The Dive Bomber (4 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

Falling Wings
and a Lost Ship

A
S
calm as though about to take a ride in a sightseeing bus, instead of a man-killing dive bomber, Lucky Martin hauled his helmet over his tousled brown hair and buckled the straps under his big chin.

“All through in a couple of hours,” said Lucky, “and happy days are here again.”

“You've got a tested chute?” said Dixie.

“Sure, but I won't need it.”

“Don't tempt fate,” pleaded Dixie, shivering although the day was warm. “You…you're all I've got now.”

“You'll have a fortune to boot very shortly,” grinned Lucky. “Did I ever let anybody down?”

“No.”

“Then I never will. That little ship out there is as tough as a mustang, rarin' to go. Solid as the
Rock of Gibraltar
.”

“I never—” said Dixie, feebly trying to cheer herself up by uttering an ancient aviation joke, “I never saw the Rock of Gibraltar in a power dive, so I don't know.”

“Atta girl. Put on your earmuffs and keep the liniment handy for your neck. When I start down, you're going to see something!”

“I hope not. Lucky—”

“What?”

“Can't you ease her off at seven
Gs
? Can't you pull her punches a little?”

“The smoke meter in that crate won't lie and if she can't take it, we'll want to know before we start production.”

“Then you'll try to pull her apart?”

“Sure I will, but she won't. Honey, that's my job. If they won't pull with me in the pit, they won't pull at all.
Rough Rider
, that's me. But if she does—”

“Then you think it might go to pieces…?”

“No. It can't! There's the commander and the observers. Flynn! Rev her up, and let's have a listen at her.”

Flynn, in the office, heeled the brakes and jabbed the throttle. The engine bellowed sweetly and then died off to a clicking murmur.

“Okay,” said Flynn, surrendering his place and climbing down. “Give it hell, Lucky.”

“All set,” said Lawson.

Lucky reached out of the pit and gave Dixie's shoulder a reassuring shake. She managed a smile and he grinned back. Pulling the hood down over him, Lucky taxied into the wind, saluted the crowd, shoved upon throttle and stick and lanced down the runway and away from earth.

Evans, the mechanic, tried to look uninterested.

The dive bomber climbed as fast as a sixteen-inch shell—and fully as loud.

Anacostia tumbled away so quickly that it appeared in need of a chute. The Capitol and parks dwindled in size as though sprinkled with
alum
. The Washington Monument receded until it was nothing more than a toothpick stuck in a green carpet.

Bridges were black lines across the silver Potomac and the cars upon them were something less than moving periods.

To the south, Alexandria was enveloped in a haze. To the northeast, Baltimore was a black smudge. The rolling green of Maryland was laid out like a quilt, tacked to brown Virginia with blue tape.

Ten thousand, fifteen thousand, eighteen thousand.

Lucky went around three times, admiring the view through the glass of the hood, incidentally noting that the air was clear of ships under him.

He examined his neat cockpit, to make certain that everything was lashed down. That was necessary, because loose objects would float in front of his face when he started the dive.

For an instant he had an odd feeling in the region of his heart. A premonition reared black and ugly within him. He mopped at his face, although it was cold so high in the air.

What was the matter with him? He'd done this half a hundred times before. Wasn't he Lucky Martin? Other men might die, but hadn't he always pulled through? He knew his ship and he knew himself. Nothing could possibly happen. He knew exactly when to pull out. Even when the gravity gauge slid up to nine, even when the blood was driven down out of his head and everything went black, he knew what to do.

There was
Bolling
, there was the Naval Air Station. That was the target, he was the bullet.

“
Fire, Gridley
,” muttered Lucky, trying to grin.

Back on the stick and throttle. Let her
stall
and whip out of it. He'd show them. Up came the nose. The ground was straight down at his back.

The dive bomber faltered, hung motionless for an instant, standing on its tail like a flying fish.

The bottom dropped out.

The nose swooped down with whip-crack speed. The earth tipped. The throttle shot up the trident.

With a bellow which made every window in Washington rattle and shake, the dive bomber started down.

Two-fifty, three hundred. Three-fifty, four hundred. Four-fifty…Terminal velocity!

