The Rocketeer (5 page)

He grinned.

The spectators in the bleachers heard the GeeBee approaching before they saw it because it was dropping down straight from the sun like a meteor. But the sound told as much as the view, for Peevy’s trained ear detected the telltale, labored sputter of a plane engine in trouble. “Something ain’t right . . .” he murmured, and then more loudly, to alert the others, he shouted, “Something ain’t right!”

Then the GeeBee came into view, wobbling toward the runway, a plume of smoke boiling from the cowling. The group looked up in horror and Peevy glanced once more at the bottom of his shoe, which still had traces of sticky gum. Man, if Cliff lived through this, he’d probably kill Peevy.

“Come on!” shouted Peevy. “Move yer butts! Get the fire extinguishers! Get the water trucks! Get going! Move! Move!” The occupants of the bleachers cleared out, dashing toward the hangars to get whatever crash assistance gear they could.

As Cliff hurtled downward, he frantically tried to wipe the spewing oil from his goggles. Smoke billowed up in front of him and he held his breath. The last thing he needed to do was inhale a few lungfuls of smoke and choke to death. No. Then he would miss his chance to die on the runway.

The runway, which was now only seconds away, seemed to reach up toward him and tilt crazily.

But it wasn’t too fast for Cliff. It wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle. He told himself that over and over again. He wasn’t going to let the GeeBee beat him despite all the things that had gone wrong. Cliff hadn’t gotten to where he was by listening to naysayers who predicted a fiery end for him. Then Cliff realized just exactly where he had gotten to—namely, inside a falling box of metal that was going to crash and burn inside of thirty seconds, and wondered if maybe he should have taken those naysayers a bit more seriously.

No. He banished those thoughts from his head as he concentrated on the job before him. Doesn’t have to be pretty or elegant. Just get down on the ground. Just make it down and walk away from the landing, and that would be enough to make it a good landing. And he was going to be able to make it. The ground wasn’t spiraling as crazily now, and he’d managed to wipe away enough oil to get just enough vision.

And that’s when he saw the car coming directly toward him.

Moments earlier Wilmer had slammed the roadster forward and shot out of the hangar like a cannonball. He blew past the Plymouth, which skidded around the rear corner of the building and screeched to a halt.

The Plymouth engine choked out and died, having given everything it could and more. Desperate, determined, Fitch leapt out of the car, crouched into a marksman’s pose, and fired on the fleeing roadster.

Barreling down the runway, Wilmer’s back suddenly arched in pain as a bullet hit him square in the shoulder.
It’s not fair! This was the last time!
he cried out in his mind, his eyes slamming shut in pain.

Then he heard a roaring in his head and, through the pain, his eyes opened, and he saw a smoking airplane descending toward him on an inevitable collision course.

Wilmer threw open the car door and leapt out. He thudded hard onto the runway and rolled, the asphalt tearing up his clothes and skin.

In the GeeBee, Cliff saw, through smeared goggles, the driver of the car leap clear, which wasn’t going to do him a hell of a lot of good. He cried out and yanked on the stick in what he knew was an exercise in futility.

The GeeBee’s landing gear bashed into the roadster’s windscreen. The impact tore the wheels loose from the plane with an ear-splitting screech of metal, and then the crippled plane bellylanded in a shower of sparks.

Cliff cursed his misfortune inwardly. Any other pilot would have done a nose dive. Not Cliff. Noooo, not Cliff Secord. He manages to land right side down, but just to make it more challenging, it’s without landing gear. He just couldn’t catch a break.

The roadster, in the meantime, sped forward completely out of control—understandable, since no one was at the wheel to control it. Wilmer rolled to a stop and, every part of his body aching, managed to raise his head in time to see, a couple of hundred yards away, the roadster slam into a fuel truck that was parked at the runway’s edge. With an explosion as if hell itself had just blossomed up from down under, the Ford erupted into a churning ball of flame and smoke.

Goose, Skeets, Malcolm, and Peevy were the first to reach the battered, unmoving hulk of the GeeBee. The former two were carrying fire extinguishers and, in the distance, a water truck and fire engine were roaring down the runway.

