Josten slapped the table with his hand. "You're going to have to learn to do what I ask immediately, without question."
"Don't give me that shit. You think I'm one of these dumb Klan guys, walking around in stupid sheets or dressing like they're state troopers, playing soldiers in the freezing rain? What a bunch of jerks."
"Ruddick didn't tell me you were an expert on uniforms, too. What would you suggest for the Klan?"
Baker settled back, always happiest when giving advice. "The old guys, let them keep their robes. You ain't never going to get much out of them, anyway. For the new guys, I'd train them in old GI fatigues, stuff you can crawl around in the muck with. But if I was trying to create a political force—that's what you're doing, isn't it, trying to keep the niggers in line?"
"Something like that."
"Well then, hell, I wouldn't put them in uniform at all. No, I'd let them all be plain-clothed guys, so nobody knows what they're thinking. In time, get them on the school board, make them deputy sheriffs, have them join the Guard, stuff like that, so they'd know what's going on and have some influence."
Josten stared at him in disbelief—here was an idea, a good one from this idiot—and it worked with Dixon's ideas about recruiting some people at the Air Force Base.
"I see what you mean. Not bad. Let me think about that—perhaps we need to have a small force like you describe."
"Sure. 'Course I'm a plain-clothes guy myself, so I'm biased—but think about it. Who's going to pay attention to somebody in Klan robes? It's a joke. And unless you do an awful good job, the Storm Klanners won't be much better. Look what you have to work with."
As Josten thought this over, Baker prodded him. "Now about this trip. I'll go to Omaha, but I want to go by way of Las Vegas, lay over a couple days each way. Okay?"
"You can do that. My wife is in Omaha, with my son. I want you to go and see where they live, where he goes to school, what time he comes home."
"Are you going to snatch him?"
"He's my son; it's not kidnapping."
"That's what you say. What are you, another fucking Bruno Hauptmann? Want me to go up there and make a wooden ladder and drag the kid—"
There was an instantaneous explosion as Josten's pistol fired a bullet into the wall behind Baker's head. Rising, Josten slapped his Smith & Wesson down on the table.
"Shut up." He was leaning forward, his eyes slits, his mouth in a grimace.
Baker squirmed. "I'm sorry, I was just lipping off, just talking. I'll go. You tell me what you want me to do."
"Just what I said. Find out exactly where they live, which room in the house my son sleeps in, what time he comes and goes, what their schedule is. I am his father. I have rights."
"Sure, sure, boss. I understand."
Josten scuttled into the next room while Baker, still shaken, slurped his tea; until the moment of the pistol shot, he had despised Josten as an ugly cripple. Now he thought he could work for him.
*
Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska/February 9, 1954
Leaving the World War II factory building that now held SAC Headquarters always reminded Bandfield of the old sunken submarine movies, where the crew put on their Momsen lungs and bubbled their way to the surface. The air seemed to get fresher and the lights brighter every step away from LeMay's office.
"Spending ten minutes with that guy is like going ten rounds with Rocky Marciano."
Riley nodded. "He's brutal, but he's getting the job done. It's his style that makes systems management work." Riley rubbed his eyes, sunken and dark-shadowed. "What do you think of the accident investigation team's reports?"
"One of them's right—one may be wrong."
"Which is which?"
"I think that Williams just jerked the airplane apart; that's what Fitzpatrick says, and he's a professional pilot, no matter what else he is. But the other airplane, at Pinecastle, I don't know. It may be pilot error, too, but it might be material failure. I'm going to go down and have a look at the wreckage myself."
Both accident investigating teams had come up with the same conclusion: pilot error. At Frederick, Williams had simply placed too much stress on the airplane in the toss-bomb maneuver. In the Pinecastle accident the report said that the pilot had stressed the airplane beyond its design limits by making a high-speed high-G turn at low altitude.
Bandfield stopped to tie his shoe. "I thought they might recommend dropping the idea of toss-bombing."
