Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Pancho dropped to her knees beside Pullman.
She smelled blood and looked for the source.
She spied a dark furrow along the side of his head about the width and length of her finger.
She felt frantically for a bullet hole at either end to indicate the round had gone into his brain and exhaled hard when she didn’t find one. Not that he couldn’t still be dead.
“Is he breathing?” Marvel whispered.
Pancho reached under his jaw to look for a pulse.
This wasn’t how she wanted to be proven right about the telegram.
Back in Santa Monica, Pullman had been nothing but another man standing between her and the life she wanted to live.
Now he’d fallen trying to protect her plane.
“Come on, Pullman, it’s not your time!” she ground out as she felt around on his neck.
She jumped when a barely audible male voice rasped, “Just because you have been . . . close to heaven in your plane . . . that does not give you authority . . . to speak for St. Peter.”
“He’s alive!” she cried.
Pullman groaned. “Shh. Quieter. My head is splitting in two.”
“Sorry,” she said contritely. “Where else does it hurt?”
He opened one eye to look at her balefully. “Everywhere.”
Gently, she helped him sit up. “You’re one lucky man, Pullman. That bullet cut a groove through your hair. Any closer and your skull would’ve split in two for sure. You’d definitely be talking to St. Peter right about now.”
“Considering our last meeting,” he said, “I might have thought you ladies wouldn’t care much about my eternal soul.”
“You did seem unmoved by the telegram,” Amelia reminded him.
“You stonewalled us,” Marvel said bluntly.
“And told us to go back home,” Pancho added.
“I merely stated that your homes are far safer than flying, which I am more convinced than ever is correct.”
They all looked up as a half dozen cars turned into the airport and sped toward them.
Pancho pointed out, “That’s the rest of the pilots coming to protect our planes. Not a single one of us is running back home.”
Pullman shook his head—or started to. He stopped with a groan of pain and reached up to feel his wound gingerly. “I turned just in time to see the flash of the gun. Good thing, or he’d have nailed me in the back of the head.”
“Bastard tried to shoot you in the back?” Pancho growled.
Pullman shrugged. “Hazard of the job.” He climbed carefully to his feet and scanned the airfield in disgust. “The saboteurs are long gone.”
Pancho shared the frustration she heard in his voice.
Pullman walked over to the young reporter. Intent on his notepad, the kid didn’t look up as Pullman reached for it.
“Hey! Those are my notes!” the reporter protested.
Pullman frowned. “I want no news coverage of tonight’s events.”
“That’s not the deal the ladies made with me!” The kid looked to Pancho and Amelia for help.
“We told him he could have the exclusive since he gave us a lift out here,” Pancho explained.
“Wrecked my car, too!”
“Never fear,” Pancho replied. “I’ll have it fixed.”
Pullman pulled his badge out. “I’m a federal agent conducting an official investigation. Print one word, and I’ll charge you with obstruction of justice.”
“Look, I’ve got to make a living,” the reporter said. “And you can bet the other guys covering the race are gonna write about there being an incident with the planes tonight. If I don’t write this story, I’ll be fired as sure as the sun is gonna rise tomorrow.”
Pullman looked unmoved.
The kid added, “I’ll bet they won’t even get me a train ticket home. I’ll walk clean through the soles of my shoes before I reach Michigan. My girl is waiting there. I asked her to marry me. She’ll have to pawn my ring if I don’t keep this job and make something of myself.”
“Aww, come on, Pullman. Toss him a scrap,” Pancho pleaded.
He appeared torn.
The reporter pressed his case. “They just hired me on to be a driver but promised me a bonus if I bring in a big story.”
“Tell you what,” Pullman said, “when this race is over, I’ll give you an exclusive interview.” He looked over at Pancho. “And the headline for this story is going to be that saboteurs poured oil into the fuel tanks of at least two airplanes.”
“That crazy woman had a gun. Shot at us, too!” Vernon exclaimed. “Scared the Holy Spirit clean out of me.”
Mayor Mack rolled his eyes. “You knew there was risk involved, and you’re getting paid good money.” He withdrew an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket.
Perkins jumped forward, snatching the envelope.
“Get lost! And I’ve never met either of you,” Mack ordered.
Vernon cleared his throat. “You didn’t say nothin’ about getting shot at.” He extended his hand. “You owe us more.”
“You’re lucky I’m paying at all,” Mack retorted. “The job was to make the oil in the fuel tanks look like a mix-up. An accident. But the whole world knows you were out there now because you brought along a gun. Now, get lost before I turn you in myself.”
