Aces

by T. E. Cruise

  Suzy waited an extra few minutes, to give the brandy time to do its work, and to make sure mother really had retired for the night. Something told Suzy that if she wanted to get Blaize a job as a GAT test pilot, and in the process keep him close at hand, she had best leave her mother out of this. Suzy knew that her mother loved her, but she certainly wasn’t the pushover that Daddy was. When she was certain the time was ripe, she slipped out of bed, put on her robe, and went out into the parlor. Her father was sitting on a sofa. His reading glasses were perched on the tip of his nose, and a brandy snifter was within easy reach, just as she’d imagined, but he wasn’t reading a book. He had several folders full of papers on the sofa beside him, and an unfolded blueprint blanketing his lap.

  Her father looked up at her and smiled. “What are you doing up?” he asked mildly.

  “Daddy, can I talk to you about something very important?”

  “You’re sounding very serious.” He put aside the papers, to make room for her beside him on the sofa. “Come sit, and tell me what this is all about.”

  Suzy sat down, and began to idly flip through the folders. “What are you working on?”

  “Those are the specs on the Supershark. I got them from Stoat-Black. We’re going to build our own prototype version of that plane back in Burbank, and run some tests on her.”

  “That’s interesting,” she fibbed.

  Daddy put his arm around her. “Quit stalling. You hate airplanes. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “I want to ask you a favor, but not for me… For someone else…”

  “And who would that be?”

  “Blaize Greene,” Suzy said. “He’d like to come work for you in California.”

  Her father merely nodded, not seeming at all surprised. But then, she’d never ever seen her father act truly surprised about anything.

  “I see… Did Blaize ask you to come to me on his behalf?”

  She thought about it. “No,” she decided. “I mean, he said that he wants to come work for you, but he never asked me to talk to you about it.”

  “Then how did it come up?”

  “When I found out he didn’t have any money—”

  “He doesn’t have any money?”

  “And I had to pay for our gondola ride—” She stopped, and smiled. Her father was shaking his head, but he was laughing.

  “Maybe you’d better start from the beginning,” he said.

  (Five)

  Near the Porto Di Malamocco

  Lido. Venice

  11 June 1938

  Blaize Greene ran along the beach. The sun was just coming up, glinting red fire against the Hotel Venezia’s top-floor windows, visible above the trees. The sun washed the sky with orange light, and set to life the placid waters of the Adriatic. The soft dawn brought awake the seabirds. They stretched their wings and sprang aloft, cawing loudly, as Greene padded past.

  He was wearing white canvas lace-up shoes with cork soles, white tennis shorts, and a crimson, cotton tennis sweater with a thin yellow stripe running along its V-neck and around the cuffs. Greene’s hair was touseled and damp; sweat trickled down his spine; his breath came easily as his legs pumped rhythmically. The salt air was invigorating. As he ran he mentally visualized how he wanted this morning’s race to proceed. Periodically he checked his wristwatch. He’d been up for the past hour and a half, running for the past forty-five minutes. Another fifteen minutes, and then he’d call it quits.

  He waved to his race team as he ran past the three wooden launch ramps shared by all the Moden Competition entrants. His team was just rolling the Supershark on its dolly out of its tent hangar, onto the ramp apron. Greene kept on running, to the Porto Di Malamocco, a narrow channel that separated the southern tip of the Lido from the island town of Chioggia. As he turned to run back, he glanced at the stone breakwater jutting out into the sea. On its far end was erected a tall, red and white checkered pylon: one of the turning points in the race. Just for the hell of it Greene ran the length of the breakwater, skipping nimbly along the slippery, barnacle-encrusted jumble of rocks. He touched the pylon, then ran back to the beach, and continued on his way.

  Greene’s society friends in London had accused him of having a split personality. When he wasn’t flying he was a late-night, heavy-drinking sybarite; an infamous partygoer who never failed to get his name into the society pages or the more crass gossip columns run by the Fleet Street rags. But when he was flying he became more spartan than a monk; no drinking, and no late-night carousing. He just ran, got lots of sleep, and concentrated on the job at hand.

