There was more. Hafner had an experimental feeding program for his foreign laborers, trying to determine the minimum calorie level he could provide and still get ten hours work a day from them. One group was to get two thousand calories a day, another twelve hundred, and a third eight hundred. A phrase leapt out at her: "The workers are to draw on their present stock of fat and muscle in the service of the Reich." A very elegant way to say, "The workers are to be starved to death."
She decided to pass on the information about the feeding experiment to Caldwell, too. It was sickening. She could understand how Helmut might be so loyal to Germany that he tolerated the Nazi idea. But how could he have anything to do with a monster like Hafner?
*
Guadalcanal/September 29, 1942
In the South Pacific, the Japanese, flush with an apparently endless series of victories, were startled by the Americans in the Battle of the Coral Sea in May. For the first time in naval warfare at sea, the exchange was entirely by air; no ship on either side saw the enemy. The Japanese claimed a victory, having inflicted slightly more losses than they received, and rejoiced in the sinking of the famous American aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Lexington. But it was far from being a victory on the scale of Pearl Harbor. The real result was that the intended Japanese invasion of Port Moresby, New Guinea, was postponed.
Determined to lash back, and mindful of Doolittle's Tokyo raid, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto decided to take Midway Island, some thirteen hundred miles west-northwest of Hawaii. He dispersed his fleet from the Marianas to the Aleutians. Sailing on the world's most powerful battleship, the 72,800-ton Yamato, Yamamoto commanded the greatest armada ever assembled in the Pacific, 165 warships.
He himself was commanded by worms. Yamamoto loved sashimi and had indulged himself before his ships sortied. En route, tiny parasites staged their own Pearl Harbor in his intestinal tract, virtually incapacitating him during the most crucial moments of battle.
Besides Yamamoto's worms, the Japanese fleet had to contend with a U.S. force, albeit smaller, savagely hungry for revenge, and as a result of intercepts, well informed on Japanese intentions. The American carriers were ably handled—and lucky. In the ensuing battle in early June 1942, Japan lost four carriers, more than three hundred aircraft, and the bulk of its most highly trained pilots. Precisely as Yamamoto had predicted, Japan had run wild in the Pacific for six months; now the tide was beginning to turn. Now Yamamoto concentrated his efforts on evicting the invading Americans from Guadalcanal.
Captain Jim Lee, sitting in a pool of sweat as his McNaughton Sidewinder vibrated beneath him like a Harley-Davidson with a blown gasket, was not aware of the war's new trend. He'd arrived on Guadalcanal the week before, flying in with four other pilots from the Sidewinder Operational Training Unit. They were replacements for the 67th Pursuit Squadron, part of the "Cactus Air Force," a tiny group of Army, Navy, and Marine pilots who maintained a tenuous American grip on Guadalcanal as Japanese efforts to retake the island escalated.
The battle for Guadalcanal, an obscure island until it was seen as the logical stepping-stone for a Japanese invasion of Australia, centered on the tiny airstrip the Marines had wrested from the surprised Japanese defenders. American engineers poured in, and with bulldozer and interlocking perforated steel plates—Marston mat—made it available to Grumman F4F fighters and Douglas SBD dive-bombers.
So far the fighting had been fairly even. The American planes were generally slower and less maneuverable than the Japanese, but they were far more rugged and had greater firepower. The principal Japanese bomber was the Mitsubishi G4M1, called Hamaki—cigar—by its crews because of its round, fat fuselage. These were large, fast airplanes, possessed of a very long range because of their huge, unprotected fuel tanks. Regularly, they flew in impeccable formation over the six hundred miles from Rabaul, New Guinea, in the Bismarck Archipelago, to bomb the airstrip. Mitsubishi fighters—Zeros—escorted the bombers, then made their own strafing runs.
With highly disciplined hit-and-run tactics, the Grummans could combat the Zeros on even terms; dogfighting with them was fatal. But the F4F pilots loved to catch a flight of the vulnerable G4M1 bombers and light them up like torches with just a few hits.
