Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 (64 page)

It was cloudy out. He remembered that with a gasp. The sky here in San Angelo was covered with thin, pale clouds that would follow them east, though the forecast in the newspaper said the rain would peter out before it reached Little Rock. He made a show of looking at the clipboard, and shook his head. “I haven’t seen the latest.”

“Lewis will get it,” she said, and slid back the side window to call to him. Lewis lifted a hand in acknowledgement, and a few minutes later, Jerry brought the sheet up to the cockpit.

“They’re just about ready,” he said, handing it over, and in the same moment the referees shouted for the leaders to start their engines.

“Are you ok?” Alma asked.

Mitch grimaced. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

She gave a long look, honestly assessing, and Mitch forced himself to meet her look with a smile.

“I promise,” he said. “I can handle it.”

She hesitated a moment longer, then nodded. “Ok.”

The Terrier was heavy with the extra fuel, soggy on its wheels, waddling awkwardly into the turn that lined them up on the runway. Mitch eyed the length of it uneasily as he waited for the flag. It should be more than adequate, but the air was still and the weight of the supplemental tank sat uncomfortably toward the tail. Alma was frowning, too, making the same calculations, and Mitch gave her a shrug. It would be enough or it wouldn’t. He thought it would be. Just.

The flagman waved them on, and Mitch pushed the throttles forward, bringing up the power as quickly as he dared. The Terrier rumbled forward, the big engines howling; the tail lifted, and dropped again, and Mitch looked at the airspeed indicator. Close, but not there, not enough. He cursed the lack of headwind. If he couldn’t get more out of her, if he couldn’t get the tail to lift — They were almost at the point of no return, fly or die, crashing ignominiously off the end of the runway.

“Come on,” he said, under his breath. The speed was creeping up, the tail starting to lift. “Come on.”

“Mitch,” Alma said, quietly.

Now or never. Mitch ignored the airspeed, concentrating on the feel of the plane under him, the air on the wings. They were almost there, almost ready, the engines full open — and they were almost at the end of the graded strip. He felt the power building finally, the wings catching lift, the whole body lightening at last, and he eased back on the yoke just as the wheels left the graded dirt. The Terrier wobbled and flew.

He kept the angle shallow, catching his breath, letting the plane steady under them. It was a good thing they were in the desert, not someplace with trees ringing the field, or telephone lines… But they were up and flying, the airspeed rising now, and he tugged the yoke back just a hair, increasing the angle of climb to something a bit more normal. She was still heavy, still awkward, but that would improve as the extra fuel burned off, and they wouldn’t be landing again until Little Rock.

“Well,” Alma said. Mitch glanced at her, and saw her crooked smile. She tapped his shoulder in answer. “Nice flying.”

C
omanche’s Ford was a silver dot in the distance, a speck of fire when the sun caught the bare metal of the fuselage. They were overtaking it, Mitch thought. Not as fast as he would like, but the fuel was burning off in the supplemental tank, and he could see the airspeed creeping up. TWA was further ahead, out of sight in the haze that thickened the eastern horizon, but TWA was a Ford. They didn’t quite have the range they needed to reach Little Rock on a single tank of gas.

“Where do you think they’ll stop?” he asked, and Alma looked up from the map and clipboard.

“Dallas. Maybe Texarkana, but if I was TWA — I’d go light on the first leg, try to build a lead, and then be first to refuel.”

That made sense. Take off with the lightest fuel load possible to get them to Dallas, flying at full throttle, then be first in line so that they spent only the minimum time on the ground. The TWA team knew Gilchrist could make the jump without stopping, but they’d be slower at the beginning, burdened with the extra fuel and the tank. At worst, they’d end up second, still within striking distance.

“I’d be more worried about the Fokkers,” Alma went on, “except I’m pretty sure Bestways doesn’t have the range. The Harvard boys might, but even if they try it, I don’t think they can make up the time.”

“McIsaac might take the chance,” Mitch said. The ex-rumrunner would know how to get the most out of his machine, that much was certain.

“And if they don’t, they’ll at least try to stretch it to Texarkana,” Alma said. “At least, that’s what I’d do.”

“Yeah.”

