Authors: Walter J. Boyne
The Chatos formed up; there were six left. He wondered how many of the Italians had gone down.
Lowe was waiting for him when he returned.
"Bandfield, we're in trouble. The word is that we've both been slated for execution."
"Jesus, great. What for and when?"
"The Russians figure we are American spies. I'm not sure when they plan to act, but we can't afford to wait around. I'm leaving the country tomorrow. You should too."
Bandfield listened, nodding. He was ready to go back for every
reason but one: Hafner. Somewhere, the bastard was flying, and he
wanted to nail him.
"And I have news from Henry Caldwell. He'll be in Paris during
May and June, working out details for a sale of aircraft to France."
"What kind of reception will I get when I land in France?"
"They'll just shuttle you to the embassy in Paris, and you'll be smuggled home. There won't be any problems. When will you leave?"
"I'm not sure."
"Look, don't screw around. Go the next time you fly. Just peel off
and head for France. Maybe I'll see you back in the States. So long."
Bandfield watched Lowe leave, wondering if he'd make it, feeling
a mixture of relief and anxiety well through him. Time was running
out on him. Sooner or later, some Nationalist pilot was going to get in the first shot, and that would be it.
That night at the field, Lacalle bounded in, grinning widely.
"How would you like to fly an I-16, a Mosca?"
Bandfield, suspicious, hesitated to reply. This was just the sort of
thing the Russians might do to put him off-guard. But he had fulfilled most of Caldwell's requests, learning about the airplanes and flying with the Russians. Flying a Mosca was the one thing he hadn't done. Besides, if he could not trust Lacalle, he could never trust anyone.
"What do I have to do?"
"Come with me tomorrow. I have permission to take one pilot and two I-16s and fly to Bilboa. They are down to their last two Chatos. We'll have to leave early in the morning, and fly directly over Nationalist territory."
Bandy hesitated. He had tried to find out where Hafner was—the only thing he could determine was that he wasn't on the same front.
Maybe he was in the north.
The chances for it were admittedly slim. Kosokov had kept all
intelligence reports to himself, and gave out only the minimum information at the preflight briefings. The front was hundreds of miles long—meeting Hafner in combat would be pure chance.
He felt a wild enthusiasm at the thought of leaving, of getting away from the misery that was Spain. His life had become a
wretched aggregation of hours in his miserable hut and brief terrify
ing moments of combat. But there was a pang when he thought about deserting Lacalle when he needed him. That, with his gambler's obsession about finding Hafner, overcame his good sense.
He tried to think what Patty would be doing back in the United
States. She was probably spending her last days before the flights with Amelia started again. Going with Lacalle would delay him
only a few days at most. And he'd be able to indulge the pilot in him by flying yet another type, getting the information Caldwell wanted.
As he thought about it, he realized the delay was risky. But, he
reasoned, why would they let him take a modern aircraft, a Mosca,
if they were going to kill him? Lowe was probably wrong. His spirits
soared again. Bilboa was less than an hour's flying time from France. He'd fly the Mosca to freedom. As tired as he was of the killing, as disillusioned with "the cause," he still wanted one last chance to find Hafner.
And this was it. If Hafner wasn't in the north, if their paths didn't
cross, he would forget about him. He would never leave Patty again,
never experience again this deep-seated loneliness and longing for
her.
Lacalle was matter-of-fact. "We won't have a formal checkout.
You've flown planes with retractable landing gear before, haven't you?" Bandy nodded. "This is no different—you just have to keep on the rudder on takeoff. It's hotter than the Chato, but probably less difficult than the racers you flew. And thank you for coming with me. My days with Kosokov are numbered!"
Mine, too, Bandy thought.
*
Vitoria, Spain/April 24, 1937
The entire business in Spain was crazy, but von Richthofen thought the most insane event so far was bringing this new committee form of warfare to the front. It was on Udet's orders, and Richthofen had
been furious.
For his part, Bruno Hafner was happier than he had been since the palmy days of March 1936, when he had impressed his new bosses with his management skill.
Reentering combat had been like a passionate encounter with a
lover from the past. He realized how pale any other stimulus was.
He'd tried cocaine, when Dusty was getting so involved, and it meant nothing. He drank for the oblivion, not the pleasure, it brought. Women were the next best thing to combat, as Charlotte,
and more recently Lili, had proved, but he was older and his juices
were drying up. Ah, but combat! There was nothing that gave him the consummate, fulfilling sensation of the slashing dive into an enemy formation. To fasten like a bulldog onto someone's tail, to sense and savor his terror, and then, with simple pressure from the
fingertips, to erase him. It was an exquisite pleasure, as good now as
in 1918. In his brief time in Germany, he had met the Japanese attache, who had described the pleasures of eating blowfish, apparently a combination of delicacy, intoxication, and danger. Combat was that and more, hardly delicate, but so laced with danger overcome as to be magnificent. It was all he had remembered it to be, and more. He had scored seven times, three fighters and four of the ancient observation planes the Loyalists flew. Each time the old familiar rush of pleasure had returned, the biting sense of absolute and final control and superiority, the glowing sense of victory.
Combat changed life's ordinary wine into vintage champagne.
And life in Spain was good, especially after the idiocy of Germany
and the hectic self-imposed pressures of America. The Spaniards
treated the Germans well, as they bloody well should have. Franco
had controlled Vitoria longer than almost any other city, and had been able to provide the Condor Legion a convent—sans nuns—in
which to quarter their officers. Hafner had a comfortable room, and the food was excellent. And Udet had arranged for the pilots to look
at the plans of the Hughes racer, as the Focke-Wulf company had
modified it, to judge its worth. He could not have asked for better
treatment.
