A familiar face in a leather cap and goggles poked his head over the side of the open c.o.c.kpit of the autogyro.
Howard Hughes.
"You must be joking," Deitel said.
Rucker covered Deitel and Terah, laying down grazing fire until the last second. Rucker was grabbing at the last rung when the roof access door swung open, a dozen guards pouring out. They paused, slack-jawed, for one crucial moment. Hughes increased the throttle and flew up and away from Hamilton House with his human cargo dangling below.
The gunfire from behind was futile.
Rucker turned and gave Hamilton House the finger.
Five hundred feet above the ground, dangling from the ladder, Deitel clung for dear life repeating his comfort words.
"I hate Texas. I hate Texas. I hate Texas."
Barely fifteen minutes later they were at a dirt airstrip on the New Jersey side of the East River, taxiing down the runway in Hughes"s H-3 racer. Rucker was in the copilot"s seat, scanning all around.
"Yep, we"ve got company."
Four Union States Navy monoplanes, two-seater swept-wing fighters with wing-mounted guns and fixed landing gear, were closing on the strip. The autogyro, while an amazing piece of engineering allowing vertical takeoff, landing, and hovering, was a slow bird and easy to track from the ground, so they"d ditched it.
The lead navy fighter strafed the runway, kicking up dirt but missing on the initial run. Deitel tried not to squeal. Terah was stone-faced. Rucker and Hughes didn"t blink.
"Lousy control these boys have," Rucker said, as casually as if he were appraising different coffees.
"Not enough hours of stick time," Hughes said. "No confidence, worried they"ll get target fixation and plow into the ground. Shame, really."
"Those are High Dynamics P-27s. Max speed is something like 197 mph."
Another two Union fighters made strafing runs at the H-3, but it was airborne now and gaining speed and alt.i.tude fast.
"Watch this," Hughes said. He hit the supercharger and the plane rocketed forward. In seconds the U.S. Navy fighters were distant specks.
Hughes grabbed the wireless mike. "Tin man to Mama Bear. Tin to Mama Bear . . . We"re five by five. En route now to waypoint Echo Three."
The radio crackled. "Tin man, we read you. Good work. Tell Goldilocks his rocking chair is en route to the tree house."
"Roger that, Mama Bear."
Hughes turned to the rear of the c.o.c.kpit.
"Lady," he nodded, "and gentlemen . . . after a quick layover in Richmond, our next stop is Airstrip One, where Captain Rucker"s Raposa awaits. You are now free to move about your lives as the Union States authority can go stuff itself."
Deitel checked his watch.
It said 12:26 P.M.
One day.
Just over one day and three hours he"d known Rucker.
He turned to remark on this to Rucker, and realized Rucker and Terah had slipped away to the rear of the plane, beyond the closed bulkhead.
"What are they up to, Herr Hughes?"
Hughes smiled and ran a hand through his curly mop of hair.
"Either they"re tearing at each other"s throats or tearing at each other"s clothes. One or the other, I highly advise not getting in the middle of it. It"s a long flight to the Caribbean airstrip, and there"s only one first aid kit."
Deitel reflected on this. He sat.
"So, how did we enjoy our first trip to the Big Apple?" Hughes asked.
"I was only there for two hours."
"And?" Hughes asked. Did these Texans ever stop smiling?
"It was more than enough. Is there a . . . what is the word . . . galley?"
"I brought sack lunches," Hughes said. "I was worried that one or the other of those two might have their teeth knocked out, so I brought soup."
Deitel sulked.
"And soft tacos," Hughes added with a smile.
Deitel perked up.
Then Hughes"s expression turned stern.
"Do not spill anything. Seriously."
"What are you doing here?" Terah demanded when Rucker followed her through the hatch to the back pa.s.senger area.
"It"s here or the c.o.c.kpit. Not a big plane, you know," Rucker said.
"No, here. Dealing with this. Bothering me."
"Look, Terah, I told you. Lysander sent me to get you out before you blew your cover with that bone-headed killing and because there"s something brewing that"s a lot more dangerous than whatever the Union States" latest scheme is.
"Besides," he volleyed back, "what are you doing there? Kind of a waste of all that historical knowledge you have rattling around in that big head of yours."
Terah calmed a little. But not much. Her defenses were still up even if she hid it with a devil-may-care laugh.
"You know me, and you know how it is. There"s only so long I can publish papers and manage a museum before I go stir crazy. I need the thrill. And more importantly, someone has to keep an eye on our enemies while others of us"-there was no mistaking her gesture right at him-"spend all their time working for no one"s good but their own. Or on their backhand. Truth now-how did you get involved with this?"
