Conquerors of the Sky

by Thomas Fleming

  One of Cassie’s breasts was in his mouth. His tongue revolved on that dark red teat. He was free to do that some night soon. His hand roamed those firm thighs, that auburn pussy. There were no obligations, no prohibitions, no guilt. Incredible.

  He ordered steak like everyone else. “Buildin’ up your strength?” Cassie said.

  “I’d say you’re being challenged, Dick,” Sam Hardy said. “With Cassie satisfaction is guaranteed.”

  “Unto exhaustion,” Moon Davis said.

  “You’re just a dirty old man,” Cassie said and swiveled away, her compact rump rippling.

  “Now there’s the kind of flutter I admire,” Davis said. “Why can’t you work some of that into your goddamn planes, Frank?”

  “Because you’d never keep your eyes on the controls,” Frank said.

  They ate thick steaks washed down by more Scotch. Frank Buchanan began assaulting an idea Adrian Van Ness had launched in Newsweek’s profile of him, a lightweight vehicle he called the People Plane. With savage sarcasm Frank mocked the idea of a plane in every garage. “People kill themselves by the thousands driving cars. Can you imagine what they’d do flying planes? Of course, that wouldn’t bother Adrian any more than it bothers those vultures in Detroit. Some people will do anything for money.”

  Cliff reminded Frank he used to agree with Adrian on the People Plane. “I don’t agree with Adrian about anything. On principle,” Frank roared.

  “Douglas is fooling around with the same idea. We call it the Convertiplane,” Harry Holland said. “It’s half-helicopter, half-propeller driven. If you think flying a jet’s dangerous you should try getting that thing back on the ground.”

  There was a commotion at the entrance to the dining room. A big blond man in a blue Air Force uniform was standing there, his arm around Cassie and Madeleine. “Billy!” Frank bellowed.

  All around the room heads turned, expressions changed, as the other drinkers and diners and waitresses turned to gaze at the newcomer. On the women’s faces was a range of emotion from patent envy to suppressed desire. On the men’s faces rueful admiration was almost universal. This was obviously a celebrity. He seemed to know it too, as he strolled toward them. The grin on his face was supremely reckless, the eyes coolly defiant. He doesn’t give a damn for anything or anyone, Dick Stone thought, in a burst of intuition he would confirm many times in the next twenty years. How do you get that way?

  In a moment Dick was shaking hands with Major Billy McCall. Frank Buchanan flung one of his long arms around him. “You’re looking at a test pilot that can fly anything we put in the air,” Frank said. “The best goddamn pilot alive today.”

  “Hey Pops, careful,” Billy said. “Lindbergh’s still around.”

  “So’s Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, and Buzz McCall,” Frank roared. “The claim still stands.”

  He gazed at Billy with an affection that would have made Dick Stone flinch. His conscience would have immediately asked him how he could possibly deal with such unstinted love. But Billy accepted it as offhandedly as if it were a pat on the back.

  “You guys thought you had it tough over Europe. This kid flew ninety-seven missions in the Pacific, bombing at fifty feet,” Frank said.

  “Twenty-five feet, Pops. Let’s keep the record straight,” Billy said.

  “Yeah. We’ve heard all about it,” Cliff Morris said. In his drunken daze, Dick Stone had trouble including him in his field of vision. On Cliff’s face was not an iota of admiration. In his eyes were the polar opposite of affection. He looked at Billy with an odd mixture of loathing and—was it fear? Yes, Dick decided. His intuition, probably the only part of his alcohol-soaked brain that was operating, concluded it was definitely fear.

  “What’s this bullshit about Madeleine being off limits?” Cliff said.

  “It’s her idea, Big Shot, not mine,” Billy said. “Can I help it if she only likes jet pilots?”

  Billy took a swallow of Cliff’s drink. “The fact is, you haven’t really flown until you wrap your legs around a jet engine.”

  “How about around Madeleine?” Harry Holland said.

  “She comes close. We put my Lustra on autopilot and tried it the other day at ten thousand feet. Sensational.”

  “Hey,” Dick said. “Do you and Madeleine give flying lessons? That’s one I’d like to take.”

