Jerry's face suddenly went grim. Beyond her through the open door one of the reporters was watching avidly. "Get the hell out!" Jerry said.
"Mrs. Segura and Dr. Ballard," the reporter said. "More than just friends? A tender scene in a hotel room seems to suggest…"
Jerry slammed the door in his face.
"Not again," Alma said, burying her face in her hands. "Am I having an affair with you or with Mitch?"
"Both of us," Jerry said. For some reason he looked amused.
"I have no idea what's funny," Alma snapped.
"I was just thinking that Gil would think this was the funniest thing in the world," Jerry said and squeezed her again.
"That he would," Alma said, resting her hand against his shoulder. "Oh, that he would!"
He held her for a moment longer, but she could feel his weight shift as he looked around the room. “Where’s Lewis?”
“He wanted to talk to Rayburn — the guy from Comanche,” Alma said. “I think he said he was taking Mitch with him.”
“I thought he was going to give the necklace back to Henry this afternoon.”
“He was,” Alma said. “But Henry wasn’t in his room, and he didn’t want to leave it with the secretary.”
“No,” Jerry said fervently. He fished in his pocket for his watch. “Well, let’s get rid of the damned thing now. I’ll just call his room, and he can come down and collect it himself.” He released her, went to the phone as he spoke, and she heard him ask for the Cactus Suite.
“What?” Jerry’s voice and eyebrows rose together. “Oh. Ok. Thank you.” He hung the receiver back on the stick, shaking his head. “Henry’s left. He checked out this evening.”
“To catch the New Orleans train,” Alma said. “Of course he’d have to. I should have thought of that.”
Jerry reached into his pants pocket, closing his hand over the wrapped necklace. “We’ll see him in New Orleans. Do you want me to keep this until then?”
“Yes,” Alma said. “Please.”
Lewis eased his key into the room lock, hoping he wouldn’t wake Alma. He hadn’t meant to spend quite so much time talking to Rayburn, but they’d been stationed along the same part of the front, though not at the same time, and that had broken the ice. At least Rayburn wasn’t taking the business with the supplemental tank personally — he wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t holding a grudge. That had seemed to disappoint a couple of the reporters, but Rayburn’s co-pilot had told them in no uncertain terms to get lost, and they’d spend another half hour griping about the newspapers and the radio. But that’s what paid for the race, they’d agreed, and Lewis came away feeling as though he’d at least kept from making an enemy.
To his surprise, the bedside light was still on. Alma sat up against the headboard, book in her lap, but she looked up alertly as he closed the door behind him, laying the book face down on the sheets. The title glowed yellow against the green background, above the stylized image of a man and a woman in an expensive convertible beneath a full moon: Kept Woman. Given the gossip, Lewis thought, it seemed a bit too appropriate. Except that nobody kept Alma.
“I didn’t think you’d still be up,” he said, and shrugged off his coat.
“I couldn’t seem to get to sleep,” Alma answered.
There was an odd note in her voice that made him look sharply at her. “Everything all right?” He reached for his flight jacket as he spoke, slipping his hand into the pocket where he’d put Henry’s necklace, and found only empty silk.
“It’s not there,” Alma said. “I asked Jerry to take it.” There was definite color in her cheeks, but she met his eyes squarely. “I almost put it on earlier tonight.”
“But you didn’t,” Lewis said.
Alma shook her head. “It — wanted me to.”
“It’s strong,” Lewis said. He hesitated, but he owed her his story, after she’d given him hers. “The curse — Henry was right, I think. There certainly seems to be one. I was looking at it, and all I wanted was to see it around your neck. Luckily, something — She stopped me.” He shivered in spite of the room’s warm air. “Henry said every woman who wore it died.”
“It wants to kill,” Alma said. She shook her head. “And it wanted me to put it on. It was — very persuasive.”
The color was back in her cheeks, an unsual blush. Lewis sat beside her on the bed, and after a moment, she leaned into him.
“I feel stupid.”
