Another tremor rolled through the deck and Von Heissel saw the spotlight beams waver from their position above the circle. He waited for the ship’s pilot to bring Majestic back to its correct position, but instead the illuminated area continued to shift below. His satisfied smile slipped, and he stalked over to one of the speaking tubes.
“Helm. Why are we moving off station?”
A little bit of drift was to be expected, but it was now evident that Majestic was powering away from the objective. There was no answer from the control room.
“Helm, respond immediately.”
Silence. He rang the ship’s bell, signaling a general alert, and then turned to his companion. “Something is wrong. Go find out what’s happened.”
Newcombe reviewed his solution one last time. This problem was more complex than most, with more variables than he would have liked, not the least of which was his own ability to do what needed to be done. He looked at the length of twisted cloth, torn from a bed sheet, stretched between his hands, and felt sick with dread.
Don’t think about it, he told himself. Just stick to the plan.
The plan. He would open the door to his stateroom and summon one of the two guards posted to ensure that he and the other hostages did not leave without permission. It would be a simple request for help, and the guard would probably comply without protest, imagining the bookish scientist to be the least likely person to attempt any kind of violent confrontation, but as soon the guard passed into his quarters, Newcombe would drop the loop around his neck and pull it tight.
He had worked out the physics of garroting someone. The person holding the strangling rope had all the advantages; comparatively little strength was needed to quickly render someone unconscious.
Yes, just unconscious, he thought. No more than forty-five seconds. The makeshift rope would cut off the supply of blood to the guard’s brain, and he would go down in less than a minute. If it went longer than that, brain damage or death might result, and that wasn’t something the scientist wanted to contemplate. As long as he believed he wasn’t about to possibly kill someone, the odds of his being able to go through with it were about even.
Dealing with the second guard would be a little trickier, and there were a lot more variables there. He would proceed quickly to Fiona’s stateroom. He had managed to pass her a brief note during the dinner service, short on detail, but with the explicit message: “Be ready!” He wouldn’t have time to explain everything to her; the remaining guard would immediately register that something was amiss and come in to investigate, but once more, the belief that Newcombe was incapable of such aggression would render the man vulnerable to a decisive attack.
With the guards subdued and Fiona free, they would need only to collect Lafayette and make their way to the landing platform and freedom.
There were other variables to consider, but ultimately, he knew that the longer he tried to work the equation, the more their chances of survival diminished. Once Von Heissel realized what he had done, it would be curtains for them all.
He took a deep breath, and went to the door.
The ship’s bell rang at just that moment, and he nearly jumped out of his shoes. Whenever the bell signaled the traditional watch periods, it always startled him, but this time the signal was different. The insistent ringing continued for several seconds.
Newcombe sagged against a bulkhead, breathing deeply to bring his heart rate back down to normal and repair his shattered nerves. When he at last regained a measure of his former resolve, he took one last deep breath and opened the door.
The hallway was empty. The guards were gone.
For a moment, he was stunned. The equation had changed; new variables had been added.
No, he realized. It’s an opportunity. Seize it.
He darted across the corridor to Fiona’s stateroom and threw open the door without knocking. Fiona stood there, hefting a broken chair like a baseball bat and poised for action.
“Findlay!” She lowered the impromptu cudgel. “They’ve sounded general quarters. What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” he confessed. “But I think this may be our last chance at escaping.”
She flashed a confident smile. “Then let’s go, shall we?”
They entered Majestic through an access hatch located near the airship’s bow. Hurricane pulled the cover back and Dodge peeked in, but saw no sign of activity. A metal ladder dropped down about thirty feet to a catwalk which curved around the internal helium bladder, and out of sight.
“Looks like this is where we go our separate ways,” Hurricane announced. “But if you’re not on that landing platform in half an hour, I’m gonna come looking for you.”
“We’ll be there,” Dodge said.
“Be careful, big guy,” added Nora.
As Hurricane hastened away to carry out his part in their two-fold mission, Dodge and Nora crept along the catwalk. The interior of Majestic was a vertical maze of platforms, ladders and stairs, all designed to facilitate the unending process of maintaining the ship. Once below the level of the gas bladder, Dodge could make out the landing platform and the neat row of Sparrowhawk fighters lined up behind the two autogyros. There was however not a living soul to be seen.
Nora let out a gasp. “Dodge, is that blood?”
She pointed to a dark stain on the otherwise immaculate metal of the catwalk. It did indeed look like blood, and a lot of it. “Must be the work of our mysterious party crashers. I hope they’re on our side.”
They made their way down, and a few minutes later reached the forward end of the landing platform where they found another pool of blood and a pair of streaks leading away, painting a trail to the cockpit of the nearest biplane. Dodge glanced inside and saw, amid a tangle of stiffening limbs, the bodies of two crewmen. Their distinctive blue uniforms were in shreds and stained black with copious amounts of drying blood. Whoever had dispatched them had done so with brutal efficiency. He didn’t shed any tears for Von Heissel’s “loyal” crew, but the mysterious nature of their killer filled him with dread. Would they find Newcombe and the others similarly hacked apart?
He steered Nora well clear of the grisly discovery and they crept along the platform. As they passed the autogyros, Dodge glanced at the interior. The rotor-wing aircraft were critical to their escape — he knew they could carry three people, for a short distance at least — but Fiona couldn’t fly both of them at the same time. Dodge had studied a technical manual for the aircraft prior to embarking on the mission, and he hoped that knowledge, coupled with his experience in a variety of fixed-wing aircraft, would enable him to get the whirlybird in the air and down in one-piece. His quick look verified that all the controls were where the manual said they would be; there wasn’t much more he could do without actually trying to start it up.
They continued to the spiral staircase that led down into the parts of Majestic with which he was more familiar. Thus far, luck — or more probably, the violent pre-emptive action of the unknown assault force from the gliders — had spared them any encounters with Von Heissel’s men, but he was prepared for a much different reception in the inhabited sections. He drew his pistol, holding it before him and aimed low, as he circled down the stair. He had almost reached the bottom when a door opened and a familiar figure stepped into the stairwell from a door at the back of the stairwell.