The evening started with mutual congratulations, to Lindbergh for his pioneering survey flights with his wife and the radical "artificial heart" he was working on, to Bandfield and Roget for winning the contract. Lindbergh was obviously more interested in the medical matters than he was in flying.
He had changed dramatically, the gangly charm of youth gone lupine-lean. He was so tensely alert that his ears seemed to twist and turn to sense the always present enemy. Where he had once been reticent, shyly diffident, he was now actively angry when he felt the conversation was drifting away from what he wanted to talk about. His brittle, argumentive conversational tone revealed his thinly veiled annoyance at having to be in public at all, even with some old friends. Bandy could not believe that this rigid, almost fanatical politician—there seemed to be no better word for him—was the same man who had put itching powder in the first sergeant's shorts.
Yet he was gracious about Roget Aircraft's winning the Allied order, telling Bandy that the new Roget transport was clearly superior to the Hafner aircraft.
"You're on your way now, Bandy. If you can hold Douglas off, you can get more orders than you'll be able to fill."
"We're going to try, Slim."
After the initial round of ritual kidding, Lindbergh was subdued, almost uninterested, unless he was vociferously directing the conversation into political channels.
He started on Roosevelt. "The man is a criminal. I think he's a Bolshevik. Look what he did to aviation when he canceled the air-mail contracts. He ruined the lives of honest businessmen and killed ten Army pilots."
Lindbergh's voice took on an evangelical quality, as if he were addressing a huge audience. Used to being the center of attention everywhere, Lindbergh was unaware that people at every table were looking at him, a few supportively, but most astounded at his ferocity.
"Eddie Rickenbacker was right! Roosevelt is a murderer! He sent those Army pilots into the weather with poor equipment, and they died! We've got to get a Republican in there."
Bandfield wanted to be still, but couldn't. "Slim, I can't agree with you. I knew people in California who were down to picking out of restaurant garbage cans to feed their families. After Roosevelt came in, they got some relief. It seems to me that he's trying to get the country back on its feet by providing jobs for the ordinary man."
He could tell that Lindbergh was angry, resentful that he'd taken issue with him, but he continued, "Hoover was only interested in the rich guy. When I talk to the workingmen in the plant, I can tell they are for Roosevelt one hundred percent. You'd never see Roosevelt using Army troops to throw out veterans, the way Hoover did."
"Bandy, you always were just about half a communist yourself. I remember how you talked about your dad. But make no mistake, Roosevelt is a disaster for this country. You only have to make a trip to Russia to decide whether you want the country run by people who work in the factory, or by people who have achieved some success. It's almost a biological thing, a survival of the fittest."
Lindbergh's voice had risen, and he was gesturing with his hand, the index finger pointing, underscoring his remarks.
Bandfield shut up. They had a flight to make tomorrow, and it was one that had to please Lindbergh. He wondered if his old friend was thinking about running for office. Slim's dad had been in Congress; it would make sense. But he ought to be more prudent about Roosevelt.
*
Stapleton Field, Denver, Colorado August 7, 1934
The next day, the crisp blue sky seemed to march the mountains right up to tidy, carpenter's-square-straight city limits. Bandy was glad it was cool, but didn't like the twenty-knot wind blowing from the right of the runway.
Lindbergh spent an hour familiarizing himself with the cockpit and discussing the engine-out procedure with Bandfield and Roget. He regained his former friendly personality as he became more absorbed in the engineering of the aircraft.
They started the engines and taxied out. Just after the pre-takeoff checklist was completed, Mahew came forward and edged Roget out of the way to stand just behind Bandy and Lindbergh.
"I'd rather have Hadley stand there, Ted, for the takeoff."
"Not this time. Go ahead."
Bandy shrugged and pushed the throttles forward. Denver's mile-high altitude drained the engines' power, and the RC-3 accelerated slowly toward its 75-mph lift-off speed. Bandy cranked in aileron to lower the right wing into the crosswind and keep the plane from drifting off the runway. He felt the left wheel lift off, then the right.
