He killed the motor and pulled the plugs from his ears. Despite its distance, he could hear the airship’s motors as it made its final approach. His entire body was stiff when he climbed out of the cockpit, every joint protesting being set in motion again. He crouched down to untie the canoe and launch it on the plainly gentle waves. Now that he’d landed, he realized it was his imagination that made the swells appear tsunamic in size.
Checking that his .45 was secure in its holster, Bell slid into the canoe and started rowing for the ship, the sea surging placidly under his near-invisible little craft.
36
The Cologne slowed dramatically, barely making any headway against the wind, as she inched closer and closer to her mooring mast. When the tip of the nose passed over the Dagna’s stern rail, a rope was tossed down to the waiting deckhands. Like handlers guiding a reluctant elephant at the circus, the men coaxed the airship to the mast. For his part, Captain Grosse feathered the engines with the mastery of an orchestra conductor.
Additional lines were dropped from the airship, and soon the first rope was fed into the electric winch at the top of the spindly mooring mast. The huge dirigible then was drawn in those last few feet so that a locking pin could be rammed home inside the coupling between mast and ship. The engines were cut. The Cologne was so large that barely a tenth of her length was above the tender’s deck. The rest extended out over the Caribbean.
Swiftly approaching the tender, Bell could hear the men cheering at the end of another successful mission.
He paddled next to the German ship and found she’d dropped anchor. He quickly tied the canoe to the anchor chain and wedged it against the hull. He was hidden from above by the flaring of the ship’s bow. He figured an hour was enough time for the crew to finish performing their duties and settle in for the night.
During his wait, the wind shifted, and the airship pivoted around the mooring mast like the world’s largest weathervane.
When the hour had passed, and Bell couldn’t recall hearing anyone stirring on deck for at least thirty minutes, he climbed the chain as carefully as he could to prevent it from rattling. At the top, he paused, listening. All he heard was the lapping of the water against the hull and the background rumble of machinery deep within it. He shinnied up a little higher. While his thighs burned clamped around the chain, he refused to hurry.
The landing beacon had been long extinguished, and other than the red navigation light on the ship’s stubby bridge wing, the ship was only illuminated by the milky glow of the moon and stars. Bell spied a lone sailor with a rifle slung over his shoulder meandering by, then heading toward the stern. Once he was out of sight, Bell legged over the railing and crouched in the darkness for a minute.
He reached the main deck without incident. He walked aft, finding cover wherever he could—winch windlasses, air funnels, the tarp-covered lifeboats. At a pair of glass and metal doors, he successfully worked the handle of one and stepped inside the superstructure. The ship had electric lighting, but the bulbs were dim and spaced far apart.
Logic dictated that Marion was likely being held on a lower deck. He found a stairwell and climbed down. At the end of a hall, bright light spilled from the galley’s doorway. He heard someone working in there, scouring pans after a late meal served to the Zeppelin’s crew. He passed a dozen closed doors—cabins, no doubt—and came to another flight of stairs. The next deck down, the lighting was even dimmer. It was warmer too, closer to the engine room. He passed more closed doors and almost missed the one with a lock hastily welded to the latch to prevent it from being opened from the inside.
He tapped on the door—shave and a haircut, but only the first part—tap-tap-taptaptap-tap. He did it again. On the third try, the room’s occupant tapped the final bit. Marion hated it when Bell did that, so of course he made it one more of the secret codes and language they shared.
He gently lifted the latch and opened the door. Her lips were hot on his, and her arms around his neck felt like they would never release and let him go.
“Are you okay?” he asked her when she came up for air. Her hair was lank from the heat and humidity, but her eyes were clear as always.
“I’m fine. The Huns didn’t dare touch me. I owe you an apology, though.”
“Me? What on earth for?”
She gave him her most impish grin. “I didn’t expect you’d rescue me for at least another twenty-four hours. Sorry I underestimated you.”
