Chapter 10 #3
Jenkins was a good man, but overworked and impatient. He was also under a great deal of pressure to get ahead of enforcing Prohibition, an endeavor that was going very badly indeed. Pullman didn’t blame his boss for not hearing what he’d been trying to say about a possible threat to this race.
He headed for his car, parked just around the other side of the hangar. Of course, without manpower assistance from Jenkins, the odds of successfully protecting all the planes and pilots dropped considerably.
But he had to try.
Panic surged through Marvel, leaving her so wide-awake she was jittery.
When had she let go of the stick? Had she just zoned out for a second, or had she truly fallen asleep?
She shook her whole body to rouse herself and blinked her eyes rapidly.
A haze of grogginess clung stubbornly to her mind, as if she’d just awakened from a very deep sleep.
Something was wrong—with her plane and with her.
Worse, she was on her own to figure it out and deal with it.
No one on the ground could help her. Up here, it was just her, the plane, and the wind in her face.
Speaking of which, she loosened her seat belt and half stood in her seat to lean over the high edge of her cockpit, literally putting her face in the wind.
She drew in several deep breaths, or rather, opened her mouth and let the air ram into her lungs.
Her mind cleared, leaving a warning bell clanging loudly in her brain.
Carbon monoxide poisoning was a danger every pilot knew about and had to look out for. She was no chemist, but apparently, carbon monoxide was heavier than air and tended to pool inside the fuselages of airplanes.
Louise Thaden had collapsed from it just a few days ago, on her way from Kansas to Clover Field.
Rumor had it she’d nearly died when she could barely stay conscious long enough to land her plane.
Her engine and Louise’s were identical, so hers definitely put out carbon monoxide, too.
But her fuselage shape was also slimmer and more aerodynamic than Louise’s.
Before today, she’d had no trouble with carbon monoxide building up in her cockpit.
Had something changed to make her plane prone to poisoning her?
Maybe she was just tired. After all, they’d only got a few hours’ sleep after that interminable banquet and before they had to head over to the airfield that morning to make their last preparations for the race.
Being exhausted made much more sense than her plane suddenly becoming a carbon monoxide trap.
There was no reason for her to worry that her plane needed a breathing tube installed.
All she had to do was remember to stick her face into the wind frequently. It was routine for most pilots to do so anyway because of the pervasive risk of inhaling too much carbon monoxide while seated so close behind the big open-air engines most airplanes used.
In fact, she did it again now.
As she inhaled big lungfuls of clean air, she spied something ahead that made her swear like a sailor.
Pancho and Louise had passed her while she’d been dozing off!
She needed to keep her speed up till the very last second.
Chase them down. See if she could get her nose back ahead of them before they landed.
No. What she needed to do right now was focus.
She needed to fly the plane and get down on the ground safely.
This was a long race, and she had plenty of time to make up a few measly minutes in the coming days.
The last thing she wanted was to do something dumb to knock herself out of the race or get herself killed and prove the doubters of women’s aviation were correct.
Landing in San Bernardino was not easy in the best of circumstances. The field ran parallel to the nearby mountain range and was known for its turbulence, particularly in the afternoon when temperatures topped one hundred degrees and the thermal air currents were at their peak.
The airport had expanded the width and length of its grass landing strip significantly to accommodate so many airplanes landing in quick succession.
In the final race briefing, Jim Granger mentioned that he’d spoken with the owner of the San Bernardino airfield, who’d assured him the newly planted grass airstrip would be watered down by the Chamber of Commerce to keep dust to a minimum.
Since the lightweight planes had taken off first, she did expect there to be some dust by the time she arrived. But a bit of reduced visibility was nothing new to any of the women flying in this race.
Her insides tightened as she started her descent into the field.
She searched over the edge of the cockpit for the ground landmarks that should be visible right now if she was on course.
Mountains to her left, railroad to her right.
Check. She was spot on her plotted course, which meant the Federal Airport in San Bernardino should be dead ahead.
She couldn’t see it, so she tipped her wings up briefly, first the right wing, then the left.
Bingo.
But that one quick glance of the airfield was enough to melt the grin off her face. The dust rising from the field was much more than a plume. It was a thick, billowing cloud of brown dust that completely obscured the landing strip.
The Chamber of Commerce had promised to have water trucks wet down the landing strip!
How on earth was she supposed to land on that?
The only reason she had any idea where the runway lay was because she’d flown in earlier that summer in preparation for the air race and knew the grass strip ran east–west on the mountain side of the main hangar.
It looked like an army of farmers were down there plowing together.
The dust was so thick she could not see the ground from above.
How was she supposed to make a visual approach and find the runway, let alone find the end of it and gauge her height correctly to reach the ground just as she crossed the threshold?
How would she know when to cut power and flare to land? Would she be able to see the ground at all when she flew into that roiling dust cloud? Would she be able to steer safely down the runway without hitting another plane or, heaven forbid, a bystander?
A miscalculation would cause her to pancake in the landing .
. . or worse. She could crash outright. Cutting her power too soon could send her into obstacles short of the runway.
Cutting it too late would cause her to overrun the runway, land long, and go off the far end of the airstrip into whatever obstacles stood at that end of the field.
Maybe she should make a low pass over the runway and then come back around to land after taking a look at how bad the conditions were going to be.
Except Pancho and Louise had obviously made it in. She didn’t see either of them flying circles around the airport up here out of the dust cloud.
Then you can do it too!
If she did the low pass, she could very well end up on short final approach at the same time as the next airplane coming in behind her.
She and the next pilot would both be flying basically blind as they aimed their planes at the exact same tiny piece of real estate, which was a recipe for a midair collision and disaster.
The planes had taken off too close together.
The organizers of the race weren’t pilots, and it sure showed.
They wanted a great show for the spectators.
Planes landing one after the other. No chance for the excitement to dip.
She ground her teeth in frustration. Pancho had been on the planning board, but her safety suggestions had been overlooked in favor of a grand spectacle.
That’s why you’re doing this derby . . . to make them respect your pilot skills . . .
Right.
Marvel tightened her resolve. She was proud to be one of the women in the derby.
All of them were there to prove their skills, and she was one of the best. As she flew along the south edge of the airport on the downwind leg of her landing pattern, she dipped her left wingtip to see if the runway was visible from here as she flew past it.
Sweet mother of Christ Almighty.
There were thousands of people on the airfield.
On the actual airstrip.
Worse than that, a significant number of them had driven their cars straight onto what was supposed to be a wide expanse of grass that could accommodate all twenty airplanes.
She dipped her wing again and spotted the insanely narrow strip of dirt the cars had so kindly left open for planes to land on.
The fools had even parked at both ends of the runway.
Where in the Sam Hill were the race officials?
Why hadn’t they put a stop to this madness and cleared the cars off the runway?
There was no time left to wonder how the field below had become such a mess.
She had only seconds to decide. Try to land or else pull out of the landing pattern and .
. . do what? Go back to Clover Field? Land somewhere else?
Wait for all the other planes to land, for the dust cloud to dissipate, and pray she didn’t run out of gas before the air cleared enough for her to land safely?
Honestly, she doubted the visibility down there was going to improve anytime soon. Another lap or twenty laps around the airfield weren’t going to change that.
Pancho and Louise had already proven it could be done.
Marvel’s competitive spirit sparked to life inside her, giving her flagging confidence a much-needed boost. This is a race, after all.
So, race. Her brand-new Travel Air hadn’t been made to come in behind anyone.
And when it came to flying into the unknown, she’d learned to fly in Alaska.
Adjusting in a heartbeat to what was in front of her was something she knew a thing or two about.