Born to Fly (18 page)

The lieutenant hollered to me over the engine, “Now can you tell me where we’re going?”

“The train station. In Providence,” I said.

I pulled on my goggles. Lieutenant Peppel shoved the
throttle full-forward and we accelerated like a stone from a slingshot.

Suddenly I was aware of yelling and the roar of an engine. Only it wasn’t our engine. I poked my head out the side of the cockpit and oil splattered all over my goggles. I quickly wiped them clean and screamed, “Watch out, Lieutenant!”

Dead ahead of us, a T-6 trainer, a tank of an airplane, had just landed on the opposite end of the runway, blocking our escape.

“Dad-gum pilot trainee, he landed on the wrong end of the runway!”

I checked the instruments. “We’ve already built up too much speed to stop!”

“I don’t know if there’s enough runway to clear it!” Lieutenant Peppel screamed back.

“Well, we can’t turn around.” I pointed to our rear.

Lieutenant Peppel poked his head out, looking backwards. “It’s Captain Winston again. And he’s gaining on us.” But when the lieutenant turned to face forward again, our Allison V-12 engine coughed a big spurt of juicy exhaust and Lieutenant Peppel was suddenly blinded by oil and gas.

“Aieeehhh!” he screamed in pain. He dropped the control stick and I instinctively grabbed it, fighting to hold us steady.

“I’ve got it!” I told him.

“Pull up, pull up!” he cried.

Directly ahead, the big barrel nose of the oncoming T-6 was only thirty yards away and closing. I shut my eyes and summoned all the guts I could. With all my strength, I pulled the stick to my belly.

The mighty Warhawk fighter nose lifted off the ground, clearing the oncoming T-6 by inches, and we tore into the air like a screaming hurricane.

“I did it, I did it!” I rejoiced.

But before Lieutenant Peppel could crank our canopy shut, the gusting wind blew my P-40 manual right out of the cockpit.

“My pilot’s manual!”

Lieutenant Peppel rubbed his eyes. “I can’t see, Peach-pit.” He gritted his teeth. “Looks like we’re both gonna have to fly her.”

With a lump in my throat I answered, “I hope one of us can remember how to land this thing.”

F
rom the outside, the P-40 might have seemed to be flying pretty smoothly, skipping over the clouds as we traced the highway north.

But inside the cockpit was another story. Nothing in that manual could have prepared me for flying the real thing. My whole body was as taut as a tightrope as I white-knuckled the stick while the oil-blinded Lieutenant Peppel worked the rudder and guided my hands on the controls.

“Ease up a little,” he told me. “Take a breath. Dip your wings.”

I took a breath like he said. Then I tipped left and scanned the road below for the deputy’s car.

“Any sign of ’em?” the lieutenant asked.

“Negative,” I answered.

“We need to get the captain on the radio,” he yelled.

I adjusted the transmitter like he told me, and we eventually locked on to the crackly voice from the tower.

“Okay, here’s the lieutenant,” I announced nervously.

Lieutenant Peppel took my helmet and hollered into the mike, “Sir…. Yes, sir…. I understand, sir. It’s just, she needed the plane because someone is gonna bomb the President…. But sir, Captain Winston … I believe her.”

Someone else started barking questions and the lieutenant relayed what he was hearing to me. “There’s some kid there with news clippings about the President’s arrival in Providence. Said he saw explosives in Deputy Steyer’s basement.”

“That’s Farley! Just ask him. He knows I’m telling the truth.” Would you believe it? Farley had actually come through. Maybe it was true what Dad used to say: If you expect the best out of people, that’s just what you’ll get.

Lieutenant Peppel hollered, “Captain Winston. Get that FBI agent—”

“Barson,” I yelled.

“Agent Barson,” Lieutenant Peppel repeated. “Have him call the Providence station. Tell them to do whatever it takes, but the President’s train cannot stop there.” The lieutenant signed off, then told me, “They’re all gonna take
a car and do their best to run him down before he can reach the station. That kid Farley said his father showed him a back-road shortcut.”

“There it is!” I shouted.

We dipped down out of the clouds and I spotted the plume of smoke from the President’s train as it neared a small town. There were red-white-and-blue welcome banners and flags flying over the crowd that had gathered to watch the President’s train pass through.

“That’s the Hampton station.” I checked my watch. “According to the train schedule, they’re right on time.”

I opened the throttle and we cleared some trees on the other side of an upcoming tunnel. But then I spotted the deputy’s black-and-white Ford coupe crossing the railroad tracks up ahead, and a sick feeling came over me.

“A
re you sure it’s the deputy’s car?” the lieutenant asked.

I dipped the wing and we dove lower and pulled even with the car, five hundred feet above it. We were close enough that I could recognize the yellow Geneseo town seal on the car’s black hood. I dropped even lower and buzzed the car to make sure the occupants could hear our engine. It worked. Kenji stuck his head out the passenger window. I rolled back the cockpit canopy and I waved my arms and flashed the thumbs-down bail-out signal, the one
I showed him when we were out in Father Krauss’s boat. Kenji flashed it back at me. He remembered!

“It’s them,” I said.

“We’ve gotta find a way to stop him, Bird.”

“But without hurting Kenji,” I said.

“That’s gonna make it tricky.”

I glanced down in the cockpit, looking for any kind of solution. But this was a training airplane. It had no bullets and no bombs. I felt under the seat.

“We could drop the parachute?”

Lieutenant Peppel shook his head and chuckled. “With the way you fly, we might need that.”

I studied the knobs and switches. I fingered the white handle on my left. It was marked
FUEL
.

“Could we drop a fuel tank?” I asked.

