The Rocketeer (23 page)

T
he hulking shape of the Bulldog Café squatted in the silver moonlight. The neighborhood all around was dark and quiet, as if holding its breath. Not a soul was in sight.

Cliff had been watching for several minutes to make sure no one was around. He felt exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept for a week and could sleep for twice that time. Still, he didn’t want to just go waltzing into the café and be a sitting duck with the rocket pack if someone was in there waiting for him. So he’d taken care to stash it before coming over, in a place that he hoped was clever—and yet simple—enough to avoid detection.

Now he poked his head into the back of the Bulldog Café and whispered, “Peevy? Millie?”

No response. Maybe they were in hiding. He climbed up a few steps of the storeroom ladder and looked cautiously into the attic room. “Peevy? Millie?”

“Hey, Cliff!”

He was so startled he dropped the trapdoor on his head and slipped off the ladder, landing heavily on the café floor. He looked up in confusion to see the bathrobe-clad Patsy emerging from a shadow.

“I couldn’t sleep.” She pointed next door, to where her mother and she lived in a small, modest frame house. “An’ I saw you sneak in.”

“Patsy,” he gasped. “You scared the livin’ . . . heck,” he said, amending his original word, “outta me.”

“Sorry!”

He took a breath to steady his jangled nerves. After surviving bullets and thugs, he was getting rattled by a kid. “Where’s Peevy?”

“Some men took him away,” she said worriedly.

No less worried was Cliff as he looked at her in shock. Men? What men? Which men? There were so many people involved in this thing, it seemed, and they all had guns or badges or both, and none of this was doing Cliff a shred of good.

Suddenly the phone rang loudly. Catlike, Cliff was on his feet and snatched the receiver. “Peevy?!” he practically shouted into it.

“Wrong,” came a guttural voice. “This Secord?”

Cliff’s mind shifted into overdrive. This didn’t sound like a fed. Didn’t sound like Sinclair. It sounded kind of like the guy Sinclair was shouting at in the restaurant. The one he’d called Valentine.

“Who is this?” said Cliff slowly.

“Wanna talk to your girlfriend?” said Valentine.

Cliff sighed in relief. Whoever it was, it was somebody who didn’t know how to bluff worth a damn. “You’re fulla crap! She’s safe outta town by now!”

“Yeah? Get a load of this, smart ass!”

There was a brief pause, during which Cliff wondered what sort of lame trick they were going to try now. And then his blood ran cold as the unmistakable voice of jenny came on. “Cliff . . . is that you?” She sounded tentative and terrified.

“Jenny!” he shouted in alarm. “Where are you? What are they—?!”

“Ah-ah,” the voice of Valentine cut back in. “Just a taste, lover boy. So you know we’re serious.”

“You bastard!” hollered Cliff, feeling more helpless than ever. “If you touch a hair on her head, I swear I’ll . . .”

“You want her back?” Valentine had gone from silky and even amused to hard-edged nastiness. “Bring us the rocket! Now, write this down.”

Cliff grabbed a pencil and a paid bill from a spindle by the cash register and scribbled quickly as Valentine continued. “Griffith Observatory. Exactly four
A.M
. By the statues. We’ll be waiting. And, Secord?” There was a dramatic pause and Cliff knew what was coming. He’d seen it in films, and sure enough: “Come alone or the girl’s dead.” And, as if in preview, the phone went dead.

Cliff hung up and stuffed the bill into his pocket. Patsy, frightened by the conversation that she’d just heard, said urgently, while tugging on the leg of his jodhpurs, “Cliff, what’s happening? What are they doing to Jenny?”

Short-tempered, angry, Cliff snapped, “Quiet, Patsy! I have to think!”

Patsy fought to hold back tears, and immediately Cliff felt remorseful. Hell, the kid hadn’t done anything. He knelt down next to her and said softly, “I didn’t mean to yell at you. Listen . . . can you keep a big secret?” She nodded. “You know the flying man who saved Malcolm today?”

Immediately all thoughts of tears were forgotten. Patsy remembered the awe she’d felt when she’d seen him swooping down, the sunlight sparkling off his helmet as he soared through the air like a bird. “The Rocketeer!”

