The Fly Boys Read Online Free PDF Page A

warned as he made the long trek from the double doors to Gold’s desk.
    The office had wall-to-wall, moss-green carpeting and was furnished with sofa and armchair groupings upholstered in supple
     burgundy leather. Custom-built display cases loaded with mementos highlighting Gold’s decades in the aviation business lined
     the oak-paneled walls beneath ornately framed oil painting landscapes and commissioned oil portraits of successful GAT airplane
     designs in flight.
    Teddy settled himself into one of the armchairs in front of Gold’s desk. “It’s not the end of the world.”
    “But it
is
the end of the XP-4,” Gold said, his voice cracking with barely repressed fury.
    “Herman—”
    “Damn it, Teddy!” Gold exploded. “I hate to lose!”
    “No wonder,” Teddy murmured coolly. “You’ve had so little practice at it.”
    “Just get to the bottom line.” Gold heard the rude impatience in his tone. “Sorry,” he said quietly.
    Teddy smiled and nodded. “Don’t mention it. Like you said, you hate to lose. Well, flight-stability considerations aside,
     the bottom line problem is that the XP-4 is too fucking slow. She’s no faster than presently existing state-of-the-art piston
     engine fighters.”
    “Which makes her obsolete before she’s even put into production,” Gold mourned.
    Teddy nodded. He took a pack of Camels out of the side pocket of his lab coat, lit a new cigarette off the butt of the last,
     and dropped the butt into the smoking stand beside his armchair.
    Gold stood up and went to the windows behind his desk. His office was located on the top floor of the main building. He had
     a view of the sprawling factory complex’s airfields, which were being used as parking lots for hundreds of finished GAT BuzzSaw
     AC-1 bombers lined up in orderly rows, awaiting their shipping dates to go winging off to war. Beyond the olive drab armada
     of bombers were the yellow security guard shacks and the high, steel mesh fence topped with barbed wire. Beyond the fence,
     watching everything with timeless immutability, were the majestic, tawny California hills.
    Gold kept his back to his chief engineer as he said, “Thank you for not saying I told you so concerning this mess.”
    “I knew you’d say it for me,” Teddy chuckled.
    Gold sourly nodded to himself. He’d been the one to insist upon a conservative design approach for the XP-4, because he’d
     felt that it would appeal to the likewise conservative military. Teddy had argued against the design, warning that its inherent
     performance characteristics and capabilities would likely be inadequate for a jet fighter.
    Gold turned away from the windows and sat back down behind his desk. “You know what really galls me, Teddy? That I’ve been
     thinking like a businessman instead of an engineer. You were
right
when you tried to tell me that I was making a mistake, but I just wouldn’t listen.”
    “Hey, you did listen,” Teddy said. “You just didn’t agree with me at the time.” He shrugged. “You had a good point about sticking
     to a conservative design to romance the military. Hell, if it had worked out, we would have been sitting pretty.”
    Gold pointed to his old drafting table and the glass-fronted bookcases filled with technical manuals taking up one corner
     of the office. “You know what the problem has been, Teddy? I’ve been away from that drafting table and sitting behind this
     fucking landing strip of a desk for too long. Goddammit, I’ve got a hundred bookkeepers working for me! Why should I think
     like one!”
    Teddy grinned. “It comes with the territory, boss. I can afford to sit downstairs and think like an engineer. That’s my job.”
     His arms spread wide. “But you’re responsible for everything. You’ve got eighty thousand people working for you around the
     clock in three shifts. How many AC-1 Buzz-Saw air combat bombers did we build last year?”
    “Fuck that,” Gold scowled. “Who
can’t
sell