Amerika

by Paul Lally

  Orlando had deflected the gun enough to give me covering fire and I took it, making it to the sponson, getting on board, securing the door and scrambling up to the flight deck where Mason at the engineer’s station fussed with his controls like a pipe organist.

  ‘Great job!’ I pounded his back, and then turned to see a Friedman sitting at Captain Fatt’s command table in the back, holding the chair handles in a death grip.

  ‘Hang on professor, we’ll get you out of here in one piece.’

  I hurried past him to the left seat.

  ‘Welcome aboard,’ Ava said from the co-pilot’s seat.

  She laughed at the shocked look on my face. ‘You don’t expect to fly this tub of bolts by yourself, do you?’

  ‘Got to try.’

  ‘I’m multi-engine rated, remember?’

  ‘But this is a Boeing clipper.’

  ‘It’s a plane, captain, now sit down and start giving orders.’

  I keyed the microphone, ‘Ziggy, you there?’

  His voice tinny and tight. ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Cast off the line!’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  I advanced the throttles, but instead of pulling away from the dock, she slewed sideways, still pinned to shore by the bow line and began pivoting around on her nose, exposing her flank to fire. I cut power to minimize the swing.

  ‘Damn it, I said cast off that line!’ ‘It’s...it’s tangled.’

  ‘Cut it then. There’s a hatchet to your right. Do it now!’

  ‘Hang on, skipper. Wait...got it! We’re free!’ Ava shouted, ‘Here they come!’

  I couldn’t see the dock from where I was, but the tracers streaking past us were proof enough. Because we were facing nose out to the lake, the clipper’s port wing and engines overhung the dock, which gave me an idea. I shoved all four engines to full takeoff power. The resulting hurricane-like prop wash sent everything on the dock flying, including, I hoped, the enemy commandos.

  From the sudden lack of tracers, it seemed to be working. Before we cleared the end of the dock we were moving at least fifteen knots into the dark, uncharted waters of Lake Salvador and picking up speed fast.

  Gone were the lights that showed our runway, gone were the boats making sure no underwater obstructions waited to rip out her hull. We were on our own in the dark, but not quite; the first false light of dawn on the eastern horizon helped me orient myself enough to where I was. But where I wanted to go was another question.

  Sure, we were free from the attacking forces, or so it seemed. But now what? I applied left rudder to keep her nose straight and realized that my left shoe was long gone, somewhere back on the dock. I kicked off my other shoe and flew barefoot, the cold metal of the rudder pedals oddly reassuring, reminding me that I was alive, the plane was safe and we were free.

  But just then the plane shuddered from a long burst of fifty-caliber machine gun fire from the waist gun. Orlando’s voice came over the intercom. ‘We got company, brother. Two boats, converging port and starboard.’

  I applied back pressure on the yoke to pull her up onto the step and then eased it off slightly.

  ‘Flaps ten,’ I called.

  ‘Where, where?’ Ava shouted.

  I pointed to the flap control over her head. She found it and within seconds the plane shifted slightly from the increased wing area.

  Orlando shouted, ‘They’re gaining on us, brother.’

  Bullet strikes thumping into the plane...sixty-five knots, sixty eight, seventy and I rotated her nose and felt her slab-like wings bite the air and lift us up from the chattering, banging water surface and into the silky-smooth, pre-dawn air.

  Now came the dangerous part; leveling out at fifty feet and holding her there until she built up more speed before climbing away. A big, fat, silver flying target to the boats below.

  ‘Still taking fire,’ Orlando said.

  The fuselage shuddered and bucked from the bullet hits. The controls still worked fine, What about the engines?

  ‘Four in the green?’

  ‘So far,’ Mason answered. ‘But cylinder head temps are climbing fast.’

  The airspeed indicator needle finally touched one hundred-five knots. I hauled back on the yoke to climb away from the enemy boats and away from the nightmare below.

  I made a slow climbing turn to starboard until we reached one thousand feet and flew over Couba Island. Fires still dotted the darkness and the occasional flashes of explosions meant they were still fighting down there while we were up here safe and sound.

  What now?

