The Rocketeer (6 page)

The balcony of the wide, plush office opened onto the Santa Monica hills, and beyond that was the ocean lapping at the shore.

Most people, when standing on such a balcony, would gaze longingly and in fascination at the Pacific. Not the man whose office this was, though. His attention was always focused on the sky. It was his second home. In some ways, it was his first.

At this point, however, his attention was not on the sky, or, for that matter, on the ocean. Instead, it was on the telephone receiver that he had pressed against his ear.

He was quite slim, and his face was narrow, even foxlike. He had a high forehead and his hair was combed back, and his entire body and being radiated quiet intensity. He sported a pencil mustache that he had left after shaving the rest of a beard, acquired during a recent marathon flight. Just behind him on a shelf was his latest acquisition, the Harmon International Trophy for record flight achievement. Like an oversized paperweight, the trophy was sitting on top of a note that read simply: “I wish I could have been with you,” and was signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt. At this moment, even that didn’t matter to him. All that did matter was the news that he was getting over the phone.

“There’s no mistake about that, Wooly?” he said.

“No mistake, sir,” came Wooly’s voice.

“I see.”

“I know it was a little sloppy—”

“It was damn sloppy,” the man shot back.

“Hey,” said Wooly, feeling slightly annoyed. “At least it didn’t wind up in the wrong people’s hands.”

“Well, yes,” he conceded, “it could have been worse.”

“That’s our attitude. Now, if—”

“Right,” said the man, and hung up before Wooly could continue.

He looked across his desk at two War Department liaisons, Foster and Wolfman. His lips thinning even more than they were before, he said, “That was Wolinski. They chased it to an airstrip in the Valley. There was a wreck on the runway . . . the Cirrus X-3 was destroyed.”

Wolfman and Foster exchanged looks of disappointment . . . and, at the same time, relief. Echoing Wooly’s words, Foster said, “Better lost than in the wrong hands.”

“How soon can you rebuild it?” asked Wolfman.

“Rebuild it?” said the mustached man. He seemed amused. “Not a chance.”

This time the two liaisons gave each other glances of somewhat greater significance. Clearing his throat, Wolfman said, “My people in Washington will have something to say about that.”

The mustached man gave an unpleasant laugh. “Your people in Washington want to turn anything that flies into a weapon. Apparently, someone else had the same idea.” He then picked up a thick portfolio and riffled through it, gazing at a sheath of diagrams with an almost wistful regret.

Foster said, a bit more loudly, “Sir, I’m afraid we must insist . . .”

The man at the desk sounded almost bored. He didn’t look up at them as he said, “I’ll remind you boys that I don’t work for the government. I
cooperate,
at my discretion.”

He stood and strode over to the fireplace, where a crackling fire was burning brightly. “Two of my best pilots were killed in the test phase,” he continued. “God knows how many more men would’ve died if it had flown. I’m sorry I ever dreamed the damned thing up.”

And before Foster and Wolfman could react, the tall, brooding, mustached man dropped the portfolio into the fireplace. The flames immediately began to consume the blueprints, documents, notes—all of it.

Wolfman and Foster were on their feet immediately. “You can’t do that!” said Wolfman.

“What’ll we tell the President?” protested Foster.

One of the objects being reduced to ash in the fireplace was a watercolor rendering of a proposed Hughes Aircraft pavilion at the upcoming 1939 World’s Fair. In the sky above the structure was a flying man soaring toward golden clouds.

“Tell him the dream is over. Tell him Howard Hughes said so,” said Howard Hughes, running a finger over his mustache. He looked up over his desk at a scaled-down model of another pet project of his—the biggest seaplane in history, which he called the
Spruce Goose.
The model alone, which he kept mounted on an overhead track so he could watch it cruise around his office, was as wide as a man’s outstretched arms. He sighed. There would always be more dreams.

He turned and gazed back into the flames, watching the portfolio and papers he’d dropped there being consumed.

