Chapter 4 #2
She heaved a sigh of relief. As bad as it looked, it didn’t appear she’d damaged the main wing spar.
Shouldn’t be too difficult to patch up. Another first she hoped to accomplish soon was being the first female licensed airplane mechanic.
She’d been working on engines and learning aircraft repair for a while now.
Tomorrow, she and the mechanic assigned to her for the air derby ought to be able to rebuild the wingtip, cover it with fabric, and slather the fabric in dope—cellulose nitrate glue—that would shrink, harden, and waterproof the airplane’s skin.
The dope should have just enough time to cure and dry for her to fly over to Clover Field before the race started Sunday afternoon.
Assuming the race officials let her enter at all after not making it to the race’s start point on time.
Obviously, it wasn’t ideal to need structural repairs just before the biggest race of her life, but this emergency landing could’ve gone worse. Much worse. She was going to go ahead and declare herself darned lucky today.
She could really use her cane right about now.
She limped back around to the cockpit window, climbed inside, and perched on her knees to reach behind the seat where her luggage and flying gear were stowed.
Of course, her cane had slid all the way to the back of the hollow tail.
She had to lever herself most of the way over the seat to retrieve it.
She’d just climbed back out of the plane—without taking a spill this time—and hobbled a few steps toward a man and a teenage boy coming out of the farmhouse when a sharp sound cut through the thickening fog.
It was shrill and coming closer. Fast.
Headlights abruptly pointed at her as three cars bounced across the field toward her in the fog’s unnatural gray twilight.
In their illumination, she got her first good look at the field she’d landed in.
The fallow soil was firmly packed and smooth after a hot, dry summer.
She’d been exceptionally lucky in her choice of a landing spot.
The piercing sound turned out to be sirens attached to the cars, and they were deafening.
Compared to an airplane engine, a noisy propeller, and wind noise, the cars were still louder.
They raced right up to the nose of her plane before halting and cutting the sirens.
A half dozen men jumped out and charged toward her as if she and her plane were on fire.
Surprised, she called out pleasantly, “I’m fine. Not hurt in the least—” She broke off, realizing with a jolt that those weren’t fire extinguishers the men were pointing at her. They were guns.
“Hands up!” one ordered sharply. “Bureau of Investigation,” he declared.
The BOI? Whatever for? She said politely, “I think you gentlemen have mistaken me for someone else.”
The agent approached her cautiously, stopping well out of arm’s reach. He braced his feet wide and looked her up and down. “You made the mistake, ma’am,” he told her firmly. “I will not be swayed toward leniency because you’re a woman.”
Beside her, two of the agents poked their heads inside her plane. It felt as if rabid raccoons were about to tear it apart. But the BOI was no joking matter. She quelled an urge to run over and protect the Monocoupe from them.
One of the men climbed inside the plane and reached behind the seat to rummage around. Roughly.
“Could you and your men please be careful with the cargo? I’m flying in a cross-country race day after tomorrow, and the rules state I must carry enough provisions for three days in case I have to emergency land somewhere.”
The agent before her scowled and snapped, “You don’t tell me and my men what to do, young lady.”
“I’m asking you to be careful, not telling you,” she pointed out as evenly as she could manage. “And now I’m asking who you are and why your men are ransacking my airplane.”
“I am Agent Pullman. My men and I are helping out the Bureau of Prohibition, which is undermanned in this county,” he informed her gruffly.
Bureau of Prohibition? Her belly did a sharp somersault. They thought she was running liquor? Yikes.
“Miss, I’m placing you under arrest.”
CLOVER FIELD, NIGHT BEFORE THE RACE
Most of the folks who’d come to see the pilots check in for the race had gone home for the night, but the pilots who’d made it in were doing last-minute once-overs of their planes and flight routes.
A gaggle of reporters still hung around, hoping to get pictures of the last two racers when—and if—they arrived tonight.
Phil Ball, owner of Mono Aircraft and Charles Lindbergh’s primary backer, had called personally all the way from St. Louis to enter Phoebe Omlie in the race since she was in the air, flying to Santa Monica, when news broke of the last-minute rule change.
Mary Haizlip’s sponsor had called in for her as well, saying she’d had maintenance trouble and had landed to fix it before continuing on to Clover Field.