  My mind was a complete blank. For the past half hour I had run around like a demented monkey this way and that, dodging bullets, trying to make it safely to the clipper. Now that I was here, all I could think to do was continue climbing. That’s it, nothing more in my head.

  Ava said, ‘What the hell happened?’

  ‘Nazi commando unit.’

  ‘How did they find out where we were?’

  ‘Sixty-four dollar question.’

  She shook her head. ‘Can’t believe it.’

  ‘Believe it - how’s your mother?’

  ‘I left her in the cellar with a squad of troopers. She has some bourbon, plenty of cigars and if worse comes to worse the general’s pistol.’

  ‘Which general?’

  She laughed. ‘Longstreet.’

  ‘A civil war pistol?’

  ‘She fires it regularly - at people who ask too many questions, like you.’ She glanced out the window. ‘Now what, captain?’

  We had reached two thousand feet. Instead of answering I leaned the fuel mixture and said. ‘Maintain this rate-of-climb and heading until we reach five thousand feet. I need to check for damage. When I get back, I’ll show you how to put her on autopilot.’

  ‘I have the aircraft.’

  ‘Make sure-’

  ‘I repeat; I have the aircraft, captain.’ Her frown prevented any further conversation, so I headed aft to count the bullet holes, both in the plane and in people, starting with Mason who had been grazed along his ribcage.

  ‘This hurt?’ I said as I probed the wound.

  ‘Only when you do that.’

  ‘Then I won’t do that.’

  He tried to grin but couldn’t.

  I broke out the first aid kit, folded up a gauze pad and tried to figure out how to apply the bandage. Moments later, Friedman arrived, alert and commanding. ‘Let me help. I studied medicine early on.’

  Mason said, ‘What made you change your mind?’

  He smiled. ‘The sight of blood. Take a deep breath and hold it.’

  Together we wrapped Mason’s wound with a compression bandage. When Friedman tied it off, he said. ‘Let us see to the others.’

  ‘Okay, doc.’

  We met Ziggy at the bottom of the spiral staircase. His clothes were disheveled and his shirt cuffs torn.

  ‘You okay?’ I said.

  ‘Other than almost dying from fright, yes.’

  ‘Think of it as a movie and you’ll be fine.’

  That didn’t impress him. ‘What happens now?’

  I had the beginnings of an idea, but only said. ‘I’ll let you know.’

  A beam of sunshine entered the compartment. For some reason it made me feel happy - happy to be alive to see its comforting warmth, instead of like Captain Fatt, gone to distant skies. I turned toward the door leading to the mooring compartment but Ziggy said, ‘We’re all set there, cap.’

  ‘No bullet holes, no damage?’

  He patted his chest. ‘Just my heart attack. Other than that, we’re tight as a drum.’

  Friedman said, ‘You are joking about your heart, yes?’

  Ziggy shrugged. ‘A figure of speech, doc, I’m fine, except for almost getting killed back there.’

  It seemed impossible, but I couldn’t find a single bullet hole in the fuselage except for a neatly-stitched line in what used to be Cabin F, leading from the window and then up the side. No way could
I inspect our double-bottom hull. Surely we had taken fire there, too. But even so, small caliber stuff, and hopefully our bilge pumps could keep up with it long enough for us to dive down and plug them up when we landed. But with what, I wondered, and then dismissed the question. The answer would come when it needed to. Right now I needed to check on Orlando, who, when Friedman and I reached Stateroom G, was sweeping up empty fifty-caliber cartridge shells.

  ‘That monster packs a mighty punch,’ Orlando said.

  ‘Saved our lives – correction; you saved our lives.’

  He patted the machine gun’s breech. ‘I’m calling him Joshua. And the walls of Jericho came tumbling down.’

  Friedman was already heading aft and Orlando and I followed. We passed into the compartment the ground crew had converted into a bomb bay and came to a dead halt. The atomic bomb swayed gently from its mounting bracket, held by electro-pneumatic release clamps. The idea flickered through my cluttered mind again.

  I said to Friedman, ‘Do you know how to arm this thing?’

  He looked shocked, but then recovered quickly. ‘Regretfully, yes.’

  ‘How complicated?’

  He shrugged. ‘A little, but from your line of questioning it would seem I will have many hours to figure it out.’

