Eagles at War (4 page)

"I'm meeting with the mayor of Hankow in the morning, so I'm sending you out to the field to preflight my airplane. The car will take you and wait for you. Just give the ship a walk-around and run it up. All you need to know is in the manual there."

As Jim left the room, Chennault's voice boomed out behind him, "The water on your dresser is boiled; the Bromo-Seltzer is in the dresser drawer."

He slept better than he expected to, and the breakfast of tea, rolls, and noodle soup was just what the doctor ordered. Hankow woke up around him as he rode to the field, peddlers pushing carts with huge wooden-spoked wheels and tiny narrow flatbeds, beggars sitting mutely on the corners, hands outstretched, women scuttling along with back-breaking loads. The air was miasmic with human waste, poverty, and death, as if the bacteria had no more room to breed on the ground and were invading the atmosphere.

He'd come to China with the Charlie Chan stereotype in mind, expecting the Chinese to be oval-faced and paunchy. Instead he saw all about him a universal leanness, a crowd of scarecrows with sallow, emaciated faces, their rib-etched bodies grunting under loads he couldn't have budged on his best day. Most were barefoot, clothed if they were lucky in a worn tunic and trousers, a few wearing the traditional straw hat. Gaunt children squatted in groups around little hooped baskets; he couldn't see what they were selling. Hunger clasped their gaunt bodies like a jockey riding a horse; their feet were long extrusions of dirty flesh, slender toes snaked into the mud like tendrils of a vine.

And through all the hustling humanity trooped the bearers. They wore nothing but a cloth twisted across their middle as they balanced a bamboo pole across their shoulders, huge baskets of goods suspended at each end. Moving at a trot, heads bobbing, they threaded their way through the thickest crowd. The narrow streets were lined with tile-roofed mud houses leaning drunkenly together for support; down past them the bearers tramped, converging like runs of herring at narrow points, never colliding or upsetting a basket.

Two fierce-looking soldiers stood guard at the Curtiss Hawk, their long Mauser M1899 rifles unslung. The chauffeur barked at them and they moved sullenly to the side.

The Curtiss was a beautiful little airplane, mint-bright, as if it had just come from the factory, and Lee felt immediately at home in it, the familiar scents of leather, oil, and metal a relief amid the stink of China. The chauffeur stood at the side of the engine, holding a huge American fire extinguisher he had pulled from the Packard's trunk.

The Wright Cyclone engine caught on the first crank of the starter, and Lee slowly went through the engine run-up drill, enjoying the aircraft's sense of leashed power as it leaned against the chocks, vibrating with energy.

He felt rather than heard the first explosion and looked up to see a stick of bombs walk across the field, blasting holes and rearranging the wrecks. A flight of twelve Japanese twin-engine bombers passed overhead in immaculate V-formation. They looked like the Mitsubishis shown in Chennault's notes; supposedly they were fast but lightly armed.

The chauffeur understood his signal—thumbs thrusting outward rapidly—and pulled the chocks. If Lee had been planning to fly, he'd have worn a seat-pack parachute and be sitting six inches higher; now he was sunk almost below the rim of the cockpit and had to strain against the shoulder-harness to see over the instrument panel. He was airborne after a four-hundred-yard run. The Hawk was simple—no gear controls to worry about—and the power settings were just full forward. Scanning the sky, he sorted out the arming and firing switches. A second group of bombers was in the distance with a copper-toned glint of reflected sun above them—a fighter escort.

I hope it's one of the bastards that shot us up yesterday. At fourteen thousand feet he was level with the bombers but still well below the fighters. He warmed his guns with a short burst.

Lee accelerated, running a triangular check between the fighters and the bombers. Squinting, he saw that there were nine fighters, probably the Nakajimas again, monoplanes with fixed gear and a closed canopy.

