Air Force Eagles (15 page)

McNaughton pulled out a Dutch Master cigar, bit off the end, and lit it. The airplanes he'd built for Ruddick were nothing, mere show. His hooks now were jabbed and set far into Ruddick's dark, vulnerable past. He inhaled deeply, and the cigar tip glowed cherry red. Why did people like Bandfield meddle in business when they never even saw the satisfying side of it? Any idiot could make money—the pleasure was in power and control. Hell, even Elsie knew that!

The night before at the hotel they had paired off in little groups. Bandy and Roget talked quietly, still concerned about Ruddick's chances. The Bandfield children were noisy, with George and Charlotte acting big, arguing about everything as they tried to explain the races to Ulrich. Patty and Lyra were going through the latest issue of
Vogue
magazine. They wore almost identical linen dresses; Lyra took her cue from Patty in everything from hairstyles to underwear, and Patty was flattered by it.

When the idea of going to the races had first been proposed, Lyra had demurred. Patty thought she was concerned about the expense, so she had insisted, pointing out how much Ulrich would learn about the country on a train trip, how good it would be for Charlotte and George to have someone to be responsible for. But not until last night did she understand that Lyra was really frightened to come to the races with them.

After two stiff drinks, Lyra had opened up.

"Patty, forgive me, but I hate airplanes and pilots—you and Bandy excepted. Ulrich's father was the kindest man in the world, but airplanes destroyed him."

"It was the war, Lyra. War changes men."

"It was the war, true, but it was mostly the airplane, the jet fighter—it blinded him. First he wouldn't see what the Nazis were doing—then he didn't care."

Patty patted her hand.

"Helmut changed from a decent, loving, compassionate man into an amoral killer. He became obsessed with a technology he thought would save Germany—and Nazi Germany wasn't worth saving."

"Was he really a Nazi?"

"He was worse than most Nazis because he was brilliant—he had no excuse. Most of them ..." She fell silent, shivering with loathing at the memory of her reluctant affair with Joseph Goebbels, a brilliant monster.

"Lyra?"

"I'm sorry—I have so many bad thoughts of the war. You can't know what it means to see your lover change, day by day, into a killing machine."

Patty felt she knew something about Josten's addiction to aviation. Flying had cost her too much as well—her mother and her first husband had died in crashes. The tension and the absences had more than once almost broken up her marriage to Bandfield.

The next morning, race day, Bandfield had encouraged them to watch. Ulrich and the children wanted to go, and Lyra had to give in.

Service participation at Cleveland was a time-honored tradition; there was no better way to show the taxpayers what their money was buying than to send a few fighters to race around the pylons. Even though the eighty thousand spectators knew that it was more of a demonstration than a race, not many people had ever seen a jet. The pretty little silver F-86s, with their swept wings and raucous engines, were crowd pleasers.

Down on the starting line, Bayard Riley sat sweating, sucking on 100 percent oxygen, delighted to have a chance to compete in the Thompson Jet Trophy Race. At precisely 3:55, the four F-86s launched, streaking for the first pylon.

Riley had just finished familiarization in the airplane at George Air Force Base, and as much as he wanted to win, he was more determined not to kill himself. As they hit the first turn, the number three F-86 pulled up and out. Riley didn't see any smoke—probably some sort of a control problem. The remaining three fighters began flying a circular course, covering almost twenty miles instead of a pylon-hugging fifteen, turning the first lap at just over six hundred miles per hour.

Riley was enjoying himself, glad that the leader was being sensible, when he noticed that the distance between him and the first two planes was widening. He shoved his throttle to the firewall, the competitive urge surging, the gap staying about the same.

It was tough flying. The air was turbulent, and they were pulling a constant 6 to 7Gs to maintain the tight circle; when they hit a gust, the Gs went up a couple of brutal notches. The primitive G-suits helped, but Riley felt as if he were in the grip of a python.

On the sixth lap, he squeezed past the second place machine, its fuselage frayed, the glossy paint trim worn away as if it had been beaten by a chain. Six-hundred-miles-per-hour bugs beating an airplane to pieces, he thought.

