Trophy for Eagles (66 page)

"What kind of airplane are they supposed to fly?"

"They'll use her Lockheed Electra, specially modified."

"I don't like it, Henry. It's too much responsibility for Patty—and
Amelia will walk away with the credit, no matter how nice she is about it. She is the pearl of the press's oyster."

"Publicity has nothing to do with it. This is a serious mission, just
as yours is. You'll be getting back from Spain well before she's ready
to go; you can help out."

"You're really getting your money's worth out of a captain's pay,
aren't you, Henry?"

Caldwell laughed. "We've always got to think of the taxpayer—
you know the government always wants a bargain for its money."

*

Downey, California/November 25, 1936

It was only six in the evening and he had spent two hours watching
the disaster develop with a clinical clarity, ringside at his own anointment as a prize jackass. He tried to concentrate, to listen to announcer Boake Carter's velvet voice coming over their Philco
radio, saying something about a pact between Japan, Germany, and
Italy against the communists, but it was too petty compared to the
hole he was digging for himself. Once again he had backed himself into a foolishly bull-headed position in a domestic argument, saying too many extravagantly mean things that obviously had no basis in truth, casting totally spurious aspersions on Patty's flying ability,
denying all his own faults, and then, in truly fatal error, saying some
things that were absolutely true. As Hadley had always said, only the
truth hurts, and when he told Patty that she was undertaking the Earhart flight not to honor her mother but to upstage her, he knew he had lost game, set, and match, as well as the battle and the war.

But even so, some internal nugget of incredibly stupid hubris made him realize that he had not yet reached the stage of humiliation when he could admit his mistakes. He raised his voice to raise the stakes, bluffing once again that he was fed up and tired of her nonsense, that he was leaving, that a divorce was the only option, that she could get on by herself. He prophesied how happy he'd be
and how miserable she'd be, when in fact all he wanted was to throw
himself at her feet and then at her sweet round ass.

She looked at him with that hard little fighter's look, the sweet smile of victory lurking on her lips, fully realizing that he had said something for which he was now sorry, that she could move in for the kill and ram home a few hard truths before he caved in.

"Yes, and my little smarmy Wobbly, my smart-ass Nazi-hater,
guess who's going to go to Spain to show his daddikins that he's a big
communist and a fighter for freedom, and is going to save the
world? What thirty-six-year-old has-been pilot is going to gird up his
rapidly tiring loins and save Spain for its noble peasants?"

She had him, he was spinning on the spit of her insight, each side
roasting evenly in the truth of her words.

"Not so. I'm going because I'm ordered."

"Weak comeback. If they ordered you to fly for the Nazis, to be in
Franco's air force, you'd stand on your stubborn ideals and refuse to
go. No, you're just being Daddy's boy, one more time. You're going to hunt for Hafner, to revenge Millie. Bandfield, you're nuts!"

It hurt so bad, it was so true, that he laughed and grabbed her, planting his open mouth around hers, forcing her lips open, probing her somewhat in fear, for she had been known to bite, but confident that he could get another set of hormones going simply because he was admitting that she had won.

She responded as she had that night in Denver long ago, sucking
him in, tearing at his clothes. They kicked the coffee table over as
they fell to the floor, Boake Carter's fluid baritone still singing over
them, fumbling and feeling and tussling to get merged, to push into
each other with every ounce of energy, to jam tongues and fingers
and noses and organs into any handy orifice, plunging and bucking
and finally coming in a wild relief that signaled not only sexual release but the end of their argument.

They walked amiably naked into the bedroom, arms linked, hands stroking. He ran back out to the kitchen to get some ice and
some whiskey. She brought warm moist towels to the bed, and they
comforted each other.

"Bandy, I know you're right. I won't go."

"No, I was wrong, you have to go, you said you would."

"No, let's not either of us go. We've each given so much to
flying—our lives, our lovers; I even gave my mother. We don't have
to do any more. There are other people who can take our places. Henry Caldwell would understand."

"I don't think we can get out of it—at least I can't."

"You can, and you will. You've got to get over this Hafner business. He killed my mother, Bandy, and I don't hate him as much as you do. He'll get his. But he's ruining us. This is the best—almost the first—lovemaking we've had since the
Hindenburg."

He watched her moving about. Lately she had become com
pulsively neat. She gathered up their garments from where they had
been strewn and walked around the bedroom hanging up their clothes, placing their underthings in neat little piles, knowing that
he was admiring her, that her movements were arousing him again.
He watched her breasts bobble as she moved, her hips lifting as she
bent over to smooth the sheets. He pulled her to him, began kissing
her again, murmuring in her ear that he loved her, that they wouldn't go, that they would get out of flying, and she responded once again.

They were lying contentedly together, fully agreed that they would start over, that neither one would leave, no matter what anyone said, when at nine o'clock, the phone rang. She ran into the
living room and talked briefly to Rose, the woman who lived next
door.

When she returned, she said, "I've got to get dressed. Rose's child
is sick and she wants me to look at her."

He nodded.

She looked around the room, under the bed.

"Where are my step-ins? I had them right here."

He shrugged.

She looked at him closely.

"What have you got in your mouth?"

She jumped on him, plumped his cheeks. He coughed, laughing, and pulled the shell-pink step-ins out.

"Delicious, as always."

"You absolute goof! When I get back, I'm going to ravish you again."

