Eagles at War (50 page)

Lee's words were drowned out in the blast of the flak explosion that tore into the left wing root and the fuselage of
Virgin Effort,
tearing a gaping hole in the fuselage and ripping open the wing. The violent explosive decompression in the forward pressure cabin sucked charts, checklists, and dirt out of the airplane before a rush of smoke filled the cockpit.

Lee had the right rudder jammed all the way, cranking in trim to keep the airplane on course.
Virgin Effort
was staggering, flames roaring out of the fuel tanks in the left wing.

"Damnit, let's bail out, Skipper. This thing is going to blow." "Get ready. Let's get the bombs off and make for the coast, see what we can do."

Just as the six thousand pounds of bombs left, the stricken B-29 flew into a towering thermal from the fires raging below.
Virgin
Effort
bounced crazily upward into an intersecting beam of searchlights whose glare turned the smoke-filled cabin incandescent. Lee racked the airplane to the left, desperate to escape the clutching searchlights, but they followed him tenaciously. He leaned forward, low, sheltering his eyes with one hand, concentrating on the flight instruments, desperately trying to escape from the lights. His head was down when the fuel tanks exploded, blowing the left wing off at the root and sending the
Virgin Effort
into a vicious flaming spin trapping everyone inside. At three thousand feet the empennage broke away, carrying the tail gunner into the black void of night to a lonely death. The rest of the B-29 plunged down erratically, striking the earth on its right wing, then cartwheeling through the flimsy homes of workers at the Nakajima plant. High octane gas spewed from ruptured tanks like a Fourth of July pinwheel, adding fuel to the already leaping flames. The gale force wind from the Kanto plain crossed the city, stoking the fires and spreading them over the fire breaks, jumping canals, turning the wood-and-paper houses into instant torches. In the middle of the flames, the shattered remains of
Virgin Effort
and its crew were totally consumed, resting on the ruins of a house where an entire family—mother, grandfather, and two children—perished. It was one house out of 272,000 houses that burned that night; they were four out of 83,000 who would die. Thirteen other B-29s were lost.

*

Nashville, Tennessee/March 18, 1945

She was standing at the head of the stairs in a tattered white robe, her hair down, her face puffed and swollen, raging at the top of her voice, "You did it, you killed him, you sent him over there to die. You filthy old man, I hate you."

Henry Caldwell stood penitently, his head hung, his hands folded behind his back. What did his promotion to lieutenant general mean now?

"Get out of here. You killed him."

"Now, Elsie, don't say that. Jim Lee was a fine combat officer. He was doing exactly what he wanted to do."

"Damn you, he was not! He wanted to be here with me. We were going to get married. Jim and I would have been happy together. You sent him away to be killed, you bastard. Now he's dead and you killed him as surely as if you'd shot him yourself."

I should be angry, he thought, and all I can feel is love for this poor woman. Maybe she's right. Maybe I did kill him.

"Get out of here. I can't stand the sight of you. I never could stand you, your stinking breath, your tobacco smell. Get out of here with your dried-up old body. You killed my angel!"

Her words drilled into him, each insult a jab of pain.

"Come on, Elsie, pull yourself together."

"I know why you did it, too! You wanted him dead, so he couldn't testify against you. Well, don't you worry, I'll do it for him. I'll get you sent to jail! I don't care if I have to go, too, I'll get even with you."

Shaken by her fury, it took him a moment to understand what she was saying. From the moment word had come to him that Lee had been killed, he'd been overwhelmed by a concern for Elsie. It had not even occurred to him that Lee's death might benefit him, but he could see that it was true. With Lee dead, he stood a far better chance of being believed. It would be his word and his reputation against Elsie and McNaughton.

"Get out of here! I don't ever want to see you again. But I'll see you in jail. I'll go to the FBI, I'll go to the President, I'll do whatever I have to do to get revenge."

He stared up at her. She grabbed a vase from a tabletop and threw it at him, the water splashing over his uniform before it shattered on the floor. Then she picked the table up and hurled it down the stairs.

Afraid that she'd hurt herself, Caldwell fled in shame to the Cadillac outside where Troy McNaughton sat waiting. Humiliated, broken-hearted, Caldwell felt a leaden anger with himself for still caring for this woman who had destroyed his life, who now hated him—had always despised him!—and who had made such a fool of him.

McNaughton drove slowly, watching Caldwell out of the corner of his eye. He entered a gate in the enormous fence that had been built around the McNaughton plant property, then drove slowly up a back road that led to an overlook from which the entire field could be seen. There were Sidewinders parked everywhere, with a dozen aircraft climbing and descending in the traffic pattern. McNaughton knew that there was no balm for a pilot's soul like watching aircraft land and take off.

When he saw that Caldwell was beginning to compose himself, he said softly, "I've never ever seen her like this. Underneath that Southern-comfort charm, she's always been such a calculating bitch—"

Caldwell interrupted. "Don't bad-mouth her, Troy! I wish I had someone who cared for me as much as she must have cared for Lee."

"Christ, Henry, you did. You had Shirley. Pull yourself together and don't be such a patsy so late in your life. This woman has screwed you royally, she's threatening to send you to jail, and you're defending her? You must have bats in your belfry."

Caldwell stewed at the truth in the remarks. Shirley had loved him unreservedly, in her own way. But it was different with Elsie—she had him enthralled in a way he never would have believed possible. Finally, he said, "You're just worried because you'll be going to jail, too."