  “In a couple of months Billy’s going to become the world’s fastest human,” Frank said. “Our experimental jet, White Lightning’s going to hit twice the speed of sound.”

  “Or they’re going to scrape what’s left of me off the desert floor with a spoon,” Billy said, all traces of self-satisfaction vanishing from his face and voice. “That crate’s been doing strange things in the sky. Haven’t you gotten my reports?”

  “I’m sorry, Billy. I’ve been working day and night on this new plane, the—”

  “Read those goddamn things, Pops. Especially the one about tumbling from seventy to seventeen thousand feet before I figured out what to do.”

  “Fifty-three thousand feet!” Frank said, shaking his head. “But you pulled it out.”

  “Next time I may not be so lucky.”

  “Yes you will,” Frank said. “There’s absolutely nothing that can destroy your luck.”

  “Maybe,” Billy said. “But read those goddamn reports anyway, Pops.”

  “I will, I will,” Frank said. But when Billy joined them for several Inverness nightcaps, Frank spent most of his time talking about the Talus. Billy listened with cool indifference. At times he almost seemed bored and made little attempt to conceal it. Dick Stone was baffled by his refusal—or was it his inability?—to return Frank Buchanan’s lavish affection.

  Meanwhile, Sam Hardy conferred with a tall blonde named Tess about her availability. She was very cool. “Sam’s problem is negative sex appeal,” Cliff said.

  “He’s got an awful case on her,” Frank said. “I’m beginning to wonder if this club is a good idea for some people.”

  Hardy returned to the table and ordered a double Inverness. “The bitch is treating me like my wife,” he said.

  At 1:45 the lights began to blink. Cliff reassured Dick that he was not passing out. It was closing time. They staggered to the door where Madeleine asked Billy to wait for her. Cliff Morris watched, glowering. Billy whispered something in Cliff’s ear. Dick was standing next to them and caught the word “Cassie.”

  “Yeah. But ask her now, wiseguy,” Cliff said.

  Outside, Dick wondered who was going to drive. Frank Buchanan did not look up to it and neither did anyone else. “Pilot!” Frank roared. “We need a pilot.”

  Out of the darkness rushed a middle-aged Mexican. “I’m right here, Mr. Buchanan,” he said.

  “This club thinks of everything,” Dick said.

  “That’s how you build planes. You try to think of everything,” Frank said.

  “Then you test them and find out how much they forgot,” Billy said.

  “I thought strafer pilots didn’t worry about that sort of thing,” Cliff said.

  “Fuck you, Cliff. Come on out and fly it tomorrow,” Billy snarled. His rage seemed out of proportion to Cliff’s minor needle.

  “We’ll do something about it. I promise you,” Frank said.

  Sam Hardy slapped Billy on the back and began reciting a poem.

  Wrinkle wrinkle little spar

  Up above the yield so far.

  Away up in the sky so high.

  I sure am glad that I don’t fly.

  The other designer, Jeff Hall, did a little dance around Billy and added a stanza.

  Sputter sputter little jet

  Out of fuel would be my bet

  Fuel consumption way too high.

  I sure am glad that I don’t fly.

  “Fucking designers,” Billy raged. He grabbed Hardy by the tie and began swinging him in a circle that would have sent him sailing into downtown Los Angeles. Dick Stone and Cliff Morris managed to rescue the choking victim be
fore the crash landing took place.

  “We’ll fix it, Billy. I promise you,” Frank said, acutely distressed.

  “It’s serious, Pops.” He glowered at Cliff. “I bet this bastard has been throwing my stuff in the circular file, hoping I’ll get splattered.”

  “Cliff wouldn’t do a thing like that. It’s my fault, Billy.”

  Crazy, Dick thought. Coming close to murder about a plane after spending the night talking wings and tails and rates of climb and more or less ignoring ten or fifteen beautiful naked women. Love in the aircraft business might turn out to be more complicated than it looked at first.

  THE DAWN OF FLIGHT

  Cliff Morris sat in his sunny dining room frowning at the front-page story in the Los Angeles Times.

