Trophy for Eagles (59 page)

She tapped him on the arm and pointed out the window. "Have you noticed how good Dusty looks?"

"Yeah, I did notice. He's put on some weight."

"Believe it or not, I think I've got him to kick the habit, finally.
After this competition, we're going directly to the Mayo Clinic for a
full course of treatments. It's taken me years to get him to agree."

Bandy felt awkward about the revelation. "What will Bruno say
about that?"

"He says it's a great idea. I think he's even more ready for a divorce than I am, God love him." She giggled and said, "God had better love him, because damn few humans do."

She reached over and patted his arm. "I'm glad Patty has you. I
think Dusty and I will move away, go down South somewhere. I want to get him out of the New York environment."

"How about your flying? Are you willing to give that up?"

"Oh my God, yes. You knew I set a New York-Dayton record
coming out. Going back I'm going to go for the altitude record, and next week I'll try some closed-course records. That will be enough to have even George Putnam throwing rocks at Amelia. And that will be enough for me."

Bandfield walked with her out to the airplane, sensing her eager
nervousness. He could not detect any animosity at all in the discus
sion Hafner and Rhoades were having on how the flight would be conducted.

"Look, Dusty, don't do anything flashy. This first flight is for the brass, not the papers. Don't pick up the gear until you've passed the point where you can land, don't make any low passes. Just a gentle
demonstration. Got it?"

Dusty was smiling. "Got it, Bruno. Don't worry about a thing."

A strange world, Bandfield thought as he did the walk-around
inspection on his fighter. He kept an eye on the other airplane.
Charlotte swung herself up into the fuselage, followed by Dusty Rhoades, Hafner, and another Air Corps test pilot, a young lieuten
ant named Joe Teague.

Bandy crawled into the Curtiss, adjusting his parachute and headset. The crew chief was an old friend, who asked, "What's
bothering you, Bandy? You keep looking at the Hafner airplane like
it's going to blow up."

Bandy shrugged, and saw Teague drop out through the front compartment. Then Bruno appeared at the rear, his sharkskin suit rumpled, apparently having crawled through the fuselage and out
the aft door. It seemed strange to Bandfield; he had been inside and
seen how crowded the fuselage was. Hafner would have had to crawl
over the center-section fuel tank and around the side of the bomb bay. He probably just wanted to be sure everything was stowed properly.

Bandfield's headset crackled. Radio communications were a new
wrinkle at Wright Field competitions, and he was surprised at the clarity of the transmission when he heard Rhoades announce that they were ready for takeoff.

Inside the bomber, Charlotte motioned for Rhoades to lean over.
She kissed him and whispered, "This is the last competition, Dusty.
After this we're going to settle down and live like normal people.
Well, maybe like almost-normal people."

Always all-business in the cockpit, Rhoades squeezed her hand and gave her a thumbs-up sign, then completed his checklist and nodded. She eased the throttles forward, and the huge Hafner
bomber moved across the grass, the four propellers sending a spray
of dew in shining curls over the wing as it gathered speed.

Charlotte said, "Call out seventy-five miles per hour for me,
Dusty," just as the nose of the bomber jerked off the ground in a
rocketing climb. Both pilots shoved forward on the control column as the airplane trembled, not yet a hundred feet high.

Her voice calm, she said, "Controls are locked." Dusty had
placed his feet on the wheel and was pushing forward with all his
strength when the airplane stalled. He didn't see Charlotte turn to
him, didn't hear her say, "I love you," as the airplane's nose merged
with the earth.

Bandfield had watched unbelieving as the bomber broke ground
at about sixty miles an hour, pulling up so sharply that he could see the full outline of the wing, the engines racing, smoke pouring back
from the exhausts. Bandy heard Charlotte's call about the control
locks just before the aircraft shuddered and pitched violently forward
to dive vertically, crashing just inside the field boundary. A black balloon of smoke and flame roared up as crash wagons started their
claxons. Bandfield was transfixed, noting in surprise that he had seen the crows in the trees lining the field scatter in flight even before he had heard the explosion. Shoving the throttle forward, half flying, half taxiing, he hurried toward the wreck.

On the ramp, Hafner and Murray were hustled into a staff car that raced to the scene. Hafner sat sunk in the backseat while
Murray perched forward, tears in his eyes. He turned and drove his
fist into Hafner's face.

"You bastard, you killed her! It was the control locks, wasn't it?
You stupid crazy bastard, you cared more about that goddam dog than you did about Charlotte!"

He hit him again, and Hafner made no move. A young captain
leaned back and grabbed Murray's arm as they pulled up to the site.

Bandy stopped one hundred yards from the crash. By the time he
was out of the airplane and running toward the flames, he knew it was too late for anyone to help. The bomber had impacted vertically, and the flames consumed it from the nose to the tail. The
only recognizable parts were the wingtips, propellers, and the out
line of the rudder.

Murray had rushed toward the crash site. A fireman was restrain
ing him when a secondary explosion knocked them both flat, the wall of flame broiling Murray's face and hands.

Within an hour, the fire had died sufficiently for the crash-investigating team to take a preliminary look. The internal control
lock had kept the elevator firmly fixed in the full-up position. No
matter how strong Charlotte and Rhoades had been, they could never have broken it loose.

