Air Force Eagles

by Walter J. Boyne

  Bandfield had gone down to the McNaughton hangar to make one more attempt to talk Ruddick out of flying. When he arrived, there was an argument in process, with Milo Ruddick screaming at the top of his voice, "What the hell do you mean you're not going to fly? You won the Ohio race, you can handle this, I know you can."

  "Dad, I'm scared. I've been advised not to fly this airplane by people I respect. And I've got a monster hangover. I'm not going to fly."

  Ruddick grabbed his son by his shirt and shook him. "You're making a fool out of me, son. You can win this going away."

  "Dad—I'm not flying."

  Bandfield stepped forward. "Congressman, that's a good decision on your son's part. But I can find you another pilot, if you'll let me."

  Speechless, Milo Ruddick whirled on him, glaring. "Go ahead, Colonel. We might as well try to salvage something out of this."

  Bandfield turned and ran, holding his injured arm to his side, leaving a morose group to trundle the airplane out to the starting line.

  As engines began to start down the line—the big growling bark of the Corsairs; the softer, melodious snarl of the Mustangs—Bandfield came trotting back, holding his bad arm, followed by a pilot in flight suit and helmet.

  Suspicious, Ruddick barked, "All right, Bandfield, who's the pilot?"

  The new pilot stuck out his hand. "I'm John Marshall, sir. You had me fired from McNaughton, but I'm willing to fly this plane for you.

  Milo Ruddick stared at him. "Goddamn it, Bandfield, what kind of a joke is this?"

  "No joke at all, sir. If my arm was right, I'd fly the airplane myself. Since I can't, I'd recommend John Marshall before anybody else."

  Furious, appalled that anyone could insult his father so openly, Bob Ruddick said, "Dad, they're trying to make fools out of us. I'll fly it. I'll be okay."

  By the time Marshall and Bandfield were back in the stands, the McNaughton pit crew was well into the starting process. Milo Ruddick stood on the Viper's left wing, grinning foolishly, hair blowing in the slipstream, hosing water through the Viper's wingtip radiator, sending repeated thumbs-up gestures to his son.

  Inside the cockpit, head pressed against the tiny canopy, wearing a modified football helmet and an oxygen mask, Bob Ruddick sat looking straight ahead over the vibrating blur of the instrument panel, talking to himself.

  "Just take it easy, fly high and wide. Don't have to win, just have to survive."

  Sucking oxygen to offset his throbbing hangover, Bob Ruddick forced himself to swing his head to the left; it felt like his brain had lurched to one side and then back, like a balloon filled with mercury. His father grinned, jabbed his thumb up again.

  The pilot looked back at the instrument panel, praying for a red warning light, a temperature going off the peg, anything that would give him an excuse to pull the throttle back and shut this quivering beast down. He started, sensing that his airplane was suddenly rolling backward, then, realizing it was an illusion, saw that the racers on either side of him were moving forward.

  Bandfield yelled, "They're off!" as ten airplanes moved forward, the Viper hanging on the starting line. A Corsair was already airborne, gear coming up.

  Roget yelled, "Ruddick's not started. Maybe he got smart and aborted."

  Huddled in the cramped cockpit of the Viper, Bob Ruddick shot an agonized look at his father pounding on the wing with one fist and pointing at the fast-disappearing racers with his other. Confused, frightened, yet conditioned to obey, young Ruddick shoved the Viper's throttle full forward, leaving his father's fury behind him in a crackling blast of the Allison's exhaust.

  With the other aircraft airborne and already heading for the second pylon, the roar of the Viper's engine broke across the stands, somehow louder alone than the combined noise of the ten other starters had been.

  Bandfield watched the jade-green racer leap forward at full power, knowing just how frightened Ruddick was, how alone he felt.

