by Terry James
Breathing came easier when he strapped the mask on his face.
A fireball exploded a hundred feet in front and to the right, and he used the left brake at the top of the rudder pedal to cause the tail wheel to swing to the right. Debris from the bomb showered the cockpit. He revved the engine and steered toward the runway. No time to worry about where the next enemy ordnance would land. He must get airborne –now!
He was behind the throttle of his beloved P-51BS again, and it felt good. Even with the probability that he would die before he made it off the narrow, bomb-pocked runway, it felt good.
At only 26, with a combat resume that listed 14 single-handed Messerschmitt kills, James Morgan had little trouble convincing the Israelis he would be a productive asset in the battles that would come with Ben Gurion’s declaration of Israel’s nationhood. He preferred the just-formed U.S. Air Force to do his flying, but this was the only war of significance around. The United States had lent his services upon his agreeing to take up his commission again. He had been given one grade up from where he left right after the war.
He could rejoin America’s military air arm anytime. The brass had agreed to his volunteering for the small group of American pilots who were sent, without announcement, to bolster Israel’s chances of survival once independence was declared. He had jumped at the chance to join the fight. And there were those who were more than eager to send him to the Middle East. Perhaps it was a death wish on his part--to forget the secret he harbored in his troubled thoughts. Because of the same secret--he was convinced--they sent him with the unspoken hope he wouldn’t be coming back. For now, he had to avoid the last crater in the runway by lifting the fighter just before reaching it. For now, he would kill as many Arab planes as they could put in his path. Or die trying.
A dozen thoughts raged within his smoke-saturated brain…
…The battle-hardened Israeli colonel with the scarred face and eye patch who had slammed his fist into James’ stomach, just to “see how the American gut is constructed these days.” The caustic-mannered officer grinning before welcoming him into the Israeli service.
…His mother’s farewell hug, her cheeks streaming with tears. Her instructions about staying away from danger.
…His teenage sister asking him if she could use his phonograph and record collection until he got back.
…Laura, beautiful, fresh-faced Laura with the tear-filled green eyes. His wife of two years, holding their one-year old daughter, begging him not to volunteer for the fight he, God help him, couldn’t resist joining.
The P-51’s throttle was all the way forward, the fighter’s engine screaming while it strained to gain altitude. The ground below exploded at various places as the Arab forces pressed their attack.
James leveled the aircraft and began searching the skies for an enemy target of opportunity. He didn’t have to look too hard or too long. They seemed everywhere. Diving, firing, dropping their belly loads of high explosives.
His Israeli friends, who had only nine, for the most part, outdated fighters, were doing their parts, sending one enemy airplane after another earthward. They fought with skill and ferocity he had not seen, even in the most intense times of air battle over Europe.
James downed a Fairchild F-24R Argus after several seconds of tailing it, and watched it plunge trailing a black stream of smoke.
For the moment, there was a lull, and he moved alongside an Israeli ally, looking into the cockpit for any signal the pilot might give that would indicate where their next engagement could be found.
A blood-saturated, gaping hole where part of the leather helmet should have been, the pilot’s head slumped forward, the canopy on the left side, shattered.
The German-made AviaS-199 Sakin flew in formation with him, although the pilot was as dead as any corpse James had ever seen. Yet, the aircraft seemed as in control as his own.
Suddenly the Israeli plane banked sharply right and downward. James prepared to watch the fatal plunge when the diving plane leveled off. What happened next would be something he would rarely tell anyone, ever, no matter how long he lived. Who would believe it?
The Sakin locked on to an enemy aircraft and began firing, knocking it from the sky. James watched while the same Israeli fighter downed two more enemy planes, not wasting a single burst of machine gun fire.
Within seconds, the enemy aircraft broke off the engagement and fled back toward their desert nests. James looked for the fighter with the dead pilot but couldn’t find it. Another Israeli pilot pulled his P-51 Mustang beside Morgan’s left wing and signaled they should go home.
