If the turbo wasn't going after the latest souped-up Hound Dogs or Razorbacks or Mules, it didn't have much point. It carried enough firepower to make a fair ground-attack aircraft, but only a fair one: it went so fast and covered so much ground, it couldn't linger and really work over a target. It had bomb racks, but using it as a fighter-bomber struck Moss as the equivalent of using a thoroughbred to pull a brewery wagon. Sure, you could do it, but other critters were better suited to the job.
And so he wished the United States had come up with it a year and a half earlier. It would have swept Confederate aircraft from the skies. As things worked out, enemy airplanes were few and far between anyhow, but getting them that way had taken a lot longer and cost a lot more.
His pulse quickened when he spotted a pair of Hound Dogs well below him. The newest Confederate aircraft got a performance boost by squirting wood alcohol into the fuel mix. They were a match for any U.S. piston-engined fighter. They weren't a match for a turbo-not even close.
He gave the fighter more throttle and pushed the stick forward. As he dove, he wondered what kind of pilots sat in those cockpits. These days, the Confederates had two types left: kids just out of flight school who might be good once they got some experience but didn't have it yet, and veterans who'd lived through everything the USA could throw at them and who'd be dangerous flying a two-decker left over from the last war.
The way these guys stuck together, leader and wingman, told him right away that they'd been through the mill. So did the speed with which they spotted him. And so did the tight turns into which they threw their aircraft. The one thing a turbo couldn't do was dogfight a Hound Dog. You'd get in trouble if you tried. They'd turn inside you and get on your tail in nothing flat.
Even if they did, they wouldn't stay there long. In a turbo, you could run away from anything in the world except another turbo.
Moss climbed again for a new pass. The Hound Dogs dove for the deck. He followed them down, smiling when his airspeed indicator climbed over 500. No piston job could touch that, not even diving for all it was worth.
They knew he was after them, all right. They stuck together all the same. Yes, they'd been flying together awhile, or more than awhile. He had to guess which way they'd break when he got close. He chose right, and that was right. They started to turn so they could shoot back at him, but his thumb had already come down on the firing button atop the stick.
When the cannon boomed, pieces flew from the C.S. wingman's Hound Dog. The pilot struggled for control and lost. The fighter spun toward the ground. The pilot wouldn't have an easy time bailing out.
Meanwhile, though, the leader was shooting at Moss. Well, he was trying to: your sights wouldn't let you lead a turbo airplane. It just flew too fast. The leader's tracers went behind the turbo as it zipped past him.
Swinging through as tight a turn as he could make, Moss came back at the C.S. fighter. The Hound Dog didn't want any more of him. Its pilot wanted nothing more than to escape. And he did, too, getting down to treetop height and dodging and jinking in a way Moss couldn't hope to match.
'All right, buddy-I'll see you some other time.' Inside his cockpit, Moss sketched a salute. That was a good flyer over there on the other side. Yeah, he was a Confederate son of a bitch, but he made one hell of a pilot.
Time to break off, then. When Moss pulled back on the stick, the turbo seemed to climb hand over hand. No prop job could come close to matching that performance. You had to trade speed for height, but the turbo had so much speed that it sacrificed much less than a Hound Dog or similar U.S. fighter. If Moss could have seen this in 1914…
He'd flown a two-decker pusher when the Great War broke out. That was the only way anyone had figured out to get a machine gun firing straight ahead. No interrupter gear to fire through the spinning prop, not yet. Moss laughed. That technology was turning obsolete right before his eyes.
He hadn't had a wireless in his pusher, either. He hadn't had an enclosed cockpit, let alone oxygen. He hadn't worn a parachute. If he went down, he was a dead duck. And, with an airplane made of wood and canvas and glue and wire, with an engine almost aggressively unreliable, plenty of those early airplanes did go down, even with no enemies within miles.
He laughed once more. Now he sat behind sheet metal and bulletproof glass in an armored seat. He could fly more than twice as high as that pusher could have gone. But he still flew, or flew again, with aggressively unreliable engines. Maybe he could bail out now if they went south on him. On the other hand, maybe he couldn't.
