Trophy for Eagles (20 page)

Bandy had protested the installation. It added weight and it hadn't
been tested. Worse, if only one side released, the gear would bounce in the slipstream until it beat the plane to death.

"Fuck it." He reached down and pulled the T-handle. The left
bolts slipped out, then the right followed. The gear gyrated back up to rip along the fuselage side and lodge on the horizontal stabilizer,
the wheel gouged into the fuselage fabric. The airplane, now un
balanced and configured not for flight but for death, bucked desper
ately upward like a harpooned whale.

"Goddammit, Hadley, you and your goddam cockeyed ideas."

Bandfield was pushing forward on the stick, trying to keep the nose from climbing further to a stall and spin that would sling him like trash into the Pacific.

"Think, goddammit, think!" He tried to shield the grossly over
weight airplane from further stress. Any maneuver that would shake
the gear loose would tear the airplane apart. Sweat popped out on his forehead as he leaned into the stick, managing to hold the nose
below the point of stall. He had full power on, and the airplane was
trembling, rattling, threatening to go into a head-snapping dive. It quivered, and he brought the throttle back; he felt the landing gear
move again, and the nose came down, enough to break the stall and
let him advance the throttle again. He had stabilized the stricken airplane in a mushing knife-edge between flying and falling.

He considered turning back, trying to minimize the distance between himself and the shore, but each time he entered a bank the airplane shuddered as if it would destroy itself.

There was another jarring clatter. The nose came down and the
gyrations stopped. He watched in gratitude as the airspeed picked up
first to 100, then to 105 mph. The gear must finally have broken loose from its near-fatal embrace.

The sequence of events puzzled him until he thought it through. The gear could have weighed only about one hundred pounds, but it represented a lot of drag and surface area. When it lodged in the
back, it had upset the center of gravity and added an enormous amount of drag. It was a wonder he hadn't crashed. Once the gear was gone, though, the airplane was cleaner than it had ever been. No wonder it flew better. Right after he throttled Hadley, he'd pat him on the back and tell him what a good job he had done!

*

Aboard the
Miss Charlotte

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

Bruno Hafner was sweating, moving the controls around the cockpit as if he were stirring a giant bowl of cake batter. Nellie was whining
and coughing; she was probably airsick. The fuel-laden Miss
Charlotte,
normally so sweet to handle, was flying nose high at 80 mph,
right on the ragged edge of a stall.

He looked down in disgust at Bandfield's Breese monoplane
plodding along below, a bright silver cross against the deck of clouds
that hid the surface of the sea. "If that
Schweinerei
doesn't start moving, I'm going to leave him."

Hafner was already impatient; he'd flown a great wide circle to
bring him back to cruise in Bandfield's blind spot. He knew how to
navigate and had a direction finder, but he didn't want to miss the
dot that was Hawaii. Murray had told him about Hadley's coup with
the Army radios; he planned to take advantage of it and fly above and behind the Breese for most of the trip, cross-checking his own
computations with the route of Bandfield's flight. When Hawaii was
in sight, he'd simply pour on the gas and pass him, for the Bellanca
was at least fifteen miles per hour faster than the Breese.

Something fell away from the tail of Bandfield's airplane, a twisted cross that disappeared into the clouds. The Breese leaped ahead.

Puzzled but grateful, Hafner pushed his throttle forward to main
tain station, high and to the rear, letting the airspeed build. The
Miss
Charlotte
became docile once again, and Hafner reached back
to scratch Nellie's ears through the wire of her cage. He thought briefly that he probably should have left Nellie home with Murray.

He was
almost
sure that Murray took good care of her; it was too bad
dogs couldn't talk.

*

Aboard
Miss Duncan's Golden Eagle

5:30
p.m.
PST, August 16, 1927

Millie awoke for the fourth time since they'd left. The trip out to the
Coast had been exhausting, and she had gone to parties almost every
night. It was incredible now to be on her way, actually en route to Hawaii and to "being someone." Flying wasn't yet the poetry she'd imagined it would be, but at least she wasn't feeling sick.

Scottie Gordon, the navigator, smiled at her, showed her the chart. The Vega was clipping along at 123 mph on a true course of
252 degrees. He leaned over and yelled in her ear: "You slept right
through the only ship sighting we've had. About half an hour ago the clouds opened up and there was a Japanese ship down below. I used the binos and it was something like the
Tachiband Maru."

She glanced at the red X plot marks. "Aren't we a little north of
course?"

"We're creeping along the edge of a high-pressure zone; we'll cut
back south later."

"How's Jack doing?"

"Happy as a clam. He's already eaten two sandwiches and drunk a
cup of coffee."

She sat back in her chair, trying to figure where Bandy was. The
Vega was twenty miles an hour faster than the open-cockpit Breese;
they'd been gone five hours, so he was about a hundred miles behind them. She tried to imagine how he looked, goggles down,
wind blowing his hair wildly as it had on the double-decker buses in
New York.

By bending down, she could see forward to the back of Uncle Jack's head. He was so generous. This morning he'd said that he
would come in on the factory with Bandy and Roget; with the prize
money, it meant that they'd have enough capital to get started.

