But now his mobile face was taut with apprehension.
"Bandy, I know this guy. He worked for me on Hell's Angels as a stunt pilot. He's a real prick."
Hughes was worried. The final flight was tomorrow afternoon, and Bandfield was boozing. Howard Hughes liked getting his hands dirty, the flying and the senoritas. But he didn't like to lose, especially this time, when they had their first real shot at winning. Worse, the dismal tour was turning him into a combination father confessor, psychiatrist, and cheerleader.
Bandy grimaced as he sipped the tepid Pisco punch. After half a dozen bouts with dysentery in South America, he usually drank only beer or boiled water. But he found himself in a situation he couldn't avoid, a social evening with the Peruvian military—his would-be customer—and Bruno Hafner, his rival and enemy. Hafner had handled it perfectly, acting as if they were long-lost friends, enjoying the fact that Bandfield had to be civil to avoid a scene.
"I know him too. He burned my airplane. And now he wants to drink with me."
A drinking bout with Bruno was the last thing he could afford. They hadn't sold a plane on the South American tour, and he was overdrawn on his letter of credit. Even with the money Roget made at Wright Field, they couldn't go on much longer. Hughes had offered to help out with the finances, but Bandfield had long since decided that he wouldn't take any money from anyone unless they had some genuine prospects of sales.
He had been pretty successful in avoiding Hafner until this evening. They had been competing twice a day, in the early morning and late afternoon, and their chance meetings were always marred by Hafner's bragging. He was politely correct until some of the Peruvian military came around, when he always managed to refer to his victories on the Western Front in a way that made Bandfield look like a Boy Scout.
It was psychologically compelling. Nearly all of the South American military looked to Germany for training and equipment, and they put an extraordinary premium on Hafner's ace status. The aircraft competitions were run on a dual track. At the top level were a series of contractual requirements that made sense and gave a cloak of legitimacy to the offer to purchase. The requirements had some combination of specifications for speed, bomb load, range, etc., plus the usual details on delivery and method of payment.
At the next level, the judges who had the final say were almost always fighter pilots, and the competition was usually evaluated almost solely on the dogfighting capability of the airplanes, without regard to their ultimate use.
Bandfield knew there was a third level too, one he refused to use—simple bribery. At every airfield hints had been dropped about certain requirements "at the Air Ministry," which had been clear indications that graft was expected. He couldn't bring himself to address the problem. Even if Roget Aircraft had the money to give away, he wouldn't have done it.
But so far he thought things had been going well. Today the contest had been a race in time to climb to altitude—five thousand, ten thousand, and twenty thousand feet. The Peruvians had to have high-altitude capability to cross the mountains that filled the country from border to border. The Pratt & Whitney engine of Bandy's Rapier had been fitted with a supercharger to get more performance, and although Hafner's export version of the A-11 had beaten him to five thousand feet, he had easily won the other two contests. It made them even for the competition.
Colonel Jorge Santos came over. A little over five feet tall, lath-lean from too much smoking, he wore his hair oil-slicked back in a wide pompadour. The only bulk he had was provided by a resplendent Sam Browne belt and a holster carrying a gun as big as a French 75. As head of the Peruvian air corps, he would make the final decision on which airplane to buy. The APRA communists were near revolt at Trujillo, and both the army and the navy wanted bombers in a hurry.
"Capitan Hafner has proposed another contest, Mr. Bandfield. He wants to race to see who can drain a bottle of beer in the fastest time."
Bandy had not spent all his time at Berkeley working—he could chug-a-lug with the best of them, and the Pisco had raised his ordinarily high level of combativeness.
Before Bandfield could reply, Santos went on, "He wants me to caution you that German university students have a great deal of practice in drinking beer, and that it might be an unfair competition."
"He's on, Colonel. How many bottles?"
"Just one, but perhaps I neglected to say while doing a handstand."
Bandy's Pisco shifted in anticipation.
"Okay."
"Ah, yes, and I'm sorry, I also neglected to say, on the window-sill."
Hughes grabbed Bandy's arm. "Let's get out of here, Bandy. They're setting you up. That window is on the second floor. You'll kill yourself."
