Front Lines (Front Lines #1)(60)
“You’re becoming cynical.”
“Or realistic.”
A perverse part of her wants to tell Strand about seeing the Stamp Man, but that would just make him worry, and what’s the point in that? Besides, this is supposed to be fun.
They reach the airfield, which is nothing but three battered old biplanes parked on a dusty field. There’s a cylindrical fuel tank standing aboveground on a rusted iron platform, surrounded by brand-new barbed wire. And there is a large tin shed that is the field’s closest approximation of a hangar. A triangular flag on a pole rustles fitfully, suggesting the breeze is out of the west. Strand points to a plane painted yellow. Written in uneven script along the fuselage is Braxton Air Service.
“That’s ours, and that is the whole of Braxton Air Service. But my uncle has ambitions, you know, or had, anyway. He’s a bit at loose ends now.”
They park the bikes on a grassy spot with bare cover provided by two tall palm trees. Each time the breeze blows the palm trees sway, causing them to be alternately in cool shade and brilliant sun. They spread the tablecloth and set down the picnic basket. But Rio is more fascinated by the plane than she is hungry and, after a few minutes’ rest, heads toward it, confident that Strand will follow.
“I’m afraid I may have misled your mother,” Strand says, wincing. “I didn’t lie, I was careful not to, when she asked about the cockpit. The Jennies do have two cockpits; however, my uncle has adapted the passenger cockpit to carry the insecticide tank for spraying. So I’m afraid there’s just the one cockpit, and we’ll have to squeeze in together.”
“Oh, indeed?” Rio says archly.
“Unless you’d rather not.”
There is no safe and proper way to answer that directly. The fact is that so much physical contact would be just the sort of thing to give Millie Richlin fits.
Up close the Jenny is a fragile-looking thing with the upper wing longer than the lower, a wooden frame with fabric stretched and lacquered to form the surfaces. The propeller is polished wood, and the top of the engine and its muffler stick rudely out of the cowling.
“It’s not exactly a P-38,” Strand admits. “But there’s the advantage that I actually know how to fly this one.”
“How is it different?”
“Well, for one thing, this engine here will be lucky to hit one hundred and twelve horsepower, while the P-38 has two engines with thirty-two hundred horsepower total and a ceiling of almost forty-five thousand feet, whereas this old girl will be struggling at half a mile.”
“Forty-five thousand feet! That’s eight miles up. Why do you want to be eight miles up?”
“Because that’s where the German bombers fly. Of course they’re much lower when they drop bombs—you can’t hit anything from eight miles up. The idea is to ride that P-38 up there and wait until you see a nice fat Heinkel or Junker poking along a mile below you as it comes in for a bomb run. Then you come swooping down, guns blazing.”
There are of course accompanying hand gestures. And even a sound effect: taka-taka-taka-taka!
“Is that what you’ll be doing?”
He shrugs. “I’d like to fly a fighter, the P-38, or the P-40, if I have the stuff for it. Otherwise, I guess if I don’t wash out altogether, I’ll be driving a bus: a B-24 or B-17. Bombers.”
He indicates the hard spots where it is safe to place her feet. Rio climbs cautiously and slides into the snug, wood-ringed space with its handful of gauges and knobs.
Strand leans over her and shows her the throttle and choke. “We’ll just set these . . . All right, that should do it. I’m going to go start her up. All you have to do is push this in about halfway once I give you the sign. Oh, and don’t fly it away.”
Rio raises her hands. “I won’t touch a thing except . . . whatever that is.”
Strand walks around the wings to the propeller. He turns it slowly by hand a couple of times, pumping fuel to the cylinders. Then he swings the propeller hard.
The engine sputters and sputters some more, then catches and chugs along, sounding very much like any average car with a bad muffler. The propeller spins until it is just a faint blur and Rio feels the wind of it on her face.
Strand climbs up and awkwardly wedges himself behind her. Her back is against his chest, and her bottom is pressed back against something she doesn’t want to think about at the moment, though thanks to her famous latrine raid she has a far-too-clear picture in her mind. Strand’s arms reach around her and his long legs twine through hers to reach the pedals. His camera is on her lap, and all in all there is scarcely room to take a deep breath.
She pulls on the goggles he gives her, and they are off, bouncing across the grass, picking up speed. Ten miles an hour. Twenty. Thirty.
The engine roars to a higher pitch, though it still seems pitifully unlikely to enable actual flight, and yet suddenly the bouncing is gone, the wheels spin in air, and they are aloft.
Rio looks over the side, wind whipping her hair and making her cheeks vibrate. The ground falls away, trees shrink to become bushes, a tractor looks like a toy, cows are reduced to black-and-white mice.
“I’m flying!” Rio exults.
“Is this your first time up?” Strand says. His mouth is quite near her ear, and she can hear him clearly. She can also feel the rise and fall of his every breath, and even, when she focuses her attention, the beat of his heart.