  He went along with the jokes his London friends made about his grueling, self-imposed—or self-inflicted, depending on one’s point of view—regimen. He pretended to need their commiserations. It wouldn’t do to expect them to understand, but he did want to oblige them. He needed the company of his friends in order- to survive the interminable periods when Stoat-Black had nothing for him to fly.

  He was happy when he was flying, and miserable when he wasn’t. It was as simple as that, or as psychologically complex. He was not particularly fond of himself as a human being, but at least he was a tolerable test pilot: he knew how to fly, and he wasn’t afraid to take a risk during the course of a day’s work. People thought he was brave. He encouraged the perception. The truth was that he really didn’t give much of a damn what happened to him. He suspected that the best of what life had to offer was already behind him. He wasn’t going to be in his twenties forever, and it was going to be rather difficult to freeload off his title and his charm once the lines set in around his eyes. He’d be a rather pathetic kind of sort of bloke, then, wouldn’t he?…

  Rather as pathetic as his father was, the day he tramped off into the woods in order to undergo his “hunting accident,” during which he evidently, “accidentally,” put both barrels of his custom-engraved shotgun into his mouth and blew his head off…

  Greene had only been eleven years old at the time. He’d been away at school. The headmaster had come to wake him in the middle of the night, saying only that something awful had happened, and that he and his brother must hurry in order to take the next train. And so they had, sitting alone, sleepy-eyed and staring at their own reflections in the rocking, brightly lit compartment’s plate glass, sick to their stomachs with apprehension…

  Greene stumbled on a piece of driftwood on the beach, almost turning his ankle. He realized that his steady pace had increased to a sprint. He forced himself to slow down, to calm down…

  Everyone had been awfully good about the circumstances surrounding the death of his father, Greene remembered. Hence the “hunting accident” nonsense. Greene had been grateful to one and all at the time, and he still was, on his father’s behalf. It was nice that they had let his father go off into eternity with at least his dignity intact. The old boy had been left with precious little else.

  Greene hoped that they would be as kind toward him when the time for his “accident” came around.

  He again passed the launch ramps. The other race teams were bringing their seaplanes out, and parking them on the aprons. Meanwhile, the Stoat-Black mechanics had the Supershark’s engine cowling off. Greene knew that they would perform a maintenance check, then lightly mist the engine with oil and coat the seaplane’s moving parts with thick grease, to protect against the salt spray. All of that would take a couple of hours. By ten this morning the Supershark would be rigged up to the crane and hoisted off her dolly, onto the ramp. She was scheduled to launch at ten-fifteen. She would be one of the last to hit the water. Today’s eliminations competition was scheduled to begin at ten-thirty.

  He had only a few more minutes left of running. He forced himself to increase his pace. He’d been at it for exactly an hour when he reached the Hotel Venezia, where the Stoat-Black contingent was staying.

  He went down to the waterline, kicked off his shoes, took off his sweater, and hurled himself into the sea to wash away the sweat. He splashed about for a few minutes
, then came out, gathered up his things, and trudged up the beach toward the hotel.

  He was thinking about a hot shower, and a big breakfast, and the fact that he’d dreamt about his father last night. He hadn’t dreamt about the old boy in years, but then, he also hadn’t talked about his father in years, until yesterday… with the girl. She had been so very easy to talk to. He couldn’t remember the last time he had talked to someone, really talked, not just exchanged inanities.

  But she was a child, he told himself, suddenly embarrassed about the way he had opened up to her. He wondered if he had revealed too much about himself? If there was something unmanly in unburdening himself in such an unseemly manner?

  He supposed that it didn’t matter, one way or the other. She’d probably forgotten everything he’d said. And anyway, Greene didn’t expect to see her again.

