Trophy for Eagles (4 page)

The excitement was beyond the sexual. He had experienced no erection, no orgasm, no genital sensation at all, but no caper in
bed had ever given him the same wild rush of pleasure. It had been a cerebral release, a mind-clearing exaltation, a searing soul-cleansing mixture of triumph and survival that he had never felt before but knew that he must experience again.

After that, ordinary honors were bland, even the notice that he'd
won the Blue Max. At first, he'd tried to talk to his colleagues about
his feelings, confident that they must have felt something of the same. They were embarrassed. They had no idea of what he meant,
but were uncomfortable in the suspicion that whatever it was, it was
unnatural. So he never again mentioned that he found that his real enjoyment was simply in killing. What had begun as a patriotic keen-edged hyper-hunting experience became an addiction, a thirst that he assuaged every flight, either in a fight against another airplane, or in a quick sweep behind the Allied lines, looking for
staff cars, marching troops, anything on which to spend his bullets.
Goering had reprimanded him officially for needlessly risking his
life and a valuable airplane. It made no difference. He couldn't help it, and it gained him a reputation for wild bravery that was totally
unjustified. He knew he was brave enough, but the exploits, the
balloon-burning, the wild dives down the trench line, were compul
sion, not courage. And he'd come to learn the hard, blinding rules of a compulsion to worship destruction.

Without it, life had no bite. When he first came to America, the differences, the challenge to succeed, had temporarily replaced the urge to kill. It had passed, and he tired of the continual posing, the sham of playing the good-natured German nobleman who enjoyed nothing better than competing with American pilots. The Berlin charm he turned on like beer from a spigot was devastating to American women; he had only to kiss their hands to feel their underclothes dropping with their inhibitions. Even American pilots had come to have some sort of inverse appreciation for him as a German ace. He couldn't understand it. Maybe it was because they had won the war, and wanted their opponents to have been worthy.

He felt his black mood turn the corner. Once he forced himself to
think about the killing, to realize how much he missed the feeling,
he could gather the energy to bound out of the car and again assume
the well-paying role of a tennis-playing knight of the air.

Murray came back, with Nellie prancing on the end of her leash.
Hafner took the bit of steak he had had wrapped the night before and bent down. A tender look suffused his face. "Roll over, Nellie. Even
you must work for your supper."

The battery acid that passed for coffee at the field cafe finally jolted Bandfield awake. He paused at the door of the tiny operations shack
to check the weather. Long Island's verdant greens amazed him; spring had already faded from the hills around his Salinas, California, home. A single deceitful ray of sunshine bled through the rolling gray clouds, brightening the pale green crayon stipling of
new growth on the trees lining the field before drowning in a fresh drumroll of rain. A transparent veil of water peeling off the wings of
a big trimotor was clear evidence that there would be no flying today. He eased the door open and entered self-consciously, as if this were his first day in school. In a way, it was.

Inside, he straightened his shoulders to a good military carriage
and stretched to his full six-foot height. Lean at 165 pounds, a shock
of curly black hair showing no sign of the combing he'd just given it,
the twenty-two-year-old Bandfield looked tired and worn. He sat
down, tight muscles creaking in harmony with the fragile squeaking
wooden rungs of the chair, tilting back to survey the room. He had
breathed better air in his dad's smokehouse, but in all the world this
was the best and only place to be, surveying his competition. The stale odor of cigarettes, unwashed bodies, and oil-stained leather
jackets underscored a salty sporting tension. Four men were already
dead in this game, and the two Frenchmen, Nungesser and Coli,
were missing, probably lost at sea. It could happen to some of the
others here.

The low-ceilinged room was fifteen feet wide by twenty-five feet
long, its bare-stud walls decorated in standard ops-shack style with old calendars and oil-company advertisements. Sprawled on wood
en chairs and boxes were the handful of men who were the fulcrum
on which the entire American aviation revolution balanced.

For a decade after the war, pilots and aeronautical engineers had watched everyone else—stockbrokers, radio repairmen, car sales
men, bootleggers—make money. One cynic, with fifteen years invested and no return, mused that there was plenty of money in aviation—he'd left all of his there. Another quipped that the only
real danger in aviation was starvation. Bandfield's casual walk to the
operations shack convinced him that east or west, it was the same: too many men scrambling for too few jobs in flying. Aside from
some trainers, the only signs of activity were the planes gathered to compete for the Orteig Prize. Half the buildings were empty, fading
signs lamenting famous names of long-gone aviators, optimistic
victims who thought they could make a living flying. All across
America, in every other industry, the economy was booming and
the sky was no limit. In aviation, the sky was a sure pathway to bankruptcy. Cal Coolidge said that the business of America was business. It didn't apply to flying. And it was Coolidge who had
suggested that the Air Service buy only one airplane and let the pilots take turns.

But it wasn't Silent Cal's fault that the profession was torn by a never-ending battle between cost and revenue. Airplanes were ex
pensive, and sometimes lasted only a few weeks or months. Crashes
were common, and hangars were usually ramshackle tar-paper buildings littered with oil-soaked rags, easily victim to casual
cigarettes or faulty wiring. The investments of many a lifetime had
gone up in smoke. Insurance was costly and hard to come by. Maintenance costs were high, and neither passengers nor cargo yielded profit.

