The Warbirds

by Richard Herman

  20 August: 1800 hours, Greenwich Mean Time 1400 hours, Washington, D.C.

  Stacks of computer printouts and reports were arranged in Waters’ office against the walls. But the two maps that Bill and Sara had tacked up were the most important documents in the office. Bill had created his scenario on a map of the Persian Gulf, sketching in the order of battle of force threatening Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

  Sara had tried to re-create the geography of Bill’s scenario on her map of Europe. “We substitute the North Sea for the Persian Gulf, East Anglia in England for Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and the continent for Iran. The distances are almost identical and both have overwater approaches.”

  “The weather’s different,” Bill said. “The Gulf has almost unlimited ceilings and good visibility. The flying weather in Europe is cruddy. The continent has less than fifteen-hundred-foot ceilings and five-mile forward visibility about thirty percent of the time.”

  “True,” Waters said, “but if a fighter puke can’t handle the weather he’s not going to do well when surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery are hosing him down. The distances are much more critical. With a base in East Anglia we can run raids against NATO’s Tactical Leadership Program at Jever Air Base in Germany and they can retaliate against us. The Luftwaffe should love it—World War Two all over again.”

  Waters stretched out in a dilapidated overstuffed chair he had rescued from a back room and plotted how he would use the Tactical Leadership Program, the TLP, in a training program. The possibilities excited him as he developed one training scenario after another. TLP was NATO’s counterpart to the United States Red Flag and strongly supported by the German Luftwaffe and the RAF. U.S. pilots who had been through both programs gave TLP a slight edge over Red Flag…Waters broke off his brainstorming and returned to the immediate reality of finding a new home for the 45th.

  “The computer boffins,” he said, affecting his best, or worst, British accent, “assure me these stacks of printouts contain data on every base available to us in NATO. Supposedly everything is in here, including which toilets leak and the age of the grass. Let’s find the base we want.”

  Six hours later Carroll drew a heavy red circle on the map around a base seventy miles northeast of London in East Anglia—RAF Stonewood. “That’s it,” he announced. “I don’t think we’ll find anything better.”

  Sara stood up in the middle of the clutter littering the floor and announced she was hungry. “It’s eight o’clock on a Friday night. If either of you are interested, it’s spaghetti at my place.” Waters and Carroll looked at each other, tore the maps down from the wall, locked them and the other classified documents in a safe and were right out the door after her.

  Waters had asked Sara to a Van Cliburn concert over dinner when a lull drew their attention to Sara’s background music—a classical piano piece.

  “I’m just a farm boy from a place near Lyndon, Kansas,” he had said, “but I’m a music nut—especially classical. Go figure it, but there it is.”

  A man of parts, no question, Sara had thought. A complex man she wanted to know more about. Much, much more. From that day at Alexandria South when he had asked her what Blevins would do, the growing attraction she felt for this older man had tugged at her. And now she sensed the attraction was mutual…

  She carefully dressed for the evening, choosing a sleeveless black dress her mother had made for her. By most standards it would be considered modest, even simple, with a modest neckline that formed a vee in the back just low enough to suggest she was not wearing a bra. A woven belt of the same material snared her small waist, and the full skirt ended below her knees. The dress was discreetly but emphatically sexy. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun and her jewelry was small gold earrings and a matching necklace.

  She answered the knock at the door.

  “Well, what do I call you? Colonel Waters seems a bit formal.”

  My God, he thought, he barely recognized her. In mufti she was all woman…“Muddy, I guess, like everyone else. I’ve been cursed with that name for so long that it seems natural now. Hell of a thing to call a grown man. I can’t even remember when I picked the name up, sort of goes with Waters, I guess.”

  “Okay, then, how about Anthony?”

  “Whatever you say,” he said, and meant it.

  Sara loved the concert. Cliburn’s virtuosity created its own magic with the audience and flowed over her. Afterward she suggested, brazenly, she supposed, but to hell with it, that they go back to her apartment for coffee.

