Amerika (16 page)

Like an airborne tiddlywink, we made the seven hundred-mile journey in a bunch of short hops. We’d take off, fly along the west coast of Florida for a while, get low on fuel and set down again. With such a heavy payload we had no choice. The plane’s normal range was seven hundred miles, but with four passengers and a thousand pounds of gold, I could only carry half-full tanks with no reserve.

The  laws  of  flight  are  few  but  immutable;  exchange  altitude  for airspeed, and vice versa. Exchange weight for range; ditto. Flight rules are not bendable, which is a relief, because you never waste time figuring how to get around them, you just obey them or else.

We landed in Naples first, then Clearwater. From there I took a chance and leaped across the Gulf of Mexico to Apalachicola in a single hop. If we ran into engine trouble we were sunk, but if we didn’t start cutting corners it would be dark before we got to Lake Salvador, and landing a seaplane in the dark without a lighted flight path is one those rules you never break. The only one who ever did and lived to tell the tale was my mentor Captain Fatt, and I was in the right hand seat when he did it.

I told Ava the story of how were on final approach in San Cristobal; a full load of passengers and cargo, ten o’clock at night, overcast with the ceiling about a thousand feet. Pan Am had spent tens of thousands of dollars rigging up a fancy underwater lighting system that would show pilots the outlines of the watery runway, including a flashing approach line, which was well and good when it worked.

Tonight it worked, and a more welcome sight I couldn’t imagine after hand-flying  the  S-42  for  the  past  two  hours  non-stop  on  instruments through heavy weather.

When I spotted the landing path, I wiggled the control column, relieved to surrender the plane to Captain Fatt for landing. Pan Am policy specified that the captain made landings when weather was at issue. But this time he waved his unlit cigar at me and said, ‘Keep it kid, she’s all yours.’

‘You sure?’

‘What’d I just say?’

‘Yes, sir.’

My fatigue vanished, replaced by adrenaline as I scanned the instruments, made power adjustments, called for flaps and settled down to the business of landing a four-engine seaplane like I was easing a baby down on a pillow.

The S-42 was a handful. Her controls were stiff, reaction times sluggish, and just as I was approaching the threshold to begin my flare for landing, the path lights disappeared. I felt like I had been thrown into a black sack. I could see the distant lights of San Cristobal, but beneath a fathomless void. The water’s surface could be fifty feet away or five. Impossible to tell. I had to abort the landing, go-around and figure out what to do next.

I started to shove the throttles to full power, but Fatt slapped my hand away.

‘I’ve got the aircraft.’

To my amazement, he continued the descent, carrying just enough power to keep us above stall speed. The altimeter was no use. We were too close to the ground for it to register precisely. I held my breath, ready for the sudden slam that would signal we’d crashed into the rock-hard water. I ran the emergency drill: get the life rafts inflated, shove the passengers out and into them fast.

‘I know you’re there, sweetheart,’ Fatt crooned. ‘Come to daddy and give us a kiss.’

As if in answer, I heard a singing TWANG, then another, and another as the S-42’s keel kissed the water surface. Fatt backed off the throttles and let her slowly decelerate until she finally settled safe and sound into San Cristobal Bay.

He had literally flown her onto the water, staying just above stall speed, ever descending until, with years of experience and thousands of flying hours under his belt, he sensed the nearness of the water and made a landing as smooth as if it had been the middle of the afternoon in a dead- calm sea.

‘Home, Jeeves,’ Fatt said and wiggled the control column, which meant

I had the aircraft again. As I taxied toward the landing dock, Fatt lit up his cigar, which was strictly against Pan Am regulations as laid down by Dutchman Preister. But Fatt was an old-timer who did as he pleased. Had been with Pan Am from the start, worked shoulder to shoulder with Preister and Trippe in Key West, where I had first met him as a new-hire.

I began turning the S-42 in the wide arc that would lead us to the dock. As I did so, the water around me lit up and sparkled as the landing path lights came back on again.

‘Nice, very nice,’ Fatt said. ‘Just when we needed them too.’

