Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [247]
“Get me Colonel Loveless at the Rose Hotel. Hello ... Clint. Get back up here, right away.”
Hiram was out of bed, wrestled into a bathrobe, and paced the living room until his vice chief of staff arrived from the hotel down the block.
“November, 1943,” Stonebraker said. “I sent you to the Assam Valley to get some tractors flown into Chengtu.”
“By God!”
“Think, Clint.”
“By God!” Clint’s voice trembled. “By God. We had a little sergeant in maintenance. I remember now. He was a
regular impresario with a cutting torch.”
“Remember how we got those tractors over the Hump, Clint!”
“Yes, sir. This little guy cut them each up into fifty parts, numbered each part, flew with them to Chengtu and welded them back together.”
“Why in the hell didn’t you think of this earlier?”
“Because ... sir ... I’ve been too busy keeping the goddamed food down to fifteen hundred tons.”
“All right ... what was his name?”
“Christ ... let me think ... a real gook name ... Homer ... Halbert ... Remus ... something like that. Freshwater.”
“Goldwater?”
“No ... let me think ... we sent him a citation. Drinkwater! Clarence Drinkwater!”
“Get back to Headquarters, find out where he is, and get him over here.”
Clarence Drinkwater, auto wrecker and junk dealer from Atlanta, Georgia, was approached the next afternoon in his yard by a man from Air Force Intelligence.
He was very happy because he spent his days cutting up junk with a torch and was pleased to know that his rare talent was needed. He packed an extra case of chewing tobacco for he always needed a chaw to help him concentrate.
Twenty-four hours later he arrived in Germany at the Hanau Engineer Base into the waiting arms of Clint Loveless, who nearly broke into tears watching Clarence begin cutting up rock crushers, graders, bulldozers, and all the heavy machinery needed to make new runways in Berlin.
Big Nellie sat in Hiram Stonebraker’s suite listening to the general explain the mountain of new projects that had been initiated to support the mission. Work had begun on rail lines, highways, airstrips, dumps.
A spare-parts base had been established outside Munich at Erding; MATS announced the first Skymasters would be on the way from Hawaii and Alaska and Tokyo and the Caribbean, and the President had authorized the call-up of ten thousand reserves.
“I’m hoping to be able to give the order to stop the cannibalization of the Gooney Birds. It is still a great old craft and I hate to see them lose their integrity. If we intend to airlift Berlin ...”
“Excuse me, General. What did you just say?”
“I said, if we intend to airlift Berlin ...”
“Airlift ... my God ...”
“Never thought much about it.”
In his column, Nelson Goodfellow Bradbury told America that a new word had been given to the English language by the rightful father, Hiram Stonebraker. It would capture the imagination of the world.... The word was Airlift.
Chapter Twelve
HONOLULU
Master Sergeant Nick Papas, a sizable and burly man, made into Tiger Quong’s Gentleman Bar in Pearl City. Tiger was weary, making motions of mopping the bar, waiting to close. He poured Nick a beer. Nick chug-a-lugged it.
“Where’s the sleeping beauty?”
Tiger pointed to a tiny office off the hallway. Nick entered. Captain Scott Davidson was passed out cold, sprawled on a cot. Nick had been looking for him all over Honolulu when the Tiger chased him down by phone.
He stared down at the captain. “Christ, what a sorry-assed sight,” then brought Scott Davidson up to a sitting position. He was like a limp rag doll. Nick slung an arm over his shoulder and dragged him into the men’s room, where Tiger was waiting with a bucket of ice water. The frigid dousing stunned him from his reverie.
“You son of a bitch,” Scott moaned, “you son of a bitch. I’m sick ... I may die ...”
“Go in the can, stick your finger down your throat, and vomit.”
“Goddam you, Nick. You’ve got no respect for rank.”
“Puke already. Tiger