“Not without the risk of hurting Kenji. They’re five hundred pounds and they’d crush the car if you hit it.”

“I could always just land on the road in front of him … if I knew how to land.”

“That car is a ton and a half of steel. This plane is made out of stressed-skin metal to be as light as it can be. That’s not a fight you want to be in.”

“Hey.” I jiggled the red-handled lever by my right knee. “What about this?”

He grabbed hold. “Flour bombs?”

“Yeah. You knocked me flat with one, remember?” I said.

“It might work,” he agreed. “But you’ll have to aim it just right. You want to stop him, not make him crash. All right.
Climb to five hundred feet and line up a bombing run. When we start the dive, stay about ten degrees left rudder. If I remember right, that there bombsight is a little off.”

“Roger,” I said. I pulled the stick and we climbed toward the clouds. I took a deep breath.

“Ya ready?” he asked me.

“Okay,” I said.

I dipped the nose and the mighty Warhawk picked up speed like a runaway roller-coaster car. I set my target gun-sight bead on the deputy’s car. The stick began to shudder under my hand against the gravity forces pressing on the plane.

“It’s okay,” Lieutenant Peppel said. “She likes to buck a little. I’ll keep her steady. You just line up that bull’s-eye.”

I squeezed my left eye and focused. We roared over the the car and—

“Bombs away!” I cried as I released the lever.

POOF!
I looked down and saw the deputy’s windshield caked with flour.

“Bull’s-eye!” I cheered. Deputy Steyer would have to stop and pull over now.

I came around again alongside the roadster for a closer look. From my vantage point in the cockpit I saw Deputy Steyer lean out and use his hand to clear the windshield.

“Darn it. He’s not slowing down,” I said.

Then Kenji must have leaned over and tried to grab the wheel and make the deputy stop, because just as the car was crossing the Hampton Creek Bridge, it swerved. It
careened left and then back again, into the side of the bridge, shooting sparks as its fenders scraped the railing.

“Don’t crash, Kenji!” I cried out, though I knew he couldn’t hear me.

“What’s Kenji doing?” Lieutenant Peppel shouted.

“He grabbed the steering wheel.” I hadn’t planned on Kenji being so fearless that he’d risk crashing the car.

The car was zigzagging its way off the bridge when suddenly Kenji’s door flew open. Deputy Steyer was leaned over, shoving Kenji by the neck. Kenji was trying to break his grip and at the same time hold on to the open door, but the deputy was too strong. With one final shove he tossed Kenji right out of the car.

“No!” I screamed.

“What happened?” the lieutenant shouted.

I dipped the wing and watched Kenji’s tiny body tumble head over heels into the creek. I gave up chasing the car and tried to turn back around to find Kenji.

The lieutenant resisted my moving the stick. “Why are we turning back?”

“That dirty coward threw Kenji out of the car,” I told him.

He let go of the stick and I circled the Warhawk back over the creek. But there was no sign of Kenji.

I prayed hard.
Please, God. Let him be all right. Just give him half a chance, and he’ll do the rest. I know him—he’s my best friend
.

A moment later something bubbled to the surface in the creek. I circled the P-40 closer.

It was Kenji.

And he was alive!

“I knew it!” It would take more than one overgrown Nazi spy to get the best of
my
best friend. I saw Kenji paddle to the shore and climb up the bank onto the bridge. When he slapped his waterlogged cowboy hat against his pant leg, I could tell he was more angry than hurt.

“I think he’s okay,” I said. Then I pressed the radio intercom button under my chinstrap. “Papa Bear, this is Baby Bear. Come in, Papa Bear! Captain Winston? You there?”

A moment later, Captain Winston barked into my radio earpiece, “Papa Bear? Blast it, is that you, Peppel?”

“No, sir. It’s me, Bird.”

“The kid?” the captain hollered. “For God’s sake, who’s flying that plane?”

“We both are, sir,” I told him. “The lieutenant got oil in his eyes. I’m steering and working the radio.”

“Criminy. Well, use your call letters, at least.”

I clicked off the mike and turned to Lieutenant Peppel. “What are our call letters?”

“Baker two-six Juliet.”

“This is Baker two-six Juliet. Over,” I said.

“We read you, two-six Juliet. Over,” the captain answered.

“Tell Agent Barson to pick up Kenji on the Hampton Creek bridge,” I said. “Deputy Steyer threw him out of the car.”

“That son of a—” The captain caught himself and cleared
his throat. “Ehhmm. Sorry. Roger that. I’ll radio Barson. But put the lieutenant on for a moment.”

I passed my helmet to the lieutenant so he could hear the captain. He listened for a few seconds.

“Roger. Yes, sir.” His voice dropped low, like he’d been deflated. “Roger that. Two-six Juliet. Out.” He gave me back my helmet.

“What is it? What’d Captain Winston say?”

“Bad news. There’s a freight train unloading on the track ahead of the President’s train. They can’t get around it. The President has to stop in Providence.”

“What are we gonna do?”

“Guess it’s up to us to stop this thing, Peach-pit. Do you understand?”

My hands began to shake a little. “Yeah. I understand.”

With the Warhawk cranked up to full throttle, we caught up with the deputy’s car about ten minutes later. Below us I could see it speeding recklessly down the road. I swooped down as low as I could, right over the top of it, and pulled the bomb release.

“Take that!”

But when I looked back, the deputy’s car and its windshield were clean. Somehow I’d blown it.

“I missed.”

“It’s not your fault.” Lieutenant Peppel wiped his eyes and squinted at the car below. His vision had cleared a little. “You probably spent your load on the first drop.”