Sky Ghost (23 page)

“But its not the right way—it just
seems
like it is.”

Payne took off his glasses and just shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe Hunter was standing there saying all this stuff.

“Make some sense please, Flight Officer,” he told him.

“Tomorrow,” Hunter said. “Tomorrow I’ll make some sense. But now, we have to do something about this letter. It’s the first step to solving a lot of problems. I know it is.”

Payne took the letter again and read it over—especially the last paragraph, where it stated that anyone signing it would in effect become the CO for the entire Circle Wing.

“What are you suggesting exactly?” Payne asked him harshly. “That you sign this thing and take command?”

Hunter just shook his head. “No, not me,” he replied. “It’s not my style, and besides, I’ll be too busy.”

Payne’s face grimaced.

“Then who the hell do you want to sign it?” he asked.

Hunter pulled a pen from his flight suit pocket and handed it to Payne.

“You,” he said.

T
HE WEEKLY CARGO PLANE
from Gander touched down at Dreamland base at the height of yet another snowstorm.

It came in, like most planes did at the fighter base, slipping and sliding, two of its 10 engines on fire, the rest of them encased in ice.

The base’s emergency crews rode out to the newly arrived aircraft at a somewhat leisurely pace and hosed down the offending engines.

And as always the crew fled—getting away from their flying beast as fast as they could.

One passenger stumbled out of the back. His hair was smoldering, that’s how close he’d come to being consumed.

He was carrying two large suitcases and kept dropping them as he ran. Finally one of them burst open and the insides fell out onto the snow. A bottle of red hair dye. A tacky tuxedo. Three crystal balls.

It was Zoltan. Formerly Captain Zoltan of the Air Corps Psychic Evaluation Division, now Zoltan the Magnificent, USO performer.

He picked up his stuff, grabbing all he could in the blinding snow and then looked around the frozen base in a quiet panic.

“What the hell am I doing here?” he asked.

His daughter had first inquired about this gig months before, just after Zoltan got mustered out of the service because of his bad knees—or was it bad legs?

The problem was neither he nor his daughter could see into the future—at least not far enough to realize that an American victory was not in the bag, as everyone had assumed way back then.

He was playing a rubber chicken date in Westchester when he first heard about the Great German Deception in Paris. His initial disgust was an economic one. His daughter had been working on a postwar European tour for him and a five-night stand in Paris was to have been the topper.

But that idea was killed as soon as the place got flattened, and frankly, after that, the whole entertainment dollar thing went right down the tubes. People went back to buying booze and things they could do at home. The audience appeal of a traveling psychic show was pretty lean when it appeared the country was about to be invaded. You would have thought that people would flock to a seer in such desperate times—but no, things were so bad, apparently people didn’t want to see into the future.

So he began casting about for anything, and the USO was about the only group still out there who still had any money.

He got booked on a tour of U.S. bases first, and played to the glummest audiences possible. It got so bad, he begged his contact at the USO to get him off the tour. Just his luck that the contact actually came through. If Zoltan wanted a change of scenery, he had just the place for him to go: 10 shows in Iceland.

Now Zoltan picked up his bags and began the long trudge toward the clutch of buildings way at the other end of the runway. He had to find some colonel here, the entertainment director for this place. The guy who’d be pulling his strings for the next two weeks. Zoltan had scribbled his name down somewhere. What was it again? Colonel Carpp? Colonel Crapp? Colonel Crabb? He wasn’t sure.

He kept walking, and the wind and snow got worse and with each step he felt more miserable.

This was not good, he thought, looking out on the utter wasteland of snow and ice. He was feeling some really strange vibes here.

“I should have seen this coming,” he whispered to himself.

T
HE NEXT DAY DAWNED
bright and sunny. There was no snow in the forecast for the region where the Circle Wing was located. It was perfect flying weather.

Yet no combat missions would be flown today. Or the next day. Or the day after that.

By orders of the new adjunct general, all 12 bases of the Circle were on stand-down until further notice.

