Authors: Thomas Fleming

Conquerors of the Sky (43 page)

BOOK: Conquerors of the Sky

5.8Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

They flew back to California that night. On the plane, Cliff told Adrian about NSC-68. “Interesting,” Adrian said. “NSC stands for the National Security
Council. It's one of Truman's better ideas. They're supposed to advise the president on defense policyâinstead of letting a lot of kitchen cabinet pals make up his mind for him, Roosevelt-style.”

In California, the ebullience continued to build. Buzz McCall drew up plans for rehiring 20,000 workers. Frank Buchanan put the design department to work on converting the Talus to an airliner. Jet engines still guzzled too much fuel to make a commercial plane profitable. They would have to go back to props, which meant a lot of expensive changes. Jim Redwood talked to Cliff about joining him in an expanded sales department as second in command.

The Air Force continued to test the Talus at Muroc. Other pilots found it a difficult plane to handle. Perhaps they lacked Billy McCall's skillsâor his determination to make the plane perform for Frank's sake. There was a third crash, killing another three-man crew. But three crashes were not considered excessive for a radically new plane. Frank was sure another redesign of the ailerons would solve the problem.

One hot day in June of 1950 Cliff was summoned to Adrian Van Ness's office. He charged up the stairs wondering if the good news from Washington had finally arrived. The CEO was standing at the window, looking down on Buchanan Field, where nineteen completed copies of the Talus now sat on the flight line. “I've got a little present for you,” he said.

He handed Cliff a check for a thousand dollars. “A bonus for staying sober in Washington and hearing about NSC Sixty-eight. It's the most important state paper since the Monroe Doctrine. It proposes a policy to deal with the Communist threat. It's what they call a forward strategyâa network of bases around the world that'll support our allies and enable us to meet a Soviet challenge wherever and whenever it appears. Do you see why that could be very important to Buchanan Aircraft?”

Cliff nodded. “Air power. That's where we're ahead of the Russians. Most of those forward bases will be for planes. We'll need fighters to defend them, transports to supply them.”

“Exactly,” Van Ness said. “After I finished reading NSC Sixty-eight, I slept for eight hours. It's the first time I've done that since the war ended.”

Adrian moved some papers around his desk for a few moments. “But it doesn't mean our worries are over.”

He moved a few more papers. “How's the Talus doing? Buzz tells me you've still got those stability problems.”

“Frank thinks he's got them licked.”

“I want the reports on it. All of them. Don't say anything about this to Buchanan.”

There was a hostile sound to the way he used Frank's last name. “Why not?” Cliff asked.

“Because you just got a direct order from me not to,” Adrian said.

“What's going on?”

“A lot of things I can't explain to you.”

“Mr. Van NessâAdrianâ” Cliff was never sure which name to use. “I think
I'm entitled to an explanation. I've put a year and a half of my life into this plane.”

“If we don't get this bomber off our backs, we'll have to lay off three or four thousand peopleâand you'll be one of them.”

“I thought it was worth a billion dollars if the Air Force buys it!” Cliff gasped, trying to comprehend what Adrian was saying.

“The powers that be in Washington, in particular the Secretary of the Air Force, don't want to buy it. They prefer Convair's B-Thirty-six. Do you know who Floyd Odlum is?”

“He's head of Convair.”

“The Secretary of the Air Force vacations regularly at his house in Palm Springs. Consolidated's going to build the B-Thirty-six in Texas. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Sam Rayburn, is from Texas. One of the slickest, crookedest operators in the U.S. Senate, Lyndon Johnson, is from Texas. They want that billion dollars to go to Texas, not to California.”

“Why the hell should we let them do that, if their plane isn't as good as ours?”

Adrian Van Ness smiled briefly. The flash of bitter humor exposed Cliff to a world of power and intrigue that he barely knew existed. “I've been told by the Secretary of the Air Force, personally, if we encourage our friends among the generals and pilots to fight for our planeâand they could fight very effectivelyâwe' ll never get another contract from the Air Force or the Navy or the Marines. We'll be back to trying to sell planes to airlines that don't need them.”

“So you're going to give the Secretary the stability reports and he can use them to beat the Air Force generals' brains in when they complain?”

This time Adrian Van Ness's smile was almost pleasant. “I begin to think I haven't misjudged you after all, Cliff.”

“Yes you have. I don't buy it. If Frank knew about this, he could fight back. He could give them data that proves we've solved most of the problems. Or will in a couple of months.”