When I finished recounting my Captain Fatt story, Ava said, ‘He still flying?’

My throat got thick for a second. ‘He went down with the
Dixie Clipper
on a test flight right after Lufthansa took over. A Boeing 314, queen of the fleet.’

‘The crew?’

‘All hands lost without a trace somewhere fifty miles east of New York. They searched forever, but no luck. Like the
China Clipper
disappearing a few  years  back  on  its  way  to  Manila;  that  one  they’re  sure  think  was Japanese sabotage. My guess is that the Nazis did the same thing to Captain Fatt and the clipper.’

‘Miss him?’

‘Every day.’

We flew in silence. I tried not to think about that cigar-chomping, hell- for-leather man. The last of the breed. I was the type replacing him; cool, rational, no-nonsense professional, except for when I got pissed, or worse, pissed off; then I was more like my mentor.

Ava said, ‘Miss flying with Pan Am?’

‘Miss the big birds. But as for doing it for Trippe, no thanks, not with swastikas on their tails.’

‘But that’s just the clippers Lufthansa uses for their transatlantic flights.’

‘And  they  use  Pan  Am  crews  to  fly  them,  thanks  to  him.  Traitor Trippe’ll do anything to keep that precious airline of his alive.’

‘I know.’

‘How?’

A slight hesitation. ‘I read the papers. Times like this, people do the damndest things to keep going. Like you and this airline of yours.’

I laughed at that. ‘One bloody seaplane.’

‘It’s a start.’

She looked away, and then back at me. ‘You were in Buenos Aires when they bombed us.’

The drone of the engines faded into the background.

‘Who the hell are you, anyhow?’

‘None of your business. You’d just gotten your Master Pilot’s wings. No more First Officer Carter for you, no sir. Captain Carter would be at the controls. How’d it feel? To be the boss at last?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Try.’

Instead I remembered Estelle’s angry face, red with tears, and Baby

Eddie crying in the crib the night I left for my first trip as captain.

‘Sam, you promised,’ she said. ‘Can’t you call in just this once? We’ve planned this forever.’

Her sister had just her first baby. All along the plan had been for us to fly to D.C. and visit her and Estelle’s parents who lived there too. I glanced at the new wings pinned on my uniform chest: three small stars on them now, denoting full command.

‘Captains can’t call in. Especially on their first trip.’

Estelle marched over to the crib and lifted up Baby Eddy, who immediately began rooting for her breast. She deftly opened her nursing jacket, sat on the edge of our bed and fed him. She looked up at me, her face pale in the early morning light seeping into the room.

I had to go. I was late already. Still, I hesitated.

She said quietly, ‘I understand more than you’ll ever know. I’ve gone wherever your job took you. I’ve had babies and changed diapers when you were at ten thousand feet over God knows where. I’ve slept alone in this bed, wanting you beside me, on top of me, loving me, and I understood all along that this is what you love. And I love you. So, it stands to reason that I would love your job, too.’

She brushed away a strand of hair.

‘Except today I don’t love it anymore. I hate it. I don’t understand why you can’t be with Abby and me and the baby at such an important time in our lives. You’ll be a captain forever. But your family will be grown up and gone before you know it. Is that what you want?’

I let the thought of cancelling the trip flicker through my mind, but it came to a dead halt.

‘I never thought I’d get promoted like this. No warning, no nothing, just ‘bang’ here’s your wings. Go.’

‘That’s the way Preister works. You of all people should know that.’

‘It’ll mean more money for us, more-’

Her furious look silenced me.

‘You mean more climbing up from the bottom of the seniority list all over again. As first officer you were at the top, remember? All the choice trips. Welcome to just the opposite and you know it.’

She switched sides with the baby. ‘Go ahead and go, Captain Carter. Your crew is waiting for you, but I promise you, your family is not.’

As things turned out, Abby came down with a fever the morning they were supposed to leave Miami for Washington. Rosie offered to drive up to Miami from Key West and take care of her, so that Estelle and the baby could head up to Washington and then on to heaven, too, I hoped and prayed.

Ava said, ‘I’m waiting for your answer.’