"They can't—the War Plan calls for fusion weapons that can't be delivered any other way and have the crew survive the radiation. They've even got a new acronym for it—LABS, for Low Altitude Bombing System. Your guys are going to have to come up with something pretty fast with the parachute-retarded bombs."
"We're about a year away, I think. The AEC is hell to deal with, and the problem is a hell of a lot more complex than it looks."
"What ain't?"
*
Pinecastle Air Force Base, Florida/ February 14, 1954
Bandfield followed the line-chiefs instructions, letting the T-33 nose-wheel edge around the yellow stripe that marked the parking slot, his eyes squinting in response to the glare from the acres of concrete ramp bleached white in the Florida sun. As he shut down he was furious with himself—on his way to investigate an accident, and he was almost one himself.
The problem was preoccupation—between trying to get the parachute-retarded bombs to work, help Riley with the investigations and keep Patty happy with an occasional visit home, he worried that Hadley had gone off the deep end with their fire-bomber program. In the past year they had re-manufactured six old TBM torpedo bombers, modifying them to carry both borate and water—and couldn't sell a one. Now they had a B-17 nearing completion, and no takers for that, either. The PBY sat in a corner of the hangar, flyable, but with no demand for its capability. Hadley tried to get the Forest Service let him give a demonstration, but they weren't interested—they were developing their own system.
But none of this excused the sloppy way he had planned the flight, nor the poor execution of his penetration. He'd arrived over McCoy with his tanks running dry; if Orlando Approach Control hadn't noted the urgency in his voice and given him an immediate clearance, he'd have had to declare an emergency. Then, in the descent the canopy had fogged up, and despite the bright Florida sun he'd had to have a GCA to help him on to final approach, like leading a blind man across the street. What a balls-up!
The 86th's Flying Safety Officer, Major Darby, was overage in grade and none too happy to see him; all crashes immediately reflect on the safety officer's past work, and he didn't feel any good could come of Bandfield's visit. The decision was pilot error and he was satisfied with that, especially since the pilot had just transferred in, and no blame was going to attach to Darby.
The B-47's wreckage was in a secured hangar; the charred and battered parts were laid out as closely as possible to the way they'd been when the aircraft was whole.
"Thanks, Major Darby. No sense in you hanging around; I'll be poking around for a while, and then call Base Ops for a ride back."
The last thing in the world Darby was going to do was let this s.o.b. from out of town run around unsupervised. He snorted, "No, sir; I'll stay here in case you need me. Or in case you find something."
Bandfield methodically checked the charred wreckage of the aircraft as if he were pre-flighting it, moving from the mangled cockpit around the exterior in a clockwise manner, threading in and out of the jumble of parts. Some, blown clear by the explosion, were only moderately damaged; others were so burned beyond recognition that only an expert could have guessed what they were.
After one circuit of the wreckage, Bandfield homed in on the fuselage center section. The wings extended in stubs from either side, broken off about ten feet from the fuselage.
"Major, is there any way we could pull the access plates on the wing-fuselage juncture?"
"I'll get someone in, Colonel, but why? That's about the only part
that held together."
"Just a hunch. Do you mind?"
Bandfield wandered around the wreckage as they waited; it was hard to believe that something so potent as a B-47 could be reduced to rubbish like this in an instant. After about forty minutes, a truck with two crew chiefs and their tools showed up. They were eager to please, but it took almost two hours to shore up the fuselage center section safely enough for them to work on it. Once they got the fuselage secured, it took them another forty minutes to pull away enough panels for Bandfield to inspect the wing-fuselage juncture. He straddled the center section like a cowboy riding a horse and, using a big six-cell flashlight, peered into the triangular openings.
"See anything, sir?" Darby's tone clearly implied that there was nothing to see.
"I don't see anything that might be connected to this crash,
Major, if that makes you feel better. But I'd like you to have your men pull both the milk-bottle pin assemblies from this aircraft, tag them left or right, and send them both to me."
