Trophy for Eagles (52 page)

The airplane was towed in and the engineers swarmed over it. Two hours later, the Wright engineers came to him, red-faced.

"Our error, Mr. Bandfield."

Bandfield felt sorry for the engineer who poured out the tearful
apology. They had installed the float valves in the carburetors with
the hinges on the wrong side. When the nose went up, the floats closed. It was a factory modification and they just hadn't picked it up.

"Thank God you didn't crash. And thank you for not letting it crash."

Bandy slumped down, speechless, as the enormity of the error hit
him. A stupid error, the worst kind, had almost killed them, and wiped out the company. He didn't reproach himself—there was no way in the world he could have known about the carburetor float valve if the Wright people didn't.

He thought of all the people he'd known who had been trapped
and killed by such a pointless mishap. With all his experience, with
all his skills, he was totally vulnerable to some distant mechanic's
improperly installing a part. In part it was the growing complexity of
aircraft. No matter how many hours you worked, you could no longer do everything and check everything yourself.

Bandfield had no illusions about himself, no false modesty,
knowing his virtues as well as his limits. One virtue was an ability to
be utterly emotionless about engineering problems, to see them in a
clear light. It was impossible to feel the same way about human-error problems.

An urgent need to see Patty came over him, an almost childlike desire to flee and bind himself in her arms. The feeling shook him. He had never needed anyone before. Never had anyone been able
to barge in emotionally when he was having practical flying or
engineering problems, not even Millie. He had loved her, but now he realized how entirely different it had been. He had always
wanted to protect and take care of Millie—with Patty he wanted to share, to discuss, to sort things out. She offered a kind of resilient
strength that he had never known before—but now that he recognized it, he needed it, and badly.

Thinking about her shifted the whole perspective of the near-accident. She was the important thing in his life, and the racing
airplane they were planning had to work flawlessly. He realized that
his entire future happiness was bound up with an engineering problem far more important even than the RC-3: Patty's flying the racer.

She had come to California to help with the design—at least that was the excuse they used. They had spent every possible day together since the wonderful night in the Brown Palace, and he
realized that they had formed a strong partnership that could endure
almost anything—even marriage. If everything went well, she could
handle the airplane easily. If she had some sort of unusual emergen
cy, she would probably be overwhelmed. In an airplane as tricky as
the Beechcraft, the accident would probably be fatal.

He realized again that he did not handle personal problems with the clinical precision with which he attacked engineering difficulties. She had made it perfectly clear that if she married him, he
would have to let her do exactly what she wanted to do about flying.
The only solution, the only middle ground, was for him to stay with
her, to train her and prepare her for the flights as if she were a boxer
getting ready for a championship fight. Maybe, after they were
married, after they had started a family, she would have a change of
heart.

It was the best solution he could come up with to bridge the twin
personal and engineering problems. He felt better and was turning
his attention back to the recalcitrant carburetors when he thought to himself, I've got to tell her about this, about how I feel. It might be
important to her.

The next flight of the RC-3 went off perfectly, and Bandy decided
he'd raise and lower the gear on purpose this time. The rest of the
testing passed so smoothly they were able to double up on the test objectives, and by the end of the month, Bandy felt they could take
their "final exam," the route test with Mahew.

*

Denver, Colorado/August 6, 1934

The Brown Palace seemed far less comforting than it had last year during the first three days of his visit to Denver. Instead of being
locked in Patty's energetic embrace, Bandfield spent his time show
ing the Allied Airlines brass and their wives through the airplane, and listening to Mahew complain about everything.

"Charles Lindbergh is coming in tonight about six; I'll want him in the copilot's seat tomorrow."

Bandfield nodded; he would have preferred Roget, but only because he was familiar with the airplane. Lindbergh would do well.

Bandfield had raced out to buy Patty a present. He went overboard and got her a $35 Elgin watch, particularly enjoying it
because there had been a time when all he had in the world was $30
to get him to Paris. He paid cash for the watch, even though there was a time-payment plan available. At the cash register, there had been a big display of Mickey and Minnie Mouse watches, $1 apiece. He'd bought a Minnie Mouse and asked for a big box. When he gave them to her, he would put the Minnie Mouse on top of the Elgin, just for a gag.

The evening wasn't promising. He was going to have to be pleasant to Lindbergh without appearing to trade on their past
relationship. And it wasn't going to be easy to be pleasant. From the
press, Bandfield had discovered how versatile his old flight-school
friend had become. He had already made many flights as important as the one to Paris, and now was busy in some very scientific activities, far removed from the world of stick and rudder. Lind
bergh was working on something called a perfusion pump as a step toward an artificial heart. His experiments, done with some French
doctor, had been written up in medical journals and the popular press.

Perhaps even more surprising was his political clout. He hadn't been afraid to take on President Roosevelt when the big air-mail scandal erupted. It was all politics—Roosevelt had canceled the air-mail contracts with the airlines and assigned the Army to do the job. Initially, the Army hadn't had the training or the equipment, and a lot of deaths had resulted. Eddie Rickenbacker had called
Roosevelt a murderer, and gotten away with it. Lindbergh had been
less dramatic, but his voice carried more weight, and his direct
confrontation with Roosevelt had been strongly criticized. It was as
if the public wouldn't allow a hero to be controversial. He was always going to be "Lucky Lindy" on his way to Paris; publicizing his political points of view didn't sit well.

