The Dive Bomber (5 page)

“See this girl?” said Bullard.

“Good looking,” commented the man.

“You are to guard her closely. She is not to speak to any persons unknown to you. She is not to go near a phone. She is to stay either here or at the plant. But understand this. You are not to harm her as long as Lucky Martin behaves. Is that clear?”

“You're clear as corn liquor, gov'ner,” said Two-Finger.

“And you two,” said Bullard to the unsavory pair, “are to stay with Martin wherever he goes, hear everything he says, and report instantly to Two-Finger if Martin fails to work, or if he oversteps his liberty. In that event, you know what to do with him. Understand?”

They nodded.

“And now,” said Bullard to Lucky, “shall we go inside and arrange our plans for the production of a hundred
private sport planes
?”

“Bullard,” said Lucky, “I'll promise nothing. It seems to me that a certain giant bomber crashed twice recently and you couldn't work the deal there. You've used pull and dollars to get by here, but I'm telling you that if there's anything I can do to trip you up—”

“The planes will be all right. I told you we'd build one dive bomber. I also told Lawson that I was letting you do it, and he shook his head and said you were crazy, that the crate was no good. But that one dive bomber will be selected from all the planes.
And you'll test it,
Unlucky Martin.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Lucky,
the Laughingstock—

W
EARY
weeks later, Dixie, under unsuitable escort, made one of her infrequent visits to the plant. While Two-Finger puffed a cigar under a No-Smoking sign, and while the other two guards lounged nearby eyeing Lucky, a limited conversation was possible.

“Benedict Arnold did something like this one,” grimaced Lucky.

“Don't look at it that way,” said Dixie. “You've been forced by circumstances—”

“So was Mr. Arnold, but that didn't make less a traitor out of him.”

“But nothing bad will come of this. A hundred sport planes wouldn't wreck anything.”

“A hundred dive bombers could sink a navy,” said Lucky.

“But if the government says your ships are no good—”

“You and I and this Bullard know they're all right. And worst of all,
I
know it. Just because two crashed… Say, there's that aircraft inspector again.”

Dixie looked quickly at the hangar door and saw a small, unimposing man step inside. Not in the least worried, Bullard stood in the office door and called a greeting to him.

The inspector smiled and approached Lucky. “Things are looking up for you, Martin.”

“Yeah,” said Lucky in a sour voice.

“Glad all your tests didn't add up to a total loss, anyhow,” said the inspector. “Sport planes are cheaper, but better than nothing. Put you on your feet again, anyway.”

Risking later thunder and lightning from Bullard, Lucky said, “If some people weren't so dumb, they'd know they were
still
dive bombers.”

Bullard looked quite unworried.

The inspector smiled. “Still sticking to it, eh? Lawson was around the other day and he said you were just about the most stubborn guy in the business. Why do you keep worrying about a ship after it's gone bad twice?”

“With a bigger engine and bomb racks,” said Lucky, “they're good dive bombers.”

“Sure,” said Bullard indulgently. “Have a cigar, Inspector?”

“We better smoke outside, unless you want this place to burn down on you,” said the inspector. “Still anxious to try another ship as a dive bomber, Martin?”

“Be on hand and you'll see,” said Lucky.

The inspector grinned and shook his head. “I don't like to watch guys kill themselves, thank you. How's everything going along, Bullard?”

A moment later Bullard was back. But he was no longer pleasant. “Trying to tip him off, are you?” he roared.

“Somebody will have to,” said Lucky. “They won't believe me.”

“Of course they won't, after what I've been feeding them about you. You Two-Finger! Get on the job and get this dame out of here.”

Two-Finger looked sad. “I can't do nothin' with her, boss. All I can do is keep her away from people. I…I've been having to spend nights sittin' on her front steps, and it ain't hot out neither. I got a breakdown comin' on. See that red streak on my jaw? She gimme that for trying to go inside one night it rained.”

Dixie stepped gingerly past Bullard, walking like a well-bred Persian anxious to avoid contact with garbage. Her roadster, now out of hock as well as her other possessions, was now waiting for her on the tarmac. Two-Finger tried to slide into the front seat but Dixie gave him a stormy rake of
canister
with her eyes and Two-Finger, cowed, slunk into the
rumble
.

“You try that again,” said Bullard, when only dust remained to mark the place the roadster had stood, “and you'll see something that will amaze you. You got any idea which of these planes I mean to make up as a dive bomber?

“No, and you won't have until the last minute. Therefore, Unlucky Martin, you'd better be sure they're all okay, each and every one. You're going to test one of these through all its paces, see?”

Bullard went away, and Flynn, who was busy hoisting one of the small engines into its mount, spat brownly upon the place where Bullard had stood.

