Authors: Walter J. Boyne
Hafner pulled up and rolled over to look down at the battered Mosca. This was Bandfield, no question. A flight of Heinkels
appeared. He whirled on his wingtip to fire a warning burst in their
direction. They understood, pulling away to the north.
This pigeon belongs to me, he thought. Bandfield was below, slow, hurt, and apparently out of ammunition. Hafner felt a glowing sense of excitement, a realization that it was going to be better than he had planned, better than he could have dreamed. He would
snip at this upstart American like an Oriental torture master, slicing
bits from him until he flew him into the ground.
Bandfield watched the Messerschmitt ease in next to him, flying in formation. He lolled his head to the side as if he were wounded. Jesus, he thought, the bastard is going to whip me again. Patty is really going to be mad at me about this.
Hafner's Messerschmitt disappeared behind him. Bandfield had turned to stare to the rear when a shadow blanked out the sun. He looked up, and smiling down, just as he had so long ago in Peru, was Bruno Hafner's huge head, with its hooked nose and its fleshy lips stretched into a smile.
Hafner looked into Bandfield's shattered cockpit, smeared with
oil and blood. Bandfield glanced up and pushed away, but a hint of
pressure on the Messerschmitt's controls let Hafner follow. This stylish victory would do him no harm. The younger pilots would talk about the quick kill of one Mosca, and then this complete domination of the other.
He checked his fuel gauge; not enough remained to fly Bandfield
into the ground. It would have to be an execution, better than he deserved.
I'll drop back now, he thought, and give him two twenty-second bursts. He waved a slow salute—flip, not correct; Bandfield wasn't
worthy of a correct salute—and reached down to check his gun-charging handles.
Bandfield gazed up at Hafner's coarse and heavy face distorted by
the helmet and the strain of combat. There was not much he could do. His hand crept to the side, moved the lever; the heavy landing gear, screaming in protest, thundered down into its extended posi
tion, slowing him abruptly. Simultaneously, Bandfield chopped his
throttle, raising his nose a hair. The Messerschmitt shot forward,
and Bandfield's propeller nicked through the light metal of Hafner's fin and rudder. In the milliseconds in which it sliced through frame
and formers, the exploding effect of the 250-mile-per-hour wind blew the Messerschmitt's rudder off at the stump.
Hafner's first sense was that the Mosca had somehow disap
peared, his second that his rudder pedals were slack. The Messerschmitt snapped, then spun crazily, pinning him to the cockpit side.
Above, two of the Heinkels milling in amazement locked wings and
began an earthward plunge that matched the Messerschmitt's. Hafner pushed against the canopy, trying to overcome the G forces pinning him inside. He snapped his seat harness loose, straining to get out, his thoughts kaleidoscoping to match the whirling brown and green of the land below. Spinning in his mind were images of Germany, of his father's house, of Charlotte, of the Bristol fighter he'd shot down in 1918, of Charlotte again and Nellie, and of the Bristol again and the Bristol again and the Bristol, Nellie, the Bristol, he was merging with the Bristol, spinning down, locked with the Bristol.
Bandfield's aircraft shuddered and bucked as the damaged pro
peller threatened to tear the engine from its mounts. He shrugged,
popped the throttle full forward, and dove for the sea, for France—
and for Patty.
***
EPILOGUE
Paris, France/May 1, 1937
Only nine years and 345 days too late to win the Orteig Prize, Frank Bandfield woke up in the American embassy, his first conscious
thought of Patty, his second that this was surely not the room Lindbergh had slept in.
He passed his throbbing hand over his forehead. He had crash-landed on the beach near the village of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, out of fuel and anxious to be on solid ground. The local doctor—if he could be called that—had poured cognac into the hole in his hand and bound it up with a cheap gauze bandage. The doctor stationed with the embassy had gasped in horror and spent the afternoon snipping
at the wound with scissors and muttering about blood poisoning and French medicine before sewing it up.
Henry Caldwell had used the time he'd spent with the doctor profitably, firing question after question to Bandfield about the Russians and the Germans. Caldwell had been apologetic about the shabby treatment from the embassy—officially Bandfield did not exist, was not in France, had never been to the embassy. The
ambassador was not worried about what the Germans would think,
having this "mercenary" on the premises, but the French were, and
it had taken two days to get custody of Bandfield, and another to have him transferred to Paris.
One more interrogation was scheduled for this morning. After that, Caldwell had promised a quick trip to Le Havre and then a luxury voyage home on the
Normandie.
After washing up, Bandfield peered up at the single window near
the ceiling of his dingy room. Last night, he had propped himself on a chair and looked out over the rooftops of Paris, wondering how it
had looked to Lindbergh in May of 1927. Roosevelt Field was an
eternity away in time, a universe in distance. So much had hap
pened. When he landed on Long Island, primed to be the first to fly
from New York to Paris, he'd felt he had the hottest airplane in the
world, the original
Roget Rocket,
good for 125 miles an hour. A few
days ago, he'd abandoned an airplane that could fly twice as fast and
was already obsolete.