  Inside the airplane, Ruddick's leg pressed the rudder full right, as the Viper began its implacable torque-driven drift to the left, the immense gyroscopic forces generated by the engine power twisting the entire airframe in opposition to the propeller. Bob Ruddick was unaware of the complex mass of forces preying on the racer—he sat unseeing, unthinking, glazed eyes staring straight ahead, ignoring the instruments, ignoring the change in direction, the change in the horizon; his hand was locked on the throttle, his right leg rigid on the rudder pedal, seeing only his father's angry face and the fist jabbing at him.

  The Viper accelerated swiftly even as it began its arcing turn, gathering lift that brought its wing up, taking the weight from the wheels, changing it from a ground-bound juggernaut into a torque-driven missile, the sucking lift inexorably driving the right wing up, up, and over. Immobile, scarcely seeing, a passenger in the last seconds of his life, Bob Ruddick huddled in the cockpit as the Viper went inverted, pausing for just a moment before its nose dipped to plow into the ground, the roar of its engine ceasing in the massive explosion that brought the expectant crowd to its feet in collective horror.

  Bandfield burst from his seat toward the wreckage. Roget followed along behind at a fast walk, mumbling, "We should have stopped him somehow, driven a truck into the prop, something." As he watched Bandfield disappear ahead of him into the crowd already circling around the wreckage, the airborne racers reappeared, on the second lap. And Roget said to himself, "We should have driven a truck over his dad."

  The appalled onlookers—mechanics, firemen, ordinary members of the crowd—circulated as fire trucks futilely sprayed the blazing wreckage-encrusted hole. Near the center, two circles of fire that had been the wheels sent out sparkling streamers of molten magnesium. Bandfield, breathing hard, stood recalling how many times he'd witnessed the same hopeless destruction, the same swift change from gleaming airframe and beaming life into this sickening charred amalgam of fire, flesh, and metal.

  The racers passed overhead again, already on their third lap. Two Corsairs were leading. It was just registering that Odom's Beguine was not in the pack when a tremendous blow smashed into Bandy's temple, knocking him flat with a lightning blast. Pain in great pulsating currents blinded him, and he felt his stomach convulse. He was vomiting as he tried to get to his feet to run, sure that there had been a secondary explosion in the wreckage.

  As his vision cleared, he saw Milo Ruddick standing over him, a two-by-four board in his hand, screaming, "You dirty nigger-loving Jew, Bandfield, I'll kill you! You and your ignorant friend scared my son to death! It's your fault, you filthy bastard, your stupid idiotic talk killed him!"

  Behind Ruddick was Troy McNaughton, smiling down at Bandfield.

  Roget separated them and hurried Bandfield to one of the ambulances standing by the crash site. It took them almost an hour to get off the field through the surging, crash-maddened crowd. At the hospital, the X-rays found no fracture, and a young intern asked endless questions about the race as he used twenty-two stitches to sew up the cut on the side of Bandfield's head. In the cab on the way back to the hotel, Bandfield asked, "Ruddick must be crazy. What was he saying about loving Jews and niggers?"

  "I don't know, Bandy, he was out of his mind with grief. You can sue him for everything he's worth, you know that."

  "Christ, I don't want to sue him. Did you ever hear who won the race?"

  "Yeah, Cook Cleland in the Corsair. But the bad news is Odom—he lost control on the second lap and crashed into a house. Killed him and a woman and her little baby. I doubt if there'll be any more racing at Cleveland."

  *

  Little Rock, Arkansas/October 1, 1949

  The shades were always drawn, now. Milo Ruddick sat despondently at his desk, unshaven, shoelaces untied.

  A four-by-eight-foot blown-up photograph of Bob Ruddick standing in front of the Viper hung on the wall. It had been taken immediately after the Ohio Trophy race, and Bob was grinning as he held the huge cup. Ruddick was glad he had the photo now, regretting only that i
t was not the Thompson Trophy. But that was life.

  And so was revenge.