  While she made coffee Waters rummaged through her tape collection, selecting an artist he had never heard of. “Who’s Liona Boyd?”

  “A classical guitarist. Put it on, I think you’ll like her,” Sara said, bringing the coffee. She looked around the room…the lights were not too dim or distractingly bright. The neighbors were quiet and they did have the right music. She settled onto the couch, close but not touching him, and curled her legs up under her full skirt. “What happened to the Shaws after they left Alexandria South?” she asked, rather abruptly steering the conversation in the way she wanted, into his past.

  “What? Oh…he’s assigned to Headquarters TAC at Langley in charge of Operational Requirements. Beth likes Norfolk and the Virginia countryside. They may retire there.”

  “Really? I was born and raised in Virginia,” she said, stirring her coffee, “near Fredericksburg. I enjoyed that evening with the Shaws. She’s so vivacious. I take it you’ve known them a long time…”

  Waters felt himself unwinding, wanting even to confide in her, and told her how they had met in 1963 at pilot training at Williams Air Force Base outside of Phoenix. They were both married and had lived in the same apartment complex. He told her how poor second lieutenants were. “Base pay was two hundred and twenty-two dollars a month. Payday was a very big deal.”

  Sara sensed something was bothering him. “I never realized you were married…You and the Shaws never mentioned it.”

  Waters looked slightly pained and she instantly regretted bringing it up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to pry.” She leaned forward to pour more coffee, brushing his arm.

  “You’re not prying,” he said. “It happened a long time ago…Life was much simpler, I’d known Sarah since I was a kid. Small farm towns are like that.”

  Sara, startled by the name, was staring at him.

  He knew exactly what she was thinking…wanted to make her understand that he had never looked for a replacement for his first wife. “We were a couple in our senior year in high school and it seemed so natural, friends in common and a shared and surprising interest in music. We both went on to the University of Kansas. Along with baseball and playing in the orchestra, my life was complete with Sarah. Or so I felt. We were married in our senior year. I started out majoring in math but ended up in aeronautical engineering, which was why I joined the Air Force, to be around airplanes. I wanted to be a test pilot then. Sarah accepted it and we decided to start a family…”

  Waters was staring into his coffee cup. Slowly he recounted the hours in the hospital. “That was the hardest time of my life. I couldn’t have made it alone. Beth made it a lot easier. Something like that leaves a scar, I guess. Anyway, it was years before I could have what they call a close relationship with another woman. And by then I guess I’d turned into a crusty bachelor, too set in my ways and caught up by the Air Force.”

  Listening to him, Sara felt at once moved and excited. Tears actually started to form. Was this careful discriminating Sara? Falling in love with the man beside her that she had spent only a few hours alone with. It seemed so…Impulsively she put a hand to his cheek. “Please, I need to look at you when I say this.” She turned his face to her. “I want you to stay with me.”

  “Why? Pity?” He turned away from her and she could feel the barriers of memories start to build again.

  “How about need, feeling…maybe even love?” Her hand was still touchi
ng his cheek. “Anthony J. Waters, ever since you walked off that airplane at Andrews shoving your cruddy flight cap over your thick skull I felt something about you. For you. Don’t make this crazy lady explain. I’m saying and doing things I’ve never done before—”

  “And Jack?”

  “I don’t understand what he has…Oh, yes, well…” She searched for the right words, knowing how critical they were. “Please try to understand what I’m saying. Jack…I think I saw a young, a very young you in him. But I don’t want you that way, I want you the way you are now.”

  Waters was staring straight ahead, not looking at her, not daring to.

  She tried one last time to break through his reserve. “Jack only invited me to the marketplace in Alexandria. We had dinner. Period.”

  “Blevins,” he muttered. “I should have known. That lying sack of—” But her lips on his cut him off, and he was grateful to find her pulling him close, and down, obliterating all thoughts except of his delight in this lovely woman actually seeming to want an old party named Muddy Waters.