*

Aboard the
Miss Charlotte

7:00
p.m.
PST, August 16, 1927

The spectacular setting sun had turned the
Salinas Made
briefly into a brilliant orange ball. Then the plane had lumbered on below, shedding its colors until it disappeared against the flat gray of the
undercast. Hafner sighed in relief when the navigation lights of the Breese winked on, two dots, one red, one green, above the endless
gray clouds that hid the ocean.

He had sat high above other airplanes on other days. In 1918, Bandfield would have been cold meat, perfectly positioned for a
diving attack. Hafner reached forward and cocked imaginary ma
chine guns, waggling his wings. How sweet it would be to drop down and send two lines of bullets through the common little
upstart! With all the gas he was carrying, he'd burn like the flaming
coffins the Americans called observation planes late in the war. One
squirt and they were alight, the flames fanned to white heat by the rush of wind.

It was ironic. During the war he had routinely killed young men he didn't know, with whom he had no quarrel save that they were
flying planes marked with roundels instead of crosses. The chaps in
the Bristol, for example—he probably had had much in common
with them. Below was a vicious little man who had cheated him out of the Orteig Prize. It would be amusing to dive down and frighten
Bandfield, but the Miss
Charlotte
was still far too heavy to do anything but fly straight and level. A sudden movement, and the extra Gs would pull the fuel tanks right out through the belly, like an elephant dropping a calf.

He wondered where the others were. He'd seen the
Oklahoma
limping back to the field with black smoke trailing from its engine, obviously out of the race. Winter's Vega was far ahead. He checked
his watch.

An hour later, sleep began to steal up on him. He bit his lips and pounded his fist against his thighs, then strained to reach back and pour Nellie a drink of water. He glanced at the diagrams Murray had drawn for him. The Signal Corps had installed a transmitter at Fort Windfield Scott at the Golden Gate, and another on the island
of Maui. Each transmitter put out two lobes of signals, a dash-dot for N on the right and a dot-dash for A on the left. The course line
lay where the two signals overlapped to form- a continuous tone. It had worked well just out of San Francisco. He turned it on again.
There was nothing, total silence. That goddam Murray had warned him that the system wasn't reliable; he was right again.

Edging the window open, he leaned forward to let the rush of air
awaken him. The draft blew his charts back over his shoulder, past the tanks to lodge in the rear of the airplane, far out of reach.

"Donnerwetter!
Now I
have
to stick to Bandfield!" Hafner was
suddenly awake and a little ill at ease.

*

Aboard the
Salinas Made

9:00
p.m.
PST, August 16, 1927

Jesus, how did Slim do it? Bandfield asked himself. He groggily
poured himself a cup of coffee. Lindbergh had flown for thirty-three
hours and landed at night. He was only a little over eight hours into
the flight and was already almost passing out.

Part of it was the night before, of course. He had slept very little,
going over every element of the flight, wondering if Hadley was
right about the risks. He'd been working long hours, trying to get the
airplane ready; now it was catching up with him.

He nodded, sleep dimming his reflexes, requiring a gathering of will for any act. He leaned his head to the edge of the windscreen, letting the rush of air tug at his goggles. He opened his mouth and
the rushing wind blew his cheeks wide, drying the saliva so that his
lips stuck to his teeth.

His exasperation with Hafner's following him had long since
worn off. Hours ago he had been stretching, twisting his neck to get
some circulation going, when he saw the unmistakable angular outline of the Bellanca silhouetted against the lighter evening sky.
His first reaction was elation at having the loneliness of the Pacific
broken; then he realized Hafner was coming along for the ride, letting him do the navigation.

Just like that square-headed prick, he thought. It puzzled him until he sorted out the strategy. Hafner would figure he could loaf along until he got in sight of Hawaii, or until his direction finder picked up the Maui beacon. Then he'd put his nose down, pour the coal to it, and land first.

But Hafner didn't know Bandy had dropped the gear. Now he was at least as fast as the Bellanca, maybe faster. It was still a horserace,
and this time Hafner would be the horse's ass.

*

Aboard
Miss Duncan's Golden Eagle

10:00
p.m.
PST, August 16, 1927

The airplane was incomparably better than anything Jack Winter had ever flown, a real thoroughbred. Gordon had sent a note
forward, giving their position and their fuel consumption; they were
flying eight miles an hour faster and burning three gallons an hour less fuel than he had planned. He thought about advancing the
power a little, to get even more speed, but decided against it. Things
were going so well he wouldn't change anything.

The moon had risen twenty minutes earlier, and now the band of low clouds below, soft hillocks of moisture, were bathed in a
gorgeous yellow light. He scribbled a note and sent it back to Millie
on the little string pulley they'd rigged up.

She read: "In ten years, passengers will be paying $500 to do this,
and you are doing it first, free!"

She creased the note and put it in her bag. There was a book in
this flight, and she was going to need all the material she could get.
She could get ideas from Bandy, too, loafing behind them somewhere—she hoped.