Trophy for Eagles (72 page)

Lacalle ran out of the operations shack. "Full-scale attack on Guernica. We just got word that three flights of Ju-52s are en route."

They walked out to the stubby little green I-16s. Lacalle punched
him playfully on the arm. "At least fuel is no problem. We're the
last airplanes the Republic has left in the north. We'll get the best of
everything."

Bandy carefully preflighted the Mosca, aware that this would be his last combat flight. The stubby little Russian plane reminded him
of Hadley's racers, small, short-winged, lethal-looking. Methodical
ly, he checked the fuel tanks with his own dipstick. They were full. He calculated that he could fly to France with half tanks, even if he
had to ditch in a field or on a beach. It would be over then.

*

Burgos, Spain/April 26, 1937

Von Richthofen had settled into the narrow cockpit of the Junkers
Ju-52 when an orderly ran forward with a message. He read it and
cursed. "You take it, Baumer; I've got to go back to the office."

After von Richthofen was safely out of the cockpit, Captain Werner Baumer threw up his hands. "I thought we might actually
get him into combat today, and let him see what a hopeless dog this
airplane is as a bomber." Baumer resented the way the high command thought the Ju-52, designed as a transport, could do any job. In the past, they had even had them going low, ground strafing, where any Spanish child could shoot at them without missing. He signaled that he was ready to start engines. On either side of him,
ground-crew men dressed in dusty black coveralls went through the
final checks to see that the bomb safety pins were removed, the chocks pulled, and the runway ahead clear.

Baumer saw the green flare ascend and pushed his hands forward,
the movement of the three throttles adding power, while si
multaneously releasing the brakes. The Junkers moved sluggishly ahead, and Baumer settled down on his hard metal seat, sensing the
adrenaline coursing through him, as it always did, even on an easy mission like this. In the back, gunner Erich Tauber ran his hands over the 7.9mm MG 15 machine gun, sighting down it and making
machine-gun noises with his mouth, an eighteen-year-old delighted
to be at war.

*

Guernica, Spain/April 26, 1937

The heavy bell in the church tower began to peal. The Basques
were crowding the streets, drivers forcing their ox wagons through
the densely packed crowd of buyers and sellers. Monday was market
day, rain or shine, peace or war.

On the hillside, Father Alfonso Miravittles stopped to catch his breath. His finger, still moist from the oil of extreme unction used to slip poor dying Arturo Consados through the gates of heaven, crept down into the heel of his boot to comfort the blister. He
realized what he had done and wondered if the Lord would consider
it a misuse of a sacrament.

In the distance, he could see the crumbling ruins of the ancient Basque parliament building in the north end of town, now decked
out with multicolored rags, washing hung out by the refugees to dry. Since the refugees had swelled the population, everything was made
to serve as housing. His own work had tripled.

He began to move again, slowly. On the way to old Arturo's hut
this morning, he had passed the famous Guernica oak tree. Six hundred years old, cut to a stump during the Napoleonic wars, it had flourished since, and become Guernica's symbol for Basque resistance. But this year it had come into leaf early, a sign as ominous as the trembling rumble he sensed in the air, a low
guttural growling that was causing the magpies to fly in quick calling
circles. He crossed himself, and hurried on.

Baumer's Ju-52 was the lead aircraft. He flew it precisely, antic
ipating maneuvers so that it seemed to fly as crisply as a fighter, rather than the lumbering truck it was. His observer, Lieutenant Henke, was suspended below in the archaic bombardier's position,
exposed to the wind that he was busy calculating. They were flying
at four thousand feet, secure in the knowledge that there would be no enemy flak or fighters.

Above the bombers, Lieutenant Adolf Galland watched the Junk
ers roll on. He and his fellow fighter pilots were delighted to be flying an escort mission in their Heinkel He-51s, instead of the
usual dangerous attacks against ground targets. And circling above
the Heinkels, unable to fly in formation with them because they
were so slow, essing back and forth in easy turns in his brand-new
Messerschmitt Bf 109 drafted from the test group at Rechlin, was an
elated Lieutenant Colonel Bruno Hafner.

