The Rocketeer (25 page)

Twenty German commandos in gray jump suits rushed from the bushes, or appeared atop the observatory’s staircases and domes, surrounding Eddie and his men. They aimed their Schmeisser machine guns at the stunned gangsters.

Cliff could have kicked himself. If only he’d done an aerial survey of the area first. But the moment he’d seen Jenny he’d been drawn to her, moth to flame. And now they were both going to get burned.

Sinclair flashed a serpent grin at the gangster and said, “I believe it’s your move, Eddie.”

Realizing that he was outgunned and outmanned, Eddie signaled his men to drop their weapons. Slowly and reluctantly, they did so.

Curiously, Cliff saw that Sinclair was checking his watch. Now, who could he have had an appointment with—?

Then he heard something, something that had been faint but was now getting louder and louder. The sound of whirring engines, immense, bigger than anything Cliff had ever heard in his entire career of flying.

Everyone turned their gaze to the sky.

The sky turned silver.

I
t completely filled the night sky, blotting out the moon, blotting out hope of escape, blotting out everything. It seemed to have sailed out of a Movietone newsreel directly into the living nightmare that the lives of Cliff Secord and Jenny Blake had become.

The zeppelin lowered itself toward the observatory, gondola softly aglow with its running lights. Emblazoned on the airship’s side was the name
Luxembourg,
and, as if it needed any further announcement of its loyalties or origins, a huge swastika decorated the rudder. It almost seemed as if the behemoth balloon weren’t even there, but merely some deadly, spectral apparition.

The reality of the newly arrived zeppelin was testified to by Sinclair’s sharp, barked commands to the German soldiers that surrounded them.
“Ergreifen die Rakete! Schnell!”

Cliff didn’t understand the entire command, although
“schnell”
he knew to be “Move it, buddy.” But
“Rakete”
sounded close enough to “rocket” to make it pretty damned clear what their intention was, as if it weren’t painfully obvious already. One of the commandos ran to Cliff and started to unbuckle the rocket pack. Cliff’s mouth tightened as he restrained himself from swinging his fists, as much as he wanted to. He knew right where he would hit this Nazi clown too—smack on the upper lip, where he looked like he was starting to grow a mustache. In emulation of Uncle Adolf, no doubt.

“Haltet sie in Schach!”
snapped out Sinclair, and if there was any question as to what that meant, it was clarified immediately when the commandos swung their Schmeissers at their captives. Switching back to his charming facade with the skill of a consummate actor, Sinclair said jovially, “So long, Eddie. Thanks for the memories . . .”

And suddenly Sinclair was blinded.

Everyone was. Car-mounted spotlights stabbed out to illuminate the observatory. Tires screeched and smoked as police cars and FBI sedans pulled up. Wooly and Fitch, grabbing at the opportunity to vindicate themselves in high style, were in the lead, in position with tommy guns ready.

Fitch felt a degree of annoyance. Here he’d wished that for once they had automatic weapons so they’d be on par with the bad guys. So now they had tommy guns and what did the bad guys have? Schmeissers and a goddamn blimp. Still, at least he wasn’t crouching there, facing armed German commandos while waving what amounted to a pop gun. Through a bullhorn he bellowed in a voice that echoed throughout the area, “This is the FBI! Throw down your guns!”

Cliff tossed a quick glance at the Nazi commando who had been in the process of unbuckling the
“Rakete.”
He had been totally distracted by the goings-on, and even better, was acting as if Cliff were utterly helpless and to be forgotten. What he didn’t realize was that as long as Cliff had the control brackets attached to his wrists and thumbs to hit the ignition, he’d never be helpless.

He hit them now.

Jenny saw him do it, and her alarmed scream was drowned out by the rocket’s sudden flare-up. The force of the blast hurled the terrified Cliff—who was certain he was going to crack his skull wide open like a cantaloupe because he wasn’t wearing his helmet—across the lawn, dragging the hapless commando behind. They disappeared over a ledge, falling roughly into the tangle brush.

The momentary distraction was all that was needed. Cliff’s scream had not yet faded when Lothar yanked his twin .45s free of their holsters and, with a howl that seemed to hearken back to the Stone Age, started firing with reckless abandon. Cops and feds hit the deck as slugs punched through fenders and shredded tires.

It was an invitation to chaos, and nobody elected to miss the party. The feds started firing on the commandos in the forecourt, while Sinclair and Lothar headed for the stairs to the roof. Jenny almost made a break for it, but Lothar grabbed her firmly while continuing to fire with his other hand.

Seizing the opportunity, Eddie Valentine and his men snatched up the tommy guns that the Germans had so ingraciously—considering they were visitors to the country—insisted that Eddie’s gang toss down.

Eddie Valentine decided to make his sentiments widely and immediately known, both for the sake of letting his own men know who to aim at, and because the last thing he needed was to become the next target should the feds decide they wanted some American gangster hot dogs to go with their Krauts. “Lousy Krauts!” he shouted. “Let ’em have it, boys!”

The feds were stunned to see the Eddie Valentine gang abruptly on the same side, emptying their bullets into the commandos, and taking hits alongside the feds and cops. In short, having cast their lot on the side of the angels, they were fighting as valiantly as anyone could have asked.

Fitch was astounded, and then realized that there were other concerns besides Eddie Valentine’s totally unexpected alliance. From behind the shelter of his bullet-pocked sedan, he called out to the men, “Watch the zeppelin! That thing’s filled with hydrogen! One bad shot’ll fry us all!”

He caught a brief glimpse of Sinclair—Damn! It
had
been Sinclair! Maybe they should recruit that Secord kid or something—Sinclair’s hired gorilla, and a terrified girl who had to be a hostage, all heading up toward the observatory roof. But there was nothing he could do about it except take cold comfort in the fact that the ranks of Nazi commandos were thinning. If they were thinned sufficiently, they might have a shot at going after Sinclair.

