 2. Paul Ritter beat on the sides of the cockpit of his HE 51. The Messerschmitts were too fast to be able to escort him home. Short-winded thoroughbreds, they would run out of fuel turning endless circles over his poky crippled crate, trying to travel as slow as he did. And he could not follow them up where they were. The MEs disappeared over the foothills. Paul nudged the throttle, trying to coax a few more meters of altitude from his Heinkel but it shook vehemently, threatening to rip the engine off its mounts. He throttled back. Present altitude would have to do. A piece of the prop was gone. He could see a darkened spot in the blur of its disk. The lopsided churning made his teeth clatter together and shook him to his bones. A loosened strut began to knock. He considered baling out. But he had been told his first day in Spain: Do not, do NOT put down behind the enemy line. Civil war was not like other wars. Spain's struggle was an evil internecine slaughter with all the horror and viciousness of violence within a family. "Remember all the stories you heard of knights and courtly aerial combat of the Great War? Forget them." And they told him a tale of a Russian baled out over Madrid, who was mistaken for a German. The Reds stomped him to death. Paul decided to try to fly home. He noted which way the MEs had gone. Their base was at Lanaja. His own base at Sarinena would be in the same general direction. How to get around the foothills was the problem, because he was not getting over them. He pulled his map out of his boot, spread it on his knee. Dog-eared paper fluttered in the open air. He wiped sooty black glaze from his goggles and studied the landmarks. There's the mountain. There are the rivers. Behind him, the Cinca branched off to the north. Off his port side, the Alcandre snaked toward the lowering sun. The Alcandre river valley would take him around the high land. He stuffed the map next to his chest, under the harness straps. I know where I am. He turned his crippled ship gently toward the river. Alone on the wind with his tattered wings, without the Rata sniping at him, the danger and isolation took on a perverse sense of fun. Normally Paul Ritter could fly in his sleep. Now simply staying aloft was a challenge. It was comical how hurt this poor bird was, and yet he remained unscathed. The Rata seemed to have hit everything but Paul. He felt more relief than peril, even as the bucking HE 51 was shaking apart. He had to admire the bi-planes ability to take abuse. At last he spotted the railroad. God invented railroads for pilots to find their way. And just this side of the tracks lay the airfield so recently come into Nationalist hands. As recently as March, Sarinena had been a Red air base. All the bomb craters there, the scrap piles of ruined Red machinery, all the strafing stitching up the ground, all that was German work. When April came, the front advanced, and those were German airplanes hiding under the silvery green olive boughs at the field's edge. The other Heinkels were already down and clear of the landing strip. Good. I'll need all the room. Paul let his altitude slip. Had to estimate this just right. There would be no second chance. He reached for his Very pistol to fire a warning, but felt something wet on his legs. Oil? His blood chilled at the thought of sparks. He put the Very pistol away. He could see people now, coming out and pointing at him. No one was shooting, so they knew who he was despite his failure to circle and flash is recognition markings. Everyone was keeping well back from the landing strip. I must look like the flying dead. As he descended, losing speed, there reached him a smell he had been able to ignore so long as it was snatched away by the wind. Fumes from a slow leak of something. He glanced at his madly jiggling gauges. The engine temperature had soared. His boots were slippery on the rudder pedals. He could not bring himself to look down. Something hot had drenched his legs. Great white clouds hissed from his engine. The prop shoveled thick billows of it into the cockpit from the port side. Paul leaned out the starboard to see the field. Caught a mouthful of white vapor as he inhaled. Gagged on foul taste of glycol. He heard a crackle and could not see his engine for the smoke. Heart to ice. Skin to Quills. Burning smell. It was far too late to jump. If there was a fire, he was jumping anyway. The HE 51 lost stability at low speed. The lurching spinner threw off what balance he had. Tension came and went on the control column, leaving Paul only