“Quite all right,” he said breezily. “You couldn’t have possibly known there was an airplane I could borrow.”
She turned serious and earnest. “You know about the great big balloon of theirs, right? That’s how they nicked me from the Spatminster. They boarded from a rowboat that they lowered from the balloon. I was blindfolded but could still tell what was going on.”
“The balloon is called a dirigible, or rigid airship, and you and I are going to hijack it.”
Marion looked dubious. “With just your pistol?”
“And my charm.” Bell smirked. He then explained. “The airship is filled to the gills with hydrogen, a very explosive gas. They won’t risk me firing the gun, so hijacking it when they take off in the morning should be a snap.”
When they reached the deck, Bell noticed immediately that the wind had picked up. He saw too that lights were shining at the top of the mooring mast, when before they had been out. If bad weather was brewing, it made sense that they would take off and try to fly around the storm.
“Are we too late?” Marion asked when her husband went quiet.
“Not sure.” They would be discovered if he tried to launch a lifeboat. The airship was their only ticket to safety. “Come on.”
There was no one at the base mooring mast, so they climbed up it. The higher they went, the more noticeable it became that the Dagna was rolling in the roughening seas. The wind also seemed to have picked up speed. Bell heard men below him and placed a hand at the small of Marion’s back to impel her to climb faster. One of the airship’s engines coughed to life, a loud blat that cut across the howl of the wind ripping through all the rigging.
“I’d say we’re just in time.”
They raced up the last few switchbacks of stairs. On the platform at the top of the mast, a sailor monitored the thick hose that was pumping water into the Cologne’s ballast tanks. Bell flipped his .45 and clipped the man behind the ear with its grip. His skull had to be extra-thick because rather than collapse into unconsciousness, he clutched the wound with one hand and sprung to his feet to confront Bell.
Bell struck at him again, harder this time, but the sailor blocked the swing with an arm. Bell threw a straight left that flattened the man’s nose and caused blood to flow. The sailor was dazed, and so Bell finished him with a strong kick between the legs. When the man doubled over, Bell gave him another rap on the back of the head with the butt of the Colt automatic.
The men coming up from below were only a few landings away. Bell turned to the airship’s entrance hatch as another figure emerged from the craft’s interior. The light was streaky with shadows, so no one saw any faces, but the newcomer recognized the prisoner and assumed the man with her was helping her escape. Heinz Kohl lunged for Bell, swinging with a left cross from what looked like too far away.
Bell had recognized the bodyguard’s tactic and ducked back quickly enough that the man’s leather-gloved wooden fist missed his nose by an inch. Kohl was so used to landing his first blow that he was hyperextended. Bell slid in and fired two rabbit punches to the kidneys before dodging as Kohl swung his prosthetic arm like a club. Bell popped back up, hitting Dreissen’s bodyguard with a straight right to the nose, but the old brawler was ready and bowed his head so that Bell’s fist ended up caroming harmlessly off the man’s forehead.
Kohl swung again. Bell trapped the artificial limb between his chest and arm and turned sharply, yanking Kohl off balance enough
for Bell to loop a length of the chain railing ringing the platform once around Kohl’s wrist and kick him on the outside of the knee hard enough to collapse him to the deck. One more kick sent him off the platform and dangling above the deck by the straps holding his once deadly arm to his shoulder.
He pointed Marion to the hatch. “Go.”
There was a small vestibule just inside the airship, and a flight of stairs that would lead down to the keel and allow access to the gondolas. On the wall above the hatch was a large, red-painted lever held in place with a brass pin. Bell pulled the pin and heaved down on the lever, using all the weight of his body. The locking mechanism that held the airship to the mast slid free, and the great ship immediately began to rise. The filling hose ripped from its mount in a spray of water. Bell had to grab a handhold on a bulkhead close by and wrap an arm around Marion to keep them steady as the ship arrowed into the sky.
Wind blasted through the open hatch.
“It wasn’t like this before,” Marion said, her voice an octave higher than normal. “What’s happening?”
