Rocket Science (2 page)

Floyd studied the railroad tracks. “What are you gonna do now?”

“About Dad? Not much I can do.”
Except clean his side of their joint cemetery plot
, I thought.

“No, no,” Floyd waved a hand. “I mean, the war’s over, America’s getting back on its feet, all that stuff. Everybody will go off rationing soon, the service is discharging a million guys just like me, jobs are tough to get. What are you gonna do?”

Floyd knew I had a good job at Boeing, and a college degree and pilot’s license to go with it. I figured he was really talking about himself. Floyd didn’t much like to ask for help, or even advice. I spoke carefully. “Well...I figure I’ll marry the right gal, maybe buy a house here in town. Keep working in Wichita.”
Watch my Dad die from drinking.
“What about yourself? Got plans with Mary Ann yet?” Plans more complicated than condoms and a mattress in the back of the Willys, at any rate. He kept both in the barn at home when he wasn’t planning to use them.

“Yeah, we’ve talked.” Floyd flashed me his million-dollar smile. He really ought to move to California and go into movies. “She wants kids, dogs, a flower garden. I don’t know...”

Floyd was rarely uncertain of anything. It was almost charming to watch him wonder. Every now and then I could still see the rough-edged farm boy who’d carried me around school and town on his back, that first year after the polio got me. “So, what’s on your mind?”

“Well, you know...take you, Vern.”

I hated being called Vern. He knew that.

“While I was off getting my gourd shot at in Europe, fellows like you were safe back here going to college and getting swank jobs you could keep after the war. A poor Gus like me, never even finished high school, I don’t have a chance unless I want to run my father’s farm. Any fool can see that’s a losing game these days.”

I was too surprised at Floyd’s comment about high school to be angry for what he said about me. We’d get back to that later. “Floyd, you finished school. I remember. You were sick for graduation, but so what?”

Floyd shook his head, then took a deep drag off his cigarette. “No. That was just a story. I failed senior English and American History that spring. I was ashamed, so I didn’t tell no one. Then I went off in the service the week after everybody graduated. It never came up again.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, but I tried. “Still, a guy like you — you’ve got a clean service record, you know aircraft engines. You could get on at Boeing or Beech Aircraft in Wichita real easy. I can put in a word for you in personnel if you’d like. Maybe get you on my team, even.” I tried to sound enthusiastic. He might be the nearest thing I had to a brother these days, but Floyd working under me was not high on my list.

“Yeah, well, about that service record...” Floyd broke off and stared down the tracks. He looked like he might bust into tears right there. Then we both glanced up at the scream of a train whistle, coming in from the east.

“What happened?” I asked gently.

“Nothing.” Floyd wiped some dust from his eyes. He gave me another million-dollar smile. “I’ll tell you sometime when we’ve got nothing better to do. There’s plenty of work coming for both of us on that train.”

The Santa Fe Baldwin 4-8-4 oil-burner sat just past the platform, chuffing and wheezing. It was a big steam engine, fairly new, black as Tojo’s heart with white and gold lettering. Even though my life was about aircraft, I appreciated the design compromises and manufacturing know-how that had gone into that magnificent beast belonging to the previous century. This was the age of flight, and my heart always wanted to soar.

Odus Milliken the railway agent, a cadaverous veteran of the Spanish-American War who seemed likely to live forever, had told us that this route would be getting the new diesels soon, so we’d better say goodbye to the steam trains. As much as I admired the old machines, I could live without the noise.

Odus and Bertie the switchman had conspired to drop two flat cars off onto the depot’s freight siding. One was loaded with an enormous crate, the other had something bulky secured under a tarp. Floyd and some of the old guys from the Otasko Club strained with the swing-arm block and tackle on my Dad’s stakebed truck to shift the massive crate from the first flat car. With my bad leg and all I stayed out of the way. The crate was almost too big for the truck — easily large enough to contain a small omnibus. I couldn’t imagine what something so massive and heavy could actually be. Had he shipped home artillery? I wouldn’t put it past Floyd.

Odus stood with me, shaking his head and laughing in his creaky old-man voice. “Those boys are idiots,” he said. “They ought to trot over to the lumberyard and borrow a forklift. It’s gonna take them all day to get that crate off. Plus he’s got that other load, too.”

I hadn’t realized that both flat cars were for Floyd. Where had he gotten the money for the freight charges? “What else does he have?”