When he began his descent toward home base, Morgan caught a glimpse of a bright object in the distance. It was disk-shaped. It accelerated toward the east at incomprehensible speed, then vanished.
Chapter 2
Austin, Texas, May 1967
Lori Morgan bristled in silent rage while Dr. Charles T. Morrison paced back and forth in front of the lectern 15 rows below her seating level. The spotlight from high above the professor of biology exaggerated the balding of his head. His words echoed throughout the amphitheater in caustic tone and cadence.
“While we study life, the baby killers sweep the villages of Vietnam with 50-caliber machine gun fire. American hotshot flyboys drop bombs on and strafe helpless women and children, while desecrating what was once pristine forests that kept the earth cleansed…”
Lori had heard enough. She stood from her theater seat and made her way past the knees of her fellow graduate students, her face reddened against the flaxen colored hair pulled back and knotted in a bun.
While Lori’s long, slacks-covered legs carried her toward the double doors at the top of the amphitheater, a shorter, dark-haired female student tried to catch up to her.
“You know he noticed you leave,” Ginger Knox said, finally able to pull along beside her friend.
“What about you? He noticed you chasing me,” Lori retorted, pushing through the doors and onto the concourse that led to an atrium and beyond to the University of Texas grounds.
“He doesn’t know me from anybody. But he knows that you are Dr. Waldren’s favorite grad student,” Ginger said, trying to catch her breath.
“Yeah, well, I’m not sitting still to listen to some panty-waist anti-war professor call my father a flyboy who murders women and children.”
“But your dad just trains them, doesn’t he?”
“He’s done his share in Korea, and Vietnam… even World War Two,” Lori said, slowing and bending to pick up a crumpled cigarette package that had been discarded just off the broad sidewalk. She stood again and deposited the package in her purse.
She saw Ginger’s eyes welling with tears and reached to touch her.
“I’m sorry, Gin,” Lori said, embracing her friend. “This is where Joey was hit, isn’t it?”
Ginger didn’t answer but nodded.
“It’s hard to believe it’s been less than a year since that monster did what he did,” Lori said, picking a tissue paper from her purse and offering it to her friend.
“He was a good brother, Lori. Why him?”
Lori said nothing but put her arm around the shorter girl while they began walking toward the looming 307-foot tower, from which on August 1, less than a year earlier, Charles Whitman had murdered 14 people and injured dozens more with a high-powered rifle.
Ginger said, “You see that guy up there? He’s looking at us.”
Lori looked upward toward the tower that was now within 50 feet. A man, wearing a dark suit, stood in a sixth-floor window, large binoculars trained on them.
When the man saw that they were looking upward at him, he slowly removed the instrument from his eyes, put on a pair of dark sunglasses, and left the window. He walked into a small office just off the hallway that circled the interior of the tower, picked up a phone receiver from a desk and dialed. He spoke into the mouthpiece moments later.
“The Morgan girl is here. Shall we implement DD101?”
The man listened, hearing the words, “Not now. There’s plenty of time.”
Aboard Air Force One, over Memphis, Tennessee, May 1967
“Why have I not been let in on this ‘til now? Why did I have to learn about it over cocktails at some dinner party? You boys told me the Roswell thing was all to do about nothing. Looks to me like Eisenhower thought otherwise.”
Lyndon Johnson scanned the document just handed him by Jarrod McConnell, one of a half-dozen National Security Agency advisors.
“Listen to what he had to say in this memorandum. No, I guess it’s a letter. It’s dated November 4, 1953.”
Johnson pulled the reading glasses low on the bridge of his nose, and strained to look downward at the document while he began to read:
“I cannot overemphasize the need for the utmost discretion and understanding in exercising the authority set forth in these documents. Accordingly, I would like you to find some way to brief the various Authorizing Commanders on the subject to ensure that all are of one mind as to the letter and spirit of these instructions. Preferably, I would like to see this done in a closed meeting to be arranged through the Director of the National Security Agency, yourself, and representatives of the MJ-12/Special Studies Project. I specifically want Project JEHOVAH director Professor Albert Einstein and Doctor Robert Oppenheimer to inject any useful comments to the briefing as they are most informed on the physics related to the subject. Perhaps the annual Quantico conference could provide an opportunity to do this without the publicity that would call attention to a special meeting.