On the eighth lap, Riley forced his way into the lead, forgetting about his galloping fuel consumption, pushing past Mach .95, way beyond the F-86's low-level limits.

Riley was totally lost to the racing urge now, pulling the airplane even tighter, letting the G-forces build as he tried to increase his lead. A tremendous jar hammered through the stick, rolling the airplane sharply to the right, outside the race course.

A wail went up from the crowd—half-hoping for an accident, half-praying for the pilot—followed by a cheer as Riley regained control. He slowed the F-86 down and came in to land.

A fan asked Bandfield for an autograph, and as he signed, Riley stared at Lyra. He ran his hand through his jet-black hair, wet with sweat; he wiped it on his flight suit and extended it to her. It had been months since Helmut Josten had shown him the photograph, but he recognized her instantly. Reluctantly, she pressed her fingertips against his own, as he continued to stare intently at her, wondering if he should admit that he knew Helmut, that he was working to get him into the country. In the end, he decided to say nothing.

To Patty's amused concern, Lyra had withdrawn her hand with a little shudder, wiped it with a handkerchief, and turned away.

Bandfield had not noticed the building intensity and was surprised when a discomfited Riley declined his invitation to come by the hotel for drinks and dinner.

Later Patty teased him. "By golly, Bandy, I believe you were trying to be a matchmaker for Lyra. I should have told you that she doesn't like pilots."

"Nonsense. All women like pilots. Some just like them a little more than others."

The afternoon heat hung across the field like a hot towel, soaking the tired and edgy crowd. It was almost five o'clock and eleven airplanes were being positioned for the start of the Thompson Trophy race for piston-engine aircraft. There were three of the big Goodyear F2G Corsairs, gull-winged monsters with huge R-4360 engines; six Mustangs in varying degrees of modification and preparation from stock to the superslick Beguine; a Bell King Cobra and the McNaughton Viper. The
Cleveland Plain Dealer
had picked Bill Odom, flying the Beguine, as the favorite, but the radical appearance of the Viper and Ruddick's boyish appeal had also attracted a lot of followers.

Bandfield had gone down to the McNaughton hangar to make one more attempt to talk Ruddick out of flying. When he arrived, there was an argument in process, with Milo Ruddick screaming at the top of his voice, "What the hell do you mean you're not going to fly? You won the Ohio race, you can handle this, I know you can."

"Dad, I'm scared. I've been advised not to fly this airplane by people I respect. And I've got a monster hangover. I'm not going to fly."

Ruddick grabbed his son by his shirt and shook him. "You're making a fool out of me, son. You can win this going away."

"Dad—I'm not flying."

Bandfield stepped forward. "Congressman, that's a good decision on your son's part. But I can find you another pilot, if you'll let me."

Speechless, Milo Ruddick whirled on him, glaring. "Go ahead, Colonel. We might as well try to salvage something out of this."

Bandfield turned and ran, holding his injured arm to his side, leaving a morose group to trundle the airplane out to the starting line.

As engines began to start down the line—the big growling bark of the Corsairs; the softer, melodious snarl of the Mustangs—Bandfield came trotting back, holding his bad arm, followed by a pilot in flight suit and helmet.

Suspicious, Ruddick barked, "All right, Bandfield, who's the pilot?"

The new pilot stuck out his hand. "I'm John Marshall, sir. You had me fired from McNaughton, but I'm willing to fly this plane for you.

Milo Ruddick stared at him. "Goddamn it, Bandfield, what kind of a joke is this?"

"No joke at all, sir. If my arm was right, I'd fly the airplane myself. Since I can't, I'd recommend John Marshall before anybody else."

Furious, appalled that anyone could insult his father so openly, Bob Ruddick said, "Dad, they're trying to make fools out of us. I'll fly it. I'll be okay."

By the time Marshall and Bandfield were back in the stands, the McNaughton pit crew was well into the starting process. Milo Ruddick stood on the Viper's left wing, grinning foolishly, hair blowing in the slipstream, hosing water through the Viper's wingtip radiator, sending repeated thumbs-up gestures to his son.