Inevitably, management sought economies in pilots' salaries and the workplace. Pilots who complained were ruthlessly replaced.
Youngsters were always coming up, glad to subsidize the company—manufacturer, air-mail carrier, no matter—for the privilege
of gaining a few hours of flying time. Every airfield office Bandfield
had ever seen had been just like this one, inadequately furnished, poorly heated, an offense to the eye. A masochistic glee hung over
the whole discipline of flight, a perverse reasoning that if you really
wanted to fly, you wouldn't mind being miserable. It was a price
most pilots gladly paid, trading ten hours of labor on the ground for
every hour in the air.

Even the Orteig race planes, supposedly the best in the business,
confirmed his view. He knew the problem was the same he'd had with Hadley Roget—a lack of engineering discipline. Airplanes
were designed by people who loved them blindly without targeting what they were supposed to do, never realizing that it was pointless
to build the best-looking airplane in the world if it couldn't earn its
keep. They were all going to try to fly the Atlantic, and if they all
succeeded, it still wouldn't prove a thing. What the world needed was safe airplanes that could make money, airplanes like his own.

There were so many hazards, from engine failure to losing con
trol in a storm. Few of the airplanes had decent instrument systems, and fewer pilots had any experience with the sort of weather they'd
find over the North Atlantic. Bandfield glanced around, estimating that the sea might claim half of the men in the room. They all
knew it, but not one of them would have been anywhere else in the
world.

He watched Lindbergh's strong, slender fingers tear up an orange
crate and hand the bits of wood to tiny Richard Byrd, who stuffed
the splinters into the gasping coal stove as carefully as if staving off
an arctic wind. Last year, the slightly built Navy commander had been the first man to fly over the North Pole; this year he intended
to be the first across the Atlantic. Neither man spoke, each preoccu
pied with thoughts as bleak as the weather.

Lindbergh noticed his old friend and came over to introduce him.

Bandfield thanked Byrd for the use of his hangar. The explorer
smiled and said, "Glad to do it. I looked in this morning; you've got a nice-looking airplane."

Bandfield flushed with pleasure. "It's the best thing I've flown, sir. I'd be glad for you to fly it sometime."

Byrd's smile faded like ice in a cup of coffee. Little worry lines
appeared on his brow as he murmured, "No thanks. Not until I'm back from France, anyway."

Bandfield realized that his plane had shifted the warmth just as it had the odds. Before, Byrd had clearly been the leading contender; now the race was up for grabs. As Lindbergh introduced him to the
other pilots, the same feather edge of resentment surfaced. It was
understandable. He was a wild card flying a slick airplane, and the record time he'd made across country, just under twenty hours, had
superheated the competitive tension already searing the room. The other planes—a Bellanca, a Ryan, and a Fokker—were roughly equal to one another in performance, and the race could have been won by the first one off. The rotten spring weather that had kept
them grounded was the only thing that had made it possible for him
to compete. If it had broken even slightly in the last week, they would have leaped off on the flight to Paris, and he would never have left Salinas.

Bandfield sat down again, balancing on the back legs of his chair,
his head braced against the rough wall. He wished that Hadley could see him, meeting pilots they'd only read about. Shaking
hands had hurt the raw red creases that split his knuckles into a map
of pain. The only thing that would get hands clean was a corrosive mixture of gasoline and Spic and Span cleaner that removed the skin along with the grime and turned nailbrushes into medieval instruments of torture. He needed some Jergens or vaseline, but he
knew he wouldn't get any, and that his knuckles would still be sore
on the next takeoff. It was an occupational hazard to be ignored, like
missed meals, lost laundry, and empty pockets. Still, the barren room seemed cozy compared to the interminable night flight from St. Louis. A sudden burst of warmth from the stove, seen rather than felt, helped him transform past fear into present pleasure. He blew his breath down into his plaid flannel shirt, recycling warmth back into his system, listening to the sharp staccato chatter of the men he was going to beat to Paris.

The aviators were as different in backgrounds as in builds, alike
only in their gut desire to hammer out a living in a profession in which it was easier to earn death than a dollar. Bandfield smiled as he tried to analyze their personalities. Though most had things in common—wrinkled clothes, no glasses, and quick reflexes—each
man was unique, and each one somehow resembled the airplane he flew.

Take good old Slim, whom he'd known only too well in flying
school. Despite his serious, almost worried demeanor, Lindbergh
was always playing wild practical jokes, from lacing a canteen with
kerosene to putting itching powder in the first sergeant's shorts. But he was a professional pilot, shy despite an obvious competence. Lindbergh was a born leader, and definitely a contender to be first
across. He could have been a success in anything—medicine, law,
even following his father into politics—but he'd given his life totally to aviation. Like most of them, he was broke, in hock to his backers. He was tall, lean, and gawky, somehow handsome in spite of it, just
like his airplane, the
Spirit of St. Louis.
Aesthetically, the silver Ryan's wing seemed too long for its stubby fuselage, and the windowless nose had a blind, salamander look to it. The landing
gear was joined to the wings by a wild Erector Set of struts, yet it
looked capable.

Richard Byrd was entirely different, compact and contained, with
a handsome face lit up by a smile he switched on and off like a light
bulb. He viewed his real profession as exploration. Flying was only a
tool that let him leapfrog over older, more famous competitors. Bandy had read endlessly about the Virginian, whose generosity with the hangar had made him a friend for life. Byrd was an
enigma, adored by the public and yet treated with frosty reserve by
those who should have known him best. A patrician, he'd chosen
the equally elegant Fokker trimotor, a big airplane to suit a big ego,
one he wouldn't fly but would command.