“That won't do him or you or me any good. It will just make the blood flow on both sides. Consolidated has the votesâin the Pentagon and in Congress. What is there about growing up in California that makes people so naive?”

Cliff felt a flush of anxiety and humiliation. Adrian was talking to him as if he were a child. Cliff heard Buzz sneer
momma's boy
. “I'm trying to educate you, Cliff. You could go a long way in this company,” Adrian said. “We need someone with a good personality and no moral principles worth mentioning.”

Cliff tried to choke down that compliment. It was so oblique, it was not easy to get down his throat. He gulped and gulped, trying to make excuses for Adrian Van Ness. Maybe if you were born rich it was hard to treat people as equals. Maybe it had something to do with graduating from Harvard.

“It's for the good of the company,” Adrian said. “It's even for Frank's good. He's got years and years of planes to design for us.”

“But he loves this plane,” Cliff said. “It's the most original thing he's ever created.”

“Frank gives every plane that ultimate rating. He tends to think in extremes. You have to learn to use people like him. And people like Buzz, for that matter.”

With an inrush of regret Cliff realized Adrian Van Ness had him figured exactly right. He would do this rotten thing. He would help Adrian sabotage the plane Frank Buchanan had worked on day and night for eighteen months. He would betray a man who had been his second father and friend.

Why? Was something missing inside him? Was this another moment of truth like the one over Schweinfurt? Cliff twisted away from answering that question. Courage had nothing to do with it. Adrian was right. It was for the good of the company. He was bending before the power of the Pentagon and Congress and making Cliff bend before his power. That was the way power worked.

For a moment Cliff thought of Sarah and the current of love that seemed to be carrying him toward some special happiness. What did that mean now? “Get moving,” Adrian said. “I need those stability reports before the end of the day.”

Cliff nodded obediently. He was being sucked into a vortex that swirled invisibly around Adrian Van Ness the way knots of force swarmed around a wing and fuselage in flight. He had watched them testing models of the Talus in the wind tunnel, charting these vicious unpredictable unknowns. He had learned a lot about building airplanes in the last eighteen months. Now he was learning how they were destroyed.

LAYING ON OF HANDS

Dick Stone sat before his computer putting together a cost estimate for redesigning the Talus as an airliner. Frank Buchanan burst into his office with a painting of the plane soaring over the Rockies. “We need a new name for it,” he said. “Something dignifiedâbut with commercial appeal.”

“How about the Aurora,” Dick said. “Didn't Moon Davis say it took him back to the dawn of flight?”

“Wonderful!” Frank said, whacking him on the back.

Frank wandered around the Black Hole, showing the painting to everyone. He returned to tell Dick the name had won unanimous approval. “Now all we've got to do is sell it to Adrian Van Ness. He thinks naming planes is his prerogative.”

About a half hour later, Cliff Morris dropped into Dick's office. “How's it going?” he said.

“Great,” Dick said. “I'll have an estimate for the airliner version ready by the end of the day.”

Cliff closed the door. “That may be premature. We're having some problems
with the bomber. It takes more than a good design to sell a plane to the government. We need some help from you.”

“Who's
we
?”

“Adrian Van Ness and your old buddy.”

That was supposed to impress Dick and to some extent it did. “We want you to revise your cost estimates on the Talus,” Cliff said.

“Scale them down to the minimum?”

“No. Raise them to the maximum.”

“What the hell's the point of that?”

“Look. Trust me. I can't explain everything right now. A maximum evaluation would be very helpful with the problem we're having.”

“How about a minimum explanation, at least?”

“It'sâit's got something to do with keeping Congress happy. Adrian wants a high and a low so no one will scream if we come out on the high side. Don't mention it to Frank. He won't understand the politics. It'll only upset him.”

Dick put together an upscale cost estimate that brought the Talus close to two million dollars a copy. It was not hard to do, since Frank was still grappling with some unknown unknowns in the plane's controls. At lunch the next day, Adrian Van Ness smiled arcanely at him and squeezed his arm. “I appreciate that estimate,” he said. “It's nice to have another realist at work around here.”

Dick did not get the point but he nodded and smiled back, not inclined to dispute a compliment from this WASP, which for him at this point meant White Anglo-Saxon Paragon.

At home, he continued to enjoy Cassie Trainor. She was still working at the Honeycomb Club, playing a defiant game with him, daring him to love her in spite of her refusal to take his advice. He played the game right back, dating other women whenever he felt like it. He was not quite ready to love Cassie but he liked her more and more. She entertained him with impersonations of horny airline passengers and panting Buchanan executives. Cassie had developed a contempt for the male sex that was invigorating, as long as it did not get personal.