For the thousandth time, Lee realized just how tough Caldwell had been with him—and how lucky he was for it. First he'd been sent for a month-long indoctrination at the McNaughton factory to check out the Sidewinder. Presumed to be Caldwell's friend because he came from Headquarters, he was immediately introduced to the top management—including the woman he'd heard so many rumors about, Elsie Raynor. In the process, he'd really learned to fly the Sidewinder and had concluded that, while it wasn't as good as McNaughton claimed, it wasn't as bad as most people thought.
Lee was not unaware that McNaughton had given him a specially prepared airplane, powered by a more powerful engine and cleaned up on the basis of wind-tunnel reports. Troy McNaughton insisted that if the Packard Merlin engine was installed, the Sidewinder could be used as the desperately needed long-range fighter. From the reports he gave Lee, it looked possible.
More important, Lee recognized that Elsie was extremely powerful. When people wanted things done in the plant, they went to her first. Troy obviously liked and trusted her, and he valued her link to Caldwell. Lee had done some pro forma flirting, just part of a pilot's customary routine, and was surprised by Elsie's immediate and direct response. Flattered that a younger man would be interested in her, amused that they were both redheads, she had taken him to bed within a week of his arrival.
Now, wiping sweat from his brow in Guadalcanal, Lee was watching a line of Navy Grumman Wildcats warm up. The Marine and Navy pilots had been quick to fill their Army reinforcements in on living conditions, nicknames, tactics, and survival in the miserable heat and humidity. The island, so beautiful from the air, green and clean against the blue waters and white clouds of the Pacific, was dourly distressing close up. The jungle's exuberant growth choked the volcanic soil; its rotting vegetation was laden with poisons. Even the slightest nick required medical attention to prevent rampant infection.
Situated in "Mosquito Gulch," their rain-drenched tents were spotted among the huge coconut palms of the old Lever Brothers copra plantation, between the field and the beach. There was no flooring and a shortage of cots; some pilots had to sleep on stinking wet Japanese straw mats. Each day, at the height of the rain, the cots and mats sank into the mud, to be pried out later.
Dress wasn't a problem; they had only the flying suits or the khakis they'd arrived in, their "cover" a blue baseball cap designed to shield them from the burning sun that followed the rains. They ate a miserable melange of captured Japanese rice and Spam, cooked in as many different ways as possible by beleaguered Marine cooks, who worked with spoons in one hand and rifles in the other.
The war was everywhere. Every night ships of the Tokyo Express would come down the slot to heave shells into the compound, to be followed by small two-place seaplanes harassing them with machine-gun fire. They called the seaplanes "Washing machine charlies" in jest, but the noise destroyed their chances for badly needed sleep.
The pilots lay less than two and one half miles in any direction from the fighting perimeter held by the First Marine Division. A "banzai" charge could overrun them in just a few minutes, so most kept a weapon near at hand.
There were hazards everywhere else as well, from taxiing the fighters over the rough, watersoaked ground, to clearing the trees that surrounded the runway in an enormous green crash barrier.
The one great advantage of the Cactus Air Force—the name came from their radio call sign, "Cactus"—lay in the coast-watcher reports, the information from the patriots who hid themselves in isolated island outposts and reported the movement of Japanese ships and planes. With admirable foresight, the Australian Navy had recruited from a mixed bag of civil servants, retired enlisted men, and planters an intelligence force that radioed critical information on Japanese indentions. It saved the
pilots precious fuel by letting them delay until the last minute before scrambling.
Now Lee waited, his eyes glued to the needle of the coolant temperature gauge that was hovering at its redline, as heat shimmered from the olive-drab Sidewinder. If his flight didn't take off soon, the Allison engines would cook themselves to pieces, and instead of four McNaughton fighters, they'd have four fixed-machine-gun nests to trundle into the firing line.
He grinned, recalling his last time on the firing line, in Nashville, two days before he left for the Operational Training Unit. He'd submitted a whole series of test reports on the cleaned-up Sidewinder, but General Henry Caldwell hadn't believed one of them. Caldwell was always looking for an excuse to visit Nashville, so he came down to "talk to Lee personally"—and get in a little time with Elsie.