Peevy moved quickly, seeing the smoke rising from the smoldering GeeBee. The last thing he was going to allow to happen was for Cliff, having survived the landing, to go up in a roar of fire afterward. “Goose!” he shouted as he clambered up on the wing. “Give me a hand!”

Goose passed the extinguisher over to red-faced Malcolm, who was huffing and puffing heavily from the run and was remembering the days when he could dash the length of a runway on foot and not be the least out of breath. As Peevy and Goose worked on wrenching open the jammed cockpit, Skeets urgently waved Malcolm over. “Get the flames out,” he shouted, “before they hit the fuel tank!”

Malcolm nodded, and he and Skeets turned their extinguishers on the smoking fuselage, fighting the cowling fire with everything they had.

Peevy and Goose grunted and pulled one more time, and this time the battered canopy came loose. Cliff, miraculously, was conscious, and so it was only a matter of moments to pull him most of the way out of the cockpit. He stopped for a moment to snatch Jenny’s photo off the instrument panel, and then followed Peevy and Skeets down the side of the GeeBee to safety. They ran a safe distance and then turned and stopped. Cliff looked on helplessly as Skeets and Goose put out the fire on the wounded plane.

“I knew it!” he suddenly shouted, and pointed. “Look! The gum fell off!”

Peevy looked where Cliff was pointing, then took a deep sigh, looked up at his protégé, and shrugged. “Bad break, kid. These things happen.”

Wilmer’s head sagged to the ground and he stared into the blackness of the asphalt. Then he heard the sound of a trigger being cocked a few feet away and heard an authoritative voice announcing, “FBI! Don’t move!”

He laughed and it hurt, which probably meant that something was broken in his chest. His shoulder throbbed with pain. Nevertheless, in his best Edward G. Robinson voice, he growled, “You’ll never take me alive, copper,” and then he passed out.

“N
ow, let me get this straight. You chase some two-bit thugs onto our runway, they crash into my plane, and it’s
my
fault?”

Cliff was dogging the heels of two guys who’d been identified to him as G-men named Wolinski and Fitch. Cliff had always had tremendous respect for the feds in their various incarnations, both in works of fiction and in the real world. But these guys were nothing like the screen portrayals he’d seen of the super-efficient, brave, and conscientious agents that he’d read about in the newspapers. These two guys seemed totally self-absorbed, as if Cliff’s complaints and clear consternation were irrelevant. He was a taxpayer, for crying out loud. He paid their salaries!

The FBI men shouldered their way through the confusing mass of ambulances, fire trucks, cops, and others who had shown up in the hour following the crash, turning a usually busy airfield into a complete madhouse. Cliff and Peevy stayed right behind them, not giving a hoot about the G-men’s claims that they were too busy.

Fitch and Wooly, for their part, just wished that these guys would go off and do something else to anybody else. Write their congressmen. Call a lawyer. Anything except ride their backs. “Look, kid . . . no offense,” said Wooly, “but we’ve got more important things to do than get all sweaty over whose fault it was.”

“We put three years and every dime we had into that racer!” said Peevy, bristling.

Fitch had even less patience than Wooly. Throughout the last twenty years, hotshot aviators had been tearing around the country providing barnstorming “entertainment” that more often than not ended in accidents and fiery death. Fitch laid his life on the line every day for the good and security of the country. Flyboys did the same thing to provide cheap thrills and kicks for the yokels. It showed a callous disregard for life and safety that Fitch could not abide at all. “So file your gripe with Uncle Sam,” snapped Fitch. “Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

“And wait six months? A year?” Cliff brushed a hank of his sandy brown and slightly scorched hair out of his face. “We make our living with that plane!”

Fitch stopped and turned to face him, hands on his hips. “Guess it’s time to get a
real
job,” he said.

Fitch loved moments like this—letting smart-mouth punks like this Secord clown know exactly where they stood. Because Secord would undoubtedly love to take a poke at Fitch for that crack, and Fitch knew damned well that even a cloudhead like Secord wouldn’t risk going to the slammer for punching a federal agent. So Secord would stand there, burning, firmly put in his place by his helplessness to respond.

