Nora, still a little rattled from the unexpected discharge, scooped up the gun and scrambled to put some distance between herself and the woman. Only then did the gravity of what had just occurred sink in.
Dodge was at her side an instant later. He gently took the pistol from her hands and turned her away. “It’s okay,” he whispered, soothing. “Now let’s get out of here.”
As he guided her back to where Hurricane was retrieving his other pistol from Sorensen’s belt, Dodge said: “I didn’t expect you for another five minutes.”
“Sorry if I came at a bad time.” The big man grinned, but then his expression hardened. “I ran into one of our Nipponese friends upstairs. I think that’s who came in the glider. Him and his friends.”
“That must be who took control of Majestic. They’re hijacking her in order to steal the wave device.”
“Well, it won’t matter much. The charges are all set; this gasbag is going down.”
“Let’s find the others so we can all be somewhere else when that happens.”
As they stepped out into the stairwell, the door leading to Majestic’s central corridor swung open. Hurricane’s guns were out in a flash, but thankfully he withheld firing long enough to identify his target.
“Newton!”
The scientist squinted behind his inadequate eyeglasses. “Hurricane? Dodge? How on earth—?”
“Time for all that later,” Dodge said quickly. “Are the others with you?”
“We’re right here,” Fiona called over Newcombe’s shoulder. “Brilliant timing, too.”
“Yes,” Lafayette added, trying to sound braver than he obviously felt. “Nice of you to finally show up. Now can we get out of here?”
Dodge gestured up the stairwell. “The last flight out leaves in a few minutes. Don’t miss it.”
Tyr Sorensen snapped to consciousness like someone waking from a nightmare. As he sat up, a spike of pain stabbed through his skull and he touched a finger to the rising goose-egg just above his right ear.
Someone cold-cocked me, he thought bitterly. He couldn’t fathom how someone had gotten the drop on him; the last thing he recalled was….
As his memories caught up, he jumped to his feet looking for the others; Anya, the baron, but also Dalton and the woman. They were all gone. The only movement in the bay was the rush of air blowing up through the opening in the floor.
No, not all gone. He spied a motionless form near the edge of the opening, and as he took a step closer, his heart became a lump of lead in this chest. “Anya!”
Her eyes fluttered open as he knelt beside her. “My love!”
For perhaps the first time in his long and storied life, Sorensen was paralyzed with dread. He had fought in the skies above Europe, engaged the world’s deadliest aces and emerged victorious, though not always unscathed, but he had never felt such utter terror. He wanted to pull his lover into his arms, take her pain into his own body, but he feared that even his gentle touch might hasten her descent.
“Grandfather is gone,” she whispered. “Dalton killed him. And I will soon join him.”
“No. I will save you. I’ll get you to the doctor. Hold on, my beloved.”
She smiled, and a stream of blood flowed from her lips. “It is too late for me, my love. You must go.”
“I will never leave you.”
“You must.”
Sorensen’s mouth worked, but no more words could rise past the grief in his throat. He felt her hand tighten on his. “Do this for me,” she said. “Remember me only in life, and I will live forever in you.”
He nodded, but the dread of losing her kept him rooted in place.
Then, his beloved Germanic princess opened her eyes wide and something other than love filled her gaze. “They are escaping. You must hunt them down. Go quickly. Avenge me.”
Her commanding tone broke the spell. He bent down and kissed her forehead, then without another word, rose and sprinted from the room.
As Dodge worked the mechanism to open Majestic’s tail section to the sky, he felt a tremor ripple through the aircraft — an explosion had occurred somewhere on the ship.
Hurricane glanced up at the suspended helium envelope. “Not one of mine.”
“Doesn’t matter, I guess.” Dodge signaled Fiona to start up her autogyro. “We’re finished here anyway.”
He hurried back to the second gyro as the engine on the first roared to life. The propeller blades started beating the air as it revved up for takeoff, and by the time Hurricane got situated, the gyro with Fiona, Newcombe and Lafayette was already gone, escaping doomed Majestic once and for all.
Nora climbed into the forward passenger well with Hurricane. “Looks like I’m sitting on your lap again.”
“Right back where we started.”
Dodge loosened the ties securing the aircraft to the deck, and then climbed inside. For just a moment, he was stymied as he stared at the unfamiliar controls, but he reached down into his memory and started putting names to the switches, dials and levers. He found the starter, and the engine turned over with a noise like a gunshot.
He found the lever to engage the rotor axle and felt the airframe shudder with the torque as it started to spin. Okay, gonna have to keep that in mind.
After a few seconds however, the blades were spinning too fast to see. He ran through the procedures for controlling the craft, trying to find parallels with the fixed-wing controls with which he was more familiar. The rudder was more or less the same, but to change pitch and yaw required tilting the rotor assembly using the collective control. That would take some practice, but he didn’t plan on doing anything fancy. He released the wheel brakes, tilted the rotor forward, and opened the throttle to full.
Just as the craft started to roll, Sorensen, with murder in his eyes, erupted from the stairwell and ran straight for the gyro. He timed his intercept perfectly, throwing an arm over the lip of the cockpit as if he might, with nothing more than his passion, prevent it from taking off. Overloaded as the aircraft already was, it did not seem entirely beyond the realm of possibility.
Regardless, Dodge wasn’t about to take on one more passenger. He released the stick just long enough to drive a fist into Sorensen’s unprotected face, and the saturnine pilot went sprawling backward.
Dodge got both hands back on the controls just as the edge of the platform fell away beneath him. For a few sickening seconds, the autogyro plummeted like a brick, but Dodge fought back the impulse to panic and methodically did everything the manuals said to do. Almost grudgingly, the aircraft responded.
“Dodge! Turn!”
Hurricane’s shout reached him just as he was feeling a measure of relief at having figured out how to fly the gyro, but he knew the big man wouldn’t have made that urgent suggestion unless it was absolutely necessary, so he banked hard to starboard before finally looking up from the cockpit.
A column of bright colored light flashed by to his left, almost close enough to touch, and although he was past the unexpected obstacle before he could make sense of what it was, the landscape of lights below helped him recognize it instantly.
He had almost crashed into the Empire State Building.
He had been so consumed with finding his hostage friends, that he had been unaware of the airship moving through the skies, but he recalled Von Heissel’s accusation — someone, he now realized it had been the Japanese hijackers — had moved Majestic away from the valley, and in the brief time between their parachute drop and their escape, the airship had sped through the skies like an arrow aimed at Manhattan.