2
Oh, Hedy Lamarr is a beautiful gal,
And Madeleine Carroll is too.
But you’ll find, if you query,
A different theory
Amongst any bomber crew.
For the loveliest thing
Of which one could sing
This side of the heavenly gates,
Is no blonde or brunette
Of the Hollywood set,
But an escort of P—38’s.
—Author unknown, “Lightnings in the Sky”
The Lockheed Lightning gleamed in the late-afternoon sun. It was a living artifact, a part of the great effort against Hitler that could still take to the sky, that still looked deadly. The twin tail booms, the chiseled cockpit, the broad sleek wings all whispered of power. The machine guns and cannon concentrated in its nose had been abrupt and to the point. Its firepower was far more precise than the spread-wing guns of other aircraft of its time. You did not want to get caught in the sights of this aircraft.
“It’s not an easy plane to fly,” Max said. The P—38J had its own mind; it required a pilot willing to blend with its geometry. A pilot like Max, maybe. A pilot whose senses could flow into its struts and joints and cables and rudders.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Kerr. He took out his checkbook. “I don’t intend to fly it.” He threw the remark in Max’s general direction.
Kerr was tall and imposing, good-looking in a used-up sort of way, rather like Bronco Adams, the barnstorming pilot-hero of his books. The fictional Bronco flew his trademark Lockheed Lightning in and around WWII China through a series of high-octane, high-sex thrillers. Kerr wrote in a style that he liked to describe as the one-damned-thing-after-another school of literature. It was not surprising that he wanted to own one of the few P—38’s left in the world. “You’re not going to fly it?” Max asked, not sure he had heard correctly. “It’s in great condition.”
Kerr looked bored. “I don’t fly,” he said.
Max had read three of the novels, Yellow Storm, Night in Shanghai, and Burma Crossing. He’d enjoyed them, had not been able to put them down, and had been impressed with the author’s mastery of the details of flying.
“It’s true,” said Kerr. “I fake it. It’s easy.”
Max stared at him, outlined against the blue and white star on the nacelle. The plane wore a fresh coat of jungle-colored paint. Its K—9122 designation was stenciled in white on the fuselage, below the name White Lightning and the image of a whiskey jug. In 1943 it had operated from a field outside London, where it was part of a squadron cooperating with the RAF. Later it had escorted bombers on missions over Germany, a task for which its combination of range and firepower were ideally suited. In 1944 it had gone to the Pacific.
White Lightning had a lot of history. Max had tracked it down from Army Air Force records, had interviewed pilots and ground personnel, and now produced a computer disk. “Everything we could find is here. Pilots. Campaigns. Kills. Eight confirmed fighters, by the way. And two Hinkels. Bombers.”
“Good.” Kerr waved it away. “I won’t need it.” He uncapped a gold pen and glanced around for something to lean on. The port side tail boom. “You want this payable to you?”
“To Sundown Aviation.” Max’s company, which restored and traded in antique warbirds.
Kerr wrote the check. Four hundred thousand. The profit to the company would be a hundred and a quarter. Not bad.
The check was green, and the face contained a reproduction of Bronco’s P—38 in flight. Max folded the check and put it in his breast pocket. “Are you going to put it in a museum?” he asked.
The question seemed to surprise Kerr. “No,” he said. “No museum. I’m going to put it on my lawn.”
Max felt a twinge in his stomach. “Your lawn? Mr. Kerr, there are six of these left in the world. It’s fully functional. You can’t just put it on a lawn.”
Kerr looked genuinely amused. “I would think,” he said, “that I can do damn near whatever I want with it. Now, I wonder whether we can get on with this.” He glanced at the folder in Max’s hand, which contained the title documents.
Kerr’s pilot-hero was a congenial, witty, and very human protagonist. Millions of people loved him, and they agreed that his creator had raised the aviation thriller to a new level of sophistication. Yet it struck Max that that same creator was a jerk. How was that possible? “If you just leave it on the lawn,” Max said, “it will get rained on. It will rust.” What he really meant was that this kind of aircraft deserved something far better than being installed as an ornament on a rich man’s property.