“Come on,” Odus said. “Let’s have look.”

Odus and I walked around the flat cars, staying out of the way of Floyd’s work party. Odus untied the lashing that held one corner of the tarp to the second flat car. We lifted the canvas and saw a massive rubber tire. I peered up. “It’s a truck.”

“Really?” asked Odus. “I never would have guessed.”

I eyed the four-foot drop off from the flat car to the rails below. “How are we going to get this onto the ground?”

“Well, if they’d listed this correctly on the manifest, I would have had it off already,” said Odus sharply. “I’ve got a ramp we can drop at the end of the car. You just drive it off. Why don’t you pull the tarp off it while I go set it up?” He trotted away.

I tugged and pulled to get the tarp off the truck. The tarp was huge, heavy and damp, and nearly smothered me when it finally slid off. That was when I discovered it wasn’t a truck. It was a halftrack. Definitely German — field gray with the big black cross on the doors. Floyd had shipped himself a German army vehicle complete with bumper numbers and swastika. But it was the weirdest halftrack I’d ever seen — nothing like those newsreels of troops riding in an armored box over muddy, cratered landscapes.

The front looked just like any truck built in the last fifteen years — I didn’t recognize the make, of course, but it had to be German. The tracks in back looked a whole lot like an old Caterpillar 60 with extra wheels in the middle to extend the tread length. But the body on top was planed and angled like it was meant to fly away. There wasn’t a vertical surface anywhere on the back of the halftrack. I cocked my head, studied the thing. It really did look streamlined, or perhaps as if it had been meant to deflect explosion.

“Oh, Floyd, what have you done?” I whispered to the halftrack.

It started raining as soon as we left the depot and headed out of town, and it poured all the way back to the farm. I kept praying that the creaky old Mack would make it without sputtering to a halt. I didn’t look forward to dragging the truck and Floyd’s monstrous crate down muddy dirt roads with Mr. Bellamy’s ancient Farm-All. Lucky for me the spirits that moved the old truck smiled, and it kept turning over in spite of the dampness.

Somehow we got the vehicles all the way to Floyd’s place without attracting attention from the Butler County Sheriff. We parked both Dad’s truck and the German halftrack in Mr. Bellamy’s ramshackle barn. All but a few of the cattle had been sold over the summer, because large animals had become too difficult for the Bellamys to manage. In addition to a whole gallery of rusted plows and spreaders, generations of rotting hay and Floyd’s recreational mattress, the barn now sheltered an inbred tribe of resentful cats, three blank-eyed heifers, a single goat, and some stray bantam hens with one nasty little rooster. That left plenty of space for us.

Floyd got out of that weird halftrack and leaned on the fender, flashing his million-dollar grin. He patted the Nazi vehicle. “What do you think, Vernon? Hometown boy makes good.”

“Smuggling back a Wehrmacht halftrack hardly counts as the crime of the century,” I snapped.

“Hey,” Floyd said. “It’s not just a halftrack. It’s a
Feuerleitpanzerfahrzeug auf Zugkraftwagen
.” He rattled off the German tongue-twister like he’d been speaking the language all his life. “Adapted from the Jerries’ V2 control post.”

That explained the shape. It really
was
a blast deflector.

“Cheer up,” Floyd continued. “The f-panzer’s just a souvenir. What’s inside it, and inside the crate — those are the real prizes.” He paused, mock serious. “And
they
may well be the crime of the century.”

“Really.” I couldn’t decide if he was crazy, stupid or pulling my leg in a very big way. Maybe all three. The war addled people.

“Come on, take a look.” He walked to the back of the halftrack and stepped up onto the ladder that hung from the hatch at the rear of the strangely-angled cargo box. A huge stainless steel padlock secured it, with an eagle engraved on the lock body. The bird was so large I could see it from ten feet away. Floyd took a key ring from his pocket and fit one in.

“That lock looks like it’s worth a fortune all by itself,” I said.

“Oh, probably.” Floyd shrugged. “Some kind of special SS lock. You want it?” He turned to face me, open lock in his hand.

“Nah, keep it. It’s yours.” His words about wartime stay-at-homes like me taking all the good jobs still stung, in part because there was a measure of truth to them. I figured Floyd was going to need all the valuables he could get in life. Unless the truck was full of diamonds. Or something worse.

