I felt the G force hold me flat against my seat and bubble the blood racing in my arms.
I leveled her off at the top of the loop and when I checked the panel, we were doing three hundred, racing out over the Atlantic with Long Island already far behind us.
I reached forward and tapped the shoulder of the Army flier seated in front of me.
"How about that, Colonel?" I shouted over the roar of the twin engines and the shriek of the wind against the plastic bubble over our heads.
I saw him bob his head in answer to my question but he didn't turn around.
I knew what he was doing. He was checking out the panel in front of him.
Lieutenant Colonel Forrester was one of the real fly boys. He went all the way back to Eddie Rickenbacker and the old Hat in the Ring squadron. Not at all like the old General we'd left on the ground back at Roosevelt Field, that the Army had sent out to check over our plane.
The General flew an armchair back in Purchasing and Procurement in Washington.
The closest he ever came to an airplane was when he sat on the trial board at Billy Mitchell's court-martial. But he was the guy who had the O.K.
We were lucky that at least he had one Air Corps officer on his staff.
I had tabbed him the minute he came walking into the hangar, with Morrissey, talking up a storm, trotting beside him.
There were two aides right behind him – a full colonel and a captain. None of them wore the Air Corps wings on their blouse.
He stood there in the entrance of the hangar, staring in at the CA-4.
I could see the frown of disapproval come across his face.
"It's ugly," he said. "It looks like a toad."
His voice carried clear across the hangar to where I was, in the cockpit, giving her a final check.
I climbed out onto the wing and dropped to the hangar floor in my bare feet.
I started toward him. What the hell did he know about streamline and design?
His head probably was as square as the desk he sat behind.
"Mr. Cord!" I heard the hissed whisper behind me.
I turned around.
It was the mechanic. There was a peculiar grin on his face.
He had heard the General's remark, too.
"What d'yuh want?"
"I was jus' gettin' ready to roll her out," he said quickly. "An' I didn't want to squash yer shoes."
I stared at him for a moment, then I grinned. "Thanks," I said, walking back and stepping into them.
By the time I leached Morrissey and the General, I was cooled off.
Morrissey had a copy of the plans and specs in his hand and was going over them for the benefit of the General.
"The Cord Aircraft Four is a revolutionary concept in a two-man fighter-bomber, which has a flight range of better than two thousand miles.
It cruises at two forty, with a max of three sixty.
It can carry ten machine guns, two cannon, and mounts one thousand pounds of bombs under its wings and in a special bay in its belly."
I looked back at the plane as Morrissey kept on talking.
It sure as hell was a revolutionary design. It looked like a big black panther squatting there on the hangar floor with its long nose jutting out in front of the swept-back wings and the plastic bubble over the cockpit shining like a giant cat's eye in the dim light.
"Very interesting," I heard the General say. "Now, I have just one more question."
"What's that, sir?" Morrissey asked.
The General chuckled, looking at his aides.
They permitted a faint smile to come to their lips. I could see the old fart was going to get off one of his favorite jokes.
"We Army men look over about three hundred of these so-called revolutionary planes every year.
Will it fly?"
I couldn't keep quiet any longer.
The million bucks it had cost me to get this far with the CA-4 gave me a right to shoot off my mouth.
"She'll fly the ass off anything you got in your Army, General," I said. "And any other plane in the world, including the new fighters that Willi Messerschmitt is building."
The General turned toward me, a surprised look on his face. I saw his eyes go down over my grease-spattered white coveralls.
Morrissey spoke up quickly.
"General Gaddis, Jonas Cord."
Before the General could speak, a voice came from the doorway behind him.
"How do you know what Willi Messerschmitt is building?"
I looked up as the speaker came into view. The General had evidently brought a third aide with him.
The silver wings shone on his blouse, matching the silver oak leaves on his shoulders.
He was about forty, slim and with a flier's mustache.