Mission Hindenburg

by C. Alexander London

  “I …” Hamilton couldn’t speak with the boot on his throat, but as he looked up at the crowd gathering in the hallway to catch a glimpse of the intruder, he saw one familiar face. Toby Griffon — famous architect, Janus leader, and one of the Outcast’s allies — stood behind a junior executive from Fold N Eat. He made eye contact with Ham, then smiled.

  Thank you, Toby Griffon mouthed silently to Ham, who realized he’d just done the Outcast’s sabotage for him. Now he had a boot on his neck, he was under arrest, and his friends were still in danger.

  One of them was still on a flying bomb.

  70,000 feet over the Athens

  Amy was amazed by the students aboard MIT’s Subspace Cooperative Airship — which they called the SCA. The engineers and officers were graduate students, and the rest of the crew looked like undergrads, not much older than she was. From what Amy could tell, the oldest people on board — the professors — were only there as advisors. Even the captain was a PhD candidate who’d trained for her pilot’s license. If it weren’t for Cahill family intrigue, Amy could be one of these students in a few years. Her curiosity could be a tool for discovery and imagination rather than one for destruction or salvation. She could be … normal.

  The thought didn’t thrill her like it used to. Her grandmother hadn’t wanted a normal life for herself or for her grandchildren. Grace had chosen to thrust Amy and Dan into the family’s secrets, and try as she might to be free of them, Amy had to admit there was a rush to it all. Who else her age had explored ancient ruins, dashed through the halls of power, foiled global plots, and now, charged toward the edge of space? Normal was not something Amy aspired to anymore.

  Not even a little.

  She hid behind a large water filter and watched the students bustle to and fro as the airship lifted off. They shouted numbers to one another, cheering when certain numbers were called out, laughing at obscure physics jokes, and celebrating their success when they hit 70,000 feet above sea level.

  “Hold something back until tomorrow, Cap’n,” one of the students called out. “We don’t want to set the record on the first day!”

  “Yeah, let the others underestimate us!” another student called.

  The captain seemed to answer with the hiss of the gas mixtures in the balloon above the cabin. Amy saw their altitude on a display screen stop rising. They settled back down to 68,000 feet above sea level.

  “All levels are holding,” an engineer shouted.

  “Roger that,” the captain said over a loudspeaker. “We’re looking good from up here.”

  A redhead in an MIT windbreaker and blue jeans stood in the center of the floor and spoke to the crew. “Seriously, guys, you’ve worked so hard, I think we should all be proud. If you do your jobs, by this time tomorrow, we’ll have not only set a world record for subspace travel and won the Airship X Prize —”

  Everyone cheered.

  “— but we’ll have given birth to a new era of efficient, eco-friendly, safe, high-speed transit that could revolutionize the way humanity moves. In the tradition of da Vinci, the Wright Brothers, Einstein, Gates, and Jobs, we are all part of a team that is reimagining the future. All of us! Together!”

  The crowd cheered again.

  “Except for you!” the redhead said, and pointed straight at Amy’s hiding spot. “You can step out now. I’ve seen you.”

  Amy felt her blood run cold, but she stepped out sheepishly.

  “You don’t belong here,” the redheaded girl said.

  “I’m — I’m just an ob-ob-observer,” Amy said.

  “And I’m just the crew chief,” the redhead said. “I know you aren’t supposed to be on board. So why don’t you tell us who you are and what you’re doing here? We don’t appreciate stowaways.”

  Amy wondered what would happen if she told them the truth. She felt certain these students had a good chance of winning this competition, which would make them the Outcast’s likely target, even though they were nowhere near the Karman Line. That was at 327,360 feet above the earth’s surface. Blowing up this ship now wouldn’t really match the clues that the Outcast had given.

  But, Amy wondered, why was the Outcast giving them clues, anyway? If he really wanted disasters to happen, he could just tell them nothing. It seemed like he was trying to keep them busy chasing his trail … but to what end? That Amy still didn’t know.

  And she wanted to.

  What she needed was more time, and she’d already stood in front of these students without saying anything for long enough.