Hafner had pulled his mess jacket off and handed Santos the soiled ribbon of the Pour le Merite he had earned in the ]agdgeschwader Richthofen. Tugging his suspenders into place, he jumped up on the window ledge and did a handstand. His hands were huge, spanning the dark wooden sill. Santos placed the bottle of beer in front of him.
"Now," he said, grabbing the top of the bottle between his teeth and arching his neck to the side. Santos counted "Uno, dos, tres, quatro . . ."as the beer spewed out the corner of Hafner's mouth. He gulped a few swallows down—up, really—and swung his head to sling the bottle between his arms out the French windows.
Hafner flipped forward, landing on his feet.
"Your turn, Mr. Bandfield."
"Don't be a sucker, Bandy. This guy must be a professional acrobat."
Bandy moved to the window. He positioned himself, gripping the sill.
The dream was the same. He was flying Winter's Vega, the engine had quit, and Millie was in the back, calling to him. For five years now he'd made that last endless glide to the sea two or three times a week. He was somehow flying the airplane, somehow sitting outside, admiring the Vega's yellow finish, unable to aid Winter's desperate efforts. It was always the same, the switch from the controls to helplessly watching from the outside until the Vega hit. There was never a splash, it simply disappeared, blotted up by the sea. Then, below the surface, covering an area as large as the Vega, was Millie's sweet sad face.
The dream ended as it always did, with him suddenly sitting bolt upright, silently calling out Millie's name.
Hughes was sitting by the bed, watching him intently. Finally he said, "Well, good morning there, chief! How are you feeling?"
"Okay."
Hughes broke into laughter. "It's a goddam good thing you landed on your feet and not your head. I'd be taking you home in a box."
Bandfield struggled to adjust the pillows, groaning. "That bastard Hafner slopped beer all over the damn windowsill. It was slick as ice."
"Yeah, the whole thing reminded me of one of the early chapters of War and Peace, except the Russian guy pulled it off. They sure suckered you."
"I'm glad you enjoyed it, Howard. Excuse me for not laughing. Between the pain and thinking what Hadley Roget is going to say, and the worst hangover of my life, there's something wrong with my sense of humor."
Hughes's expression changed. "Yeah, Roget is going to be furious. He didn't really expect us to beat Jimmy Doolittle flying for Curtiss. But here in Peru, with just Hafner and the A-11, we really had a chance."
Bandy nodded. "Well, we'd better win this one, or we're out of business. If we could get an order for even a dozen airplanes, it would get us by until the end of the year."
The hospital was set under a stunted line of trees on the edge of the beach, and the sharp reflected light from the yellow sand thrust into his eyes like a hollow white needle. He moved his legs. The casts clicked together, and pain lashed him. Christ, both ankles must be broken.
Bandy turned to sit on the edge of the narrow camp bed, torn mosquito netting draped around his head like a nun's hood. "I'd have felt better about the Peruvian army doctor if he hadn't kept mooching cigarettes."
"What the hell were you thinking about, letting that goddam German con you like that? You must have
had eight drinks."
A convulsive wave of bile-laden nausea shuddered through him, and he felt his liver part its moorings. Eight drinks. No wonder he felt like dying.
"What time is it?"
"Ten o'clock. I asked them to postpone the demonstration for a day, but Hafner refused. Don't blame him. He'll be taking off about four. Jesus, Roget will nail your ass to the hangar wall. This was the only contract we had a shot at, and now we're scratched."
"Scratched, hell. Just get me in the airplane and strap the casts to the rudder pedals. You may not be the greatest pilot in the world, Howard, but you are a damn good mechanic. Let's rig up some sort of clamp. I think you can reach the pedals if you pull the access plates away on the side of the cockpit."
"Look, I'm not wiring you in any airplane in your condition. How would you bail out if something went wrong?"
"Nothing is going to go wrong. Besides, we'll never be much over five hundred feet off the ground anyway. I'm not even going to wear a chute."
"You should have been wearing one last night," Hughes roared. Bandfield threw the limp pillow at him. He missed, knocking over the plain white water jug he'd drained during the night without thinking about germs. Between the Pisco and the bad water, he'd probably be better off if he crashed.
