Conquerors of the Sky (42 page)

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Authors: Thomas Fleming

BOOK: Conquerors of the Sky
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They were both naked now. Cliff's fingers were deep in her English pussy. Sarah's breath came faster and faster. My God, maybe he
was
better than Billy! She kissed the pulsing tip of his penis, something she had never done before. Willfully, powerfully, she rolled him onto his back and mounted him, a position they seldom used—and never on her initiative.
Cliff rotated his palms on her nipples until they were as erect, as erotic as his penis. “You've been my luck from the start,” he said. “No matter what I did with anyone else, she never meant anything to me. You're the only one I ever cared about.”
Some antenna in her mind, perhaps stirred by a tremor in his gaze, made her suspect that was a lie. But it was a loving lie. As loving as the lie she had told him about Billy. It was enormously confusing. Love on a bed of lies.
“From the start I saw us as a team,” he said, stroking her as he spoke, sending surges of pleasure through her body. Sarah summoned pity, she summoned hope. “We are, we are,” she said.
From somewhere deep in her soul a caustic voice whispered.
You'll do your part. He won't even try
. Was it Billy McCall? Go to hell—or heaven—you smiling bastard, Sarah replied while her husband clutched her to his chest and came with a shuddering rush.
Power
. The word whispered in Sarah's soul. She had just exercised, demonstrated, her power over this man. He had prostrated her with a swing of his mighty hand. Even that humiliation had become part of the power she had just acquired. Sarah lay in her husband's arms wondering if once a wife tasted such power, she could ever let it go.
“By the way,” Cliff said. “You're not sending those letters to Tama, are you? The ones signed Califia?”
“No.”
“They're driving her nuts.”
Good, Sarah thought, delighted to hear her chief rival was faltering. Was she on her way to becoming an evil woman, in spite of her repentance? Life in America was incredibly complicated.
High above the Mojave Desert, a new version of the Talus roared through its latest tests, looking more than ever like an illustration from a science fiction novel. The entire plane was now a wing. Not a trace of a fuselage remained. Around Cliff four Air Force generals shook their heads in disbelief. “Give me three hundred copies and the Russkies won't say boo for twenty years,” one said.
Three hundred copies at a million a plane was three hundred million dollars. With spare parts and the usual overrides in a cost-plus contract, they were talking about a half billion dollars. Cliff Morris, project manager of the Talus, could claim a lot of the credit for pumping that much money into Buchanan Aircraft. It was incredible the way his life had turned around in the last three months.
In Cliff's mind it was all connected to an amazing event. He had fallen in love with his wife again. The feeling seemed part of a current suddenly swirling through him and around him since their night of rage and reconciliation. Everything had been clicking, flowing, flying.
Frank Buchanan had switched to jet engines and solved most of the Talus's stability problems. The plane zoomed through one checkout after another, demonstrating speed, maneuverability, endurance—and its greatest asset, its phenomenally low drag-to-weight ratio. No other plane in existence could match it as a weight lifter.
The rest of Cliff's life seemed to reshape itself in the same magical way. A
nervous Cassie Trainor told him she did not want to see him anymore. She was going to move in with Dick Stone. Two months ago he would have been furious. Now he just patted her on the behind and wished her well.
Sarah had shut off that stupid phonograph. She said she wanted to make her own music. She greeted him every night with ravenous eyes. After they made love they lay in bed, talking about the company, his ambitions, the Talus, Frank, Buzz, Adrian. He told her everything.
Sometimes she helped him see things he had missed. Mostly she told him how good he was at this project manager's job. He was good at bridging gaps between people. Maybe it was because he was big and looked like he had the answers. People trusted him. He was a war hero.
Each day he went to work without the old crawling anxiety in his belly. It was amazing. Was Sarah some sort of sorceress? At times the wartime hunch that she was his luck swelled to cosmic proportions. She was his guide, his priestess, his goddess. The boyish devotion he had once felt for his mother was transformed into something close to adoration of his wife.
There was only one thing wrong. Up there at the controls of the Talus was Billy McCall. Every time Cliff saw him, a flicker of his old fear revived. Beneath the fear was a cold unforgiving rage. It was one thing to play sex games with chippies like Cassie Trainor. Billy had seduced his wife. Yet Cliff had to pretend he knew nothing about it, he had to go on exchanging jokes and taunts with Billy in the same old way.