“He’s going to help me get Jenny back,” said Cliff firmly.

She looked excitedly at him. “Then it’ll be okay! He’ll save her! The Rocketeer can do anything!”

He stared at her, unsure of what to answer, unsure if it even needed an answer. Obviously it did, because Patsy immediately picked up on his uncertainty and said, “Can’t he?”

Cliff put his hands on her small shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Yeah.” He said it as much for his benefit as for hers. “Yeah . . . maybe he can.”

She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tight.

And that was the moment when the front and rear doors of the diner were kicked in. Four large men with guns rushed in and surrounded Cliff before he could move so much as an inch. He froze, afraid that any kind of play would cause a hail of bullets and a severely perforated little girl. Not to mention himself.

He waited for what seemed eternity to learn whose side these new gunmen were on.

The front door swung open and a familiar man stepped into the wash of lights. He smiled lopsidedly.

“Remember me?” said Agent Fitch.

I
n the office of Howard Hughes, Peevy sat across from the millionaire aviator, holding a cup of coffee and eating a sandwich. “Gotta admit,” said Peevy to Hughes, who was listening intently to the old mechanic, “I always thought if I met you, I wouldn’t know if I’d want to shake your hand or punch you.”

“Why?” asked Hughes, amused.

“ ’Cause I helped out Wiley Post.”

“Ah,” said Hughes, understanding immediately. “And I broke Wiley’s record for circling the globe. His record stood for five years, Peevy. A hell of an accomplishment. And he was alone. And he flew a slightly longer course.”

“And he had plane trouble!” added Peevy, his annoyance resurfacing. “Talk about all the trouble he and the
Winnie Mae
had . . .”

“And all the advantages I had.”

“Why, if Wiley were alive today,” bristled Peevy, and then he realized that he was being impolite to his host. He settled back and said, “Still . . . little under four days. You did pull off one hell of a stunt, Mr. Hughes.”

“Thank you, Peevy,” said Hughes. “And be aware that I’ve always tried to be helpful and supportive to those fliers who don’t have my . . . advantages. For example, did you hear about Corrigan?”

Peevy frowned. “Doug Corrigan? Nice guy. Kind of quiet. If you’re gonna tell me he flew nonstop from California to New York, I heard about that . . .”

Hughes leaned back and smiled. “He’s not in New York anymore. He’s in Dublin.”

“Dublin,
Ireland
? How’d he get there?!”

“Illegally,” said Hughes. “He wanted to get permission to fly the Atlantic but was hampered by the permit procedures. Government apparently was reluctant to let him go. So he went anyway. Landed in Baldonnel Airfield just yesterday. Claims he intended to fly from New York to California and his compass got stuck.”

Peevy roared with laughter. “His
compass
? You mean he says he went the wrong way?”

“That’s right,” agreed Hughes, a twinkle in his eye. “State Department was ready to hang him out to dry. But I placed a call to Secretary of State Hull on Corrigan’s behalf. Pulled a few strings. He’ll be back here in California in no time.”

“Yeah, but the next time I see him, I’ll be sure to call him ‘Wrong Way,’ ” said Peevy.

“The point is, Peevy, I admire men like Corrigan. And Secord. The times we’re living in are among the most exciting in the history of mankind. Between air flight and radios, the world is shrinking before our eyes. It’s becoming smaller and smaller, and what frightens me is that if we don’t get more accustomed to living with each other, we’re going to choke each other to death.”

“Yeah,” said Peevy darkly. “Like that Hitler guy.”

“Like Hitler,” agreed Hughes. “Which is what the rocket pack was built with an eye toward. So tell me how you got it up and running, Peevy. I’ve seen the photos of the Rocketeer. It flies. I can’t believe it.”

“I’ll tell you,” said Peevy slowly, “if you tell me what Katharine Hepburn is really like.”

Hughes grinned. “Deal. You first.”

“Well,” said Peevy, leaning back, totally at ease, while a man who could buy and sell him a million times over hung on his every word, “all I did was bypass the pressure valve, and that solved your throttle problem.”