“When it does,” said Kerr, “I’ll give you a call and you can come down and touch it up for me. Now, if you will, I have work to do.”
A Brasilia commuter plane was circling the field, getting ready to land. It was red and white against a cloudless sky.
“No,” said Max, retrieving the check. He held it out for Kerr. “I don’t think so.”
“Beg pardon?” Kerr frowned.
“I don’t think we have a deal.”
The two men looked at each other. Kerr shrugged. “Yeah, maybe you’re right, Collingwood,” he said. “Janie didn’t much like the idea, anyway.” He turned on his heel crossed the gravel walkway into the terminal, and never looked back. Max could only guess who Janie was.
Max came from a family of combat pilots. Collingwoods had flown over Baghdad and Hanoi. They’d been with the USS Hornet in the Pacific and with the RAF in the spring of 1940. The family name appears on the 1918 roster of the Ringed Hat squadron.
Max was the exception. He had no taste for military life or for the prospect of getting shot at. His father, Colonel Maxwell E. Collingwood, USAF (retired), to his credit, tried to hide his disappointment in his only son. But it was there nonetheless, and Max had, on more than one occasion, overheard him wondering aloud to Max’s mother whether there was anything at all to genetics.
The remark was prompted by the fact that young Max should have been loaded from both sides of the barrel, so to speak. His mother was Molly Gregory, a former Israeli helicopter pilot, who during the Six-Day War had earned her nickname, Molly Glory, by returning fire at shore batteries during the rescue of a crippled gunboat.
Molly had encouraged him to stay away from the military, and he could not help reading her satisfaction that her son would not deliberately put himself in harm’s way. Her approval under those circumstances, ironically, had hurt him. But Max enjoyed being alive. He enjoyed the play of the senses, he loved the companionship of attractive women, and he had learned to appreciate the simpler pleasures of snowstorms and sunsets. He expected to have only one clear shot at the assorted joys of living, and he had no intention of risking it to meet someone else’s misconceived expectations. Max would take care of Max.
If he’d had any doubts about his character, his suspicions had been confirmed by an incident at Fort Collins when he was twenty-two. He had taken a job flying cargo and passengers to Denver and Colorado Springs for Wildcat Airlines. On a cold mid-November afternoon he had been inspecting his twin-engine Arapaho, standing under one wing with a clipboard, when a commuter flight came in. He never knew what had drawn his attention to the flight, but he paused to watch the plane touch down. The sun was still well above the mountains, the plane a blue-and-white twin-engine Bolo. It rolled down the runway, and he saw the face of a little girl, brown curls, big smile, in the right-hand forward window. The plane slowed and was approaching the terminal when, with only a brief wisp of black smoke as a warning, the port engine burst into flames.
Horrified, Max had started forward. A fuel line must have burst, because the fire roared across the wing and engulfed the cockpit before the pilot had time to react. The little girl with the smile did not even seem to know what was happening.
Someone in a white shirt, with his tie loosened, burst from the terminal and charged the plane. But he was too far away. The fire roared over the fuel tanks. Max had taken only a few steps before he realized it was hopeless. He stopped, waiting for the explosion, knowing it was already too late, almost wishing the blast would come and end it.
The little girl had been watching him, and now she saw the fire. Her expression changed, and she looked back at Max.
Max never forgot those eyes. Then the man with the tie bolted past, his shoes making clacking sounds on the concrete, and Max called after him that he would get killed. He got to the plane, fought the door open, and went inside. Still the girl stared at Max. Then hands drew her away from the window.
And in that moment it went.
The aircraft erupted in a fireball. The blast of heat rolled over him as he fell face down on the apron.
Max had found out who he was.