  At the hotel Greene showered and shaved, and had breakfast sent up to his room. He dressed in a pair of wheat-colored linen slacks; woven, tan leather slip-ons; a light blue cotton shirt; and a loden-green corduroy sport jacket with tan leather patches on the elbows. At nine-thirty he checked his onyx case to make sure that he had an ample supply of his custom-blended Dunhill cigarettes, grabbed the battered leather valise that contained his flying gear, and went downstairs, where a water taxi was waiting to take him to the launch ramps.

  The Supershark was ready and waiting for Greene when he arrived. She was a nasty-looking beastie, Green thought, grinning. Her gleaming, black and red striped aluminum fuselage was slender as a dagger, and tipped with a twin-blade prop that was also striped black and red. Her bright red wings were stubby and elliptical. Beneath the fuselage were the floats, like twin cigars, painted black, and almost as long as the airplane itself. The open cockpit was positioned well behind the humped cowling, which hid the big, in-line V-12 engine.

  But for all her sleek beauty the Supershark was a tortoise among the hares, Greene knew as he went inside the tent hangar to change into his flying gear. Her top speed of four hundred miles per hour was at least fifty miles per hour slower than the fastest of the purebred racers entered in the race. Greene knew that she wasn’t destined to win the Moden Cup. As a matter of fact, he suspected that the Supershark would be eliminated during tomorrow’s competition. But that was tomorrow. She should make it through today.

  He pulled on his cover-alls and his leather jacket, grabbed his leather helmet, gloves, and goggles, and went out to the launch ramp, where the race team was throwing buckets of water onto the planking in order to grease the Supershark’s slide into the sea. Greene used a stepladder to get into the seaplane’s snug cockpit. As always, the fact that the Super-shark was raised up on floats made him feel as if the airplane were on stilts. He strapped himself in, performed a preflight check, and started the engine. The mechanics released the straps holding the Supershark’s pontoons to the ramp, and rocked her tail up and down to get her sliding. As she began to move, Greene throttled back, to control the descent. The Supershark’s churning prop seemed destined for a dunking as the seaplane dipped nose-first toward the sea, but, as always, she bobbed level as the pontoons entered the water.

  While the Supershark’s engine warmed up, Greene gauged the wind direction by watching the flags flapping on shore. He cranked the handle under the instrument panel, lowering the water rudders hinged into his pontoons, and felt his rudder pedals come to life. He opened up the throttle and taxied out into open water, heading north, toward the start/finish pylon on the barge anchored offshore, parallel to the grandstand. The other seaplanes were taxiing along with him, rising and falling on the waves.

  By now the grandstand was filled, and the beach was crowded with spectators. Out on the water the air was filled with the combined dronings of idling aircraft engines. Greene wiped the sea spray from his goggles and waited for the signal to take off. He happened to glance to his right, looked away, and then did a double-take. About thirty feet away was one of the German entries, looking vaguely insectile, thanks to its narrow fuselage; bulbous, enclosed canopy; spindly undercarriage; and olive green paint job, highlighted with yellow stripes. Perhaps it was his imagination, but Greene had the oddest feeling that the pilot was fixedly staring at him…

  At ten-fifteen the signal for takeoff was given. At once the combined dronings rose to an urgent whine, splitting the sky as a baker’s dozen of racing throttles were opened.

  Greene blasted his own engine, and the Supershark surged forward. He retracted his water rudders, allowing his vertical fin tail rudder to take over now that the Supershark was creating a slipstream. The spray on the windscreen glistened like diamonds as the Supershark skimmed along. Greene could hear and feel the waves coursing against the raven-black floats. The controls abruptly felt light as the floats lifted out of the water, and the Supershark began planing like a speedboat. The water seemed to cling, but then slipped away with a final gentle caress, like a lover reluctant to part, as the Supershark rose up into the clear blue sky.

  Greene, feeling warm in the sunshine, despite the brisk wind tugging at his cheeks, banked around to take his place at the end of the ragtag pack of seaplanes circling the start/finish pylon. The airplanes continued circling until everyone was aloft. A red smoke bomb was set off on the start/finish pylon barge. Then the tentative formation streaked past the pylon. The race—seven 32-mile laps of the triangular course—had begun.

