Aces (7 page)

“As the Herr Adjutant wishes,” Froehlig murmured. “But now it’ll be at least ten minutes before we can get anything in the
air.”

“But my Fokker’s still on the ready line—” Goldstein exclaimed. He stared at his airplane. “My God, the propeller’s turning!
Who started the engine?”

“I did,” Corporal Froehlig said. “I ordered the crew to start her up as soon as the siren sounded.”

“Then why isn’t she in the air?” Goldstein asked, exasperated.

Corporal Froehlig looked away. “The Herr Adjutant will explain.”

“Explain what?” Goldstein demanded impatiently.

“No one will fly your machine,” Bodenschatz said, looking embarrassed.

“Because it has only one gun?” Goldstein asked in disbelief.

Bodenschatz shook his head. “Because the others consider it unlucky… and unclean.” His voice trailed off. “—because you’re
a Jew.”

Goldstein shuddered, disgusted.
These fools can no longer humiliate me
, he thought.
They can only humiliate themselves
. “Then I’ll fly it,” he said, turning away.

Bodenschatz stopped him. “You’ve been grounded.”

Goldstein saw that Spad No. 17 was coming around for another try at the fuel lorries, while the other two flew top cover to
protect their companion against an ambush from a returning German patrol. “Begging the Herr Adjutant’s pardon,” Goldstein
replied. “But we’ll all be
dead
if we don’t get a plane in the air to at least
distract
the enemy.”

“But those Spads will be on you as soon as they see you rolling,” Froehlig objected. “You’ll be shot up before you leave the
ground.”

Goldstein looked at Bodenschatz. “Sir, will you help?”

“But how can I?”

“Your motorcycle sidecar, Sir. It has a machine gun. If you were to ride alongside my Fokker, affording me covering fire until
I was airborne?…”

Bodenschatz’s dark eyes lit up. He grinned and quickly nodded. “Herr Sergeant, I’ll be beside you when you need me.”

Goldstein ran toward his airplane, with Froehlig keeping up beside him. “Your helmet and goggles—” the corporal began.

“No time for them,” Goldstein muttered.

“The windchill,” Froehlig protested.

“Heiner, look on the bright side. It’s going to be three against one, assuming I can even take off. I’ll probably be
dead
before I feel any discomfort.”

As they reached the idling airplane Froehlig reached out to grasp Goldstein’s arm. “Good luck, Hermann.”

“Thanks, my friend,” Goldstein smiled, and then he was hoisting himself into the cockpit. He quickly buckled himself into
his seat as Froehlig pulled the chocks from the wheels. As the Fokker began to roll Goldstein slapped open the throttle and
steered for open ground.

Goldstein, squinting against the engine exhaust smoke, looked up over his shoulder. The Fokker was bouncing and jolting its
way along the rutted field. The Spads would spot him any second now.

He saw Spad No. 17 break off strafing the fuel lorries, luckily, before any of the Spad’s bullets could ignite the petro.
The Spad came around onto Goldstein’s tail, with the other two stacked above it, still acting as lookouts as they patiently
waited their turn to shoot German fish in a barrel.

Goldstein smiled grimly. At least he’d succeeded in drawing the enemy away from the vulnerable fuel deposit and the hangar
tents. He didn’t think the Frenchies could resist his decoy maneuver. Blowing up fuel lorries or parked airplanes was important
work, but destroying a
piloted
airplane, even if it was still on the ground, would count as a kill on a pilot’s record.

Goldstein waited for the last possible moment before turning his Fokker into the wind, so abruptly that his triplane’s wing
skid scraped the ground. The Spads overshot him. He heard their Vickers guns, and saw their rounds kicking up mud, but no
bullets hit his airplane. Goldstein had his throttle wide open, the Fokker was rattling along fit to jar the teeth out of
his head, but it would still be another minute before he would be going fast enough to get airborne.

The Spad pilots would know that as well, just as they’d know that now he
had
to remain on a straight course if he wanted to reach takeoff velocity. All the Spads had to do was get behind him and use
their machine guns to nail him down.

Goldstein again peered over his shoulder. The Spads were closing in. He saw orange fire licking out from the barrels of No.
17’s twin Vickers. The mud was erupting in molten spurts all around his Fokker. He hunched down in his seat and waited to
get shot. Where the hell was Bodenschatz?—

Thanks to his own engine making such a racket, Goldstein didn’t hear the motorcycle until it had pulled up alongside his airplane.
Bodenschatz jauntily waved and then hunched over his sidecar’s Parabellum and began firing short bursts up at the offending
Spad.