They were in Richthofen's headquarters in the Hotel Front6n. Lieutenant Josten spread the plans out on the table, big rolls of
three-view drawings, smaller drawings of details, and sheets of tables
showing the predicted performance.
The pilots, none of whom besides Hafner had flown anything
hotter than their Heinkel biplanes, were ecstatic. "Look at the wide tread on the landing gear! You could land this airplane on any field
and not have the gear come off." The Heinkels and even the new
Messerschmitts had vicious takeoff and landing characteristics that
had killed many a pilot.
Hafner tried to refrain from commenting, but could not. "And look at the armament. Two guns in the cowl, and three in each wing. The British are building eight-gun fighters, and we'd better have them, too."
Even von Richthofen became enthused. The airplane would make an excellent ground-support type. He turned and, in his
clipped Prussian staccato style, said, "Lieutenant Josten, please tell
General Udet that this is what should come after the Messerschmitts! I will inform General Sperrle of my opinion."
At the end of the evening, Josten sent a wire to Udet saying that
the pilots approved. The following day, a copy of a wire to the Focke-Wulf aircraft company came in. It was a single word: "Pro
ceed."
Hafner weighed the consequences of his coup. If he judged Tank
correctly, the whole matter of the Hafner and the Hughes racer
plans would be forgotten. It would be a Kurt Tank design from now
on. That was acceptable. The people who counted—Udet, Goering, Milch—would know the truth. Now if it was only possible to
get the big bomber back on track. If he could see Hitler personally,
he could probably sell the idea. But that was almost out of the question; in the last year the Fuehrer had become even more
unapproachable. Perhaps when the Condor Legion returned there
would be a victory parade. He would be one of the leading aces—
only two men were ahead of him now—and Hitler would undoubtedly decorate them. That would be the time to spring it, before Goering or anyone else could interfere.
He held two envelopes in his hand. One was of heavy, cream-
colored paper, richly embossed. It contained a personal message of
congratulations from Adolf Hitler himself. The other was made of the cheap yellow-glazed ersatz paper used by every government office. It was by far the more important of the two. Udet had sent it—again, why, Hafner did not know. He was still unsure how he stood with Erni. But he had sent it, and inside, on his personal note paper, was a little combat scene. A Heinkel, with Hafner's head bulging out, was shooting at a Russian Chato biplane. Udet had not tried to do the pilot's face in the Chato—he'd covered it with a helmet and enormous goggles. But there was a little arrow from a circle in which was written: "Your old friend Bandfield." At the bottom of the letter was the message: "He's near Madrid. I'll keep you informed."
It was almost too good to be true. Good Christ, to have a chance to down Bandfield. Hafner recalled the flight to Hawaii, when he had perched in perfect attack position behind Bandfield, unable to do more than watch. Not this time! If he could catch him in the air, the American was a goner.
Hafner rubbed his hands together. If Udet could pin down where Bandfield was exactly, Hafner knew he could arrange to be trans
ferred to that area. He wondered how good Bandfield was in the Russian plane. It might be a problem, one that he'd have to look at carefully.
Less than a hundred yards away, relieved at last to be alone, von
Richthofen riffled through the neatly mounded paperwork on his desk. The meeting with Josten and Hafner had been far more productive than he'd expected. The little war in Spain was proving to be quite fruitful, even as it became routine. He looked at the schedule. On the twenty-sixth, they were scheduled to bomb Guernica. It was a short mission for the bombers from Burgos, and the
Loyalist air force had just about been shot out of the sky. He might just lead this one personally.
*
Bilboa, Spain/April 25, 1937
Bandfield was continually surprised at how the sharp shock of war
was so quickly worn into ordinary depressing poverty. The streets
and houses of Bilboa had been bombed and shelled into shattered
masses that seemed to defy reconstruction. Immediately after the bombs hit, the broken buildings stank sharply of flame, cordite, and, all too often, burned flesh. Within a few days, the odors had
given way to musty wet-mattress smells, overladen with the deep,
sickening dead-dog scent of decaying bodies. Tired from the shell
ing, the poor food, and the inevitability of surrender, the local people were sullen and unfriendly.
And Lacalle was furious with himself. He had ground-looped his
Mosca landing on the polo field the Loyalists were using as their
last-ditch airfield in the defense of the north. It had been in the
makeshift repair shops—abandoned stables—ever since, and in the
meantime, the last of the Chatos had been shot down.
By midafternoon on the twenty-sixth, Lacalle's airplane was final
ly repaired, just as reports began to come in that an Italian bomber,
probably a Savoia-Marchetti, had bombed the Renteria bridge east of Guernica, with little damage. A few minutes later, a Heinkel He-70 had bombed the railroad tracks at Guernica, then machine-gunned the town square. The methodical Condor Legion always followed a similar pattern. If another Heinkel showed up on a reconnaissance mission—the "before" picture for intelligence pur
poses—it usually meant that a full-scale bombing raid would be on
within the hour. Bandy decided he would follow Lacalle through the initial attack to gain the combat information Caldwell wanted on the airplane, then return. When Lacalle landed, he would make a break for France. He felt no remorse about leaving. His mission was accomplished, and he was tired of killing, tired too of the
Loyalist cause, and absolutely exhausted and disgusted by the com
munists. War had become so totally repellent that he was ready to give up everything but his quixotic crusade to find and engage Hafner in combat.