“Don’t,” Lewis said. “If it hadn’t been for Her, Her hand — I’d probably have asked you to try it on, and that —“ He couldn’t bring himself to finish. “I should probably get it back from Jerry.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” Alma’s color deepened, but she forged on. “I don’t want to be around that thing right now.”
Lewis hesitated. “I was thinking that She, Diana, might be some protection —“
“I’m sure She is,” Alma said. “But I still nearly put it on. I don’t want to have to worry about it, not with the race to think about.”
And that was fair. Jerry would certainly be able to keep it safe. After all, he was trained, he knew what he was doing. Lewis closed his eyes, wondering how a curse like this could be broken, how it had come into being in the first place. For a moment, the room’s light dimmed and wavered, like the light of candles streaming in a steady breeze. Men in green uniforms trimmed with red and gold swept through the parlor of a house, while a woman shrieked in the corner, blood staining the front of her thin white dress. Hate rolled from her like heat from a furnace, hate and desperate fury, sweeping over them deadly as chlorine gas, to gather at last in a strand of iron…
He shuddered, and Alma laid a hand on his arm. “Are you all right?”
He nodded. “Yeah. But the sooner we get that thing back to Henry, the happier I’ll be.”
“Me, too,” Alma said. “Me, too.”
In the morning the bus brought them back to the airfield in good time, drawing up in front of the terminal where a small crowd was already waiting. There were more adult men than Mitch would have expected for a weekday morning, and he wondered just how many of them had jobs to go to. The local paper hadn’t exactly been encouraging — the front page had held three articles on the race and the money it was bringing in, but the fourth big article had been the closing of an ore processing company, the third to go out since the previous January. They mostly seemed happy, though, and there were quite a few kids— who surely ought to be in school — among the adults, so maybe they were just taking a holiday.
All around him, the actresses were drawing themselves up, giving themselves the little bounce that settled them into their on-camera personalities, and Mitch tested a smile. Alma smiled back, but Lewis just looked grave. He wasn’t flying today, and that always made him nervous; Jerry looked tired and cranky — he hated losing — but even as Mitch met his eyes, Jerry straightened, his face easing into something that resembled equanimity. They were last off the bus, to spare Jerry’s leg, but they got a nice cheer anyway, an announcer with a bullhorn calling their names.
“— Gilchrist Aviation. Pilot and owner Alma Gilchrist Segura, decorated pilot Lewis Segura, Great War ace Mitchell Sorley and passenger Dr. Jerry Ballard.”
Alma smiled and waved just like the starlets, and Mitch made himself do the same, grateful to finally duck into the shelter of the hangar. He was beginning to hate the casual way the race promoters called him an ace. It hadn’t been so bad right after the War, because then everyone remembered exactly what it meant. An ace was a man with at least five kills, five dead men or more; Mitch had seven, and he remembered every one.
“Right,” Alma said, hands on her hips. “Lewis, get us fueled up — make sure they get the supplemental tank full. Jerry, is there anything for passengers this morning?”
“Not that they’ve told us,” Jerry said.
“Good,” Alma said. “Ward off the reporters, will you? Mitch and I will start the preflight.”
Mitch nodded, an
d Alma’s gaze slid past him, fixing on something behind him. Mitch turned to see the referee coming to join them, and Alma sighed.
“Scratch that. Mitch, would you take the preflight? It looks like Mr. Nichols wants a word.”
“Sure,” Mitch said, and climbed aboard. He didn’t really mind doing the preflight check on his own. He liked having time with the plane, time to think through the flight plan, and he settled himself easily into the pilot’s seat. The leather was starting to come unstitched along the inner edge of the seat back, where everyone grabbed and pulled as they climbed in. They’d want to get that fixed, once it was over. He could get Frank the saddler out from town to take care of it, look over the rest of the planes at the same time…
He shook the thought away, and made himself pick up the clipboard. By now, he could do the routine in his sleep, but it was better to have the check. He went down the list, trying to concentrate, but the announcer’s words kept coming back. Mitchell Sorley, ace. Well, that’s what he was. He had the medal and the citations to prove it, seven kills in the air over Italy. And the Austrians were damn good — the best of them had trained with the German jadgstaffelen, and come back to teach their own squads the same methods, and they were flying the best planes they could get their hands on, just the same as everyone else.