*

Seville, Spain/December 10, 1938

The war gushed over Spain like a rising tide, the angry rivulets of
flame and fire destroying fields and homes alike. What had begun as
localized uprisings, sporadic militant relics of the monarchy, had
coalesced into a major upheaval when Franco had brought in the
savage Moroccan tabores, troops whose color, skin, and reputation
for artful dismemberment boosted hate and fear to hysterical levels.
The positions plotted on the maps shifted rapidly, as Spaniard
battled Spaniard and the Loyalist government forces were shoved to
the east. The coming of costly friends—Italians and Germans to the Nationalist "rebels," Russians to the Loyalists—changed the black
internecine bitterness into a miniature world war.

"Sunny Spain my arse! I was warmer in the backseat of a Rumpler
over France in the winter of 1918 than I was in that Junkers!" No one spoke; if Major General Hugo von Sperrle, commander of the Condor Legion, said it was cold, it was unquestionably cold. A brutal face—eyes like oysters sunk in a souffle—and a harsh, insistent laugh that demanded agreement, not humor, made him
frighteningly formidable. He stamped his feet and swung his arms: "Well, Richthofen, whom have you got to talk to me? I want to hear
the bad news directly from the source."

He moved with surprising grace to the battered table that served as
a desk. Behind him was the obligatory picture of Hitler. On the wall
opposite a crucifix hung, a withered bit of palm still curled behind it
from a long-ago Palm Sunday.

Sperrle's chief of staff, Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, had shot down eight Allied airmen flying in his famous cousin's flying circus in the World War. For Sperrle, he had more than the usual
pilot's contempt for an observer. Silently, he took in Sperrle's bulk,
the "mark of the Prussian" curl of fat about his neck, the diamond-
studded signet ring sinking in an ocean of flesh. Worst of all, Sperrle
was crude, with deplorable table manners. But von Richthofen was
more ambitious than fastidious, and he had the delicate task of informing the general that the principal German fighter in the
Luftwaffe, the Heinkel He-51, was outclassed by Russian airplanes.

"I've asked Colonel Hafner to brief you, Herr General."

Von Richthofen had not so much chosen Hafner as had him thrust upon him.

"Hafner? He's Udet's pretty boy, isn't he? I knew him in the last
war."

"I don't know if Udet likes him or hates him. This assignment could be a plum or a death sentence. It doesn't matter—he knows his airplanes."

Von Richthofen's uncertainty was compounded by Udet's own ambiguous status. One heard one moment that he was Goering's right-hand man, another that he was on the way out. So von Richthofen elected to treat Hafner at arm's length, as just another fighter pilot, ignoring all the political implications.

There was another very good reason for choosing Hafner to brief
Sperrle—his huge size. This very important meeting could grow
unpleasant, and Hafner was as tall as Sperrle and twice as muscular.
It wouldn't come to a shoving match, of course, but Sperrle was a bully, and bullies preferred smaller men as victims.

He signaled to his orderly to bring Hafner in. They went through the formalities, discussing where they had flown and fought in the World War. Then Sperrle said, "Hafner, tell me straight out. Is the problem the Heinkels or the pilots? Don't try to cover for your friends."

"Herr General, the pilots are superb. But the Russians are flying a
better airplane."

"Nonsense, it's just a copy of an old American Curtiss fighter. I've
read the intelligence reports about it."

"Herr General, you have read the reports, but have you ever seen
one on your ass, with four streams of bullets coming at you? Have
you ever seen our shitty seven-point-nine-millimeter bullets bounc
ing off their armor plate?"

Sperrle's monocle popped off. Von Richthofen stepped forward as
Hafner continued, "It is quite stupid to say that it is a copy of a
Curtiss. The Russian I-15 is also a radial-engine biplane, but those
are the only similarities. It is a far better airplane than the Heinkel, and we are soon not going to be able to cross the battle line unless we get something better. You'll recall that the airplanes were
shipped in packing crates marked 'Furniture.' We'd have been better off if there had been furniture inside, rather than the Heinkels!"

Von Richthofen was appalled. He wanted Hafner to be frank, not
belligerent. His time in America had made him undisciplined.

"And, for the last month, they've been using a monoplane fighter
with a retractable landing gear, very fast. We can't even engage them."

As Hafner spoke, Sperrle replaced his monocle, realizing that his only way out was to laugh, to treat this swinish behavior as a joke.

"Ah, enough, I believe you. And what about the Russian pilots?"

"They are quite good, not as well trained as we are, but with those airplanes they don't have to be. The Spanish are flying them as well.
We'd better get some Messerschmitts down here, and soon, or borrow some Fiat CR-32s from the Italians."

Sperrle's monocle popped again. He could see Goering's reaction
if he recommended borrowing Fiats from the Italians.

"Very well. All the 109s we have are experimental aircraft so far,
as you know. But we'll bring three of those down, until the production deliveries start. It's not much, but it's the best we can do. Dare I
ask you about the bombers?"

"The Ju-52s are slow, but as long as we can protect them, they'll do the job. But we won't be able to fly protective formations for long. The Russians are too powerful."

Von Richthofen leaned forward. "Will the Messerschmitts be adequate?"

Hafner turned to him. "I think so, against their biplanes, of
course. I'm not sure about their monoplanes. They are very fast, but
don't seem to be too maneuverable. The Messerschmitts will help only for a year or two, anyway, until the Russians bring down something better."