Amerika (47 page)

‘With four engines and a speedboat to break the suction, not with three engines and a side wheeler riverboat.’

‘Creeley’s trees were at least seventy-feet high. Here it’s looks to be about thirty feet from the water to the top of the dam.’

‘Thirty-two feet,’ McGraw added quickly.

‘I bet we could do a short field takeoff on three engines.’

‘I’m not a betting man.’

‘I’m a betting woman, and I’m positive we can. An idiot could do it. Even Captain McGraw could if he knew how to fly. No offense, sir. I didn’t mean to imply you were an idiot.’

‘None taken, Miss James.’

I raised my hands to silence them. ‘We sound like the Marx brothers doing a routine.’

‘Like hell we are.’ Ava’s voice rose half a stop. ‘We’ve got a mission to fly and we’re going to do it or... or...’

‘Or die trying, which is probably what’ll happen.’

‘Not if you’re at the controls, captain.’

I turned away and analyzed the canyon again. I had to admit the idea was clever. The walls were more than wide enough to accommodate the
Dixie Clipper’s
wingspan as she swooped down into the canyon. That didn’t worry me. But the left hand turn the river took about a half-mile away did for sure. Just like back at Creeley’s, only worse. We’d still be inside the canyon walls at that point, clawing for enough airspeed to climb out, and I’d have to stand her on her wing to make that turn, and lose even more airspeed in doing so.

I said, ‘We’d have do this tonight for us to make it over the target at the scheduled time.’

McGraw rose on his tiptoes, excited at finding a chink in my armor.

‘This is your lucky day, captain - or night, I should say. The full moon rises around 8:30. It’ll light up this place like daytime.’

‘That’ll help.’

‘The good news isn’t finished. I’ve got a tour scheduled for tonight. Charlie Macomb, he manages the dam, always lights up the place like a Christmas tree as a favor to me. ‘Course I grease his palm a bit too, to do it. No sir, there’s nothing more beautiful than Boulder Dam at night.’

Ava said, ‘Except for the
Dixie Clipper
flying over it.’

McGraw smiled. ‘If we time it right, we can give our passengers an unexpected treat.’

‘Heart attacks, you mean,’ I said. ‘We’ll be blasting down the river like there’s no tomorrow.’

He clapped his hands. ‘You’ll do it then?’

‘Yes.’

The leaking avgas from our ruptured sponson tank cast a rainbow-like sheen  on  the  lake  waters  as  I  taxied  the 
Dixie  Clipper
  away  from  her mooring. It felt like she was bleeding to death. But nothing we could do about it now. While we were on our scouting mission at the dam, the Sentinel Island crew, under Orlando’s supervision, had managed to find bullet holes in the right sponson that we had missed. But like our battle damage to the hull, not just the outer duralumin skin the Nazi bullets punctured, but the fuel tanks themselves had been hit.

If only we had the self-sealing tanks like the fighter planes we had been building before the Neutrality Act. I remembered movie newsreels showing row after row of twin-engine, supercharged Lockheed P-38
Lightning
fighter planes moving down assembly lines, out onto the tarmac and then zooming into the air, guns blazing, on their way to Britain and France. But now those same assembly lines were gearing up to make refrigerators instead, while we were stuck with a bleeding seaplane.

The crew briefing had been surprisingly quick and issue-free. When I announced our intentions I had expected objections, but to a person they agreed that we had come this far together, and if we had a chance to continue, we should take it, no matter how risky, no matter how farfetched.

When they finished I said, ‘Fair enough. But let me say one more time, if you want out, that’s fine too. There’s no guarantee we’re going to make it out of here in one piece, let alone get to the target.’

I paused. For sure I thought Ziggy would want to bail and I couldn’t blame him. Of all the crew, his was the least important position. We could easily do this without him. But from his stony silence and stern features, it became clear to me that he felt just the opposite.

