High Risk 0.1

PROLOGUE

The sound was like the noise of an angry wasp boomed through a loudspeaker.

Casey, late arriving to work, heard the familiar ratcheting snarl of the rotary engine and smiled, as he always seemed to smile these days at that sound. There was nothing in the world like the sound of a rotary engine. And there was no place he’d heard that sound so frequently, since the war’s end, as on this improbable field in Southern California where Howard Hughes was making the most expensive movie ever produced.

Casey waited for the “blip” sound that would signify the pilot cutting the ignition as he taxied for takeoff. Like the proverbial other shoe, though, the engine revs never dropped. Another ten-dollar stiff who can’t fly a rotary, he thought. Sighing, Casey turned to look. Nobody else on the Hell’s Angels set seemed to be working, he noticed; they all watched the Thomas-Morse Scout as the tiny biplane dashed away from the hangar line and bounced along the rough grass rectangle that was Mines Field, the Inglewood airport. Abruptly the Tommy lifted from the grass as though tossed upward—and as abruptly it darted down and to the right, plowing a furrow into the grass and raising a huge cloud of dust. A second later the sound of the crash reached him.


Casey turned to the man who had appeared beside him. "Tell me again, Mike. Why does Hughes keep hiring idiots who don’t understand about rotaries?"

Mike—one of Hughes’s assistants—laughed. "Why don't you show that clown how it's done? I bet Hughes would love to see some real flying."

"You're on," Casey said.

* * * *

Minutes later, Casey was strapping himself into a Thomas-Morse while a mechanic doped the engine, squirting fuel into each cylinder. Normally he'd take more care with the starting routine, but today he was a bit hung over and less inclined to worry about the proprieties. Besides, there was a punk down at the end of the field who badly needed a lesson.

Once the Tommy’s engine was running, Casey did take the time to carefully adjust the fine-mixture control, pressing the blip switch from time to time to keep the biplane from leaping over the chocks. The switch, which cut the electricity to the spark plugs, was the only way to control the speed of a rotary engine, since rotaries didn’t have throttles or even real carburetors. The fuel-air mix had to be carefully set as well, and more important it had to be adjusted again immediately after takeoff. Failing to do that would cause the engine to run too rich; it would belch black smoke and unburned fuel, and probably choke. This was likely what had happened to the greenhorn.

The proper care of a rotary engine was something that any Great War pilot—Casey, for example—would have known. The new generation of barnstormers and stunt pilots, though, knew only the more gentle behavior of the Curtiss Jenny and its descendants. Which might have been fine for making serials or westerns in which the cowboy hero unaccountably had a plane with which to track rustlers. But Hell's Angels was about scout pilots, and scouts were hot ships. They demanded respect.

Casey waved the chocks away. Blipping to keep under control, he carefully steered the small fighter out to the smoothest part of the grass field, then released the switch. The Tommy immediately picked up speed as its engine roared to full power. Seconds later, the rumbling of unsprung wheels ceased as the biplane suddenly broke free from earth. Immediately giving left rudder to counteract the strong torque and gyroscopic effects generated by the spinning engine, Casey adjusted the fuel-air mix until the engine sounded right. The Tommy continued to climb, and Casey let it for a few more seconds, to give himself a bit of room.

Then he dropped the nose to build up speed, and when the airframe started to shake he pulled the stick back into his stomach. The Tommy arched up into a loop, sky, earth and sky appearing over Casey’s head as he cycled through. He was pleased to see, as he came out, that he’d actually gained a hundred feet or so of altitude while looping. That almost never happened. I hope Hughes saw that, he thought. The man was a jerk sometimes, and a lot more sensitive than any millionaire ought to be. But the movie he was making was easily going to be the biggest aviation picture ever, and Casey was grateful every morning that he was working on its aerial scenes.

Dodging over the high-tension wires at the end of the field, Casey made a quick circle and brought his Tommy back down, cutting the engine so that he rolled to a stop just a few feet from the Tommy the ham-fisted tyro had wrecked a few minutes ago. He was pleased to see that Hughes was among the group of men examining the damage. Unstrapping himself, he climbed out of the cockpit.

Then Casey realized that Hughes wasn’t smiling. That probably, he decided, had something to do with the bloody nose and lip the director sported. The beginnings of a couple of spectacular black eyes showed on either side of the flattened nose.

"You little prick," Hughes said. "Get off my set. Get off my movie. I don’t ever want to see you again."

"What did I do?"

"Get out of here before I call the cops."

"But Mr. Hughes—"

Hughes stepped into a car that had just pulled up beside the wreck. He disappeared with a rude gesture and a cloud of dust.

Casey stood by the biplane for a couple of minutes, hoping that someone would laugh and tell him that it was okay, that everyone had enjoyed the joke and it was time to go back to work.

Frank Tomick eventually walked up to him. Tomick was one of only three pilots who’d been with Hell’s Angels throughout its lengthy production. "What the hell were you doing, Casey?" he asked.

"I thought I was making a point about people needing to learn more about rotaries," Casey said. There was no point in delaying the inevitable. He added, "Hughes piled that Tommy, didn't he?"

"Of course he did," Tomick said. "I told him he didn’t have enough experience to fly one of those things. The last thing we needed was you rubbing it in."

"Oh, God," Casey said. "Now what do I do?"

"For a start," Tomick said, "forget about ever working in Hollywood."