They were coming up on Dallas. Beneath the wing, the road that was their landmark had acquired more houses, more settlement, the long rectangles of cultivated land. Ahead, Comanche’s Ford had taken on shape, wings and fuselage distinctly visible. The Terrier was overtaking more rapidly now, and a moment later the Ford tipped sideways, banking into the turn that would take it down to the field at Dallas. One down.

And maybe two, if Alma was right and TWA had tried running fast and light. It was possible that TWA was refueling right now, that they were passing over them at this very moment… Mitch narrowed his eyes as though that would help him see more clearly, and Alma picked up the binoculars she kept in the pocket beside her seat.

“Anything?” Mitch asked.

She was silent for a long moment, balancing the binoculars lightly in her hand to minimize the vibrations, but then she shook her head. “I don’t see anything. Which doesn’t mean —”

“I know,” Mitch said.

The port engine coughed once, and caught, then coughed again.

“Time to switch over,” Alma said.

“Yeah.” Mitch reached for the controls, cutting off the lines that led to the rear tank, waiting a heartbeat, and opening the lines to the main tanks. They probably could have waited a little longer, but there was no point in losing performance to drain the dregs. There was plenty of fuel on board to get them into Little Rock.

Beneath them, the land changed again, the houses thinning, then becoming farmsteads set in fields not yet green with spring. Some of them wouldn’t be, Mitch thought, banking to catch the next road that was his target. This was ranching country, not the kind of farmland he’d known as a boy. It looked brown and barren; if there were cattle there, he didn’t see them.

The sun was behind them now, and Alma lifted the glasses to scan the sky ahead without result. Off the port wing, a line of darker green marked a river, and Mitch banked to run parallel with it for a while. Beneath them, the land slowly changed again, brown giving way to green, the familiar patchwork of fields.

“Texarkana,” Alma said, and pointed.

There were buildings beneath the wing, and, on the roof of someone’s barn, the arrow and compass pointing toward the airport. Mitch glanced at the clipboard instead, and turned gently onto the heading that would bring them into Little Rock. About a hundred and forty miles, give or take. An hour and a bit before they knew if anyone had found a way to beat them. TWA couldn’t, not in a Ford, not with the narrow lead they had. Refueling would eat up every minute of their advantage. Even so, it took all Mitch’s willpower not to advance the throttle, pour on the power to get them in any minutes sooner. Haste made waste, literally in this case. Alma had worked out the optimum speed, and he would hold to it.

Below them, the ground was wooded, hilly. The race route suggested following a state highway, but there was no sign of it, no obvious break in the woods. Mitch looked at the compass again, making sure he was on the right line, then back at the ground. Still nothing.

“I don’t see the highway,” he said.

“I don’t either,” Alma answered.

The choice was obvious: cast around for the landmark or follow the compass bearings and hope for the best. “We’ll pick it up later,” Mitch said, and hoped it was true.

The trees crawled past beneath the wing. Now and then a field appeared, pale between the groves, a mule straining against the traces of an old plow.

“There,” Alma said, and pointed.

Dust rose between two stands of trees, trailing behind a battered Model A.

“You think that’s our road?” Mitch asked. The bearing looked all right, but…

“Yes,” Alma said, with a firmness that Mitch suspected hid an uncertainty that matched his own. Still, it was the best bet they had, and he banked the Terrier to line up on the narrow strip of gravel.

An hour passed, the road snaking beneath them, still on the right bearing for Little Rock. Another ten minutes, and Alma pointed ahead, where a clump of buildings rose out of the trees.

“Arkadelphia.”

Mitch glanced at the fuel gauges again, turning the numbers over in his head. They were making better time than he’d expected, had more fuel left than he’d thought, and he advanced the throttle another notch. For a second, he thought Alma was going to scold, but instead she nodded.

“Now’s the time,” she said, and he let it out another notch. The sound of the engines changed, deepened, and he watched their airspeed creep up again.

And then at last they saw it, the first buildings on the city’s western edge. The field was on the eastern side; Mitch put them into a slow descent, and Alma squirmed in her seat, scanning the sky with the binoculars.

“I don’t see anything,” she said. “But there’s the tower.”

