Authors: Walter J. Boyne
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. Haf
ner 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 Amer
ican 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
]agd
geschwader
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 trans
port 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."