Floyd pulled open the latch and swung the door wide. He stepped up inside, calling, “Get in here.”

I stepped up the ladder to peer in. There was a profusion of radio and electronic gear in the truck, much of it obviously installed in haste. Loose wires trailed everywhere, and a box of stray vacuum tubes was jammed under an operator’s console. A hooded glass screen was bolted to one side of the van, while racks of gear lined the other. It looked like a radio operator’s idea of heaven.

Or maybe hell. I wasn’t sure which.

“What does it all do?” I finally asked. He’d mentioned the halftrack was an adapted V2 launch controller, but as far as I knew they were ballistic rockets — nothing that would require all this radioelectronics.

“I got no idea,” said Floyd cheerfully. “That’s why you’re here.”

“Floyd, I am a materials science engineer specializing in aeronautics. I know how to refine aluminum, how to machine wires and struts. I can find my way along the parts list of a B-29 in the dark. I don’t know
anything
about electronics, past winding a radio crystal.” I waved my hands around the van. “This might be a television studio for all I can tell.”

Floyd didn’t seem perturbed. “Vern, you’ll do fine. The boffins I...well, got this from...they said the German word for this thing translated as ‘telescanner’ or ‘farseer.’”

I knew about radar, from my work at Boeing, but it wasn’t common knowledge in the fall of 1945, so I didn’t say anything. But this truck certainly seemed as if it could have been used to control a German radar installation, perhaps out in the field.

Floyd looked at me, waiting for me to answer. I just stared at the electronics and wondered how long we would both spend in the stockade at Fort Leavenworth for this. After a few moments, Floyd spoke again. “You haven’t seen the best part yet, old buddy. This f-panzer is just a sideshow. Let’s open my crate.”

I followed Floyd back out of the control center, whatever it was. I carefully shut the door behind me. Floyd had removed the shiny German lock. I looked around for him, but he had disappeared, only to return a moment later with two long-handled crowbars and an axe.

“We’ve got to tear this baby down,” he said, handing me one of the crowbars.

“Uh, Floyd, let’s talk this over first.”

“Sure, sure, Vernon. What’s on your mind?” Floyd was obviously feeling expansive. I might too, if I’d swiped a German secret weapon.

“Look, I don’t know how to say this, but...I don’t want to look in that crate.”

Floyd’s eyes crinkled as his mouth turned down. It was like he was acting out his emotions. “I thought you’d love this stuff.”

“Oh, I could love it, believe me. Only, what’s in that telescanner truck of yours is enough to get us both put away for a long, long time. That’s a military secret Floyd. I don’t know where you got it, I don’t know how you got it, and I certainly have no idea how you got it all the way from Germany to Kansas, but it’s—”

“Belgium, actually,” Floyd interrupted.

“Gosh darn it,” I yelled. “I don’t care if you bought it in the camel market in Timbuktu! That thing is trouble, great big heaping buckets of trouble. Either you go and drop it in a quarry, or we call the authorities in Wichita and hand it over to someone in a position of responsibility. I don’t want to know anything more about it. Ever.” I turned my back on him.

Floyd made me so furious, sometimes. For years, he had gotten everything he wanted on charm, good looks and athletic ability. But the war was over, we weren’t in high school any more, and Floyd’s thoughtlessness was really starting to show through. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how Floyd had thought stealing some Nazi secret weapon and shipping it back to Kansas would be a good idea. Not even he could be that dumb.

“Vernon.” Floyd spoke in his small voice. I was about to hear the I’m-so-sorry-it’s-all-my-fault-it-will-never-happen-again speech. I could recite that one from memory. “I’m not going to apologize for what I’ve done,” he said.

He surprised me. Floyd really did. Maybe he was growing up after all. “What are you going to do?” I asked, turning to face him.

“I’m going to ask you to do me one more favor. Then, if you don’t want any part of this, walk out of the barn and go home. Just forget the whole thing. I’ll never say another word, you’ll never be involved again. If there’s any trouble your name won’t come into it. Promise. Honest injun.”

I knew from long experience what Floyd’s promises were worth. He was sincere — he was always sincere — but somehow things never quite worked out. Now he was taking a whole new approach to conning me into something he knew I didn’t want to do. That made me curious. The scam was obviously huge. Being an idiot, I took the bait. “Maybe. What’s the favor?”