“Not enough ballast water. The captain needs to vent hydrogen to get us neutrally buoyant.”
Bell shifted to give Marion access to the handhold. He then pulled the hatch closed.
“What the hell have you done?” Otto Dreissen bellowed as he charged up the stairs.
The .45 felt like it leapt into Isaac’s hand, and the German brought himself up short.
Dreissen sneered, then said, “Fire that thing in here, and the last thing you see is your wife turned into a human torch.”
“Then I advise you don’t do anything stupid to make me want to pull the trigger.”
The airship lurched hard as it continued to rocket heavenward. Metal struts creaked and moaned at the unprecedented strain they were under. All three were forced to remain where they stood, clutching to railings to keep from being tossed around. Bell felt like he was back in the tanker truck as it was being overwhelmed by the avalanche.
“How are you even here?” Dreissen demanded.
Bell had to practically shout over the metallic protests the ship made as it climbed higher still. He couldn’t understand why the Captain hadn’t vented more gas to slow its perilous rise. “I had a plane. I followed the airship back from its ill-fated rendezvous with Court Talbot out on Lake Gatun.”
Marion gave a little choked gasp at hearing Talbot was involved in this plot.
Dreissen absorbed that news and asked, “Ill-fated? What happened to Talbot and his men?”
“I didn’t realize the fire I set on their boat would cause one of the two underwater mines you’d delivered to explode. Whatever it is you’re up to is finished, Dreissen. You lost your bombs.”
“On the contrary, those last two explosives were an extra bit of insurance. Talbot and his crew made multiple runs every night, ferrying my mines from their jungle camp. They’ve already wired and submerged enough mines to suit my purposes.”
Bell hadn’t expected that, though he should have. He’d forgotten that while he’d lost days battling amnesia, Talbot and company had been hard at work. “At the Gatun Dam?”
Dreissen smiled because he knew he’d just rattled the Van Dorn investigator. He paused as if contemplating not answering, but decided that at this juncture there was no harm in gloating. “Near enough that the shock wave generated by the detonation will collapse it. The lifeblood of the Panama Canal, the water of the Chagres River, will once again rejoin the Atlantic Ocean. My engineers estimate it will take a year to replace the spillway and any of the dam that has eroded away, and another three to five to refill the lake.”
“Nice fantasy,” Bell said, “but it’ll never happen. I know who your gunman is, and he won’t get anywhere close enough to detonate the mines.”
The German shook his head as if he’d caught a child in a lie. “You can’t possibly.”
“The only person I told about Marion leaving on the Spatminster was Tats Macalister. He’s your man.”
Bell knew he was right. Dreissen would make a terrible poker player. His nostrils had gone a little white, and his eyes shifted down and to the left. Some of the arrogance seemed to leave Dreissen’s puffed-out chest.
Bell continued. “He’s too good at playing the English dandy to be one of your employees, so I’m going to guess he’d be military intelligence. I forget what you people call it.”
“Sektion IIIb,” Dreissen said, shocked. “He’s a Major.”
“And the final blow to your plans is, I had an investigator canvass all the hotels in Milwaukee, looking for the name Dreissen. I know you have a brother based in New York. You and Talbot had to accelerate your plans when word leaked that TR was coming to inspect the canal, and I mean leaked even before I was called in by his political party. You wanted to complete your brother’s mission from two years ago. He was the hand pulling the strings to have Roosevelt assassinated by John Schrank. One of our detectives who was there at the time and saved Roosevelt’s life knew that Schrank’s uncle worked for Essenwerks. You and the German government are terrified that he might become our President again.”
Dreissen didn’t deny it.
Bell continued. “When my colleagues discover your brother was in Milwaukee on the day of the failed assassination, I have arranged it so that Roosevelt is prevented from coming ashore, and your shot at blowing him up is over.”
