by Ted Bell
“Hasn’t forgotten much, has he, lad?” Hawke said, a broad smile on his face. “Look, he’s headed back this way!”
Indeed, the Camel was headed straight toward them, very low but swiftly gaining altitude. As Nick watched in awe, his father kept climbing, climbing, right through the vertical until the Camel was completely upside down and then arching over, diving straight down toward the ground at a tremendous speed.
“An outside loop!” Commander Hobbes exclaimed. “This chap knows his business!”
Just when Nick thought the Camel would plunge straight into the ground, his father brought her nose up, leveled off, and roared just over their heads, waggling his wings.
“Now you can see why he was an ace,” Hawke said. “How many Huns did he shoot down, Nick? Any idea at all?”
“He ended the war with twenty-three victories, sir, awarded both the Distinguished Flying Cross and Distinguished Service Cross, with bar. He’d have had even more had he not been badly wounded.”
Hawke looked down at his young friend. The boy’s eyes shone with pride for his great hero.
They both turned to watch as the Camel roared to the end of the airstrip and went into a severely steep climb, banked hard right, and raced over the treetops back toward Hawke Castle and the blue waves of the channel. Nick’s heart was in his throat, thinking of all the years it had been since his father had done these aerial stunts. Was he pushing himself too far? So full of joy, that he was oblivious to danger? He suddenly wanted his dad back safely on the ground.
But the acrobatics weren’t over. The Camel raced south toward the tower, did another perfect loop around it, and then came speeding toward them once more, only a hundred feet in the air.
“Is he going to land?” Nick asked.
“I don’t think so,” Hawke said. “He’s not slowing.”
“But what—”
When the Sopwith was less than a few hundred yards from the group watching from the ground, Angus McIver suddenly inverted the plane.
He was flying completely upside down now, and yet he roared just over their heads as if it were the most natural thing in the world. A few hundred yards later, he inverted again, now right side up, did a sweeping left-hand turn over the forest, and lined up for his final approach to the airstrip.
“He’s bloody amazing, that’s what he is!” Gunner cried, squeezing Nick’s shoulder. “Fifteen years in the Royal Navy, and I never saw the like of that kind of flying, I will tell you right now.”
“Good thing you remembered that length of hemp to tie him in,” Nick said, struggling to deal with the mixture of emotions fighting for space inside his mind. Fear, pride, and joy, all jumbled up.
Moments later, the Camel touched down in a bumpy landing and rolled to a stop just in front of the barn. A moment later, the sputtering big Bentley was silenced.
Nick rolled the steps over to the cockpit as his father hoisted himself up and out of the aircraft and carefully made his way down the steps to the ground, where Gunner handed him his cane.
Everyone raced toward him, cheering and applauding: first his wife, Emily, embracing him with tears running down her cheeks, then little Katie, then each and every one hugging him in turn.
Nick was the last to approach him. “Dad, I was so afraid that maybe you’d—”
“What, son?”
“I—it’s been so long—I didn’t think you’d remember everything and—”
His father bent over until he was eye to eye with his young son. “Nicky, ever since that day I went down in the Ardennes forest, I’ve been dreaming of this very moment. In my dreams, almost every night, I was doing the things I just did. I remembered everything precisely, you see, how she felt before a stall, how much rudder to apply, how she tends to climb in a right-hand turn, or dive in a left turn because of all that engine torque. I haven’t forgotten a thing because I’ve dreamed every moment of this day every night for over twenty years.”
Nick reached up and clasped his hands around his father’s neck, pulling him closer so that he could whisper into his ear. “Teach me, Dad. Teach me how to do all those things. Teach me how to fly the Camel. Fly her just like you did. Loops, barrel rolls, all of it!”
“Well,” his father said, his eyes alight, “I don’t know about that. How old are you now?”
“I’m twelve, Dad. You know that.”
“Twelve, is it? Well, as luck would have it, I’d just turned twelve when my father taught me to fly in a Sopwith Cub. So I can hardly refuse, can I?”
Nick hugged his father as hard as he could and said, “I love you, Dad. When do we start?”
