Bell crossed over the broad expanse of Lake Gatun, the sun’s dancing reflection like a constant companion as he flew. There were no markers of any sort in this part of the country. Eventually, channel buoys would mark the shipping lanes, but for now there was nothing but rising water and impenetrable jungle. If Bell had to put down, he’d be hard-pressed to make it back to any sort of civilization. Had he drifted more easterly, he could have followed the side-by-side tracks of the Panama Railway and flown over some of the new bridges installed to raise the rails above the lake. However, his prize was farther west, where there was nothing.
He had his map at the ready inside his jacket pocket.
An hour and a half into his flight, Bell finally spotted a landmark he’d memorized earlier, a particularly steep-sided island rising from the lake. This was the well-documented mountaintop on the topographical map, and he’d impressed himself that he’d flown straight for it relying on dead reckoning alone. There were other islands around it, as Bell knew there would be.
The area he wanted was still about ten miles away, up a long, narrow inlet that had once been a valley. He carefully scanned the water below for any sign of Court Talbot’s boat and his crew of mercenaries. He also watched the horizon for the cigar-shaped airship. It appeared he had the sky to himself.
He flew on for a few more minutes until he found his first target. This was the less likely of the two spots he and Townsend had determined. The valley seemed tight, though the hills weren’t as high as at the second location. Seeing the inlet, versus studying it on a map, Bell came to the quick conclusion that the site wasn’t suitable at all. It was far too narrow for an airship to operate in with any margin for error. Taking one of those behemoth flying machines into the guts of the valley was tantamount to suicide.
Bell decided to skip it and continue on to the primary location.
The flight time was only another ten minutes, and he dropped altitude as he approached the second flooded valley. The hills were tall enough to hide an airship yet far enough apart that the ship had maneuvering room between their gentle slopes. One remained poking up in the middle of the inundated valley as an island, which could screen him from view of anyone farther up its reach. It would be a perfect place to stash the plane, so he dropped more altitude and prepared to land.
Taking off and flying an aircraft was never the difficult part of the sport, it was the landing. The pilot had to time altitude, speed, and throttle control to the second. Make a mistake, and you overfly the field or, far more common, you crash to the ground. Sometimes you walk away and sometimes that’s where you die. Bell knew the risks and was as comfortable landing in an open field as a paved runway. But he’d never landed on the water before.
In principle, it should be the same as at a proper airport but there were differences. The valley was so narrow that Bell couldn’t orient the plane enough to land into the wind, he’d need to crab it in against the crosswind. And there was a bit of a chop to the water. He had to time touchdown on the back of any wave rather than the front.
He reviewed everything in his mind before dumping more altitude and lining up the nose with the island. When he entered the valley’s throat with hills rising up off both wings, the crosswind intensified, forcing Bell to put more and more pressure on the rudder bar. He eased back farther on the throttle, drifting the biplane closer and closer to the surface. He knew he couldn’t land if the nose was pointed too far into the wind because the float wouldn’t slice into the water but instead crash across it.
He sank lower still, the lake flashing just a couple feet below him. Just as he was about to land, he released pressure on the rudder, the plane swung sharply, then he touched down with the float pointing in the direction of travel exactly. It was a perfect water landing in tricky circumstances. Speed bled off so quickly, he had to goose the throttle a little to taxi close enough to the island so he could unload the canoe and tow it under cover.
34
Over the past week, Cologne’s crew had become experts at night operations above Lake Gatun. The ship soared over the coastline well north of the dam that held back the waters. There was no beach, just mangroves and jungle, and not a soul for miles around. They were at seven thousand feet in a moonless sky and completely invisible. From the ground, it would look like stars were winking out momentarily when the airship blocked their light with its enormous body, then the twinkles would return as the dirigible glided serenely past. The engines were throttled back to a low rpm. Their sound was no more than a hum to any animals below who happened to hear it.
The jungle was dark and featureless, yet somehow a malevolence reached up from its depths. This was no place for man and yet man had come to tame the land and cut a channel through it between the two seas. The tropical forest had fought the incursion with heat and rain and storms and disease. As Court Talbot looked down from his lofty perch high above the canopy, he felt a superstitious dread that the jungle had not given up the fight.
The Captain