  The pack was fairly bunched together on the first leg of the course, from the start/finish pylon to the turning point on the breakwater at the Porto Di Malamocco. From here it was roughly eight miles to the second turning point, an offshore pylon at the southern tip of Chioggia. The pack next began a sixteen-mile straightaway returning the way they’d come, but well offshore. The straight allowed the purebred racers to surge ahead to the third turn, at the checkered pylon erected on the breakwater guarding the entrance to the Port of Venice. From there it was a seven-mile straightaway back along the Lido, past the grandstand, and again past the start/finish pylon.

  Greene completed the first lap in under six minutes, averaging three hundred and fifty miles per hour. The furious roar of his engine deafened him, and the sea was a blur beyond his pontoons. By the end of the second lap, the entrants had all pretty much found their places. The Super-shark was positioned in the bottom third of the pack. She’d been steadfastly in the middle the day before, but the slower planes flying yesterday had been eliminated for today’s race.

  From his position, Greene was more confident than ever that the Supershark would survive today’s elimination to fly another day—one more day, to be exact, he guessed. Nevertheless, the Supershark had more than proven herself a reliable and relatively fast airplane. Once she was back in England, her floats would be replaced by conventional landing gear. Work would then proceed on transforming her into a fighter.

  Greene glanced behind him and was surprised to see that the olive and yellow German plane was pacing him, flying on his tail. That was very odd, Greene thought. From the race the previous day he was sure that the German plane was somewhat faster than the Supershark. The German had to be purposely hanging back to remain on the Supershark’s tail.

  As Greene streaked low over the grandstand at the end of his third lap he wondered if Suzy was down there watching. That he found himself hoping she was amused him. He abruptly remembered that he’d also dreamt about Suze last night. He wondered why he’d blocked that out. He tried hard to remember the dream’s details, but they continued to elude him. How very odd; he always remembered his dreams…

  The fifth and sixth laps passed uneventfully, but then Greene had expected as much, considering his modest but safe position in the pack. The true struggles took place among the front-runners for first place, and those bringing up the rear, battling to squeak past elimination. By now he’d gotten used to the German on his tail.

  Greene rounded the pylon at the Port of Venice breakwater. He was over the beach, approaching the grandstand, anticipating the final lap of the race, when the Ge
rman put on a burst of speed, leapfrogging over the Supershark. Greene involuntarily hunched into his cockpit as the German’s pontoons passed less than a yard over his head. The German dropped like a stone directly in front of him, forcing Greene to throttle back, so abruptly that the Supershark was put into a stall.

  The German flew on, beginning his final lap, as the Supershark fell toward the beach. Greene, struggling with his controls, kept her from going into a spin, but he was already too low to go into a dive to break out of the stall.

  The first order of business was to get the hell away from the crowded beach. He banked out over the water. The maneuver cost him further precious altitude, but Greene knew that he was going down one way or another, and he didn’t want to kill anyone. The frothing blue sea was reaching at him as he managed to get the Supershark’s nose up, an instant before his pontoons touched the waves. What he did next was the result of training and instinct rather than thought. He kept the Supershark skipping across the surface in a series of hops, controlling the pitch angle of the floats to avert a capsizing. He opened up the throttle, hauled back on the stick, and somehow, miraculously, regained the sky.

  He’d survived, but he was out of the race. Saving his own and the Supershark’s skin had cost time. The rest of the pack was already rounding the Chioggia pylon. The Supershark didn’t have the speed to catch up and regain its prior position. What was worse, Greene was keenly aware that the German had made him look like a fool in front of everyone.

  The German was a distant speck to the south, but he still had not reached the Chioggia turning point. To hell with the race, Greene thought, as he poured on the power. He no longer cared about the race; he wanted the German.

  Greene had no inkling why the German had done this to him, but that didn’t matter. Greene took pride in conducting himself like a gentleman, but the German had inexplicably chosen to rob him of his professional honor in front of his employer, and thousands of others. Greene would have his satisfaction.