The Carpetbaggers

1

I pulled the stick back into my belly with a little left rudder. At the same time, I opened the throttle and the CA-4 leaped upward into the sky in a half loop, like an arrow shot from a bow. I felt the G force hold me flat against my seat and bubble the blood racing in my arms. I leveled her off at the top of the loop and when I checked the panel, we were doing three hundred, racing out over the Atlantic with Long Island already far behind us.

I reached forward and tapped the shoulder of the Army flier seated in front of me. "How about that, Colonel?" I shouted over the roar of the twin engines and the shriek of the wind against the plastic bubble over our heads.

I saw him bob his head in answer to my question but he didn't turn around. I knew what he was doing. He was checking out the panel in front of him. Lieutenant Colonel Forrester was one of the real fly boys. He went all the way back to Eddie Rickenbacker and the old Hat in the Ring squadron. Not at all like the old General we'd left on the ground back at Roosevelt Field, that the Army had sent out to check over our plane.

The General flew an armchair back in Purchasing and Procurement in Washington. The closest he ever came to an airplane was when he sat on the trial board at Billy Mitchell's court-martial. But he was the guy who had the O.K. We were lucky that at least he had one Air Corps officer on his staff.

I had tabbed him the minute he came walking into the hangar, with Morrissey, talking up a storm, trotting beside him. There were two aides right behind him – a full colonel and a captain. None of them wore the Air Corps wings on their blouse.

He stood there in the entrance of the hangar, staring in at the CA-4. I could see the frown of disapproval come across his face. "It's ugly," he said. "It looks like a toad."

His voice carried clear across the hangar to where I was, in the cockpit, giving her a final check. I climbed out onto the wing and dropped to the hangar floor in my bare feet. I started toward him. What the hell did he know about streamline and design? His head probably was as square as the desk he sat behind.

"Mr. Cord!" I heard the hissed whisper behind me. I turned around. It was the mechanic. There was a peculiar grin on his face. He had heard the General's remark, too.

"What d'yuh want?"

"I was jus' gettin' ready to roll her out," he said quickly. "An' I didn't want to squash yer shoes."

I stared at him for a moment, then I grinned. "Thanks," I said, walking back and stepping into them. By the time I leached Morrissey and the General, I was cooled off.

Morrissey had a copy of the plans and specs in his hand and was going over them for the benefit of the General. "The Cord Aircraft Four is a revolutionary concept in a two-man fighter-bomber, which has a flight range of better than two thousand miles. It cruises at two forty, with a max of three sixty. It can carry ten machine guns, two cannon, and mounts one thousand pounds of bombs under its wings and in a special bay in its belly."

I looked back at the plane as Morrissey kept on talking. It sure as hell was a revolutionary design. It looked like a big black panther squatting there on the hangar floor with its long nose jutting out in front of the swept-back wings and the plastic bubble over the cockpit shining like a giant cat's eye in the dim light.

"Very interesting," I heard the General say. "Now, I have just one more question."

"What's that, sir?" Morrissey asked.

The General chuckled, looking at his aides. They permitted a faint smile to come to their lips. I could see the old fart was going to get off one of his favorite jokes. "We Army men look over about three hundred of these so-called revolutionary planes every year. Will it fly?"

I couldn't keep quiet any longer. The million bucks it had cost me to get this far with the CA-4 gave me a right to shoot off my mouth. "She'll fly the ass off anything you got in your Army, General," I said. "And any other plane in the world, including the new fighters that Willi Messerschmitt is building."

The General turned toward me, a surprised look on his face. I saw his eyes go down over my grease-spattered white coveralls.

Morrissey spoke up quickly. "General Gaddis, Jonas Cord."

Before the General could speak, a voice came from the doorway behind him. "How do you know what Willi Messerschmitt is building?"

I looked up as the speaker came into view. The General had evidently brought a third aide with him. The silver wings shone on his blouse, matching the silver oak leaves on his shoulders. He was about forty, slim and with a flier's mustache. He wore just two ribbons on his blouse – the Croix de guerre of France and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

"He told me," I said curtly.

There was a curious look on the lieutenant colonel's face. "How is Willi?"

The General's voice cut in before I could answer. "We came out here to look over an airplane," be said in a clipped voice, "not to exchange information about mutual friends."