  Sometimes the best way to buy time for a lie was with some piece of the truth.

  “I admit, I am a stowaway,” she told them. “My name is Amy Cahill and I’m here because … well … I love exploration, and this was the only chance I could imagine to see something most people my age have never seen before: history being made.”

  “You think we’re making history?” the redhead asked.

  Amy nodded. “I do.”

  “I know Amy,” a girl in a matching MIT windbreaker announced. “She’s an old family friend.”

  Amy looked at the girl in the windbreaker, who had the name Eriele Cienfuegos stitched onto her jacket. As far as Amy knew, she’d never seen this girl in her life. “My grandparents in Manila knew her grandmother,” Eriele said. She gave Amy a wink. “We can trust her.”

  “You vouch for her?” the redhead asked.

  “I do,” said Eriele.

  The redhead shrugged and ordered everyone back to their posts. “We’re going to test the rotational axis thrust,” she announced. She looked at Amy and Eriele. “Tell young Ms. Cahill that if she gets nauseated easily, she should probably go to the bathroom now. In about five minutes we’ll be spinning at about five g’s. Even NASA astronauts puke at that speed.”

  “Thanks, Katlyn.” Eriele smiled sarcastically until the redhead named Katlyn left them alone, then she turned to Amy. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you strapped in safely before the maneuver.”

  “Thanks for your help there,” Amy said. “But I don’t know you. Did your parents really know my grandmother?”

  Eriele nodded. “Grace Cahill was an amazing woman,” she said, then dropped her voice to a whisper. “Even we Lucians respected her leadership.”

  “You’re a —”

  “Yes,” Eriele told her. “Don’t be nervous. Not everyone is on the Outcast’s side.”

  “But what are you doing on this airship?” Amy wondered.

  “I could ask you the same question,” said Eriele. “In fact, I have to. Should I be worried?”

  Amy had to decide if she trusted this Lucian stranger. A Lucian on board a competing airship was not a good sign. Could Eriele be setting up the bomb at this very moment, keeping Amy at ease to prevent her from discovering it? Or was she making sure this ship did not reach the Karman Line … which meant one of the other ships was the target?

  Either this ship was going to explode or it wasn’t. The only one who might be able to give her an idea was Eriele. She had to keep the girl talking.

  “I think …” Amy began, but just then an alarm sounded. “Are we starting the spin?” she asked.

  “No,” Eriele said, worry etched across her forehead. “That’s the emergency landing siren!”

  Amy tensed. Was this it? Was this the disaster?

  The airship began to drop rapidly. Amy gripped the wall beside her to brace herself.

  “All right, team.” The captain’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “We’re making an emergency descent back to Athens. All flights are on lockdown. Apparently, there’s been an attack on board one of the ships.”

  Amy’s eyes snapped open.

  It wasn’t this ship.

  “Oh, no!” Amy’s heart raced at the thought of Cara and Ian and Hamilton and Jonah, and most horribly, Dan. “Oh no oh no oh no.”

  “Some joker threw a briefcase out the window of the Fold N Eat and we’re all grounded until further notice.” The captain laughed over the spe
aker.

  The crew groaned and Amy’s adrenaline settled. Her hands stopped shaking. It wasn’t the Outcast’s disaster underway, it was Hamilton Holt’s.

  Moscow, Russia

  Alek sat on the edge of a large steel desk opposite Nellie and Sammy, whom he’d handcuffed to the chairs he’d pushed them into.

  “Did you have a chance to peruse the file?” he asked, gently waving the Nathaniel Hartford in Nellie’s direction so the breeze of the file made her hair sway. He moved with the cool grace of a dancer, every gesture deliberate and controlled. “Shall I enlighten you?”

  He smiled and opened the pages. He held it up the way elementary school teachers hold up picture books during the read-aloud time.

  There were a few more photos of the handsome man shopping for flowers in a Cambodian market, driving a motorcycle through Beijing, and laughing with a younger Grace Cahill on a bench. The younger Grace Cahill looked so much like Amy that Nellie gasped.

