Closing Time (Catch-22 2)

"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 & 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 dreamily.

"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 that 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 the 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.