Trophy for Eagles

by Boyne, Walter J.

  He knew only too well how fast and how deadly the Messerschmitt was. There was time still to admire its angular nose, blunt-tipped wings, and even the St. Andrew's cross insignia. The thin black streamers from the low-slung exhausts showed that the airplane was pulling maximum power. As it closed in the curving dive that would place it at his rear, the American saw it also bore a personal marking, one he had seen long ago.

  He had no doubt in his mind who was flying that slanting red killing machine, and the knowledge washed him in a fierce warrior's joy. He would revenge the Spaniard or join him.

  ***

  PART I

  GAMBLING FOR GLORY

  ***

  Chapter 1

  Roosevelt Field, Long Island/May 15, 1927

  New York's nightlife saved Frank Bandfield. Broadway-baby lights down below turned the gray meringue covering Manhattan into a luminescent signpost to Roosevelt Field. Sandbagged by fatigue, he'd drifted far off course, rousing to find himself hurtling westward back into the same storm that had battered him for the last three hours. He flew directly over the city's center at two thousand feet, above the jagged points of skyline floating like islands in the fog. A nudge of the rudder set a descending course for Long Island, the slowly turning propeller cutting phosphorescent slices from the clouds.

  Earlier he had flown with his customary tenderness, fingers sensitive to the stick, the plane responding like a bride passionate to please. Lashed by hours of wind and rain, the compliant bride had turned shrewish, fighting his control and bounding off in directions of her own. From Columbus on, sleep had dimmed his senses as implacably as the cold turned his gasoline-soaked fingers into ice. A copper fuel line, routed through the cabin in the frenzied improvisation at the factory in Salinas, had developed a long crack that sent a fan-shaped film of fuel spraying into the cockpit. He'd spent the last hour with his hand clamped over the line, gloves wet through, damping the vibration to prevent a complete break that would cut off fuel flow to the engine. Clamping the stick between his knees, he blew futilely on his hands, one at a time, to summon feeling.

  Six hours into the flight, he'd begun to bite his lips to stay awake. Now they were raw and swollen, but sleep still assailed him. He was hungry and thirsty, his guts rumbling in protest against the unaccustomed neglect. Waiting for the prelanding adrenaline to course through him, Frank Bandfield rocked back and forth in his seat, trying to ease the cramps, letting the sharp handles of the fuel cocks at his side prod him awake. He was alone in the sky; he needed a little help from the ground.

  He prayed someone was there. He might have flown across the country to a field empty of his competitors! What if Byrd or Lindbergh had already taken off, was halfway across the Atlantic? The Orteig Prize was $25,000 for the first airplane across—nothing for second place. Yet the prize was the least of it: the headlines and the future would belong to the first pilot to land his plane in Paris. Whatever came after would be an anticlimax.

  His usual optimistic manner came back with the rush of the wind. Christ, if they were gone, he'd turn around and head west to California, maybe make the first flight to Hawaii or even Australia, if there were enough islands in between. He'd do what had to be done, whatever it was.

  Twenty minutes later, his wingtips trimming gray shreds from the clouds like whiskers from a beard, he ducked below the last layer to see a long L of lights flicker on at Roosevelt Field. They'd believed his estimate, and were waiting for him. Elated, he thought, Goddam, Slim must have turned out the whole National Guard.

  He dropped, curving through the patchy mist to meet the field's east-west layout, sideslipping to bleed off altitude. Tired eyes sought to pick out Lindbergh against the cars parked a hundred yards apart along the field's boundary. The sleek little monoplane's tail skid cut through the soaked grass, sluicing a rooster tail of moisture to glisten in the yellow headlight halos. Bandfield turned off at midfield, the field's potholes bobbing the wings up and down in a Swedish exercise rhythm. He taxied toward the tall, lanky figure who was waving a flashlight and shouting at him.

  "Bandy, great to see you! But, you rat, you beat my record!"

  The pilot climbed out of the cockpit, his legs stiff and his back aching.

  "Good to see you, Slim! The record's not official. I didn't log off from St. Louis. And thanks for the lights. I really needed them."

  "I was afraid you wouldn't see the dinky little string of boundary lights in the fog. Too bad it's too early for the reporters—you made one hell of a landing."

