Born to Fly (17 page)

I ran back down the stairs and climbed onto the workbench. But the window was still too high for me to reach. Maybe if I stood on the stool on top of the workbench? I climbed down and cleared the workbench. There were coils of wire, maps, newspaper clippings—all kinds of junk—on it. There was my P-40 manual! I stuffed it in my back pocket. There were also some strange jars of liquid that looked like the kind our science teacher would use, and a metal can of black powder with red writing on the side. I
moved them off the bench top onto the floor, but I stopped as I was about to set down the powder can. I’d seen something like it before. It was at the trial, when Agent Barson was saying all that boring stuff about chemistry and ingredients to make explosives. This was the same kind of can as the one they’d found in Uncle Tomo’s apartment. The one Uncle Tomo said he’d never seen before. Deputy Steyer had put it there. He set off the bomb in the P-40 factory and then made it look like Uncle Tomo did it. And that got me thinking: What the heck was the deputy doing to Kenji’s phonograph?

Of course! Deputy Steyer had been making another bomb. But why put a bomb in a kid’s record player? I had no idea, but I had to get out and warn Kenji. I wrapped the knife in some newspaper clippings so it wouldn’t cut me, and I put it in my other back pocket.

I lifted the stool onto the workbench. It was metal, and heavier than I thought it was gonna be. The seat swiveled around, making it hard to stand on. I climbed up and knelt on top of it. Then I got up onto my feet. But one leg of the stool was shorter than the others, and the stool teetered. The seat spun around and I felt myself falling. I grabbed on to the ledge of the window and had to use my legs to balance the stool back upright. I reached back and got the knife out of my pocket. I covered my face with my arm, and
CRASH!
I smashed the basement window with the knife butt. I cleared out as much of the busted glass as I could, then pulled myself up. Crawling through the jagged
window frame, I scraped my arms and tore my pants, but I didn’t care.

Once I was out, I raced down the street to the nearest house and pounded on the door with my fists. “Hello! Is anyone home? Hello?”

It seemed like forever, but at last the inside lights turned on and someone opened the door. It was Mrs. Simmons, still half asleep.

“Mrs. Simmons? Call the deputy! No, wait, don’t call him. Call the FBI, or the Army or something. Deputy Steyer’s gonna blow up my friend Kenji!”

“Uh-huh. Whatever you say, Bird.” She promptly slammed her door to go back to bed.

“Mrs. Simmons. Mrs. Simmons!” But she wouldn’t come back.

I ran for another house, across the street. This one was a dump. Out back there was a smelly chicken coop—and someone was inside.

“Hey! You in the chicken coop!” I hollered.

Two big feet, covered in putrid chicken crap, stepped out. It was Farley Peck.

“What the heck are you d-d-doing?” he said.

“Farley! You’ve gotta help me,” I babbled. “Somebody just tried to kill me.”

“Yeah? Good.” He turned around to head back into the chicken coop.

“You don’t understand. Deputy Steyer is the spy! He’s the one who killed your father.”

He looked back at me. “You’re nuts.” Then he started walking away.

“Wait!” I grabbed him by the sleeve. “I found this.” I unwrapped the newspaper clippings I’d put around the knife. He instantly recognized the knife and snatched it out of my hand.

“Where d-d-did you get this?”

“I found it—”

But he choked me by the collar of my shirt before I could finish.

“Where?” he demanded.

“In Deputy Steyer’s basement!”

He rolled the knife over in his hand. “My dad g-g-gave this to me when I was six.” He touched it slowly, the same way I held my dad’s dog tags. Then Farley, the big bad bully, started to sniffle. He turned away to wipe his nose on his sleeve.

“It’s the deputy,” I said. “It has been all along. He’s the spy. Everyone wanted the killer to look like Kenji or Uncle Tomo. They never thought he might look just like us.”

Farley clenched his fist under my chin. “If you’re lying—”

“I’m not. Swear on my dad, I’m not.”

He looked me in the eyes, and maybe it was because I looked so scared, or maybe it was because he just realized I had lost my dad, too, but for once he actually believed me.