It was my turn to be surprised. I flashed a quick look at the lieutenant colonel but a curtain had dropped over his face. I could see, though, that there was no love lost between the two.

"Yes, sir," he said quickly. He turned and looked at the plane.

"How do you think she looks, Forrester?"

Forrester cleared his throat. "Interesting, sir," he said. He turned toward me. "Variable-pitch propellers?"

I nodded. He had good eyes to see that in this dim light. "Unusual concept," he said, "setting the wings where they are and sweeping them back. Should give her about four times the usual lift area."

"They do," I said. Thank God for at least one man who knew what it was all about.

"I asked how you thought she looks, Forrester?" the General repeated testily.

The curtain dropped down over Forrester's face again as he turned. "Very unusual, sir. Different."

The General nodded. "That's what I thought. Ugly. Like a toad sitting there."

I'd had about enough of his bullshit. "Does the General judge planes the same way he'd judge dames in a beauty contest?"

"Of course not!" the General snapped. "But there are certain conventions of design that are recognized as standard. For example, the new Curtiss fighter we looked at the other day. There's a plane that looks like a plane, not like a bomb. With wings attached."

"That baby over there carries twice as much armor, plus a thousand pounds of bombs, seven hundred and fifty miles farther, five thousand feet higher and eighty miles an hour faster than the Curtiss fighter you're talking about!" I retorted.

"Curtiss builds good planes," the General said stiffly.

I stared at him. There wasn't any use in arguing. It was like talking to a stone wall. "I'm not saying they don't, General," I said. "Curtiss has been building good airplanes for many years. But I'm saying this one is better than anything around."

General Gaddis turned to Morrissey. "We're ready to see a demonstration of your plane," he said stiffly. "That is, if your pilot is through arguing."

Morrissey shot a nervous look at me. Apparently the General hadn't even caught my name. I nodded at him and turned back to the hangar.

"Roll her out!" I called to the mechanics, who were standing there waiting.

Morrissey, General Gaddis and his aides walked out. When I got outside I saw that Morrissey and the others had formed a group around the General but Forrester stood a little to one side, talking to a young woman. I shot a quick look at her. She was stuff, all right – wild eyes and sensuous mouth.

I followed the plane out onto the runway. Hearing footsteps behind me, I turned around. It was Morrissey. "You shouldn't have teed off on the General like that."

I grinned at him. "Probably did the old bastard good. He's got enough yes men around him to be a movie producer."

"All the same, it's tough selling him as it is. I found out Curtiss is bidding their planes in at a hundred and fifty thousand each and you know the best we can do is two twenty-five."

"So what?" I said. "It's the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad. You can't buy a Cadillac for the same price as a Ford."

He stared at me for a moment, then he shrugged his shoulders. "It's your money, Jonas."

I watched him walk back to the General. He might be a great aeronautical engineer, but he was too anxious ever to become a good salesman. I turned to the mechanic. "Ready?"

"Ready when you are, Mr. Cord."

"O.K.," I said, starting to climb up to the cockpit. I felt a hand tugging at my leg. I looked down.

"Mind if I come along for the ride?" It was the lieutenant colonel.

"Not at all," I said. "Hop in."

"Thanks. By the way, I didn't get your name."

"Jonas Cord," I said.

"Roger Forrester," he answered, holding out his hand.

I should have guessed it the minute I heard his name, but I didn't tie it up until now. Roger Forrester – one of the original aces of the Lafayette Escadrille. Twenty-two German planes to his credit. He'd been one of my heroes when I was a kid.

"I've heard about you," I said.

His smile changed into a grin. "I've heard quite a bit about you."

We both laughed and I felt better. I pulled on his hand and he came up on the wing beside me. He looked into the cockpit, then back at me.

"No parachute?"

"Never use 'em," I said. "Make me nervous. Psychological. Indicates a lack of confidence."

He laughed.

"I can get one for you if you like."

He laughed again. "To hell with it."

About thirty miles out over the ocean, I put her through all the tricks in the book and then some only the CA-4 could do, and he didn't bat an eyelash.

For a clincher, I took her all the way up in a vertical climb until, at fourteen thousand feet, she hung in the sky like a fly dancing on the tip of a needle. Then I let her fall off on a dead stick into a tailspin that whipped the air-speed indicator up close to the five hundred mark. When we got down to about fifteen hundred feet, I took both hands off the stick and tapped him on the shoulder.

