George Martin: Deuces Down

Nothing of the kind occurred. We slunk into the restaurant like two tourists from Wisconsin, quietly finding a table off in one corner.

Dearborn did take the seat that would keep his back to the wall, and his eyes on the entrance. I’d seen that maneuver with Mr. Skalko, too. “Expecting someone?”

“As a matter of fact, I am. An old buddy who eats here about four times a week.”

I let the subject drop as a waiter arrived. We ordered a beer each, then, when the plates arrived almost instantaneously, started in on the food. I should say, I ate; Dearborn devoured a double combination that seemed to consist of a heap of refried beans and cheese the size of a football. At one point he slowed down long enough to say, “Don’t watch too close now, Cash. I only had one meal in the past twenty-four hours, and, as you will recall, I was unable to retain that for long.”

The beer had mellowed me to the point where I was able to smile at the memory. I got Dearborn talking about himself, partly to avoid having to talk about myself, but also to hear the standard military shit-kicker war story bio. I was surprised, then, when Dearborn told me he was from Chicago and had grown up in a privileged North Shore family. His father had been a senior executive at Sears prior to the wild card, at which point he had been turned, losing his job and his money. Dearborn was lucky enough to win an appointment to the naval academy at Annapolis. After graduating in 1951, he became a naval aviator.

He won his wings of gold too late to shoot it out over Korea, but served with the fleet in the Mediterranean, then did a year of graduate work in nuclear engineering, before coming to Tomlin in 1958 to attend the test pilot school as a navy exchange pilot. “I had just graduated and joined the project when they had the accident.”

He meant the X-11A disaster, the spectacular mid-air collision between a prototype space plane and its mother ship that killed pilots Enloe and Guinan, and sparked a wild card hunt that destroyed the home-grown American space program. Or so I’d heard.

“That was a bad scene, for a long time after. I stayed at Tomlin flying chase and pace on a few other programs. They sure weren’t eager to let the X-11 guys get their hands on new aircraft. We were jinxed.” He smiled. “I missed out on three other accidents. There was quite a bad string there around 1961, ’62.

“But when General Schriever became head of Systems Command, he rammed through the Quicksilver program. I was the only X-11 pilot around, and being in the right place at the right time, got in on the ground floor.” He smiled. “Ruined my navy career, of course.”

“Ruined? Being one of the first Americans to fly into orbit? Even if it was secret, you should have had it made!”

“You don’t know much about the military, do you, Cash? When I joined Quicksilver, I had already spent four years here at Tomlin, which meant I was working for the Air Force, not the Navy. I needed to do a tour at the Pentagon and in ’ Nam, then command a ship. If I ever wanted to command a carrier, which is the whole reason you become a navy aviator.

“I stayed at Tomlin through the first year of test flights. Me and the prime Air Force guy, my old buddy, Mike Sampson. Then the program got cut back, and both of us were left twisting in the wind. Sampson made out better than me: he went off to drive 105s out of Cam Ranh Bay, and wound up getting a Purple Heart.

“I was too old to go back to the fleet. Why waste time re-qualifying me for carrier ops? I’d be eligible for retirement before I finished a tour like that. So they assigned me to a missile test squadron at China Lake.” He smiled bitterly. “That’s when I started drinking. And drank myself right out of the cockpit, right out of the Navy, and out of marriage number two.”

In spite of that, he had ordered a beer, though, to be fair, he had barely sipped it. “I’m guessing Doreen is number three?”

“Correct. I came back to southern California to work for Lock-heed as a civilian, since they had the support contract for Quicksilver. She was my first secretary…” He laughed at the memory. “Guess I wasn’t cut out to work in an office. Too much opportunity for mischief.”

I must have been feeling brave. I pointed at the beer on the table. “Are you cut out for Tominbang’s project?”

Dearborn smiled, picked up the beer and poured it on the saw-dust floor. “Being the first human on the Moon? I can give up drinking for that , no problem!”

His voice trailed off and his expression grew tense. I realized he was looking over my shoulder. “Well, well, well,” he said, softly.

I turned and looked: all I could see was another man about Dearborn ’s age, though smaller and less weathered, smiling and chatting with the hostess. “Is that the guy you were expecting?”

“Yes. Major Mike Sampson! Hey, ‘ Wrong Way ’!” He started his phrase in a conversational tone, but by the time he reached “ Wrong Way ” he was shouting.

“ Wrong Way ” Sampson-the compact man at the entrance-turned with the deliberation of a gunfighter being challenged. Then he recognized Dearborn, and his face lit up like a harvest moon. Working his way to your table, he knocked over other patrons like tenpins, stopping short of actually hugging Dearborn. Instead, he punched him the shoulder. “You lucky son of a bitch!” he said.

“How much luck can I have, if you found me!” They exchanged similar sentiments for several minutes. Eventually I was introduced; Sampson wound up joining us.

It turned out that he had recently returned to Tomlin after recovering from wounds received in combat. He was now head of something called a “joint test force” at the flight test center. “Why didn’t you just take disability?” Dearborn said.

“Because I wasn’t disabled,” Sampson snapped. “Yeager fought his way back into the cockpit after getting burned in that crash, and he was much worse off than me.” He hesitated, glancing in my direction, but some invisible gesture from Dearborn cleared him for further revelation. “Besides, the Air Force has some very interesting stuff cooking. I want to be part of it.”

“Nothing as interesting as what we’re doing,” Dearborn said, shooting me an all-too-visible shit-eating grin. He then proceeded to violate every clause in Tominbang’s confidentiality agreement, telling Sampson every detail of the project!

Sampson absorbed the information silently, but appreciatively, nodding with growing enthusiasm. “I should have known,” he said. “Everybody was saying, ‘Poor Al, he really screwed the pooch at China Lake.’ But I knew better. I said, ‘It only means there’s something great coming along for him.’”

Sampson would go far in politics, because he almost had me believing him. Dearborn chose to do the same. “Thanks, buddy. But I really pushed the envelope on luck this time, let me tell you.”

“We’re older, Al. Like pro athletes, the power isn’t what it was.”

“We’ve both got enough juice for one last caper, especially something like this. Are you in?”

“Hell, yes!” They shook on it. “Obviously, it will all be on the Q.T. Vacation time or evenings.”

“You already know the vehicle, so you shouldn’t need more than that.”

After confirming various phone numbers and some personal catchup-there was fond mention of a woman named Peggy, a name which meant nothing to me-Sampson went off to meet his original dinner companions, who must have been furious by that time.

I was a little furious myself. “What do you think you’re doing? You told him about the project and signed him up as what? Your alternate?”

“Look, Tominbang’s putting out a lot of his own money in this. And, let’s face it, Cash, I’m not the most reliable individual. I’m thinking of the program at large: Sampson’s good. Weird, but good. He’ll be there only if we need him.”