The world was a monstrous cup. Everything was bowing back and up, except the green patch that was Bolling Field. That sank away, as though afraid of being hit by this rushing projectile.

Seven hundred feet per second, swifter than a small-bore bullet, the plane charged earthward.

Shaking, screaming, drumming at the faraway earth with its deafening thunder, the ship stayed in the perpendicular groove.

Swiftly the
altimeter
ran down its scale. Thirteen thousand, eleven, nine, six…

The time for the pullout was at hand. Would the plane hold together, or would it explode under the impact of air?

Time to pull out.

The hangars were getting larger and larger. The people increased from dots to white, strained faces. The river was stretching apart, getting wider and wider.

Five thousand, four…

The howling riot of the engine combined with the agonized shriek of the wires.

Three thousand!

Lucky came back a little on the stick. Too much would mean his instant death. Too much would slam an invisible ton weight upon him, squashing him into the seat.

The ship would take it. Still under control.

Back down and yell!

Lucky, to ease the piercing pain of his ears, roared unheard into the din and fought back the controls.

The earth whipped level with a mighty lurch. The plane streaked out in a horizontal line.

She was holding together!

Blood rushed from his head. Blackness shut down before Lucky's face. Before he had ended his shout, he was unconscious.

But this was always true. This was nothing to be concerned about. In an instant…

With a splintering crash, the wings burst apart. Sections dived to the right and left, to float in the blue.

Wingless, with nothing to stop it now, the dive bomber plummeted straight down, engine still yowling.

Lucky saw the wings. He felt the mighty jolt of their leaving. Stunned, but instantly alert, he unsnapped his belt and jabbed both hands against the glass hood which covered him.

Earth, people, river and blue sky all whirled in a mad
cotillion
.

The hood would not raise. He put his shoulders against it. Wind wrenched it out of his grasp and threw it up, tearing it from its hinges.

Windsock
, trees, trucks, an already moving crash wagon…

Lucky managed to get his feet under him. He shoved himself halfway out of the pit. The savage slipstream almost ripped him in two, pinned him where he stood.

A boat on the Potomac, cars on the road, spinning lawns entangled with a glaring, cavorting sun…

Lucky was staring straight ahead, jaw set, strength useless against the sinews of the wind.

This instant he was alive. In the next he would be dead. But his whole being was concentrated on only one thing—the shock which would be Dixie O'Neal's. To see the plane and all her future destroyed in an instant, to see a cockpit bathed red with what remained of Lucky Martin…

A second is a century in the air.

Lucky lifted his foot and slammed it against the throttle. In the instant the projectile changed speed, inertia removed its clutching hand.

Flung out into the battering flow of air, turned over and over through lusting space, Lucky saw the earth three hundred feet under him.

Flung out into the battering flow of air, turned over and over through lusting space, Lucky saw the earth three hundred feet under him.

His fingers gripped the rip cord and he started to pull. A wing fragment passed a yard from his head.

The pilot chute grabbed air and whistled back. The big chute cracked and flowed in a white bundle behind him, but not open.

He was still falling.

One hundred, seventy-five, fifty…still falling free.

With a resounding slap, the main chute opened. The harness yanked him backward from the ground, bruising him.

An explosive crash to the right told him that the fuselage had hit in the open field.

Swaying gently like an acrobat on a trapeze, Lucky reached the earth and fought down the billowing chute which dragged at him.

He unbuckled his harness and when they reached him he was carefully wiping his face with a handkerchief.

“Got a smoke?” said Lucky to an awed sailor.

But everybody except Lucky was too excited to locate one.

Dixie's face was as pale as ice cream and she couldn't see because the world was swimming and misty. But she touched his sleeve to make sure that he was real.

“Have
you
got a smoke?” said Lucky.

Dixie opened her purse and handed him a pack and matches.

“There goes the old ball game,” said Lucky, jerking his smoking cigarette at the smoking hole in the earth.

Lawson cleared his throat nervously. “Too bad and I won't say I told you so. I'll give you a report on this if you want, but all I can say is that the ship is only capable of usual wing loads and should not be recommended for anything but sporting use and private fliers who will give it no strain.”

“I don't care about that. There's no decent market,” said Lucky. “Who'd want a sporting plane of this design?”

