Magestic 2, p.66
Magestic 2, page 66
‘Very little, but the skin will offer thick honeycomb that will stop a bullet, should anyone shoot at it. The floor and ceiling are bullet-proof by accident, due to thickness, and the fuel tanks are self-sealing. But it would be a large and soft target if it encountered a fighter.’
At Lemming Base I met Hal in his grey flight suit. ‘What you doing up here with us workers?’ he asked, leading me towards a jeep.
‘Checking you’re not enjoying yourself too much,’ I told him as we hopped into the jeep, the driver pulling away. As we rounded a hangar, a jet screeched down the taxiway, one of the prototypes. I pointed, raising my voice to be heard, ‘How are they doing?’
‘Little left to do,’ Hal shouted. ‘They handle well, decent payload and mission profile.’
We passed four large hangars before stopping at the Huey shed. I smiled as I stepped down, four green Hueys sat there awaiting some Rolling Stones music.
‘And how do these fly?’
‘You’ll not find much difference. If anything, we’ve improved the damn design.’ He pointed. ‘Door mounts for guns, even a winch now for fetching-up downed RAF crews in the British Channel.’
‘English … Channel, not British.’
‘Fucking Limeys.’
‘Range?’
‘She’s good for just about two hundred when loaded.’
‘Extra fuel tanks?’ I asked as I inspected one of the helicopters.
‘Side clip-on drop-tanks, and they’ll take her to four hundred no problem. Still, ya wouldn’t want to be shot at with them fitted!’
‘No,’ I agreed. ‘Armour?’
‘She’s a tough bird, she’ll take a fifty cal and keep going.’
‘Perspex?’ I nudged.
‘Will bend and go white, but not shatter. You’d just have to stick ya head out the window to fly.’
He led me next door, four Cobras sat proud and looking menacing. Each was single seat, RPG pipes on the sides, a thirty mil cannon sticking out the nose at an angle.
‘Is the mission profile any good on these?’ I asked.
‘Their anti-tank role is fine. These new RPGs will fly two thousand yards at a tank and make a mess, and the bird has a night sight. In the desert it’ll kill tanks just by looking at them.’
‘The cannon?’
‘Pilot has a tube to look down. If you can see something you can hit it. But against a Tiger … I doubt it will crack the armour. Any other vehicle is fine, and soldiers don’t fare too well when hit with a thirty mil shell.’
‘No,’ I agreed. ‘You reckon this will fit in the new transport?’
‘Already checked, and they do squeeze in. We could get three of these in, or two Hueys with no fuel. Rotors come off, and the tail rotors, then they’re workable packages for the hold.’ He tapped the rear of the fuselage. ‘Storage bin. We can get twenty RPGs in there, but ya have to land and fit them yourself.’
Mounting the jeep again, we drove past two hangars, past Goose aircraft parked on the apron, past Super Goose bombers, and to the jet bomber. Halting without getting out, Hal said, ‘She flies like a dream now, so end of the design line for her, for now at least. Three more being made.’
At the next hangar we passed a jet prototype, finally stopping at the last but one hangar. Stepping down, my face took control of itself, and smiled.
‘Oh, yeah baby,’ I let out.
‘Thought you’d like it. She’s the final variant of the jet fighter.’
‘She ... is an F15 Eagle.’
‘I named it Eagle, and it stuck.’
I approached, admiring her long and rounded nose, square intakes, high wing and twin tails.’
‘Power to weight?’ I asked as I walked around the plane.
‘If you don’t raise the undercarriage in time, it’ll break off,’ Hal reported. ‘Point her nose to heavens and open the throttle and she’s a rocket. Hacker had mach two out of her.’
‘I thought we limited speed for payload?’
‘We did, but the new engines just don’t want to fly slowly. The damn scientists were bored, so they optimised something or other, fitted a new alloy and the damn thing motors along, even with a good payload. Jimmy has taken her up.’
‘He kept that quiet.’
‘You’re married with kids; this is a single man’s toy.’
I wagged a warning finger. ‘She an expensive bird?’