“All very clever, Herr Bell. Your insights and deductions are quite accurate. My government does not want him in the White House, nor do we want the United States to have the power to control maritime commerce of the Northern Hemisphere.” He let out a dark chuckle that was soon drowned out by the howling wind. “But you are wrong about one critical detail. My brother didn’t feel the need to stay with him all the way to Milwaukee. He left Schrank, and the psychologist who kept Schrank drugged and deep in his sick fantasies, in Chicago.”
It was like being gut-punched. He’d figured it all out, but it wasn’t going to prevent a catastrophe.
Several tense minutes went by. The air grew cold and thin. Their breaths condensed each time they exhaled. The airship’s ascent didn’t seem to be slowing at all. A loud bang caused Marion to scream. Bell was growing more concerned, and even Dreissen’s expression darkened.
“Why haven’t we stopped rising?” Bell shouted.
Wind then found a weak seam in the airship’s canvas skin and tore open a flap that allowed icy air to rush inside the envelope and fill the stairway with racket.
Dreissen said nothing.
Another bang, and the dirigible shuddered like a ship caught in a storm at sea. More wind filled the stairs, and the massive bags of gas that kept the airship aloft fluttered and chaffed against the wires and braces that held them in place. Metal screamed as it was pushed to the very breaking point.
Marion began panting to get enough oxygen, and Bell felt himself growing light-headed. He had no idea how high they’d gone but it felt like he was standing atop some of the mountains around Denver. The dirigible began a corkscrew motion that made them feel weightless at times and the shrieks of tortured metal became banshees’ wails.
“Since you’re trapped, I will deal with you after this crisis is over.” Dreissen began to climb down toward the control gondola along the airship’s keel, lowering himself hand over hand with his feet barely touching the stairs’ treads.
Marion’s lips had gone blue and her hands were as white as porcelain. They both gulped air like fish trying to get enough oxygen into their lungs while their breath wreathed them like smoke. The vapor became frost whenever it touched an ice-cold aluminum support strut.
What followed a minute after Dreissen’s disappearance deeper into the ship was utter chaos. There came a huge rending crash somewhere aft of the nose section. The wind suddenly grew into a hurricane gale. Marion’s scream was drowned by the roar. Metal screeched and tore. The no
se suddenly pitched upward, leaving the pair dangling in space and then it swung through several loops, spinning like a dervish. Debris filled the air while the gas bag moaned like a wounded animal as pressure within its envelope rose and fell.
And then everything seemed to stabilize. Bell looked down the stairs and along the central hallway only to see black sky. He didn’t understand what had happened. And then the main section of the dirigible revealed itself. It was dropping away from the nose, its backbone snapped. The airship had torn itself apart midway between the entrance hatch and the control gondola. The nose section remained buoyant, the single remaining gas bag providing more lift than the structure’s weight. The bags in the rest of the airship had erupted through multiple rips and the broken craft now hurtled earthward.
A pocket of escaping hydrogen met the spark from the one motor that was still chugging away. The explosion was like all the light in the world had been concentrated on that one spot. Heat and fire reached up, and had the fifty-foot section of nose been closer it would have been consumed by the fire and added its own explosive gush of flaming hydrogen to the mushrooming pyre.
When the initial blinding flare faded Bell could see the Cologne’s burning husk falling away like a meteor trailing a flaming tail.
The nose section stabilized so that its peak was pointing upward with maybe a couple degrees of tilt. Bell and Marion had proper hand-and footholds and were relatively safe for the time being as the dangerous ascent had reversed itself. Their makeshift balloon was drifting downward as tears in the envelope allowed hydrogen to escape at a steady pace. Soon enough the air began to warm and thicken as they dropped. They soon could breathe normally.
“Are you okay?” Bell asked his wife.
“I’d be better if your rescue plans weren’t always so cockeyed.”
“Not always,” Bell said in self-defense. “But like you like to say, I’m always either at the right place at the wrong time or the wrong place at the right one.”
The Saboteurs Page 32