  WHITE LIGHTNING SETS

  NEW ALTITUDE, SPEED RECORDS

  With Air Force Major Billy McCall again at the controls, a Buchanan Aircraft experimental plane, called White Lightning by its aficionados at Muroc Air Force Base, streaked to another new speed record of 1,315 miles an hour yesterday. Launched from a B-29 high above the desert, the almost wingless rocket plane was a white blur in the cloudless blue sky as it whizzed down the prescribed course. Last week in the same plane, McCall set a new altitude record of 89,916 feet.

  “I lost another four pounds last week,” Sarah Morris said.

  “Huh? Oh—great,” Cliff said.

  “I’m down to a hundred and thirteen pounds—only three pounds more than when we were married,” Sarah said.

  “Great. You look great,” Cliff said, without raising his eyes from the paper.

  Sarah did look a lot better than the fat woman he had seen in the hospital eighteen months ago, when Margaret was born. But Cliff had too much on his mind to get very excited about it. Billy McCall was setting altitude and speed records, rapidly becoming one of the most famous test pilots in the country, while he was project manager of a plane that might vanish without a trace. The Talus program was awash in problems. Frank Buchanan was threatening to quit the company. The U.S. Air Force was demanding to see a demonstration of the Talus’s supposedly unique powers six months ahead of schedule.

  “That’s wonderful news, isn’t it—about Billy McCall setting another record.”

  “Wonderful news for who?” he grunted.

  “For Buchanan Aircraft. Isn’t it?” Sarah said, blinking her blue eyes in that plaintive way that set his teeth on edge.

  “Yeah,” Cliff said.

  “Will you be home for dinner tonight?”

  “I doubt it. I may be out at Muroc for a couple of days, in fact.”

  There was a long pause. “Is that the truth?” Sarah said.

  “Sure it’s the truth. Why the hell shouldn’t it be the truth?”

  “Because the last time you stayed overnight at Muroc, you came home with matches from the Casino on Catalina Island in your pocket.”

  “I told you—we flew there to unwind—get some fresh ideas from the sea breezes. This plane is driving us all nuts.”

  It was not the first time Sarah had implied Cliff was unfaithful. It invariably infuriated him. He was not ready to become an old married man. But the arguments—and the unspoken threat of a divorce—made Cliff realize Sarah was important to him. Her admiration for his heroism in the air over Germany was an emotional insurance policy he did not want to lose. She was a kind of emblem of his war record, the most important achievement in his life.

  He pulled her out of her chair and kissed her. “I swear to you—I’ve got nothing on my mind but you, the kids and this plane.”

  And Cassie Trainor, he silently added, thinking of that slinky slithery body in Manhattan Beach; fucking her at 3 A.M after watching her moving naked around the Honeycomb Club in that bold, languid way. Laughing. Cassie was always laughing while he did it. She made him laugh too.

  Sex was so dumb sometimes. The crazy positions you tried for the hell of it. Sometimes it was better in the dark, when it was all feeling. Cassie liked it in the dark and she liked it in the shower and in the tub and on her terrace looking out at the dawning ocean pretending not to notice what he was sliding into her from behind.

  Then the call to Billy. Last night she had called him while he was inside her. He stroked her while she told Billy how (gasp) much (ooh) better Cliff wasssssss.

  Jesus. Where did all that come from? With his arm around his wife. Was it the contrast? Could he get Lady Sarah to become Cassie? Get her to stop making sex some sort of sacred performance, complete with classical music on the phonograph? It was amazing, how much she had changed when the war ended. When she wasn’t kissing a lover who was liable to die the next day.

  He remembered trying to get Sarah to take her clothes off and hang around naked in the beach house they had rented in Laguna in the summer of 1945. On hot days Tama had seldom worn anything in their house at Redondo Beach when he was a kid. Lady Sarah had been horrified. The way that snooty little English nose twitched. Horrified. Maybe he should have insisted on it. Torn off her clothes and screwed her on the rug.

  Cliff did not like the way Sarah was looking at him. There was nothing in her eyes, not even anger. She seemed to be holding everything back. Maybe he should cut it out. Drop Cassie. But not for a while. He kissed Sarah on the cheek.

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “Okay. I won’t bother.”