‘To what?’

‘To how it felt to be a captain at last.’

I thought about her question. ‘Ever read
Tale of Two Cities
?’

‘Sure.’

‘It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.’’

A huge hand holding a plate filled with food appeared between us and stopped everything.

Orlando said, ‘Luncheon is served, madam. The same for you, captain?’

‘Sure.’

‘Make it two, Ziggy.’

‘Coming right up.’

During one of our refueling stops, Orlando and Ziggy had raided a grocery store for lunch fixings. Right after takeoff, Ziggy began concocting a dizzying picnic lunch of thick corned beef sandwiches, cold chicken pieces, potato salad, pickles, olives, and cheese. He did it with flair; the sandwiches neatly quartered and pinned with festive toothpicks, the potato salad arranged just so alongside the pickles and olives. Even cloth napkins.

I said to him, ‘Your wife must love having you around.’

‘Don’t have one.’

‘Your girlfriend then.’

‘No sir.’ ‘Those Hollywood ladies don’t know what they’re missing.   Where’d you learn to cook?’

‘At my mother’s knee. God rest her soul.’

Ava said, ‘She’s still alive, and so’s your father.’

‘Pays to plan ahead.’

‘That’s morbid.’

‘Better safe than sorry.’

I said, ‘Where do they live?’

‘Brooklyn, thank God. If it had been Manhattan, I’d be praying for real.’

‘They survived, then.’

‘Yes, which is more than I can say for my grandparents back in Germany. They’re Jewish and it’s a living hell for them. Yellow stars on their shoulders, friends getting arrested in the middle of the night, whole families disappearing without a trace. We’re trying to get them over here, but they can’t get visas.’

‘Why not?’

He sighed. ‘It’s a long story that I don’t want to tell.’

We finished the rest of the long water hop to Apalachicola in silence, each of us lost in thought and our ears numbed by the constant engine drone. I let Ava take the wheel to get some multi-engine hours in her log book, while I scanned the instrument panel for signs of mechanical trouble, and out the windows for Nazi compliance fighters. I doubted they’d be patrolling this  far  out  in the  Gulf  of Mexico,  but I wasn’t  taking  any chances.

Fortunately, nature was on our side: puffy cumulus and high cirrus clouds were starting to pile up, created by a low pressure system sweeping in from the northwest. If trouble turned up we could duck inside the clouds and hide. By my calculations, we had a day or so more of decent flying before the high pressure system surrendered to the low, and the endless cycle of sun, clouds, and rain, would repeat itself.

I said, ‘Be nice to have a chart instead of just a heading.’

‘Ziggy, toss me my flight bag,’ she shouted.

Moments later he handed up a thin tan briefcase.

‘Look in the back,’ Ava said. You’ll find a New Orleans sectional. I use it a lot.’

‘Why?’

‘My family’s from there, remember?’

I poked around inside. The normal pilot’s tools: pencil, plotter, whiz wheel, log book, maps, and to my surprise, instrument approach plates too. It’s one thing to be a fair weather flyer, but to be trapped inside the clouds, unable to see anything, relying completely on your plane’s instruments to get you safely on the ground, that takes a true aviator.

‘You got an instrument ticket?’

She laughed. ‘Barely, but yes.’

I unfolded the map.  ‘Lady, you are full of surprises.’

Ava said, ‘Lake Salvador’s southwest of New Orleans. Got it?’

I located the kidney-shaped area of water easily.

‘See that island about three quarters of the way up?’ she said. ‘That’s Couba Island. Our destination.’

‘No nightlife for you in the ‘Big Easy,’ huh?’

‘Next time you visit New Orleans, I promise.’

‘No thanks. Invitations at gunpoint aren’t my style.’

‘Sorry about that. I was afraid you’d refuse.’

‘I still can.’

She shot me a look. I shrugged my shoulders. ‘But I won’t. Besides, I need to collect on the bonus you promised for finding the gold.’

‘There’s a lot more than a bonus waiting for you down there.’

‘Like what?’

She pulled the pin from the control column and swung it over to me.

‘You’ll find out.’