"You're goddamn right I am. Lee's death has changed everything! We've got to get her to shut up some way, somehow, and we can ride out whatever they come at us with. I've talked to my lawyers—we can both blame the whole damn thing on Lee. We'll say that he was a careerist sucking up to you, that he wanted a job from me, but that we didn't know anything about the business with the pitot tubes."

Caldwell's voice was resigned, almost academic. "Troy, I never did anything wrong. Why should I run the risk of covering for you? We'll just let the thing come to trial."

"For a smart man you've got a short memory. If it goes to trial, Elsie will go to jail, sure as hell. You might get off, but Elsie would go to the pen."

Caldwell thought this over. He knew he shouldn't care that Elsie hated him. And if she had always hated him, if she'd always been pretending, what difference did anything make? He tried to summon an argument against taking any action.

"How can you stop Elsie from talking if she wants to? She's a determined woman, and bright, too. I just wish she cared for me."

McNaughton didn't try to conceal his disgust. "Henry, stop acting like an overaged Romeo! It's bad enough for you to hurt yourself, but I'm not letting you take me with you. There's got to be some way short of killing her to shut her up."

Caldwell whirled in his seat, emotions stirred by other than sadness for the first time in days. "By God, don't even talk about killing her, or even hurting her, because I swear if anything happens to her, I'll strangle you with my bare hands."

McNaughton looked at him and smiled. "I believe you would, Henry. You are an old fool and a mean one, too. But we've got other problems."

Caldwell looked at him contemptuously. "What could that be?"

"The microfilm you brought back from Hafner on the V-2 is not complete. The material dealing with the guidance systems is not up to date with the rest of the drawings. My scientists tell me that there's no sense in even trying to build a copy until they get the rest of the data. They're working on it themselves of course, but there's no chance that they'll be able to duplicate in a few months what the Germans did over ten years."

Sagging, Caldwell shook his head. "It's that fucking Hafner again. He's a Borgia, everything he's connected with is poisoned somehow."

They were silent for a moment and Caldwell continued. "I got the State Department's agreement to arrange amnesty for Hafner,
if
he comes across with the rest of the material on submarines and poison gas and the other stuff. But he's disappeared. I can't get in touch with him."

"How about your contact in Sweden?"

"She's disappeared, too. He's probably had her killed. Eventually he kills everyone he comes in contact with."

"Well, you better pray that the Russians don't grab Hafner, or even the British for that matter. What's happening with this so-called Operation Overcast?"

"You're not even supposed to know about that, Troy. I can't tell you anything."

"No, but I can tell you plenty. There's a hotshot Army colonel who already has a firing range being built down in New Mexico, and he's got a request in to have captured V-2s sent there for tests. We'll be sucking hind tit if that happens before we get going on our own missiles."

"Hell, I pay for it, just like you do. Only I pay in money and you pay in jobs and perks and promotions. Why don't you have Bandfield concentrate on picking up Hafner? He's bound to be running into people who will know him."

Caldwell stirred. If they picked Hafner up, he could smash his face in, kill him.

"Not a bad idea. Maybe I'll go myself. He is totally evil."

"Right! Don't forget the spot we're in. If you come back with a bundle of first-rate information, you'd be in a hell of a lot better position if Elsie causes some trouble. Why don't you see Arnold and try to get control of the whole operation?"

Lethargy returned to Caldwell's manner. "I can't. He's recovering from a heart attack, a bad one. I wouldn't need him anyway. I'm sending Bandy over—I could just go with him. At this stage of the war everything's looser than hell, anyway. People are spending more time jockeying for position in the Pacific war than worrying about what I'm doing."

"You do that. And I'll take care of Elsie on this end." He saw the look in Caldwell's eyes and added, "But nicely, never fear."

*

Munich-Reim/April 24, 1945

Early morning fog nestled down around the ring of hills circling the horizon. The two old friends sat under the just budding trees that surrounded the makeshift dispersal pens. They were dressed alike in gray leather flying suits, their pockets bulging with the miscellaneous necessities of flight, misshapen officer's caps pulled down so low that the brims touched the rims of their sunglasses. A few chairs, a table made out of a door and fuel drums, field phones, and a ration can ashtray for Galland's black Brazilian cigars constituted the "operations area." They were drinking ersatz coffee out of thick
Wehrmacht
cups and chewing slowly on pieces of damp Army bread smeared with a thin red substance that smelled not unlike the noxious
}2
fuel being pumped into the Messerschmitt Me 262s of
Jagdverband
44.

The airfield was a ragtag mixture of runways and battle damage—some real runways with fake damage, some fake runways with real damage. Few buildings were still whole, and all maintenance was conducted outdoors. But it was spring, the war was nearing its end—and
Ju
44 was the world's most elite fighter unit.

"Well, it's full circle, Josty. I started out in 1939 as a
Staffel
commander. Here it is 1945, and I'm a
Staffel
commander again."

"Yes, but then you were an
Oberleutnant,
flying Henschel biplanes. Now you're a
Generalleutnant
flying 262s! Quite a difference. "

Galland snorted with rage. "The biggest difference was that then
we
were winning the war! Now the Americans are past Aachen and the Russians are swallowing up Berlin. We'll be lucky to last another week."