Indiana Jones & the Sky Pirates Read online

  When they were through, Tarkiz emerged from the cabin with a large fire extinguisher. "He'll stand to the side of each engine when we start," Cromwell said.

  "We may not always have time to do it this way, but whenever we can, we follow the book. If there's a fire, he can douse it at once. All right, inside we go. Wait. We won't go anywhere with those chocks by the wheels. Remove them. And don't walk within the radius of those propeller blades! If one of those things ever kicks in it can slice off your arm or cut you in half." "Yessir," Indy mumbled.

  They climbed aboard. Indy listened to Foulois reading off the checklist. They set instruments before starting, adjusted the altimeter to the field elevation, then nodded to one another. Brakes locked. Controls free. Propellers clear.

  "Indy, go back and check doorlock security," Foulois directed.

  "Tarkiz closed it. I heard—"

  "You want to do more than fly, my friend." Foulois smiled. "You want to operate this machine. Check the door."

  Indy disappeared, came back with a nod of his head. "Done."

  "While we did the walkaround, did you check the security locks on the underwing lockers?"

  "Why, I didn't—

  "I know. I did," Foulois scolded gently. "You do it by the book, Indy, and you learn to memorize everything. Now, we'll taxi out. I'll work the radios, Will," he told Cromwell, then turned again to Indy. "Notice how he keeps the yoke full back when we taxi. This keeps the tail down and gives us better control on the ground. And while we taxi we'll keep checking the gauges as the engines warm up."

  They stopped well short of the active runway. Another checklist, another litany of shouted calls and checks and rechecks. They ran the engines to full power until the Ford rattled and shook as if it had palsy.

  Both Cromwell and Foulois turned to grin at Indy. "You remembering everything?"

  "Huh? Oh, sure!" Indy said hastily.

  "There's a great American saying, my friend." Cromwell laughed. "In a pig's eye, you are. But you'll learn. Now, we'll break a rule. You should be strapped into a seat, but being the magnificent pilot I am," he showed a broad toothy smile, "we'll let you stand where you are. Get a good grip on the seat backs and don't touch anything that moves. Got it?"

  "Got it!" Indy told him.

  "You're clear to the active and for takeoff," Foulois told Cromwell. The Briton worked the outboard engine, tapping the brakes gently, and lined up the airplane on the runway centerline. He moved all the controls again to their limits, held the yoke full back, adjusted the friction knobs for the throttles, and nodded to Foulois.

  "Ready?"

  "Like a French goose," Foulois told him.

  Cromwell held full pressure on the brakes, and moved the throttles steadily forward to their stops, the propellers screaming. He scanned the gauges, nodded to himself, and released the brakes. The Ford surged ahead, howling.

  Almost at once the tail came up and Indy had a clear view of the runway.

  Cromwell held in right rudder pressure to keep the Ford tracking true, the speed building up swiftly. In less than four hundred feet the main wheels were off the runway, and Indy looked around to see the ground fall away.

  It didn't. Engines and props howling, the Ford tore down the runway barely above the concrete, building its speed steadily. The grin on Cromwell's face told Indy more than enough. These guys were going to pull a surprise on him.

  Unknown to them, he'd read the pilot's operating handbook on this airplane, and he knew that even with a full load it was flying and climbing very well, even as slow as eighty miles an hour. He saw the gauge needle on the airspeed indicator tremble at 100, and it kept right on moving around as the runway end rushed at them.

  "And it's upsadaisy!" Cromwell sang out as he hauled the yoke back suddenly. Indy was already braced, but he was still surprised and delighted as the "old lady" trimotor lunged skyward in a wild climb, and then seemed to hang vertically as Cromwell wracked her over in a steep bank. The three men were laughing and whooping it up together; Indy glanced back into the cabin where Gale had a grin from ear to ear, and Tarkiz showed a face turning green as his stomach tried desperately to flee his body. I'm going to learn to fly this thing myself, Indy swore.

  There wasn't time for anything else but their checkout schedule. Once in the restricted airspace reserved for them, Tarkiz staggered back to the circular container near the cabin rear. He pulled back and locked the sliding hatch atop the fuselage, then turned a crank handle that lifted the machine gun mount and the weapon into the airstream. Lying flat against the fuselage was a panel of curving armor glass.

  Tarkiz pushed this upward and locked it into place with folding metal braces; now he had a buffer against the powerful winds of flight. He released the securing pins of the machine gun, slid a heavy round canister with two hundred rounds of ammunition, and shouted at the top of his lungs: "Give me something to kill! It makes better my stomach!" Gale went back, tugged at his sleeve, and handed him a leather helmet with earphones and a mike within the helmet so he would be on intercom.

  "Just hang in there and enjoy the scenery, old chap," Cromwell instructed him. "You'll get your chance to play with your new toy."

  "Hurry up," growled Tarkiz.

  Foulois pointed out their objective, a wide plain of several thousand acres. A huge circle had been painted on the ground and in its center was a small cluster of buildings. "That's our target," Indy announced. "Let's see you two mugs tear it up."

