“Even worse,” Bobby replied, “they wear veils.”
“Even better,” Wally countered. “You ever heard of the Dance of the Seven Veils? I saw it once in Mexico. Sure wouldn’t mind a repeat performance.”
“Not that kind of veil,” Bobby said drily. “And these girls don’t belly dance, either.”
“I thought this was the land of harems?”
“Land of hairy legs, more likely,” interjected Jack. “Not that you’ll ever see a leg under those long black robes.”
“Can’t kiss ’em, can’t dance with ’em… heck, the Germans can have ’em. I hear they like hairy legs.”
“That’s why they invaded France,” Bobby quipped.
Laughter rumbled over the radio in response.
“Cut the chatter.” It was their flight leader Major Bovington breaking in. “And keep your eyes on the sky.”
The pilots grumbled inwardly. They were hundreds of miles from the nearest German air base. Chances were slim to none they’d see an enemy fighter. The fledgling American air force hadn’t seen combat yet—not in the European theater of operations, anyway—and the pilots were dying to test their mettle.
The P-39s’ powerful engines put miles of vast desert behind them. Then the sky started to turn dark. Bobby checked his watch. It was only half past noon.
And then he saw it, rising up over the horizon: a black curtain stretching from the desert up into the sky.
“What the heck is that?” asked Wally as the curtain drew closer.
“I don’t know, looks like rain. Stand by, I’ll find out.” That meant the major was trying to make contact with the base at Tehran.
Bobby let his eye follow the traffic jam of trucks all the way forward to the black curtain. That was why the trucks had halted—the black curtain. He saw drivers getting out of their cabs, hastily removing the canvas tarps from their truck beds, and using the canvas to cover themselves in the roadside ditch. “What the heck are they doing?” Bobby wondered out loud. Then he understood.
“Pull up!” he yelled as he yanked back his control stick. “Pull up!”
“Why? What do you see?” the major demanded, scanning the sky for any sign of German attack.
“It’s a sandstorm!” Bobby replied, continuing to climb as rapidly as he dared.
But the black curtain was approaching fast.
The P-39 was a low-altitude fighter, and its maximum fuel efficiency was at a mere ten thousand feet. For that reason, the squadron had been maintaining a low-level formation. But now, as the danger of the sandstorm loomed, they all pushed their engines to maximum capacity in an effort to climb over the inclement weather.
Bobby could feel the wind rattling his P-39’s fuselage and buffeting the fighter in a roller-coaster ride of air turbulence. Just as he neared the highest point of the storm, the bottom dropped out from under him. His stomach caught in his throat. A downdraft forced his plane to plummet. Bobby adjusted his course, and the plane recovered, but now he flew inside the thick of the storm. He could hear the sand blasting his cockpit, could see the dust swirling through his propeller and entering the intake valves. But he kept climbing, clutching the control stick in a death grip.
The darkness cleared, and the bright sun practically blinded Bobby for a moment. He had climbed up and over the storm. His engine whined as if protesting the high altitude. But it didn’t stall.
Bobby was safe, and the black curtain now stretched out like a pall below him.
He looked around and over his shoulders. He was shocked at the damage caused to the other planes by even such a limited exposure to the storm. Paint had been sandblasted off, and he had trouble reading identification numbers. So did Major Bovington, who asked each pilot to sound off. Bobby voiced his identification and counted the planes around him.
One was missing.
It was Jack.
“I’m going back for him,” Bobby announced, twisting his control stick and corkscrewing back into the storm. Darkness and radio silence enveloped him before the major could command him to stop.
The wind kicked the P-39 around, and the sand tore at its cockpit. Bobby leveled out over the uneven desert, trying to penetrate the dust cloud for any sign of a signal flare from Jack. Sand was sucked into the P-39’s intake valves. The engine sputtered and stalled. Bobby didn’t bother lowering the landing gear—it would do more harm than good on the desert’s craggy surface. He pulled up the aircraft’s nose and braced for impact.
He was thrown forward against his safety harness as the bottom of the Airacobra ripped out from underneath him. Then his back pounded against his seat as the plane ground and jerked to a halt.
The whiplash knocked Bobby out. He slowly came to. The cockpit and even its glass canopy were still intact, but he could see sand pouring in through its seams. He unlatched his safety harness and tore open his ejection pack. He pulled the silk parachute out in billowing bunches and pressed it to his chest while heaving open the cockpit canopy.
The wind roared in his ears, and he felt searing pain as sand flayed his skin. He covered his face with the parachute and rolled out onto the P-39’s wing. He fought against the wind and wrapped the silk parachute into a cocoon, as he’d seen the truck drivers do with their canvas tarps. The whipping sand still hurt, but at least now it was bearable.
There was nothing left to do but wait like this. Eventually he fell asleep.
When Bobby woke, he was disoriented. He could tell he was buried in sand, and he was having trouble breathing. And he was wrapped in something, something silky and white. He pushed and pulled and kicked, desperately trying to break free of the sand, desperate for a breath of fresh air.
Bobby’s head thrust up out of the sand, and he gasped for air. As he caught his breath, he squinted into the sun-bleached desert. Now it did look just like one of those Rudolph Valentino movies, after all. Sand covered everything—the rocks, the bushes, everything. If Bobby hadn’t bailed out onto the P-39’s wing, he never would have been able to dig his way to the surface.
Bobby plowed through the sand back to the P-39’s cockpit. It was all that was left of the Airacobra, protruding from the huge dune that had enveloped the plane. He sifted through the compartment for emergency supplies: a canteen of water, a flare, a pair of binoculars, and a map. He dug the sand away from the instrument panel and tried the radio, but dust had gotten inside and ruined its components. He climbed up on top of the cockpit and raised the binoculars. He saw a glint of metal in the far distance. Was it Jack?
Bobby stumbled down the steep dune, an avalanche of sand tumbling down with him. But he kept his feet and set out in the direction of the glinting metal. The sand was hot; he could even feel it through the soles of his boots. His eyes burned in the bright light, so he put on his goggles. It was only a few miles, but it felt like a marathon. Sweat poured off him under his flight suit, only to evaporate almost immediately into the dry air. His lips begged for moisture, but he knew licking them would only make it worse. He forced himself to take a drink of water, knowing he might pass out from dehydration even before he realized he was thirsty.
Bobby was right about the glint of metal. It was another P-39—Jack’s plane. It, too, was buried in a sand dune, only the tail and the cockpit sticking out. Jack sat on the side of the dune, sheltered from the wind, watching with a smile as Bobby approached.
“Well, I guess I won’t die alone,” Jack announced.
“You won’t die at all,” Bobby responded.
Jack climbed to his feet and peered in a slow circle. “I don’t see anything but desert.” Then he lifted his canteen. “And we’ve only got a few days before we’re dead from dehydration.”