“What do you need me to do?” he asked, with no stutter at all.

“I don’t know.” I tried to think for a moment. I happened
to glance down at the newspaper clippings in my hand. The ones I had wrapped the knife in. The ones from Deputy Steyer’s workbench. One of them wasn’t really a news clipping. It was just the weekly train schedule. The 8:00 a.m. arrival time for Providence was circled. Another one was from the front page of the
Geneseo Post
in March. The headline read:
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT TO STOP IN PROVIDENCE THIS SUMMER
.

“Oh my God!”

“What?” Farley said.

“It’s the President. That’s who the deputy’s really after. He put a bomb in Kenji’s record player, and if we don’t stop him, he’s gonna use it to kill the President.” I gave Farley the circled train schedule and the newspaper clipping about President Roosevelt. “Find Agent Barson. Show him these, and tell him everything.” But Farley didn’t move. That jerk! He just couldn’t stand to help me or Kenji. Even if it meant saving the President!

I shook him. “What’s the matter with you!?”

“It says here the President’s train arrives at eight. It’s at least seven-fifteen right now, Bird. The deputy’s got too much of a head start for anyone to catch him by car. And the local train already left for Providence. There’s no way to catch him.”

He was right, of course. It was hopeless. I plopped down on the ground. Right onto the P-40 manual in my pocket. The manual that said—on page 13, section 3, if I remembered correctly—that the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk could
reach a top speed of 362 miles an hour. Providence was about 180 miles away. At top speed, the Warhawk could get there in about thirty minutes.

I leapt back to my feet, looked around, and spied a rusty bicycle that was leaning against the chicken coop. I mounted it and told Farley, “Find Agent Barson.”

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“To try and catch a plane.”

B
y the time I made it to my house, my legs were aching so much from pedaling Farley’s rusty piece-of-junk bike, I felt like I’d been running through knee-deep pancake batter. I bet Farley never once oiled that darn bicycle chain. I flopped the bike against the barn and spotted Alvin playing in our backyard.

“Where’s … Mom?” I asked, between gasps for air.

“Out looking for you.”

“And Margaret?”

“They went looking for you, that way.” He pointed
toward the pond at the back of our field, and I was off and running.

When I made it to the weeds near the pond, I found Lieutenant Peppel’s motor scooter on its side, but no sign of Margaret or the lieutenant. I cut through the weeds and followed the sound of laughter and a trail of discarded outer clothes leading to the pond.

“Margaret?” I called out.

“Oh God! It’s my little sister.” I heard a splash, like someone diving underwater, just as I burst into the open to find Margaret swimming in her underwear.

“Margaret! I need your help,” I called out.

“Where the heck have you been, Bird?” she said, trying to hide the fact that she was standing in our pond—in her
bra
! “Um. We’ve been, I mean
I’ve
been looking all over for you.”

“Tell Lieutenant Peppel we need his P-40!”

“Lieutenant Peppel? He’s not here.”

“It’s important, Margaret!”

Something swirled under the water next to her.

Some bubbles came up, the water thrashed, and finally, the lieutenant couldn’t hold his breath any longer and popped up for air. “Sorry, Margaret.”

“Lieutenant! Deputy Steyer is going to blow up the President!” I yelled. “We have to beat him to the train station!”

He rolled his eyes. “Kid, I tell you what. I promise, I’ll take you flying tomorrow.”

I saw I was getting nowhere fast, and there wasn’t a lot of time to convince him. Then I spotted his uniform. A pilot’s uniform.

“Thanks!” I snatched it up and was on the run again.

“Hey!” the lieutenant hollered to Margaret. “She’s taking my clothes!”

“Bird!” Margaret screamed after me.

But I had a pretty good head start. By the time they’d splashed their way ashore, I was already bouncing through the field on Lieutenant Peppel’s motor scooter.

I hadn’t stopped to think that I’d never ridden a motor scooter before, and since my legs didn’t quite reach the running boards, it was even harder to balance. So every time I started to swerve and fall, I ended up cranking the throttle on the handlebar to compensate. This kept me from wiping out, but my lack of balance combined with the burst of power every time I used the throttle left me swerving left and right like I did when I first learned to ride a bike.