He had pulled strings to get the airplane assembled swiftly, flying
the test flights himself, driving the crew overnight to get the special
paint job completed. The bright red paint was totally unauthorized,
as was the large white winged sword behind the cockpit. But this was
wartime, and the authorities winked at the deviations from discipline that signaled high morale.

Hafner patted the intelligence report in his flying-suit pocket. Two I-16s had reinforced Bilboa; one of the two pilots was an American volunteer. Hafner grinned to himself. It had to be Bandfield, it
must
be Bandfield!

Five thousand feet below, Baumer muscled the Ju-52, keeping the airspeed and altitude constant, aware that a deviation would bring a rocket from Henke. The observer's signals to turn right or left were marked by a red or green light on the panel. At the beginning of the war, the bombardier had sat in a hole chopped in
the floor and dropped the bombs by hand. Things were improving a little, bit by bit, as they learned their way. It would be better in the
next war.

Behind Baumer, three other flights of Junkers, all loaded with
550-pound high-explosive bombs, were readying to drop. The big bombs would break the buildings into kindling, open the gas mains,
prepare the way for the fires. Then they would return in the third wave, carrying incendiaries.

Unheard below the bombers, the church bell ringing the air-raid alarm sent a few of Guernica's population into the crudely built bomb shelters. More crowded into the church, with contradictory hopes. The first hope was that they wouldn't be hit in a church; the
second was that if they
were
hit, their death in church would assure
salvation.

Lacalle had led Bandy to the north to gain altitude, then back in a sweeping climb to ten thousand feet. Flying the Mosca was like balancing a marble on a pencil, and Bandy was not yet comfortable
in it. Below them lay Guernica's houses, built wall to wall so that streets meandered through them like water through a rocky field.

Unaware of the approaching Russian fighters, Baumer felt a sense
of quiet satisfaction. All of the long efforts—the trips from Germany, the training, the sweat and hard labor—all were made
worthwhile at the press of Henke's bombardier's button that sent the bombs hurtling toward the town. It was a signal to the other planes,
whose bombs cascaded down, tumbling from their vertical storage to course clumsily into alignment.

Henke's string of bombs, falling in pairs, hit the Hotel Julian,
then walked explosion by explosion across the street to the railroad
station. Erich Tauber depressed his gun as far as he could and fired a burst into the streets.

Father Alfonso stumbled as he watched the bombs from the second wave of bombers smash into the church, crumpling the steeple and throwing the altar forward across a line of kneeling
women, turning prayers into screams. The priest's eyes were stream
ing tears as he raced to his church, his people.

Lacalle signaled and dove, accelerating to five hundred kilometers per hour before firing. Lacalle aimed for the number-two man in the formation, Bandy for the lead airplane. As he dove, he
knew the only thing that would make being here worthwhile would be finding Hafner in one of the German planes. He was too tired to
feel fear anymore, too jaded to enjoy a victory.

Baumer was surprised by the controls jumping in his hand in
concert with the metallic clatter of the heavy Russian machine-gun
bullets cutting through his wing. He banked his Junkers into a gradual turn to the left, trying to keep the formation together as he
saw the two green Russian-built single-seaters chandelle up ahead.
He felt the vibration of Tauber's gun—the youngster's bursts were too long, he'd burn out his barrel.

"I-16s," he called to no one.

Lacalle's target started to smoke. He turned to the left and attacked its wing man. Bandy dove to attack the lead plane again.
The Junkers grew big in his sights, and he put a line of bullets across
the corrugated skin of the fuselage. He still had respect for the German gunners, having seen more than one of his comrades go down from their fire. The Junkers's top gunner was huge, sticking much farther up into the slipstream than usual.

