The Fly Boys Page 3

  “I did see them,” Steve said excitedly, but then his expression soured. “Gee, I don’t know, Major. I’ve kind of gotten used to the P-38 Lightning.”

  “She’s a good mount, all right,” Wohl agreed. “But let’s face it: she’s no match for the Navy’s Hellcats and those gull-winged Marine Corsairs. The Jug is supposed to be faster than the P-38, and carries more firepower. I’d think a red-hot jockey like you would be itching to fly one.”

  “But I’ve only been at Tobi Point for a couple of weeks, Major,” Steve protested.

  “That just makes it easier for you to transfer,” Wohl prodded. “It’s not like you’ll have to leave behind any good buddies.”

  Steve looked Wohl in the eye. “You really want me to go, don’t you, sir?”

  Wohl hesitated. “Son, I’ll put my cards on the table. After watching you fly and having this palaver with you, I think that you’re too rich for my blood, and too rich for the rest of the squadron. You’re all raw talent and no cunning,” Wohl continued. “My big worry concerning you is that your tremendous talent is going to keep you brash. That it’ll get you killed before you get enough experiencee to learn to be in control of your skills, and not the other way around.”

  Steve frowned. “You mean I let my skills control me?” He paused. “I never really thought about it that way….”

  “Roger that,” Wohl smiled. “You need seasoning, old son, and the way you get seasoned is by watching and emulating more experienced pilots, but before you can learn anything from someone else, you’ve got to respect them.”

  “Sir, I know I was insubordinate,” Steve said, getting upset. “But I never meant disrespect—”

  “Simmer down. I know that, old son,” Wohl snorted. “If I’d thought otherwise I’d be busting you down to noncom, not spending all this time palavering. What you need is to fly with pilots as good as you are. Maybe even get a taste of what it’s like to be second best, unlikely as that prospect might seem to you now. The only way that’s going to happen is if you get assigned to an elite squadron where everybody is a top scorer.”

  “Well,” Steve said, “I guess I’m going.”

  “I can’t force you into a volunteer outfit,” Wohl replied. “But speaking man to man, I advise you to take advantage of the opportunity. I think it will build your character. You see, it won’t be easy being a member of the sole Army squadron on a Marine-held island. You and the rest of your squadron buddies are going to have to pull together unless you want those webfoots to run you right into the sea. You having to count on others—and knowing that they’re counting on you —will be good for you, old son. It’ll help you to mature.”

  “Yes, sir,” Steve said evenly, hiding the fact that he thought that what Wohl was handing him was a crock. He was mature enough to get the job done, which was shooting down Japs, right? On the other hand, he probably wouldn’t have to put up with any more of this pussy shit that Wohl was trying to hand him in a sharpshooting outfit.

  Wohl pondered him. “By the way, I’ve been saving the best for last. This new squadron is going to be commanded by your old buddy Cappy Fitzpatrick.”

  “Major Fitzpatrick?” Steve repeated happily. It was a sure bet that Cappy wouldn’t try to make him hang back. “That settles it! I’m going!”

  Wohl chuckled. “Thought that would close the deal. I’ll start the paperwork. You’re dismissed, Lieutenant.”

  Steve got up, came to attention, saluted, and turned to leave the office.

  “By the way, Lieutenant,” Wohl called out.

  “Sir?” Steve asked from the doorway.

  “I’m also putting you in for the Air Medal.”

  “Sir?” Steve asked, mystified. “But I thought…”

  Wohl waved him quiet. “You’re a wild man, Lieutenant Gold, and you’re going to have to be tamed if you’re to be of any real use to this Army, but that aside, you’re presently the goddamned angel of death in a dogfight. For that you deserve recognition, and I intend to see that you get it.”

  “Thank you, sir!”

  “Don’t thank me, old son. You earned it,” Wohl said wryly. “I guess that this will only be the first in a chestful of medals coming your way.” He pasued. “If you can develop the self-discipline you’ll need to stay alive long enough to collect them.”

  CHAPTER 2

  * * *

  (One)

  Gold Aviation and Transport

  Burbank, California

  5 October 1943

  The intercom buzzed. “Mr. Quinn to see you,” the secretary said.