Mahew's huge arm reached up and switched the left engine magneto off. "Now crash or fly, Bandfield. Let's see how good this fucker is."
The airplane swung sharply to the left, responding both to the roaring power of the right engine and to the drag of the windmilling left propeller as the plane drifted off the runway. Bandy pushed in hard on the right rudder, slamming the propeller and throttle controls forward simultaneously. The relentless wind drifted them toward a line of hangars.
"Gear up, Slim, and engine-out check," he shouted.
The gear was going up as Lindbergh, his features set and eyes flashing, feathered the left engine and "cleaned up the cockpit," putting all the switches and valves in their proper position for the emergency. The RC-3 nuzzled the thin air as its speed crept to ninety, then ninety-five, climbing strongly.
"Wahoo! You just sold me a whole bunch of airplanes, Bandfield," Mahew yelled.
Bandfield nodded grimly, thinking, Thanks for nothing—you fucking near killed us all.
When they landed, Lindbergh grabbed Bandfield's arm. "Bandy, I swear I didn't know he was going to do that. It was inexcusable."
Then he pursued Mahew down the long aisle and backed him up, crouching, against the rear bulkhead. Lindbergh put his finger in Mahew's face and dressed him down quietly and ferociously. Bandfield couldn't hear what was said, but he wished he knew the words that were turning Mahew from a strutting bully into a nodding yes man.
*
Wright Field, Ohio/September 12, 1934
The past few weeks had changed Bandfield's view of the world. Patty was as absorbed in airplanes as he was—when they were working on them. When they were not, she insisted on an absolute exclusion of airplanes, aviation, aviators, and anything to do with flying from the conversation.
"You're a monomaniac, Bandy, do you know that?"
"Most pilots are."
"I don't sleep with most pilots, and I'm sleeping with you. You've got to broaden your horizons, and I'm just the girl to do it."
They had started with a concert. Bandy had heard of Leopold Stokowski before, and knew that the three Bs were Beethoven, Brahms, and Bach, but that was about the extent of his musical knowledge. He had agreed to go only because she insisted, and because he thought he would sleep through most of it.
Stokowski's magnetic presence changed his mind. Bandfield had no basis for comparison, but when the night was over, he was aware that he liked classical music, something he couldn't have been persuaded of the day before. The conductor, with his leonine shock of white hair, had led the Philharmonic in the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique, and Bandfield was hooked.
It was the same with travel, which he had always considered before only in terms of time en route. The scenery below was often interesting, but few flights were pleasure trips—he was either on his way to a meeting, his mind filled with what had to be done, or he was hauling people or parts that had to get from Point A to Point B in a hurry. Patty dragged him to a Burton Holmes lecture series, and he found himself actually panging with the desire to see London, Paris, all the great capitals, to take Patty to the South Seas, to go to "darkest Africa."
Patty watched the transformation with approval bordering on glee. She loved this man, and was going to marry him, but she wanted his full potential developed. Flying had stunted him; she would change that.
She changed him in many ways. He was naturally conservative when it came to public behavior; she was wildly daring, unorthodox, equally willing to picnic or m
ake love in a public park.
She had amazed him again on this training trip to Dayton. Twice on this trip out they had almost crashed. The second time was due to the rotten weather at Wright Field, when a wild ring of blue-black lightning-laden thunderstorms had almost blasted them out of the sky. At the last second, with the radios completely jammed with static and the turbulence threatening to break up the Beechcraft, Bandfield had spotted the Wright Field runway through a hole that had opened as quickly and as fleetingly as a sea anemone in a tidal pool. Patty had cut the power and sideslipped the Beechcraft in to a perfect landing. He was proud that she hadn't ground-looped and not at all sure that he would have done as well.
The first near-crash had been more fun. After slow-timing the 450-horsepower Wasp they'd installed to upgrade her training, Patty had volunteered to fly Bandfield back to Ohio. Roscoe Turner had set a new transcontinental record on the first of the month, flying from New York to Los Angeles in ten hours and two minutes. Patty wanted to see what she could do on a west-east run.