  Morning. Still in bed, Sara was saying how much she loved the concert, especially the final encore. “I know they planned it, but when that little old lady walked down to the stage and he bent over the edge while she whispered to him…well, I could have cried when he played the Polonaise.”

  “Show biz. Sentimental but it worked. Besides, it was only one of his Polonaises, number six in A-flat. Cliburn really did it the way I bet Chopin meant for it to be played.”

  “Well, aren’t you the big-deal expert…Okay, go ahead, pontificate. What did he do so special?” she asked, nuzzling his chest.

  Waters had to force himself not to be hopelessly diverted. “It’s the four-note bit in the middle. Sort of heroic, and I think that’s what Chopin had in mind—ouch, damn it. Don’t bite…” he gasped as her head worked lower.

  “I’ll bite when you sound like the back of a record jacket,” she whispered. “Now, stop twitching, you’re as bad as that old man who sat next to me.”

  “That old man was Senator Leeds.”

  Sara raised her head and wiggled back up his body. “Him? A senator? He’s a dirty old man.”

  “Right. So watch out for him. He has a reputation for twitching.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Never mind…any man would want you. Especially the way you looked last night.”

  “How about this man? What about now?”

  She cradled back into his arms. “Do you know how worried I was that I might have lost you tonight? I wanted you so bad I couldn’t wait. Shameless, right?”

  “You bet,” he said. “Now, please shut up and let’s get serious.”

  The yellow slip of paper telling Waters to call Cunningham’s aide was on his desk when he arrived at his office at 5:30 in the morning. The colonel was not surprised when Stevens answered on the first ring; the general had a reputation for coming to work at ungodly hours. Stevens was very polite, asking Waters to “drop by” Cunningham’s office at his convenience for a word with the general.

  Six minutes later Waters was standing at attention in Sundown’s office. Cunningham leaned over his desk. “Sit down, Waters. It makes me nervous to look up to someone tall as you.” He puffed on his cigar, sending a thick smoke screen into the room. The cigar was the key to Cunningham’s mood. When he rolled it about in his mouth unlit he was worrying and chasing a problem to a solution. If he lit the cigar and puffed lazily away and savored the aroma he was, for him, relaxed. Waters had never seen him puff so hard and braced himself for an outburst of the famous Cunningham temper.

  “The Egyptians kicked the 45th out of Alexandria South yesterday.” Cunningham bit off each word as Waters settled into a chair. “Like we suspected, the Libyans made a deal with the Egyptians. They kicked out their Russians, Egypt gives it to us. The Egyptian ambassador told State late yesterday that his government had no choice but to close Alexandria South because of the political situation. All operational flying has been stopped and I’ve got a wing tossed into the wilderness.” A fog of smoke swirled around the general’s head. He was, Waters suspected, blaming himself for losing control of the situation, for not being able to handle the Egyptians, even when he all but appeased the bastards. “I hope you’ve found a base for the wing in Britain because none of our other so-called friends over there are interested.”

  “Yes, sir. RAF Stonewood in East Anglia.”

  “Good. I’ll talk to our air attaché in London and have the British send a negotiator to work out arrangements for a base activation. Have one of your people show him around and work out a technical agreement.

  “There’s something else”—he laid the cigar in an ashtray and leaned across his desk, clasping his hands—“the brigadier general’s list will be released in the next few weeks and I wanted to tell you why you aren’t on it.”

  The news did not surprise Waters. Still, he appreciated Cunningham telling him to his face.

  “Muddy, this is crazy, but you’re a bachelor and no single man makes general or command of a wing. I think the Secretary’s wife made the policy. Find yourself an Air Force wife and you’ll get promoted. It sucks, but that’s the way it is.”

  Muddy Waters ambled back to his own office, distracted and intrigued, and less upset than the general could have imagined or understood.