Goldstein never expected Bodenschatz to do any damage; all he’d wanted was for the adjutant’s gun to buy him a little breathing
space. Goldstein watched what was happening in his rearview mirror and couldn’t have been more shocked when Spad 17 began
spewing black smoke, the thick oily clouds effectively shrouding his Fokker, preventing the other Spads from accurately returning
fire.

Goldstein heard Bodenschatz bellow, “Good God, I’ve got a kill!” He watched in his mirror as Spad 17 banked steeply onto its
side and then nosedived, its prop biting into the mud. The Spad erupted in thunder and flames as its momentum cartwheeled
it end over end across the field. There was no way the Spad’s pilot could have survived that, Goldstein thought as Bodenschatz’s
driver, panicked by the shooting flames, veered off.

He pulled back on his stick, and the Fokker responded. He glimpsed Bodenschatz behind his smoking machine gun, his fists held
aloft in triumph, and then the motorcycle and sidecar dropped away. Goldstein was airborne.

As soon as he had enough altitude not to scrape his tail, Goldstein hauled up the Fokker’s nose, putting his machine through
a severely tight Immelman loop. He heard his Fokker’s struts groan in protest and knew that he was risking tearing the fragile,
three-tiered, wood and canvas wings right off his machine, but he held to the aerobatic maneuver, up and over and right into
the surprised faces of the two Spads. Like jousting knights, the three planes converged upon each other. Goldstein fired a
burst from his Spandau gun point-blank into the prop of the nearest Spad, even as his opponents’ Vickers tore holes in his
own engine cowling. Then he was past the two Spads, and fighting for altitude.

Goldstein knew that the Spads were equipped with Hispano-Suiza in-line engines that put out 220 horsepower as compared to
his engine’s puny 110. It was a given that the Spads could fly rings around any Fokker triplane, but Goldstein’s Fokker was
a stripped-down machine, carrying only one gun, and he himself was a pilot who, like a jockey, had disciplined his body to
go without so as to be as light as possible.

The Spads at the field’s far end would climb higher and faster than his Fokker, but all three airplanes would have to stop
climbing prematurely to avoid entering the heavy cloud cover that canopied the sky. Goldstein hoped the Spads’ pilots would
overestimate their altitude advantage when they began their attack dive. If they did so, their superior speed, relatively
low altitude, and proximity would not allow the French pilots the time to correct their misjudgment.

The wind tore at Goldstein, almost blinding his unprotected eyes as he came around in a steeply banking turn toward his two
adversaries. The Spads had come around as well. They were hurtling toward him head on at top speed. As he’d hoped, the French
pilots had underestimated his modified Fokker’s climbing ability. They’d figured he’d be lower than he was, so their angle
of descent was too steep for them to use their own guns.

As they crossed Goldstein’s path, well forward of him, he put a burst into the nearest Spad, plowing a 7.92-millimeter furrow
along its fuselage from nose to tail.

The Spad he’d shot up went into a tailspin, just pulling out in time. Goldstein watched the bullet-pocked airplane skirt Cappy
field in a wide bank and then head for home. The other Spad was turning tail and running off as well. Goldstein didn’t understand
what was going on until he saw Jastas 11 and 6, in stacked Vee formation, coming home.

It was over, and he was alive.

Goering’s all-white D VII buzzed Goldstein as he came in for his landing, swooping past the still burning wreckage of the
Spad that Bodenschatz had shot down. Goldstein wondered what that was all about as he touched down, cutting his engine and
rolling to a stop before his Fokker’s hangar tent, where a number of pilots were congregated. Froehlig and Bodenschatz were
hurrying toward him. Glancing into his rearview mirror, Goldstein saw Goering’s airplane touch down a couple of hundred feet
behind him.

“Congratulations, Herr Sergeant!” Froehlig exclaimed as Goldstein climbed out of his Fokker. “That was a magnificent performance.”

Bodenschatz was dancing about madly, overcome with excitement. “Did you see it, Herr Sergeant?” He laughed. “I shot down an
airplane! I must be the first ground officer to get himself a confirmed kill!”

“I saw, Herr Adjutant.” Goldstein grinned. “My congratulations. You can fly with me anytime.” He noticed the other pilots
standing some distance away. They were scowling at him. “What’s the problem with them?”