The trip was in a response to Henry Caldwell's peremptory summons to Bandfield. His wire said only: "Urgently request your presence Wright Field earliest possible date." When Bandfield had called Caldwell, he wouldn't discuss the matter on the phone.
After a long day at the plant, they had taken off at 10:00 p.m. from Downey, anxious to take advantage of strong tailwinds. The night climb out from the Los Angeles area had been easy, with the bright light of the moon turning the mountains into sharp relief. Following her custom, Patty had slipped her hand into the fly of Bandfield's trousers right after takeoff. She had begun the practice on their first encounter in Denver, routinely holding his penis with a firm grip at every opportunity, when they were driving, in the movies, everywhere she could do it without a too obvious risk of discovery. He rather liked it but was initially curious, asking, "I'm not complaining, but why do you do this? We've had about as much loving as you can cram into three days."
"All loving is not fucking. This is quiet loving. Besides, it's something Charlotte counseled me about."
Bandfield had laughed, thinking that conversations between Charlotte and Patty were probably a little different from most mother-and-daughter talks.
"She said the sure way to a man's heart was not through his stomach but his groin. If you grab hold and don't let go, you can be sure his attention doesn't wander."
It seemed reasonable to Bandy.
"Besides, Stephan played around a little, and that was probably my fault. This way, if I feel any signs of life at all, I'm going to be on the spot to take care of it."
So far it had been a good arrangement. The flight across the Kingston mountains had been gorgeous, single lights here and there from lonely miners picking out the ebony blackness of the ground. The sky was a star-bathed smoked crystal, blanched into a shimmering transparency by the full moon. The Beechcraft flew effortlessly, hurtling across a sleeping countryside as if it had been protectively slipped into a transparent pneumatic duct that would whoosh it to Dayton unassisted.
They were crossing Kingman, Arizona, as their mutual response to her soft squeezing grew. She withdrew her hand and began disrobing, bit by bit, leaning over to sing garbled intermixed snatches of "Anything Goes" and "I Only Have Eyes for You." Her voice was terrible, but he didn't care as she peeled down, doing as good a takeoff on a burlesque stripper as the confining cockpit permitted.
She'd somehow removed her bra without his noticing; when she unbuttoned her blouse the moon caught her breasts tumbling out in an avalanche of beauty.
Bandfield frantically trimmed the airplane to fly hands-off as she reached over and began undoing his belt.
"Look, we don't have room to really fool around here. If you don't watch it, we'll be singing Tumbling Tumble Weeds' on the desert down there."
They had not been together for a week, and he was burning. She was as determined to be funny as she was to be passionate, and she reached over and bobbed her breasts in his face, before kissing him deeply. The airplane also began to bob and weave.
She leaned forward and yelled in his ear, "When we go up, you really go up. And when you really go up, I really go down." Her head dropped to his lap, affording him both pleasure and a chance to check the instruments.
"Okay, that's enough, I can't stand it. Let's try it."
He moved his seat back as far as it would go, and she swung her right leg up and over, facing him, her breasts pushed into his face, her efforts to mount him reminding him of the carnival game in which you try to throw a hoop over a slanted pole. There was just room for her left leg between the seats, while her right was pressed up against the side window. Trying to retain control by glancing over her shoulder, he felt the airplane's gyrations increase as hers did. His attention to his instrument cross-check began to wander.
"Got you!" she yelled when they finally fused in a potion of blind passion brewed by lust, love, and strange places. He climaxed as the airplane nudged its red line in a screaming spiral, their breathing matching the rising scream of wind across the wings. Putting his head under her arm, gasping, he brought the instruments back into a normal range, and struggled back to straight and level flight.
"Promise me not to do that again. Not till New Mexico, anyway."
Patty had pulled a notebook out. "How high were we when we started?"
"About eleven thousand feet."
She wrote it down. "I'm going to keep track of this. We may as well set a few private roistering records of our own."