They burned like everyone else, too. He’d had a knack for fire, though he never meant to aim for the fuel tanks. Five of the seven went down in flames, and nobody carried parachutes. Two of the pilots jumped, pinwheeling black against the sky to vanish in the trenches; the rest stayed with the burning mess, though he thought most of them were already dead. One had fought it all the way down, trailing smoke and flame, but he’d died before they could pull him from the wreck. Gil had said he couldn’t have lived, but that was still the one that bothered Mitch the most. All that effort, slipstreaming, turning, fighting the air to keep the flames at bay, and for nothing. The Italian pilots had called him Il Incendario, the Arsonist, behind his back, and the Americans had called him the Fireman to his face until Gil put a stop to it. Jeff — Jeff had managed to smash the squadron’s record of The Firemen’s Rag, and Mitch would be in his debt forever for that one.
He had wondered, after he was wounded, when he knew he was going to live and he had all the time in the hospital to think about it, if it was payback. Karma. There were worse things than burning.
“Got the weather?” Alma asked, sliding into the co-pilot’s seat, and for an instant Mitch couldn’t remember what the sky had been like that morning, could see only the cold blue of Italy. Cold blue, and the bright golden-brown of the enemy planes, each with its own heraldry, skull and crossbones and a knight’s plumed helmet and a six-pointed star… “Mitch?”
It was cloudy out. He remembered that with a gasp. The sky here in San Angelo was covered with thin, pale clouds that would follow them east, though the forecast in the newspaper said the rain would peter out before it reached Little Rock. He made a show of looking at the clipboard, and shook his head. “I haven’t seen the latest.”
“Lewis will get it,” she said, and slid back the side window to call to him. Lewis lifted a hand in acknowledgement, and a few minutes later, Jerry brought the sheet up to the cockpit.
“They’re just about ready,” he said, handing it over, and in the same moment the referees shouted for the leaders to start their engines.
“Are you ok?” Alma asked.
Mitch grimaced. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
She gave a long look, honestly assessing, and Mitch forced himself to meet her look with a smile.
“I promise,” he said. “I can handle it.”
She hesitated a moment longer, then nodded. “Ok.”
The Terrier was heavy with the extra fuel, soggy on its wheels, waddling awkwardly into the turn that lined them up on the runway. Mitch eyed the length of it uneasily as he waited for the flag. It should be more than adequate, but the air was still and the weight of the supplemental tank sat uncomfortably toward the tail. Alma was frowning, too, making the same calculations, and Mitch gave her a shrug. It would be enough or it wouldn’t. He thought it would be. Just.
The flagman waved them on, and Mitch pushed the throttles forward, bringing up the power as quickly as he dared. The Terrier rumbled forward, the big engines howling; the tail lifted, and dropped again, and Mitch looked at the airspeed indicator. Close, but not there, not enough. He cursed the lack of headwind. If he couldn’t get more out of her, if he couldn’t get the tail to lift — They were almost at the point of no return, fly or die, crashing ignominiously off the end of the runway.
“Come on,” he said, under his breath. The speed was creeping up, the tail starting to lift. “Come on.”
“Mitch,” Alma said, quietly.
Now or never. Mitch ignored the airspeed, concentrating on the feel of the plane under him, the air on the wings. They were almost there, almost ready, the engines full open — and they were almost at the end of the graded strip. He felt the power building finally, the wings catching lift, the whole body lightening at last, and he eased back on the yoke just as the wheels left the graded dirt. The Terrier wobbled and flew.
He kept the angle shallow, catching his breath, letting the plane steady under them. It was a good thing they were in the desert, not someplace with trees ringing the field, or telephone lines… But they were up and flying, the airspeed rising now, and he tugged the yoke back just a hair, increasing the angle of climb to something a bit more normal. She was still heavy, still awkward, but that would improve as the extra fuel burned off, and they wouldn’t be landing again until Little Rock.