The only problem with this approach was that Cliff hauled off and slugged Fitch in the jaw, his fist moving so fast, it was a blur. Fitch went down flat on his butt.

Peevy’s eyes widened in astonishment, but Cliff was too burned to notice. What he did see, though, was an infuriated Fitch clambering to his feet with a snarled, “Why, you lousy . . .” and charging right at him.

Fitch was off balance, and when his punch landed, it did little more than shove Cliff back. What it did, though, was send Cliff staggering into the arms of Peevy and the ground crew, who grabbed Cliff and held him back to prevent him from adding even more years to his prison sentence. Wooly, for his part, held Fitch back with a hand against his chest. “Relax, Joe Louis!” he said.

Fitch didn’t feel like Joe Louis. He felt like Max Schmeling, who’d been KO’d by Louis a few weeks before in just over two minutes. Nevertheless, he saw the angry faces of the fliers surrounding them. He could arrest them. Maybe even shoot them. And there were other feds just within shouting distance. Maybe . . .

Aw, the hell with it. The kid had moxie. Still, the last thing Fitch was going to do was admit admiration, and so in his gruffest voice he snarled, “That one’s free, kid. Keep it up and you’ll be eatin’ dinner through a straw.”

Peevy couldn’t believe Cliff’s good fortune. And he believed it even less when Cliff started forward again. The smaller, older man nevertheless put a hammerlock on the hotheaded pilot and whispered harshly in his ear, “He’s a G-man, for Pete’s sake! You lookin’ for time in the slammer?” He pulled on Cliff. “Come on . . .”

He dragged Cliff off, and the other fliers, seeing the moment had passed, drifted away. Fitch for his part rubbed his jaw and then glanced in annoyance at his partner. “Son of a bitch hangs one on my kisser and you let him waltz.”

Wooly smiled raggedly. “Maybe you had it coming.”

Disdaining to discuss it further, Fitch stalked toward an ambulance with Wooly right behind him. They got there just as Wilmer, on a gurney, bandaged and splintered from head to toe, was being loaded on. Fitch motioned for them to wait, and they stepped back. He leaned down over Wilmer.

“Your pal in the rumble seat’s playing his harp. If you make it to County General, your next stop’s Alcatraz. So spill. Where’s the package?”

Wilmer chuckled and mumbled through blood-spattered lips, “Blown to hell. Go look for it.”

Fitch stepped back and waved impatiently. “Get him out of here.”

The annoying, mocking laughter of Wilmer continued as the ambulance drivers loaded him into the ambulance. Fitch tried to choke down his frustration, and then suddenly Wooly tapped him on the shoulder. “Look. Over there. Looks like they found something.”

The “over there” he was pointing to was the smoldering wreck of what had once been the roadster. Several firemen were grouped around it, along with a G-man named Stevens. Stevens signaled to Fitch and Wooly as they headed over and pointed to what the fireman was extricating from the wreck, carefully using a pair of tongs. “Hey, Fitch!” called Stevens. “Take a look at this!”

Fitch and Wooly approached the remains of the roadster. The fireman raised a charred and twisted lump of metal up in front of them, presenting it for their inspection. Its shape vaguely suggested something that once could have been a streamlined, finned object.

Fitch was afraid to say it, but Wooly had no such concerns. Indeed, he was relieved that at least they knew, one way or the other. “That’s the gizmo all right,” said Wooly.

Fitch was digging a nickel out of his pocket, and he flipped it to Wooly, the buffalo head flickering momentarily in the sun before Wooly caught it. “Call him, Wooly,” said Fitch.

Wooly grimaced. “Why me?”

“He likes you,” replied Fitch.

Wooly sighed. Fitch was right, actually. For some reason, The Man had taken something of a liking to Wooly, appreciating his open and honest air. At the very least, he didn’t insult Wooly the way he did Fitch.

Wooly went off to make the call.