Major Henry Caldwell was watching out the window of his second-story office when the yellow Beechcraft landed, seemingly by magic from the heart of the towering thunderstorms. The landing coincided with the familiar twinge of mixed anxieties. He was worried about the appropriation, about the new fighter competition, and about his wife's complaints about his tiny salary. He spooned Bromo Seltzer into one glass, then poured water into another. There was comfort in the fizzing as he splashed the mixture back and forth from glass to glass, gathering his strength from just the sight of the fizzing white foam. He drank it, then raced down the stairwell, two at a time, to meet the Beechcraft on the flight line. On the way he thought of the pride he'd feel in owning an airplane like the Beech, and snorted. With a major's pay he was damn lucky to own the old Hupmobile that had given up the ghost on him this very morning. He'd caught a ride out to the field with a friend, his wife's angry argument ringing in his ears. She saw him making decisions for companies involving hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he wasn't making enough to buy a house, get a new car, or even be sure their son would have a college education.
But there was an even bigger problem, that of Europe, where it seemed that every air force, including the Italian, was forging ahead of the United States Army Air Corps in performance, numbers, and productive capacity. The final item was the real unknown. The air attaches could comment on airplanes they had seen—often, in the case of the Germans, anyway, specially prepared ships whose performance might not be carried over into operational types. But there was no one who could look at the factories and tell him what the production potential was.
He knew where the United States stood—almost destitute. The country was producing less than two thousand aircraft a year. In a pinch, the present factories might double that amount, but it would take time. There were only a few hundred combat-ready airplanes in the inventory, spread from Panama to the Philippines, not enough anywhere to really fight.
The European problem had a troubling component. Hafner Aircraft, one of his most promising companies, was under suspicion. Bruno Hafner was building bombers for the Air Corps, and supposedly had something revolutionary in his experimental shed. Yet in Caldwell's safe there were three separate assessments from the American air attache" in Berlin that Hafner was involved in some kind of espionage work with the new German air force. It seemed incredible that a supplier to the U.S. Army Air Corps could also be a traitor to his adopted country. When he considered that he personally
had awarded Hafner Aircraft contracts for the A-11 and the Skyshark, he paled. He didn't expect to be much more than a major when he retired, but he'd like to do that without a court-martial.
Caldwell had selected Frank Bandfield as a means to solve both problems, if he could. He was certainly wise enough in engineering and in manufacturing to tell what was going on in Germany and elsewhere. Caldwell remembered from the days of the bombing competition, when Hafner and Bandfield had refused to shake hands, that an enmity between the two existed. By asking around, Caldwell learned that Bandfield nursed a deep and abiding hatred of Hafner, going back to the days on Roosevelt Field, just before Lindbergh flew to Paris. Hafner obviously reciprocated.
Unable to dissemble, Caldwell met the Beechcraft and pulled Bandfield aside brusquely, with a bare nod to Patty, saying, "What is it with you, Bandfield? You smell like a French whorehouse! Are you wearing some goddam perfume?"
Bandfield checked the wind sock and moved downwind.
"Jesus, Henry, you sure are an old smoothie. What a cordial greeting."
Caldwell's wattles turned a brighter pink. "Goddammit, Bandfield. Don't screw around. I invited you out here, not her."
"Jesus, you didn't invite me, you ordered me. I don't even know why I'm here. I'm not working for the Air Corps anyway, and I sure as hell haven't sold it any planes. What the hell business is it of yours who I bring with me?"
"Look, it's nothing personal." He thought for a moment, weighing whether he should proceed, then plunged ahead. "Frankly, we're worried about Bruno Hafner. We're not sure where his loyalties lie."
"I'll tell you. They lie with Bruno Hafner and nowhere else."
"Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. I've got some official word that makes Hafner look pretty suspicious."
"You thought enough of Hafner to buy a whole bunch of airplanes from him. You didn't buy any from me."
"Touche. But a lot has happened since, and that's why you're here."
Caldwell furrowed his brow. "I'm going to have to talk to Patty personally, to reassure myself about her. Hafner is just her stepfather, I know, but it could lead to problems. I've got my neck on the line on this. But lemme give you some background, first. Then I'll tell you how you can help us."
Trophy for Eagles Page 35