“Well,” said Lawson, “people do buy sporting planes. And just this morning Mr. Bullard was telling me that this crate, though useless to the government, might fill his needs. He has a foreign order for private planes, not of pursuit variety. This is the furthest thing from a fighting craft I ever saw, but it would fill a sporting requirement if equipped with a smaller engine. See Bullard. Don't give up.”

“If you see him first,” said Lucky, “tell him to go to the devil. I don't like him. This is a dive bomber—or was.”

“It is and was a pile of junk,” said Lawson, stiffly. “A sport plane and nothing more. See Bullard.”

“Nuts,” said Lucky Martin, taking Dixie's arm. “Let's go.”

CHAPTER SIX

The Devil
Springs a Trap

D
IXIE
mysteriously produced ten dollars and Flynn, sworn to secrecy, did not reveal that he had hocked her wristwatch worth a hundred and fifty.

And thus it was that they ate for three days.

At the end of that time the wires Lucky Martin had sent (collect) were answered severally to the effect that it was vacation time as far as test pilots were concerned.

“I guess,” said Lucky, sitting on the porch of the soon-to-be-foreclosed O'Neal mansion, “that I'd better contact an airline.”

“I did this morning,” said Dixie. “I called up the general manager of EAT, and he says he has a waiting list as long as a
Department of Commerce
appropriation bill.”

“Maybe Western Air—”

“Plans,” said Dixie, “are fine as long as they remain in the dream stage. But I was wrong.”

“I'm not licked yet,” said Lucky in a hopeless tone of voice.

“Of course not.”

“We'll…we'll… Well, what the hell will we do?”

“The plant is going to go
under the hammer
, and everything else as well. But never mind, Lucky. I studied bookkeeping and I—”

“Nix. We're not that low…or are we? Say, when did this street allow dirigible traffic?”

The object of his remark, trailed by sallow and shambling Smith, came up the walk.

“Nice afternoon,” replied Bullard.

“It
was,
” said Lucky.

“Mind if I sit down?” said Bullard.

“Sure, if that chair can take it.”

“You're not very cordial,” said Bullard, gently reproving, after the fashion of a rhinoceros.

“You ought to be a mind reader,” said Lucky. “Dixie, I think you had better go in. I'm about to tell this Bullard what I think of him.”

Dixie stayed where she was.

Bullard, seated in the creaking chair, smiled in a bland good humor. “So I ought to be a mind reader. All right, Lucky Martin. I'll start now. Your government threw you down twice, I catch you on the bounce. Mr. Smith, here, has kindly consented to give you another chance. You are at present thinking about how broke you are, how futile it is to try and find a decent job, and you're wondering when you'll next eat. Five million dollars—”

“I said no once. I don't often change my mind.”

“Stubborn men seldom do,” replied Bullard. “But I have something that might change it.”

“I doubt that.”

Bullard pulled a bolt from his vest pocket and tossed it up, catching it in his fat hand. “You see this?”

“It's a wing pin.”

“That's right,” said Bullard. “It seems to be a perfectly good bolt, doesn't it?”

“What of it?”

“It's not, that's all. It's not steel, it's bad wrought iron.”

“Well?”

“You wouldn't want to be hanged for the murder of Big Tom O'Neal, would you, Martin?”

Lucky stood up and casually examined his fist. “You can leave any time you want, Bullard.”

The personification of a balloon did not stir.

“Smith,” said Bullard, “call for Evans.”

Smith called, and in a moment, Evans sullenly shuffled up the steps and stood uneasily, avoiding Martin's eyes.

“Evans,” said Bullard, “you work at the O'Neal plant.”

“He did, but he was just fired,” said Lucky.

“Evans,” continued Bullard with judicial inflexion, “have you ever seen a bolt like this before?”

“Yeah.”

“Where?”

“In Mr. Martin's hand at the plant.”

“And what was Martin doing with this bolt?”

“He…he was changing it for a solid steel pin the night before O'Neal got washed out.”

“And you are ready to swear to that?”

“Yeah.”

“Very good, Evans,” said Bullard, “you can wait at the car.”

“You bet,” said Lucky, and before anyone else could move, Lucky seized Evans by the arm and threw him down the steps and into a rosebush.