the broadest control over the ailerons. They tensed and slacked with the wings flexing. The port wing dipped. He corrected. Was suddenly over-correcting. Swung. Righted. Looked ahead. Short. He was going to be short, dropping too fast. Olive trees blocked his path. A net of twisted boughs reached up to snare him. White-knuckled on the throttle, Paul pushed forward, brought on a wild, heavy hammering, a dying mechanical squeal. The airplane bobbed up, cleared the olive trees. And tongues of flame shot up from the other side of the firewall, fluttered back at him. He cut the engine. The HE glided a moment, stalled bare meters from the ground. The tail dropped first, mashed down, thudded forward. Its spatted legs folded with bone-jarring jolt and screech of tearing aluminum. The HE pitched forward, planted its flat nose in the ground. Paul pulled his feet off the pedals, jerked his knees up, threw his arms round his head as metal crushed inward at him. Momentum carried the HE onward. The heavy engine plowed into the dirt, skidded sideways, tipped, slammed onto its side. Spars folded with resounding thundercracks. Wings jutted up at the grotesque angles of a squashed dragonfly. The instant all came to a stop, Paul was unstrapped. He reached his hands up to his mechanic who miraculously appeared over him, a guardian angel with the rounded shape of a great bear. Otto's heavy paws grasped Paul's reaching arms hard enough to bruise and pulled him up from the cockpit. The two men teetered on the edge of the canted fuselage, then bounded down to earth just as flames jumped the firewall. The wood-framed wings caught like tinder. Fabric blackened and shrank off the steel tube skeleton of the fuselage and curled into black crisps that floated away on the heated rising air. Brown and green camouflage paint blistered from the silvery metal cowling and peeled back like withering skin. Pauls knees buckled. The ground would not stand still beneath him. He staggered up to regain his footing. He had not realized he was vibrating. He ripped off his goggles. They left red marks imprinted on his flushed face. He threw his leather helmet on the ground, and screamed at the bi-plane, "Burn, you obsolete piece of shit!" He heard his own voice from within his head, as if his ears were stuffed with cotton. He pulled at his wet, sticking trouser legs. He was surprised to see they were not black. The wetness was glycol, not oil. The airplane had pissed all over him. The feeling was decidedly mutual. Tears. I don't cry. He gave a furtive glance about to see who was watching. Everybody. He turned away lest someone mistake why he was crying. Not for fear. Not hurt. He was so angry and humiliated. The damned Soviet rat had embarrassed him. While Spain watched. The world watched. Spain's skies were Germany's proving ground. How could a brand new air force be so outdated? He roared into the fire, "You were born obsolete!" Even the Italians had better machines than this. Bi-planes, yes, but better bi-planes. The Italian Fiats were faster, heavier, and their Breda machine guns packed a bigger kick than his MGs. The Fiat could hold its own against a Russian Rata. The HE 51s had been sent to Spain to protect the Nationalist bombers. But even before the arrival of the Messerschmitts, the HE 51s had been reduced to depending on the bombers machine guns to protect them. And slow? Paul had been outrun by a Republican transport. A big DC-2 three or four times his weight had brazenly crossed into Nationalist territory and just walked away from him as he gave chase. He in a German fighter and he could not catch a goddam transport. The HE 51 was a model of stifling orthodoxy. It was the product of rearward thinking. Some old man thought you needed to feel the wind of an open cockpit to know what you were doing in the sky, and that you needed two planes to maneuver. That way was best. It probably had been best once upon a time. But a funny thing about the quality of best -- Paul had never known it to sit still in anyone's trophy case. What Paul would not give to have the best, for as long as it was every given to anyone, to be supreme in the sky like an eagle among lesser birds. Footsteps closed behind him at an assured stride. Paul knew him without turning. Though all pilots walked with variations on a strut, this tread belonged to the staffelkapitan, Johann Lowenstamm. This man, thought Paul, was perfect. Lowe was never afraid. Lowe's iron nerve ran solid to the core. Paul turned his tear-streaked face away toward the fire, afraid what Lowe would think