  ‘Nineteen if the winds hold.’

  Orlando cleared his throat. ‘Are you saying what I’m thinking?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Friedman said, ‘But where is your crew?’

  Good point. I had no navigator, no radio operator, and no qualified relief pilot to spell me from what would be a nineteen-hour mission. Other than Mason, our twelve man rigorously trained crew was down on Couba Island, either dead like Fatt, or wounded, or in hiding.

  ‘We’ll figure out a way.’

  Easy to say, not easy to do. Especially when I returned to the flight deck and announced my intentions. Ava would act as co-pilot, Professor Friedman would arm the bomb, Mason would be the bombardier, but only until he needed to do so. Until then, he’d double as flight engineer. Orlando would take over from him when needed, and Ziggy? When I announced my plan, he suggested he be the purser.

  ‘I know where everything is in the galley, and we’ve got to eat, right?’ I said, ‘An army travels on its stomach.’

  Mason interrupted, ‘We’re low on fuel.’

  I knew he would say that, but even so it came as a shock, especially when I’d just announced we were flying clear across the United States to drop a bomb.

  ‘Which tanks got filled?’ I said.

  He tapped the fuel gauges. ‘Looks like they only did the wings. Must have been waiting until morning to top off the sponson tanks.’

  Our wing tanks held six hundred gallons each. The sponsons over two thousand.

  ‘There’s worse news,’ Mason said. ‘The left wing tank must have taken a hit. We’re losing fuel.’

  ‘How bad?’

  ‘Not the end of the world, but steady.’

  ‘Any seaplane bases around here?’ I said to Ava.

  She thought for a moment. ‘There’s Creeley’s Landing, about fifty miles from here.’

  ‘How big?’

  ‘LaGuardia field it is not.’

  ‘Hundred Octane?’

  ‘Unless Lester’s been thinning it down to save money.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Fixed base operator. Old man Creeley is quite a character.’

  ‘Time we pay him a visit.’

  ‘You’re kidding me. His marina’s on a pond for God’s sake.’ She saw my frown and added quickly, ‘Not a pond exactly, but you’ll never set this thing down there.’

  Turns out she was right. I didn’t sit the Dixie Clipper down, I rammed her onto the still waters of the narrow inlet with all the teeth-chattering grace of a novice pilot. As soon as she hit I chopped the throttles and the clipper wallowed to a stately taxi as birds and wildlife exploded around us in shock and alarm.

  The morning light had barely penetrated the overhanging cypress and cottonwoods at water’s edge. At one point, their proximity made me certain at that our one hundred-fifty-foot wingspan would prove too much and our mission would end before it began. But by the grace of Orlando’s direct line to God, we made it in one piece.

  I checked the instrument panel clock: 5:17 a.m. Our entire world had changed in the space of an hour, and this was only the beginning.

  I said, ‘Think he’ll be awake?’

  ‘He will now.’

  ‘Ziggy, can you handle the mooring?’

  ‘I’m on it, captain,’ He hurried up from the back where he’d been sitting with the professor. He opened the floor hatch and disappeared.

  I turned to Ava. ‘You’ve got the aircraft. Take us into the mooring.’ I sat back and folded my arms.

  She gulped but said nothing, then leaned forward to look over the nose of the plane to better judge her aiming point while I cut power to the inboard engines. To my surprise she smoothly worked the throttles of the two remaining engines back and forth to alter the track of the plane like she’d been doing it all her life.

  ‘Lucky for you there’s no wind,’ I groused, realizing my little joke was backfiring.

  ‘I can handle wind.’

  ‘Sure you can.’

  ‘Captain Carter, unless you have a legitimate reason for acting like the Wicked Witch of the West, do you mind letting me dock this beast?’

  ‘The Wizard of Oz. Great movie. Abby loved it. Ever see it?’

  ‘Mickey Rooney was my date at the premiere.’

  ‘No kidding. How is he?’

  ‘Short, now shut up.’

  She advanced the port engine and the Dixie Clipper slowly swung around to line up with the orange and white mooring buoy. Ziggy’s head poked out of the bow hatch, he turned, grinned and saluted, just as a small green dinghy pushed off from the dock and putt-putted straight for us. A bent over figure sat crouched in the back, his hand on the tiller and his jaw set.