“I'll get you for that!” squealed Evans, tangled up with thorns.

Lucky was down the steps before the words were fully uttered. He snatched Evans up, though the man was not a weakling, and with a well-placed right, knocked him down again.

A kick catapulted Evans on his way, and Lucky, his hair in his eyes and his fists as big and hard as grenades—and quite as ready to explode—went for Bullard.

Smith was standing to one side, a shaky automatic in his bony fingers. “Stay where you are!”

Bullard stood up and his right hand bulged in his coat pocket. “Come up and sit down, Mr. Martin. We want to talk with you.”

Lucky, even then, would have charged them both. But with a chilled heart he saw that Bullard's hidden weapon was pointed at Dixie.

Forced into a chair, Lucky restlessly tried to think of a way out.

“We've got you for murder,” said Bullard. “You bumped old man O'Neal to get the plant. Your own men heard you quarreling with him just before he took that flight. So did the people on the field. We preserved the wreckage for examination and three bad pins are still in it, and two are in a wing section I picked up after it broke. These pins—”

“You're lying!” cried Dixie.

“The courts won't think so. I've got witnesses, I've got the evidence—”

“You caused that crash in Washington!” said Lucky.

“They'll find nothing in the wreck but good pins…
now,
” grinned Bullard. “No, my fine murderer, there is no way out.”

“Lucky! He can't do it!” wailed Dixie.

“I can,” said Bullard. “And, what's more to the point, I will. Unless, of course, you listen to reason.”

“That's blackmail!” said Lucky.

“Bright boy,” said Bullard.

“Go to the cops,” said Lucky. “Tell them your lies, produce your perjured witnesses, and see how far you get!”

“I'll get far enough to see you hanged,” replied Bullard.

“I won't go through with it! I refuse to violate the Neutrality Laws!”

Bullard grinned fatly. “Who said anything about violating any laws?”

“But if you manufacture fighting planes at the O'Neal plant and then export them, the United States will stop you in your tracks. I don't care what blind you use, it can't be done! Do you think the Army spends its time playing tiddlywinks? Do you think the Navy sails its boats in a bathtub? And what about the agents of the
Treasury Department
, the Coast Guard? Bullard, you're insane. You can't get away with this thing. You might be able to force me to build the planes, but you'll never get those same ships beyond the
three-mile limit
!”

Bullard lighted up a cigar and gazed at Lucky pityingly. “My boy, you lack finesse. You may be a fine test pilot but you will never make a diplomat. Have I said anything about your building
dive bombers
for my client? No. Why, you call me insane without knowing any of the facts.”

“I know enough of them,” snapped Lucky. “Three years ago half a dozen pilots tried to get away with this. They got caught in Peru and the US wrecked them for life. One shipment of fighting planes went out to Spain because Congress was slow getting the law through, but none have gone since. I know that China is yowling for US fighting ships. I know that Outer Mongolian warlords will pay anything for them. Take your client British planes, French planes, any planes, but, Bullard, you'll never get so much as a joystick out of the territorial limits of the United States. The sooner you get that through your head, the better off you'll be.
Nobody
can do such a thing with the United States as alert to such a move as it has lately become. Put that in your cigar and blow it up.”

Bullard was still grinning. “England, you say? France, Italy…? Lucky Martin, you must know that all of those places are using every available factory and every available ship in the present arms race. The
only
place in the world I can get these ships is right here in the USA. And, Martin, you're going to build them for me.”

“But, damn it, I tell you you're a fool. You'll never get them out!”

“Do you think that shipload to which you refer,” said Bullard, “would have risked possible confiscation if the reward at the other end had not been enormous? No. You underrate me, test pilot. If you think I am such a fool, I do not blame you for turning down my offer.”

Bullard looked about him carefully. He was evidently very sure that Lucky could not use the information he was about to impart.

Bullard hitched forward with a confidential air. “See here, does the new law say anything about private planes? Sporting planes?”

“No,” said Lucky, dubiously.

“You know definitely,” said Bullard, “that the private plane manufacturers sell a large percent of their goods to a foreign market.”

“Yes,” said Lucky, uncomfortably.