  Without hesitation, hurling Indy's body against the entrance side to the cockpit, Cromwell slammed the Ford into a winghigh rollover, coming back on the yoke, rolling in full left aileron, stamping left rudder, and shoving the throttles full forward. He kept his controls moving as the trimotor swung up and around to peel off for the ground, and the next moment their speed went right through the gauge's reading of 150 mph. It was a breathless rush earthward at a terrifying angle.

  Cromwell seemed like a madman intent on reaching the ground in the shortest possible time. Indy noticed what he'd failed to see before; a vertical line with crosshairs marked on the windshield. "Damn it, Will," Foulois shouted, "what's the redline on this thing!"

  Redline, redline, thought Indy furiously. Of course, that's what they call neverexceed speed. I think it's about oneforty or something. But we're already doing onesixty and—

  "I don't know and I bloody well don't care!" Cromwell shouted back to the Frenchman. "You can't hurt this thing and you know it. Now shut the devil up and get with the systems! Guns charged?" "Charged!"

  "Tank jettison armed?" "Armed!"

  "What the blazes are you going to do?" Indy shouted. "Drop our fuel tanks?"

  Cromwell glanced about for only a moment. "Yahooooo!" he shouted in a very unmannerly British war yell. He brought the nose of the Ford up slightly, eased in right rudder to line up his sight markings, and the next moment depressed the button on his yoke. The airplane vibrated and shook from nose to tail as the two wing machine guns roared. Fountains of dirt leaped up along the ground, and then boards splintered and shattered as Cromwell fired dead center into the target buildings. He pulled out of the dive perilously close to the ground, and with their speed still high, hung the Ford on its wingtip in a screaming vertical turn. "Tarkiz! Your turn! Get the center building!"

  They heard the machine gun in back firing in staccato bursts, the wind backdraft bringing acrid gunpowder to their nostrils. Above the screaming wind, howling engines and propellers, and firing gun, they heard a terrible strangling noise. "What's going on back there?" Cromwell called to Gale.

  She could hardly speak. She seemed to be choking. Indy rushed back, staggering from side to side of the cabin through the wild ride, the hammering gun, and thundering bedlam. Gale grabbed Indy close, spoke into his ear. "It's our hero! Tarkiz! He's throwing up out there!"

  She was convulsed with laughter. Swept up in the rush of emotion, she grabbed Indy's waist to hug him fiercely.

  Their eyes caught and held. For the instant they
might have been alone on a mountaintop. Impulsively Gale's hands swept up, grasped Indy's head, and kissed him fiercely.

  He was astonished. He still held her tightly, wideeyed. "This is marvelous!" she shouted. "Let's go forward and see how Tarkiz did!"

  Holding onto one another they pushed into the cockpit deck. Foulois pointed to the center building. "He is a superb marksman," Foulois remarked, as calmly as if drinking tea on some quiet veranda. "In America, I suppose you would call him DeadEye Dick. He is really very good."

  "Rene, I'm going to sling those tanks into the buildings," Cromwell announced to the Frenchman in the right seat. "As soon as I do that, you've got the controls. Bring her around in a climbing turn and then see if you can put those rockets where they'll do the most good!"

  "Righto, cheerio, and wot for, eh?" Foulois mimicked his friend. "Have at it."

  The Ford came around with diminishing speed; control and accuracy were everything now. Cromwell held the trimotor straight and true as Foulois held his hand on the emergency release cable handle. "On my mark!" shouted Cromwell. A moment later he sang out, "Three! Two! One! Mark!"

  They felt a jolt as the tanks were ejected by powerful coiled springs.

  Cromwell brought the Ford up in a high swinging chandelle, close to stalling speed at the top of the curving climb with the left wing down so they could all see the two tanks tumbling as they crashed into the buildings. A white mist leaped into being as the tanks ruptured.

  "Bingo!" Indy shouted his congratulations.

  "You've got her," Cromwell called to Foulois. The Englishman held aloft both hands and clapped them together in the traditional handingover of control.

  There wasn't a nudge to the airplane as Foulois took the controls. He brought down the nose, swept about in a wide turn, and eased into a shallow dive. "I'm going for onethirty," he announced to Cromwell. "Call out the speeds."

  "Oneforty, coming down, onethirtyfive, and, that's it, onethirty on the nose." Foulois nudged the throttles as if stroking a woman's hand, and the airspeed needle pegged on 130.

  Foulois's voice was calm and cool as if he might be talking about a soccer game or ordering a drink at a Paris club. "Confirm rocket release doors open."

  Cromwell looked up at the wings; the covering panels had slid away.

  "Doors open, electrical primers armed." "Very good. Thank you." Indy nudged Gale. "I think he's got ice water in his veins.

  Gale was too excited to talk. She clung to Indy's arm, eyes wide, immersed in the moment.

  "Just about time, and . . . fire," Foulois said calmly, pressing the button. Two rockets from their rails ejected flame and smoke behind them, racing earthward toward the buildings, squiggling like tadpoles as they arrowed ahead of the trimotor. They struck with spouts of flame, and then the gasoline vapors ignited with a huge fireball leaping upward, a boiling mass of flames and smoke.