“Well,” Alma said. Mitch glanced at her, and saw her crooked smile. She tapped his shoulder in answer. “Nice flying.”
Comanche’s Ford was a silver dot in the distance, a speck of fire when the sun caught the bare metal of the fuselage. They were overtaking it, Mitch thought. Not as fast as he would like, but the fuel was burning off in the supplemental tank, and he could see the airspeed creeping up. TWA was further ahead, out of sight in the haze that thickened the eastern horizon, but TWA was a Ford. They didn’t quite have the range they needed to reach Little Rock on a single tank of gas.
“Where do you think they’ll stop?” he asked, and Alma looked up from the map and clipboard.
“Dallas. Maybe Texarkana, but if I was TWA — I’d go light on the first leg, try to build a lead, and then be first to refuel.”
That made sense. Take off with the lightest fuel load possible to get them to Dallas, flying at full throttle, then be first in line so that they spent only the minimum time on the ground. The TWA team knew Gilchrist could make the jump without stopping, but they’d be slower at the beginning, burdened with the extra fuel and the tank. At worst, they’d end up second, still within striking distance.
“I’d be more worried about the Fokkers,” Alma went on, “except I’m pretty sure Bestways doesn’t have the range. The Harvard boys might, but even if they try it, I don’t think they can make up the time.”
“McIsaac might take the chance,” Mitch said. The ex-rumrunner would know how to get the most out of his machine, that much was certain.
“And if they don’t, they’ll at least try to stretch it to Texarkana,” Alma said. “At least, that’s what I’d do.”
“Yeah.”
They were coming up on Dallas. Beneath the wing, the road that was their landmark had acquired more houses, more settlement, the long rectangles of cultivated land. Ahead, Comanche’s Ford had taken on shape, wings and fuselage distinctly visible. The Terrier was overtaking more rapidly now, and a moment later the Ford tipped sideways, banking into the turn that would take it down to the field at Dallas. One down.
And maybe two, if Alma was right and TWA had tried running fast and light. It was possible that TWA was refueling right now, that they were passing over them at this very moment… Mitch narrowed his eyes as though that would help him see more clearly, and Alma picked up the binoculars she kept in the
pocket beside her seat.
“Anything?” Mitch asked.
She was silent for a long moment, balancing the binoculars lightly in her hand to minimize the vibrations, but then she shook her head. “I don’t see anything. Which doesn’t mean —”
“I know,” Mitch said.
The port engine coughed once, and caught, then coughed again.
“Time to switch over,” Alma said.
“Yeah.” Mitch reached for the controls, cutting off the lines that led to the rear tank, waiting a heartbeat, and opening the lines to the main tanks. They probably could have waited a little longer, but there was no point in losing performance to drain the dregs. There was plenty of fuel on board to get them into Little Rock.
Beneath them, the land changed again, the houses thinning, then becoming farmsteads set in fields not yet green with spring. Some of them wouldn’t be, Mitch thought, banking to catch the next road that was his target. This was ranching country, not the kind of farmland he’d known as a boy. It looked brown and barren; if there were cattle there, he didn’t see them.
The sun was behind them now, and Alma lifted the glasses to scan the sky ahead without result. Off the port wing, a line of darker green marked a river, and Mitch banked to run parallel with it for a while. Beneath them, the land slowly changed again, brown giving way to green, the familiar patchwork of fields.
“Texarkana,” Alma said, and pointed.
There were buildings beneath the wing, and, on the roof of someone’s barn, the arrow and compass pointing toward the airport. Mitch glanced at the clipboard instead, and turned gently onto the heading that would bring them into Little Rock. About a hundred and forty miles, give or take. An hour and a bit before they knew if anyone had found a way to beat them. TWA couldn’t, not in a Ford, not with the narrow lead they had. Refueling would eat up every minute of their advantage. Even so, it took all Mitch’s willpower not to advance the throttle, pour on the power to get them in any minutes sooner. Haste made waste, literally in this case. Alma had worked out the optimum speed, and he would hold to it.
Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 Page 50
