Sentimental Journey (45 page)

They were required to take off and land a certain number of times to be officially checked out. Some instructors would give you some slack on that, but not Rafferty.

She checked her logs. She had one takeoff and landing left to qualify. The sun was getting lower, but she felt there was still enough time.

She taxied around again and prepared for her last takeoff.

“You’re not going to make it, Morrison.” Rafferty was talking to her from the tower.

The bastard was smiling. She could hear it in his voice through the earphones in her headset.

“You have one landing left to qualify. Too bad, Morrison. I can’t qualify you. They’re closing the airport because of the haze. Bring that plane to the west hangar.”

She tapped the mike with her finger to make some static noise, then blew into it a few times as she turned the plane for another takeoff. “Sorry, sir, but I can barely understand you.”

“I said bring the plane in!”

“You’re cutting out,” she lied.

“Turn that goddamn plane around!”

“Cannot copy. Can you repeat, sir?”

“I said . . . do not take off!”

“Roger, I’m taking off as ordered. Over.” And up she went.

“OH
LOOK
AT ME
NOW
”

Red pulled his truck into the lot across the street from the airfield and parked. He opened the door and stood alongside his dusty black truck, one foot on the running board and his arm resting on the truck cab.

In front of him was a big, old brown-brick building with a flat roof and four floors—each one cut with white, wooden-framed windows that ran across the side like dominoes spread out on a parlor table. Two skimpy trees stood in the front, and there was a gravel walkway that led to the door. Off to the south in a vacant side yard, the lawn was brown and burnt, with round, scabby patches of dirt showing through the grass that made it look as if it had skinned its knees. Above that was a good hundred feet or more of clothesline strung in Zs. He’d never seen so much female underwear in his life, bras, panties, and slips, all of it bleached to a crisp, blinding white, except one lacy brassiere that was red enough to fire up a bull.

He’d been told that the women were assigned to quarters near the field, in an old Sears and Roebuck building. One look at that clothesline was enough. He’d found it.

He crossed to the front door and rapped on it.

Nothing.

From an open window on the third floor, he could hear the thin, scratchy sound of radio music and the distant chattering of women talking and laughing. He knocked again, louder, then searched for a bell to ring.

There was none.

He stepped back and looked up at the closest open window; it was up on the third floor and had a flimsy-looking flowered curtain drifting out of it. Since the air was still as a rock, the only thing that could make that curtain drift would be a fan in the room.

“Hel-
lo!
”
He waited.

Nothing.

“Hello!”
Still nothing.

He cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered, “Is anybody in there?”

A pert looking brunette with full lips and a head full of pin curls swiped aside the curtains and stuck her head outside the window, scowling.

“Hello, ma’am.” He slipped off his service cap and nodded to her.

Her expression changed on a dime. She hitched her hip on the window frame and grinned down at him. “Well, well . . . hello to you, soldier.”

“I’m looking for Charley Morrison.”

“Lucky Charley.”

That was why he liked Charley. She didn’t embarrass him the way this girl did. He looked down for a moment, away from her come-on look, and stared at the field cap in his hands.

“Who are you talking to, Rosalie?” Another girl wedged her head out between Rosalie and the window frame.

“Charley’s beau.”

“Charley has a beau?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I’m just a friend.”

“Uh-huh, sure,” the new girl said. She gave a sharp nod toward the airfield. “She’s at the field. Ask over there and someone can tell you where she is.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I—” He stopped.

She hadn’t waited for him to finish. She was gone as quickly as she had appeared. But not Rosalie, who was still sitting in that window, languid as a cat full of buttermilk on a warm summer day. “Oh, don’t you mind her, sugar. She’s always like that. But I’m not. No, siree. Not me. I
like
men.”

He just wanted to leave, but he didn’t want to be rude to her.

She laughed and waved a hand at him. “Go on. Find Charley. But if she’s busy, you come on back here and I’ll be happy to keep you company.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Red put his hat back on and turned, then flatfooted it across the dirt lot, heading off toward the airfield.

For the next twenty minutes he wandered around, asking for Charley. Everyone had seen her, but no one knew where she was. He had two places left to look, one was the tower and he doubted she was there, and the other was a big Lockheed Aircraft hangar out on the west end.