Things had started off badly—Lee had walked into the conference to find Caldwell and Elsie yelling about someone named Hafner. They were both embarrassed at his arrival, and Caldwell was giving him a severe dressing down on the etiquette of knocking before entering, when Troy McNaughton bounced in—also without knocking.
Like a schoolboy caught with jam on his face, Caldwell tried to cover by talking about Lee as if he weren't there.
"Jesus, Troy, back at Headquarters, Captain Lee raised hell with me, telling me that the Sidewinder wasn't any good. Then I get these reports that say it can be a superplane."
"He just had to get familiar with it, Henry. It's the same with all pilots. I'll bet even Bandfield would like it if he flew it a few hours."
"Well, if these are right, you've done a spectacular job cleaning the airplane up. I couldn't believe Lee's reports—picking up thirty miles per hour in top speed, and an extra four hundred miles in range."
"He's a good man, Henry. I didn't like him at first, thought he was a smart-ass, but he did his job and he was fair."
Elsie chimed in, "He's a real good test pilot, too. He'd fly the airplane all day and spend all night writing up the reports. He kept me busy typing."
Lee broke in, trying to sound properly modest. "I was just lucky, General; all the work had been done before I got here. All I had to do was validate it."
They ignored him.
"We had our best people on it, Henry, our 'tiger team.' They went over that airplane bolt by bolt, nut by nut. It was details, just details, but they added up."
When Caldwell left the meeting to go back to Washington, he had shaken McNaughton's hand, barely nodding to Lee and Elsie. Now, as Lee sat stewing in the Guadalcanal heat, he wondered if Caldwell knew that nothing was ever as it seemed—not love, not airplanes, not anything.
The scramble call crackled through the headsets, and the four Sidewinders took off, rocking back and forth as the nosegear chattered along the rough runway. Ahead, eight Grumman F4Fs were in a circling climb, waiting for them to catch up.
Sweat poured from Lee as he urged his plane higher. The Navy pilots had agreed to level off at fifteen thousand feet, because the McNaughtons had no oxygen. They circled clockwise in two groups, the Grummans on the outside, trying to slow down enough to stay with the Sidewinders.
Ceaselessly checking his instruments, Lee began to wonder if the scramble was a false alarm. They flew for forty minutes, watching their fuel supplies creep down while the towering cumulus clouds that presaged the next rain showers crept up.
Suddenly, down below, he saw four bombers, escorted by eight Zeros, hurtling toward the line of ships offloading supplies at the beach. Lee heard the flight leader yell "Tallyho" and dive; Lee followed with the rest of the McNaughtons while a flight of Grummans immediately peeled off after them.
Lee was exultant. They wouldn't have had a chance at fifteen thousand feet against the Zeros; now they were going to be fighting on the deck, where the odds were more even.
He lined up a bomber in his sights and fired a quick sighting burst from the four machine guns. Then, his aim dead on, he lifted the nose slightly and fired the flat-trajectoried 37-mm cannon, the thump, thump, thump of its recoil slowing the Sidewinder. The left wing of the bomber tore away, its fat fuselage rolling seaward before disappearing in a salty geyser.
Lee wracked the McNaughton into a vertical bank, turning as tightly as he could, G forces hammering him into the seat, trying to clear behind him. He saw an F4F dispose of another bomber and two Zeros spinning toward the sea.
Reversing his turn, he glanced back to see two Mitsubishi fighters behind him, one on either side. He pushed over toward the sea a thousand feet below, the Zeros following, thudding 7.9-mm bullets and 20-mm cannon shells into his aircraft. Squeezing down, praying that if the weak-lunged Allison engine behind him couldn't outrun the Japanese it would at least absorb their fire, he headed for the beach, hoping to draw the enemy fighters across the Marine antiaircraft guns.
The lead Zero moved closer, wanting to finish the McNaughton off. Lee felt the airplane shudder as cannon shells slammed into the engine. The propeller disc dissolved to a slowly turning paddle before stopping. He put the nose down to maintain speed, trading altitude for distance toward the shore.