Bandfield was too honest not to admit to himself that much of the problem was jealousy. Lindbergh's successes had been a too-sweet
coating over the bitter pill of Lindy's failure to help Roget Aircraft
when it desperately needed it. He knew that if the positions had been reversed, if he'd made the famous Paris flight and Lindbergh
was struggling to sell airplanes, he would have helped Lindbergh.

Maybe that was one of the prices of fame—maybe you couldn't help your friends. And Lindbergh had paid another terrible price,
the loss of his baby. Bandfield looked over at the framed picture of
Patty on the hotel dresser and gave a little salute. He tried to imagine what it would be like to live with her someday, to have
babies. The thought of losing their child to a kidnapper was impossible! His heart went out to Lindbergh as he went downstairs to the
dining room.

The evening started with mutual congratulations, to Lindbergh
for his pioneering survey flights with his wife and the radical "artifi
cial heart" he was working on, to Bandfield and Roget for winning
the contract. Lindbergh was obviously more interested in the medical matters than he was in flying.

He had changed dramatically, the gangly charm of youth gone
lupine-lean. He was so tensely alert that his ears seemed to twist and
turn to sense the always present enemy. Where he had once been
reticent, shyly diffident, he was now actively angry when he felt the
conversation was drifting away from what he wanted to talk about.
His brittle, argumentive conversational tone revealed his thinly veiled annoyance at having to be in public at all, even with some
old friends. Bandy could not believe that this rigid, almost fanatical
politician—there seemed to be no better word for him—was the
same man who had put itching powder in the first sergeant's shorts.

Yet he was gracious about Roget Aircraft's winning the Allied
order, telling Bandy that the new Roget transport was clearly supe
rior to the Hafner aircraft.

"You're on your way now, Bandy. If you can hold Douglas off, you can get more orders than you'll be able to fill."

"We're going to try, Slim."

After the initial round of ritual kidding, Lindbergh was subdued, almost uninterested, unless he was vociferously directing the con
versation into political channels.

He started on Roosevelt. "The man is a criminal. I think he's a Bolshevik. Look what he did to aviation when he canceled the air-mail contracts. He ruined the lives of honest businessmen and killed ten Army pilots."

Lindbergh's voice took on an evangelical quality, as if he were
addressing a huge audience. Used to being the center of attention
everywhere, Lindbergh was unaware that people at every table were
looking at him, a few supportively, but most astounded at his ferocity.

"Eddie Rickenbacker was right! Roosevelt is a murderer! He sent
those Army pilots into the weather with poor equipment, and they died! We've got to get a Republican in there."

Bandfield wanted to be still, but couldn't. "Slim, I can't agree
with you. I knew people in California who were down to picking out
of restaurant garbage cans to feed their families. After Roosevelt came in, they got some relief. It seems to me that he's trying to get
the country back on its feet by providing jobs for the ordinary man."

He could tell that Lindbergh was angry, resentful that he'd taken
issue with him, but he continued, "Hoover was only interested in the rich guy. When I talk to the workingmen in the plant, I can tell they are for Roosevelt one hundred percent. You'd never see
Roosevelt using Army troops to throw out veterans, the way Hoover
did."

"Bandy, you always were just about half a communist yourself. I
remember how you talked about your dad. But make no mistake,
Roosevelt is a disaster for this country. You only have to make a trip
to Russia to decide whether you want the country run by people who work in the factory, or by people who have achieved some success. It's almost a biological thing, a survival of the fittest."

Lindbergh's voice had risen, and he was gesturing with his hand,
the index finger pointing, underscoring his remarks.

Bandfield shut up. They had a flight to make tomorrow, and it
was one that had to please Lindbergh. He wondered if his old friend
was thinking about running for office. Slim's dad had been in Congress; it would make sense. But he ought to be more prudent about Roosevelt.

*

Stapleton Field, Denver, Colorado
August 7, 1934

The next day, the crisp blue sky seemed to march the mountains right up to tidy, carpenter's-square-straight city limits. Bandy was
glad it was cool, but didn't like the twenty-knot wind blowing from
the right of the runway.

Lindbergh spent an hour familiarizing himself with the cockpit
and discussing the engine-out procedure with Bandfield and Roget.
He regained his former friendly personality as he became more absorbed in the engineering of the aircraft.

They started the engines and taxied out. Just after the pre-takeoff
checklist was completed, Mahew came forward and edged Roget out
of the way to stand just behind Bandy and Lindbergh.

"I'd rather have Hadley stand there, Ted, for the takeoff."

"Not this time. Go ahead."

Bandy shrugged and pushed the throttles forward. Denver's mile-
high altitude drained the engines' power, and the RC-3 accelerated
slowly toward its 75-mph lift-off speed. Bandy cranked in aileron to
lower the right wing into the crosswind and keep the plane from
drifting off the runway. He felt the left wheel lift off, then the right.

Mahew's huge arm reached up and switched the left engine
magneto off. "Now crash or fly, Bandfield. Let's see how good this
fucker is."