Captain McGraw was right about the moon, just as he was right about a lot of other things; it rose bright and clear in the night sky. The barrenness of the surrounding rock outcroppings, empty of vegetation, reflected the light and became a silvery, craggy landscape almost as barren the moon and just as unforgiving. How anything managed to survive in these dry, dusty conditions was a mystery to me. But that was a thought to consider only while calmly cruising at eight thousand feet on autopilot on a starry night. We had to get up there first.

‘Flaps five,’ I said.

‘Flaps five.’

I slid back the cockpit window and leaned out to catch a glimpse of the slowly receding dock. The tall figure of Esau McGraw stood silently watching. I waved at him. He took off his Stetson and waved it in return. The moonlight made it look white as snow.

I said to Ava, ‘What an odd pair those two are.’

‘I’m sure they feel the same about our crew.’

All of whom were now at their assigned stations. But since we weren’t anticipating armed resistance at this point, Orlando had exchanged his waist gun position for the radio operator’s station. He sat facing the engineering panel, watching Mason’s every move.

The noise on the flight deck was slightly less because we only had three engines. A mixed blessing to be sure. I would gladly have traded quiet for power. Even so, we still needed our intercoms to communicate normally.

‘Captain to crew, station report.’

‘Engineering, check.’

‘Co-pilot check.’

‘Ziggy? Professor?’ The two were strapped in at the captain’s station next to the navigator’s table.

‘Doing fine back here,’ Ziggy said, his voice pitched higher than I’d ever heard. ‘Telling each other Bar Mitzvah jokes.’

And that was it for my ‘crew.’ I wanted to laugh but it wasn’t funny.

‘Channel buoy,’ Ava called out.

The red beacon marking Black Canyon’s channel shone brightly in the darkness. I throttled up our port engines for a differential turn to starboard. The buoy dutifully slid away in the opposite direction as I came into the wind. Sure enough, the starboard wing dipped slightly as the force of the air struck it. But our taxi speed was just below ten knots, so we were spared the embarrassment of weathercocking. Instead of the wind hitting us sideways as it had been all the way from the dock, we now faced it head on, making it much easier to taxi.

‘So far so good,’ Ava said.

‘...said the man falling off the cliff.’

‘Funny.’

‘But true, in about five minutes.’

A mixture of fear, anger and excitement, all rolled up into one, flickered across her dimly-lit face.

‘Fasten your seatbelt,’ I said. ‘And keep your eye on the head temps.’

She flicked her eyes to the gauges. ‘That’s not the only temperature rising. I’m sweating bullets.’

Dead ahead of us the night sky was getting brighter. I could only assume the lights coming from Boulder Dam. No time like the present. I flexed my fingers over the throttle quadrant, gripped three of the four rounded knobs and shoved them forward. The engines responded smoothly and we began accelerating. To them, just one more flight. To me it might damn well be their last. The airspeed needle quivered past twenty, then thirty knots. The nose felt heavier than usual. I cranked in more elevator trim and that seemed to help.

‘Forty,’ Ava called.

‘Flaps ten.’

The first faraway slap of water against the hull as she started skipping along. A slender string of stars appeared on the horizon, then grew larger and larger until they became lights, hundreds of them it seemed, ringing the upstream edge of Boulder Dam. Off to starboard, the
Desert Queen
, lit up like a Christmas tree, sailed full speed for the dam.

‘Sixty knots,’ she called.

Too slow, way too slow. Rudder stiffening, adding more trim to keep her from pulling toward the dead engine.

‘Ready flaps forty.’

‘Standing by.’

I could read the engine instruments, but wanted confirmation.

‘Engineering, how we doing?’

‘In the red, but go, go, GO!’ Orlando shouted.

I risked some back pressure on the yoke and felt her rise up onto the step momentarily, fall off, then rise again and stay there. The wallowing motion instantly disappeared as the hull rode higher and higher and the thrumming sound increased as the wavelets began spanking her bottom. How much room left before the dam? Half mile? Less? Hard to tell. Never tried taking off into a concrete wall that rose higher and higher the closer we got. All we needed was thirty-five feet to clear it.