  He helped Bandfield walk to get the circulation going. As they circled, the airplane steamed and gurgled like a winded horse, the hot engine and exhaust manifolds crackling in the misting rain. Lindbergh's bird-quick eyes took in the smooth finish of the plywood fuselage, the cantilever wing. His old flying-school roommate had a first-rate airplane.

  Bandfield saw the glance and laughed.

  "It's a duesy! And it flies as good as it looks, Slim."

  "It must if you got across the Alleghenies in this weather." He switched subjects. "Do you have anybody here to help you?"

  Bandy looked at him blankly. It had taken every dime he and his partner had to get him here. There was nothing left over for a support crew. If there was work to do, he'd do it.

  "No, I'm on my own. I'll be okay."

  "I'll give you a hand when I can. We'll talk about it in the morning."

  Bandfield thanked the mechanics who had parked the cars to illuminate the field and were now pushing the airplane into a battered hangar, little more than a garage, three hundred yards from the main buildings. Lindbergh yawned and said, "When Dick Byrd heard you were inbound, he said you could use this."

  Bandfield looked anxious. "How much will it be? I'd planned on just tying the airplane down."

  The tall pilot laughed. "No charge. Byrd is very hospitable."

  Lindbergh knew from experience that all Bandfield could handle now was a cup of coffee and some sleep. He handed him a Thermos as they drove in a borrowed Essex to a shack where a folding cot and two Army blankets waited. "Not the Plaza, Bandy, but you'll need to get some sleep before the briefing tomorrow. The latrine's around the corner. Tomorrow, if you want, I'll get you a room where I'm staying. See you in the morning."

  Bandfield awoke six hours later, champagne corks popping through his sinuses and muscles tightened like a sardine-tin lid, head pounding from the engine fumes. He had two hours before the meeting—plenty of time to check the airplane, get some breakfast, and do some thinking.

  Back in Salinas, his old friend, partner, and mentor Hadley Roget would already by elbow-deep in another project, probably tinkering with the racer, cracking his stream of tired jokes. As much as they had argued building the airplane, Hadley would be as confident that Bandy had made Long Island as he was that he would make Paris.

  It seemed incredible that the two of them had rolled his airplane out of the hangar for the first time only four days earlier. Working around the clock with pick-up help, they had built it in just eight weeks of calico cat/gingham dog fighting. It was a battle between Bandfield's hard engineering practice and Roget's inventive genius. Clarice, Hadley's wife, would bring them coffee, wincing at their swearing. They argued and yelled even as they built, but no matter how angry or frustrated they were, the hammering and the gluing never stopped. As a result, Bandy had the sleekest airplane in the world, powered by a 220-horsepower Wright Whirlwind engine and fueled by an enormous note at the bank.

  If he won, the Orteig Prize would pay off the bank, and there would be a little left over to build some airplanes, improved versions of what he was flying. He loved Hadley Roget like a father, but next time, he had said, the airplane would be built his way, according to sound engineering practice, and with no cockamamie unproven ideas like Hadley's full-span flaps and single-strut landing gear.

  The fuselage-building process that Bandfield had invented was radical enough. They had made male and female molds out of concrete, then used heat and a vacu
um bag to mold plywood into any shape desired. He had the vision, and Hadley was enough of a master craftsman to make it work. The fuselage was a shell of plywood strengthened with formers, and when the big tanks needed for the ocean hop were removed, capable of carrying the pilot and four passengers in relative comfort.

  Their biggest argument had come over the cowling and wheel covers that Bandfield had insisted on. Roget swore that the engine would overheat and that mud would catch in the covers. Bandfield had worked it all out on a little wind tunnel he had built out of a packing crate and an old fan. His lungs still ached from sucking on the big White Owl cigars to get smoke to blow through the tunnel. The flight confirmed the test results; he'd averaged 125 miles per hour coming out, the engine running cool all the way.

  In the end, all the arguments had ended in a draw, for he'd been wrong about Hadley's flaps. They worked like a charm, cutting his takeoff distance by about a third, and making the approaches easier. But the single-strut gear still worried him—he still hadn't made a takeoff with the full fuel load he'd need to get to Paris, and he had a vision of the plane sitting in a Fatty Arbuckle pratfall, gear spread wide.