People rarely recognize the significant moments of their lives without the assistance of hindsight. A trip downtown to buy a book results in a chance meeting that ends at the altar. A late taxi leaves one stranded with a fellow traveler who becomes a friend and who, two years later, offers a career move. You never know.
Max had experienced a turning point shortly after the incident at Fort Collins, when a weekend of planned seduction went wrong and he found himself with nothing to do on an otherwise pleasant spring Sunday. Friends persuaded him to attend a warbirds air show, and he met Tom Lasker and his Avenger torpedo bomber.
Lasker was a flying farmer with several thousand acres up on the border. He had just purchased the Avenger at an auction and was having second thoughts when Max, looking for a lunch partner, came upon him and saw first the plane and then the big weather-beaten man seated beside it, staring at it, his wooden chair turned backward, his rough features creased with concern.
The Avenger was battered; it sagged, and its paint was flaking off. But something about it touched Max. He was a romantic at heart, and the Avenger was pure history, lethal and lovely and in trouble. It was his first intersection with an antique warplane. And it changed his life forever.
“It could use some work,” Max had told him.
Lasker spoke to the plane. “I think I got carried away,” he said.
Which is how Max got into the antique plane business. He cut a deal and spent the next few weeks restoring the Avenger. He subcontracted to replace the engine and tighten up the hydraulics. He installed state-of-the-art electronics, applied fresh gray paint to the aircraft, and gave it a new set of insignia. Battle stars gleamed on its fuselage and wings, and he drew a crowd when he flew it into Fort Moxie to turn it over to its owner.
That had been a reluctant transfer. Lasker was pleased with the results and handed Max a generous bonus. His wife, Ginny, came with him, and she was ecstatic when she saw what he had done. That earned Ginny a permanent place in Max’s affections. She posed in front of the plane and insisted on going for a ride. Lasker had taken her up and circled the town for a half-hour, buzzing the water tower, while Max waited in the office. When they came back, they all went out to the farm, and Ginny laid out a roast-beef dinner. They drank and talked long into the night, and Max slept in the guest room, as he would do many more times.
Max had been restoring antique warbirds ever since.
The colonel and Molly Glory had both approved.
Max cruised down through cloud decks in the early evening toward Chellis Field outside Fargo. The P—38 felt good, felt damn out of this world. But he had lost the high bid, and the company would have to begin the process of a sale all over again. It was unlikely he would do as well next time.
Still, Max thought of himself as more of an artist than a businessman. His art was incorporated with power and flight as well as with cockpit design and battle emblems. Sundown’s warbirds were not intended to rust on someone’s lawn. (He didn’t even like museums very much, but at least there people could admire the old aircraft for what they had been.)
Well, what the hell. Maybe he would take a beating, but for tonight he was back at the controls of the Lightning.
He’d installed modern navigational systems, of course, and he rode his directional beam in and lined up with the runway. At the three-mile mark the aircraft was at five hundred feet. He reduced throttle and dropped flaps. Indicator lamps blinked on to signal that his wheels were down. The field lights rose toward him. Gently he pushed the yoke forward. Off to his left, ground traffic was moving along Plains Avenue. Just over the tarmac he cut throttle and pulled the nose up. The plane drifted in, and his wheels touched.
Sundown Aviation had its own hangar, which also housed its business offices. He brought the P—38 around, opened the doors with his remote, and rolled inside. There were a couple of other aircraft here that the company was currently working on: a North American P—51 Mustang, which was headed for the Smithsonian, and a Republic P—47 Thunderbolt. The Thunderbolt was owned by an Arizona TV executive.
He shut the Lightning down and climbed out, grinning, picturing how his mechanic would react in the morning when he walked in and saw that the Lightning was back. Moments later he was in his office. Stell had left the coffee machine on. He poured a cup and eased himself down behind his desk.
There were a couple of calls on the machine. One was from a parts supplier; the other was from Ginny Lasker.
“Max,” her recorded voice said, “please call when you can.”