‘Well … relatively. But they have this alloy crap coming out their arses now, and they can mould large frame sections at once, or some crap; those fucking eggheads are always improving something. They have an electric golf buggy that goes on forever without stopping, lightweight hang gliders. They even stuck a torpedo engine in an old frame and made a cruise missile. Flew so far they lost it.’
I was concerned. ‘It could be in someone’s back garden!’
‘No, it went north, so Stalin is wondering who fired the big red cock-shaped thing through his window, squashing wife number four.’
I laughed. ‘That would start an arms race, although he’d be happy to lose another wife.’
‘Mac made up the bunker-buster bombs,’ Hal informed me as we took in the F15 look-a-like. ‘It’ll break through ten feet of concrete. Would make a nice mess of a concrete runway; probably tear up a sixty metre stretch, a hole thirty feet deep. He’s working on a type of cluster bomb at the moment.’
‘Type of?’
‘It’s a big ‘ol dispenser that drops modified Battery Grenades with timed fuses. Some go pop after they hit the deck, then one every thirty seconds till they’re all done.’
‘Airfield suppression,’ I noted.
‘If you fly straight and level over the target at the right height and speed and flick the switch, yeah,’ he scoffed. ‘Never mind the damn pilot taking flack from the ground. And at night you’d probably miss the damn airfield altogether!’
‘And the existing airfield suppression bomb?’
‘That’s great. You fly in fast, nose up and over, release it, roll, and bug out at speed. It smacks into the ground and the bomblets disperse. Or you drop it from ten thousand feet in a dive and bug out quickly.’
At the F15 nose, I pointed at the gun pods.
‘Four fifty cal,’ Hal said. ‘For air-to-air if you need it. You can select one, two or four to fire simultaneously. One hard-point on each wing, one on the belly, and that’s it.’
‘Payload?’
‘We’ve had her up with three bombs, each two thousand five hundred pounds. There’s an RPG pod you can carry, fifteen RPGs in each, but it slows the bird down, and you have to drop to below three hundred knots to fire them. But she’ll make a mess of a battleship.’
‘How?’
‘Put three bunker-busters on her, fly in at fifty feet off the deck at four hundred knots, release, and nose up. That would spoil a captain’s day. I reckon just the one bomb would finish off a battleship or a carrier. And if you dive from ten thousand, drop at five thousand and pull up, the bomb will go right through at out the damn bottom – and then keep going!’
‘If one of these made toast of three Jap carriers, that would turn the war in a day,’ I pointed out with emphasis.
He shrugged and made a face.
I toured the underground labyrinth, greeting a few people I knew, stopping to chat to engineers and staff. The hotel was busy, its bars busy, a mix of nationalities; British, Canadian, American. A Chinese restaurant had appeared – with Canadian staff, an Indian restaurant – with Canadian staff, and a pet store. I stopped at the pet store – called the Pet Centre.
‘Excuse me, but isn’t it a bit cruel … for people to have pets and then rotate out?’
‘There are a fixed number of pets, sir, and when people leave they hand them over to us, and we allocate them again.’
‘Oh. You stock Lemmings?’
The man smiled. ‘No, sir, just leave your shoes on the floor overnight. We have cats, dogs – the huskies are popular, song birds, hamsters and mice.’
‘Do the animals not care about a lack of sunshine?’
‘They get used to it, sir. Even the Moose.’
I stared at him. ‘Moose? Are the rooms big enough?’
He laughed. ‘They keep them in the hangars, sir. A few orphans were found and hand-reared, so now the moose think they’re engineers, sir.’
‘What happened to the bear?’
‘It was sedated and taken to a zoo, sir, when it kept eating the Lemmings, and a cat, and … some hamsters.’
I left, shaking my head.
The drive over to the atom bomb site took ten minutes along a straight road, no features visible. There were no guards or gate, and everyone knew everyone else. Down the first set of stairs I met one of our scientists, and he led me to a new section, a ride in an electric golf buggy, my bodyguard on the back. Here we did find a guard, to stop unauthorised or accidental entry. Inside, I found a massive room, considering it was underground, dozens of machines and lathes, metal casing, desks and cabinets.