He heard a burst of machine gunfire to his right, and he and Wooly glanced over, unsure of the origin of the fusillade. There, crouched behind a police car, was Eddie Valentine, blasting away at the Germans with patriotic zeal. He tossed a tight grin in the direction of two men who would gladly, five minutes earlier, have tossed his butt in jail and sent the key on a one-way trip to France.

“Now I’ve seen everything,” muttered Wooly.

What Wooly was not able to see, at that moment, from his angle, was what was occurring on the roof of the observatory. Specifically, a ladder had been lowered from the zeppelin’s gondola and snagged by the formidable Lothar. He had passed the struggling Jenny over to Sinclair and was now, appropriately apelike, scampering up the rungs toward safety.

“Please, Neville!” begged the desperate girl. “Let me go!”

Sinclair didn’t even bother to reply as Lothar reached down and grabbed her, carrying her kicking and screaming into the gondola.

Her screams were covered by the steady firing of the machine guns from assorted countries; covered and unhearable to everybody but one person . . .

Cliff, struggling to his knees, blood dripping from his forehead, looked up in alarm as he detected Jenny’s piercing screams. His eyes were glazed over, and his mind kept wanting him to just lie down and sleep for a few minutes. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d closed his eyes . . .

But everything immediately snapped into focus as he saw the zeppelin lifting from the roof.

Jenny. The bastards had Jenny.

All right. If they were playing for keeps, then so was he.

He yanked a Mauser machine pistol from the holster of the unmoving commando beside him, and tried not to think about the fact that he had never tried to shoot a human being in his life, much less intend to take a life. But a line had been crossed and he was going to follow the people who had crossed that line, no matter where it took him. Gripping the pistol firmly, he struggled up the hillside.

Inside the gondola, a tense German wearing a dark suit and a swastika lapel pin saw what Sinclair was conspicuously not carrying and said harshly,
“Sie haben die Rakete nicht?”

“I have her!” said Sinclair, pointing at Jenny. Upon the agent’s confused glance, he continued. “That damned rocket will come to us! Now, get this ship above the clouds!”

Cliff, gaining strength with every step as adrenaline surged through him, reached the observatory lawn and snatched up the helmet that he had put down earlier. The cops were mopping up the last of the commandos, and the surviving hoods were aiding their wounded. No one was looking in his direction, and that was just fine with him as he raced up the winding stone staircase. He glanced up and saw that the gondola was already rising toward the clouds.

He heard the agent named Fitch shout, “We’re losing ’em!” and then the other one, Wooly, suddenly cry out, “Maybe not! Look!”

He knew who they had spotted: him. But there were no shouts of “Halt! Stop!” No threats of arrest, no recriminations. Nothing except a sense of anticipation, of hope, of prayer, and the realization that all of a sudden he had gone from being patsy and victim to being their last hope.

He slammed the helmet on, and by God, as he paused atop one of the copper domes, for the first time he truly felt like he was what the papers had made him out to be. He was going to be the hero, the one who saved the day. All this time he’d felt like a fake, on the run from everybody, someone always coming after him.

Not now. Now they were doing the running and he was doing the chasing, and he wasn’t just some idiot pilot who’d stumbled into something beyond his understanding.

He checked the Mauser’s clip, ignited the rocket, and leapt into the sky, a blossom of fire and smoke carried upward by the power of one man’s vision and the hope of several dozen agents of the law.

Finally, finally, finally, he felt like the guy he’d been reading about in the papers.

He was the Rocketeer, dammit. Time to show the Nazis just what that meant.

And boy, was Jenny going to be impressed.

The Rocketeer sailed upward toward the zeppelin. He had never dealt with anything quite so big, never had to judge distance between himself and something of that immensity. But he was utterly confident, carried away by the moment, that he could handle it.

That confidence almost cost him dearly, for the silver tail of the airship was rushing to meet him at a faster pace than he was prepared to make its acquaintance. He eased down on the throttle buttons, but he had completely blown his projected trajectory. As a result, his velocity carried him on a descending arc straight into the zeppelin’s tail, and he smashed into the massive rudder with such impact that he tore the skin right off it.

He slid down the vertical stabilizer and landed hard on his back, shock slamming through his body, and not made to feel any better by the rocket pack’s feelings as if it were going to be driven through his back and up through his chest.
Land on your chest if you’re going to land badly, idiot!
he screamed at himself. Aside from the fact that he could snap his spine, the last thing he needed to do was burst the rocket pack and be stuck on this one-way ticket to the Fatherland.

In the meantime, the hole that Cliff had created in the rudder’s skin was widened by the fiercely howling wind, causing the rudder to swing erratically. While that was of benefit to Cliff, the wind cut both ways, threatening to hurl him off. He pulled himself to his feet and crouched low, fighting the fierce gusts with everything he had.

They would know that something was wrong with the rudder. They weren’t stupid. And they would undoubtedly send someone to check out the nature of the disturbance. Perhaps they would even assume that it was him.

Realizing that what all this added up to was that he didn’t have tons of time, the Rocketeer started to move atop the airship toward an entrance hatch. A red beacon flashed on and off, bathing the bronze helmet in a weird light.

He was getting closer and closer to the hatch, now ten feet, now eight, now five, and the wind was trying its best to hurl him from his perch. But he resisted all the way and finally made it to within arm’s reach of the hatch cover. He poised over it, gun at the ready.

Totally without warning, the hatch cover sprang open, and it knocked the Mauser from Cliff’s hand. He watched in horrified helplessness as it bounced down the side of the zeppelin and fell away.

Lothar emerged from the hatch. And he just kept on coming and coming, like a flow of lava oozing from a volcano, massive and deadly.