On weekends, they did not see as much of each other because Dick spent Saturday and Sunday in the air with Billy McCall in his dark green Lustra I. Billy had been surly at first. He made it clear that he was teaching Dick to fly strictly as a favor to Frank Buchanan. Like most pilots, he had a low opinion of navigators, except when he needed one. Frank had apparently told him it was important to keep the computer guru happy so he would send Adrian Van Ness only soothing reports.

Billy loved flying too much to remain surly in the air. From the start he taught Dick the way Frank Buchanan had taught him. Frank called it the laying on of hands. For the first several hours Dick simply kept his hands on the yoke and imitated everything Billy did, while he explained it. By now Dick had mastered taking off and landing and other elementary maneuvers, such as the turn and the climb and the dive. Today they were going to explore something more ambitious: spins.

Ten miles at sea, Billy began his lecture. “An airplane is a three-axis all-attitude vehicle,” he said. “It can be flown in any attitude accidentally or on purpose. I want you to be able to fly this baby upside down, in an inverted spin if necessary. I want you to be able to handle every kind of spin in the vocabulary.”

He proceeded to put the plane into an oscillatory spin, a translational spin and a flat spin, which Dick later learned was usually fatal in a single-engine plane. Each time they pulled out with Dick's sweaty hands on the yoke and numb feet on the elevators while gravity threatened to pound his chest cavity to jelly.

Returning to the Buchanan airport, Dick made a classy landing, lining up the plane in the middle of the runway in spite of a tricky crosswind. Billy pushed back his fifty missions cap and socked him on the shoulder. “You're ready to solo,” he said. “Only thing left to discuss is philosophy.”

“What do you mean?”

“What you believe is up there in the sky. You think there's a Big Air Traffic Controller who's gonna take care of you when you get your ass in a tight spot?”

Dick shook his head.

“You don't think there's anything up there?”

Dick nodded.

“You're wrong,” Billy said, staring at the northeast runway, where a blue Cessna was taking off. “There's two ladies up there. The Lady of Luck and the Lady of Death. They go for some guys, no one knows why. Sometimes guys go for them. No one can figure that one out either. Except they're both beautiful.”

The Cessna's right wing dropped alarmingly. The pilot was obviously a student. Billy paused while the instructor jerked the plane level and climbed for survival. “Sometimes you can feel the Lady of Death's hands resting on top of yours on the throttles. The Lady of Luck just watches and smiles. Pretty soon you figure out she doesn't give a damn. Only thing to do then is laugh in both their faces.”

Billy smiled bleakly and socked him on the shoulder again. “Now you're ready to go. Take her down to Laguna and back,” he said. “Keep an eye out for other planes. They'll be a lot of them around today.”

The Lustra was a very forgiving plane. It lifted off the runway as if it were part balloon and in ten minutes Dick was at five thousand feet, about five miles off Long Beach. He looked around him and felt a loosening in the center of his chest.

Freedom! He could go north or south, climb into that azure sky or dive toward that dark blue sea. He could loop or roll if he had the nerve. The sky filled his eyes. He owned it. He owned that burning sun and that iridescent blue dome, he owned the ocean and the coast line with its thousands of little houses and tiny boats in narrow harbors. He even owned that big-bellied Southwest Air Lines DC 3 plodding toward him en route from San Diego to San Francisco or Seattle.

Dick banked and dove and climbed. He did not try any loops or snap rolls or immelmans. He was an unstable mixture of courage and caution. Having seen a few planes crash, he knew how dangerous flying was. The stunts could wait for a little more confidence.

Closer to shore, he swooped low enough to watch the surfers riding the big waves. He wondered if he might see Cassie. She often surfed at Laguna. Sure enough, there she was. He recognized the streaming auburn hair, the long lithe body swaying on the board as it slithered and bounced down the almost vertical incline while the white mountain of water crested just behind her.

That did it. Dick lowered the nose, picked up speed and hauled on the yoke to climb into the blank blue sky and go over the vertical into his first loop.

Cassie recognized the plane. She paddled out on her board and stood up to wave. Dick did three snap rolls and came out of the third one with the nose much too high. He was within a whisker of stalling into a probably fatal spin at five hundred feet.