  Protocol had briefed Carroll on the proper care and handling of the British officer, Group Captain Sir David Childs. He first met Sir David on Monday afternoon when he arrived at Dulles and escorted him to one of the VIP suites at Boiling Air Force Base on the edge of Washington.

  Sir David was average looking, and at first his funny high-pitched voice struck Carroll as ridiculous. However, the lieutenant soon learned there was nothing peculiar or amusing about what he said. The group captain displayed a first-rate intellect. Carroll had met Royal Air Force officers while serving as an intelligence officer, but this one was different. During the next week Carroll became Childs’ shadow. He noticed that the vice air marshal in charge of the Permanent British Liaison Office located in the Pentagon deferred to Sir David’s abbreviated suggestions about the base activation.

  Finally Carroll was able to tell him that a meeting with General Cunningham was set for three o’clock on a Wednesday, right after the How-Goes-It briefing on Stonewood’s activation to initial the technical agreement.

  “Ah, yes. I see.” It was the longest conversation that Carroll had had with Childs.

  Cunningham twirled a pen, thinking about the document in front of him that created a new base. Once signed by the U.S. ambassador to England and the British Minister of Defense, RAF Stonewood would become a formal reality. In name it would remain an RAF base complete with a British base commander. But inside the main gate it would mostly be an American base.

  “Waters, this is good,” Cunningham said, tapping the Technical Agreement for the Operational Use of RAF Stonewood with his pen. “How did you negotiate it so quickly?”

  “It was easy with Group Captain Childs here. We built on the other agreements worked out for Bentwaters, Lakenheath and Upper Heyford. Sir David made it clear that Stonewood can never be anything but an intermediate base for a forward deployment into the Middle East. That simplified things.” Waters realized he was getting to feel at ease with the general as he got the hang of how the general worked.

  “Tell me about Childs.”

  “Don’t let his squeaky voice mislead you, sir. He’s competent as hell. Oh, I’d like his escort officer, Lieutenant Carroll, to come along. He’s been involved in this from the get-go. He’s my expert. He also keeps his mouth shut and can think.”

  The general nodded. Waters’ style of leadership, he realized, was different than his, but the results were in front of him—a well-executed Technical Agreement.

  Group Captain Childs’ entrance into Cunningham’s office combined convention and showmanship. He had deliberately selected an old but well-tailored uniform that he wore with dignity an
d authority. It represented the traditions and lineage of the Royal Air Force. His hat was tucked under his left elbow as he walked quickly up to Cunningham’s desk and snapped a British palm-forward, open-handed salute.

  The general was not fooled. He knew what Sir David was up to, had half been expecting it. He returned the salute, stood up and shook hands with Childs. Cunningham knew the force disposition of the RAF to the last man. He also appreciated how the tightly knit organization could fight and how little short of decimation could take an RAF squadron out of action. Training, tight organization and a tradition of professionalism did much to offset its small size. Childs had managed to remind the general of all that by simply wearing the right uniform, and wearing it the right way.

  Both men played their roles, understanding that they were committing their governments to a mutual endeavor that could take them both into war in the Middle East. Childs had a sense of history that few U.S. officers or politicians could equal or appreciate. The lessons of two world wars were not lost on him, and he had negotiated his government into a position based entirely on implied agreements. Her Majesty’s government was under no obligation other than allowing the Americans the use of Stonewood. The British still had the flexibility to apply pressure on the Americans, increase their own involvement or withdraw.

  During the casual conversations and low-keyed meetings Childs had in the Ministry of Defense before coming to Washington he had been shown a scenario remarkably similar to Carroll’s. The British politicians appreciated the financial and political implications of that scenario and were aligning their slender resources to maintain a semblance of stability in the Persian Gulf. But they needed help from the United States. They also had no illusions about the U.S. developing a decisive foreign policy for that part of the world that would be certain to last through successive political administrations. Among other things, they understood the trade-offs each U.S. President had to make between Israel and Saudi Arabia.