‘Bomb casing assembly,’ I was informed. ‘Next door is the room for final assembly, below us the fissile material store.’
‘How far below us?’ I quipped.
‘Eighty feet. Quite secure.’
The man led me on, and to a room of desks, about fifty desks, maybe thirty in use, heads down, slide rules being pored over, people talking in hushed tones. Next door we found a laboratory full of gadgets that would make for a great Flash Gordon movie, my guide explaining that it was for developing utility equipment, such as some of the two-dozen different types of Geiger counters. He showed me a room with shiny centrifuges behind a glass wall, and all the while I kept thinking about the serious lack of computers anywhere; these guys were doing it the hard way.
They had their own lecture theatre with around thirty seats, a black board and chalk at the front. That was followed by a few meeting rooms - a few people meeting, a large canteen … and then I wondered why I was even here.
‘How’s it going?’ I asked an American scientist, lifting the tedium.
‘We’re looking at more efficient ways to enrich the Uranium,’ the egghead enthused.
‘That always helps,’ I said, no idea what I was saying. ‘Keep up the good work.’
Seeing a sign for “surface” I suggested we’d walk from here, to get some fresh air, and we burst into sunlight after two flights of stairs. I could see the main buildings, and led my bodyguard towards them at a slow pace, the ground soft under our feet, moss and heather thick over the tundra, a few foraging Lemmings disturbed. A jet roared past, making me envious, the sound of a Huey on the breeze.
We hopped aboard our jeep, soon back at the main base, and to the tower. I spent an enjoyable hour watching the planes take-off and land, thinking of the future, and what effect the technological jumps would have on the world.
Mankind was supposed to advance from biplanes to jets and ballistic missiles during the Second World War, and then on to passenger jet aircraft with crap seats. But we were going to nudge them towards uncomfortable jet passenger travel in 1943, not 1963. We would soon inflict the horrors of taking the kids on holiday aboard a jet airliner upon the world, as well as over-crowed airports and duty free. How thoughtless and cruel we were being, how reckless with the timeline.
Back at the hotel, Jimmy said to me, ‘Motorbikes, cross-country- deserts, dispatch riders.’
I raised a finger, suddenly deep in thought, turned around and headed to the car factory. Halfway there, I said to my driver/bodyguard, ‘No, take me to the aircraft factory, design section.’
‘You sure, boss?’
‘Yeah, the guys in the car plant are busy enough. But I know a few guys that have some time.’
At the Design & Planning Department, I grabbed a senior man. ‘Find me six men who are not busy for a few weeks, for an odd project.’
He grabbed the men, all now working on production instead of design. Assembled, I said to them, ‘OK, new project. It may not seem it, but it is important. I want you to design for me a completely new motorbike.’
‘Motorbike?’ they queried. ‘Like a Norton bike from England, sir? Or the British Army dispatch rider bikes?’
‘Yes, like those, but one that can reach eighty miles per hour, has a good range, can cross deserts, mud, and not break down very often.’
‘It’ll be for the army?’
‘It will, they’ll use it to send messages back and forth. It will also be used for recon, and snipers, so it needs to be quiet. Use your alloy for a frame, design a four-stroke engine that’s compact, and build me a bike that won’t fall apart after heavy use, get clogged with sand in the deserts, or drown in the jungle. But no toaster, please.’
Intrigued, they got to work. Leaving the building, I could see an aircraft that I didn’t recognise, and journeyed around to the tower. In the tower I asked about it.
‘It’s a hobby plane, sir, a glider made from spare parts. It has a small engine to get to altitude, then it … glides, sir.’
‘Good. I want a two-seat prototype, and a team on it, and I want a few soon.’
‘For production, sir?’
‘For the military. They fly to a place, cut the engine and glide in real quiet.’
‘Ah, I see.’
‘Let the people involved know I want one added to our catalogue.’