Professionals, their job done, the two Zeros turned away to seek new prey while Lee concentrated on the touchdown. He knew he wasn't going to make it to landfall, so he tried to get within swimming distance of one of the lighters offloading cargo.
With the shattered engine and stopped propeller, it was quiet in the Sidewinder until he jettisoned the car-door entrance to the cockpit. The rush of wind was deafening, and he could hear the hissing from the boiling coolant radiator. A glance at the instrument panel showed that he was out of airspeed and altitude. Cinching up his straps, he eased the shattered fighter into the water, touching down tail low. The Sidewinder slowed until the propeller struck, pole-vaulting it over on its back.
As the plane somersaulted tail first, his arm flailed out the side door and his face crashed into the gunsight. He felt a sickening crack in his forearm and a lightning rush of pain as water surged in around him. The plane sank straight down until it was resting, inverted, twenty feet below the surface. His left arm useless, Lee fumbled with his straps, trying to hold his breath when all he wanted to do was scream in agony.
*
Cottbus, Germany/October 1, 1942
Bruno Hafner was drowning in bad war news. Rommel was retreating in Africa, and the drive toward Stalingrad was slowing down. The old warrior was edgy, despite his satisfaction with progress on the jet fighter. The first Me 262 airframes were already assembled in the huge underground factory. Galland had readily agreed to let Hafner have them, as the best hope of getting jet engines into mass production. Even the new blades, made of the rarest metals, had a short life in the raging inferno of the jet, but now old Fritz had provided a solution.
Hafner picked up a turbine blade, a simple T-shaped fold of metal. Fritz, the master machinist, had ignored the need for rare metals and gone to the heart of the problem: heat transfer. He had taken a simple sheet of ordinary steel and made a hollow airfoil of it. Ducts permitted air to flow through the turbine blade, cooling it effectively and eliminating the need for rare metals. It was a million-mark idea—and it might just win the war. They had run one engine in a test cell at full speed for a hundred hours straight. Now they were running acceleration and deceleration tests, full throttle, back to idle, full throttle again, and the engine was chirping along like a canary bird. Production engines probably wouldn't do as well, but if they lasted even twenty-five hours, it would be enough.
And if it didn't win the war, it might be a bargaining chip afterward. A year ago it looked as if Germany couldn't lose; now the odds were shifting rapidly. Russia sprouted divisions like a hydra—was there no end to their manpower?
Hafner reached into the satchel beside him and pulled out a package of foreign magazines, sent in from Switzerland, looking for the article he'd snipped from Aviation. It said that a farmer in Nashville had brought suit against the McNaughton Aircraft Company because the high-pitched roar of an engine under test
had caused his chickens to stop laying, and that the explosions had frightened his cows. A McNaughton Aircraft spokesman had said only that it was a necessary test of a radical new type of engine.
There had been intelligence reports that McNaughton had a jet engine under development—this confirmed it.
Hafner realized with a start that this opened entirely new opportunities. If McNaughton was having trouble with its engine, he might be able to open negotiations with his old colleague Henry Caldwell directly. They might be able to do business. Caldwell was an entrepreneur, even if he wore a uniform. He'd be willing to trade—if he thought the terms were right—and Hafner would see that they were.
He had known for almost two years of Lyra's contacts with Caldwell; perhaps it was time to play the cards he held on the pretty little Jewess.
***
Chapter 7
Northwest of Tula/November 18, 1942
They were sweeping too low for his taste over the tops of the green-black pine trees, the propellers of the red-starred Lisunov Li-2 transport churning twin crystal vortices from the snow-laden branches. Giorgi Scriabin hoped that the Messerschmitts would ignore the glistening signal that a victim was at hand.
Damn, I'm too old for this, Scriabin thought. He compressed himself into a ball beneath the rough Army greatcoat, trying to squeeze warmth from his fast-pumping heart into hands and feet long gone numb in the piercing forty degrees of frost. The Russians had kept the outward form of the license-built DC-3, but their version was sadly lacking in fit and finish. The faint warmth trickling from the cabin heater valve was swept away in the cyclone of wind sieving through the Li-2's cabin.
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