  He turned back to the file of papers on his desk. The report had been compiled by Troy McNaughton's chief of security, Dick Baker. It confirmed the material Ruddick had gathered from his military intelligence sources. His suspicions had been absolutely correct. Not only had Bandfield recommended the jungle bunny Marshall for the test pilot's job, he'd gotten him another job in Salinas. Bandfield's wife was no better; she was one of those pushy women always wanting to do a man's job. And she had brought this Communist woman, a Jewess no less, into the country with her brat.

  But these were only externals. The most damning thing in Bandfield's criminal past was his flying for the Reds during the Spanish Civil War. He'd shot down eleven of Franco's planes. And the Air Corps had actually let him back in to fly!

  "I wonder how much damage he's done over the years. He sabotaged the McNaughton supersonic program, hiring that nigger, that's for sure. Well, I'll get him. I'll get him."

  *

  Salinas, California/October 15, 1949

  Saundra Marshall did what she'd done every morning for the past six months—rolled down the striped awning, pushed the tables out to the front, brought the boxes of fruits and vegetables out, sprinkled them down with a fine spray of water, swept the floor—and then waited.

  The waiting had been horrible at first; sometimes not a single customer had come in all day. Her initial reaction was that it was because she was Negro; there weren't many colored people in the area, and the Marshalls were the only ones with a store. But bit by bit, business had improved so that she felt a little better. Today was Saturday, and usually the weekends were better, with tourist traffic stopping for soft drinks or directions.

  It had puzzled her for a long time that the majority of her customers were male Mexican laborers. Invariably, they would come in alone, poke deferentially around the store, buy one or two little items, gum or a candy bar—and then shyly buy some of the cosmetics she had prepared. Then a few Mexican women started coming in. They were far more direct, going directly to the counter, and pointing to the bottles they wanted.

  She had created a simple line of homemade cosmetics—face cream, hand cream, and a general purpose lotion, all based on her sweet old Aunt Mary's recipes. No one had called her Mary—she was "Aunt Love" to everybody, and Saundra had called her line "Love's Lotions."

  The ingredients were simple—regular cold cream, tinted with food coloring and perfumed with Evening in Paris, then mixed with aloe vera and glycerine. She'd designed the label herself and had them printed at the small shop on Olvera Street.

  It had taken her awhile to realize that it was the new label that had caused the jump in sales. She had designed it to read

  Love's

  Lotion

  but the "s" in Love's had been looped around the "L" in Lotion, so that it looked like

  Love'

  Potion.

  When she'd finally figured it out, she felt she had to change the label, but John wouldn't let her. "Honey, it's not like you were selling fake medicine that couldn't cure them. This is good stuff. And if some of your customers happen to think it's a love potion, it might just work for them. Besides, it's the only thing that's getting us any business. Raise the prices!"

  This morning Patty Bandfield and Lyra were coming over to test her products. The three of them, from such vastly different backgrounds, had wonderful times together. In the beginning, part of it was that Lyra and Saundra were mutually exotic to each other. Saundra had never met a foreigner before, and Lyra had never talked at length to a Negro. But more important, all three of them were strong, independent women, all wanting to get more out of life than just a living.

  Lyra and Patty came in laughing and spent the next twenty minutes experimenting with the cosmetics.

  Lyra, ever the pragmatist, said, "John was right. These are good products; I'll use them myself. You don't have to care what people do with them—if they think they work as love potions, more power to them. Maybe I'll take an extra bottle for that myself."

  Patty shot her an approving glance. "And John's right about pricing, too—you're way too low. You're not charging for all the time it takes to make them. I'll bet if you raise prices, you'll sell even more."

  Enthusiastically, Patty squeezed her arm. "I think you might have something here. Why don't you think about expanding? I could help you with the finances. I'll bet you'd find a big market in Los Angeles."

  The words were a reprieve. Business had picked up, but Saundra had already decided that unless things improved dramatically in the next sixty days, they were going to have to go somewhere else. She'd opened their little variety store with $4,000 in savings—blood money, John called it, from his flying for Israel. He had protested long and hard about a store, but finally, as always, had given in to her. But when she needed another $4,000 to keep going, she found that he had spent the rest of his savings on his little racer.