Ava stroked the instrument panel, ‘C’mon, darling, you can do it.’

I wasn’t so sure, but I liked her confidence. Sometimes it adds lift to your wings when you need it most.

And then suddenly I was flying down a tunnel; that familiar place where nothing exists but the task at hand, and knew the time had come. Nothing on either side of me, just the dam ahead. No engine sound, no outside noise, just my own breathing and my hands feeling the warmth of the yoke and my feet on the stiffening rudder pedals as the
Dixie Clipper
merged with me into one creature with metal wings and engines and a human heart and mind rushing across the water faster and faster, and slowly lifting off the water surface, getting her nose down, gaining airspeed.

Needle touching seventy, intake towers skyscraper-tall flashing past on both sides.

‘Full flaps!’

The wings broadened with added lift just as the
Desert Queen
flashed past to starboard, a gush of steam coming from her whistle, but I didn’t hear it, and I pulled back on the yoke and up we rose, higher and higher and cleared the top of the dam with nothing but stars above and clear sky. But the stall horn was sounding, control yoke softening, and I shoved it forward and we nosed down, losing the sky, and the dark canyon walls rushed in on both sides, reaching out to rip off our wings.

Gone was the wide expanse of water behind us. Now just the narrow, winding river below that curved to the left and I kept the throttles at full power  as  we  dropped  further  and  further,  gaining  airspeed  but  losing altitude. Ava shouted something but I couldn’t make it out.

All I could think about was the airspeed building fast enough to let me pull back on the yoke and level us out from the seven hundred-foot circus dive we made off the edge of a cliff, and that damned canyon wall was straight ahead, velvet black, unyielding and coming fast.

‘Landing lights!’

Twin cones of white split the darkness, turning the black canyon walls brown and dark red. They slid to starboard as I banked into a tight turn that instantly stole the precious airspeed we had gained from the drop, only to lose it as I tried to escape the stone walls. By how much I don’t know. All I know is that we were still here, not a tangled wreck, and Black Canyon opened out ahead of us, its river sparkling in the moonlight as we flew below the ridge like some gigantic, prehistoric bird in search of its prey.

The iron band around my head slowly began to ease and my tunnel

vision melted outward until I could see more to my left and right and the cockpit noise rushed back like a rising tide and I heard Ava’s voice, ‘We’re losing number two if you don’t throttle back.’

I gently eased back on the power, even though my instincts told me to push her even more. We still needed to climb out of the canyon, but we were too heavy to do it unless we had at least one hundred-ten knots indicated, which we did not. And so instead, I continued flying a weaving, sinuous path that followed the river as it coursed down the canyon toward God knows where.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the canyon walls grew wider, maybe three or four hundred feet, which greatly reduced the chances of losing a wingtip or worse. But it couldn’t last forever. Sooner or later the walls would start narrowing again and this time it would be too tight a fit.

‘Sure would love to see some sky,’ Ava said.

‘Ten more knots and we will. Keep your eyes peeled on these walls. If they start squeezing in, holler.’

‘I’ll scream my head off.’

I had been slowly milking up the flaps the whole time, and by now they were fully retracted. The lessened drag would give us a few more much- needed knots. What else could help? Then I remembered.

‘Cowl flaps closed?’ I said.

Orlando said, ‘Been closed.’

‘Damn, so much for that idea - where’s Mason?’

‘Beside me.’

‘How’s our fuel?’

Mason chimed in. ‘Too soon to tell. Give me an hour into the flight and I’ll have a chart ready for you.’

‘Let Orlando do it. You’ve got a bomb to drop, remember.’

A chuckle. ‘Forgot that little detail.’

Ava shouted, ‘We’ve got positive rate of climb!’

I started pulling back the yoke before she even finished her sentence, so anxious was I to escape the brooding depths of the dark canyon. The clipper climbed slowly, an aluminum whale in search of the surface to take a breath of air. The night sky slid into place, complete with countless, comforting star while the altimeter continued its clockwise journey, five hundred feet...seven-fifty... one thousand…