Each base received a separate set of orders. Each set spelled out exactly what activities were to be completed during the stand-down. For just because the Circle bases would not be flying any missions against the enemy, that did not mean there would be nothing to do.

Things were going to change. That was assured once the new orders went out. The biggest change was the consolidation of 20 of the Circle Wing’s 33 bomber squadrons. Now, instead of going in 33 different directions at once, the 20 squadrons would become the 101st Combined Heavy Bombardment Wing.

This new unit would contain no less than 750 bombers, both B-17/36s and B-24/52s, as well as 300 or so cargo planes, recon planes, weather planes, and training bombers.

The second biggest surprise was that 10 other bomber squadrons were being deactivated. Two would no longer exist. The eight others were to have their aircraft reconfigured in a very radical way. Their maintenance crews were told to weld their bomb bays shut. They were told to take anything having to do with dropping bombs—from the racks to the bombsights to the bombardier’s station—off each aircraft.

In their stead, extra 50 caliber ammunition racks were to be installed. And each plane crew was ordered to cut 20 holes along each side of their aircraft’s fuselage. At each of these holes, a glass blister would be placed, and then a .50 caliber machine gun. These weapons would be taken from the Circle’s storehouses and from the two bomber squadrons that were being deactivated completely.

When done, each reconfigured bomber should have no less than 50 machine gun stations on board—20 on each side of the fuselage, as well as double guns in the nose, belly, roof, and tail.

One of the bomber squadrons that was wiped out completely was the 3234th, the all-female unit. Their ground crews were dispersed to the new 101st Combined. Their pilots were told to report to Dreamland base. They were now the nucleus of the 2001st Fighter Squadron.

About 20 miles west of Dreamland there was an island in the ice known as Krjnck Jel, or simply “Crank.” For the next 48 hours, the sky above Crank was filled with female pilots flying the little-used Mustang-5s of the dormant 2001st. At first, the airplanes simply flew in circles in formations of twos and threes. Then, gradually, as the day wore on, the planes began engaging in mock dogfights with each other, using direct-beam radio signals as “ammunition,” fired by squeezing bubble switches attached to their control columns.

Each pilot was rated on accuracy and skill, and those women who proved the best were then made combat staff officers in the 2001st. Their first job was to instruct the rest of the new fighter pilot corps.

On the second day, these instructors became “The Aggressors,” the designated enemy that the rest of the squadron fought against. The only man involved was Hunter, playing the part of referee/guru.

By the end of this second day, the pilots were well schooled in the basics of fighter aircraft. The transformation was nothing less than remarkable.

On the third day, a new twist was added. The Aggressors flew very low patterns over Crank Island. Twelve bombers borrowed from the Combined Group flew over the island in a mock bombing formation. The Aggressors “attacked” the bomber formation, rising straight up out of the earth to do so, or so it seemed. But before they could reach the bombers, the Mustang-5s of the 2001st pounced on them. On the first few tries, the Aggressor pilots got through to the bombers every time.

But by the end of the day, the Aggressors were getting nowhere near them. Thus the new 2001st Fighter Squadron was reborn.

The changes didn’t stop there. A great hoopla was put on surrounding the restructuring of the revitalized Circle bases. New unit patches were sewn, new flag decals were stamped out. All of the airplanes—bombers, trainers, cargo planes—were painted the same deep blue and white camo, an effective yet eerily chilling color scheme.

Now, instead of crews gathering separately on each base, trucks were used to bring people in to congregate in one big club, located in a hangar at Dreamland. This makeshift place was open to all, officers and enlisted men both. Here the crews would eat together, drink together, get to know one another.

In many ways, this might have been the most important change of all.

There was one squadron that didn’t receive any instructions when the Wing first reorganized. Not flight orders anyway. Instructions eventually came through though. And now many of the drudge jobs usually done by the plane crews themselves had been turned over to the members of this last squadron.

