There were six planes-the new B-24 Liberator type, long-range and fromidable. They gave him a waist-gunner’s seat in the third plane and showed him how to use the intercom and oxygen apparatus.
Everything he owned of any consequence was in the B-4 bag at his feet and except for the pistols none of it was of moment to him; he did not carry souvenirs of his life. It was one of the things that made him feel apart from the rest of his kind-the White Russian exiles with their passionate covetousness.
It was cold in the night sky. Through the turret perspex he watched the other planes bobbing slightly in the intangible balance of their staggered formation. The drone was hypnotic and soporific; in his mind he ran back over the tense telephone conversation with General Deniken-searching for clues to the things Deniken had left unsaid:
“Alexsander, you have been transferred to Washington. You’ve received your orders?”
“I’ve received orders, yes sir. I’m not permitted to discuss them.”
“I understand. Alexander, there is something you must do for me. I ask this in your brother’s name.”
He bridled slightly. “Yes?”
“You must go immediately to New York and meet with someone. You must do this before you report to Washington.”
“I don’t think there’s time for that, General.”
“Make the time. This is a matter of the utmost importance-it is vital. The Plaza Hotel in New York, do you know it?”
“Yes.”
“You must be there by tomorrow evening.”
“Will you be there, General?”
“No, they’re sending someone from Feodor’s group in Spain. I don’t know which of them it is. It may be your brother. It may well be Prince Leon himself. The matter is that important. I beg of you be there within twenty-four hours. I ask this in Vassily’s name.”
There was no way to refuse the old man. If the exiled shell of White Russia had a savior then A. I. Deniken was that man. He was the greatest White general of the Russian Civil War and he had been the last Supreme Ruler of All the Russias: to the White exiles and even to the surviving Romanov Pretenders like the Grand Duke Feodor he was the next thing to a Czar.
Put by Deniken it could not be refused.
In the early hours they took more than an hour to refuel at Wright Field in Ohio and then they were droning on through a dull summer morning, buffeting in the turbulence of the clouds. At three in the afternoon they came into McGuire Field. Captain Johnson walked back from the leading Liberator, a parachute pack trailing in his fist. “I’ve got to report in but I’m driving over to Philadelphia right away. If you want to hang around I’ll give you a lift to the Trenton station. It’s about an hour and a half on the train to New York.”
Alex waited for him in the PX canteen. Johnson collected him at three forty-five. He had a motor-pool Ford. Alex tossed his bag in the back seat and climbed in.
“My name’s Paul, Colonel. Most of them call me Papp-I’m four years older than the next oldest pilot in the Thirty-fifth”
Alex reached across his lap to shake hands. “I appreciate your trouble.”
“No trouble at all. Always bothers the taxpayer in me when we have to ferry those big jobs empty-seems like a hell of a waste of aviation gasoline.”
Johnson was a stocky man with blunt hands and short reddish hair and a square freckled face. He couldn’t have been much over thirty: “Pappy.” At thirty-four Alex felt old.
Johnson drove as if pursued, flashing along the narrow roads of the New Jersey pine barrens. It was hot under the sullen sky and they kept the windows wide open; Johnson shouted to make himself heard. “They got you aboard damn quick down at El Paso. You mind if I ask where you get your drag?”
“The base commander at Bliss is an old friend. We soldiered together in Finland.”
A sudden sidewise glance; Johnson’s face changed. “Danilov-sure. They had a piece on you in Colliers last year, right? ‘This man goes where the wars are’-something like that. Joined up over here to train ranger commandoes, wasn’t that it? Listen, you’ve seen those German planes in action. How do they really stack up?”
“They’re not as good as Goering and Goebbels want us to think. The Spitfires have been handing it to the Messerschmitts.”
“Weren’t you in China?”
Johnson’s professionalism was total: it was a characteristic of good airmen. Anticipating the question Alex said, “There isn’t a plane in the world that can match the Japanese Zero.”
“I’ll tell you something, Colonel, you give me a B-Seventeen Fort and I’ll take my chances against those peashooters. You ever seen a Fort up close?”
“No.”
“Sweetest airplane a man ever built. We had a flight of prototypes for tryouts last year. You think we’ll be in this war, Colonel? I don’t think it’s going to be decided by Messerschmitts or Zeroes or anybody else’s peashooters. I think it’s going to be dogfaces and carriers and long-range four-engine bombers. That’s the three things that will decide it-the rest is all window dressing. It takes carriers to open the sea-lanes. It takes heavy bombers to flatten the enemy’s communications and supply lines. Takes the infantry to root him out and finish him. That’s the whole story of this war we’re looking at.”
Johnson had the earmarks of a long-distance talker but Alex listened with respect because the pilot was a shrewd man and obviously it was a thing to which he’d given a great deal of thought.
Alex said, “I’d add one thing to that list. I’ve seen panzers in action.”
“I don’t agree. That’s only tactics. You can stop a tank easy if you’re ready for it. They’re sitting ducks. Too many ways you can hit a tank. Let me tell you something-I put my squadron through a little experiment last year. We mocked up twenty tanks on the ground out at Camp Hunter-Liggett in the Mohave Desert and then we took off. We made a regular war game out of it-phony flak, the works.
“We plastered hell out of them. On the scorecard it was Air Corps fifteen, Armor nothing.” Johnson flashed a glance at him. “Low-level precision bombing, Colonel. You’re right on top of your target-hell you can’t miss if your bombardiers know their jobs. You know how good a target a big fat tank makes from fifty feet altitude?”
“What if they’d been real tanks-taking evasive action?”
“Tanks can’t maneuver that fast. They turn like bull elephants-catch them on rough terrain even the best panther tank can’t make better than fifteen, eighteen miles an hour. They’re sitting ducks. But the War Department gave me that same line. Christ I felt like Billy Mitchell. They told me to take my ideas and shove them. Well I guess that’s all right-when the time comes maybe I can talk them into taking out that report of mine and dusting it off. We’re not into the war yet, a lot of things are likely to change.”
Johnson guided the Ford smoothly through the main street of a small town. On the outskirts he put it back up to fifty and went swaying through the bends. Light rain began to bead up on the windshield. Alex said, “You can really pinpoint a target as small as a tank, can you?”
“It takes training, Colonel. I never said it was easy. But one of these days it’s going to help win this war.”