The sky in the watercolor blackened, and the flying man in the picture burst into flame.

“T
hree hundred gallons?!”
Peevy stared in shock at the slip of paper in his hand. “We don’t burn that much in
two years!”

Inside the airfield hangar, a heavyset man stood in front of Peevy with meaty thumbs looped into frayed suspenders. He chomped down on a cigar that he habitually switched from one side of his mouth to the other. It was Bigelow, owner and operator of the Bigelow Air Circus, and at the moment he was being shouted at by a pipsqueak named Peevy and didn’t particularly appreciate it. “You burned it in two seconds when my fuel truck went up.”

Perched on a chair nearby, Cliff protested, “I didn’t blow up your truck, the guy in the car did!”

Bigelow, as always, had all the answers. “Yeah, after bouncing off
you
!” He waved his cigar in Cliff’s direction, leaving a trail of smoke in the hangar air. “Pilots are responsible for a safe landing. You know that.”

Cliff was about to protest when Peevy cut him off. The mechanic tried to sound reasonable. “Where we gonna get this kind of dough, Bigelow? The GeeBee’s scrapped.”

Now they were getting into the territory that Bigelow wanted. Trying to look sympathetic, he said, “Look, fellas, I hate to kick you when you’re down, but business is business. I’m out-of-pocket here. ’Course . . .” He paused, savoring the moment. “I could always use the old clown act.”

Peevy’s eyes narrowed. So that’s what this was all about. Bigelow had never liked Cliff’s style, his confidence, or anything else about him except his ability as a pilot and his entertainment value. But if he could keep that entertainment value and add in the pleasure of humiliating Cliff by making him dress in that stupid clown costume to do aerial acrobatics in a flying death trap called
Miss Mabel . . .

“We don’t do that anymore,” said Peevy.

Before he could get another word out, Cliff immediately said, “Sure we do.” He ignored Peevy’s glare and said, “Fifteen bucks a show, right?”

Bigelow was loving it. Secretly he was still sure that Cliff had removed the screws from his chair that time. He still had back troubles because of it. “Ten,” said Bigelow, rolling his cigar back. “Five goes against your bill.”

Peevy fired a glance at Cliff, who shrugged. What choice did they have?

However, Bigelow acted as if it were entirely up to them, as if he hadn’t boxed them in. “It’s up to you, boys,” he said expansively. “See it my way or see me in court.” He turned, started to leave, and then as an afterthought added, “Clown suit’s in the storeroom. First show’s at nine tomorrow. Don’t be late.” And he walked out.

“Lousy nickel nurser,” muttered Cliff.

Peevy went to Cliff and took him by the shoulders. “Cliff, are you off your nut? Doin’ the clown act means goin’ up in
Mabel.
She’s a flyin’ coffin. You said so yourself.”

And Cliff hadn’t been exaggerating. Barnstorming had really gotten its start after the Great War, when surplus war planes were put on the market at dirt-cheap prices. Pilots bought them and went around the country putting on shows or taking thrilled passengers for flights, usually operating out of barns—hence the term.

Miss Mabel
had been one of the first purchased and, the way things were going, was working on being the last retired. It was a positively ancient biplane called a Standard, painted garish yellow. It had been dubbed
Miss Mabel
by Peevy, who, along with all the other air veterans on the field, not to mention every man, woman, and child in America, was madly in love with Mabel Cody, the daring air circus acrobat who cavorted on the wings of Standards and Jenny biplanes as if she were a monkey leaping around branches. He’d seen her in action a number of times and was utterly captivated by her verve, her skill, and her pure and obvious lust for life as she capered about, high in the air, wearing a skin-tight white jump suit that inspired pilots everywhere to rise to new heights.

So Peevy had named the plane for her, knowing that it would probably be the closest he’d ever come to climbing inside of Mabel Cody.

Miss Mabel
sported the number 19 on the side, which Cliff had claimed was the number of pilots killed flying her. Each time, he said, the plane had been rebuilt by the money-conscious Bigelow, although attempts at rebuilding the pilots had met with somewhat less success.