Finding the airstrip from which he'd taken off was another adventure. Just any old field wouldn't do. The turbo had a high takeoff and landing speed. It needed a lot of runway. One that was fine for prop jobs likely wouldn't let him land.
Instead of the base, he spotted another airplane: a Confederate Grasshopper buzzing along over U.S. territory to see what it could see. Grasshoppers were marvelous little machines. They could hover in a strong headwind and land or take off in next to nothing. For artillery spotting or taking out casualties or sneaking in spies or saboteurs, they couldn't be beat. Moss knew that several captured specimens were wearing the U.S. eagle over crossed swords instead of the Confederate battle flag.
The guy in this one saw him coming before he got close enough to fire. It scooted out of the way with a turn no honest fighter could match. Try to shoot down a Grasshopper whose pilot knew you were there and you'd end up talking to yourself. It was like trying to kill a butterfly with an axe.
More for the hell of it than any other reason, Moss made another pass. With effortless ease, the Grasshopper evaded him again. He didn't even bother opening fire. And the observer in the back of the light airplane's cockpit squeezed off a burst at him with his pintle-mounted machine gun. None of the tracers came close, but the defiant nose-thumbing-it couldn't be anything else-tickled Moss' funny bone. He would have had a better chance against the Grasshopper in his 1914 Curtiss pusher than he did in a Screaming Eagle.
He made it back to the airfield and eased the turbo down to the ground. You had to land gently. The nosewheel was less sturdy than it should have been; sometimes it would break off if you came down on it too hard. The first couple of pilots who'd discovered that would never learn anything else now.
'How'd it go?' a groundcrew man asked as Moss climbed down from the cockpit.
'Nailed a Hound Dog,' he answered. The groundcrew techs cheered. Somebody pounded him on the back. He went on, 'His buddy dove for the deck and got away-bastard was good. And I made a couple of runs at a Grasshopper, but ffft!' He squeezed his thumb and forefinger together, miming a watermelon seed squirting out between them.
'Take an even strain, Colonel,' a groundcrew man said. 'Those suckers'll drive you bugshit.' The others also made sympathetic noises.
'How'd she perform?' another tech asked.
'Everything went fine this time around.' Moss banged a fist off the side of his head in lieu of knocking wood. 'Engines sounded good, gauges looked good all the way through, guns behaved themselves, nosewheel wasn't naughty.' He turned to eye it. There it was, all right, looking as innocent as if its kind never, ever misbehaved. No matter how innocent it looked, he knew better.
Leaving the Screaming Eagle to the men who fed and watered it, he walked over to the headquarters tent to report more formally. His flight suit kept him warm up over thirty thousand feet. Here in the muggy warmth of Georgia spring, he felt as if it were steaming him.
Colonel Roy Wyden ran the turbo squadron. He was a boy wonder, just past thirty, with the ribbons for a Distinguished Service Cross and a Bronze Star among the fruit salad on his chest. When Moss told him he'd knocked down a C.S. fighter, Wyden reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a bottle and two glasses. He poured a couple of knocks of good Tennessee sipping whiskey-spoil of war-and said, 'Way to go.'
'Thank you, sir.' Moss tasted the drink and added, 'Thank you, sir.' Wyden grinned at him-and seemed even younger. Moss went on, 'I went after a Grasshopper, too, but he got away a lot easier than the Hound Dog's buddy.'
'Those goddamn things. There ought to be a bounty on 'em,' Wyden said. 'A Screaming Eagle isn't exactly the weapon of choice against them, either.'
'Tell me about it!' Moss exclaimed. 'He fired at me. I never laid a glove on him. He's back there somewhere laughing his ass off.'
'They'll drive you to drink, all right.' As if to prove it, Wyden sipped from his own whiskey. He glanced over to Moss. 'Does that Hound Dog make you an ace in both wars?'
'No, sir. I made it the first time, but I've only got three this round,' Moss said. 'I spent too damn long on the