Bandy stayed until the firemen, using their long steel hooks, dragged the charred lumps from the crash. Then he went back into the operations shack to telephone Patty. In the brief time since the
crash, the reporters had flooded the news circuits, and the operators
were busy, handling the deluge of calls. Henry Caldwell came in
and shoved a photo, still wet from the developer, across the table to
him. "Our photographer snapped this right at the top of its climb. You can see that the controls are locked."

Bandfield tapped the picture of the elevator with his finger. "Full
up. She never had a chance." He paused, then asked, "How is Bruno taking this?"

"He and Murray both acted like they were crazy. Murray was badly burned, had to go to the hospital. Then Bruno climbed into a
staff-car ambulance and demanded to be taken into town. He really
depended on Charlotte, didn't he?"

Bandfield could tell that something was behind Caldwell's questions. He nodded his head yes, as Patty came on the telephone line.
"Bad news, honey."

There was silence on the other end, then a single anguished sob. Patty's voice was weak as she asked, "A crash?"

"Yes. On takeoff. Nobody had a chance."

The sobbing came more deeply now. Bandfield's heart constricted in sympathy.

"Oh, God. I knew it would happen someday. What was it, engine
failure?"

He waited, picturing her as she cried, her eyes closed, tears welling down her face. He said, "We don't know yet what happened. The main thing was that she didn't suffer, honey. It was instantaneous."

There was a silence, and he could feel her gathering herself together, calling on that magnificent inner strength.

"Call me later, will you? I just need to cry now."

"You shouldn't be alone. I'll get there as soon as I can."

"I'll be all right. Call back in an hour. I love you."

He hung up, sorrowing more for Patty than for Charlotte.

Caldwell had stood, head down, during the conversation, think
ing of Charlotte in the A-11, of her dash in flying in the amphibian.
Now she was gone, like so many others, in an inexplicable instant.

Caldwell cleared his throat and managed to say, "This was awful,
Bandy, the worst I've seen. Tough luck, Bandy. She was a great
woman."

He took a deep breath and went on. "Apparently Dusty Rhoades
had no next of kin. We don't know who to contact. Do you know anyone?"

Bandfield shook his head as a deep inner grief seared him. He'd
seen accidents like this so many times in the past. He wondered how
often he would have to see them in the future.

Beaten as if he'd run a marathon, Bandfield had just thrown himself
down on his hotel-room bed when the phone rang.

"Caldwell here. Come out to base headquarters, right now."

"Jesus, Henry, can't it wait? There's nothing we can do for anybody now."

"Oh yeah? Just get your ass out here, now."

Bandfield drove to Wright Field in a daze, trying to put some reasonable meaning on the day's events. An interminable Illinois
Central freight train had kept him stalled as it rumbled past, sparks
flying. When it cleared, he charged forward into sharp conscious
ness when a passenger train, hidden by the freight cars, roared by
behind his rear bumper. He stumbled unshaven and still in his
smoke-stained flying suit, past some tight-lipped military police into
the base commander's office.

The suspended incandescent lights barely burned through the fog
of cigarette smoke, casting long dark shadows like those in a Howard
Hawks movie. Grim-faced military policemen stood at parade rest around the walls. In the center, at a brightly polished wooden table,
sat Murray Roehlk, one arm pillowing his square head, the other dangling straight down. Bandfield could see that he had been crying.

"What's going on, Henry? What's going on with Murray?"

Caldwell raised his voice. "The little bastard is under arrest. And
Bruno Hafner is gone."

"Slow down, Henry I don't follow you. What's with Murray?"

"The son of a bitch sabotaged the aircraft and murdered two innocent people."

Murray roused himself like a wounded bull seal protecting his
harem, shook his head, and shouted, "I didn't. It was Hafner. I wouldn't never have hurt Charlotte. I idolized that woman. She was a living saint."

Time seemed to stand still for Bandfield. He looked at Murray in
amazement. He had never seen the man express any emotion
before. Now his face, burned and blackened, partially covered with
bandages already needing changing, was filled with a bitter mixture
of sorrow at Charlotte's death and livid rage that Caldwell was detaining him.

And Henry Caldwell had changed as well. His face was a mask of
suppressed fury and blind hate, as if Murray were the one man in the world upon whom he could vent all his frustrations.

"I'll living saint you, you sawed-off gorilla! We've got a witness
that says Charlotte had unlocked the controls. Lieutenant Teague says he saw her move the safety lever before he got out of the cockpit."

Roehlk turned on him, his eyes savage with hate. Bandfield felt that either man would have killed the other without a second thought. "Yeah, and that's what I'm telling you. That's why Hafner went out the back. He must have manually reinserted the control lock."

Caldwell's brow furled in fury. "I don't believe you. I "don't believe one goddam thing you say!"

"Wait a minute, Henry. I saw Hafner come out the back of the airplane. He might have done it then. Where is Hafner? Why don't we question him?"

"We don't know. He's just disappeared."

Caldwell turned and jabbed his finger in Murray's face. "And he's
left Roehlk to take the fall. Somebody is going to fry for this, and it
might as well be you." Roehlk turned as pale as the burns and dirt would let him.

Caldwell took Bandfield into the dreary room next door. "The
two MPs working him over will get the truth out of him. Would you
call Armand Bineau? See if you can find out what might have happened, if Hafner could have done something to sabotage the airplane."

Bandfield let his eyes wander over the room's standard austere Air
Corps decor, white-enameled overhead reflectors, painfully plain
brown furniture, and dismal beige walls, as he waited for the call to
Bineau to go through.