I'm no saint. I probably shouldn't have fooled around with Elsie, but she wanted it."

  "Frankly, I don't give a damn about Elsie," Bandy snapped. "It was just an infatuation and Henry's probably well out of it. The business with the pitot tubes is something else again."

  "Yeah—that's what I wanted to talk to you about. McNaughton had me convinced there was an engineering fix in the works that would take care of things and make the airplane live up to expectations."

  "That might wash once, Jim, even though you're supposed to be an engineer. But not twice."

  "Elsie suckered me into it. We got, well, friendly, and she began filling me in. The way she told it, Henry was taking money from Troy McNaughton to give to her. She had McNaughton's books, showed me the disbursements."

  "She's the bookkeeper, she can cook the goddamn books any way she wants. That doesn't mean that Caldwell took anything."

  "Maybe. But that's not the way I read it at the time. Troy's a hell of a salesman, he convinced me the best way I could help Henry was to keep Sidewinders coming down the line until they got them fixed. And I guess they did. The Russians like them now."

  "You're switching tracks—we were talking about Henry being on the take, and now you're talking about the Sidewinder's performance. "

  "It's all wrapped together. Troy convinced me that if we could keep things quiet until after the war, Henry could retire, and nobody would be the wiser."

  "Jesus, if you thought he was guilty, you should have turned him in. If you didn't think he was, you should have turned McNaughton in. What the hell do you think an officer's commission means?"

  The light from the unshaded sixty-watt bulb dimmed periodically as more demands were placed on the overstrained generators. Bandfield searched Lee's weary face for some signal that this was somehow just a bad joke, that there was a better explanation.

  "Look, Bandfield, you grew up poor. I didn't. I hated it when Dad lost all our money in the Depression. I want to make it big!"

  "Shit, that explains everything. No problem. Anybody would understand that."

  "Don't bullshit me, Bandy, I'm tired. Well, after the Sidewinder, I was in whether I liked it or not. I really believed I was helping Henry."

  "While you were fucking his girlfriend?"

  "We hadn't started anything yet. Then McNaughton came to me one night with a bunch of papers, showing the high-drag profiles on the Mamba. Same story. He said he thought they could do some fixes—better wing/fuselage juncture, smoother skin, the usual—but that he needed time. I dreamed up the change to the pitot-static system, and that was it."

  "Stop. You could have done that on your own. There was no need to create the paperwork about Caldwell being on the take."

  "I didn't know about that at the time. When I found out, it was too late. Elsie and I were mixed up together—and I'd accepted a job offer from Troy for after the war."

  Bandfield stood up. "Lee, you really are a shit. If it weren't for Caldwell, I'd knock your block off and then turn you in for a court martial."

  "Yeah, I figure you would. Why don't you? Don't tell me I was a patsy for covering for him. You're doing the same goddamn thing yourself, right now. You want purity and justice, you talk about what a commission means, so you turn me in, and him, too."

  The characteristic uneven sound of Japanese engines passed overhead, followed by four sharp explosions.

  "Uh-oh—looks like we've got visitors. They sent some Zeros down on a one-way mission the other day."

  Both men raced outside the tent as the base defense antiaircraft was opening up. A few searchlights were tracking aimlessly about the sky. Two B-29s on the nearby hardstand were already burning, and the Japs—Bandfield couldn't tell what the planes were, they were too slender-looking to be Bettys—came in at low level, strafing. One swerved as it approached the end of the runway and hit the ground flat. It skipped like a rock, its remaining bombs blowing up on the second bounce, the blast knocking down Lee and Bandfield. The other intruder roared directly overhead, racing out toward Magicienne Bay.

  The two B-29s were burning fiercely now, their fuselages collapsed in the center, wings poking up, noses forlornly cast in one direction, tails dumped in another. The blazing bombers were surrounded by a tightly packed ring of B-29s around them, all fully fueled with high octane aviation gas and loaded with bombs for the next day's mission.

  Bandfield yelled to no one in particular, "Christ, they're going to go up like firecrackers on a string!" He ran to where the ground crews were frantically trying to push the sixty-ton monsters away, moving the outermost ones to clear a path for the inner circle of planes. Some particularly gutsy mechanics braved the intense heat to climb into the cockpits, trying to get at least two engines started to taxi.

