Trophy for Eagles (19 page)

There wouldn't be any need to bother with Bandfield. That loudmouth Roget had selected an ancient crock for him to race this
time. Hafner could see the tail of the Breese, set up on a tripod and
sticking out of Roget's canvas hangar. It was a piece of shit, just right
for Bandfield to fly.

*

Oakland Municipal Airport/August 16,1927

Tension draped across the field like the tendrils of a Portuguese man-of-war, the sudden bark of an engine running up breaking the thick silence like an exploding paper bag. The airplanes were marshaled in a semicircle less than two hundred feet from the field's
edge. To get as nearly a racehorse start as the field would permit, the
first plane was to taxi to the start line, and the second into the waiting circle, both marked in lime on the sand. The entrants would then sequence from the marshaling position in the order in which Millie Duncan, the uncontested queen of the contest, had drawn them from an old felt hat.

Precisely at twelve noon, with a wave of his checkered flag, the starter shattered the tension like a crystal vase hitting the floor. A
Travelair monoplane, the bright-blue-and-orange
Oklahoma,
was first off, to the spontaneous cheers of the crowd.

Bandfield sat in the cockpit of his battered Breese, for most of the
week the only airplane in the contest not to have some brave name lettered on its side. Earlier in the week, he and Hadley had talked about a comic name—Miss
Blivet, Miss Hap, Hawaii or Bust
—but finally settled on
Salinas Made,
too unhappy with the plane to make more than a gentle joke about it. Vance Breese had dropped
by and with Roget had spent the last two evenings trying to talk him
out of the flight, telling him the airplane wasn't sound and the
margin for error was too small. Roget, always cranky, had gotten
almost belligerent, yelling, "This time 17/ burn the goddam airplane."

Bandfield listened to them respectfully; Breese was a famous
name, and Hadley was in many ways a genius. Finally, he broke in.
"Gents, I appreciate what you're saying, and I know what I'm
risking. The problem is, we need the money to stay in business. If things go right, I plan to land in Hawaii within two hours of Jack
Winter's arrival. If things go wrong, then I won't have to listen to any more of Hadley's rotten jokes."

Bandy hadn't told Hadley about Jack's generous offer to invest the
prize winnings in a plant. Long ago, he'd learned the hard way not to believe anything until he had it in hand; when he and Millie had the checks, they'd tell Hadley.

Deep down, he knew the prize money was secondary to getting
another shot at the big time, a second chance he'd never thought he'd have when the
Rocket
had gone up in smoke at Roosevelt Field. Hadley and Breese had been right about the airplane—it was a fucking dog, apt to come apart in flight. But more than anything else he wanted to be in Hawaii while Millie was enjoying the
celebrations. He feared what success might do to her if he were not
there, and the thought of seeing her go by in a parade, as he had seen Lindbergh, was too much to bear.

Hadley, his usual foul mood drowned in tight-lipped apprehension, was just finishing testing the radio. Totally self-trained, Hadley had an indomitable approach to life. When they couldn't find a transmitter/receiver set on the West Coast that they could use, he'd worked out a deal to "borrow" one from the Army. It amused
Bandfield to see the usually grouchy Roget turn on the charm when
he wanted something. By the time he'd finished telling a few jokes—the one about "three pieces of strange pussy a day is no record, but it ain't a bad average" getting the biggest laugh—the Army master sergeant from Crissey Field who'd worked with the
Bird of Paradise
crew practically insisted they take the radios. It was
another reason he had to make it. There was no way the sergeant could explain the shortage if he went down at sea.

The
Dallas Spirit
taxied to the line. Bandy waved at Captain Bill
Erwin; in the back, strapping himself in was Al Eichwaldt. Bandy had been upset at first with Erwin. The older man had practically
adopted Millie when she arrived. If he hadn't been an eight-victory
ace from the war—and on Spad XVIs, the worst plane at the front—Bandy would have been angry. But Erwin was so good-
natured, so fatherly, and so friendly to Bandy that they finally got
along well. They were in a Swallow, and Erwin had complained more than once about the way it flew. It had been a rush job, and just didn't seem to be put together correctly.

Erwin saluted again as he applied power, and the
Dallas Spirit
hustled down the runway, lifting off from almost exactly the spot where
the
Oklahoma
had broken ground. Bandy wished them good luck.

Roget nudged him as the roughly finished
El Encanto
lined up.
Norm Goddard had modified a surplus Navy two-seater Vought
observation plane into a crude cabin monoplane, stuffing it with fuel everywhere, including a big bulging tank strapped to its belly like a suitcase on a luggage rack. The
El Encanto
had barely
reached a grudging fifty miles an hour when it veered into a wild
ground loop, scattering dust in a circle that drifted toward the bay.
The landing gear folded as the airplane slid off the field toward the
spectators, tumbling until it came to rest. The crowd hung back, expecting a fire, but Goddard had cut the switches, and the
El
Encanto
lay there, its wing thrust like Ahab's arm toward the sky.
Bandy's heart went out to him.

Hafner grimaced; one less to worry about. He was sweating from
the heat of the sun filtered through his Pyralin windows, and
glanced nervously back at Nellie. Long used to engine noise and vibration, she was sleeping quietly in her special case. Murray had
fashioned it out of thick cork sheets for both insulation and flotation
purposes.

Livingstone Irving was next off in a later-model sister ship to
Bandy's airplane, the Breese
Pacific Pabco Flyer.
More experienced
and more cautious than Goddard, he sensed that the airplane was not accelerating properly, and cut the switch to coast to a stop. A tractor towed him back to the starting gate.

