He was shouldering his sling canvas duffel, fat as a sailor’s and long enough to stuff a body. He swung it off for presentation. “My gear. Where does it go?”
“It doesn’t. Not with us.”
“I’m going to need this in Tibet.”
Calloway swung open the door of a compartment behind her own seat. “You’re not getting to Tibet unless we carry these.” Three petrol canisters took up most of the space. “The Corsair’s maximum range is less than seven hundred miles. We’ve got two refueling spots, but we’ll have to put down and top off with these on the leg to Lhasa.”
“Then we need a bigger plane.”
“We don’t have a bigger plane, unless you packed one in that duffel.”
He frowned. “I miss the Clipper.”
“I miss flying by myself. What’s in there, anyway?”
Reluctantly, he handed her the bag, which bent her over with its weight. “You’re kidding, right?” She dropped it on the hangar dirt and began pulling the contents out. “No, no, no.” Shirts, underwear, trousers, and jackets were tossed to one side. So were extra boots, binoculars, compass, canteen, and sleeping bag.
“What are you doing?”
“Curbing weight and space. Here.” She picked out a sweater and threw it to him. “It will get cold past Chengdu. The rest is too bulky. What’s this?” She held up a bottle of single-malt scotch, Glenfiddich, which Sir Arthur had recommended.
“Replenishment.”
“Weight.” She tossed and it shattered.
“That’s twenty-year-old scotch!” She was a madwoman.
“The monks don’t need it and neither do we. And what’s this?” She pulled out two guns by the stock, a. 12- gauge shotgun and a Winchester Model 70 hunting rifle with scope. “Jesus Lord. Going hunting again?”
“In a manner of speaking. Those we do bring.”
“No room, college boy.”
“I’ve already been strafed on this trip.”
“No room.”
“You carry a pistol.”
“And so do you. We’ve no room for long guns.”
“They go in the cockpit with me. We’ll leave you behind if we have to.”
She put her hands on her hips. “You’re going to fly this plane by yourself?”
He looked her up and down. “How hard can it be?”
The insult won a smirk, her first concession of respect. She nodded reluctantly. “You bring a Zero down with one of these and I’ll be impressed. So let’s do a trade for these guns. Something else has to go.” She stepped up on the wing, reached into his cockpit, and hauled out a pack and harness. “This will give you more room, and incentive to aim true.”
“What’s that?”
“Your parachute. We’ll leave it here.”
“Great. What are you bringing?”
“The clothes I’m wearing, a box of tools, and chewing gum. And my parachute, since I travel light. You got money?”
“Chinese gold.”
“Don’t show it. Use a money belt. But you can buy robes and boots in Tibet for pennies on the dollar. Guns, too, I imagine.”
“I like my own.”
She gave him a leather flying hood, goggles, and white silk scarf. “Bugs and grit can hit like bullets when you fly. The scarf is to prevent chafing when you crane your neck. I want you looking for Japs the first hundred miles. When you get to the Potala Palace you can give it to the regent. Trading scarves is custom in Tibet; they call the scarf a khata. Now, be useful. You can turn the prop.”
“We are in the Dark Ages.”
“Don’t do it until you get my signal. And step backward once it spins. I don’t want hamburger all over my plane.”
The engine roared to life, spitting a plume of black smoke. The propeller turned into a blur. He walked around the biplane wings to look at what the aviatrix was doing. Inside her cockpit was a stick, a pair of foot pedals, and a throttle. He would fly, if he had to.
“Here, use this!” she shouted over the roar of the engine. It was a jar of Vaseline she was smearing on her checks. “Fights windburn. Tibetan herders use red cream made from whey, but it stinks like hell and makes them look like demons.”
He smeared his face, climbed up on the lower wing, and swung himself into his cockpit. Even with the parachute gone, it was a tight fit with his firearms. Their barrels pointed up, rattling with the vibration.
Beth pushed the silver throttle and the biplane shuddered and began to move. Then she used the rudder pedals to turn and soon they were bouncing down the dirt runway. The engine roared, climbing toward a whine, and they raced, skipping now. Then a pull of the joystick and they lumbered into the air, a posse of Chinese children running after them and waving.
Could have carried another fifty pounds, Hood thought sourly, but his spirits lifted with the plane. Maybe he could still catch Raeder. Houses turned to toys below. People became insects. He settled back for the ride. It was too noisy to talk.
The view was panoramic, the wind bracing, and the experience entirely different from the Clipper. He felt as farsighted as a bird. China became a green quilt buttoned with tile and thatch roofs. They skimmed just a few hundred feet above, peasants pausing to peer up at them. Behind, on the horizon, plumes of smoke rose from the Sino-Japanese front.
Hood did spot the wink of sun on a plane back toward the war, so as precaution he took up his rifle, opened the bolt, and slid in a shell. He turned half around, resting the barrel on the rim of the cockpit.
Calloway pushed it aside. “Idiot!” she shouted. “You’ll take my head off before you hit something going three hundred miles an hour! I was joking about downing a Zero. Put it away!”
He saluted but rested the butt of his Winchester on the floor of his cockpit again, safety set, one hand on its stock. If a fighter came near him again, he was going down shooting.
The Yangtze was a broad silt road, third-longest river in the world. As they flew east the land grew hillier, China a hazed, rolling ocean. Everything from steamships to sampans crawled below, peasants stooping and oxen plodding in a tableau that hadn’t changed in a thousand years. Then the land rose still more and they began flying through a succession of magnificent ravines, green mountains rising higher than their wings.
“The Wu Gorge!” Calloway shouted. Forested mountainsides reared like the skyscraper canyons of New York. The sediment-laden river twisted like an orange intestine. Villages clung to narrow shelves still in shadow.
Somewhere ahead was Raeder.
T hey spent their first night in Chongqing, Hood dazed and stiff from the long hours of engine noise, fumes, wind, and cramping. He paid the pittance it cost to buy them two rooms at a makeshift inn near the grass runway. It was dim inside-electricity hadn’t reached this far-and smoky from the charcoal brazier. Calloway looked weary from the day’s flight, and was about as flirtatious as Eleanor Roosevelt. She bolted her rice and vegetables like a dog. Hood tried to make conversation.
“You’re a smart-mouth like my sister. I enjoy that.”
She snorted. “Your sister.”
“How’d you learn to fly?”
She looked at him tiredly. “Watched some barnstormers and saved up for flying lessons.” Her reddened eyes wandered around the room, as if sociability was almost too much to endure.
That just made it interesting. “Shows initiative.”
“It’s called gumption in Nebraska.”
“And you’re a girl.”
“Quite the observation, deadeye.”