"I told you. I was already on this job when your name came up. Lysander put me on the fast bird up here to save you from your own crazy."
She scoffed.
"Right. Of all the people Lysander could call on, it just happens to be you, huh? He couldn"t have hired Lucky or one of Chennault"s other Fireflies?" Terah asked, slipping off her heels and removing her stockings. "Funny, I remember you taller."
"Hey, I was on this job long before I knew you were involved," he said.
"Right," Terah said. She struck a match on the No Smoking sign and lighted a clove cigarette. "Just like Calais."
Rucker groaned. "Oh good lord. You"re not gonna start with that again."
Terah batted her eyelashes in mock innocence. "Darling, I didn"t start it there."
"That was Chuy"s doing. And don"t call me darling."
Terah took a drag, exhaled, and then stubbed out her cigarette. She put her arms around Rucker"s neck. "It"s not like we"re not good together, Fox. We"re very good when it comes to this. It"s just that over the long haul, I"m not interested in what you"re interested in."
Rucker stammered. She was doing it again.
"Stop it," he said. "I"m not interested in that, either. I wasn"t. Then you got me all twisted around. I never wanted to settle down until you." He leaned in to kiss her, and found his lips planted on her open palm.
"Sorry, Fox. I"ll take a good tumble and a stiff drink, but I"m not interested in opening a whole bottle of wine. There"s a whole world out there, and this modern girl isn"t going to be tied down to anyone. Like the song says, "Anything Goes." And like this girl says, my work is important. Someone has to take the defense of Freehold seriously. We can"t all retire on the beach and play tennis."
"Hey, tennis is an art form. The highest. That"s neither here nor there. So now you define "defense" as active sabotage and preemptive strikes against sovereign countries?" he asked. "That kind of defense isn"t what we"re supposed to be about."
Terah rolled her eyes.
"We can do what"s free or we can do what"s good," she said. And then she started removing her dress. "You"re being a naive dilettante. You can"t wait until someone"s got a gun to your head to stand up for yourself. You can"t turn your back on the world and not expect to find a knife in it."
Rucker tried not to let what she was doing distract him. He might as well have tried panning for gold in a bathtub for all the good it would do him.
"Spare me the right-wing rationalizations," he said. "I"m surprised your hands don"t whistle in the wind from the nail holes. It"s not my job to carry the world on my shoulders. h.e.l.l, why not just shoot people who you think are thinking about doing you wrong? I hear it"s all the rage in some circles. Or have Austin keep an eye on everyone at home and abroad. Those on the good side could wear armbands to show they"re loyal to the state. And while you"re . . . What are you doing?" he finally asked. "Are you . . . ?"
Down now to her lacy bra.s.siere and panties, Terah smiled coyly.
"Hmm. It"s a thought. I was planning to put on this coverall Howard gave me because that dress was uncomfortable. But it"s not like we don"t have time. And maybe it will shut you up," she said. "The whole world isn"t like the Freehold. Us, the Brazilians-we"re in a corner against enemies and even allies who don"t like the way we do things. The Brits now want us to impose their labor standards, for G.o.d"s sake. Not to mention the fact that at least one in every three Freeholders wouldn"t care if Austin did more than it"s allowed as long as it was for the good. Just . . ."
Dammit. Here we go again, Rucker thought. He knew better. Against his better judgment, and knowing how painful it would be later, he took Terah into his arms. At least it stopped their pointless bickering.
She was right on one point: if nothing else, this was the one thing they were good at together. Where their bodies met, so did their minds. In these moments, they could forget all the baggage and focus on the moment. Time enough to fight later.
"Allons-y," he said.
Despite racing due south at more than 320 miles per hour at 40,000 feet, the H-3 was being followed at a discreet distance.
Otto Skorzeny was at the controls of the matte black Focke Wulf XR-22, the experimental three-engine plane complete with pressurization technology and superchargers.
"Next stop, airs.p.a.ce of the Texas Freehold, aka the Tropical Empire," Skorzeny said to himself. "And me without my bathing trunks."
CHAPTER NINE.
Aboard the H-3 Racer On approach to Airstrip One Watching the blue and white swirls of the Caribbean four miles below and the blue and white swirls of the tropical sky above, Deitel felt . . . well, he wasn"t quite sure. He thought that if he could set aside the armed, daylight raid on the U.S. presidential mansion, the killing of an American amba.s.sador-albeit, a pedophile-an attack by an SD hit team imported to the Freehold by Texas n.a.z.is, the whirlwind trip from Colombia to Texas to New York and back to the Caribbean in just over a day, and the whole "airport that floats two miles up" thing, then he could say that things were getting back to some level of normalcy.
