The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [25]
The general said sardonically, "I thought you were supposed to be bright, Reinking. I use the Alaska run to weed my pilots. It's the next thing to combat flying."
He whirled in his chair and slammed a hand to the wall map behind him. "Shit's sake, man, just look at the terrain! The hop from here to Edmonton, anybody in ATC can fly that with one eye closed. But then comes the real flying, every goddamn Canadian mountain there is and then the Alaskan ones. That flight is long, the weather is bad half the time and worse the rest, the Fairbanks airport is no cinch—do you see what I'm driving at? Those who can hack it on the northern hop"—the general reached high to resoundingly slap the Alaska portion of the map—"I see to it that they have a good shot at transferring over to be fighter or bomber pilots. Those pilots, perhaps you have noticed, Lieutenant, according to United States Army Air Corps regulations need to be m-e-n." The general spelled it out for him ever further: "Letting the goddamn WASPs onto that run would get in the way of that."
"I see, sir." Does the Senator?
General Grady slumped back in his chair as if under the weight of that thought. "Not that it matters, now that I have to screw the mongoose on this"—Ben did not let his face show how much he savored that description—"but what do I have to look forward to next from you, Reinking? I am supposedly in charge of all personnel on this air base, yet you have orders from somewhere on high that lets you flit around here doing whatever you damn please. Exactly who is behind this kink in the chain of command?" The general leaned far forward. "The President? Joseph Stalin? God?"
A colonel with a Gable mustache, actually.
Ben's war then had not yet become an endless maze of map-plastered base offices and florid commanding officers discomfited by his existence, but it was about to. That last spring morning in 1942 at the pilot training base outside Nashville, reporting as ordered but so mad he could barely see straight, he stepped into the briefing room the visiting colonel had borrowed. He still was reeling from the epic chewing out inflicted by his training squadron CO, minutes before. "So, Reinking, is your father possibly a Congressman? He's not? Then where the hell does your pull come from? I'm supposed to produce fighter pilots. I get somebody who looks like the second coming of von Richthofen, and ten days from graduation he chickens out. First thing I know he's detached to the goddamned puzzle palace in D.C. A colonel flies in from Washington just to fetch you—if that isn't pull, Reinking, I don't know what is. Have a nice safe war, and get out of my sight."
Torn between outrage and trepidation, Ben approached the waiting colonel prepared to plead this as a case of mistaken identity. His rigid salute went unanswered, the officer waving him to stand at ease. That and the way the Pentagon man casually perched on the edge of a desk instead of requisitioning it said he was not a military lifer, Ben deciphered. Instead he looked like someone off the cover of Time, the slicked-back hair, the dapper pencil-thin mustache, the executive attitude; there was always a smokestack or an assembly line over the tailored shoulder on the magazine cover.
Colonel Whoever-he-was meanwhile had given Ben an equal looking-over and now said, as if it was the first of many decisions, "Light one if you've got one. Or try one of my Cuban 'rillos?" He held out a pack of thin dark baby cigars.
"I don't smoke, sir."
"Still in training, good." The colonel flipped open his lighter and puffed a cigarillo to life. His sudden question caught Ben off-guard. "Did you happen to hear the Ted Loudon show last Saturday?"
Loudmouth? You couldn't pay me enough to listen to that creep. Ben stuck to, "Can't say that I did, sir."
"Too bad. You were prominently mentioned. Here's a transcription." He held out a fold of yellow teletype paper for Ben to take.
THRESHOLD PRESS WAR PROJECT PICKUP FROM CONTINENTAL