  Foulois already had gone to full power and wracked the trimotor about on its right wing, climbing away from the rising fireball. Safely out of range he swung back again to the left.

  "You're hired," Indy told him, slapping him on the shoulder. The buildings were flattened, burning fiercely. "That's it," Indy added.

  Cromwell glanced at Foulois. "Take her up to four thousand. It's time for the school bell to ring."

  Foulois leveled off at four thousand feet and set the power to cruise. Behind them Tarkiz had lowered the gun mount and closed the hatch, reducing the howl of wind and engine roar from outside. Cromwell climbed from the left seat. "Who's first?" he asked Indy and Gale.

  "Ladies first," Indy said. "I'll watch her, and then I'll give it a try."

  Gale climbed into the left seat, fastened the seat belt, and let her fingers run lightly over the yoke. "Now, all I want you to do is hold our present course," Rene said soothingly. "You can follow that road ahead of us. If you pick a point on the horizon, just aim for it. Make all your control inputs gently. And don't worry about a thing. I'll be riding the controls with you. I'm sure you'll do fine."

  Gale hadn't said a word. Foulois held up both hands in the timehonored signal. "You've got it," he told Gale.

  They all expected wandering, the nose rising and falling, swinging a bit to left or right. It didn't happen. Indy stared with growing disbelief as the Ford flew on as though it was on steel rails. Cromwell and Foulois exchanged glances. "I'll be hanged," Cromwell said finally. "She knows how!"

  Indy leaned forward, watching everything Gale did. His face mirrored disbelief and no small awe at the woman, her red hair flying in the wind from the open side window. Finally he tapped her shoulder. "You really can fly," he said with masterful understatement. "Why in thunder didn't you tell me?"

  She glanced back at Indy, her eyes gleaming, loving his surprise. "No one ever asked me," she said.

  Cromwell pushed next to Indy so he could talk to Gale. "Miss Parker, you're no novice."

  "Thank you," she said, exasperating the three men all the more.

  "When?" Cromwell barked. "I mean, when did you learn?"

  "When I was twelve, I spent a summer in Germany with some cousins. They were all mad about gliding, and I joined them. I had three months of flying gliders almost every day."

  "Did you solo?" Foulois asked.

  "Second week," she said with a straight face.

  "And after that?" Cromwell pressed.

  "Scotland. More gliders, then an old training plane. My mother had the money, and I spent another summer at a flying school up there."

  "I suppose you flew solo in powered machines?" asked Cromwell.

  "Yes."

  "Well, will you get to the bleedin' point, Miss Parker! Do you have your certificate?"

  She turned again with the smile of a lynx. "Single engine, multiengine, commercial privileges."

  "I'll be hanged," Cromwell said quietly.

  "Indy, do you want to give it a go now?" Gale asked the perplexed man behind her.

  "Let's let it wait until tomorrow," Foulois broke in. "I have the field in sight. Not enough time left for now. All right, Gale, I'll take it from here."

  She kept her left hand on the yoke and began easing back the throttles to start their descent toward the airfield.

  "Why?" she asked.

  "Well, it's obvious, I mean, ah," he faltered.

  "Why don't you work the radio?" she asked sweetly.

  Indy seemed to have a thundercloud over his head. "Sure, you work the radio, Rene," he said in clipped tones. He couldn't believe this. She was going to try to land this thing, her first time on the controls!

  She brought the Ford down in a perfect threepoint landing. She taxied off the runway onto the long taxiway back to their hangar. "Would you mind taking it from here?" she asked Foulois as she started from her seat.

  "Oh. Yes, of course. Thank you," he said, feeling like an idiot.

  She squeezed past Indy, close enough to brush his lips with hers as she went by. "Excuse me, Indy. I need to fix my hair."

  10

  Indy stood before the door to Cromwell's room. He raised a fist, hesitated, then slammed his fist against the door. He heard a startled "Good God! Are the Huns attacking?" as Cromwell burst from a deep sleep. The next moment a loud crash ensued from the room as Cromwell lurched from his bed and fell over his boots. Indy pushed open the door, staring down at Cromwell with his face pushed into the floor. Indy grasped his arm and hauled the portly Britisher to his feet.

  "Do you know what time it is, Will? Do you remember what we're supposed to do first thing this morning? Did you arrange for the plane to be ready?" Indy hurled a barrage of questions at the befuddled pilot still trying to shake cobwebs from his brain.

  "No. What time is it?" he mumbled.

  "It's already fivethirty, man!"

  "Fivethirty? What are you doing up at this ungodly hour?"

  "You're going to teach me to fly this morning, you nit! Wake up!"

  "I'm trying, I'm trying. Maybe this is just a bad dream. Go away, Indy."

&nbs
p; Indy shook life into the sagging body. "Ten minutes, Brigadier. See you in the mess."

  Indy stomped into the dining mess, poured a mug of steaming coffee, and slumped into a chair at the table.

  Foulois studied him carefully. "Someone left some hot coals in place of your eyeballs, Indy."