The very fact that he could even attempt to set aside this list and think in such terms, though, made Deitel worry that the insanity infecting the Freehold weltanschauung was somehow contagious.
He made a note to add that question to his ongoing epidemiology research.
Deitel and Rucker had given Terah a preliminary rundown on what they knew about Project Gefallener not long after they left New York air s.p.a.ce. When Hughes stopped at an aeroport in the Confederate States capital of Richmond, Virginia, for fuel, Terah had gone to work, calling in a few old favors in the CSA foreign office. She sent a lengthy and encoded wireless message to the Prometheus Society detailing the materials and doc.u.ments she would need to have shipped from Austin to Airstrip One.
Now they were on final approach to that same generically named but otherwise magnificent floating airport, which was currently cruising twenty miles off the Cuban coast and forty miles north of Jamaica. Both island nations were allies-Jamaica had recently pet.i.tioned for annexation into the Texas Freehold, while Cuba had become the eleventh state of the Confederacy in 1908.
Upon landing, the events of the past thirty-six hours finally caught up with the team. Rucker, Terah, and Deitel dragged themselves to Airstrip One"s hotel, where they spent a good twelve hours just sleeping. The quiet hum of the airstrip"s generators and the thinner atmosphere two miles up made it the most restful slumber Deitel had ever experienced.
He wasn"t quite sure if Rucker and Terah had taken separate rooms, but he"d requested a room as far from the other two as possible.
Just in case.
The next morning, Rucker was up early fine-tuning the Raposa. He said if he was going to take her across the Atlantic, he wanted to check every moving part.
"The Atlantic?" Deitel asked.
"Yeah, big blue wet thing over in the direction of the sunrise," Rucker said.
"Yes, but . . . never mind."
Deitel also learned that Hughes had departed overnight to Cuba on his own business.
Just before 8:00 A.M., Rucker, Deitel, and Terah met in the French bistro-forward and overlooking the bow-for breakfast. Strong cappuccinos accompanied perfectly folded omelets loaded with garlic, bacon lardoons, and bits of salty cheese. Thick cuts of smoked slab ham, crusty croissants, and French bread with fresh churned b.u.t.ter accompanied half a dozen tropical juice shooters and tall, thin gla.s.ses of the potent Coca-Cola on ice.
After breakfast, Rucker got a radio message that Chuy was on approach to Airstrip One, bringing Tracy along with him. Deitel, who felt like he"d established a solid rapport with Chuy early on, looked forward to rejoining the exceptionally cultured and continental Brazilian. As different as their backgrounds and races were, he felt a sort of kinship, owing to Chuy"s refined demeanor and continental mannerisms. He especially looked forward to meeting Tracy, wondering what kind of amazing woman it took to capture the heart and hand of so charming a Latin peac.o.c.k as Chuy Lago.
With Terah deep in research in Airstrip One"s library level, Rucker and Deitel were on deck to meet Chuy when he landed. Chuy had piloted yet another crate in the Far Ranger Air fleet-a medium-range civilian version of a British De Havilland Wasp. Despite the long flight from Rio, he climbed out of the craft looking fresh and immaculately groomed. As usual, the mocha-skinned giant was clean-shaven, smiling, and looked dapper in a double-panel silk shirt, mink-lined leather jacket, and embroidered jodhpurs tucked into elaborately engraved Spanish caballero boots. The sash would have been too much on anyone else, but not Chuy.
Then another gentleman-a surprisingly tanned ginger in a bright yellow sweater, a ruddy leather coat, and white pants-climbed out of the underbelly hatch. Chuy"s copilot for the flight, Deitel a.s.sumed. Deitel kept looking at the two hatches.
Rucker was hugging the ginger copilot. That"s when Chuy grabbed Deitel"s shoulder.
"Ah, you Teutonic tiger, you survived your first trip to the old U.S. of A? I should have known. There is a tigre under that mild-mannered cordeiro exterior," he said in his deep, singsong baritone.
"It"s good to see you again, Herr La . . . Chuy. I"m anxious to meet Tracy."
The Brazilian pilot laughed his deep laugh. "Indeed."
Deitel looked around again at the Wasp, expecting Chuy"s wife to climb out. He didn"t even notice the ginger until the man was grasping his hand.
"Cheers, Dr. von Deitel. I"ve heard so much about you," the ginger said, his English accent crisp and distinct. "We have something in common-I"m a physician"s a.s.sistant."