“First thing in the morning sound good?”
“Oh, yes, it certainly does. Yes, it sounds absolutely wonderful!”
And so it was that Angus McIver taught his son Nicholas how to fly an aeroplane. Feet, balletlike on the rudder pedals. A feather touch on the ailerons and elevators. The first months, Nick sat in his father’s lap, both their hands wrapped around the joystick. It was terribly crowded, since the cockpit was meant for a single pilot, but they made it work.
In those first weeks, though he’d never admit it, Nick had been frightened out of his wits more than once. The Camel had a mind of its own, and if you weren’t extremely careful, you’d find yourself diving out of control in the blink of an eye. Luckily, his father’s hands and feet were never far from the controls, and, in an instant, he’d regain control. There were hard lessons well learned, Nick knew, because some day his father would not be there to save his life.
A few months later Nick finally heard his father say the words he’d been both dreading and longing to hear. “Well, Nicholas, I think you’re ready to solo.”
And solo he did, his heart in his throat, hands trembling, scarcely able to believe that anyone trusted him enough to go up all by himself. What if he forgot something? Let his mind wander even for a split second? What if—no. Such thinking was dangerous in itself. He’d been taught to fly by the best. And he would never, ever let his father down.
Everyone gathered outside the barn and watched the twelve-year-old boy roar down the runway in the twenty-five-year-old aeroplane. His mother held her breath, his father beamed with pride, and his sister jumped for joy when he lifted off the ground.
Although his father had taught him many aerobatic tricks, he thought it best, given the fact that his mother was in the audience, to simply fly straight and level toward Hawke Castle, do a simple banked turn around the tower, and then execute his best landing ever, pulling to a stop just in front of the cheering crowd.
He’d done it! He’d flown an aeroplane by himself! When no one was looking, he pinched himself just to make absolutely sure this wasn’t just another dream.
Later, when he and Gunner were alone in the barn, refueling and going over every inch of the Sopwith, he turned to his friend with a question. “Gunner,” he said, thoughtfully, “do you think it would be possible for you to make me some bombs?”
“Bombs, is it? What kind of bombs?”
“Small ones, I should think. About the size of a large apple, perhaps. So I could hold one easily in my hand.”
“And what, exactly, do you intend to do with these bombs, lad?”
“I intend to make life miserable for those bloody German invaders, that’s what I intend!”
Gunner had never seen the boy so fiercely determined in all his days. It was the kind of look he’d seen in men’s eyes in wartime before. The kind of look that got brave men killed.
And it very nearly worked out just that way.
9
STORM CLOUDS OVER PORT ROYAL
· Port Royal, Jamaica, July 14, 1781 ·
Billy Blood’s lips were moving. But his long-time companion, Snake Eye, now rowing his captain ashore in the captain’s jig, couldn’t hear a blasted word the old terror was saying. Crews aboard almost every ship at anchor were firing their flintlock pistols and blunderbusses into the air in a night of drunken revelry.
Hi
s royal highness, Captain William Blood by name, sitting atop his throne at the stern of the dinghy, was counting the number of pirate vessels lying at anchor here at Port Royal Harbor, most likely, whispering numbers to himself as he ticked ’em off, sloops, frigates, brigs, and barkentines. And every one of them full of rum-soaked crews and flying one of the many versions of the skull and crossbones.
There were plenty of ships lying at anchor to be counted, Snake Eye saw, but not nearly half so many as he knew Old Bill had been hoping for. Why, he’d told Snake Eye that very morning he was counting on a harbor full of fighting ships laying to at Port Royal when they arrived at Jamaica. The harbor was maybe a third full, at best.
“ Combien de bateaux?“ the Frenchman Snake Eye hissed. “How many?”
“By my bloody count, only seventeen,” Blood muttered, clearly displeased.
“C’est insuffisant, mon capitaine. Not enough. We’ll need ten times that number afore we’re done.”
“Aye. Maybe ten times that. And more.”
