“Hey, it’s not burning, is it?” The cameraman and his assistant were very serious, as Lander knew they would be.
“No, hell no,” Simmons said. “We have to get the extinguisher out, it’s SOP.”
Lander feathered the engine. He was heading away from the stadium now, to the northeast, to the airfield. “We’ll let Vickers take a look at it,” he said.
“Did you call him already?”
“While you were in the back.” Lander had mumbled into his microphone all right, but he had not pressed the transmit button.
He was following U.S. 10, the Superdome below him on the right and the fairgrounds with its oval track on the left. Bucking the headwind on a single engine was slow going. All the better coming back, Lander thought. He was over the Pontchartrain Golf Course now, and he could see the airfield spread out in front of him. There was the truck, approaching the airport gate. Dahlia had made it.
From the cab of the truck, Dahlia could see the airship coming. She was a few seconds early. There was a policeman at the gate. She held the blue vehicle pass out the window and he waved her through. She cruised slowly along the road flanking the field.
The ground crew saw the airship now, and they stirred around the bus and the tractor-trailer. Lander wanted them to be in a hurry. At three hundred feet he thumbed the button on his microphone. “All right, I’m coming in 175 heavy. Give it plenty of room.”
“Nora One Zero, what’s up? Why didn’t you say you were coming, Mike?” It was Vickers’s voice.
“I did,” Lander said. Let him wonder. The ground crew were running to their stations. “I’m coming to the mast crosswind and I want the wheel chocked. Don’t let her swing to the wind, Vickers. I’ve got a small problem with the port engine, a small problem. It’s nothing, but I want the port engine downwind from the ship. I do not want a flap. Do you understand?”
Vickers understood. Lander did not want the crash trucks howling down the field.
Dahlia Iyad waited to drive across the runway. The tower was giving her a red light. She watched as the blimp touched down, bounced, touched again, the ground crew grabbing the ropes that trailed from the nose. They had it under control now.
The tower light flashed green. She drove across the runway and parked behind the tractor-trailer, out of sight of the crew milling around the blimp. In a second the tailgate was down, the ramp in place. She grabbed the paper bag containing the gun and the cable cutters and ran around the tractor-trailer to the blimp. The crew paid no attention to her. Vickers opened the cowling on the port engine. Dahlia passed the bag to Lander through the window of the gondola and ran back to her truck.
Lander turned to the TV crew. “Stretch your legs. It’ll be a minute.”
They scrambled out and he followed them.
Lander walked to the bus and immediately returned to the blimp. “Hey, Vickers, Lakehurst is on the horn for you.”
“Oh, my ass—All right, Frankie, take a look in here, but don’t change nothin’ until I get back.” He trotted toward the bus. Lander went in behind him. Vickers had just picked up the radio telephone when Lander shot him in the back of the head. Now the ground crew had no leader. As Lander stepped off the bus he heard the putt-putt of the forklift. Dahlia was in the saddle, swinging around the rear of the tractor-trailer. The crew, puzzled at the sight of the big nacelle, made room for the forklift. She eased forward, sliding the long nacelle under the gondola. She raised the fork six inches and it was in place.
“What’s going on? What’s this?” the man at the engine said. Dahlia ignored him. She flipped the two front damps around the handrail. Four more to go.
“Vickers said get the shot bags off,” Lander yelled.
“He said what?”
“Get the shot bags off. Move it!”
“What is this, Mike? I never saw this.”
“Vickers will explain it. TV time costs $175,000 a minute. Now get your ass in gear. The network wants this thing.” Two crewmen undipped the shot bags as Dahlia finished fastening the nacelle. She backed the forklift away. The crew was confused. Something was wrong. This big nacelle with its network markings had never been tested on the blimp.
Lander went to the port engine and looked in. Nothing had been removed. He shut the cowling.
Here came the TV cameraman. “NBS? What is that thing? That’s not ours—”
“The director will explain it. Call him from the bus.” Lander climbed into his seat and started the engines. The crew skipped back, startled. Dahlia was already inside the gondola with the cable cutters. No time to unscrew anything. The TV equipment had to go before the blimp would fly.
The cameraman saw her cutting the equipment loose. “Hey! Don’t do that.” He scrambled into the gondola. Lander turned in his seat and shot the cameraman in the back. A startled crewman’s face in the door. The men closest to the blimp were backing away now. Dahlia undamped the camera.
“Chock and mast now!” Lander yelled.
Dahlia jumped to the ground. She had the Schmeisser out. The crewmen were backing away, some of them turning to run. She pulled the chock away from the wheel and, as the blimp swung to the wind, she ran to the mast and uncoupled it. The nose boom must come out of the socket in the mast. It must. The blimp was swinging. The men had fled the nose ropes. The wind would do it, would twist the blimp free. She heard a siren. A squad car was screaming across the runway.
The nose was free, but the blimp was still weighted with the body of the cameraman and the TV equipment. She swung into the gondola. The transmitter went first, smashing to the ground. The camera followed it.
The squad car was coming head-on with the blimp, its lights flashing. Lander slammed the throttles forward and the great ship started to roll. Dahlia was struggling with the body of the cameraman. His leg was under Lander’s seat. The blimp bounded once and settled again. It reared like a prehistoric animal. The squad car was forty yards away, its doors opening. Lander dumped most of his fuel. The blimp rose heavily.
Dahlia leaned out of the gondola and fired her Schmeisser at the squad car, star fractures appearing across its windshield, the blimp rising, a policeman out of the car, blood on his shirt, drawing his gun, looking up into her face as the blimp passed over. A blast from the machine pistol cut him down, and Dahlia kicked the cameraman’s body out the door to fall spread-eagled on the hood of the patrol car. The blimp surged upward. Other squad cars were coming now, growing smaller beneath them, their doors opening. She heard a thock against the gas bag. They were firing. She aimed a burst at the nearest police car, saw dust kick up around it. Lander had the blimp at fifty degrees, engines screaming. Up and up and out of pistol range.
The fuse and the wires! Dahlia lay on the bloody floor of the gondola, and hanging outside she could reach them.
Lander was nodding at the controls, near collapse. She reached over his shoulder and pressed the syringe beneath his sleeve. In a second his head was up again.
He checked the cabin light switch. It was off. “Hook it up.”
She pried the cover off the cabin light, removed the bulb and plugged in the wires to the bomb. The fuse, to be used if the electrical system failed, must be secured around a seat bracket near the rear of the gondola. Dahlia had trouble tying the knot as the fuse became slippery with the cameraman’s blood.
The airspeed indicator said sixty knots. They would be at the Super Bowl in six minutes.
Corley and Kabakov sprinted to Corley’s car at the first confused report of shooting at the airfield. They were howling up Interstate 10 when the report was augmented.