Sincerely,
Dwight D. Eisenhower"
The President glanced again at the document taken from the “Deep Files” of NSA. He looked first at McConnell, then at the director of the NSA.
“I want to know what the hell’s going on with this Majestic-12, and Project Jehovah matter,” Lyndon Johnson said. “Is there something to this flying saucer stuff, or not?”
The director cast a sheepish look at his underling, glanced at Johnson, and looked again to McConnell.
“Get all the files we have on MJ-12, Project Jehovah, White Pebble Majcomsec Intelligence Eyes Only, and get it to Bergstrom as quickly as possible,” the director ordered.
When McConnell had left Johnson’s mid-fuselage office, the President kneaded his nose where the reading glasses had sat. He massaged his eyes, his temples, then after licking the palms of his huge hands, slicked back his silvered hair.
He leaned back in the big desk chair bolted to the cabin’s floor and crossed his legs at the ankles, plopping his cowboy booted heels up on the desktop.
“Maybe those lights I saw as a boy growing up in Texas weren’t my imagination after all,” he said.
Same hour, Randolph Air Force Base, Texas
There would be no more sorties until the President had come and gone. The two white T-38 Talons taxied from the south end of the runway, turned right and began the long roll up the vast concrete ramp toward Talon 3, where the sleek birds belonged.
Randolph Air Force Base, headquarters for Air Training Command, was, in the mind of the instructor pilot sitting in the back seat of the lead plane, the most beautiful air base in the U.S. James Morgan peered between the hangars on their left and enjoyed glimpses of the red-tile roofed, cream-colored Spanish motif buildings while his student pilot in the front seat taxied them toward Talon 3.
“Looks like we’re the last today,” Morgan said into the microphone imbedded in the plastic and rubber oxygen mask covering his nose and mouth. He unsnapped the mask and let it swing to one side.
“Yes, sir,” the second lieutenant said, guiding the T-38 using rudder pedals while depressing the nose wheel steering button on the bottom of the leading edge of the grip stick.
When these two parked and were put in the hangar, preparation would begin in earnest for receiving Air Force One, tail number 26000. The inevitable aircraft entourage would accompany Lyndon Baines Johnson to Texas for a weekend at the LBJ Ranch not many miles to the northwest.
Morgan guided the mask to his mouth. “You did pretty good today, Shelton. You going to celebrate tonight?” the lieutenant colonel in the back asked roughly.
“I don’t know, sir. Thank you,” the 23-year-old pilot said with military stiffness.
“Come on, kid. Lighten up. We’ll be off duty here in a few,” Morgan said, seeing the exhaust temperature rise a bit above the normal range on one of the cockpit gauges.
“Yes, sir,” Lt. Clayton Shelton said, looking for the excessive temperature his instructor pilot had been fretting about for the last 15 minutes of flight. “My EGT still looks good, sir,” Shelton said.
“Guess we’re going to have to write her up,” Morgan said, thumbing through the checklist attached to his right knee by Velcro straps.
“Yes, sir. It seems to be just your number two gauge,” Shelton said.
“Yeah. Probably just a gauge. Hate to make these boys work on an engine tonight. Friday night is no time to have to pull a J-85. I’m just going to tell the crew chief that we think it’s the gauge,” he said, knowing that the flight chief for Talon 3 would mark the plane’s forms with a red X until the bird’s J-85 number two engine was checked out.
With cockpit pressure vented, James Morgan pulled the cockpit lever on the aircraft’s interior wall upward, and his canopy popped loose and flipped into its upward most position. The younger man did the same.