  “These are surveillance photos,” Alek explained. “The KGB was pursuing Nathaniel Hartford as a possible double agent during the Cold War.” He turned the page. “Sadly, they determined he was incorruptible.”

  Nellie thought she detected a touch of admiration in Alek Spasky’s voice.

  “Ah, now to the good stuff,” Alek said as he turned to another page, read quietly to himself, then held up the file for them to see. Across the top of a memo, written in English, ran a big red stamp that said:

  “Merely reading this memo could make a person an Outcast,” Alek observed. He raised his eyebrows at Nellie and smirked. “I am willing to risk it, I think. You?”

  “Why are you showing us this?” Nellie asked. “Is this one of those the-bad-guy-reveals-his-plans-before-he-kills-us moments? Because I should tell you, those sorts of things never end well for the bad guy.”

  Alek cracked his neck to the left and then the right. He rolled his shoulders back, then stood. The calm of his face had transformed to a red-hot rage. “I am not the bad guy here, Nellie Gomez. You are.”

  Nellie narrowed her eyes at him.

  “If not for the lot of you, my sister, Irina, would still be alive,” he told her. His hand shook with anger.

  “Irina died a hero!” Nellie told him. “She died saving Amy’s and Dan’s lives. She’d be disgusted to see what you’re doing now.”

  Alek raised a hand as if to slap her. Nellie braced herself, but he regained his calm and let his hand fall again to his side. He straightened his shirt.

  “And yet she is not here,” he said. “I had no desire to get involved with the Cahill family. That sort of intrigue never excited me like it did Irina. I worked for the KGB, of course, and did my duty to Mother Russia, but as for the Lucian branch? Pffft.” He waved his hand in the air like he was swatting flies. “I never had any interest … until the Outcast came to me and offered me a chance to avenge Irina’s death.”

  “So you are going to kill us?” Nellie asked. She could feel Sammy shift in his chair beside her. But she had to focus on Alek. The more time he spent talking, the more chance there would be of escape. If he was talking, he wasn’t killing them, and the former was definitely preferable to the latter.

  Alek flashed her an insincere smile. “Now, if you’ll please read this memo, I think all will become clear to you.”

  He held up the file, and Nellie and Sammy leaned forward in unison to read. As they read, Nellie felt a chill rising up her spine. The more she read, the colder she got.

  Alek flipped the page silently. The next page of the file showed an article from a newspaper that described the accidental death of a Mr. Nathaniel Hartford, late husband of Grace Cahill of Attleboro, Massachusetts.

  “ ‘Mr. Hartford was said to have died while traveling on a cultural exchange mission in Moscow,’ ” Alek read. “ ‘Several witnesses reported seeing him slip or perhaps be shoved into the freezing Moscow River. He never surfaced, and though his body was never found, Russian authorities declared him dead, as no one could survive in the icy waters of the Moscow River in February.’ ”

  “Grace — she —” Nellie stammered, shocked.

  “She killed her own husband,” Alek finished the sentence. “Well, she ordered my father, Vladimir, to do it. And when it came time to help him out, was Grace to be found? Ha! She looked out for herself alone. When my father was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in Lefortovo Prison on charges that he was some kind of gangster hit man, no Cahill came to testify on his behalf. No Lucian strings were pulled. No action was taken at all, and now he rots in prison, while the real criminal died peacefully in her bed and her descendants run free causing mayhem in their wake.”

  “If Grace Cahill wanted Nathaniel Hartford dead, there had to be a good reason for it,” Nellie said. She felt tears welling in her own eyes. She couldn’t believe that the woman who had hired her and entrusted her to care for her kiddos had ordered her own husband — their grandfather — assassinated. How could she have been so cruel?

  “It is hard when our heroes fall, yes?” said Alek.

  He stood and set the file down on the desk. Then he pulled a large suitcase out from behind it and opened the case. Inside, there were two canisters of fluid connected by hoses to an empty third chamber that had a valve with a timer on it.