“Your dive bomber,” said Bullard, “is remarkable for its easy handling and its enormous horsepower. Did you think I needed your engines? No, we have better engines abroad. Did you think I needed your bomb-rack type? No, any outfit can duplicate them.”

“What the hell do you want then?”

“You have developed a new wing design which should stand terrific pressure. It will with good wing pins. You have developed a new alloy for lightness. You have a new type of cockpit design. There you have it, Martin.”

“I still don't see,” said Lucky. “You can't possibly get past every arm of the government.”

“You forget,” said Bullard, puffing contentedly upon his cigar, “that you have twice pulled off your wings before official observers, doubly proving your wing design to be no good whatever. You forget that the government has twice turned you down. You forget that Commander Lawson turned in a report to the effect that this type of wing will apparently serve only in a sporting capacity.”

“Where does all this lead?” cried Dixie, feeling that Lucky was being trapped.

“It leads, fair lady,” said Bullard, “to nothing more and nothing less than this.”

He fumbled in his capacious pockets and finally brought forth an official-looking letter to which was appended a permit.

“Read there,” said Bullard, “that I am authorized to construct, for export, one hundred sporting planes. Read there that the wing load and stress is to be far less than that required for any fighting plane. The top speed is to be one hundred and ten miles per hour. The horsepower is not to be more than one hundred and twenty-five. This will apply to all ships save one, which will be equipped, unlike the rest, with mounts, bomb racks, and your regular engine.”

“The government issued you this?” said Lucky with a frown.

“I have friends,” said Bullard. “The failure of your bomber for fighting purposes aided my effort to have this permit issued.”

“But if Lawson gets wind of that one ship,” cried Lucky, thinking he saw a way out, “he'll
queer
your whole deal.”

“Lawson already knows it will be built,” said Bullard. “I told him you would not consent to building these sporting ships unless I allowed you to construct one last plane for testing. And this one last ship will never leave the United States!”

“But, damn it,” said Lucky, “these sporting planes are of no concern to the government. They are no menace to anything. Why do you come like this to me?”

Bullard smiled. “I was afraid you wouldn't see light otherwise. You do not seem to like me, Martin.”

“There's something behind this,” snapped Lucky. “You haven't a market for a hundred sport planes flying a hundred and ten an hour.”

“By my papers,” said Bullard, “it has been proved to the government that I have.”

“But there's no point in going to all this trouble just to get ships for private aviation.”

“Only you and I,” said Bullard, “will know that the first two dive bombers folded up in the air because of faulty wing pins.”

A bright light broke upon Lucky, almost stunning him with its brilliance. Smooth, plausible Bullard had a permit straight from the government to have O'Neal Aircraft construct a hundred slow-flying, innocuous ships using the O'Neal wing design and fuselage—both of which had been proved worthless by actual test for fighting purposes.

But only Bullard and Dixie and Lucky Martin knew that the wing design was correct. On the other side of the world, Bullard would shift the engines for more powerful plants, would carve out the bellies and fit in bomb racks, and there he would have the most potent light bomber ever manufactured.

Lucky could not blame blind Lawson. Even if Lucky managed to get word to the government, they would call him a liar and laugh at him. Under no charge whatever could Bullard be brought to account.

What was wrong with exporting a private plane which had been tested and found to be worthless as a fighting ship? What was wrong with manufacturing them?

A man with less nice ethics than Lucky Martin would have gladly gone ahead with the deal. But Lucky knew his government was wrong, knew that the ship
was
a potential menace as a bomber.

“No. I can't do it,” said Lucky.

“Then I am prepared to make matters difficult for you, Martin,” said Bullard.” I supposed you would be stubborn about this. I am okay with the government, with everybody, and I'm going to be okay with you. You think quite a lot of this young lady—”

“Lucky,” cried Dixie, “you won't—”

“If he doesn't,” said Bullard, licking his lips, “I wouldn't give ten cents
Mex
for your looks and life, young lady. Smith, call the boys!”

Presently three men swaggered into sight and up the steps. One of them, addressed as Two-Finger, wore a checkered cap pulled low over his coarse face. The other two, common as the refuse in the gutter, stood insolently eyeing Dixie O'Neal.