I drove to the Canadian Rifles base after lunch with Susan, and found the SAS officers. ‘Right, I have a new toy for you. We have a plane that glides. It has an engine, so you can fly two men to a location - say five miles short of the enemy position, cut the engine and glide in real quiet and land on a road, or in a field. From ten thousand feet, hell – you could glide ten miles or more.’
‘At night no one would see it,’ they realised. ‘And we could use it to get out again afterwards.’
‘What if there was no road?’ a man asked.
‘It’ll land at twenty miles per hour, so if you rough it up it doesn’t matter. You’d just have to walk out.’
A man wagged a finger. ‘Or, we glide over a target down to three thousand feet, a man jumps, the glider carries on a mile or two, the pilot turns on the engine and returns to base.’
They liked the idea, and I left them with it, asking that they have some glider lessons.
They came back to me two days later with a list of requirements. A storage hold for kit and weapons, a rear canopy that could be locked open then closed with a rope from the pilot, a night sight of course, and a radio. I agreed to it all, handing it to the team now working on it, the hobby plane now taken seriously. There was a logical next step.
I grabbed the senior man. ‘Could you make a plane – without engines – that could be towed on take-off by a Super Goose, basically a big glider? The plane would be stuffed full of soldiers, and they’d land in a field quietly. Once down, the glider would be wasted, so it would have to be cheap. It would also have to survive a rough landing.’
‘How many men in the back?’
‘Say twenty or thirty with kit. But it would need to land slowly, with giant flaps, and airbrakes to slow it. No armour, no nothing, just a big glider.’
‘To get twenty soldiers into a place quietly at night,’ the man surmised. ‘A throwaway glider.’
‘Can you do it?’
‘Of course we can, sir.’
‘Good man, get a team on it.’
When I informed Jimmy he just nodded.
As the weather warmed up, so did things in China. Japan consolidated its hold on the Canton region, no intention of leaving, but still kept its distance from Hong Kong. The American Brigade, however, were getting restless. More and more had parachuted in to China, and the first mission against the Japanese soon took place, the ambush of a convoy.
That mission, and the subsequent ones, were a success, but we received news in June that two men had been captured, one killed. I went and found Jimmy.
‘Do we do anything? Rescue mission perhaps?’
‘With a bit of luck, they’ll be on their way to Tokyo.’
‘Show trial?’ I queried.
‘Something along those lines.’
‘The Japs will force the men to confess,’ I said with a sigh.
‘Confess what? That they supplied arms, went to train the Chinese to fight the Japs? The world already knows that, and since the Japs invaded … no one will side with the Japs.’
‘Should we pull the rest out?’
‘No, but I will ask them to stay behind the lines and just teach.’
‘Do you care about those two men?’ I asked, not quite knowing why.
‘Two men, verses twenty million dead if my strategy doesn’t work. So … no, I don’t care about them.’
‘That’s what I figured.’
He studied me. ‘Do you care?’
‘Numbers on a page. But sometimes I get complacent here, and forget the big picture.’
‘A comfortable life will do that to you,’ he noted.
Magestic 2
Copyright © Geoff Wolak
www.geoffwolak-writing.com
Part 6
Show trials
We were right about Tokyo, and a show trial, the Japanese having just made a big mistake by doing exactly what we wanted of them. We gave the Press a nudge, and everyone in America saw a picture of the two men in chains. One had been in Spain, decorated by the President, so now the screams from the White House were even louder. The President was in a corner, caught between common sense and public opinion, a bad place to be. He started the diplomatic process, but in 1936 sitting US Presidents did not bargain for mercenaries, and then just two of them.
In a newspaper statement, he said, ‘These men are mercenaries, and knew full well what the consequences of their actions might be.’
The public didn’t quite see it that way, and we made sure that American Brigade “the movie” did the rounds again. At the very least, this trial would put the situation in Canton in the public debating arena. Fact was, the White House had been concerned about the Japanese since before 1934, when the current President ordered a naval rebuilding programme; the US had considered a war with Japan as far back as 1897. The President had been even more concerned when the Japanese invaded Canton, but was not about to start a war unnecessarily, his senior officers convincing him that America was not ready.