"Colonel, that's a lot of man-hours you're asking for."
"Do you want me to have General LeMay ask you for them?"
"Ah, no thanks. We'll get them to you by the end of the week at
the latest." "Thanks."
*
Omaha, Nebraska/April 12, 1954
"Bear, wake up! Listen to that noise!"
Riley sat bolt-upright. "Goddamn it, Lyra, don't do that to me. You must have been dreaming. I got a quart of adrenalin circulating now; I might as well get up."
"Shush. Don't talk to me like that. Just be still and listen."
He waited patiently, then he heard it, a soft scraping sound, coming from the kitchen or the garage.
He slipped out of bed, put his shorts on, then crept down the hall to Ulrich's room. Ulrich was sleeping, and Bear picked up his stepson's baseball bat.
The old floors squeaked badly, and he moved down the hallway next to the wall, one foot in front of the other, finally easing through the open door into the kitchen. There was no one there.
A small utility room connected the kitchen to the garage. As he moved forward, the bat caught a mop hanging on the wall, knocking it to the floor with a clatter.
Riley heard the side door of the garage open and the sound of someone running. He burst through the door in time to see a big man lope around the corner and out of sight. When Riley reached the corner, bare feet freezing in the snow, there was nothing but the sound of a car pulling away.
Lyra was waiting at the door with a robe, slippers, and a glass of bourbon; he took them in reverse order.
"Let me call the cops—then we'll talk about it."
"There's nothing to talk about. Helmut's behind this. I know it."
At seven the next morning the Omaha police called.
"Colonel Riley, we have a suspect we caught a little while ago. Can you come down and identify him?"
"Sure, what's he look like?"
"Ah, he's a little spade, really dark, maybe five-foot-six, one hundred thirty pounds."
"Couldn't be the man who broke in, Officer. I saw him, and he was well over six feet tall and must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds."
"Ah, well, sorry to bother you. We'll have to find somebody else to prefer charges against this guy."
***
Chapter 10
Los Angeles, California/March 26, 1954
"If old Sinatra can win an Oscar, I can get back into flying. If old Sinatra can win an Oscar, I can get back into flying."
Marshall repeated the phrase as he pounded along the beach, breathing hard and bathed in sweat, trying to think positively, to focus on anything but his investigation. He liked the linkage with Sinatra; both were outcasts from their profession. As Maggio, Sinatra had fought his way back to an Oscar for From Here to Eternity; Marshall would fight his way back to flying, one way or another.
He ran four miles a day now and usually worked out in the gym for two hours. When he read, he squeezed a spring-powered hand exerciser. He did a lot of reading, for there were no Air Force duties except to report in once a day to a little office in Space and Missiles Systems Office on El Segundo. Every Friday morning he met with the investigator from the OSI in a searching interrogation that seemed endless.
Fortunately, there were some major differences from his questioning in Korea—he always came in well rested and well fed, and the room, dreary as it was in its two-tone war-surplus green paint and muddy-brown asphalt tiles, was a thousand times better than the cornstalk and mud walls of a North Korean hut. The investigator didn't torture him, and he didn't have to worry about what was happening to Saundra.
But there was one tremendous difference favoring the brutal questioning in North Korea. There he didn't feel guilty—here he did. Fortunately the physical training was hardening him physically, just as the questions were hardening him mentally.
The interrogator had gotten off to a bad start when he asked, "Did you know any other prisoners of war who might have cracked under the North Korean questioning?"
"I don't know anything, they kept me in solitary. But that's a hell of a question to ask—you want me to be a stool pigeon for guys who suffered like I did."