Sweating, he roared up to a thousand feet for another loop and a few chandelles. He was on his way to becoming the hot pilot of his repressed dreams. Screw those punctilious medical bureaucrats who had turned him into a navigator because he had astigmatism in one eye! Dick Stone was flying in California.

Back at the airport, Dick's landing was not quite so classy. The crosswind was blowing harder and he almost hit the runway with his left wing. He pancaked to safety. Billy frowned but the Lustra was undamaged. He signed Dick's log book and they adjourned to a nearby bar to celebrate.

Billy drank hard as usual. He was in a lousy mood. “You know Sarah, Cliff's wife?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“What do you think of her?”

“Nice woman. Smart.”

“How's she put up with him? I meanâdo you think she really loves him?”

“I don't know,” Dick said, his loyalty to Cliff tying his tongue. “Women are funny about that sort of thing. You have some reason to doubt it?”

Billy shook his head. It was hard to tell whether he was saying yes and it did not matter, or no and he did not care. Dick wondered if there was a third possibility.

He drove home in a boozy glow, hoping Cassie would be there to help him celebrate his first solo. Not only was she there, she had a bottle of champagne in a bucket and frosted glasses in the freezer.

“How did you recognize the plane?”

“I've flown in it,” she said.

“Oh.”

Cassie smiled mockingly. “Jealous, Mr. Stone? I can't believe it.”

“Curious.”

“It didn't work out. I didn't want to fly as high as Billy likes to go.”

Dick decided it was none of his business. “You'd rather hang around with a
nice, unimaginative front-office man? Dull, normal sex once a week?”

“That's right,” Cassie said. “I hate excitement.”

He started undressing her. She was only wearing shorts and a pullover shirt. In ten seconds she was naked. Dick ran his hands down the firm breasts, the supple belly, into the warm luxurious pussy. “You're a bitch,” he said. “Why the hell do I like that sort of woman?”

They spent most of Sunday in bed. Dick drove to work in a state of semi-exaltation. Was he falling in love with Cassie? She was unquestionably American. You could not get more American than Noglichucky Hollow, Sevier County, Tennessee.

He put Cassie out of his head and looked forward to telling Frank Buchanan about soloing. He was pretty sure Frank would tell Buzz McCall at lunch. He wanted to see the surly surprise on the SOB's swarthy face when he found out the navigator had turned pilot.

Dick never got a chance to say a word about soloing. When he walked into the design department, the place looked like the mental ward at the county hospital. People were tearing up blueprints and cursing and pounding their desks and glaring out the windows as if they might jump, even though they were on the first floor. “What's wrong?” he asked.

“They've canceled the Talus,” Sam Hardy said. “The fucking Secretary of the Air Force awarded the contract to Convair's B-Thirty-six. It's the goddamndest decision I've ever heard. Even the Russians can build a better plane than that lumbering behemoth.”

“Where's Frank?” Dick said.

“Upstairs arguing with Adrian Van Ness. Trying to keep something alive.”

Dick wondered if his cost estimate had anything to do with the disaster. Had he exaggerated too much? Where was Cliff Morris?

Frank appeared in the doorway to the corridor with tears in his eyes. “It's all over,” he said. “Not only have they canceled our contract. They've ordered us to destroy all nineteen of the prototypes we've built. Today. They want them chopped up by sundown. They want all the tools, jigs, designs destroyed. They want to wipe the Talus off the face of the earth. Adrian's surrendering to the slimy bastards. For the good of the company.”

“Why?” Dick said, more and more appalled at what he may have helped to do. “What's their reason?”

“Stability problems. Somehow they've gotten their hands on our internal reports. Did you ever give them to anyone, Dick?”

“Never.”

“No matter. It's easy enough to rifle files at three A.M. Adrian may have done it himself. He's perfectly capable of it.”

Frank turned to his demoralized staff. “I'm quitting. I don't intend to spend the rest of my life designing planes for lying politicians to destroy. I advise you gentleman to imitate my example as soon as you can afford it.”

“Wait a second, Frank,” Dick said. “We're not going to let you do this. There's a hundred other planes waiting for you to design.”

Emotion drained from Frank's face. “That's what Adrian just said.”

“Dick's right, Frank,” Cliff Morris said. He threaded his way through the empty desks. “Adrian's right too, even if he is an SOB.”

Frank found it hard to believe Cliff was defending Adrian. “Cliff, you're hoping Sarah will have a son, aren't you?”

BOOK: Conquerors of the Sky

5.8Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

ads