As I approached the gate outside the airfield, I could see that the sentry was already looking suspiciously at the wiggly trajectory I was taking, not to mention my wildly oversized uniform and helmet. This was never gonna work. I acted like I was slowing down.

“Hold your horses there, Lindbergh.” The sentry held out his hand.

I hit the gas and tried to swerve around, but instead headed straight for him. He had to dive into the mud to
avoid getting hit. Then he scrambled into the guard shack and hit the siren.

I nearly wiped out as the scooter tires got caught in the deep muddy truck grooves that had been cut into the field after the recent rains, but I regained my balance and raced toward the hangar. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw that a military police jeep was already speeding onto the tarmac and heading toward the guard shack.

Moments later, I dumped the scooter against the hangar wall by Lieutenant Peppel’s P-40. The uniform obviously wasn’t gonna work as a disguise, so I tossed it aside and clambered up the wing into the cockpit. Just as I did, I spotted Lieutenant Peppel pedaling Farley’s rusty bicycle. He was wearing the only thing he must have been able to find—Margaret’s summer dress! He knew exactly where I was headed, so he blew past the sentry and took off toward me in the hangar.

I settled into the P-40 cockpit, switched on the magneto, and the starter began to spin up and whine. The twelve cylinders fired over and the stacks coughed that lovely smell of airplane exhaust. It wasn’t until I stretched out my feet to test the rudder pedals that I realized something was wrong. My feet didn’t feel anything. I looked down and saw that my legs were about six inches too short.

When I looked up, Lieutenant Peppel had already pulled on his uniform and was scrambling onto the wing. I quickly hand-cranked the cockpit canopy the rest of the way shut,
just before he could reach in and grab me. He pounded the glass.

“Bird! You’ve got to stop,” he commanded.

I shook my head. “Deputy Steyer’s going to kill the President! He already tried to kill me.” I must have looked pretty scared, because the stern look on his face kind of melted away. I crossed my heart. “Honest,” I said.

That was when he noticed the rope burns on my wrists. And the bruise on my forehead. “Did he do that to you?”

I nodded.

Then Lieutenant Peppel got a really angry look on his face. “Open the cockpit. I’m coming with you.”

I cranked back the canopy and he climbed in behind me.

“You really believe me?” I asked.

“I reckon I do,” he said with a smile.

Meanwhile, the M.P. jeep was heading straight toward us.

“If we stop now, we won’t get there in time to save the President,” I told him.

“Okay,” he said.

I checked our clearance, just like Dad had taught me, and Lieutenant Peppel taxied us out of the hangar, full speed ahead. I wasn’t really sure what the heck we were gonna do, but my heart was pumping way too fast for me to stop and think about it. Lieutenant Peppel pushed my feet out of his way so he could control the rudder pedals, and the big shark mouth roared out toward the runway.

The P-40 had such a big nose that you couldn’t see
anything in front of you, whether you were eleven or one hundred eleven. The only way to see the ground was to swerve left and right, in a zigzag. As we zigzagged, the M.P. jeep pulled up alongside. It was Captain Winston, riding with the M.P.’s. And they all had their guns drawn.

“Lieutenant! Stop that plane this instant!” Captain Winston ordered.

“Can’t, sir. It’s a matter of life and death!”

“Then I’m coming aboard!” Captain Winston shouted to his men, “Move me close to the wing!”

The captain chose his moment and leapt onto the mighty Warhawk wing. The lieutenant ruddered hard right to try and shake him off. Captain Winston slid to the edge and rolled right off the wingtip.

The lieutenant shook his head woefully. “I’m gonna be court-martialed for sure.”

Behind us on the tarmac, the jeep skidded to a stop and the M.P.’s got out to make sure Captain Winston was all right.

As we taxied past the control tower to line up for takeoff, I could see the traffic controllers sticking their heads out the windows of the tower and pointing at us frantically. I heard someone shout over my helmet intercom: “Who or what is flying that plane?”