Excerpt from The Last Pilot by Benjamin Johncock, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

It was still early, ten before nine, Pancho's was open. The desert was calm, the low sun nudging slowly west, burning the new day bright yellow and white. Stale carbon dioxide hung in the gloom of the bar like a bad mood. Harrison pushed open the screen door and stepped inside.

What do you want, you miserable pudknocker? Pancho said, looking up from her broom.

You know, he said.

You're early.

I'm up at eleven.

Gracie know you're here?

Practically her idea.

She's too good for a peckerwood like you.

Got any Luckies? I'm all out.

Get your ass over here you ol bastard.

She poured him a drink and he sat at the bar.

You know I love you, Pancho.

Well, don't I feel better.

I'm up again at one.

You're only up at one if you don't auger in at eleven.

Can't see that bein a problem.

You all never do, sweetie, she said, glancing at the wall where photographs of dead pilots hung. The frames began behind the bar, marring the far wall with grinning men standing beside cockpits and airplanes knocking contrails into the sky. Whenever someone augered in, she'd nail their picture up and say, dumb bastard.

Pancho had broad shoulders, dark hair and a face that looked like it was stuck in a nine-g pullout. Her real name was Florence Leontine Lowe. She grew up in a thirty-room mansion in San Marino, waited on by servants. Her grandfather, Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe, was an entrepreneur, engineer and balloonist; a hero of the Civil War. Papa Lowe doted on his granddaughter. When she was eight, he took her to the world's first aviation exhibition; a ten-day extravaganza in the hills above Long Beach. Florence watched Glenn Curtiss and Lincoln Beachey fly high and fast around the field in their biplanes for a three thousand dollar prize and was captivated. It wasn't the machines, it was the men. When she was old enough, she stopped riding horses and started flying airplanes. Her mother disapproved of her new lifestyle and, as soon as she turned eighteen, arranged for her to marry the Reverend C. Rankin Barnes. She lasted fourteen months as a minister's wife before disguising herself as a man and running away to South America as a crew member aboard a banana boat. She became a smuggler, running guns during the Mexican Revolution; later flying rumrunners into Ensenada and Tijuana. She spoke Spanish and Yaqui, slicked her black hair back with gardenia oil and lived like a peasant. She returned a year later with the nickname Pancho to news of her mother's death. She kept the name, inherited her mother's fortune and indulged her love of flying. She won races, broke Amelia Earhart's airspeed record and became one of Hollywood's first stunt pilots, throwing wild parties at her house in Laguna Beach. When the Depression ate its way into Southern California, it hit her hard. Broke, defaulting on loans, she sold up, headed out into the Mojave and bought Hannam's farm, just west of Muroc Dry Lake.

It won't give you no love, Hannam told her after the papers were signed. I used to get five, maybe six, cuttins a year; bale it, sell it on for a good price. Now, even with seventy or so acres planted up, man can't live on it, not now. It's all gone to hell.

Never did see myself as much of a rancher, she said.

That fall, she dragged out a private airstrip behind the hay barn with two English shire mares bought from the Washington State Fair then holed out a swimming pool. It wasn't long before she got to know the men from the base. They enjoyed her company; she knew airplanes and they got a kick out of her salty language and dirty jokes. In the evenings, the men grew restless, so they'd head over to Pancho's to take out her horses, have a drink, cool off in her pool. Pancho would curse and laugh and tell them stories and pour them drinks. Some nights she'd cook, a steak dinner; meat from her own cattle. She called up Bobby Holeston one morning and got him to turn the old cook's shack into a proper bar. She hired an enormous woman called Minnie to work the kitchen and Pancho had herself a business.

Excerpted from The Last Pilot by Benjamin Johncock. Copyright © 2015 by Benjamin Johncock. Excerpted by permission of Picador. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.