Marco Celere was standing with the chocks he had pulled from its wheels at his feet, waving good-bye with his Platov’s slide rule and his red-banded straw boater.
“I told you I’d think of something for your wedding night.”
“Where’s he going?”
“Abilene.”
“That sneaky, fat. .”
“I convinced him to go ahead so we’d have time to work on the motors.”
“How can he see where he’s flying?”
“Stars and moon on shiny tracks.”
Josephine yelled for her mechanicians to pour gas and oil into her flying machine and spin it over. Marco raced after her as she ran to it, dragging her wedding dress like a cloud of white smoke. He pulled the canvas off the monoplane’s wings while she knelt by tent pegs to release the tie-downs.
“I have to warn you. .” he whispered urgently.
“What?” She loosened a taut-line hitch, tugged the rope off the strut, and knelt to loosen another.
“If something were to happen to ‘Dmitri Platov,’ don’t worry.”
“What do you mean?. . Hurry it up!” she shouted to her detective-mechanicians, who were tipping cans of gas and oil into the tanks. “What are you talking about? You’reDmitri Platov.”
“‘Dmitri Platov’ is being watched by Bell’s detectives. He may have to suddenly disappear.”
Josephine untied the last tie-down, jumped up on the soapbox, and scrambled onto her machine, desperate to get up in the air. The train of her wedding dress tangled in a stay. “Knife!” she yelled to a detective-mechanician, who flicked open a sharpened blade and slashed the train off her dress.
“Keep it out of the propeller!” she ordered, and the mechanician dragged it away. Marco was still standing on the soapbox, his whiskered face inches from hers. “What about you?” she asked.
“I’ll be back. Don’t worry.”
She plunged her control post forward and pulled it back and tilted it sideways, checking that her elevator, rudder, and alettonimoved properly. “O.K., I won’t. Get out of my way. . Contact!”
She raced off the ground ten minutes behind Stevens.
Isaac Bell was already circling the field, having instructed Andy Moser to keep the motor warm and gas and castor oil topped off. From high in the air, he saw the North Side Coliseum, and all of Fort Worth, as a dull glow lost in the infinite sea of darkness that was the night-blackened Texas rangeland.
Josephine raced west, following the railroad tracks by the light of the moon.
The tall detective was right behind her, tracking the aviatrix by the pinprick of fire that marked her Antoinette’s exhaust. For the first ten miles, he kept slowing his engine so as not to overtake her. But when the glow of Fort Worth had completely disappeared, and the ground was as dark behind as it was ahead, he fixed his eyes on the double line of moonlit steel, took his finger off the blip switch, and let the Eaglefly.
BOOK FOUR
34
HARRY FROST THOUGHT he heard something coming from the east. He saw no glow of a locomotive headlamp. But he knelt anyway and pressed his good ear to the cold steel rail to confirm that it was not a train. The track transmitted no tuning-fork vibration.
Dave Mayhew hunched over his telegraph key. It was he, eavesdropping on the railroad dispatchers, who had suddenly reported the startling news that several flying machines had ascended from Fort Worth in the dark. The blushing bride Josephine’s was among them.
“This time,” Harry Frost vowed in grave tones that chilled the hard-bitten Mayhew to the bone, “I’ll give her a wedding night she will never forget.”
He had been watching the eastern sky for nearly an hour, hoping to see her machine silhouetted against first light. So far, nothing. Still dark as a coal mine. Now he was sure he heard a motor.
He turned left and called into the dark, “Hear me?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Frost.”
He turned right and shouted again.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Frost.”
“Get ready!”
He waited for a return shout, “Ready!” turned to his right, shouted again, “Get ready!” and heard, “Ready!” back.
Sound carried in the cold night air. He heard the distinctive metallic snickwhen, to either side of him, the machine gunners levered open their Colts’ action to chamber their first rounds.
There were three men on each gun, knee-deep in rainwater left by the evening storms: a gunner, a feeder to the gunner’s left guiding the canvas belt of cartridges, and a spotter with field glasses. Frost kept Mike Stotts standing by to run with orders if they couldn’t hear him.
The noise grew louder, the sound of a straining machine. Then Frost distinguished the clatter of not one but two motors. They must be flying very close to each other, he thought. Too close. Something was wrong. Suddenly he realized that he was hearing two poorly synchronized engines driving Steve Stevens’s biplane. Stevens was in the lead.
“Hold your fire! It’s not her. Hold your fire!”
The biplane passed over, motors loud and ragged, flying low so the driver could see the rails. Josephine would have to fly low, too, making her an easy target.
Ten minutes elapsed before Frost heard another machine. Once again, he saw no locomotive light. Definitely an aeroplane. Was it Josephine? Or was it Isaac Bell? It was coming fast. He had seconds to make up his mind. Bell usually flew behind her.
“Ready!”
“Ready, Mr. Frost.”
“Ready, Mr. Frost.”
The gunner to his left yelled excitedly, “Here she comes!”
“Wait!. . Wait!”
“Here she comes, boys!” cried the men on his right.
“Wait!”
Suddenly Frost heard the distinctive hollow-sounding blatting exhaust of a rotary motor.
“It’s a Gnome! It’s not her. It’s a Gnome! He’s ahead of her. Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”
He was too late. The excited gunners drowned him out with long bursts of automatic fire, feeding the ammunition belts as fast as the guns could fire. Spitting brass cartridges and empty cloth, the weapons spewed four hundred rounds a minute at the approaching machine.
ISAAC BELL LOCATED both machine guns by their muzzle flashes, two hundred yards apart to the north and south of the tracks. There was no way the gunners could see him, blinded by those flashes. But they were shooting accurately anyway, aiming at the sound of his motor, firing thunderously, stopping to listen, firing again.
Flying lead crackled as it passed close to the Eagle’s king posts.
Bell blipped the motor off, glided silently, then blipped it on again. The guns caught up and resumed firing. Heavy slugs shook struts behind him. The rudder took several hits, and he felt them kick his wheel post.
Bell turned the Eaglearound and flew back up the tracks in the direction from which he had come. Facing east, back toward Fort Worth, he saw the gray glow of first light. His keen eyes detected a dot several miles distant. Josephine was coming at sixty miles at hour. He had two minutes to disable the machine guns before she ran into the clouds of lead they were shooting into the sky. But armed with a single Remington rifle, he was badly outgunned. His only hope was to sow confusion.
He blipped his motor off again, banked, and glided silently to the right. He blipped on. The south gun chattered, tracing the noise of his motor but revealing its position. Bell steered for the flashes, swooped low, and fired his rifle. He blipped off the motor and glided over the machine gun. Well past it, he blipped the Gnome again, roared around, and headed back, flying in line with the guns on a course perpendicular to the tracks.