The Carpetbaggers

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THE SUN WAS BEGINNING TO FALL FROM THE SKY INTO the white Nevada desert as Reno came up beneath me. I banked the Waco slowly and headed due east. I could hear the wind pinging the biplane's struts and I grinned to myself. The old man would really hit the roof when he saw this plane. But he wouldn't have anything to complain about. It didn't cost him anything. I won it in a crap game.

I moved the stick forward and came down slowly to fifteen hundred feet. I was over Route 32 now and the desert on either side of the road was a rushing blur of sand. I put her nose on the horizon and looked over the side. There it was, about eight miles in front of me. Like a squat, ugly toad in the desert. The factory.

I eased the stick forward again and by the time I shot past, I was only about a hundred feet over it. I went into an Immelmann and looked back.

They were at the windows already. The dark Mexican and Indian girls in their brightly colored dresses and the men in their faded blue work clothes. I could almost see the whites of their frightened eyes looking after me. I grinned again. Their life was dull enough. Let them have a real thrill.

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