The lieutenant swung the bird to the left by pushing the left rudder pedal, then slowed the aircraft by touching the top of the rudder pedals several times. He pushed fully on the right pedal, still depressing the button on the bottom of the control stick’s handle with his little finger. The young pilot watched the crew chief wearing the sound-suppressing ear muffs while he stood in front of the long yellow parking spot. The man in the green fatigues, with three blue-trimmed, white chevrons and a star in their midst, held his arms and hands in the air. He then pointed downward and to the left with his left hand, while continuing to hold his right arm in the air. He waved his right hand toward himself, while pointing with his left hand.
The nose wheel turned sharply right, then straightened, and the crew chief again put both arms and hands in the air, continuing to signal for the pilot to come forward. At just the right moment, the crew chief crossed his arms at the wrist, and the lieutenant stopped the T-38 by pushing forward with the balls of his feet on the top of the rudder pedals.
Another enlisted member of Talon 3 hurried to place the two sets of wooden, yellow-painted chocks, each set having two of the blocks attached by short lengths of rope. He put one block on each side of the bird’s left main wheel tire, then hurried beneath the flat belly of the T-38 to repeat the procedure on the other wheel.
The crew chief held one hand fully aloft, palm forward, until the other enlisted man had finished the job. He then dropped his hand and moved to the yellow cockpit ladders.
“Hold up a minute, Shelton. I want to check this engine a little before we shut her down,” Morgan said, concentrating on the Exhaust Gas Temperature gauge for the number two engine while he applied braking pressure to the top of the rudder pedals and manipulated the right throttle with his left hand, revving the engine several times.
The right EGT gauge fluctuated erratically.
“I really think it’s the gauge, Shelton,” the instructor said. “What you think?”
“Yes, sir.”
Morgan grinned, hearing uncertainty in the young man’s voice. Although the pilot training gave some attention to mechanical troubleshooting, the youngsters weren’t supposed to be experts on everything –just experts on flying high-performance jet fighters to the point they were the best in the world.
At 46, he was confident that he had reached that goal. But, it didn’t come without a lot of testing in aerial combat. It couldn’t be achieved sitting in a pretty little white trainer whose honeycombed wings could barely fend off bird strikes, much less 20 mm cannon fire.
Still, he wa
s glad to be at Randolph for now. He and Laura had it better than ever before. She deserved to have him come home every night. She had been an understanding wife like few others.
They had married in 1945 following his discharge after World War II. Then came the strange year with the Israeli air force.
He had retaken his commission in 1948, flew F-84s, then F-86s, over the Korean Peninsula. He had been shot out of the air once, luckily parachuting into friendly territory. A couple of his fellow flyers hadn’t been so fortunate. They died prisoners of the North Koreans.
He was forced to take a desk job for a time right after the Korean Conflict, as they called it. He couldn’t figure why they didn’t call it a war. It certainly was that, and only the State Department’s diplomatic “striped-pants set,” as President Truman called them, could see it as merely “conflict.”
He knew in the back of his mind that somebody lurked behind the decision to put a thumb on his career progress, rank-wise. To keep him in his place, so that he knew they would not forget they were ever vigilant concerning the secret he carried. He had been allowed to rejoin as an active fighter pilot in late 1958. The reassignment came just in time; he had become bored stiff with the nerve-jangling corporate-like structure and all the attendant politics involved.
Although he welcomed the chance to get back to doing what he loved, the result of his forced time as a desk jockey was that uninterrupted flyers of his age were now full bird colonels or higher, while he was only a lieutenant colonel as of about six months ago.
He had the experience and all those medals. None was more qualified to lead in combat duty, they told him. He was, however, age-wise, “on the edge of physiological effectiveness” in the eyes of those who called the shots. Since he had downed several Mig 17s and other enemy aircraft over the jungles of Vietnam, he should now be content to lend his invaluable experience to training the young men whose turn had come to carry on in the best tradition of the Air Force’s top guns.