Bandfield was worried. Two of the first three airplanes had been
too heavily loaded to get off. Where did that leave him?

His stomach constricted as Millie's airplane, the Lockheed Vega
Miss Duncan's Golden Eagle,
entered the starting gate. He won
dered what she was thinking; they'd had time only for the briefest
good-bye, kissing more for the benefit of the photographers than for
themselves. At precisely twelve-thirty the Vega started its roll.

Bandfield watched, praying as it swiftly gathered speed, sending a
drifting spray of dust over the crowd. He tried to see Millie in the
back as it went by, but the tiny square window where she sat was just
a blur. Winter pulled it off the ground, and the Lockheed climbed strongly, the high-pitched resonance of its engine bidding a plain
tive farewell. Bandy remembered one of Tony Fokker's aphorisms: if an airplane looks right it would fly right. The Vega certainly looked
right. Millie would be safe in it.

He watched with a mixture of hatred and respect as Hafner taxied
his Bellanca
Miss Charlotte
to the line, his arrogant winged-sword insignia emblazoned on its side. Bandfield's emotions had become mixed. The man was daring, no question about it, and a master
pilot. And if he had set the
Rocket
on fire, he had also inadvertently
set up Bandfield's romance with Millie. Who knew what would
have happened if he'd gone on to Paris, to do as Lindbergh was—
flying all over the country? Somebody else surely would have scooped Millie up.

Hafner was delayed when the
Dallas Spirit
reappeared, a huge
section of fabric flowing behind it. Erwin made a beautiful wheel-on landing. As the plane passed Bandfield he could see that the
stitching must have come loose just behind the cockpit; the fuselage
fabric was peeled back like the skin of a banana. It was a miracle that
it hadn't fouled the tail and sent the plane crashing into the ocean.

Bandy could see Hafner's arm sticking out the side of his cabin window, pounding the fuselage side, and knew how he must be boiling with rage at the delay. When the flag went down, he got away quickly, climbing out as swiftly as had the Vega.

Bandy was surprised to see that the Miss
Duncan,
fast disappear
ing, had climbed to at least six thousand feet and was on a course that would carry it to the north of the Farallons. Winter had been diligent about attending the weather briefings; he must have seen something about the wind that others missed.

Martin Goebel was right behind Hafner in the Buhl biplane
Sunrise Special..
Both planes stayed low over the bay until they disappeared, one dot extinguished after the other, beyond the Gold
en Gate.

Roget slapped Bandfield on the back and climbed down. Bandy
guided the Breese carefully to the start line, making cautious wide turns to avoid straining the landing gear. An old habit, intended to relieve nervousness, caused him to count the airplanes on the field.
On the right were almost twenty civil types ranging from a Jenny to
a Travelair. On the left were six military DH-4s and a Martin bomber. The starter, all duded up in plus fours and boots, stood with the checkered flag. Sweat glistening in his palms, throat dry, he glanced over at Roget, who was waving the oil-stained "good luck" straw hat he always wore at big events.

The flag went down, and Bandy stood on the brakes, pushing the
throttle to its limits. When he felt the brakes about to slip, he released them and the
Salinas Made
lurched forward. It rolled
straight ahead, so slowly that he could look to the side and identify
the cars where the crowd stood cheering—an Essex, a Studebaker, a
Chandler. Reacting sullenly to the torque, the Breese started to turn to the left, and he fed in right rudder, keeping it straight.

It pounded down the sandy runway, gaining some speed, fifty,
fifty-five miles per hour. The furrows of all the other aircraft were in
the sand ahead of him, all showing the three marks of the wheels and tail skid, then two, as flying speed lifted the tail. His own tail
skid was still down, firmly planted. He pressed forward on the stick,
and the nose came down. Out of the telltale trails ahead of him, he
saw two of the wheel marks stop, showing him where the Vega had
broken ground. On the right was the twisted, broken
El Encanto.
He passed it, his plane beginning to feel light for the first time. Ahead was the bay. He pressed on, feeling the wheels leave the
ground, bounce, leave again; he was airborne but didn't dare climb,
letting the Breese wallow along in ground effect, just a few feet high.
If his engine coughed, he would get wet for sure.

***

Chapter 3

Aboard the
Salinas Made

1:30
p.m.
PST, August 16, 1927

It was a pig, a stinking, wallowing pig. Bandfield swore at the
ill-mannered Breese monoplane, hoping to shame it into becoming more manageable as the fuel burned off. In exasperation, he stop
ped trying to fly it, letting it go on its own like a huge, fuel-burdened
model airplane. He sat with his legs spread, feet on the floor, hands
off the stick. With 450 gallons of fuel sloshing back and forth, the airplane bobbed and weaved, nosing around like a drunken bear, never quite falling off on a wing, never quite stalling, simply lumbering through the air, wobbling from side to side like the
cheeks of a fat lady's ass going upstairs. The extra surface area it
presented added induced drag that kept the airspeed oscillating between 75 and 85 mph.

At that rate, he'd finish a laughable dead last. He glanced at
Hadley Roget's innovation tucked into a panel on the floor. It was a
simple T-handle, painted red and safety-wired, connected to four
bolts that held the landing gear on. If he removed the safety pin and
pulled the handle, the landing gear would fall into the sea—or so
Hadley predicted. It meant he'd have to land on the belly when he got to Hawaii, but it might mean that he'd
get
to Hawaii, and faster at that.