  Herman Gold pressed the intercom’s talk button. “Send him in,” he told his secretary, one of the three who sat outside the massive double doors to his large office. While he waited, Gold realized that his heart was pounding and that his throat was dry.

  And why shouldn’t I be nervous? Gold asked himself. Teddy must have the XP-4 test results.

  The XP-4 was an experimental turbojet fighter plane prototype, the first jet to be built at GAT. Gold had sunk a lot of time and money into this project.

  Gold leaned back in his leather chair, away from the papers littering his long, marble-topped oak desk, as GAT’s chief engineer Teddy Quinn appeared in the doorway. Teddy was of average height, with a wiry build. Like Gold, he was in his late forties. He had a shock of black hair seeded with gray, and green eyes magnified by the thick lenses of his tortoise-frame eyeglasses. He was wearing a white lab coat, the front of which was smudged with ashes from the ever-present cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth.

  “XP-4 test results in?” Gold asked, and when Teddy nodded, he demanded, “How’d she do?”

  “Shitty,” Teddy said simply. “The XP-4 is a bust.” The cigarette bobbed up and down between Teddy’s lips as he spoke, and another snowfall of ash littered the front of the lab coat.

  Gold swallowed hard against his bitter disappointment. “Son of a bitch….” he muttered beneath his breath.

  “Now calm down, Herman—” Teddy warned as he made the long trek from the double doors to Gold’s desk.

  The office had wall-to-wall, moss-green carpeting and was furnished with sofa and armchair groupings upholstered in supple burgundy leather. Custom-built display cases loaded with mementos highlighting Gold’s decades in the aviation business lined the oak-paneled walls beneath ornately framed oil painting landscapes and commissioned oil portraits of successful GAT airplane designs in flight.

  Teddy settled himself into one of the armchairs in front of Gold’s desk. “It’s not the end of the world.”

  “But it is the end of the XP-4,” Gold said, his voice cracking with barely repressed fury.

  “Herman—”

  “Damn it, Teddy!” Gold exploded. “I hate to lose!”

  “No wonder,” Teddy murmured coolly. “You’ve had so little practice at it.”

  “Just get to the bottom line.” Gold heard the rude impatience in his tone. “Sorry,” he said quietly.

  Teddy smiled and nodded. “Don’t mention it. Like you said, you hate to lose. Well, flight-stability considerations aside, the bottom line problem is that the XP-4 is too fucking slow. She’s no faster than presently existing state-of-the-art piston engine fighters.”

  “Which makes her obsolete before she’s even put into production,” Gold mourned.

  Teddy nodded. He took a pack of Camels out of the side pocket of his lab coat, lit a new cigarette off the butt of the last, and dropped the butt into the smoking stand beside his armchair.

  Gold stood up and went to the windows behind his desk. His office was located on the top floor of the main building. He had a view of the sprawling factory complex’s airfields, which were being used as parking lots for hundreds of finished GAT BuzzSaw AC-1 bombers lined up in orderly rows, awaiting their shipping dates to go winging off to war. Beyond the olive drab armada of bombers were the yellow security guard shacks and the high, steel mesh fence topped with barbed wire. Beyond the fence, watching everything with timeless immuta
bility, were the majestic, tawny California hills.

  Gold kept his back to his chief engineer as he said, “Thank you for not saying I told you so concerning this mess.”

  “I knew you’d say it for me,” Teddy chuckled.

  Gold sourly nodded to himself. He’d been the one to insist upon a conservative design approach for the XP-4, because he’d felt that it would appeal to the likewise conservative military. Teddy had argued against the design, warning that its inherent performance characteristics and capabilities would likely be inadequate for a jet fighter.

  Gold turned away from the windows and sat back down behind his desk. “You know what really galls me, Teddy? That I’ve been thinking like a businessman instead of an engineer. You were right when you tried to tell me that I was making a mistake, but I just wouldn’t listen.”

  “Hey, you did listen,” Teddy said. “You just didn’t agree with me at the time.” He shrugged. “You had a good point about sticking to a conservative design to romance the military. Hell, if it had worked out, we would have been sitting pretty.”

