"There you are!" Dex made a victory fist. "This'll do it!" He grabbed a headset microphone from one of the pasty-faced radio operators and hurriedly spoke into it. "Cap, do you read me?"
The sounds of emergency sirens and explosions continued in the background. The lights dimmed briefly from the attack going on outside. It was only a matter of time before the Flying Wings leveled the control hangar — if Sky Captain didn't stop them first.
The Warhawk streaked through the sky in fast pursuit of three Flying Wings. Like superfast metal vultures, the enemy aircraft flapped furiously, pumping with pistons and powerful whistling engines. They wheeled and evaded, reminding Sky Captain of crows on the wing.
"Dodge all you want," he muttered, forgetting that Polly was sitting behind him, "but you can't outrun this." He lined up the nearest quicksilver machine in his crosshairs. His finger hovered over the trigger on his flight stick.
A voice burst over the radio set. "Cap, this is Dex! Come in!"
He lifted his microphone. "Hang on, Dex. I'm a little busy."
Sky Captain locked his sights on one of the machines. His gloved finger flipped open the safety latch on his trigger, and with complete coolness he squeezed. A stream of machine gun fire embroidered with intermittent tracers stitched across the sky, intersecting the Flying Wing. Gunfire penetrated the smooth quicksilver hull, making the enemy craft explode in a massive fireball.
With a satisfied sigh, Sky Captain lifted his microphone. "Go ahead, Dex."
"Whatever you do, Cap, don't shoot!"
Sky Captain frowned sheepishly at the expanding cloud of smoke and tumbling shrapnel that had been the Flying Wing. "Uh, okay."
Dex sounded disappointed. "You shot it, didn't you?"
"Yeah. I thought that was the point."
"Listen, Cap, you asked me to track down the command signal, and I did. The signal is coming from one of those machines. It must be the leader. You've got to keep them in one piece, or I'll never be able to get to the bottom of this."
Sky Captain groaned, but he had never found reason to disbelieve Dex. "You sure know how to make a job harder, Dex. Which machine is it?" Ahead of him and all around the smoldering Flying Legion base, dozens of the flapping aircraft swooped and dove, continuing their attack.
Dex did not sound reassuring over the radio set. "No way of telling. It could be any one of them. Wait… I'm losing the signal." The younger man groaned. "Now it's getting fainter."
Sky Captain saw that one of the Flying Wings had veered off from the others and headed back toward the New York skyline. The rest of the mechanical attackers concentrated their firepower on the hangars and runways below. "I think I found it, Dex. It's heading for the city."
"Don't let him get away, Cap!"
Sky Captain hated to leave the rest of the Legion to the greater battle, but he knew he needed to win the war against this sinister enemy. "You better be right, Dex."
"Keep after it! I need you to bounce that signal back to me. If we lose it now, we may never get it back."
With a heavy heart, Sky Captain raced after the primary Flying Wing. "Just let me know when you've got something, Dex. The very instant you have it."
"I'll let you know. Out!"
While Polly clutched her seat in the back of the cockpit, Sky Captain veered off in pursuit of the lone enemy craft racing back toward Manhattan.
11. A Dogfight over Manhattan. Thieves from the Sky
Polly's Shortcut
Inside the map room, Dex unrolled a large chart across the main table. He didn't even flinch as a nearby detonation rocked the Legion's control center. Oily smoke began to fill the hangar, and the lights flickered again.
Undaunted, Dex unwrapped a wad of bubble gum and popped it into his mouth. Debris sifted from above like a fine rain. Overhead, the Flying Wings continued to bombard the base, while brave Legion fighters mounted their best defense.
Dex yelled to the communications operators beside him. "I want a full-spectrum sweep of every incoming signal."
Two men huddled under tables for shelter from falling chunks of the roof, while other grim operators went about their duties, hunched over dials and transmitters. A Legion warplane zoomed overhead, unleashing a crackle of machine gun fire.
"Amplify any variant frequency cycle and route it to me!" Dex bent over the screen, staring so hard his eyes hurt, willing the answer to come in time to save Sky Captain and drive off the attack on the base.
Explosions continued outside. Orange-and-black fireballs spewed upward from destroyed planes on the runways. The attacking Wings targeted the tethered observation zeppelins. Though soldiers fired their rifles from the ground and warplanes dove in to protect the lighter-than-air vessels, they could not drive the Flying Wings from the dirigibles.
Incendiary projectiles tore through the thick fabric hulls, igniting the volatile hydrogen inside. Like the tragic end of the first Hindenburg, the Legion's zeppelins were engulfed in an inferno. Their blackened skeletons collapsed with slow grace to the tarmac as ground personnel fled.
Legion planes continued to attack the Flying Wings. A volley of vengeful shots sheared off the razor-thin wing of an enemy aircraft, and the quicksilver batlike form scraped across the main hangar's roof, showering sparks. It tumbled into a heap of wreckage on the tarmac outside the tall doors.
Inside the control hangar, Dex allowed nothing to break his concentration.
Streaking above the terrain on their way to New York City, Sky Captain kept his P-40 close behind the primary Flying Wing. The enemy craft flapped its powerful metal wings like a hawk swooping in for the kill.
They sped along the spine of Long Island, covering distance at an insane speed. The flight path of the fleeing attacker took them over Queens and the site of the soon-to-open 1939 World's Fair, billed as the largest international exhibition in history. Sky Captain looked down at the distinctive Trylon, a seven-hundred-foot-tall obelisk pointing toward the sky, and the two-hundred-foot globe of the Perisphere. President Roosevelt himself would give the kickoff speech, "Building the World of Tomorrow."
First, though, Sky Captain had to save the world of today.
The speeding aircraft crossed the East River in a flash, diving toward Midtown Manhattan. "If that Flying Wing thinks he can lose me among the skyscrapers, we'll see just who's better in an obstacle course."
"It's sweet, but you don't have to show off for me, Joe," Polly said from the rear of the cockpit.
He banked hard, barely keeping his annoyance in check. "I have absolutely no intention of showing off for you."
Weaving an erratic course, the Flying Wing dipped among the tall buildings, diving to street level, where taxicabs and buses swerved to avoid a collision. Sky Captain clung like glue to the enemy's exhaust.
Pulling up in a steep climb, they shot above the rooftops. Polly peered out the cockpit canopy, surprised to see six more Flying Wings engaged in furious activity below them. "Joe, there's another half dozen of them!"
He looked from side to side, but the goggles blocked his peripheral view. "Are they after us?"
She saw, though, that the six new enemy craft had taken up positions over the yawning crater the robot monsters had blasted the day before. Like a giant open wound, the city's heavy power generators lay exposed to the air.
"Not after us, Joe. Look what they're doing!"
The six Flying Wings had lowered giant cables, slowly extending the lines into the crater. Automatic clamps attached to the shafts and supports that held the huge turbines in place. Sparks flew, metal groaned, and finally the machinery was uprooted. Up and down the streets of Manhattan, windows and lighted neon signs went dark.