Well, at least I won’t get lost.
He nosed down and began looking for an airport or any open area big enough to set down, but directly ahead there was only the dark band of the East river and beyond, the lights of Queens and Brooklyn. Then a different kind of light flashed by beneath him, streaks of light like meteors arcing through the sky.
Tracers! He craned his head around and saw the muzzle flash of a pair of Browning machine guns. “Sorensen.”
He brought the gyro’s nose up again, and started climbing for the sky. The overburdened craft responded sluggishly, but stayed ahead of the sporadic discharge of tracer rounds. Dodge caught a glimpse of Sorensen’s Sparrowhawk as it zipped past beneath him, already starting to turn for another run.
A memory of his last aerial encounter with Sorensen sprang unbidden to his mind, and he knew he was no more able to outfly the ace in the rotor-wing craft than he had been in the Catalina; the liability of his inexperience made it even less likely. But the gyro was more maneuverable than even the nimble Sparrowhawk. It could turn on a dime and move almost vertically. Moreover, the sky above Manhattan was a very different battleground than the open sea.
Dodge spun the gyro around and headed for the beacon of the Empire State Building. He dared not hope that Sorensen would hold back for fear of hurting civilians with stray rounds; the man was an unapologetic killer. But as long as he kept the buildings between them and the fighter plane, there was a chance.
He cut a tight corkscrew around the lofty aerial that crowned the world’s tallest building, and glimpsed Sorensen whizzing past once more. Now he was behind the ace, and if the autogyro had been equipped with guns, he would have had a perfect shot. But it was not, and in an instant, Sorensen came around again.
Lower, Dodge thought. The autogyro would be able to move easily down in the urban canyons between the buildings, while the Sparrowhawk would be forced to move in long straight lines, unable to turn.
Sorensen must have sensed this, for he came in low, firing right where Dodge was trying to go, forcing the gyro once more into the sky. Dodge watched the phosphorescent tracers streak down into the metropolis, and knew that somewhere down there, people might be getting hurt because of his attempt to evade the killer.
There was only one place he could think of where Sorensen might not be so quick to unleash a stream of lead. Dodge banked around the Empire State Building, and headed once more for the Majestic.
Anya imagined the Valkyries were coming to bear her off to Valhalla. She did not put any great faith in religion or the mythology of her ancestors, but the idea brought her some comfort as the cold darkness closed around her. Her father, whom she had never known, had died on the field of battle, and if those legends were true, then he would be waiting for her in the halls of Asgard.
But the array of lights she saw passing below was not the Bifrost Bridge to the afterlife. As she recognized the skyline of New York City, she saw one last chance to strike a blow that would haunt Dodge Dalton for the rest of his life.
She struggled to sit up, and then used the rail to get her feet under her. The resonance wave projector rose before her like some kind of futuristic monument, but she knew how to release the catches that held it steady, and with the barest of efforts, she disengaged the locks, allowing it to rotate freely on the gimbal arm bolted to the ceiling above.
She turned the device so that its emitter was aimed down at the Empire State Building, and then flipped the power switch, sending out a constant pulse of destructive vibrations.
What Anya did not realize, what she could not have imagined, was that the threats her grandfather had made to coerce Newcombe into crafting the emitter had not been completely successful.
Although the scientist had, to all appearances, been cooperative, he knew that he could not simply deliver such a lethal device into the hands of a madman like Von Heissel. Newcombe had realized that the baron would test the device, perhaps several times, before relaxing his ever-vigilant security enough to afford the hostages a chance at escape, so he knew the emitter had to actually work. But when he had cast the amalgam of adamantine and quartz crystal, he had also placed several glass vials of sulfuric acid into the mold. Though hidden from view, the vials would almost certainly shatter when the resonance waves began to propagate from the device. The resulting flaws in the surrounding material would spread the acid, further destabilizing the emitter. Newcombe had reckoned that the device would not survive more than fifteen or twenty minutes of operation, and even when it sat idle, the acid would continue to erode the bonds between the crystal and the adamantine.
When Anya activated the device, it took only a few seconds for the vibrations to put the finishing touches on his act of sabotage.
The resonance wave generator came apart in an eruption of kinetic energy, flinging pieces of metal in every direction. One piece, no bigger than a baseball, tore through Anya’s body, speeding her along to whatever afterlife she deserved. Another much larger piece ripped clear through the rear bulkhead, into the bay where a score of amatol bombs were neatly lined up to do their part in Von Heissel’s aborted scheme to destroy the world. The flying shrapnel had expended most of its energy tearing through the wall, and when it struck one of the bombs, it didn’t have enough force to trigger a detonation. Instead, the bomb simply began rocking back and forth precariously in its cradle, as if unsure of what to do next.
Majestic continued lumbering forward across the sky, passing the edge of Manhattan Island and moving out over the East River. Dodge caught up to her a few seconds later and angled the autogyro low, coming in under the tail section. The stream of tracers relented immediately.
Okay, that worked. Now what?
As soon as he was clear, he nosed up and cut back around, climbing up the side of the airship, and saw the Sparrowhawk shoot past underneath. Sorensen turned again, but by the time he was lined up for another pass, Dodge had cruised over the top of Majestic and was dropping back down on the other side.
He kept one eye on the sky above, waiting for the Sparrowhawk to soar over once more, but Sorensen was too canny for that. As the autogyro descended, the fighter plane moved under the airship, lined up for a perfect kill shot.
Suddenly, Majestic’s exterior swelled as if had taken a deep breath. Dodge was too focused on the stream of bullets arcing his way to even recognize that the timed explosive Hurricane had placed around the helium envelope at last had done their job, rupturing the gas bladder and splitting seams all over the dirigible’s outer skin.
It wasn’t enough to send the airship plunging immediately into the East River.
But it was enough to decide the fate of the teetering amatol bomb. Seven hundred and fifty pounds of the volatile high explosive compound slammed into the deck and vaporized in an instant. The rest of the bombs, fifteen tons worth of ammonium nitrate mixed with trinitrotoluene, went critical an infinitesimal fraction of a second later.
The back end of Majestic blossomed with fire and force.
Sorensen’s plane was instantly consumed by the fireball. Only a little further away, Dodge felt the heat and energy buffet the autogyro, and for a moment he was sure they would share the fighter pilot’s fate. Instead, the hot wind caught the rotor craft like a giant hand flinging a child’s balsawood glider. He fought for control, but for several seconds, the gyro simply rode the shockwave like a piece of driftwood on a tsunami wave.