Hughes put the water bottle back. "You can't fly like this. It would be better not to fly at all than have Hafner show you up. He's been a fighter pilot all his life. No offense, but I'm not sure you could take him even if everything were even. And he's a mean guy, a killer. When we were making Hell's Angels I could tell he enjoyed it when there was a crash."
Bandfield realized that Hughes was right. He just did not understand how desperate the situation was. It wasn't only that they were out of money; they'd been out of money before. The real problem was that they were at the end of the line with the company. He'd been putting together some magnificent ideas for a new transport and a new bomber, planes that could use the wing structure he and Hadley had invented, planes that would not only be good, but be safe. If he didn't come up with a few sales, the whole business went bankrupt, and he'd have to go to work for some other firm either as a test pilot or a buck-ass engineer, riffling a slide rule in a drafting bullpen.
"Well, we've been competitive in all the tests so far. It's going to boil down to who is the better pilot, and that's going to be me. He really doesn't need the order the way we do, so he won't be trying as hard as I will."
Hughes had a flexible tape out and was measuring the casts, laughing to himself. "Goddam, Bandy, I've seen five-hundred-pound bombs that dropped slower than you did."
"Howard, I thought I'd never stop falling. It was worse than bailing out. Get me another Sal Hepatica and a fistful of aspirin, and let's go out to the field."
Hughes paused at the door. "Look, Bandy, this isn't the end of the world, although this town could be the world's asshole. Why not forget the military stuff? We could go to the National Air Races in Cleveland, maybe win some prize money."
Despite the pain and the boredom and the overpowering concern about the company's finances, Bandy instinctively rebelled. Racing was the worst form of competition for aviation, no more than a carnival bloodletting. Everyone said it improved the airplanes, but it didn't. They just put bigger and bigger engines on smaller and smaller airframes, and more people were killed. If there wasn't a crash, the crowds felt cheated. Still, it might be the only option.
"Yeah? What would we fly in the races, a Jenny?"
"Well, if you'd stop being stupid, I could lend you the money to finish the racer you and Hadley have been struggling with so long. You could pay me back out of the winnings. If you don't want a loan, I know Jimmy Haizlip. He could maybe get us a job flying for Wedell-Williams. They've got three or four airplanes, and they're always looking for fearless pilots like us."
Bandfield thought about it. He and Hadley had stopped work on their own racer when they ran out of cash. They had only done the basic airframe; it could be modified into something competitive, maybe, with a little money.
"What about the Granvilles? Do you know anybody there?"
The Granvilles had built the Gee Bee Model Z that had won the Thompson Trophy last year. It had crashed on a world-record speed run, but they would surely have some more airplanes to fly.
"Maybe, but not without a lot of practice. The Gee Bees are almost too hot, even for me."
Bandfield sighed with resignation. "Well, if you'll take a promissory note, we might borrow enough to fix up the racer. If not, I'll just rob a bank and get some dough."
The afternoon rain that presaged the fogs of April seemed to help; by four o'clock Bandy's head had stopped pounding. Hughes had lowered him into the cockpit, then fashioned a steel-tube cage that fastened his legs in, plaster casts from the knees down, to the rudder pedals. He was literally a part of the airplane, bolted to it as firmly as the wings or engine.
When they rolled the Rapier out, Hafner was obviously surprised to find that Bandy was flying. He had been expecting a walk-on-walk-off win.
Grinning, he came over with Colonel Santos to stand looking up into the Rapier's cockpit. "How are you feeling, Mr. Bandfield?"
"Wonderful, Captain Hafner. These Peruvian doctors are miracle men!"
Santos beamed at them. "You gentlemen understand the rules? You are to meet over the field at one thousand feet at ten minutes past four. Captain Hafner will come from the north, heading due south; Mr. Bandfield will do just the opposite. Then a regular dogfight, over the sea, due west of the airfield. Keep in sight so I can judge. Agreed?"