“They’re angry because you had all the fun, I suppose,” Froehlig replied. “Those fine young gentlemen weren’t prepared to
do the job, and I suppose they just can’t accept the notion that
you
, of all people, saved their aristocratic asses.”

Goldstein shrugged wearily. “The important thing is that J.G. 1 has been saved.”

Goering’s white airplane had come to a halt beside his own. “You!” Goering screamed, hopping out of his cockpit. “You disobeyed
my orders!” He tore off his goggles and helmet and hurled them to the ground as he raced toward an appalled Goldstein.

“Sir, begging the Herr Oberleutnant’s pardon,” Goldstein stuttered. “I-I thought you’d be pleased. I saved the aerodrome—”

“What you did was disobey my orders!” Goering roared, stopping short just inches from where Goldstein was standing. The Firstlieutenant’s
face was red, and spittle was flying from the corners of his mouth. “I specifically confined you to quarters! I specifically
grounded you! But you took it upon yourself to fly—”

“Sir, we were under attack, and my Fokker was the only machine that was flight ready—”

“I don’t care!” Goering looked around, his eyes wild. “My orderly! Where’s my orderly? Where’s my stick?”

The orderly, looking deathly pale, seemed to appear out of nowhere. He quickly ran over with the Oberleutnant’s swagger stick.
Goering grabbed it away and began to rhythmically slap it against his boots.

“Herr Oberleutnant,” Bodenschatz began. “You may not understand the situation—”

“I don’t need to understand anything but that this man disobeyed my orders!” Goering shouted. His breath thudded into Goldstein’s
face. “Must I have insubordination from you, as well, Adjutant?”

“May I remind the Herr Firstlieutenant that we hold the same rank,” Bodenschatz quietly replied.

“Yes, and may
I
remind the Herr Adjutant that he is a ground officer,” Goering sneered. “And may I
also
remind him that the Herr Rittmeister left
me
in charge. I am acting C.O. of J.G. 1.” Goering’s stick sounded like a whip as it slapped against his boot.

“That’s all quite true, Herr Oberleutnant,” Bodenschatz acknowledged.

“And as for you, Herr Sergeant,” Goering began, “I will not have you disobeying my orders, no matter what.” The tip of his
swagger stick found Goldstein’s chin, tipping it up, tipping back Goldstein’s head. “Do you understand me, Herr Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir.”

Goering grinned fiercely. “I don’t think you do—”

Goldstein saw Goering’s left hand flash up in a roundhouse arc, but with his head still tilted awkwardly back by Goering’s
stick, Goldstein had no time to dodge or deflect the blow. Goering’s palm caught him on the side of his face, the noise of
impact as sharp as a pistol crack.

Goldstein’s head rocked as white-hot pain erupted all along his jawline. His knees sagged, but he kept himself from crumpling
as he looked at Goering with dazed, shocked eyes.

All around him was quiet. Froehlig, Bodenschatz, and the other pilots and ground personnel who’d been watching were too shocked
to do or say anything.

“
Now
I think you understand how it is, yes, Herr Sergeant?” Goering asked lightly.

Goldstein, still punch-drunk, shook himself. Never in his life had he intentionally harmed another human being, but right
now he felt as if he could tear Goering apart with his bare hands.

“Herr Sergeant!” Goering shouted. “I asked you if you understood. Have you bitten off your tongue?—”

“You bastard!” Goldstein snarled at Goering.

Goering’s smile instantly disappeared. “What?
What
did you call me?”

“Calm down, now, Herr Sergeant,” Bodenschatz was saying.

“I called you a bastard!” Goldstein repeated. “Because that’s exactly what you are.”

“You swine!” Goering said thickly. “You insufferable Jewish swine!”

Goldstein charged forward, tackling Goering, and then they were falling; struggling and rolling in the mud. For one brief
instant Goldstein was straddling Goering. His hands found Goering’s throat—Then he felt hands pulling him up and away.

“How dare you!” Goering was on his feet, dripping mud; the sable trim on his leather jacket was matted with the stuff. “How
dare you!”

Goldstein struggled to reach Goering, but found himself smothered in Corporal Froehlig’s powerful bear hug. “No, Herr Sergeant!”
Froehlig was desperately pleading in Goldstein’s ear. “No! Stand still!”

Goldstein sagged, the fight gone out of him. He would be court-martialed for this, he realized. Court-martialed for attacking
a superior officer.