  Their final argument had been about the airplane's name. Roget wanted to call it the Bandfield Bullet; Bandy insisted on the Roget Rocket, and the older man graciously gave in.

  It was too expensive to telegraph, let alone telephone, the coast to confirm his arrival. He carried six $5 bills, three in his wallet, three in his shoe, and they had to last all the way to Paris and back. The nest egg he'd built up so painfully during his years in school, repairing and souping up cars, had been wiped out by his mother's final illness, an excruciating bout with failing kidneys that left her wracked with pain and drenched with sweat day after day. Even after selling the truck he and Hadley had converted into a mobile repair shop, he was still in debt for the funeral bills and the airplane. Anyhow, no news would be good news. Every paper in the world was reporting on the New York-Paris race and would be quick to pick up on a crash.

  There had been time for only one short test flight before he headed for Long Island, the last of the contestants to arrive. The premier pilots in the world were in competition for the Orteig Prize, and he felt lucky to be with them. Except for the fractured fuel line and the failure of the new artificial horizon just out of St. Louis, the flight out had been uneventful. Bandfield had flown the rest of the way on needle and ball, accepting as ordinary working conditions a cabin so cramped that they'd had to build a recess in the firewall for the rudder pedals. For twenty hours, the engine's heat had roasted his feet while the rest of his body froze.

  He opened the small valise that he'd tucked between his seat and the big tank that filled most of the cabin area. A clean pungent odor ghosted through the usual gas-and-grease aircraft smell. Nestled among the clean shirt and two pairs of BVDs and socks was a bar of Fels-Naphtha soap, so strong it made you feel clean just sniffing it. Clarice must have slipped it in, knowing he'd be doing his laundry in the sink. He was content; between the valise and the thirty dollars, he had all he needed. If he got to Paris, there'd be plenty of money to buy anything he wanted. If he didn't, he wouldn't need what he had.

  He sanded the back of his hand on his stubble and decided to risk the cold water and shave. Lindbergh was going to be introducing him to some famous people, names he'd read about for years. He wondered how he'd be received, an unknown pilot in an unknown airplane.

  The asphalt road to Roosevelt Field disappeared in the murky rain, merging anonymously with the roadside bushes, the glaucous yellow reflection of the headlights running everything together like dried paint on a palette. They could have been traveling in any direction, any dimension. The long black car, high gear groaning at the twenty-mile-per-hour pace, entered a lane of trees, and the reflections seemed to shift their route of travel from horizontal to vertical, as if they were falling straight down a well shaft. His stomach protested the drop until the horizon was restored suddenly by the subdued glimmer of light from the open doors of a hangar.

  The gloomy, foreboding precipitation had the same granular texture he remembered from storms along the Baltic coast, where sea and sand mixed with the gritty industrial effluvia to produce a textured rain. Bruno Hafner rolled the window down and thrust his hand out, gathering moisture to cool his brow.

  He was tired and bored. Flying in peacetime was so different from, and in many ways more difficult than, flying in war. Even late in 1918, when there were shortages of fuel, oil, tires, everything, there was still a mechanism to get things done. If an airplane needed repair, crews worked all night to have it on the line, ready for its pilot in the morning. And the flights were short; one might have to fly four or five times a day, but only an hour at a time. Now he had to attend to things personally, not to win victories for King and Kaiser, but to face the broad Atlantic in a flight that would last more than a day. He told himself that it was worth the work and the risk—if only they could get on with it.

  "We're here, boss." Murray Roehlk's gravelly voice seemed to reach up in apology from his toes. In the back of the Marmon town car, Hafner placed the cashmere lap rug tenderly around the portly dachshund asleep next to him. He got out to stretch. As he tried to untie his muscles and clear his brain, he suppressed his usual unreasoning anger with Murray, forcing a civil tone.

  "What time is it, Murray?"

  "Six. You can wash up and I'll go get us some breakfast."