Her voice had a tightness to it. He could almost think she sounded frightened. He picked up the phone but put it down when he heard the outer door open.
Ceil Braddock smiled at him from the doorway. “Hi, Max.” She looked at him curiously. “What happened? Deal fall through?”
Ceil was the owner and sole pilot of Thor Air Cargo, which was also based at Chellis. She had riveting blue eyes, lush brown hair, a wistful smile, and a TWA navigator in St. Paul. Max had tried his luck, but she’d kept him at arm’s length. They were able to joke about it occasionally. “You don’t love me,” she told him, “you love Betsy.” Betsy was a C-47 that Sundown had sold her three years earlier. It had become Thor’s flagship, hauling freight around the United States and Canada. There were two other planes in the fleet now, and she was negotiating for a fourth.
Ceil flew Betsy occasionally at air shows, and she and Max had even used it to do a joint good deed. On this past New Year’s Day a blizzard had buried the Fargo area. There had been more emergencies than there were medevac teams, and a boy who’d taken part of his hand off with an electric saw was in desperate shape on a remote farm. They had attached the skis and flown the C—47 to Pelican Rapids. They’d landed east of the town on a frozen lake, picked up the boy, and brought him back to Fargo, where doctors reattached the hand.
Max smiled. “She was too good for him,” he said.
She looked pleased. Max knew that his tendency to be protective of the planes was one of the features she most liked in him. “What happened?”
“I didn’t like him much.”
She picked up a cup and filled it. “We’re talking a lot of money here. There must have been more to it than that.”
“That’s it,” he said. “Listen, there are plenty of people out there who would kill to own that plane. I don’t have to take the first offer.”
“I doubt many of them will have Kerr’s money to throw around.”
There were times when Max almost thought he had a chance with her. He’d stopped beating himself up over her a year ago. “Maybe not.” He shrugged. “Probably not.”
She sat down across from him, tasted the coffee, and made a face. “You need some fresh brew.”
He looked at her. “You’re working late.”
“Headed for Jacksonville tomorrow.”
That would be the annual open house at Cecil Field air show. He understood she’d been inspecting the C—47. “Everything all right?” he asked.
“Five by.” She got up, put the cup down. “Gotta go.”
He nodded. “See you whenever.”
She looked at him for a long moment and then withdrew. He listened to the outer door open, heard it close.
Damn.
He punched the speed-dial button for the Laskers and listened to the phone ring on the other end. Ginny picked it up. “Hello?”
“Hi, Ginny. What’s wrong? You okay?”
“Yes. Thanks for calling, Max.” The hint of unease was still there. “I’m alright.” She hesitated. “But there’s something strange happening.”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t have bothered you, but Tom’s gone to Titusville and I haven’t been able to contact him.”
“Why do you need him? What’s going on?”
“Do you know about the boat we found here?”
“Boat? No. Found where?”
“Here. On the farm.”
Max visualized the big wheat farm, acres and acres of flat land. “I’m sorry, Ginny. I’m not sure I understand.”
“We found a boat, Max. Dug it up. It was buried. Hidden.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Max, I’m not talking about a rowboat here. This thing’s a yacht. It’s been on TV.”
“I guess I haven’t been paying much attention.”
“Reason I called, I looked out the window earlier this evening and saw lights in the barn. It’s the boat.”
“The boat is lit up?”
“Yes. The boat is lit up.”
“So somebody went in and turned the lights on? Is that what you’re saying?”
“The barn’s locked. I don’t think the boat’s been touched. I think the lights came on by themselves. They’re running lights, long green lamps set in the bow.”
Max still wasn’t sure he understood. “Who buried the boat?”
“We don’t know, Max. As far as we can tell, nobody. At least, nobody recently.” Her voice shook.
“You want me to come out?” She hesitated, and that was enough. “I’m on my way,” he said.
“Thanks.” She sounded better already. “I’ll have Will meet you at the airport.”