19 MASSPOB
"And what does a flying wing look like?"
"Other flying wings," Wintergreen interposed adroitly, with Milo struck dumb by a query he had not anticipated.
"And what do other flying wings look like?"
"Our flying wing," answered Milo, his composure restored.
"Will it look," asked a major, "like the old Stealth?"
"No. Only in appearance."
"Absolutely, Colonel Pickering?"
"Positively, Major Bowes."
Since the first session on the M amp; M defensive second-strike offensive attack bomber, Colonel Pickering had elected early retirement with full pension benefits to capitalize on the opportunity for a more remunerative, if less showy, position with the Airborne Division of M amp; M Enterprises amp; Associates, where his opening yearly income was precisely half a hundred times richer than his earnings in federal employ. General Bernard Bingam, at Milo 's request, was delaying a similar move in hopes of promotion and eventual elevation to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and after that, given half a break with a good war, perhaps the White House itself.
It was fortunate Pickering was there to help, for this newest session on the Minderbinder bomber was proving more prickly than the others. A hint of difficulties in store had come with the unexpected attendance of the fat man from the State Department and the skinny one from the National Security Council. It was now no secret they were partisans of the competitive Strangelove entry, and they had placed themselves on opposite ends of the curved table to project the impression they were speaking separately with independent voices.
Both were career diplomats who regularly spent time away as Strangelove Associates, replenishing with newly acquired supplies the secondhand influence and fine contacts that, with bombast, were the stock-in-trade of the Strangelove empire. Another cause of consternation for Milo was the absence of an ally he'd counted on, C. Porter Lovejoy, who was otherwise occupied, perhaps, Milo feared, at a similar meeting in MASSPOB on the Strangelove B-Ware, as an ally of that one.
General Bingam was obviously delighted to be parading his aptitudes before officers from other branches who outranked him and masters in atomic matters and related abstruse scientific areas. Bingam knew a feather in his cap when he had one. There were thirty-two others in this elite enclave, and all were eager to speak, even though there were no television cameras.
"Tell them about the technology, Milo," General Bingam suggested, to move things along advantageously.
"Let me distribute these pictures first," answered Milo, as rehearsed, "so we can see what our planes look like."
"These are lovely," said a bespectacled lieutenant colonel with experience in design. "Who drew them?"
"An artist named Yossarian."
"Yossarian?"
"Michael Yossarian, He is a specialist in military art and works exclusively for us."
Coming down as instructed from the MASSPOB basement through the door to Sub-Basement A, Milo and Wintergreen had been met by three armed MASSPOB guards in uniforms they had not seen before: red battle jackets, green pants, and black leather combat boots, with name tags in cerise letters against a lustrous fabric of silken mother-of-pearl. They were checked against a roster and replied correctly when asked the password: Bingam's Baby. They were handed round pasteboard passes with numbers in a border of blue, to be worn around the neck on a skimpy whit string, and instructed to proceed directly to the Bingam's Baby conference room in Sub-Basement A, the circular chamber in which Michael's pictures were now making so auspicious an impression.
All present were reminded that the plane was a second-strike weapon designed to slip through remaining defenses and destroy weapons and command posts surviving the first strike.
"Now, everything you see in these pictures is absolutely right," continued Milo, "except those that are wrong. We don't want to show anything that will allow others to counter the technology or copy it. That make sense, General Bingam?"
"Absolutely, Milo."
"But how will any of us here know," objected the fat man from the State Department, "what it will really look like?"
"Why the fuck must you know?" countered Wintergreen.
"It's invisible," added Milo. "Why must you see it?"
"I guess we don't have to know, do we?" conceded a lieutenant general, and looked toward an admiral.
"Why do we have to know?" wondered the other.
"Sooner or later," fumed the skinny Strangelove partisan, "the press will want to know."
"Fuck the press," said Wintergreen. "Show them these."
"Are they true?"
"What the fuck difference does it fucking make if they're fucking true or not?" asked Wintergreen. "It gives them another fucking story when they find out we lied."
"Now you're talking my fucking language, sir," said the adjutant to the commandant of marines.
"And I applaud your fucking honesty," admitted a colonel. "Admiral?"
"I can live with that. Where's the fucking cockpit?"
"Inside the fucking wing, sir, with everything else."
"Will a crew of two," asked someone, "be as effective as a fucking crew of four?"
"More," said Milo.
"And what the fuck fucking difference does it fucking make if they're fucking effective or not?" asked Wintergreen.
"I get your fucking point, sir," said Major Bowes.
"I don't."
"I can live with that fucking point."
"I'm not sure I get that fucking point."
" Milo, what's your angle?"
There were no angles. The flying wing allowed the aircraft to be fabricated with rounded edges in material deflecting radar. What was being fucking offered, explained Wintergreen, was a fucking long-range airplane to roam over fucking enemy territory with only two fucking fliers. Even without midair refueling, the plane could go from there to San Francisco with a full load of bombs.
"Does this mean we could bomb San Francisco from here and get back without more gas?"
"We could bomb New York too on the way back."
"Guys, get serious," commanded the major general there. "This is war, not social planning. How many refuelings to China or the Soviet Union?"
"Two or three on the way in, maybe none coming back, if you don't get sentimental."
And just one M amp; M bomber could carry the same bomb load as all thirteen fighter-bombers used in the Ronald Reagan air raid in Libya in-in-April 1986.
"It seems like only yesterday," mused an elderly air force man drearily.
"We can give you a plane," promised Wintergreen, "that will do it yesterday."
"Shhhhh!" Milo said.
"The Shhhhh!?" said the expert on military nomenclature. "That's a perfect name for a noiseless bomber."
"Then the Shhhhh! is the name of our plane. It goes faster than sound."
"It goes faster than light."
"You can bomb someone before you even decide to do it. Decide it today, it's done-yesterday!"
"I don't really think," said someone, "we have need for a plane can bomb someone yesterday."
"But think of the potential," argued Wintergreen. "They attack Pearl Harbor. You shoot them down the day before."
"I could live with that one. How much more-"
"Wait a minute, wait a minute," begged someone else among several now stirring rebelliously. "How can that be? Artie, can anything go faster than light?"
"Sure, Marty. Light can go faster than light."
"Read your fucking Einstein!" yelled Wintergreen.
"And our first operational plane can go on alert in the year and give you something really to celebrate."
"What happens if we get in a nuclear war before then?"
"You won't have our product. You have to wait."