“Another glass, sir?” inquired a voice at his shoulder.
He glanced up at the nattily attired waiter, but before he could answer in the affirmative, a ripple of anxiety passed through the group of diners and people began rising to their feet. He shrugged apologetically and stood up just as the band launched into the customary ruffles and flourishes. Dodge craned his head to get a look at the man who was both host and guest of honor but couldn’t see him through the crowd. Abandoning the effort, he simply followed the example of everyone else, standing at attention until the final note was played. He applauded along with the rest of the crowd and then queued up in the orderly reception line as the band segued from “Hail to the Chief” into “Stars and Stripes Forever.”
Perhaps because he felt more dread than anticipation for the impending introduction, the time spent waiting flew by quickly, and in a matter of only minutes he heard a voice made familiar by weekly radio discourses speaking his name… well, almost. “Mr. Dodge, isn’t it?
It was a common mistake. “Dodge” was a nickname the sandy-haired athletically inclined writer had earned during a boyhood summer spent running bats out to the on-deck circle at Ebbets Field. Normally, he would have gently corrected the error, but this time he thought better of it.
“That’s right, Mr. President.” He shook the extended hand, mildly surprised to see the chief executive of the country seated behind a small café table.
“That’s a good firm grip you’ve got there,” observed the President. “You must get your exercise.”
“I played a lot of ball as a boy, sir.”
“Aha. And do you tag along with Falcon and his team on their adventures?”
Dodge forced a chuckle. “Only in my daydreams. I fight Falcon’s villains with the pen, not the sword.”
“I’m a big fan,” the President announced with what appeared to be sincere joviality. “Big fan. Can’t wait to see how Falcon gets out his latest scrape. Keep up the good work, young man. You’re a national treasure.”
Dodge correctly read the exit cue and moved on, letting the Commander-in-Chief have the final word. He strode away, but not before he heard: “Hurricane Hurley! Why, you’re even more impressive that I had imagined. How did you get so strong?”
The walking mountain gave a thunderous guffaw to the delight of everyone in line. Even Dodge couldn’t resist a smile as he heard Hurley, with the barest of prompting, launch into an elaborate anecdote about his childhood on the Cumberland Plateau.
He and Hurley had become friends after a fashion, and while the six-and-a-half foot giant wouldn’t have been his first choice for company on a Friday night, there was no denying that an aura of rough charm surrounded the man they called Hurricane. Part of that was most certainly his proclivity for exaggeration, which had played no small part in the creation of the Captain Falcon legend. Dodge had heard this particular tall tale before and knew it always grew with the telling. Leaving Hurley to his admirers, he went in search of the waiter with the champagne service.
To his chagrin, he found that the beyond the reception line, the party seemed to have ground to a halt. Instead of the gentle rumble of multiple conversations, there was only a faint hum of awed whispers. The attention of the group, more than three score in number, was fixed skyward. Movie stars stood alongside cocktail servers, gaping in consternation at what appeared to be a flock of birds around a distant airship. Curious, he joined the stilled crowd. “What’s all the fuss?”
“Barnstormers,” suggested one man. “Some kind of aerial circus.”
Frowning, Dodge looked again, squinting into the mid-morning sun. The array was much nearer than he had first realized and steadily moving closer. He now saw that what he had first taken to be birds were in fact… “Those are men up there.”
“Parachutists,” ventured the man.
“There aren’t any parachutes,” argued one woman. “But they aren’t falling; they’re flying!”
Dodge verified her statement with a glance, then looked to the airship at the center of the formation, thinking perhaps that the men were suspended by fine wires. What he saw however only further confounded a logical explanation.
The aircraft, if it was indeed that, was like nothing he had ever seen, save perhaps in dime novel artwork. The vessel looked like a round cake pan and was just as featureless. There appeared to be no means of propulsion — no spinning propellers or rocket flames — yet it was moving far too rapidly to be a dirigible carried on the wind. One thing was certain however: the aerial display was moving inexorably toward the White House.
“I’ll wager this is something the Army cooked up; some new secret flying machine. The President probably arranged this stunt as entertainment for the party.”
There was little conviction in the tone of the man voicing this opinion. It sounded more like an unsuccessful attempt to hide growing panic. Dodge’s gut reaction was similar; something bad was about to happen. “I think we should take cover.”
It was as though a dam had broken. In an instant, the quiet group of onlookers became a pandemonium of shrieks and frantic purposeless running. Dodge was buffeted by the human tide, and then just as suddenly found himself standing alone near the perimeter of the garden. After the chaos of the fleeing mob, the ensuing quiet was eerily peaceful.
Then the sky fell.
The next moment was surreal; something glimpsed in a dream or spawned from his pen in the latest chapter of Falcon’s adventures. An invisible hand slapped him against the perfectly manicured lawn. He had only a dull memory of the collision; it felt something like a belly flop dive into a warm swimming pool, rather than a forceful trauma such as might accompany being struck by a solid object. He lingered there, pressed to the ground by a blanket of pressure that seemed everywhere all at once.
“Hellfire!” Hurricane’s voice thundered above the din, but any further imprecations were lost in a deafening hail of gunfire.
In the corner of his vision, Dodge could just make out a contingent of dark-suited men — the President’s Secret Service bodyguards — forming a skirmish line. Their backs were to him, their faces set against the entrance to the West Wing, which was the only means of egress from the Rose Garden, and each man’s Thompson sub-machine gun spat a lethal volley of lead at the unseen attackers.
Then a different noise split through the chaos. It was a crack like the discharge of a pistol, but louder in volume and longer in duration. There was a blinding flash of light and when his ability to see returned, Dodge saw a break in the line. One of the Secret Service men had been pitched backward several yards and lay motionless with wisps of smoke trailing from his scorched clothing. However, Dodge’s gaze was riveted elsewhere, for through the gap in the wall of bodyguards, he got his first good look at the party crashers.
They were men, the same men that had flown apparently unaided through the skies, but men nonetheless. The one who now blocked the President’s only avenue of escape wore no particular uniform, but the singular distinctive accessory to his ensemble defied simple explanation. At first glance, it looked like some kind of medical apparatus or perhaps a medieval torture device. A framework of metal rods outlined the man, reaching down from a rigid waist belt to hinged footpads, up to his shoulders and down the length of his arms, and finally connecting to a domed cap, like something worn by medieval infantrymen. The rods were jointed at the elbows and knees to allow fully articulated movement, but where hands ought to have been, Dodge saw what looked like heavy armored gauntlets. The intruder brandished these metallic fists at the Secret Servicemen, disdaining the muzzle flashes of his foes’ guns. Without warning, another brilliant flash arced through the air and blasted a second bodyguard from the line.