Red rounded the corner of the hangar, out of the relentless heat and sun into a sanctum of shade. Across the hangar, past a small trainer and the maintenance area, where a mechanic was working on a Lodestar transport, he spotted a man with a crop of white hair and sporting grease-stained coveralls.

Red moved closer, close enough to see the man was sitting at a workbench, talking excitedly into a radio mike.

“Five-niner-three. Can you hear me, now? Come in?”

Static crackled back from the ham radio.

Red stood just behind him and the old-timer glanced up at him, then held up a hand, frowning as he repeated, “This is Whiting Airfield. Hangar B. Come in again if you can hear me. Over.”

More static.

“Damn and hell . . . I can’t get it.” Scratching his jaw, he turned to Red. “Caught a distress call from a plane out there somewhere. Sounded like big trouble.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know. I was repairing this here radio when out of the clear blue this panicked voice comes through.”

“Why isn’t the pilot talking to the tower?”

“She said she couldn’t get their frequency.”

“She?”

“I think it’s one of those ATA gals.”

“I DON’T WANT TO SET THE WORLD ON
FIRE
”

Charley counted off the hazards. “Three telephone pole . . .
Jackson Avenue
 . . . Two power pole . . . ”
One more to go.
She knew she should clear it by about ten feet. She checked her gauges, the needles looked off.

Rafferty’s voice bellowed into her earphones. “Morrison!”

Suddenly the plane clipped the last pole. There was a horrific crunch. She swore and grabbed the controls with both hands.

The nose shot up. The plane started to roll.

Oh, God . . .

She jerked on the controls, hard, gave the plane full power. It vibrated violently. There was a loud, high-pitched whining sound, like a human screaming. She jerked up the gear and tried to straighten the plane, both at the same time.

It bucked like a bronco. “Come in,
Whiting
Tower
. Tower? Come in.” Nothing on the radio.

Damn . . . damn . . . damn . . .

The plane lifted a bit and leveled out. She wasn’t rolling anymore. The plane began to shudder and pulled against her hand controls. She glanced at the instruments, but the plane was vibrating so much she couldn’t read them.

The engine stopped screaming so sharply she froze for an instant.

This is it.

She pulled the emergency release handle on the cockpit so she wouldn’t be trapped inside, then waited for the engine to stall, then for that inevitable drop that would follow.

But it was oddest thing. The drop didn’t come. The engine was still running, rough, but running.

She looked down.

The plane was in the air, flying low over the runway. But bad for her: over the end of the runway, and heading straight for an airplane hangar. The huge hangar door was open. She could see a trainer and a C-57
transport parked inside.

Some men were waving their arms at her. The letters on the hangar—”Lockheed Aircraft”—grew bigger and closer. Way too close.

She tried to get the plane up. Gunned it. Pulled on the controls, trying to get it up. She needed some altitude.

Come on baby . . . come on . . .

Now she could read the high-octane advertising sign that hung on the front of the hangar. It had a logo of a huge clipper plane on it, one that seemed to be coming at her.

Desperate, she punched the engine to full power, not knowing what it would do.

Get up there!

The P-51 sluggishly responded. It was flying barely above a stall.

The hangar was right there. In front of her. A huge metal coffin.

She gave full throttle. “Dear God,” she whispered. “Please. Just let me get over it.” She gritted her teeth, then closed her eyes.

It was one of those moments when everything stopped. Suspended. The world outside the cockpit just ceased to exist.

The seconds slowed. Charley waited to die.

One breath . . .

Two . . .

Three . . .

She opened her eyes. The hangar roof was beneath her as she passed over it, barely. Some kind of low sound came out of her, from deep inside her, and she wasn’t sure if it was a curse or a prayer. She inhaled, took two quick, deep breaths.

For as long as she lived—if she got out of this alive—she didn’t want to ever know by how much she had just cleared that hangar.

Okay. You’re still flying. That’s good. Think, now. God, somehow I have to get to a higher altitude.

After a minute at full throttle, the plane was actually gaining altitude again, a fact that made her racing heart slow down a little. She didn’t dare move a thing, just fought to hold the controls right where they were and to keep the plane up and level.

Think. Think.

She could hear an eerie, clanging sound coming from the starboard, as if a piece of the plane were banging against the hull. Or the angels were knocking on her door.