  Gold pointed to his old drafting table and the glass-fronted bookcases filled with technical manuals taking up one corner of the office. “You know what the problem has been, Teddy? I’ve been away from that drafting table and sitting behind this fucking landing strip of a desk for too long. Goddammit, I’ve got a hundred bookkeepers working for me! Why should I think like one!”

  Teddy grinned. “It comes with the territory, boss. I can afford to sit downstairs and think like an engineer. That’s my job.” His arms spread wide. “But you’re responsible for everything. You’ve got eighty thousand people working for you around the clock in three shifts. How many AC-1 Buzz-Saw air combat bombers did we build last year?”

  “Fuck that,” Gold scowled. “Who can’t sell airplanes to the government during a war?”

  “How many?” Teddy persisted.

  “Four thousand,” Gold said, and found himself grinning.

  Teddy laughed knowingly. “Thinking about big sales figures always did help you to relax. And the year before, we built two thousand of them, plus a couple of thousand Bear-Claw fighters.”

  “But the BearClaw orders dried up as newer fighter designs became available from the competition,” Gold said quickly, getting upset all over again. “That’s what I’m worried about, Teddy! I’m convinced that piston-engine technology has gone as far as it can go. If GAT is going to stay on top, it’s going to have to continue to meet the challenge of developing new aviation technology.”

  Teddy held up his hand like a traffic cop. “Herman, you and me go back, what, over twenty years?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So spare me the stockholder’s speech. I’m your best friend. I’ve been with you from the beginning, put GAT stock at the ground floor. Today, thanks to you, I’m a rich man. You don’t have to convince me of anything. Just tell me what you want. Do we try to redesign the XP-4, or—”

  “No way,” Gold cut him off. “No sense throwing good money after bad. That drafting table over there is calling to me,” he continued. “Know what it’s saying? Come back to the drawing board. And that’s what we’re going to do.”

  “Okay, Herm. I’ll get my department started on it.” Teddy frowned. “But starting from scratch is going to take time.”

  “I don’t care. At this point, no matter what we do there’s no way were going to be first with a viable jet fighter for the military. For instance, my contacts in Washington tell me that Larry Bell’s outfit in upstate New York is working on something the government supposedly likes a lot.”

  “And right here in California, Lockheed is supposed to have a very promising turbojet fighter in the works,” Teddy nodded. “Yeah, I see your point.”

  “And who knows what the other companies have up their sleeves?”

  “You’re not worried about it?” Teddy asked.

  “Sure, I am,” Gold said gruffly. “I’m scared shitless that we’ll be left behind, but remember one thing, buddy. It’s not about being first, it’s about being the best!”

  Teddy laughed. “I just wanted to hear you say it, Herman.”

  Gold had to laugh as well. “You do know me, Teddy.”

  “You bet your ass, I do.”

  “Our asses are already on the line,” Gold reminded him.

  “But not for the first time,” Teddy countered. “And not for the last.”

  “But the older they get, the fonder of them we become,” Gold pointed out. “So get the hell out of here and design me an airplane.”

  Gold left instructions to his secretaries to hold all calls. He wanted to clear his desk of some backed-up paperwork, but after a fidgety half hour he threw in the towel, admitting to himself that the XP-4 fiasco had him too upset and depressed to concentrate.

  He was feeling jumpy and threatened, he thought as he took off his reading glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. He wished that he smoked—the advertisements had it that smoking calmed the nerves—but he’d never taken up the habit: tobacco gave him headaches.

  He briefly considered taking the rest of the day off and going to the movies, but all the pictures had gung-ho war themes. Watching them would only make him brood about his son, Steven.

  Gold had pleaded with his only son to let him use his contacts to get the kid a safe assignment out of combat, but Steve had insisted on front-line combat duty. The boy’s determination had caused some hard feelings between father and son in the past, but now, as much as Gold worried about his son risking himself in the war, he had long ago gotten over being angry with the kid about it. He had to admit that he was proud of Steve, who was a fighter ace who’d been shot down and wounded, but who had the guts to go back for more.