Where are the damned fighters when we need them? Baumer thought as he jerked the Junkers into a shivering right-hand turn. He wondered if Erich, for all his talk of fighting, was hitting anything. Even if he didn't, just the act of firing would be a deterrent. Where were the fighters?

Below, Galland was pulling up; even in a full-throttle dive the Heinkels couldn't catch the I-16s. He was going to have to climb, and try to cut them off from their base in Bilboa.

Hafner circled above the fight, choosing his time. He could not tell which airplane Bandfield was flying, but he had ammunition enough for them both. When the lead Mosca dove again, Hafner swung down in a tight arc that pulled white trails of condensation
from his wingtips. The ugly little Russian fighter grew in his sights.
He raised his nose, fired, saw the hits registering directly in the cockpit; smoke and flames erupted in a violent wind-lashed stream.

"Kaputt,"
he said, and arced back into a roller-coaster climb to his perch above the combat. He would have liked to stay on the Mosca's tail, following it down, pumping more bullets into it. But
there was still an enemy—and it might be Bandfield. He would get
them both and be sure.

The fight had drifted away from Bandfield after his first attack,
and he was sitting at altitude, seeking the next target, when the cameo battle unfolded beneath him. He had seen Lacalle's master
ful attack, smashing the Junkers and then deftly disposing of the
defending Heinkels like an aerial Cyrano de Bergerac, a fencing master sliding in and out among the Germans. Then Bandfield
watched the red blur of metal scything down to attack. It was a
Messerschmitt just like the one he had flown back at Augsburg.

He saw the quick burst—no more than ten seconds—that shred
ded Lacalle's airplane, and swore as the Messerschmitt converted all
the speed and energy of its dive into altitude.

Lacalle's smoking airplane straightened out and began to fly level.
It was surrounded by Heinkels driving in and firing as leisurely as if it had been a target sleeve. Below, flames were already boiling up
from the city.

Bandfield's thoughts came clattering like bullets even as he
reacted. The Messerschmitt was faster and could climb more rapid
ly. It didn't matter; he was plunging headlong into the Heinkels, trying to save his friend Lacalle if he could, to draw the Messerschmitt down on him if he couldn't. It was the worst way to engage—low, in an inferior airplane, against a host of enemies—but he had to try.

Hafner watched the Mosca dive, irrationally sure now that it was
Bandfield. He saw the streams of smoke from its cowling and wings.
He waited, letting the Heinkels engage the enemy as it went past, each little biplane turning and darting to fire either at the first Mosca, now burning brightly, or at the second one, which had just broken through the melee.

The German hunched forward. There was a line of Heinkels
behind him now, ready to cut off the Mosca if he missed. He would
not miss. He shoved the Messerschmitt's nose forward and dove, seeing the Mosca turning toward him.

One of the Heinkels had been good, turning behind Bandfield to
shatter his windscreen, punching a line of holes across his instrument panel that terminated in a wide pulsing wound in his hand.
He pushed his bloody fingers against the throttle, blood squirting
against the windscreen. He glanced at his ammunition counters—they read zero. He checked an impulse to test the guns—if there
were any bullets left, he wanted to put them into the Messerschmitt.

The gleaming red Messerschmitt came dropping down in a vertical arc, curving in for the attack, an all-white winged sword gleaming behind the cockpit. In a surge of pleasure no different
from instant, urgent sexual arousal, Bandfield leaned forward, anxious to fall on the neck of his foe. He had smelled it, he knew that it
was his old enemy Hafner, and the insignia confirmed it. Bandy raised his nose, worrying about losing airspeed, but unable to turn away. He could see a bright winking on the cowl of the Messerschmitt, felt the slugs ripping through his fuselage. Bandfield mashed on his gun button, heard the clatter of air as the pneumatic
charging system pulsed the empty guns. The Messerschmitt's fuse
lage flashed by overhead, and Bandfield turned instinctively to follow, knowing that he could not dive away without the German pouncing on him like a leopard.