Billy was flying the plane that could make Cliff the crown prince of Buchanan Aircraft. Sarah told him again and again that this was cause for glee, not grief. But something dark and sullen at the bottom of Cliff's soul refused to accept it. He did not want Billy McCall to give him anything, even by accident. He did not want to owe even a shred of gratitude to the arrogant bastard.
Sarah did not understand how men hated each other. How deep it went, how impossible it was to forgive because to ask it or offer it would be a confession of weakness. He could forgive her, of course. He had forgiven her as she had forgiven him for that murderous slap.
Down, down came the Talus in a beautiful approach, not a hint of a yaw or a wobble. The tires kissed the runway as lightly as the wheels of a Piper Cub. It was hard to believe they were watching a thirty-ton plane carrying eight tons of simulated bombs. Cliff thought ruefully of how many times he had thumped the
Rainbow Express
onto the runway at Rackreath.
The generals murmured admiringly. Buzz McCall and Frank Buchanan accepted another round of congratulations. Cliff could see nothing but Billy and Sarah on a couch or bed somewhere engulfed in a green mist. The gleaming silver plane, the empty mocha desert, the distant mountains, vanished. He stood there, paralyzed until General Scott clapped him on the shoulder.
“You ready to do some selling in Washington? We'll back you with everything we've got.”
“You bet,” Cliff said, his tongue thick and dry in his mouth. He watched Billy taxi smoothly down the runway toward them. In a moment he was climbing
out of the plane with his copilot and flight engineer. “The thing flies itself,” Billy said. “You just got to tickle its clit now and then.”
Inverness flowed on the old SkyRanger they flew back to Santa Monica. As far as they could see, the Talus was as good as sold. “I gottta hand it to you, wingman,” Buzz McCall roared, holding out his glass to Frank Buchanan. “I thought it was a piece of fucking insanity the first time I saw it but you've made me a believer.”
“I couldn't have done it without you. Without all of you,” Frank said. He lurched down the aisle to pound Billy on the back. “Without this pilot at the controls.”
He thumped Cliff's shoulder. “Without this
executive
pulling it all together. Adrian thought we were going to fall on our goddamn faces. Didn't know we were a family! Band of fathers—and brothers.”
Frank whacked others on the back too. One of Buzz's engineers, Bruce Kelly, who ran things at the Muroc end of the line, designer Sam Hardy who had solved all sorts of problems with the Talus's ailerons. Dick Stone, who had made the cost estimates low enough to keep Adrian at bay. Frank talked exultantly of getting to work on an airliner version within six months.
“That's when we're really going to start lying about costs,” he chuckled, winking at Dick.
They were so high on Inverness and anticipation they barely noticed when the plane landed at Buchanan Field. They piled out and gazed at a satisfying sight on the flight line. No less than nineteen copies of the Talus roosted there, some ready to fly, others waiting for the jet engines Frank had persuaded the Air Force to let them try.
“Let's head for the Honeycomb and pick out the best pussy on the list,” Buzz said.
“Why not?” Billy said.
“Why not indeed?” Frank said.
Cliff took a deep slow breath. “Sorry,” he said. “I've got to get home.”
Buzz could not believe his ears. “What the fuck? Have you gone queer, Big Shot?”
“No. Married,” Cliff said. “I've gone married.” His face was flushing. His whole body felt like it was melting. Billy McCall was grinning at him.
“What's wrong? Afraid you're going to draw Califia?” Buzz said. Everyone had decided one of the girls at the club was Califia. Buzz liked the idea of screwing a woman who might murder you before it was over. He said it was better than stunt-flying.
Cliff struggled for breath. He could handle Buzz. If Billy said something he was going to knock him into the Pacific Ocean. “You're absolutely right,” Frank said, squeezing his shoulder. “I wish I had a wife to go home to.”
“I was going to let you try Madeleine tonight. That's how good I'm feeling, Big Shot,” Billy said.
“She's all yours,” Cliff said.
“I'm worn out. I think I'll head home too,” Dick Stone said.
“Jesus,” Buzz said. “Respectability is spreading like a fucking plague. Let's get the hell away from these pansies.”
Cliff realized Frank and Dick Stone had tried to help him. It was a small comfort. He drove home in a daze. Had he really done it? Had he made a total asshole of himself for Sarah Chapman Morris's sake? Buzz would never let him forget it. Billy would be telling him all about Madeleine's cries and sighs for the next month. He must be going crazy to let a woman—a foreigner who knew absolutely nothing about Americans—mess him up this way.