The dull-copper sun glittered low on the horizon, in Incan appreciation of the brilliant blue-green sea's contrast with the austere sands of the Peruvian coastline. To the east the Andes saw-toothed to the sky. Bandy knew he had to win quickly, or his ankles would give out from the strain of booting the rudder back and forth.
Dogfighting was very different from aerobatics. In aerobatics you had to be smooth and coordinated, so the control movements were relatively easy, going through programmed maneuvers that flowed readily from one to the next, with all the G forces on the airplane manageable and well defined. In dogfighting, all the maneuvers were vicious, sharp, with stick and rudder used against each other as much as together. The idea was to present a difficult target, and to force, rather than maneuver, the airplane to where you wanted it.
Neither airplane carried a military load or an observer. Today was a dogfight, pure and simple, and Santos would be determining the winner of the one-on-one duel. It didn't make sense, because the rebels didn't have any fighters and the Peruvian bombers would probably never have to engage in air-to-air combat. But it fit the pattern of bonehead pursuit pilots buying the airplanes, and the only thing that really registered with them—besides the silver that crossed their palms—was winning the dogfight.
As Bandy leveled off, trimming the airplane and pushing the mixture and propeller settings forward, he saw the bright red A-11 streaking south. It looked like a dropping hawk, its talons the huge fairings over the landing gear, its beak the big round Mead & Wilgoos 650-horsepower radial engine. Hafner had done a good job of streamlining, with the engine cowled so tightly that there were bumps to accommodate the rocker arms.
Suddenly it was time. Hafner bored in, a thin blue-black stream from the exhausts showing that he was using maximum power. Bandy pulled back in a climb, cutting the supercharger in early at the risk of blowing the engine. Hafner followed, but Bandy let his Rapier hammerhead to drop straight down on the A-11. Hafner turned and climbed almost vertically, the two planes passing belly to belly in opposite directions. Both went into steep turns, in which the A-11's speed permitted Hafner to gain the advantage slowly.
Bandfield quickly realized how good Hafner was, and that the Rapier's better maneuverability was the only thing saving him. With a fierce concentration, he was just able to flick out of Hafner's line of flight, to stay out of the putative path of mythical bullets. He realized escapes wouldn't win in
Santos's scorebook.
They dueled for another twenty minutes in a spiraling series of corkscrew turns that left Hafner always slightly higher, but just out of "shooting" position. In desperation, his ankles beginning to ache under the strain, Bandfield rolled from a full vertical turn to the right into one to the left. As he rolled through a level attitude, a shadow blocked out his view of the sun, and Hafner's A-11eased in directly above him, canopy to canopy, the German grinning down beneath his goggles, his big wings overlapping the Rapier's. Bandfield could see only the long nose of the A-11, the three-bladed propeller spinning in an arc ahead of his own. He unconsciously pushed forward on his stick to avoid a collision, and Hafner followed, mirroring each control movement.
Bandfield twisted in the cockpit, sweating to find a way out from the murderous embrace of the A-11. All the while, Hafner smiled, at ease, enjoying the advantage of position his superior skill had provided.
Keeping the pressure on, Hafner squeezed closer to the Rapier, his fingers on the stick sensing the changes in airflow between them. At a distance of three feet, the air tended to push them apart. At less than that it tried to suck them together, and he rode the invisible knife-edge margin between.
It had been easier than Hafner had thought it would be; Bandfield's legs were obviously bothering him. He looked down, enjoying the sweat pouring down Bandfield's face, relishing the obvious desperation in his movements. He felt the old bloodlust stir within him, and mentally went through the ritual motions that would have armed and cocked the empty machine guns. It would be so fulfilling to just drop back, press the triggers, watch Bandfield spin endlessly to the ground.
Bandfield could only keep pushing over, lowering his nose in the hope that Hafner would elect to break off. The German pilot followed easily, the maneuver no more difficult than the last part of a loop. A stream of oil crept back from under Bandy's cowling, spreading over his windscreen.
Hafner shaved the distance between them just a hair, keeping the margin so tight that Bandfield couldn't begin a turn without causing a collision. He drove Bandfield steadily toward the sea.
Trophy for Eagles Page 20
