Air Force Eagles by Walter J. Boyne Read Free Book Online

President rang."
    The Secretary's voice was tightly contained; Ruddick could close his eyes and see him, his faced lined, intense, waving his pipe as he leaned forward over a desk piled with files.
    "How is Harry doing?" Ruddick asked.
    "He's enjoying himself hugely. I wish I was."
    "I understand that he's serious about integration, that he's going to make an executive order directing it."
    "No question about it. He knows he needs it for the election. The timing will be critical—probably do it next summer."
    Ruddick grunted and Woodson went on, "You know why I'm calling. I'm going to need your help."
    "You know you'll have it." When he had been Secretary of the Navy, Woodson had opposed the idea of reorganizing the services into the Department of Defense, fearing that the Navy would be in a permanent minority in votes with the Army and the new independent Air Force. Partly to offset those fears, Truman had named him as Secretary of Defense. Ruddick wasn't sure he could handle the job; once during the war, when the deal with Germany over oil and tankers was about to be exposed, Woodson had come perilously close to self-destruction.
    "I'm having a palace revolution over in the Navy Department. They say I'm bending over backward to favor the Air Force, to appear neutral."
    "Nothing wrong with that."
    "No, but I have to throw them a bone. I'm going to come to you to carve fifty million from somewhere for that classified project we talked about the last time you were here."
    Ruddick grunted. Woodson meant a new aircraft carrier, one large enough to carry bombers with a nuclear capability. It would be tough to sell, with dozens of World War II carriers either in storage or being broken up.
    "Pretty risky, Mr. Secretary. You're rocking the rolls-and-missions boat. If we have to pare the Air Force down to forty-eight wings to stay within budget, new carriers won't sit well with anyone.
    "I know that, but if I give them this one they'll be satisfied for a while."
    "They should be; they should name the ship after you. Of course, I'll find the money, but I'm going to have to twist a few arms."
    "There's nobody better than you at that."
    Ruddick expected a little additional small talk, but Woodson went on for twenty minutes complaining about his office staff and, of all things, his desk—it was an antique, he couldn't get rid of it, the drawers stuck, the veneer was peeling, a childish catalogue of annoyances. The conversation was worse than trivial, it was bizarre, and the Secretary's quivering voice rose with the intensity of his complaints. Ruddick was glad to say good-bye finally. If the man was this troubled, it might mean big trouble for Milo Ruddick.
    He walked to the window to gaze over his property again. When the phone rang this time, it was with the high-pitched bell of his private line.
    "Ruddick here."
    "This is Dixon Price. We need to talk." Price's voice varied with the situation, suiting his tough, chameleon-like personality exactly. He'd have been at home on a carnival midway, on the docks in San Francisco, a stage in New York, or pleading a case before the Supreme Court. Whatever it took, Price had it, in spades.
    "What's the problem?"
    "The same as always, money. I've recruited half a dozen new organizers to send to Georgia and Mississippi, but I'm having a little problem with my bank."
    Ruddick was silent for a while. During the war, Dixon Price had run McAmer, the McCallum family's oil company. He had managed the complex series of deals with Woodson, involving Brazil and Switzerland supplying oil to Germany via Spain. After the war, Dixon had created the largest law firm in Little Rock and had become a part of the governor's kitchen cabinet. Many people—Ruddick included—thought that Dixon really ran the state. The Gazette had once run a cartoon showing the horse-faced governor sitting on the birdlike Price's knee, a ventriloquist's dummy. It wasn't exactly fair, but it was a political fact of life that Price