They were diving now, slanting over the bombers, trying to cut him off. It was going to be close. The bombers' nose guns were already opening up, little red dots reaching out toward him as they closed at five hundred miles per hour. Lee hunched forward in his seat, raising himself to aim through the simple fixed sight. He fired a quick burst, then dove under the bombers, using them as a shield against the escort fighters while he zoomed back to altitude.

The lead bomber went straight down, the dead pilots slumped over the controls. The other bombers scattered when their own fighters dove through them.

The Nakajimas bounced up, silver propeller discs twinkling in the early morning sun, wings moving skittishly as they jockeyed for firing position, their V-formation untidy and strung out. He turned into them, diving down, guns already chattering. The Japanese broke up into two sections, turning right and left. The Hawk was by far the most maneuverable plane Jim had ever flown, but he saw at once that the Nakajimas could out-turn and out-climb him. He broke for the bomber formation, the Japanese fighters whipping in behind him.

If Chennault's right, if this is the fastest plane in China, I'll outrun them.

Chennault was wrong; the Nakajimas were faster. When he swiveled his head he saw that the lead planes were already firing, the decking forward of the canopy alight from their 7.7-mm Type 89 machine guns.

Lee ducked down in his seat, trying to make himself as small a target as possible and still be able to aim. He streaked across the rear of the bomber formation, ignoring the tail guns, firing as he went. One bomber's wing lit up as his tracers flamed its unprotected tanks; it began a gentle arc, a dying bird seeking the ground.

The Hawk shuddered as it took hits from the rear; there was a sudden roar as his canopy was blown off. Jesus, he thought, if I'd had a parachute on, my head would have gone with the canopy! He aileron-rolled the plane on its back and pulled hard on the stick.

Can't out-turn or out-speed the bastards; maybe I can out-dive them.

The Hawk roared vertically down, wind shrieking around Lee's unprotected head, picking up speed every foot till it hit terminal velocity, near five hundred miles per hour, a mass of plunging metal butting up against compacted air, neither power nor gravity able to make it move faster. The starch-stiff control surfaces fed pressures back to him through the stick.

The Japanese planes fell back, unable to dive as steeply or as fast, heading individually for the bombers that were distant spots in the east. A hunger for revenge replaced Lee's fear. He reefed back on the stick as hard as he could, forgetting about speed, G forces, and structural limits, popping his ears as he sent the little Hawk ricocheting skyward, converting speed and energy into altitude, soaring up into the sky like a silver-tipped arrow.

Above the unsuspecting Nakajimas, Lee booted the rudder and snapped the stick forward, selecting two targets, one slightly above the other. The Japanese pilots were concentrating on rejoining formation, making the classic combat mistake of not checking behind them and about to die for it.

Ammunition must be low, can't fire yet, he thought. He let the dainty little fighters grow in size. Silver with red cowlings and a red arrow stripe down the fuselage, they were flying slightly nose high as they slowed to join up. He could see the helmet and parachute straps on the nearest pilot, who was intently making the tiny control corrections, nudges of rudder and aileron, that would bring him into tight formation. Lee's bullets ripped into the pilot of the first Nakajima, then without interruption into the cockpit of the second. He was through them in a flash, both Japanese pilots dead, their fighters spinning drunkenly away, their comrades still unaware of an attack.

Neck twisting, shoulders hunched, Lee scanned the sky behind him; it was as empty as his gun belts, as he turned back to the airfield.

Chennault was leaping up and down on the flight line, swinging his hat in an arc. The engine was still running when the grinning, eagle-beaked colonel leapt on his wing.

Lee switched off the magnetos, to hear Chennault yell, "Goddamnit, Lee, that's the way, dive and zoom, dive and zoom! You fried four of the bastards! I'm never going to let you go home!"

*

Salinas, California/October 16, 1938

Clarice Roget didn't know or care about Hadley's business in New York any more than she knew or cared about the war in China. She pressed the head of the just awakened Charlotte Bandfield against her breast, blissful with a love that made up for all the children she had never had herself.