“You better watch it,” said Flynn, lowering his voice so the other mechanics and the guards could not hear. “I was down in the locker yesterday and I heard this Smith and Bullard talking via the ventilator. They'll make one real dive bomber all right and you'll test it. Smith, who's got a pursuit ship parked south of here in an old barn, is to go with you. You get slugs in the back of your head, the dive bomber crashes as further proof to the government that it ain't any good. Smith meets Bullard at sea.”

Lucky, testing the balance of a prop, pretended not to hear.

“Bullard,” continued Flynn, “has taken a likin' to Dixie and she's not going to be left behind when they leave. As you'll carry a load of bombs in your tests, you'll be splattered all over the landscape when you crash and there's no evidence. I get shanghaied to replace these small engines with big power plants and bomb racks. Nobody is left to breathe a word about what's happened.”

Lucky went on working as though he had heard nothing. But he felt sick. Everyone had turned against him except Flynn and Dixie. He and the dive bomber were the laughingstock of the government. His death would occasion no surprise, as the news had been carefully prepared far in advance. The dive bomber, branded as worthless, might someday be used to destroy battleships flying the American flag.

He knew why he had to die. If he ever lived to finance the construction of yet another dive bomber, he could test it and prove once and for all that it would do all he said it would. And if that happened, Bullard would be sought for the way he had managed this mammoth hoax.

Lucky watched Smith and wondered how it would feel to have your head blown off with a .50-caliber machine gun. Lucky watched Bullard and remembered that incendiary ammunition did well in blowing up balloons.

And ship by ship, the
private sport planes
were taken away to be loaded openly upon a freighter. Day by day the time of the final test approached.

CHAPTER EIGHT

She Stays Together—
So What?

B
ULLARD
had done his work so well that when the day came to ask the Department of Commerce for an Experimental X license, the inspector balked. And Lawson, at his side, chorused his doubt.

“I can't let Martin kill himself,” explained the inspector.

“It's suicide,” Commander Lawson said to Bullard. “I've seen the plane crash twice and I came down here the moment I heard about it to forbid the issuance of a license if I could.”

“Now, gentlemen,” said the suave Bullard, glancing at Lucky, “you know how the boy has been yapping. He thinks his ship will stand the dive this time and, as part of his pay, I let him equip one for military purposes. Now we all know it will crash, but we can't refuse Lucky Martin his chance, can we?”

“I won't attend any test,” vowed Lawson. “I won't watch him pull another one apart. It's too hard on the nerves. We have already declared that it is only good for
sporting
purposes and we can't change our minds now.”

“Please, gentlemen,” said Bullard. “You can't do this to Martin.”

“Commander,” said Lucky, “if this one stays in one piece, won't that indicate that these export ships could all be converted into dive bombers at their destination?”

It was a bold stroke, and though Bullard, could have struck Lucky dead where he stood from rage, Bullard had to smile.

“Two crashes were enough,” said Lawson. “You're a stubborn fool, Martin.”

“I have no real grounds on which to base a refusal to issue this Experimental,” said the inspector doubtfully.

“Of course you haven't,” said Bullard. “We must give the boy his chance.”

“I refuse to attend such nonsense,” said Lawson. With a scowl he marched out of the plant, got into his car and drove away.

With Lawson out of the road, Bullard made fast work of the inspector, and the X was granted on Bullard's affidavit that the plane had been improved.

And then, because he did not think the plane would be ready to test that day, the inspector also departed, taking Lucky's last hope with him.

Neither Dixie nor Flynn were in sight. But Smith was there, battening a .50-caliber machine gun to his
ring mount
.

The test was evidently not to be conducted over the O'Neal plant and the plane was flown by Smith to a field some distance away.

Bullard took Lucky with him in his car, guards close at hand, and after a long drive, they came to a wide field in the country. Smith was already waiting for them.

Lucky wondered just how this would be done, just when he would get his. On this test dive, or on the following cross-country trip?

Shaky and jittery Smith might appear, but for all that, there was nothing wrong with his nerves. Coolly he buckled his seat pack and crawled in. The gun occasioned no comment because the plane had to be tested under a full military load.

Lucky looked at the empty bomb racks. “She hasn't got all her weight with her.”

Bullard's confidence in Smith's ability was amazing. “Fill the racks,” he ordered.

Streamlined bombs were clamped into the compartments. Lucky, satisfied, stepped into his cockpit and strapped his helmet down. He felt very lonely. He could not remember a time when Dixie had been absent at a test takeoff. He missed her smile, her advice for caution, her pretense at being calm.

“Get going,” said Smith in his whiney voice. But there was no mistaking the command in his black diamond eyes.

Lucky pulled down his hood without looking back. He jabbed throttle.

