While their method of eradicating serial numbers wouldn’t stand up to the latest developments in forensic examinations, where high-powered X rays and computers and acid-washes might raise an old serial number, it was sufficient for standard replacement parts not particular to an airplane. For those parts that might be traceable by serial number to a specific aircraft — an oleo strut, a Martin-Baker ejection seat — the area around the former serial number was heated with an acetylene torch to make the molecules dance around and perhaps totally eradicate an important number or two.
Almost all of the removed panels had now been reattached in their proper locations.
When Barr slipped through the Judas door into the hangar at noon, he found the two pilots and two technicians sprawled in one comer, sucking on soft drinks and munching on thick chicken salad sandwiches built on homemade bread. He figured the heat inside the hangar was in the low nineties, a welcome relief from the heat on the tarmac. The five-gallon jug of iced tea parked against one wall was about half empty.
“You guys taking another break?” he asked.
Norm Hackley flipped him a finger. Hackley, who was short and dark and had flown F-4s in one Vietnam tour, was closing on fifty years of age. His light eyes were as sharp as ever, and Barr estimated he had lost fifteen pounds in the last week, which he wouldn’t miss.
Karl Gettman also had F-4 time, though he was too young for Vietnam. Gettman had been a weapons system operator, the GIB — Guy in the backseat. In his mid-thirties now and certified as a pilot in a dozen jet types, he was black as night, with a mini-Afro, and a ready smile.
“You want to break something, Bucky,” Gettman said, “take a walk over by the airplanes. Better yet, take a run.”
Barr turned to look at the planes. Two five-horse-power air compressors and a commercial wet/dry vacuum stood near them, and air hoses snaked around the floor. The concrete was littered with the fine, dry sand used in the sandblasters. The sand was vacuumed up to be used again. About half of the insignia and camouflage paint had been stripped from three of the planes, and the aluminium skin was shiny and virginal. He could smell the sour aroma of the liquid paint remover being utilized in addition to the sandblasting.
“You’re not the neatest housekeeper I ever met, Karl,” Barr said.
“Me? Lucas is in charge of floors.”
Littlefield, a bulky man with huge hands and an impressively bald and large head, grinned. “Thing I like about this outfit, everybody gets to be in charge of something. I drew sand.”
With eight years in the Air Force and another eight at Lockheed in California before that aerospace giant folded its West Coast operations and retreated to Georgia, Littlefield was a top-rated airframe technician. When he made a suggestion, the pilots yielded to it without complaint.
Ben Borman was another big man, with a Swedish heritage apparent in his colouring and blue eyes. He had put twenty years of his life into the Air Force before signing on with Aeroconsultants. His specialty had been ordnance, and he was now learning to be a fuel boom operator.
“What are you in charge of, Ben?” Barr asked.
“I’m in charge of Norm. He needs all the direction he can get.”
Barr squatted in front of the group, resting his forearms on his thighs. “What’s the schedule look like?”
“There’s a schedule?” Gettman asked.
“We’re damned near as close as we can be,” Hackley said. “Day after tomorrow, we’ll be ready for paint. Then, we’ll take on the tanker.”
“Thank God we only have to strip insignia off it,” Littlefield said. “She’s got about two acres of skin, and if she’d been painted, I’d go out to the highway and raise my thumb.”
Barr grinned at him. “Before you go, you want to patch the holes in the E models?”
“Hey, guy, I already fabricated my pieces. I’m waiting on these slow bastards to get the paint off.”
The early models of the F-4 had not had an internal gun, a design failing that had raised complaints from Vietnam-era pilots who, as far as Barr could figure, only wanted the guns to prove themselves as hot-shit pilots on their glorious way to ace status. Of course, Sidewinder air-to-air missiles hadn’t been very effective at the time, either. The complaints had been met with gun pods slung beneath the centre-line for the early models, then the internal M-61A rotary-barrel cannon mounted in the nose of the F-4E.
Barr had always been a firm believer in missile technology, engaging battles with about twenty miles between the hostile aircraft. If one had to use a cannon one was too damned close. After some serious reconsideration and discussion about their mission, he and Wyatt had elected to remove the twenty-millimetre cannons from the E models. It not only saved a great deal of weight, though it changed the centre of gravity, it precluded pilots from relying on the gun for close combat. If one was out of missiles, the prudent course was to turn tail.
Littlefield had fashioned new fittings which would lock the gun port doors in the closed position.
Barr pushed himself back to his feet. “You need anything from Albuquerque?”
“You’re going to Albuquerque?” Gettman asked. “I thought Andy was going.”
“He’s got another appointment.”
“I need about ten more gallons of paint reducer and five quarts of catalytic hardener,” Littlefield said.
Barr pulled his notebook from his shirt pocket and wrote it down. “How come? I thought we had it figured.”
“We did, but we forgot about later.”
“Gotcha. Anything else?”
“I’d ask you to call my girl,” Gettman said, “but you’d probably go see her in person.”
“I’ll do that,” Barr said.
“No, you won’t.”
Barr left the hangar, crossed the dry steam of the tarmac, and entered Hangar Five.
Here, too, the lunch break was underway. The pilots and technicians were gathered at the back of the hangar, around the old wooden workbenches. In front of the benches, in twelve maintenance cradles, were the engines from the Phantoms. The Hercules engines had been pronounced fit by Demion and Hank Cavanaugh, the primary engine specialist, though the nacelles had to be removed in order to grind off serial numbers.
Each of the F-4 turbojets, however, was being fully disassembled, examined, shorn of identifying numbers, and rebuilt with new seals, bearings, and subassemblies where necessary. That was the primary reason for Barr’s trip, to pick up parts. It wasn’t an unexpected development, he thought. It was one of the laws of mechanics. Whenever he started a mechanical restoration, he always had to run back to the store a dozen times for forgotten parts. And he wasn’t alone, judging by the number of NAPA Auto Parts or Checker Auto Parts delivery trucks he saw running to the Ford and Chrysler and GM service centres in any city in the nation.
Scattered around the hangar were toolboxes on casters, small lifting cranes, air compressors, start carts, a small sheet-metal roller, an arc welder, and a couple oxy-gen/acetylene dollies. A big electronic diagnostics unit was shoved against the sidewall.
The two trailers he and Jordan had picked up at Nellis were parked in one corner, still covered with canvas and packed with cardboard boxes. The boxes contained all of the avionics and electronics, and they weren’t yet ready to dig into that pile. Wyatt wasn’t ready, though Tom Kriswell and Sam Vrdla, the electronics wizards, were itching to get their hands into those boxes.
Barr hiked the long trail to the back of the hangar, approaching Demion, Kriswell, and Wyatt.