  ‘That would be Mr. Creeley?’ I said.

  ‘One and the same.’

  Minutes later, Ziggy leaned out of the hatch, hands outstretched to snag the buoy line. He snagged it expertly and tied it off onto one of the bow bollards.

  ‘Cut engines?’ Ava asked.

  ‘Affirmative.’

  The Wright radials clattered into silence. A long beat before the surrounding trees and bushes came alive with the excited cries of birds and beasts staring astonished at a forty-ton flying boat floating in the midst of their quiet little world.

  Ava said, ‘Excuse me.’

  Before I could react she plopped into my lap, slid open my side window, leaned out and shouted, ‘Lester, you old buzzard, we need some gas and we need it fast.’

  ‘Child, is that you?’

  ‘Who’d you think it was? Some high falutin’ movie star or something?’

  ‘Hey, girl, that’s what you is now, ain’t you?’

  ‘Sure am, and I’ll give you an autograph to prove it, providing you gas up this big bird.’

  Creeley took in the immense size of the clipper looming over him like an aluminum skyscraper. ‘What in the God’s green earth is this thing doing here?’

  ‘Gas.’

  He shook his head as if trying to wake up. ‘Uh... how much you figure you need?’

  ‘Fill ‘er up.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘C’mon Lester, don’t be a pain.’

  He gulped. ‘Cash on the barrel then.’

  ‘My credit’s good here and you know it.’

  ‘Not that good.’ He folded his arms and stood there balancing easily in the bobbing dinghy.

  I tapped Ava on the shoulder. ‘My turn.’

  She slid off my lap and I leaned out the window. ‘Good morning, sir. Captain Samuel Carter, Pan American Airways at your service. Do you have any diving gear? Face masks, anything like that?’

  ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘Seems we got shot up by some Nazis an hour ago,
and I want to check the damage.’

  A slow smile spread across his leathery face like a hungry catfish spotting dinner. ‘You don’t say now.’

  I thumbed in the direction of the tail where she’d been stitched with bullet holes. ‘See for yourself.’

  He examined the damage. ‘One of them compliance fighters pounced you, huh?’

  ‘Ground fire.’

  ‘You don’t say!’

  He considered this new bit of information, adding it up like a miser stacking coins. He frowned and leaned forward for another look at the fuselage. ‘Thought Looft-HAN-see was flying these big birds now.’

  ‘They are.’

  ‘Where’s your swastikas?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He pointed to the side of the Dixie Clipper’s fuselage. ‘All I see is stars and bars.’

  In the chaos of trying to escape, I never noticed what the Couba Island flight crew had done. Overnight they had painted over the loathsome triple- tail swastikas, and then scraped off the LUFTHANSA lettering to reveal the American flag that Trippe had painted on the sides of all the Pan Am planes in 1939, when war broke out in Europe to proclaim their American nationality.

  Creeley said, ‘Looks mighty pretty.’

  ‘Be nice to see it flying over Berlin one of these days, don’t you think?’

  He considered this for a long minute. His jaw worked his tobacco like a cow’s cud. Then he spat. ‘This plane got something to do with that?’

  ‘It might.’

  ‘Secret mission?’

  ‘Didn’t say that.’

  He nodded. ‘No, sir, you didn’t. But it could be, right?’

  A long pause.

  ‘About that gas,’ I said.

  He spat again. ‘I’ll damn well pump it for you myself.’

  I left Mason to supervise the re-fueling while Orlando and I took turns diving under the clipper with Creeley’s ancient gear, which was sketchy at best. But the sputtering air compressor and hose worked well enough to keep air flowing through the diving mask.

  The water was clear enough for me to determine that the hull was basically sound, except for two rows of bullet holes near the nose that needed plugging. The clipper was built with a double hull for collision emergencies, but machine gun bullets weren’t like floating logs. The slugs had torn through both the outer and inner hulls like a screwdriver jammed through a melon. Our bilge pumps couldn’t keep up with that much water, so Orlando and I needed to fashion some kind of plugs of that would tide us over until the clipper could be properly repaired.