The bordering trees fled in a blur. The wheels lightened and parted from the earth. Lucky cranked the gear into the belly of the ship, let up the wing flaps, adjusted the
tab trim
with expert fingers.

Reckless, half hoping for disaster, he stood the ship on its tail and shot it at the zenith, engine full on and clamouring a protest against such violence.

“Take it easy,” said Smith into the tube. Lucky noted that the voice was not in the least afraid. Another stick was back there, all connected.

The dive bomber went up the scale like a spurred Pegasus. The altimeter lifted visibly without pause. Ten, twelve, fourteen thousand feet.

“Pull out at eight thousand, when you dive,” said Smith.

Minutes passed, the altimeter touched the big white twenty. Lucky leveled off and looked over the side.

Even the bulk of Bullard was invisible on the green, yellow and brown chessboard below. The world curved off to its horizons, a crisscross of white lines which were rivers and highways.

“Get it over with,” ordered Smith.

Lucky went into a dive so fast that his inertia pulled him clear of the seat. Full throttle, accelerating ten times as fast as a freely falling body, streaking in a vertical line, the diminutive bomber eagerly devoured great gulps of the four miles down.

A red barn, a big barn about the size of a match head, was Lucky's target. The eaves fanned out, the yard became square, the wind vane's movements on the peak grew plain.

“Eight thousand!” screamed Smith into the racketing yowl of engines and wings.

They were past terminal velocity, lancing into a blurred funnel of swelling earth.

The altimeter was at the big white eight.

Lucky jockeyed his stick. The fins were biting.

“Out!” yelled Lucky and instantly followed with a wild shout.

Back on the stick.

A sledgehammer hit the underside of the ship, almost halting it in midair.

Abruptly the earth dropped flat and tipped to normal level.

The dive bomber, streaking straight ahead at something more than four hundred miles an hour, had held!

For a moment Lucky Martin exulted in the ship. She was perfect. Full load of bombs. Two men. And not even a quiver as it came out. A perfect plane!

Let the clumsy, waddling battleships beware when the O'Neal bomber took the skies. No gun could get into position fast enough to stop that terrific dive. Nothing could stop the imminent hail of bombs, themselves carried by a swift projectile. Nothing could disturb the gunner's aim when he laid the eggs on a rolling deck, because the plane itself decreed the path of the missiles…

Suddenly, as they slowed to cruising, the taste of triumph was as stale as cigarette ashes in his mouth.

Who knew but that those battleship targets might someday be flying the Stars and Stripes?

Listlessly, flying as mechanically as a robot, Lucky cut the gun and slid earthward on dismal, moaning wings.

He let down the wheels and floated until they caressed the earth.

“She stayed together,” said Smith to Bullard, just as though Bullard had been in China during the dive.

“Of course she did. The pins were sound this time,” said Bullard. “Okay, Martin, hop her back to the plant field. I'll meet you there.”

Smith still stayed in the pit and Lucky, feeling worse than ever, again took off and clipped hedges on his way back.

Dixie was on the
tarmac
and, inevitably, Two-Finger was puffing a cigar at a respectful distance. Lucky's pair of leeches immediately fastened themselves to him.

“It worked,” said Lucky.

“Then it's a success after all!” cried Dixie, forgetfully happy about it.

“Yes, damn the luck. I could sell them to the Navy in spite of what Lawson says. He couldn't afford to overlook them.”

“Oh, Lucky, if you could just afford to tell him about those wing pins…But Lucky! It's not too late. They said they'd give you money. All you have to do is build another after they leave—”

“Yeah?” said Bullard, getting out of his car. “That's okay by me, Martin.” The fat wrinkles about his eyes almost hid the amused brilliance of the unsavory orbs.

“You said you'd give me the dough,” said Lucky. “My job is finished. All you have to do is load the rest of these crated ships and deliver them to collect yours.”

“Oh, so you want the money,” said Bullard. “Well, Martin, in spite of what you think, I'm a pretty good fellow after all. I'll make that three hundred thousand bucks, and I've got them right here.”

He produced them, a staggering number of thousand-dollar bills—but he did not hand them over.

“Before we go into this,” Bullard said, “you still have to test the cross-country ability to make it official. I'll want to know if I need any more of your engineering advice and if we have to make any changes before we ship. I'll put these bills in your safe, just to make sure you get them and I'll send Smith with you to see that you don't run off. Is that clear?”

Flynn, in the doorway, stabbed a warning glance at Lucky.

“That's clear,” said Lucky, ambiguously.

“All right, you,” said Bullard, indicating Flynn. “Fill this crate's tanks to the brim, see she's got plenty of oil, and take a listen at her engine. You'll have a fine flight, Martin.”

“Will you be gone long?” said Dixie.

“It all depends,” said Bullard.

“Yeah,” muttered Flynn, nursing a gas hose, “it all depends!”