Snake Eye, a fearsome seven-foot-tall Algerian-French sea warrior, known far and wide for his cruelty, ferocity, and the tattooed serpents enwreathing his face and the entirety of his bald head, had hoped to see the harbor full. He’d hoped to see outlaw barkys, frigates, and brigantines, lying hull to hull. Blood had invited every living outlaw and pirate in the Caribbean to this big parley at Port Royal. But it looked like precious few had accepted his invitation.
The captain hadn’t confided his plans to Snake Eye. No one aboard the Revenge had been told the reason for the parley. Blood kept such things to himself. But the Frenchman was content. He’d know soon enough. Old Bill was up to something. And that usually meant lead would fill the air and gold the ship’s coffers.
Snake Eye happily dug his oars into the water and pulled mightily. There was a full moon tonight, and the lights along Port Royal’s waterfront dives, brothels, and rum dens were all ablaze. This, after all, was the home port of the Brethren of the Coast, as all the pirate captains liked to style themselves. It was the pirates’ private enclave, and a stranger entered at his peril.
Snake Eye, after a month at sea, was eager to be ashore, with a belly full of strong Jamaican rum and back in the arms of a plump wench from Cap-Haitien, a beautiful octaroon whom he’d taken a fancy to. Woman called herself Sucre, and sweet as sugar she was, too.
Perhaps by morning, Snake Eye guessed, the harbor would boast a few late arrivals. But there was a great war raging between the English and their rebellious colonists, the Americans. And Snake Eye knew many pirate captains had gone to the aid of either side in hopes of reaping great rewards.
Most had sided with the limeys, of course, believing rightly that the puny American forces under General Washington didn’t stand a chance against the Royal Navy, the mightiest fleet on earth, and the deadly wrath of the well-trained British Army.
A full harbor by morning would make old Bill Blood felicitous and that in turn would have a most happy effect on his motley crew. They were a sorry lot, for the most part, half of them escaped prisoners from Bill’s daring raid on the hellish penal colony at Hell’s Island, and the other half thieving murderers who’d somehow evaded the law and were on the run. It was a far cry from the crew of Blood’s last command, a ship’s company of highly trained French officers and men who were la crème of Napoleon’s Imperial French Navy.
Blood, who had already betrayed his native England for Napoleon’s French gold, had subsequently lost command of his French frigate, the 78-gun Mystère, in a bizarre engagement with a much smaller warship, an English barkentine called Merlin. His mutinous French crew had betrayed him in the midst of battle; and a bloody English captain named McIver had taken Mystère as a prize off Greybeard Island in the Channel Islands.
In the midst of fierce hand-to-hand fighting on deck, Blood had lost his right hand to an English sword, too, but considered it no loss. He’d replaced it with a solid gold hook mounted on his stump, studded with rubies and diamonds. He kept that hook sharpened to a razor’s edge and found in battle he much preferred a sharp hook to five measly fingers.
He looked forward to the day when he could use his hook to good effect on the very man who’d severed his hand, a rich English aristocrat named Hawke. And that devil of a boy who’d absconded with the second golden orb, the mate to Bill’s cherished Tempus Machina. The boy was a wily young creature named Nicholas McIver. But Blood would deal with Hawke and the boy, too, soon enough and reclaim the second golden orb for its rightful owner, namely himself.
Once he and he alone had the world’s only two time machines in his possession, he need fear no man ever again! Racing back and forth through time and space, no one could catch him, no one could find him! In time, the crafty pirate believed, it was his destiny to rule the world. If he could manage to lure the boy to him, the whole world was within his reach.
William Blood was a giant of a man, with flashing black eyes and a full dark beard plaited with tiny silver skulls that chimed like bells whenever he shook his head. Jutting from his mouth, a long pipe fashioned from bone, a human bone, so rumor had it. He wore a long black cape and fancy pantaloons stuffed into his highly polished Hessian boots.
