“Like upbringing.”
“I was a deprived youth,” Barr explained.
Barr was one of three sons of a noted and Mayflower-linked New Hampshire family. Lacking one physical trait that identified him with the Barr clan, he had evolved as the black sheep. While he had a Yale education, Bucky Barr took delight in being good-naturedly boorish. He also had a multimillion dollar trust fund that paid him a quarter-million dollars every January 2.
They pushed two tables together to give themselves some elbow room and spent an hour with French fries, hamburgers, Heineken, and their respective notes. The debate involved the perceived condition of subsystems, mostly.
Captain Dinning kept the coffee cups filled and the beer cans rolling, and listened to them with what Wyatt thought was growing suspicion. The captain appeared to have a growing distrust of their apparent cover story, which had not been fully detailed for him. Wyatt did not worry too much about their guide, but from time to time, he threw in a statement intended to support the cover. “On 3387, what’s the result if we re-rivet with the new countersunk rivets?”
Demion said, “Much cleaner. It’s worth maybe point-one Mach.”
At four o’clock, the four of them agreed on a list, and Wyatt jotted down the tail numbers. At the bottom of the page, he wrote in a phone number with a 202 area code. He ripped the page out of his notebook and handed it to Dinning.
“That’s the roster, Captain, providing, of course, that each of them still carries an airworthiness certificate.” The captain, who was a public relations specialist rather than a pilot, looked over the list carefully. “I’ll double-check the certificates for you and get the paperwork started, Mr. Cowan.”
“We need drop tanks installed on that first F-4E,” Demion pointed out.
“Also,” Kriswell added, “we need to rob a couple planes for two drag chutes, a replacement IFF for 1502, and a rear canopy for 925.”
“Of course. It’s not a problem.” Dinning turned his head toward Wyatt. “Do you mind my asking what you’re going to do with these planes?”
“Not at all. Back in ’61, the Phantom held some world records for speed at Mach 2.6 and for altitude at ninety-eight thousand feet. It’s still a good airplane, Captain, and we’re going to modify these for racing and endurance trials, as well as taking them on the air show circuit.”
“I see. I wish you luck, but do you need all of these electronics?”
“Hell, if I’m buying them, I might as well get what comes with them, right?”
The set of Dinning’s mouth suggested he thought otherwise. “Yes. I suppose so.”
“Thanks. Now, I’d appreciate it if you could get them all towed in in the morning and checked out. We won’t worry too much about avionics at this point, but we do need batteries installed on almost all of them, and battery charges and fluid levels will have to be up to par. I’d like to have everything fuelled and ready to go by the day after tomorrow.”
The captain straightened up in his chair, his face apologetic. “On Thursday? I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Mr. Cowan.”
“The aircraft we selected shouldn’t pose many problems, Captain.”
“Not on the flight readiness, no, sir. However, before surplus aircraft can be sold to civilians, we are required to have our ground crews remove a number of weapons-related systems: the ordnance pylons, the cannon, threat warning devices, jammers, chaff dispensers, attack radar, and the like. I’m sure you understand, sir. None of that would be necessary for your objectives, anyway.”
While Dinning was explaining his problem, Wyatt got out his wallet and withdrew a certified check for $225,000. The check was identified as issued in favour of Noble Enterprises, Inc., of Phoenix, Arizona. He placed it on the table and slid it across to Dinning.
“What’s this, sir?”
“That’s payment for seven aircraft, Captain. And I’ll give you another check for the fuel and whatever maintenance is required.”
From the look on his public relations face, Dinning apparently did not think that some twenty million dollars’ worth of aircraft should be surplused to some civilian at a penny to the dollar.
“Well, sir, I think the surplus material people will want to negotiate a little further.”
“The price has already been approved by the Department of Defence,” Wyatt explained to him.
“Oh. I didn’t know that, Mr. Cowan.”
“And the price includes all equipment now aboard the airplanes. We get them as is.”
Dinning stood up, the resolution to prevent civilians access to sophisticated, and possibly still classified, military weapons clearly revealed on his face. “I’m going to have to check on that, Mr. Cowan.”
“I know. That’s why I gave you the phone number.”
Two
Andrew Michael Wyatt’s hair was full over the ears, tapered above his neck, and fell across his forehead in a casual swoop. With the deep tan of his face, he might have been a Malibu Beach or Honolulu surf bum in appearance. The deep etching at the corners of his ice-blue eyes and his firm mouth suggested otherwise. He did not smile very often, and his closest friends sometimes found him short on humour. What really killed the leisurely image was the iron grey colour of his hair.
Though he was only in his mid-forties, Wyatt impressed people as being a little older and a little wiser, maybe fifty. He had lived with the overly mature image for twenty years, having gone prematurely grey at twenty-four. He could, in fact, pinpoint the date when the silver began to appear in previously dark locks.
It was April 17, 1970, a few hours before April 18.
It was a night mission over Haiphong, and he was flying an F-111A swing-wing fighter bomber under development by General Dynamics. Wyatt was assigned to the 428th Tactical Fighter Squadron out of Ubom in Thailand, and the squadron had been given six F-lll’s for operational trials over North Vietnam. The early version of the aircraft was disappointing for they lost half of their complement within a month.
His was one of them.
Armed with two 750-pound bombs, Wyatt’s airplane had been given a dock and warehouse in the harbour as primary targets. Military intelligence had determined that both the dock and the warehouse were supposed to be military targets rather than civilian. Targets were very specific in that war, approved by the White House inner circle — all of whom considered themselves military experts, and anything not adorned with some kind of NVA insignia, whatever that might be, was off-limits.
He and his wingman, a second lieutenant named Ruskin, approached the harbour low from the west, riding the hilly terrain as low as possible in order to avoid radar detection. They were accompanied by a flight of four Marine F-4s flying cover. As they neared the city, Wyatt and Ruskin climbed to five thousand feet and spread a quarter-mile apart in search of their mission objectives on the far side of the anchorage. His Weapons System Officer, Miles Adair, in the seat next to him, had his head buried in the radar boot.
Wyatt never reached, nor saw, either of his own targets. Five miles before reaching the harbour, the radar screen lit up with the blips of Fan Song target-seeking radars. Adair counted off six surface-to-air missile launches. Most of the Fan Songs went passive as the missile-carrying F-4 fighters launched retaliatory strikes against the radar installations. As the harbour finally burst into view, the dark skies were peppered with bright pinpricks of light: exploding SAMs and erupting antiaircraft shells from the quad-barrelled ZSU-23 batteries surrounding Hanoi and Haiphong.
Some brave communist radar operator kept his set active in order to guide his missile, and Wyatt’s earphones sang with the pitched tone of the threat warning and Adair’s verbal additions to it.