  Thinking about it, Gold supposed he was also a little envious of his son. He himself had tried to enlist in the Army Air Force after Pearl Harbor, but had been rejected for being too old, too overweight, and for weak eyesight.

  Gold sighed. It seemed like only yesterday when he himself was Steven’s age, and also a fighter pilot and an ace, flying with Herr Rittmeister Richthofen during World War One.

  Feeling restless, he got up from his desk and wandered over to the memento-filled display cases. His smile was wistful as he gazed at the faded black-and-white photograph of himself alongside his barnstorming buddies Hull and Les Stiles. The picture had been taken in 1921, when he’d been a tall and gangly kid, a carrot-topped, freckled-faced scarecrow in high scuffed boots, faded flannel, a brown leather jacket, and a battered gray fedora. He’d only emigrated from Germany a few months before his barnstorming tour across America, flying stunts in Captain Bob’s Traveling Air Extravaganza.

  Gold moved on to photographs taken of himself a couple of years later, when he and the Stiles brothers and Teddy Quinn were running a fledgling mail, freight, and passenger air transport service out of Los Angeles. How proud that bright-eyed, bushy-headed young Herman Gold looked in his suit and tie! Gold thought ruefully as he ran his fingers through the short curls wreathing his ears and the strawberry-colored fuzz he presently had left up top.

  Gold continued his tour of the display cases, letting the memorabilia jog his memories. Gone yellow with age were the framed commendations and the newspaper photos of Gold with Los Angeles politicos; there were pictures of himself and his one-time partner Tim Campbell at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Burbank complex.

  In a glass case occupying a place of honor in the office was a large silver-framed photo taken in 1934 of Gold shaking hands with President Roosevelt in the White House Rose Garden. The occasion had been the presentation to Gold of the coveted Ross Trophy, aviation’s award for design excellence. Bracketing the photograph was the large, ornate bronze trophy itself and a model of the GAT Monarch airliner that had won him the award.

  There were also more recent mementos, leading up to the present. But what about the future? Gold found himself wondering.

  He paused when he got to the portion of the c
ollection devoted to his wife Erica’s accomplishments. Gold had taught his bride to pilot a plane during their honeymoon, and now she could be proud of her own illustrious career in aviation spanning the twenty-one years of their marriage.

  There was a photo of Erica when she was a newlywed barely out of her teens, a brown-eyed blonde beautiful enough to be a starlet, waving from the cockpit of a De Havilland DH 4 biplane. There was a photo of her dressed in her flying gear, posing beside her silver-skinned GAT Yellowjacket racer at the National Speed Competitions. The display case held a complete collection of the many magazine covers that featured Erica after she’d stunned the world by becoming a GAT test pilot.

  Gold realized that his dark mood had lightened. He was smiling, thanks to thinking about Erica. It had helped to talk things over with Teddy, who was a good friend, but not his best friend. He suddenly knew where he wanted to be for the rest of the afternoon.

  Gold went to the intercom on his desk and asked the secretary to call to see if his wife was at home. A few moments later the secretary buzzed back to say that Mrs. Gold was on the line. Gold told his wife that he was on his way, and asked her to stick around.

  (Two)

  Gold Household

  Bel-Air

  Gold guided his Cadillac through the wrought-iron entrance to his estate. He was pleasantly surprised by how little time it took to make the drive from Burbank to Bel-Air, but it made sense that midday traffic would be light, considering the gas rationing, and the automobile tire and parts shortages.

  Gold knew the right people so that he didn’t have to worry about gasoline, and his car was new: a 1942 raven-black Caddy convertible. He had twisted the arm of an aircraft parts supplier in Michigan to get him one of the last of the Caddys off the assembly line before production of civilian vehicles came to a halt.

  Gold drove slowly up the hedge-lined, crushed-gravel drive toward the house. It was a rambling English colonial, with a vine-covered, gray stone exterior, black iron casement windows, and a green copper, mansard roof. Behind the house was a four-car garage, broad expanses of rolling lawn, a tennis court, a pool, and stables where the family had kept Shetland ponies when the children were young. A full-time handyman gardener lived above the garage. He’d been with the estate for many years. He kept everything running smoothly. Thank God the man was too old to be drafted.