“But adding a rudder to the helmet. That’s ingenious.”

“Nah.” Peevy waved off the compliment. “Just basic aviation.”

At that moment the oak doors swung open. Peevy turned in surprise as Cliff was led in by several extremely annoyed-looking federal agents.

“Cliff! Am I glad to see you!”

“Same here, pal.” He glanced up at the huge model of the sea plane hanging from the ceiling. Jeez, what a monster.

Fitch dumped an envelope onto the desk—Cliff’s wallet, coins, pocket knife, chewing gum, and a folded restaurant bill. He turned and looked at Cliff in annoyance but addressed Hughes. “No sign of the rocket, and he’s not talking.”

Hughes rose and faced Cliff. The young aviator, for his part, didn’t look remotely intimidated. It was surprising. If death and the laws of gravity didn’t faze him, certainly a simple millionaire wasn’t going to do it. “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

“What pilot doesn’t, Mr. Hughes?” replied Cliff evenly.

“I designed the Cirrus X-3, the rocket pack. It was stolen from me.”

“
I
didn’t steal it,” Cliff bristled.

“I told him the whole deal, Cliff,” Peevy said. “He believes us. Give him the rocket.” He knew that Cliff would be thrilled to hear it. After all the trouble they’d landed themselves in, Peevy had managed to save both their hashes and get everything squared. Boy, was Cliff going to be thrilled.

So it was with considerable shock that Peevy heard Cliff say, “I . . . can’t do that. Not yet, anyway.”

Peevy’s eyes widened, and he said nervously, “Cliff, we agreed to give the rocket back to the right guy. That’s him!”

Cliff’s only response was an anxious, tight-lipped stare.

“Secord,” said Hughes easily but dangerously, “I don’t think you know the game you’re playing.” He tapped an intercom and said, “Go ahead, roll it.”

Cliff didn’t know what to expect upon hearing that, but the last thing he anticipated was what happened . . . namely, a screen lowered and a projector fluttered to life behind a wall port.

A grainy, silent black-and-white film unspooled on the screen. Adolf Hitler was seen shaking hands and exchanging
“heils”
with various high-ranking German military officials.

The Germans were busily adjusting a crude rocket pack—heavier and bulkier than the one Cliff had used—onto the back of a test pilot. As they did so, Hughes narrated. “The German prototype had the same problem as our first design. The combustion chamber would overheat and . . .”

On the film, the pilot fired an ignition button as the other Germans stood clear. He shot into the air about twenty feet, and then the rocket sputtered, pitching the pilot toward the earth. Cliff winced as the rocket then fired again, slamming the pilot into the ground.

Others ran toward him now as the pilot writhed helplessly, one pant leg on fire. Just before they could reach him, the rocket fired once more, blowing them back. The action, of course, prompted an equal and opposite reaction, and the pilot spun across the ground, striking the side of a bunker. The rocket then burst into flame, engulfing the unfortunate man’s tangled remains.

“. . . explode,” Hughes finished somewhat dryly. “My boys finally figured it out. A double-walled chamber through which the fuel is pumped. Cool the chamber and preheat the fuel at the same time.”

Inwardly, Cliff was shuddering. How close he had come! What if he’d glommed onto a rocket pack that was an earlier design, or had some other defect. He could’ve been blown to kingdom come. Despite all the bullets he had dodged in the last twenty-four hours, both literal and figurative, this, he felt, was the closest call of all.

“The German experiment didn’t seem like much to worry about,” continued Hughes. “But when we got our hands on this next film, we realized the scope of their plan.”

The image on the screen abruptly changed to an animated map of Europe, swarming with flying soldiers. Rocket-powered storm troopers. Rocket men blanketing the skies, flying in formation above burning, ruined cities. The unstoppable winged commandos swept across the continent.

Cliff and Peevy stared somberly at the animated film, and then came the bleakest image yet.

A map of the United States appeared, suddenly assaulted by dark arrows that spread from points east. Rocket-borne assault troops advanced on Washington, D.C. As the Capitol burned, searing flames leapt up to engulf a proud federal eagle. The symbol melted like wax, and then reformed into a Nazi eagle.