Daniel Frazier, the investigator, was sympathetic to him. "No, no, come on now. We're just trying to get the facts." Yet he continued his routine of asking the same questions over and over, like Colonel Choi but without the brutality. Frazier inquired about every detail of his imprisonment, trying to construct a day-by-day record. The investigator, of medium height, with sand-colored hair, had a good sense of humor and was obviously not out to crucify him—but he wouldn't let go. None of the answers Marshall gave fully satisfied him. Finally Marshall realized that there was a method in Frazier's self-fulfilling madness, for the more he prodded, the more Marshall remembered of his months in North Korea, mostly things he'd prefer to have remained forgotten.
"Tell me, Captain Marshall, can you remember just when you were taken to Manpo?"
"Danny, you know I didn't have any calendar—I didn't even have anything to mark the days going by. They moved me about so much, I couldn't have kept track of it anyway."
Frazier took off his glasses to wipe them carefully. "Let's change the subject, shall we? How do you think the Air Force treats Negroes?"
"Is this official? I mean is this part of my interrogation?" Frazier nodded. "I used to think it was pretty good; after all, I was flying in an integrated outfit the whole time I was in Korea. And most bases are integrated today." The image of Coleman crossed his mind. "Of course, there were some diehards who were still prejudiced." He straightened the crease of his uniform; he, could have come in civilian clothes, but he always made a point of being in uniform, with his ribbons and his wings.
"You say, 'used to think'?"
"Sure, until I came back from being a prisoner of war and got treated as a traitor."
Frazier, quietly methodical, just shook his head. "No one's treating you as a traitor, John. You signed a confession that you engaged in germ warfare—that puts the Air Force in an embarrassing position."
"I signed a confession that I parachuted measles-infected rats out of an F-86 Thunderjet at forty thousand feet; it was an obvious joke, a way to stop them from killing me."
Frazier was relentless. "A joke, maybe, but the Communists are making use of it. Besides the Douglas Edwards show, the film clip of you signing has been shown around the country on dozens of other programs. And, of course, there are certain implications in your actions."
Marshall felt as if he were standing tiptoe as a pool of guilt washed up higher and higher around him; he resented it because he knew he was innocent—yet there it was, a clammy accusatory rising tide.
"What implications?"
"Like what is permissible to say, and what is not; what and how much a person is supposed to endure. This investigation isn't out to get you, John; it's part of a bigger program to establish a code of conduct for the future."
"An
d guys like you, sitting four thousand miles behind the battle line, working forty hours a week, wearing civvies, eating high on the hog, sleeping warm with your wife every night—you're going to decide?"
"Not me, John, but the top leadership."
Marshall pushed his chair back. "Let me tell you something. You put the top leaders where someone starves them for weeks, keeps them awake for maybe four or five days at a time, tells them they are going to die every other day, puts pistols"—he was screaming "now; he stopped to get control of himself before going on—"puts a pistol against their heads and pulls the trigger—it's a blank but for one hot minute you don't know it's a blank, you don't know if you're dead or alive, until they laugh."
He knew he was too excited, but he went on. "Ask the brass to put up with stuff like that for a year, and then let them make a code of conduct."
Clearly taken aback, Frazier waved his hands and said, "Let me get you some coffee."
"Can I leave?"
"Not right now. Let's take a break, then I've got a few other questions to ask you." Frazier fixed him a cup and left the room.
Marshall used to drink his coffee black; since he came back it was double cream and sugar, for he never wanted to miss another calorie. He sipped the coffee, thinking of the fetid water that had been his usual drink in Korea. He was sorry that he'd lost his temper just now, but glad he'd said what he did.
When Frazier came back he was smiling. "I understand how you could get emotional after all you've been through. But I've got to get back to the basic question. How do you feel the Air Force treats Negroes?"
An irrational urge swept over him; he couldn't stifle it. "Wanna buy a duck?"
"What's that?"
"Monkies is the cwaziest peoples."
Frazier smiled. "Okay, John, I get it. You're giving me the same business you gave the Koreans. Point well taken. But, come on, tell me, how do you feel about the Air Force?"
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