Exceptions were made since the sponsors were asking.
Nobody knew where either of the missing pilots were.
Pancho paced anxiously inside the crowded hangar, declaring to no one in particular, “They must’ve seen the fog that rolled in and landed somewhere safe before night fell.”
Right. Logical. No reason for worry.
Amelia came over and said quietly, “You know this area better than the rest of us. Are there places nearby where Phoebe and Mary could’ve landed safely?”
“If they didn’t run out of gas over downtown Los Angeles, there are plenty of farm fields just outside the city limits.
But that’s if they both made it over the mountains east of San Bernardino .
. . and if they made it into the LA Basin before the whole thing filled with fog .
. . and if they didn’t get caught on top of the fogbank.
” She traded worried looks with Amelia. Those were some big ifs, and every one of them had to go Phoebe’s and Mary’s way for the lost aviators to be safe.
Amelia shielded her mouth with her hand and murmured, “We can’t afford to lose a pilot before the race even begins. With so much public attention on this derby, it would be the worst possible publicity for women pilots.”
Pancho, aware of the eagle-eyed reporters around them, muttered back, “At this point, I don’t much care about the race. I just want everyone to be okay.”
Amelia nodded. “Same. I want to win, of course, but I’m mainly doing this to prove to my promoters that I can fly solo across the Atlantic.”
“You think they’ll ever give you a shot at it?”
Amelia scowled. “Only if I transform into a man. I’m saving up to finance my own transatlantic flight. To heck with what they think.”
“That’s the spirit.”
Personally, Pancho had no desire to chase that particular record .
. . or most records. She flew for the love of it, and she fearlessly picked fights with naysayers so other women would be allowed to fly as well.
The derby continued to surprise her with just how connected she felt to the other pilots.
If someone had asked her about safety two weeks ago, she would’ve told them she understood the risks. No reason to get worked up with worry.
And now Pancho Barnes, who had cut her hair and sneaked aboard a gunrunning ship to Panama during a revolution, was wearing out the soles of her boots because she was so worried about her fellow racers.
Color her surprised.
She wouldn’t trade it, though. These women were the closest thing to family besides her son that she’d ever felt this way about.
The long tables where they’d registered were now littered with maps of the race itinerary—at least, as it stood now. It had changed several times at the last minute as various locales jockeyed to host the race and get a boatload of publicity for their towns.
A half dozen women still pored over the charts, memorizing roads and landmarks, drawing out their routes from stopover to stopover, and making tick marks every ten miles along their planned route to time their speed as they flew it.
Every last one of these pilots knows the risks, heck, faces them on a daily basis.
Pancho sighed and made another lap to the end of the hangar and back.
It was one thing to face a challenge head-on.
That she could handle. But it was quite another to stand by helplessly like this and wait for the Grim Reaper to claim one of their own.
She stared at the big clock on the wall, the minutes winding away without a phone call from either missing pilot. There hadn’t even been any sighting of either plane. But there also hadn’t been any reports of a plane going down or of a fireball.
Amelia and Louise joined her in pacing. Marvel, perched on one of the long tables, reached up to touch the little gold cross she wore on a delicate chain around her neck, her lips moving silently.
Pancho refused to think the worst. But as she glanced outside the hangar, it was hard not to. It was pitch-dark out there. And still foggy. Visibility was no more than a quarter mile. Terrible conditions to fly in. Impossible conditions, actually.
A lanky youth ran into the hangar and made a beeline for the table where Jim Granger waited anxiously to check in Omlie and Haizlip, the last two pilots.
The boy screeched to a stop, chest heaving, and gasped, “There’s a plane down .
. . outside town!” Pancho raced to join the pilots and reporters crowding around him.
The kid panted, “A farm . . . up north . . . a plane . . . in a field.”
Bulbs flashed as reporters snapped pictures of the boy. Pancho asked him tersely, “Down, you said. Is it crashed or did it land?”
The boy shrugged. “Down. That’s all I know. My dad got a phone call and sent me here on my bike to tell Mr. Granger.”
Pancho locked eyes with Marvel and asked under her breath, “Up for another road race?”
Marvel nodded. “Let’s go.”
Members of the press were already heading for the door.