Amerika (3 page)

‘Negative. It’s been resolved. Climbing to assigned altitude now.’

‘Roger, maintain proper separation from no-fly zone, according to procedures.’

‘Affirmative.’

‘Be advised your approved flight plan closes at--’ the voice paused. I could almost hear the chromium steel gears meshing in his Nazi brain as he performed the calculation. ‘Zero-two hundred hours tomorrow.’

I felt like somebody had punched me. ‘My flight plan was approved for twenty-four hours. You cut it in half.’

‘That is the plan I have before me.’

‘With all due respect, there’s been a mistake. I can’t fly non-stop to Key West, Florida. That’s over sixteen hundred miles from here. I have to refuel, I have to sleep.’

‘You will land your aircraft on or before zero-two hours hundred tomorrow morning. If you wish, you may re-apply for an additional flight plan to continue your journey. New York Control, out.’

I stared at my microphone as if the Nazi was going to climb out of it, give me a ‘Heil Hitler’ salute and click his heels to seal the deal.

Orlando said, ‘If it’s any help, I can fly while you sleep.’

‘You’ll have to. Those lobsters go out at noon tomorrow.’

‘Want me to take over?’

I thought about his earlier handling of the controls. ‘Not yet. Let me think this through.’

The first lesson I learned from Captain Fatt when he taught me to fly the S-38 was that if I got myself back on the ground safely, the passengers behind me would too - which meant I didn’t have to over-think about being responsible for their lives.

‘We’re in this together, kid,’ he said. ‘And it’ll all come out right in the end if you keep your eye on the runway ahead, not the runway behind.’

Our current ‘runway’ was in Key West, Florida, and I had to get there practically non-stop before my flight plan expired. If we were still in the air when it happened, an escort of Messerschmitt’s would be sitting on our tail within minutes; their cannons armed and gun sights hot. That’s how organized these people were in their so-called ‘compliance’ duties. It made me mad, but it also made me scared.

What kind of world were we living in?

I re-worked the numbers: our plane’s range was roughly seven hundred miles a leg, but since we had easily lost a third of our fuel because of that crappy compression joint, we would have to make the hop in three jumps, starting with a re-fueling stop somewhere north of Baltimore. Then on to Savannah, Miami, and finally home.

It would take thirteen hours of steady flying. Not impossible. My time as a first officer in Pan American’s four-engine
China Clippers
involved Pacific Ocean over-water flights much longer than that on a regular basis. But we had relief crews to spell us every four hours like they do on ocean liners.

Not this time.

Just me and the control wheel and a ham-fisted mechanic who could hold the plane at altitude if I fell out of my seat from exhaustion. But no way was that going to happen. Not on my watch.

‘Where’s that coffee?

Two sips later, the caffeine jolt rippled through my system and my lips literally tingled.  ‘Tell me again where you learned how to make this stuff.’

‘Mama’s recipe.’

‘Which is?’

‘A secret.’

‘C’mon.’

Orlando rubbed his heavy jaw and smiled. ‘Let’s just say there’s a little something extra in it.’ He raised his cup, which looked like an acorn in his enormous hand. ‘Here’s to Carter Aviation. Long may it prosper.’

‘Amen to that.’

We both sipped.

I raised my cup in return. ‘Death to the Nazis.’

‘Hallelujah to that.’

The weather forecast called for CAVU - ceiling and visibility unlimited - from Providence south as far as Washington, D.C. But after that things got iffy. Two days ago a low pressure system had shouldered its way across the plains and bucked up flat against a high pressure system stretching from Louisiana to Ohio. The resulting clusters of thunderstorm cells were now marching their way southeast. My original flight plan would have let me slide past unscathed as they worked their way off the North Carolina coast and out to sea. But with the Nazis cutting my flight plan in two, it would be a race against bad weather that I knew we couldn’t win.

If worse came to worse, we could always put down on either water or land, now that Orlando had the gear working. But just to be sure, I cycled it up and down. 

Orlando grinned and patted instrument panel. ‘What’s it like to fly this old bird again?’

‘Same tricks, just older, that’s all.’

‘Was this the very plane where...’ he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. I knew what he was driving at, and for some ridiculous reason I felt myself blushing. ‘As a matter of fact it was.’

‘So, the newlyweds really…?’

‘I don’t know. We pulled the curtains.’

It had been a last minute, weekend charter job, just two months after I got Pan Am pilot’s wings. A wealthy real estate speculator had married a chorus girl half his age. She wanted a honeymoon in Havana. He bought up all twelve seats on the plane, had four of them removed and a divan installed, plus a champagne bucket, a cooler filled with hors de oeuvres that, after we landed, I noticed hadn’t been touched. But the bride sure had, because halfway to Cuba, Captain Fatt and I thought we had hit a rough patch air turbulence that made our plane buck and swerve. A quick peek through the curtains confirmed that the disturbance was coming from the busy newlyweds in the back blissfully consummating their vows at four thousand feet and climbing.

Orlando said with a wink, ‘Maybe we could build us a little side business.’

‘How could a man of God say such a thing?’

‘I’m a part-time preacher but a full-time businessman. We could make us some good money while we’re at it. In fact, I know some folks might be interested.’

‘Forget it. We’re staying on this side of the law.’

He saluted me. ‘Aye, aye, Captain Sam. You’re the boss. Me? I’m just the worker bee.’

‘Like hell you are. You own a third of this company, like me and Rosie.’

‘Your mother is a fine woman.’

‘She is that.’