Inside the cockpit, head pressed against the tiny canopy, wearing a modified football helmet and an oxygen mask, Bob Ruddick sat looking straight ahead over the vibrating blur of the instrument panel, talking to himself.

"Just take it easy, fly high and wide. Don't have to win, just have to survive."

Sucking oxygen to offset his throbbing hangover, Bob Ruddick forced himself to swing his head to the left; it felt like his brain had lurched to one side and then back, like a balloon filled with mercury. His father grinned, jabbed his thumb up again.

The pilot looked back at the instrument panel, praying for a red warning light, a temperature going off the peg, anything that would give him an excuse to pull the throttle back and shut this quivering beast down. He started, sensing that his airplane was suddenly rolling backward, then, realizing it was an illusion, saw that the racers on either side of him were moving forward.

Bandfield yelled, "They're off!" as ten airplanes moved forward, the Viper hanging on the starting line. A Corsair was already airborne, gear coming up.

Roget yelled, "Ruddick's not started. Maybe he got smart and aborted."

Huddled in the cramped cockpit of the Viper, Bob Ruddick shot an agonized look at his father pounding on the wing with one fist and pointing at the fast-disappearing racers with his other. Confused, frightened, yet conditioned to obey, young Ruddick shoved the Viper's throttle full forward, leaving his father's fury behind him in a crackling blast of the Allison's exhaust.

With the other aircraft airborne and already heading for the second pylon, the roar of the Viper's engine broke across the stands, somehow louder alone than the combined noise of the ten other starters had been.

Bandfield watched the jade-green racer leap forward at full power, knowing just how frightened Ruddick was, how alone he felt.

Inside the airplane, Ruddick's leg pressed the rudder full right, as the Viper began its implacable torque-driven drift to the left, the immense gyroscopic forces generated by the engine power twisting the entire airframe in opposition to the propeller. Bob Ruddick was unaware of the complex mass of forces preying on the racer—he sat unseeing, unthinking, glazed eyes staring straight ahead, ignoring the instruments, ignoring the change in direction, the change in the horizon; his hand was locked on the throttle, his right leg rigid on the rudder pedal, seeing only his father's angry face and the fist jabbing at him.

The Viper accelerated swiftly even as it began its arcing turn, gathering lift that brought its wing up, taking the weight from the wheels, changing it from a ground-bound juggernaut into a torque-driven missile, the sucking lift inexorably driving the right wing up, up, and over. Immobile, scarcely seeing, a passenger in the last seconds of his life, Bob Ruddick huddled in the cockpit as the Viper went inverted, pausing for just a moment before its nose dipped to plow into the ground, the roar of its engine ceasing in the massive explosion that brought the expectant crowd to its feet in collective horror.

Bandfield burst from his seat toward the wreckage. Roget followed along behind at a fast walk, mumbling, "We should have stopped him somehow, driven a truck into the prop, something." As he watched Bandfield disappear ahead of him into the crowd already circling around the wreckage, the airborne racers reappeared, on the second lap. And Roget said to himself, "We should have driven a truck over his dad."

The appalled onlookers—mechanics, firemen, ordinary members of the crowd—circulated as fire trucks futilely sprayed the blazing wreckage-encrusted hole. Near the center, two circles of fire that had been the wheels sent out sparkling streamers of molten magnesium. Bandfield, breathing hard, stood recalling how many times he'd witnessed the same hopeless destruction, the same swift change from gleaming airframe and beaming life into this sickening charred amalgam of fire, flesh, and metal.

The racers passed overhead again, already on their third lap. Two Corsairs were leading. It was just registering that Odom's Beguine was not in the pack when a tremendous blow smashed into Bandy's temple, knocking him flat with a lightning blast. Pain in great pulsating currents blinded him, and he felt his stomach convulse. He was vomiting as he tried to get to his feet to run, sure that there had been a secondary explosion in the wreckage.

As his vision cleared, he saw Milo Ruddick standing over him, a two-by-four board in his hand, screaming, "You dirty nigger-loving Jew, Bandfield, I'll kill you! You and your ignorant friend scared my son to death! It's your fault, you filthy bastard, your stupid idiotic talk killed him!"