How smart she'd been to lure Patty and Bandy into living with them! It gave her the family that Hadley's devotion to work had denied her, even while it gave Patty the free time for her reckless flying career.

Clarice forgot all of the frustrations and anxieties of a lifetime of self-denial in the sheer pleasure of changing the baby's diapers on the sink drainboard. The simple domestic act made her feel like a real mother at last, making up for the disappointments in Hadley's ill-fated business ventures. He and Bandy had always been too far ahead of their time, building airplanes so technically advanced that they couldn't find buyers for them.

The two men, fiercely loyal to each other even as they argued and fought, were a financially disastrous mixture of brilliant engineering and almost zero talent for business. Hadley was usually too enthusiastic to bother to patent his inventions and, strangely enough, didn't seem to resent it when someone else would steal an idea and commercialize it. Bandy trusted everyone, including an accountant who looted their firm.

Only in the last two years, after Clarice had at last asserted her innate business sense, had they done well. Hadley had invented some special machine tools and Bandy had designed some generic structural aircraft parts—oleo struts and oil coolers. Clarice saw their commercial value and insisted on patenting both tools and parts. She then took it upon herself to hire production managers, honest accountants, and a hardworking plant manager on a profit-sharing basis to run what was left of Roget Aircraft. Hadley and Bandy were too obsessed with flying to interfere in such routine manufacturing operations—how could you test-fly a drill press?—and so they prospered. And none of it mattered to her except that she now had the time and the means to lavish her love on the Bandfield baby.

But there were hazards—she knew that Patty felt a mixture of relief and resentment at the way Clarice had taken over. Her own feelings were mixed. On one level, she wanted Patty to quit flying, to avoid the risks that seemed to grow with every new venture and to stay home and care for her baby. On another, more primitive level, she wanted Charlotte for herself! Such were her thoughts when Patty came bouncing in, glowing from her regular morning horseback ride.

Clarice thought for the hundredth time that Patty was the image of her mother, baby Charlotte's namesake. She had the same long blond hair, full bosom, and mischievous grin. Her amethyst eyes, one slightly rounder, one slightly longer than the other, gave distinction to her beautiful face.

A Coca-Cola calendar hanging on the wall showed both Patty's passions and her faults. It featured a glamorous shot of Patty climbing out of the dark green Seversky P-35 racing plane in which she had won the Los Angeles Air Derby. The older woman flipped back to August, saying, "I've x-ed out the days you've been gone." Counting rapidly she said, "You've been away thirty-two out of the last sixty days. It's no wonder Charlotte is shy with you."

Patty flushed with resentment because she knew Clarice was right—and she knew that she couldn't change. She was her mother's daughter, locked in a campaign to breach the male monopoly on aviation, to open the door to women flyers everywhere. She was willing to risk her life in closed course racing or testing new aircraft to get the public forum she needed.

Little by little, she was succeeding in filling the vacancy left when Amelia Earhart crashed in 1937. In the last year she had set a women's land speed record, an autogiro altitude record, and an endurance record. But she knew her career was in crisis. Only the week before she'd been halfway across the country, averaging 270 mph in a Northrop Gamma racer leased from her friend and archrival, Jackie Cochran. A new transcontinental speed record was a certainty until the engine blew up. She'd managed to put the plane down in a cornfield, ripping the wings off in the process, wrecking her career almost as much as the airplane. It was the fourth time she'd tried and the fourth time she'd failed. She knew that the men would be saying, "She's bad luck—and she doesn't understand airplanes."

Patty knew that records in themselves were meaningless—but without them she'd have no base to work from. And she knew very well that but for Clarice her flying career would have come to a halt. Now Clarice was going to use this last accident as a weapon to make her stop flying.

Clarice went on. "You know how much I love taking care of this baby, but I don't want her thinking I'm her mamma! That's your job and your privilege. You've got to stop trying to kill yourself!"

As if on cue, Charlotte reached out for Patty. Clarice handed her over, then gently pushed Patty down on a kitchen chair.