‘And bless her heart for taking care of Abby the way she does.’

Eight months ago, I had stood on the porch of my mother’s house, hand poised over the door, not wanting to knock. The awful news about my wife and baby was still on my side. My mother and my ten year-old daughter Abby were on the other. And then I knocked.

Orlando’s meaty hand blocked my forward view. ‘Baltimore Harbor Airport at your ten o’clock.’ His thick finger tapped the fuel gauge. ‘Just in time. We’re sitting on empty.’

I throttled back and began our descent. The ‘Flying Slipper’ was easy to fly, but not so easy to land. Her long, duckbill-shaped nose obscured forward vision and I smiled, thinking about my dad leaning out his locomotive cab window, trying to see past the engine’s long boiler to the track ahead. Same deal, different kind of ‘train.’

But by applying opposite rudder to my ailerons and skewing the plane into a sideways slip I could catch quick glances of the approaching water surface, adjust accordingly, and then swing her nose back to center.

‘There’s our mighty clipper fleet,’ Orland said.

‘Not ours anymore.’ I snapped.

It broke my heart to see Pan American’s big beautiful Boeing 314 flying boats gleaming in the late morning sunshine. Had things turned out differently, I would have been down there flying one, instead of up here like a kid looking through the window of the candy store.

Orlando said, ‘Mighty pretty birds. How do they handle?’

‘How would I know?’

He snapped his fingers. ‘That’s right, you were going to fly them but never did. I forgot that part of your sad story.’

‘The hell you forgot, you know all about it.’

One of the clippers was moored alongside the boarding dock, waiting for her outbound passengers for Europe. While Pan Am’s Orient operations had been cut short by Pearl Harbor, Trippe’s other routes were still working, and the big Boeings were making two and three trips a week to Lisbon, Portugal, and from there to points north, south and east via Lufthansa, the Nazi’s civilian airline.

The flying boat’s broad upper wing surfaces had been painted orange-red to aid search aircraft in case she came down in the ocean - which would never happen, of course. The plane could fly on two of her four big, beautiful sixteen hundred horsepower Wright radial engines without missing a beat.

The recently-arrived inbound Clipper from Europe, now perched on a beaching cradle, was slowly being winched up onto dry land for a lightning-fast, twenty-four hour turnaround. A swarm of mechanics climbed over and around her like ants on a sugar cube. The triple-rudder tail of yet a third Clipper peeked out of the immense hangar built to accommodate these brand-new giants of the sky.

‘Carburetor heat on,’ I called out.

Orlando just sat there.

I nudged him. ‘Pull out those two red knobs up there.’

‘Sorry.’ He yanked out the knobs.’ Affirmative, carb heat on.’

‘You’re one hell of a co-pilot.’

‘After today, the Lord is your co-pilot.  I’m spending the rest of my life on the ground fixing things like He intended.’

I throttled back to twenty-three hundred RPM and began a slow right turn to enter the downwind leg.

‘Get on the horn and announce our arrival.’

Orlando dialed in the correct frequency and keyed the microphone. ‘Baltimore Harbor Tower, Carter Air four-five requests landing permission, water.’

An American voice answered in a rich, Baltimore accent that warmed my heart. ‘Carter Air four-five you are cleared to land sea lane one. Wind zero-two-eight degrees at five. Caution, military traffic your three-o’clock, taking off to the south.’

In answer, two white Luftwaffe compliance fighters zoomed almost straight up into the sky to our right, climbing north, not even bothering to give us the once-over.

‘Somebody’s been a bad boy,’ Orlando said into the microphone. ‘And they’re gonna’ get spanked with twenty-millimeter.’

The air controller said, ‘Be advised Carter Air four-five, the walls have ears.’

Orlando said, ‘Roger, lips are hereby zipped.’

I began a steep turn to our base leg, and satisfied the water surface was clear of debris, turned final.

‘See how the landing buoys seem to be coming straight at us?’

‘I do.’ Orlando said.

‘If you’re too low, they’ll drift upward in your line of sight. Too high and they’ll drift beneath. We’re a little low, so watch what I do.’ I goosed the throttles a touch. ‘See? That brings them back to the center.’

‘I’ll be darned,’ Orlando said. ‘They did.’

‘I’ll make a pilot of you yet.’

‘Dream on.’

I imagined the S-38 sliding down a silver wire to a fixed landing spot on the water surface. With little or no wind, the harbor water had barely a ripple, which was great for ships making their way across its glassy surface, but a depth-perception nightmare when landing a seaplane. That all-important last twenty feet or so is impossible to judge correctly. By contrast, when landing on water with some chop,  you get your aircraft down to about thirty feet or so, cut power, apply full elevator, let her sink, and she’ll stall just above the waves, your hull will hiss as it touches the water, and you’re home at last, safe and sound, easy as pie.

But not on this glassy-smooth water that was getting closer and closer. Out of the side of my eye I saw a moored Boeing Clipper flash by and my heart skipped a sad beat.

Then a small jolt and shudder as the S-38’s keel touched the water and spray wiped out what little vision I had over the nose. I had to rely on my side vision to keep her tracking straight.

‘Whatever you do, don’t reduce power, keep flying her just in case she wants to skip back into the air - see that? That’s just what happened. Hold back pressure on the wheel and fly her back down again until she settles. Let the speed fall off to under fifty, and then you can relax. Got it?’

Orlando laughed. ‘Got most of it, until she bounced. I don’t know what the hell you did you get her back down.’

‘I prayed.’