His head whipped around so fast it almost fell off his neck. I laughed. "She's all yours, Colonel!" I shouted.

We were down to twelve hundred feet by the time he turned around; eight hundred feet by the time he had the spin under control; six hundred feet before he had her in a straight dive; and four hundred feet before he could pull back on the stick.

I felt her shudder and tremble under me and a shrill scream came from her wings, like a dame getting her cherry copped. The G pinned me back in my seat, choking the air back into my throat and forcing the big bubbles right up into my eyes. Suddenly, the pressure lifted. We were less than twenty-five feet off the water when we started to climb.

Forrester looked back at me. "I haven't been this scared since I soloed back in fifteen," he yelled, grinning. "How did you know she wouldn't lose her wings in a dive like that?"

"Who knew?" I retorted. "But this was as good a time as any to find out!"

He laughed. I saw his hand reach forward and knock on the instrument panel. "What a plane. Like you said, she sure does fly!"

"Don't tell me. Tell that old coot back there."

A shadow fell across his face. "I'll try. But I don't know if I can do much good. It's all yours," he said, raising his hands. "You take her back in now."

I could see Morrissey and the soldiers standing on the field, watching us through field glasses as we came in. I put her into a wide turn and tapped Forrester on the shoulder. He looked back at me. "Ten bucks says I can take the General's hat off on the first pass."

He hesitated a moment, then grinned. "You're on!"

I came down at the field from about a thousand feet and leveled off about fifteen feet over the runway. I could see the startled expression on their faces as we rushed toward them, then I pulled back the stick. We went over their heads, into an almost vertical climb, catching them full blast in the prop wash.

I looked back just in time to see the captain running after the General's hat. I tapped Forrester's shoulder again. He turned to look back. He was laughing so hard there were tears in his eyes.

She set down as lightly as a pigeon coming home to its roost. I slid back the plastic canopy and we climbed down. I glanced at Forrester's face as we walked over to the group. All the laughter was gone from it now and the wary mask was back on.

The General had his hat on his head again. "Well, Forrester," he said stiffly. "What do you think?"

Forrester looked into his commanding officer's face. "Without a doubt, sir, this is the best fighter in the air today," he said in a flat, emotionless voice. "I'd suggest, sir, that you have a test group make an immediate check to substantiate my opinion."

"Hmm," the General said coldly. "You would, eh?"

"I would, sir," Forrester said quietly.

"There are other factors to be considered, Forrester. Do you have any idea of what these planes might cost?"

"No, sir," Forrester answered. '"My only responsibility is to evaluate the performance of the plane itself."

"My responsibilities go much further than that," the General said. "You must remember that we're operating under a strict budget."

"Yes, sir."

"Please bear it in mind," General Gaddis said testily. "If I went off half-cocked over every idea you Air Corps men had, there wouldn't be money enough left to keep the Army running for a month."

Forrester's face flushed. "Yes, sir."

I glanced at him, wondering why he stood there and took it. It didn't make sense. Not with the reputation he had. He could step out of the Army and knock down twenty times what he was making with any airline in the country. He had a name as good as Rickenbacker's any day.

The General turned to Morrissey. "Now, Mr. Morrissey," he said in an almost jovial voice. "Whom do we talk to about getting a few facts and figures on the cost of this airplane?"

"You can talk with Mr. Cord, sir."

"Fine!" boomed the General. "Let's go into the office and call him."

"You don't have to do that, General," I said quickly. "We can talk right here."

The General stared at me, then his lips broke into what he thought was an expansive smile. "No offense intended, son. I didn't connect the names."

"That's all right, General."

"Your father and I are old friends," he said. "Back during the last war, I bought a lot of the hard stuff from him and if it's all right with you, I'd like to talk this over with him. Purely for old times' sake, you understand. Besides, this can turn out to be a mighty big deal and I'm sure your daddy would like to get in on it himself."

I felt my face go white. I had all I could do to control myself. How long did you have to live in a man's shadow? My voice sounded flat and strained even to my own ears. "I'm sure he would, General. But I'm afraid you'll have to talk to me; you can't talk to him."

"Why not?" The voice was suddenly cold.

"My father's been dead for ten years," I said, turning my back on him and walking toward the hangar.