"Yeah.” Mitch banked the Terrier, bringing her in low and steady to circle the field, wagging his wings to request the landing. A flagman broke from the tower, ran toward the longest of the grass-covered strips. Behind him, Mitch caught of glimpse of stands, not quite full, but certainly occupied, and then the flagman was waving them down. The windsock hung limp on the tower, barely twitching; he lined up in that general direction, centered on the landing strip, and let the Terrier find her own way down.

The flagman steered them off the landing strip — not toward the hangars, Mitch realized, but toward the terminal and the waiting grandstand. Behind him, the cockpit door opened, and Lewis leaned in, bracing himself on the door frame.

“There’s nobody on the leader board.”

Alma grinned, crossing her fingers, and the flagman waved them to a stop. Mitch set the brakes, and cut the engines, and in the sudden silence there was a noise he identified after a moment as cheering from the crowd. Lewis disappeared again, and there was the rattle of the stairs going down. Alma hauled herself out of her seat, and Mitch followed, blinking in the relative dark of the cabin. Lewis stepped back, letting Alma out first, and there was another cheer from the crowd. Mitch worked his shoulders, suddenly aware of the work he’d put in, the stiffness in his back and belly, and climbed after her, Lewis and Jerry trailing behind. A man in a race referee’s blazer beamed at them from the edge of the paved area beside the terminal.

“Congratulations, Mrs. Segura, gentlemen! You’re first in!”

Mitch glanced over his shoulder, automatically checking the sky, but there was no sign of another plane. They’d done it, then, thanks to Alma.

The referee was rattling on, “And you’re likely to be the only ones in for a while. TWA left Dallas at noon, and Texarkana just phoned to say someone buzzed the tower. They couldn’t quite make out the markings, I’m afraid —” He broke off as a boy came running with a slip of paper, took it and scanned the penciled scribble. “But they do say they have Harvard in sight and coming in to land.”

Mitch closed his eyes. They were going to come out in first, that was the main thing; even if it was TWA who were passing Texarkana, they were still more than an hour out, more like an hour and a half. Gilchrist had started the day only forty minutes behind the leader. Alma’s grin was blinding.

“If you don’t mind, Mrs. Segura,” the referee said, “I know the folks in the stands — and the boys from the papers — would like a few words from you.”

Alma’s smile was fierce. “We’d be delighted.”

Mitch dredged up a smile of his own, and followed.

Chapter Eleven

I
t was roulette again, another giant wheel turned by girls in pretty dresses, though this time they wore demure white ball gowns and diamanté clips in their determinedly waved hair. The ballroom was hung with swags of red and white, pinned with bright blue rosettes, and the women passengers had been given matching blue corsages. Jerry and Jed Pelletier had been given scarlet boutonnieres, and Pelletier fingered his warily when he thought no one was looking. Probably he hadn’t worn flowers since his wedding, Jerry thought. If then.

He was feeling a bit light-headed himself. They’d won the stage by just over two hours, for a net lead of fifty-two minutes, and that had meant two hours for the reporters to swarm them, bombarding them all with questions about the supplemental tank and how in the world Alma had thought of it. Some of it had been genuinely admiring, and some had been barbed, none-too-subtle hints that this was close to cheating. Alma had handled it all admirably, Lewis glowering at her side but smart enough not to say anything in complaint, but this was one time Henry’s jovial presence would actually have done some good. Except Henry had gone on to New Orleans along with most of the other sponsors, and the teams were left to fend for themselves. He was just glad that this stop didn’t involve another trivia contest.

On the other hand, the organizers in Little Rock had been determined to make it more than a contest of mere luck. Each space on the wheel held a prize donated by a local business — a cabinet radio from O.K. Houck, a fur coat, a jewelry set, a fancy wristwatch, plus cash amounts ranging from ten dollars up to a hundred dollars — as well as a hidden time bonus; if you didn’t like what you’d gotten, you could swap your prize with someone else’s. The catch was that the time wouldn’t be revealed until everyone had had their turn, and all the trades were made.

At least there were two fewer teams to worry about now. Both Consolidated and Bestways had had engine problems that dropped them back with United; Alma thought Bestways had an outside chance to make up the time, but Consolidated was more than three hours back, and had proved to have the shortest range of any of the competitors. Everyone else was still in the running, but Comanche was out of its regular territory, and had managed to stray off course. They were back in sixth place now, and Lewis was looking palpably relieved.