It had started out the Lindbergh decade; it was winding up the war
decade. Aviation had promised an El Dorado of riches in 1927—
you simply had to fly faster or farther or higher, and money would
flow in an endless stream. A few people had made money; many times that number had lost their fortunes and often their lives. He started to count the friends he had lost. The number grew too high, and he shook the thought away as morbid, grateful that Patty and Hadley had survived. He jumped nervously at a clatter in the
hallway; some scurrying maid dropping a tray of dishes had thrown
him back to the puffy skies over Guernica on his last mission, the
mission he'd flown repeatedly in his dreams since his landing on the
beach. He remembered the bitter frustration of being once again at
the point of defeat at Hafner's hands, his screaming outrage at losing
again to a brutal traitor who had destroyed so many people close to
him. In a single desperate move, renouncing life, Patty, the future, everything, he had lowered his gear to brake his airplane and send the smug, grinning Hafner slashing over him. He'd felt his prop claw through the Messerschmitt's fin, severing it cleanly. The
German fighter had shot in front of him like a car accelerating from
a stop sign, then begun its wild, snapping spin to the earth around Guernica.
He had felt no elation, only a sense of being clean and free. He
had beaten someone who had deserved it badly. If the Heinkels had
not been there, he would have tried to follow Hafner down, to watch him impact. He doubted if Hafner could have bailed out of
the wildly gyrating airplane. But Bandfield's sluggish Russian fighter
had almost been blown to bits around him, and the drumming, clanking noises had told him that he could not fly for long. He had dived, ignoring the vibrating engine, the propeller screaming a
banshee accompaniment to the bagpipe songs of the wind whistling
through holes left by German bullets.
The remaining Heinkel fighters had been disorganized, unable to
react. One flight of three had anticipated his line of retreat and dove, firing at him, but their bursts had fallen far behind. Far out over the Bay of Biscay, he had flattened out, racing along the
ocean's surface for the first thirty minutes. Then, cautiously, he had
throttled back, afraid that the engine would quit, trying to un
derstand the meaning of his new freedom, oblivious to the beauty of the Mosca's shadow hurtling over the bright blue waters, and to the
surprise on the faces of the sailors on the small sail boats. His fuel gauges had long read empty when he had seen a spit of beach that
he knew must be French soil. He had flown low over the sand once, to be sure there were no idling lovers in his path, then bellied in, the
I-16 sending a spray of sand and water geysering behind it.
Two stoic French fishermen had watched him crawl out of the cockpit, bleeding and throwing up in response to the release of tension. When he had finished, they had launched their boat and sailed away, still staring. For the first time, his hand had begun to
hurt, and he had waded out to rinse it off in the surf, letting the bite
of the salt water act as a counter to the pain. In a few minutes, a
black Citroen
traction avant
had pulled up, driven by two members
of the gendarmerie. After an hour of voluble, incomprehensible French, windmilling arms, and accusations of everything from invasion to smuggling, they had impounded the airplane and taken him to their local clinic. Three days later, he had reached Paris.
His propeller had sawn through his obsession as cleanly as it had
through Hafner's rudder. He felt free for the first time since the confrontation with Murray Roehlk back in Dayton, when all the suspicions, all the dark thoughts, about Hafner had been suddenly
turned into reality. Now all he wanted to do was return to Patty, to some semblance of a normal life.
A knock on the door brought him back to France. It was Caldwell, carrying their breakfast on a tray.
"Sorry about the service, Bandy, but you know the ambassador is
in a bind about this. He was good to let us use the embassy at all; he's under a lot of pressure from the French government to get us out of here."
Bandfield picked up a croissant. "This will never replace ham and
eggs."
Caldwell nodded, munching. "We've just about finished, but I've
got some good news for you. I think I can swing some contracts for
Roget Aircraft from the French. They're ready to buy anything the United States will send them, and your transports would be a godsend."
"God, that's great! Old Hadley will have to get a new stock of jokes for the French customers."
"Better than his American ones, I hope. Say, Bandy, you've been coy about how many victories you had. Give me the straight story,
now. I'm going to propose that you tour all the Air Corps pursuit units and talk to the pilots, and that's the first thing they'll ask."
"Henry, with the exception of the last fight, I hate to think about
it. Let's say it was nine, counting Hafner. Have you been able to get
any confirmation that he was killed? It would be just like that bastard to bail out and land in some Spanish whorehouse."
"No, the Germans have clammed up on this, and even the Brits haven't found anything out. There's such a stink brewing about the way Guernica was destroyed that we may never know."
"How bad was it?"
"Totally destroyed. The Nationalists are saying the Loyalists blew
it up, the Loyalists are calling it a massacre. That's what's making the French so nervous about having you here."
"I'll be glad to go."
"Sorry I couldn't get you on the
Hindenburg.
I know you liked
the last trip so much. It's leaving the day after tomorrow and getting
into Lakehurst on the sixth."
"I know you're joking. The Germans would love to get their hands on me—and I'm frankly scared to fly in it."
"Well, let's get started. We can talk on the boat train. I wish I were going back with you, but I'm due to brief the air attache from Berlin on Lindbergh's next visit."
"He's going back?"
"Yeah, he's even talking about taking a house there and living in
Berlin, if you can believe it."
"Jesus, I wish he would live in Germany for a while—that would
bring him around. And I wish you could have known him when he was in flying school, or at Roosevelt Field. He was a prince."
Bandfield was sadly reflective, then went on, "For a long time I've
tried to tell myself that success spoiled him. It wasn't that. I think the press drove him crackers."
"He's not crazy—just has a defeatist outlook."
Bandfield took a shot in the dark. "Henry, it looks like Patty isn't
going to fly with Earhart when she tries it again. If you had anything
to do with her not going, I sure appreciate it."
"I had nothing to do with her going or not going, Bandy, although I don't think you believe me. Anyway, you can get the whole story from Patty when you get back."