  Hafner's stomach barrel rolled at the word breakfast. Last night he'd been drinking Johnny Walker Black Label "straight off the boat" at the Club Vendome on 56th Street, confident that there wouldn't be any flying in the morning. The Vendome was "his" speakeasy, where the owner was pleased to have a distinguished flyer as a guest. He was the club celebrity and rarely had to spend a dime.

  His control slipped, and he glared at Murray, bellowing, "Scram." Then, the oversight dawning, he said, "Make sure you take Nellie for a walk. I've got something for her to eat when you come back."

  Murray nodded, and slipped from behind the wheel with the dog's leash. Hafner sober was no prize; hungover he was a man to avoid.

  The big German slipped back into the car and spread his bulk out over the backseat, looping his legs over the Marmon's mohair upholstery, knowing he had to go through his ritual of self-hate to bottom out his mood, to get functioning again. He thought about searching for a flask, but decided against it, swearing for the fourth morning that week that he would stop drinking, cut out all the habits that gave such intense transitory pleasure that the rest of life was pallid.

  Lately, it was taking so much longer to get drunk, and even longer to recover. He remembered the old days, back in France, indiscriminately sampling the captured wines and cognacs, drinking whatever was poured. A few glasses of Bordeaux at dinner, a drink or two afterward, and he was out cold. But he'd be on the line before dawn, checking over his Fokker, joking with the other pilots, eager to get airborne. Now he had to drink all evening to feel it. His hangovers lasted till noon and were different, depressing. With the Staffel, a hangover was something to laugh about, a trophy like a victory. Now it clung like a stinking black octopus around his shoulders, reproaching him for all he did and didn't do.

  Even at the end of the war, when his scoring string was brought to a halt by the Armistice, he hadn't felt the same bone-devouring depression. People were always saying that everything was relative. Nothing was. In 1918, he was being shot at every day, didn't have a mark in the bank, no time for romance except for quick tumbles with the local unwashed farm girls, and he was completely happy. Less than ten years later, no one was shooting, he had become wealthy selling surplus arms around the world, and he enjoyed a beautiful rich blond wife as well as a string of young girlfriends. But he was totally miserable.

  He walked himself painfully through his analysis, working to get to the pit of his self-reproach, to worry his secrets like a terrier, and then to bound up, ready for the day. The reasons for his self-pitying black moods wer
e paralyzingly simple. The first was good, one he could talk about to anyone. In 1918, he had lived in an ordered world in a powerful Germany he believed in, and where he was famous as the youngest ace to win the Pour le Merite. His squadron mates liked him, he had dined with the crown prince, his face appeared on postcards, and he was courted by the airplane manufacturers when he flew in the fighter competitions. He had scored forty-five times in aerial combat. The official records credited him with only twenty-seven, because he had given away eighteen victories to grateful young pilots to build their confidence.

  Giving away victories was unusual. The reason he had done it was tied to the puzzling, unsavory second cause of his depression, an evil appetite he could admit only to himself, an appetite for killing even more than for victory. He remembered his first realization of his obsession precisely, on May 10, 1918, when he was engaging a Royal Air Force Bristol fighter. He could see it now, its drab brown colors overlaid by the blue-white-and-red cocardes, the curious lower wing slung on struts below the fuselage, a tiny red-haired man in the backseat who played his twin Lewis guns like an organ. They had fought for twenty endless minutes, and as Hafner's brand-new Fokker D VII picked up bullet hole after bullet hole, his lust to kill grew. A snap shot, hanging on his prop, through the bottom of the Bristol's fuselage had killed the enemy rear gunner. On his next attack he closed to within fifteen meters, the big Bristol filling not only his sights but the prop disk. He could see the gunner hanging slackly in the Scarff ring turret, blood spraying in a mist from a face wound, the pilot whipping quick glances back over his shoulder, pounding on his jammed forward-firing Vickers machine gun. Hafner closed his eyes to picture the scene precisely, remembering how he had mashed the trigger lever, spraying the Bristol till his ammunition belts ran empty. The pilot fell forward and the flame-precursoring wisp of white vapor streamed out. He dropped back to watch the Bristol spin, gently at first, then more quickly and steeply until it disappeared in an exploding circle of smoke that sent small drifting bits of men and machine to litter no-man's-land below.