  He drove swiftly down the boulevards to the Hollywood Freeway, listening to the news on the car radio. Truman was cutting the defense budget again. Douglas Aircraft had just laid off 4,000 workers, Lockheed had axed 8,000, Northrop wasn’t saying how many but it sounded like it could be the whole company. Maybe Billy McCall had the right idea, staying in the Air Force.

  At ninety on the freeway Cliff wondered where they would all be if it were not for Adrian’s pull in the Pentagon. He had gotten them ten million dollars to turn the Talus into a bomber. Frank had called Adrian dirty names but Cliff and Buzz had convinced him that if he wanted to see his plane fly, they had to go this route. It was, of course, the way Buzz and Adrian had planned to go from the start. They knew the plane would never make it as an airliner.

  An hour later, Cliff and the rest of the team were on the way to Muroc in an Enterpriser, a Buchanan two-engined plane aimed at the short-haul airline market. It was an old SkyRanger refitted with new Wright Cyclone engines. Jim Redwood had sold about eighty of them last year on the telephone. But the profit margin hardly made it worth the trouble.

  Dick Stone sat beside Cliff in the front row of the Enterpriser. Dick had shared Cassie Trainor last night. Cliff liked the idea of sharing a woman. A lot of guys did it at the Honeycomb Club. Buzz said it cut down on the chances of things getting romantic—the last thing most guys wanted.

  Across the aisle Buzz was trying to soothe Frank Buchanan. “If it passes all the tests, we’ve got ourselves a contract that could revolutionize the whole business. A billion goddamn dollars. That’s what they’re gonna commit to a new bomber. Later we can turn it into an airliner in about ten minutes of redesign. We could get so rich it’ll be disgusting.”

  “It isn’t ready. We’re risking the lives of the test pilots. I don’t like losing control of the plane this way,” Frank said.

  “You’re not losing control of a goddamn thing. I’ve got these Air Force guys in my pocket.”

  That was not entirely true and Buzz knew it. If the generals were in Buzz’s pocket they would not be flying out to Muroc for tests they knew were premature. Something was cooking in Washington that made Cliff uneasy. Buzz did not want to admit that the Air Force was full of guys who had barely heard of World War I, much less Buzz McCall.

  “How was Cassie?” Cliff said.

  “Okay,” Dick said.

  “Okay? Sounds like she wore you out, Navigator, and you don’t want to admit it.”

  “Actually, she couldn’t get enough of me. She says she’s sticking to Jewish cock from now on.”

  “Yeah. I bet your
balls are aching. That broad could use up the whole UCLA football team.”

  Dick smiled in that superior New York way Cliff had disliked during the war. Was he working on Cassie to give him the same treatment he was giving Billy?

  “She’s turning into the star of the Honeycomb Club,” Buzz said, implying she was one of his girls. Cliff happened to know Cassie had turned him down twice.

  In a half hour they landed at Muroc Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert. It was not a big operation. A half dozen hangars and four or five planes of various sizes sitting on the flight line, a dozen or so quonset-hut barracks and some officers’ housing sprawled around a long low operations building. The natural scenery was far more spectacular. The empty desert stretched to the snowcapped Sierras without a single house or even a road in sight.

  Billy McCall was waiting for them in front of the operations building in his blue Air Force uniform. “How’s the fastest man alive?” Cliff said as they shook hands.

  Billy acted as if that was the dumbest question of the year and led them down a couple of corridors to an office where an Air Force brigadier general named Johnson Scott was shooting the breeze with two colonels. Scott was a stocky man with a hard mouth and squinting eyes. He did not look more than thirty-five years old. “About time you guys got here,” he said. “Before we go any further on this thing, let’s decide whether we’re operating on Air Force or civilian time.”

  “Air Force, General,” Buzz said. “We had a little problem with our plane.” He introduced Dick and Cliff as Eighth Air Force veterans. The general grunted. A fighter pilot, he had no use for bomber jocks. But when he heard Frank Buchanan’s name, his expression warmed. He began telling him how much he loved flying the long-range fighter Frank had designed toward the end of the war.

  “I want to go on record with a warning that this plane isn’t ready for extensive testing, General,” Frank said.