Despite the loss of his French command and his good right hand, he’d at least escaped Mystère with his own precious Tempus Machina, that beautiful golden orb that allowed a man to roam through time itself! He had first gone to Paris to beseech the emperor to provide him with another ship to avenge his honor against the English. But Napoleon had received accounts of the action from French officers who’d witnessed Blood’s lackadaisical behavior whilst in command of the Mystère. And so William Blood had been personally excoriated and humiliated in Paris by Napoleon himself. A French court-martial expelled him from France for eternity.
Rumor was that the enraged Emperor of France had put a price on his head as well. He’d escaped entrapment by the French Navy twice, once in Madagascar and the second time, by the skin of his teeth, in Napoli.
Now that he was wanted dead or alive by at least two countries, England and France, he’d opted for the life of a pirate and found it much more to his liking than the lot of a naval officer serving under either Nelson or, later, Napoleon. No more was Blood beholden to emperors, admirals, and sea lords with more fancy medals than guts or brains. No. He was sole lord and master of his fate, and he alone would conquer them all or die trying.
Billy had scoured the West Indies, Bahamas, and the entire Caribbean for a suitable replacement for Mystère. Earlier that spring, spying the huge British warship Revenge, lying at anchor one dark night in Nassau Town, he had planned a surprise predawn raid. He had seized the great English frigate in a brief but bloody battle. The limey sailors had been outnumbered two to one by Blood’s pirate crew, and now Old Bill had a fine warship of 74 guns beneath his feet.
Snake Eye, perhaps the only man on earth Bill could trust at this point, had been made Blood’s second-in-command aboard the Revenge. The crew had reacted in shock that such a loathsome-looking creature held their fate in his hands. But they would learn about Snake Eye in the months to come. He was as fearless in battle as any man Bill had ever witnessed, a seaman to his very bones, and his grotesque tattooed visage struck fear deep in the heart of every man who laid eyes on him, friend and foe alike.
Snake Eye was smart enough to realize quickly that a happy crew was a highly desirable state of affairs for a man suddenly placed in charge of a huge pirate ship. Especially so cantankerous and bloodthirsty a lot as his own. Thus, he tripled their rum rations, doubled their fair share of any prizes or booty taken on the high seas, and guaranteed one week of shore leave for every month at sea.
This unheard-of generosity instantly won him the hearts and minds of every man aboard Revenge. And it allowed Snake Eye a more peaceful sleep of a night, with less fear of a dagger in the heart before morning.
“How many ships? How many ships?” the large red parrot perched on Old Bill’s shoulder squawked.
His name was Bones, and he was nigh on three hundred years old. Bones was Blood’s personal winged spy, and a damn good one he was, too.
“Shut up, buzzard. I can’t think straight with you screeching in me bloody ears.”
“Counted twenty-two, so far, mon capitaine,” Snake Eye allowed, trying to be agreeable by subtly enlarging the number.
“O’er that way now, and row with a will, damn yer eyes,” Billy said, pointing at a black brig moored alongside the town dock. “I think that there may be the Pearl, Edward England’s brigantine. If she’s here, maybe more ships are on their way. He’s got a following, you know, down in Dominique.”
Snake Eye grunted agreement and took a swig of rum, shipping one oar briefly to drink and then plunging both oars into the silvery water, pulling hard for the Pearl, her fore and aft nightlights burning, her stern windows blazing with light.
The crew of Revenge, a man-o’-war of 360 tons, carrying nearly two hundred men, had spent the last month sailing all over the Caribbean posting broadsheets advertising the war council the Brethren of the Coast would be holding here in Port Royal this month.
Blood had spent many months planning this momentous event, and he wanted every man and outlaw ship he could lay his hands on. At least a hundred would be needed to accomplish what he had in mind. This paltry lot in the harbor would not do. He’d need a new plan if he was to achieve his goal, and the wheels of his mind started turning immediately as he stared at the hypnotic splashing of Snake Eye’s oars.
What Billy had in mind was to make waves. To write his name in blood across the seas and into the history books. How? Why, he meant to build the greatest pirate armada of all time. He meant to claim the world’s riches for himself. And, in the doing, inflict a reign of terror on all and sundry who had ever humiliated or betrayed him. There was no shortage of names on that list.