of him. The commander came to a halt alongside Paul. Smelled of Spanish hair oil and tobacco. Quiet energy radiated from Lowe, even just standing there with his hands clasped behind his back. Johann Lowenstamm was not a big man, but he was still imposing. His sheer presence was gigantic. Lowe spoke. "Are you hurt?" Paul shook his head. "No." He wiped his sleeve across his face, smeared grease and grit across the pale clean mask his goggles had left behind. Lowe looked critically at the burning airplane. "What'd you lose? Elevators?" Paul nodded. Elevators. Prop. Stay. Strut. Glycol. My squadron. My pride. The fire popped. The blackmen shoveling dirt on the flames all took a step back. A flare rocketed up from the blaze in a red arc. Oh shit, my Very pistol. "Guns?" said Lowe, wondering if they ought not be taking cover. "Empty," said Paul. He sniffled. Another tear escaped, tracked a telltale streak down his dirty face. He was about to insist he was not afraid, but you did not have to explain things to Lowe. Johann Lowenstamm was the ideal leader, the consummate hunter, ferocious and charming, exuberant, daring. He was clean-shaven, wore his dark blond hair combed straight back from his broad brow. He was handsome except for the dimpled scar over one cheekbone where he had taken a hockey stick. The other guy lost teeth. Blue eyes looked straight at you. His fair skin was always tanned because he was never indoors. A lion is not a domestic animal he would say. Lowe had turned the obsolescent HE 51s back into a useful part of the Legion. They carried bombs now, and delivered them in low flying relays. Chains -- cadenas the Spanish called them. The cadenas had become the terror of the Red ground troops. So successful were the HE 51s in their new close support role that they were coming straight from the factory now with bomb racks already installed. To Paul the bomb racks were an admission of failure. The HE 51 had failed fightership. Lowe beckoned, "Come back in." He turned toward operations. Paul backed away from the ruins of his aircraft. Through the wavering curtain of air that shimmered over the fire he could see a face on the other side, frowning, a slight crease pinched in the brow -- a Spanish laborer leaning on his shovel, not moving, just watching. This Spaniard had seen the German pilot scuttle out of his airplane like a beetle out of a lighted log. Paul could see the mind working behind the pinched face, judging, wondering if the Fascists hadn't chosen the wrong ally. God damn you. Paul turned to follow the staffelkapitan, caught up with him in a few running steps. The rest of the squadron had collected outside of the operations room. They hailed Paul's approach, a couple of them applauding ironically. "My God, he walked away from it." "Capital crash, Ritter." "Nice landing," said one, sincerely. Paul gave a loose throwaway salute to acknowledge all of it. Lowe's hand landed on the nape of his neck, pushed him ahead into operations. "Inside. All of you." Inside, Paul noticed they were still one short. Gunter was not here. Lowe shut the door. He told Paul, "Glad you made it," then lit into all of them for not maintaining the defensive circle. He bellowed at Paul, "Where is Gunter!" Paul had been glued to Gunter's tail. He not seen what happened to Gunter after he realized that Gunter was not part of the circle. Not my fault, he did not say. You did not say that to Lowe. When a group strategy broke down, all were at fault. Paul was supposed to have Gunter's tail. A Rata had Paul's. Everyone was looking at Paul. In the closed room, the reek of glycol was becoming pungent, an aura of it radiating from him in strong waves. It was soaked in his clothes and would not air dry. Wet, stinking, and holding the wrong answer, Paul said, "I don't know, Herr Oberleutnant." Lowe exploded. His fair face turned livid, the dimpled scar on his cheek standing out white. He had a pencil in his hand, and he stabbed holes in the map as he railed at all of them, telling them where they were supposed to have been and what they were supposed to have done. He rounded on the telephone operator, demanded, "Do we have a telephone yet!" Communications links sometimes lagged behind the fast advancing front, and there were always saboteurs. The telephone rang. So relieved to be able to answer his commander's wrath with something other than I'm sorry, mein Herr, the operator sang out, "Got it!" And he snatched up the receiver. It was Lanaja field calling. The Messerschmitts had located Gunter. He was dead on the mountainside. |