He parked the car in the driveway and trudged slowly across the lawn to front door. Sarah met him just inside, her eyes shining. “I hope you've got good news,” she said.
“Pretty good,” he said.
“Mine is very good. I'm pregnant.”
It was the current again. Carrying him in the right direction. His response came from somewhere outside his mind. “It's going to be a boy.”
“I'm sure of it too.”
They made the tenderest love of Cliff's life that night. Sex had never been tender for him. He never thought of women as fragile. He liked them big and muscular. Maybe it was because there was so much of Tama—and he saw it all in the Redondo Beach house. Sarah was fragile, especially that night. She was like a precious object, a vase or a statue that a harsh touch could smash.
He did not even want to do it at first. “I'm afraid I'll hurt the kid,” he said. “You won't. I want you. I want you more than ever.”
He rested her on top of him again. It was beautiful and slow and almost sad. He kept thinking of what Billy was probably doing with Madeleine, what Cassie Trainor might be doing for Dick Stone. Why couldn't he have both worlds? Why was Sarah inflicting this choice on him? For a moment wisps of the green fog drifted through his mind, he saw her with Billy. But he concentrated on loving Sarah, on the current that was carrying them both toward some sort of special happiness.
Afterward they talked about the Talus, the hopes it was igniting. The day after tomorrow Billy was going to fly it to Washington. Adrian Van Ness and the top people from the project team were going to join him there and display the plane to senators and congressmen. The Air Force was going to back them with all the influence they could muster.
They could not fail. The current was irresistible now. Cliff rubbed Sarah's stomach and said: “What'll we name him?”
“It's your choice if it's a boy.”
“Charles. But I'm going to call him Charlie.”
Princess Elizabeth, England's future queen, had just named her first son Charles. Tears streamed down Sarah's face. “Oh Cliff, I do love you. No matter what happens in the future, let's never forget these three months.”
“Don't worry about the future,” Cliff said. “It's going to get better and better.”
Sarah sighed. “You Americans are all such optimists.”
The next day, the chill in that comment made it difficult for Cliff to share the ebullience of the Buchanan team on the flight to Washington. Over the Rockies, he noticed Adrian was not joining the celebration. He sat alone, looking out the window of the Lockheed Super Constellation.
“What's the boss worried about?” Cliff said, sitting down beside him.
“The usual thing a boss worries about. Money,”
“Won't this contract take the pressure off?”
“It would—if we get it.”
“Is there any doubt? Our only competition is that ridiculous B-Thirty-six. The other day General Scott called it a B-Twenty-nine with elephantiasis.”
The boss managed a smile. “Maybe I'm worried about the government's overall policy. It doesn't seem to have one. We're drifting from event to event. While the Communists take over huge chunks of the world.”
“Like China.”
Adrian nodded. “The Democrats will never recover from that one unless they do something dramatic with the defense budget. Stay sober when we get to Washington. Talk to people your age—majors, lieutenant colonels, congressional aides. Sometimes they know more about what's coming than the people at the top.”
“Sure,” Cliff said, flattered that the Adrian was confiding so much to him.
They landed at National Airport and ensconced themselves in a pair of suites at the Shoreham. The next day at Muroc Billy climbed into the jet-engine version of the Talus and streaked across the nation in four hours and twenty-five minutes. He came within twelve minutes of breaking the transcontinental speed record, which had been set by a Lockheed P80A “Shooting Star”—a fighter plane.
Billy roared over Washington and landed at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. The afternoon papers carried pictures and front page stories. The next day, President Truman inspected the Talus and remarked, “This looks like one hell of an airplane. We ought to have some.”
Everyone at Buchanan could almost hear the rustle of money. The Air Force announced it was interested in buying four hundred copies. That would put the contract close to a billion dollars. At the Shoreham, Billy was the center of a nonstop party for senators and congressmen from the armed services committees, Air Force generals, and Pentagon officials.
Cliff remembered Adrian's orders to stay sober and listen. Standing with two Air Force lieutenant colonels, he heard one say: “this thing fits beautifully into NSC Sixty-eight.”
“What's that? A new way to sink the Navy?” Cliff asked.
The Navy and the Air Force had been battling ferociously over their share of the budget in the consolidated Department of Defense. The lieutenant colonel grinned and shook his head. “Top secret for the time being. We're still putting it together. A new policy statement.”

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