  “It’s time the Lucian branch end their foolish and undeserved position of power in my beloved country,” he said. “And while most of the leadership is off on Vikram Kabra’s ridiculous flight above the clouds, those who are left behind will find a taste of their own medicine most bitter to swallow. Poison always was their favorite.” He cleared his throat, pressed a button, and the timer started ticking down from ten minutes. The canisters bubbled as the fluid from each started to mix, hissing and turning to gas that filled the third chamber.

  “If you can wriggle free before liquidized acid dissolves this nest of Lucian vipers beneath the glorious State Kremlin Palace,” Alek said, “I do hope you’ll tell Amy and Dan who their grandmother really was.” He moved for the door, then turned back. “Of course, if you don’t make it out, I guess Amy and Dan will know what it feels like to lose someone they care about. Either way, a win for the good guy. Me.”

  With that, he closed the door behind him, leaving Nellie and Sammy handcuffed in a dark office with the red glow of the countdown clock marking the final minutes they had until poison gas flooded the building. The file that condemned one of Nellie’s greatest heroes as a cold-blooded killer sat on the desk in front of them.

  All in all, this was not one of Nellie Gomez’s favorite days.

  Athens, Greece

  The airships settled at their docking stations around the Acropolis. Amy practically ran down the metal stairs when she saw, on the other side of the ruins, Hamilton being led from the Fold N Eat zeppelin in handcuffs, surrounded by a private security team. Greek police were waiting across the complex with a squad car, its lights flashing. Judging by the pace the men were moving, Amy had about three minutes to talk Ham out of trouble before he fell into state custody.

  Jonah, Cara, and Ian were already running toward Ham. Ian looked much the worse for wear, his suit jacket missing and his “fancy pants” torn. She’d have to ask him what happened on board the Lucian airship once they got Hamilton out of the trouble he was in.

  Dan’s airship wasn’t down yet, and Amy didn’t see it on her quick glance up at the sky. Right now, though, she had to focus on Ham.

  By the time she reached him, the security guards had hauled him halfway across the temple complex and Jonah stood directly in their path, stopping them in front of the great Ionic columns of the Parthenon.

  “Yo, that guy’s my bodyguard, you can’t arrest him!” Jonah objected.

  “Perhaps you should do a more thorough background check on your people, Jonah Wizard,” the leader of the security detail sneered. “This young man is suspected of industrial espionage and perhaps aerial terrorism.”

  “Terrorism!” Ham cried out. “No, it’s not like
that … I was trying to stop something terrible from happening!”

  “Gentlemen.” Ian smiled calmly. “Certainly, you can understand that my cousin here is not well. He is rather dim-witted. Large, yes, but totally harmless. I’m sure we can reach some sort of arrangement for his release.” Ian pulled out his wallet.

  “Oh, Ian, no,” Cara muttered, pinching his arm as hard as she could.

  “Ouch! Cara, would you please let me discuss this with the gentlemen?” Ian snapped at her.

  Cara rolled her eyes and pinched him harder.

  “Cara, please!”

  “Young man, are you attempting to bribe me?” The leader of the security detail scowled at Ian.

  “No, sir, he wasn’t,” Cara said eagerly. “He was just giving me his, uh, wallet to … hold.” She snatched the wallet from Ian’s hand and put it in her own pocket. Ian’s eyes bulged at her as the security guards starting moving again, knocking them out of the way.

  “What?” Cara shrugged at Ian. “We couldn’t have you going to jail, too! You’re supposed to be our leader!”

  “I am your leader!” Ian snapped.

  “Sorry, guys!” Hamilton called back over his shoulder as he was hustled toward the waiting police car. “But you should know, the Fold N Eat checks out! All clear!”

  Amy smiled. Ham had done his job. They’d figure out how to get him out of jail once they’d saved the targeted zeppelin. Jonah would probably have to hire an expensive lawyer.

  “Hey, Wizard!” Ham shouted back. “If I’m not out of jail by next Friday, could you cancel my date for me? I don’t want him thinking I stood him up without a good reason!”

  Amy looked to Ian once more, hoping he’d come up with some other way to stop them from arresting Hamilton, who even thought of other people’s feelings as he was getting hauled off to jail.