  She'd just put out the plates for lunch when John came in, obviously depressed.

  "Well, baby, they've had to let me go. I knew it was coming."

  "Don't worry, John, we'll be okay. You can help me with the business. Patty's going to help me with the finances."

  "No, we've taken enough from the Bandfields. Bandy got me the job as instructor; I don't want to take anything more."

  She whirled on him. "Don't be foolish. You worked hard instructing, taking charter flights. You earned your keep. Patty's talking about investing in me, not giving me anything. She could make a great deal of money.

  He put his arms around her. "Honey, I don't want to make you feel bad, but for her to make a great deal of money, you'd have to make a great deal of money. And I just don't see that happening."

  She shrugged him off. "You were willing to put up with a job as an instructor, taking peanuts for pay, and you resent me having any success."

  "What success? You're selling a few bottles of lotion. We'd starve to death."

  "Not if we move to Los Angeles, open a factory."

  "We don't have any experience, honey. Be realistic."

  "You didn't have any experience building racers, either, and you were quick enough to sink our money in it."

  Stung, John retaliated, "Our money? Our money? I earned that fighting in Israel. You blew half of it on this store; I blew half of it on a racer. Fair enough."

  "We should have listened to your father, and stayed in Cleveland."

  "Sure, I could have stayed in Cleveland, sweeping floors. That's insulting. Hell, I've been an officer and a test pilot."

  "Well, maybe you'd be better off back in the Air Force."

  "You mean it? Could you stand it?"

  She turned away. "No. I mean without me. I'm holding you back. Somehow we've drifted apart since Tuskegee. You expect too much out of life, you demand too much of yourself. I'd be content married to you if you were just a factory hand—as long as you came home every night."

  He threw his arms around her, pressing his cheek against hers. "Don't talk like that, Saundra, don't ever talk about us splitting up. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't have made it through pilot training if I hadn't had you to think about. If you left me, I wouldn't be worth anything." He tightened his embrace.

  "I'm serious, John. I love you, and I know you love me. You just don't love me as much as you love flying."

  "Not so, not so at all. It's different, that's all. A man has to work at what he likes."

  "No, he doesn't. Most men don't. If you love your wife, and love your family, you work at whatever you can get. But I'm not trying to argue with you—you go ahead, try the Air Force again."

  "Not if you're serious about splitting up."

  "We won't split up. I'll go to Los Angeles and try to work my little business into something. We'll see what happens. If the Air Force takes you back, maybe they'll send you someplace where we can be together, where there won't be any trouble."

  Marshall snuggled his face
into her neck.

  "Honey, I don't know if the Air Force is taking anybody back in now—but I'm going to write and find out. Maybe they'll send me someplace in California. There's lots of bases here. You've been reading how President Truman is pushing integration in the military—maybe it will be better this time."

  She closed hex eyes and whispered, "Maybe." But she knew it would not be.

  *

  Nashville, Tennessee/December 14, 1949

  In the growing recession, the first thing to dry up were defense appropriations, and the manufacturers were reeling under the Secretary of Defense's ruthless cuts. Even Milo Ruddick hadn't been able to save McNaughton's missile development contracts, and they had had to close the San Diego plant.

  But behind a huge theater curtain inside the cavernous tomb of McNaughton Aircraft's main assembly bay, a sleek new shape had emerged, a half-scale version of what was supposed to be the Manta jet bomber. There was a cockpit for flight tests, but so far only Troy McNaughton and a handful of McNaughton engineers knew that the Manta was intended to be a winged missile, unmanned, and capable of carrying a large atom bomb.

  There was a quiet murmur at the arrival of Dr. Vannevar Bush and his six-man delegation from the Joint Research and Development Board, the group that was trying to manage the unruly rivalry developing among the services for the control of missile programs. The Army asserted that missiles were simply artillery; the Air Force had begun alluding to missiles as "unpiloted aircraft"; and the Navy said it needed both artillery and aircraft, and thus missiles, of its own.