Still, Cliff forced a smile. “I’ll go real easy on her. She never let us down before.”

He pulled the photo of Jenny out of his pocket, grinned, and stuck it into the Standard’s instrument panel. Behind him, Peevy went on. “The number five piston’s shot! There’s more spit and bailing wire here than airplane—”

“I can fly a shoebox if it’s got wings,” said Cliff airily.

He climbed up into the cockpit, trying not to think about the image of himself wearing that awful clown outfit. But when he tried to sit down, he jumped up moments later with a pained “Owww!”

Peevy looked up in surprise. “What?”

Cliff stepped out onto the wing and leaned back into the cockpit, the upper half of his body disappearing from sight as he rooted around in it. Finally he managed to dislodge something wrapped in a gray duffel bag from under the seat.

“What’ve you got there?” asked Peevy curiously.

“I don’t know, but it’s heavy,” replied Cliff.

He carried the bag to a work table and set it down with a thud. Now Peevy said with surprise, “That’s my duffel bag!”

Cliff pushed the fabric down and his mouth dropped in amazement. Peevy squeezed in behind Cliff’s shoulder and gasped.

It sat upright on the work table, a device that consisted of two cylinders seamlessly joined, between two and three feet in height. It was gray steel and chrome, sleek and somehow ominous, as if suggesting potential for great good and, at the same time, great danger. There were straps on it, folded tight and buckled in place.

Peevy stared at it. “Odd-looking contraption . . .”

“What do you suppose it is?” asked Cliff. Peevy shrugged.

Cliff uncoiled a wound-up cable and held it up. It was about the length of his arm. At the end of the cable was a weird metal T, like a flat bracelet. And in the center of that T was a red button.

There was something about the presence of a button, particularly a large red one, that made people want to press it.

Cliff pressed it.

With an enormous blast of flame, the device roared and leapt off the table on a rush of superheated air. Peevy was knocked to the floor and Cliff fell back with a yelp of surprise.

The cylinder shot toward the roof. It smashed through a thick rafter, bounced off the ceiling, and zoomed back at the floor. In a screaming shower of sparks, the blazing cylinder ricocheted off a steel tool cabinet, its trajectory carrying it straight through the outer wall of the hangar’s small office.

There were the continued sounds of chaos from within the office, and Cliff and Peevy looked at each other with pure terror. Peevy took a step in the opposite direction, as if contemplating simply leaving the hangar and pretending that he’d never even seen the damned thing before. But Cliff went to the hole that the cylinder had drilled through the wall and, after a moment’s reconsideration, Peevy joined him. Together they peered tentatively through the hole in the office.

The cylinder, still spitting fire and vibrating furiously as its powerful engine continued to operate, was half embedded in an easy chair. It looked as if, given a few more minutes, the thing would manage to get the chair airborne.

Cliff entered the room, shying away from the intense heat of the flame. He reached out and grabbed a mop that was propped against a wall nearby and, shielding his face, punched the red button with the handle. Even as he did so he wondered, for one horrible moment, whether pushing the button a second time would, for example, push the flaming cylinder into high gear or something. He was fortunate, though, for the small jet engine promptly shut off. The only noise left in the office was the ragged breathing of Cliff and Peevy.

Automatically Cliff started to reach for the rocket to pull it from its entrapment, and Peevy shouted, “Careful!” Wondering what he could have been thinking, reaching out with his bare skin to touch something that had been a flying inferno, Cliff immediately pulled his hands back. But then, very slowly, very gingerly, he brought his hands closer and closer to the housing, trying to sense for heat. There was none. He touched the metal lightly and then more firmly.

His eyes widened. “The shell’s still cool!”

Cautiously approaching the rocket, they each grabbed a side and, within moments, had pried it loose and gotten it back onto the work table. They set it down gingerly, as if afraid that they were handling a keg of dynamite that might blow up at the slightest wrong move.