Perkins grabbed Vernon and dragged him away as Mack looked on in distaste.
The men rounded a corner and disappeared before Mack turned and headed back to his car.
He climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine, saying over his shoulder to someone in the back seat, “Looks like we’ll both have a sleepless night on account of those cursed females. ”
“I’ll live,” Ayers responded sourly.
“You’re telling me you enjoy this much trouble from womenfolk?” Mack asked incredulously.
Ayers blew out a long stream of smoke before he answered. “I like a good fight. It’ll be interesting to see how hard I have to hit these girls before they fold and go home. Ever train dogs, Mack? I see similarities.”
Mack chuckled. “They did demand to be treated same as the men.”
Ayers grinned around the stub of his cigar. “And so I shall. I’ve busted up plenty of unions in my day. I can surely bust up a gaggle of young women joyriding their way across the country.”
RACE DAY 2, SAN BERNARDINO, CALIFORNIA
“It’s oil, all right,” Claire Fahy’s husband, Herbert Fahy, confirmed. He was a Lockheed Aircraft Company test pilot and mechanic and definitely knew what he was talking about.
Pancho stared at him in dread. It was one thing to imagine sabotage. It was another to see it for real. “What would’ve happened if Ruth tried to fly with oil in her fuel tank?”
He came down the ladder beside Ruth Elder’s plane and answered, “Fuel’s heavier than oil, so the oil would’ve floated in the tank.
Ruth’s plane would’ve started up fine and flown for a while.
But as soon as the fuel beneath it was burned, the oil would have gone into the engine and caused it to fail. ”
Pancho was shocked. This sabotage wasn’t just vandalism.
It had been intended to kill one of them!
“Calexico is one hundred and forty-four miles away, and our route flies mostly over desert,” she said.
“Even if Ruth managed to jump out and use her parachute, surviving out there at this time of year would’ve been against the odds. ”
Herbert wiped his hands on a rag and said grimly, “That oil was a recipe for catastrophe. As diabolical as mustard gas, if you ask me. Looks like they got Chubbie Keith-Miller’s plane, too.
Thankfully, Agent Pullman had the foresight to check on the planes and stopped them from doing this to any more of them. ”
“Also, by finding the oil overnight, we’ve got enough time to drain the tanks before the race,” Pancho added gratefully.
To that end, Herbert was joined by several mechanics from the airport as they began the process of siphoning the gasoline out of Ruth’s and Chubbie’s fuel tanks.
As Pancho and the other women watched them work, the sun came up, promising another scorching-hot day.
Pullman walked over to stand beside her. He asked quietly, “Are you still intent on finishing this race?”
She locked stares with him. “More than ever.”
He reached up to touch the brim of his hat, and it occurred to her that he meant it as a respectful gesture.
“You know what, Agent Pullman?” she said. “I didn’t like you very much yesterday morning.”
His lips twitched. “I noticed.”
“Thing is, lots of folks talk a big game, but that doesn’t matter to me. I judge folks on what they do.”
“A sentiment I share, Mrs. Barnes.”
“I was mighty steamed over you dismissing that telegram. Now, I’m realizing I read you wrong.”
Pullman inclined his head. “A threat isn’t credible without evidence.”
“Is that why you drove over here in the middle of the night to stake out our planes? To look for evidence?”
He nodded evenly.
He might actually be a decent guy under all that official starch. “I heard your boss told you to drop the matter of the threat. Leave us to the fate we chose.”
“The BOI’s resources are overwhelmed. My boss is tasked with a phone that rings nonstop. Reports of liquor sightings, speakeasy locations, and every known vice associated with organized crime. Prohibition has empowered mobsters like never before.”
“And we’re out here making targets of ourselves,” Pancho responded. “We had no evidence beyond that telegram, yet you showed up here anyway and checked it out. Why is that?”
Pullman pressed his lips together.
She smiled a little. “You don’t need to tell me why, but I think it’s the same reason why I’m so determined to finish this race. You don’t turn your back on something when your gut tells you it matters.”
“What does your gut tell you now?” he asked.
“That I’ve got to stand up tall and show the world courage isn’t unique to men. In this country we all come together to build something greater than before. Americans look ahead. To the future. And that’s what all of us women are doing.”
A glint of approval entered Pullman’s eyes. “Very worthy sentiments.”
They were just three words, but Pancho appreciated the compliment, especially from him. Thoughtfully, she watched him walk away.
“Seems like you and Pullman are getting along better,” Marvel said, moving up beside her.
“Who’d have guessed?” she replied wryly.