  Lee ran in the opposite direction. At the edge of the hardstand, he climbed into a bulldozer left idle for the night and within seconds had the engine running. With the blade lowered, he drove directly at a river of burning fuel streaming toward the next B-29 in line. Scooping dirt as he went, he smashed directly into the center of the first B-29, pushing a section of the flaming carcass off the hardstand into the adjacent gully, away from the other airplanes.

  Bandfield had a clear view of him from the cockpit of the B-29 he'd climbed into, amazed that Lee could breathe and function in the firestorm of heat. Lurking like monsters in the raging mass of flame and aluminum were the next day's supply of five-hundred-pound bombs. If they went off, they'd blow the rest of the B-29s to bits—and take Lee and everyone on this end of the island with them.

  Twice Lee charged back into the flames, each time scooping the fiery debris over the side of the embankment. The third time he whirled around, he saw that the construction engineers had arrived with three more bulldozers, all heading for the second B-29. Lee turned once again and began packing dirt over the first airplane, still burning, still bomb-laden, riding back and forth until the fires had subsided and the fire trucks were at last on hand, pouring water on the wreckage.

  Still unbelieving and more than a little ashamed of his own ineffective action, Bandfield walked over to where a cheering bunch of engineering personnel were slapping Lee on the back, joking and laughing.

  A giant of an engineer had grabbed Lee around the chest and was waltzing him around in a circle. "Little Colonel, where the hell did you learn to drive a 'dozer?"

  Lee, his red hair singed, skin blistered and totally black with soot, his teeth gleaming in the still glowing fires, replied, "My daddy had a little road construction outfit in Virginia. I worked summers, drove everything. You never know what will come in handy, do you?

  "Well, man, you can fly B-29s during the day for old Possum Hansell, and drive bulldozers at night for us."

  Bandfield walked Lee over to the dispensary—his eyebrows were singed away and there were light burns across his face and hands.

  "Jim, I got to tell you, that was the bravest thing I've ever seen. Those damn bombs could have gone off any second."

  "Hell, I'd never have known it. Stick around. I got a message for you to deliver in person to Caldwell for me."

  While Lee was being cleaned up and his burns dressed, Bandfield re-created the scene in his mind, trying to understand how Lee could have been such a bastard to Caldwell—and such an instinctive hero here. It was a cinch that he'd get put in for a Silver Star for this, maybe the Medal of Hon
or. He deserved it.

  How complex people were! One minute Lee had admitted to being a crook poaching his superior and friend's girl. The next minute he was doing the most heroic thing Bandfield had ever seen. It was one thing to be brave in an airplane, in combat—Christ, that's what you were trained for. But to ride that 'dozer into the flames was incredible.

  As he waited, he thought about other people and other changes. Who could have believed that iron-ass Henry Caldwell, the real genius of American airpower, could be led around by his dick by a woman who was "No better than she should be," as Clarice would have said. And Hadley, gruff old Hadley, ignoring Clarice all her life, and now pining away for her.

  General Hansell came down later to the dispensary, saying, "Lee, maybe after this I'll forgive you for your idiot ideas about area bombing." It was three hours before they got back to Lee's tent, recounting the night, each man nursing one of the clutch of bottles of medicinal whiskey—Four Roses miniatures—the jubilant flight surgeon had given Lee. He didn't get to treat heroes too often, and Lee was clearly a special case.

  Now, inevitably, their talk came back to the main agenda. "Look, Bandy, no matter what you think of me, no matter what Caldwell thinks, I've got something to tell him. It's purely professional—and I hope he listens."

  "Shoot."

  "So far the planning on the B-29 has been brilliant, from the design, to getting coolies to build airfields in China, to capturing this godforsaken rock and stuffing it with airplanes. There's just one problem."

  He drank down his whiskey and opened another, tossing the metal cap on the floor.

  "The problem is that our bombing isn't worth a shit, and it's not going to get better. We can bomb Japan for the next forty years, the way we've been doing, and they'll laugh at us. With the winds we're running into, the airplanes are coming across the target at maybe four hundred forty miles an hour—too fast for our equipment to drop with any accuracy. The bombs are being sprayed all over. The reconnaissance photos show that we're barely touching the factories, and high explosives don't do much damage to residential areas."