This meant that in the new Circle Wing, the planes were cleaned, the bombs were moved, and the garbage taken out by members of what used to be known as the 13th Heavy Bombardment Squadron.

The fourth day of the restructuring dawned clear and crisp as well and it was spent with more training, more drills, more flying.

Then word went through the new groups that a mission briefing was scheduled for that night. Finally the crews would learn the reason behind the huge shakeup.

The trucks started arriving at Dreamland ops center at 1800 hours, six in the evening. It took nearly two hours for everyone to be dropped off from the individual bases. The room was overflowing by 1930 hours, and busting at the seams by 8
P.M.
Even the hallways outside were packed. In the end, more than 4500 people were on hand.

At precisely 2015 hours, the room hushed and the lights went off.

Then, for the first time, the members of the Circle Wing saw their acting commander in his new position. Major A. Payne, Adjunct General, walked out on to the stage.

He looked nervous, and was fidgety as usual. Behind him the Main/AC computer whirred softly. The mission film screen was lowered as usual. The projector was turned on, and as usual a blotch of colors appeared on the screen. Payne reached down and focused the lens, and as usual, those gathered saw an animated map of Occupied England.

The clouds moved, the airplanes appeared, just like always. A huge gathering of airplane icons formed over Iceland, and as usual, they turned south. At this point, a wave of disappointment might have been detected by a Psychic Evaluation Officer, had one been on hand.

But then suddenly, moving quicker than he had in 10 years, Payne dramatically kicked the mission projector over. The thing fell off the stage and shattered into a million pieces on the floor. A gasp went through the crowd.
What the hell was he doing?

“You know what?” he yelled to the crowded ops room. “We don’t need this piece of shit anymore!”

The room was stunned. Mission film projectors were known to cost thousands of dollars.

Payne looked out at them. His face was creased in terror, but it was too late to turn back now.

“And you know what?” he yelled again. “We don’t need this piece of shit anymore either!”

With that he took a crowbar, walked over the Main/AC and began smashing it to bits. Magnetic tapes went flying, switches began breaking, blinking bulbs began popping. A real tremor went through the crowd now. The men and women had never seen anything like this. The Main/AC was the guiding light of the U.S. military, the Holy See. Attacking it was like beating up the Pope.

Yet Payne tore into the machine with such verve, he reduced it to a smoking pile of scrap in less than 30 seconds time.

Then he returned to the microphone, out of breath, his face more crimson than usual. All the hate, all the sorrow he’d experienced in losing so many of his men over the last four months finally came to a head. It was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

“We’ve been doing it all wrong!” he announced. “Because the War Department doesn’t know what to do and neither does that maniac piece of shit.”

And at that moment, something changed. A murmur went through the crowd.

“You sick of seeing your friends killed for nothing?” Payne asked them.

“Yes.” came the reply.

“You sick of throwing bombs into a city for no reason?”

The reply came back stronger.
“Yes!”

“You think that maybe we can start thinking about winning this war again?”

“Yes!”

“OK then,” Payne said, sweating up a storm, but working the crowd like a Saturday night preacher. “Let’s get to work and do the job right!”

“Yes!”
was the unanimous response.

The crowd was so whipped up, it was actually getting hot inside the huge room. Payne looked offstage to where Hunter and Captain James stood. Hidden, Hunter and Sarah were urging him on. He gave them a quick thumbs-up.

Payne took two steps back and dramatically tore down the very expensive movie screen to reveal a dark blue curtain.

“Starting tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen,” he said “
This
will be our target…”

He pulled the curtain down to reveal another map. A real map. No fancy moving planes, no fancy moving clouds. One that didn’t move, one that didn’t look like a cartoon.

Payne took up an old-fashioned pointer and slammed the map once hard. “This, my friends, is where we’re going!”

Every eye in the room was on the map. It looked so different, they didn’t recognize it at first.

But then it began to sink in. And then, they began to cheer.

The map was of Germany.

Officers Club