It was as much an odd mix as the captain and copilot in styling, too. Chuy had the manners and tailoring of a prancing, preening, Portuguese peacock, while Rucker was exactly what Deitel pictured when he heard the word “Texas”—cowboys, worn leather, rough edges, and a manner as smooth as sandpaper.
Rucker was a hard-looking man despite his apparent young age—no more than thirty, Deitel guessed. A long scar ran along the back of his right hand. His nose looked like it had been broken more than once. The hard lines and angles of his features, combined with the sun-baked tan of his skin, made Rucker look like he was carved from a piece of iron wrapped in leather. But something about his eyes and demeanor brought some warmth to what could have been intimidating.
Deitel saw an old shoulder patch was clipped to an empty part of the control panel. It was emblazoned with a cartoon scorpion sporting wings, a sneer, and a cigar. It was breathing fire. It was the same symbol on Rucker’s cap.
But on this patch, below the scorpion, were the words 3RD TEXAS VOLUNTEER AIR GROUP—MIGHTY FIREFLIES.”
It was a flight squadron patch.
Rucker had fought in the Great War.
Gott in Himmel. Deitel suppressed a shiver. He wondered if there were German scalps hanging somewhere else in the cockpit.
The Freeholder mercenaries who’d fought for the French? They were animals. Their hatred of Germans, rumor in the Fatherland held, was downright pathological. It didn’t matter what they were called—Texas hellhounds was one of the nicer epitaphs—they were said to be the bastard children of the devil and a coyote.
The fact that Rucker chose to wear a sidearm in his own cockpit only served to heighten Deitel’s anxiety. And yet Deitel couldn’t ignore one fact: Rucker had treated him as hospitably as a regular at a hofbrau.
When he noticed from the corner of his eye that Rucker was looking at him in a manner that was part curious, part annoyed, Deitel coughed to clear his voice.
“You were a flier? In the Great War?” he finally said, his voice only cracking a little.
Rucker simply nodded.
The silence stretched out like the horizon before them.
“Well, then,” Deitel said, forcing a pleasant smile.
He was floundering, and Rucker wasn’t inclined to rescue him.
“And so . . . yes,” the doctor finally said, and retired to the passenger compartment, where he spent the next few hours playing gin with Chuy, whom he found to be as refined as Rucker wasn’t.
Eight hours into the flight, Deitel’s nap was interrupted by an announcement and apology from the cockpit that, owing to engine trouble, the plane would be landing at a nearby strip where the two passengers could catch flights to their final destinations.
“We’ll be wheels down in about three minutes,” Rucker said over the intercom.
Deitel shook his head. Of course. Here it was. Travel in the banana republics. Shoddy engineering and primitive conditions. No doubt they’d be landing on some Central American dirt airstrip where the choice would be cargo carriers or old two-seater biplanes. His mission to Austin was too urgent for these kinds of delays. But what were the alternatives?
He looked out the window to his left. Odd. Nothing but the blue waters of the Caribbean Sea far below. To the right, the same.
So then, an airstrip on an island. Even more primitive than he’d imagined. But from what he could fathom, the plane seemed to still be cruising at an awfully high altitude with no obvious indication of descent. Three minutes?
The quizzical look on Chamberlain’s face told Deitel he wasn’t alone in this observation. Both made their way into the cockpit where Captain Rucker and Lago—Chuy, Deitel reminded himself—were about their business readying for a landing. The altimeter held steady at around 10,000 feet as Chuy engaged the landing gear. That didn’t seem right, thought Deitel.
“Herr Kapitan, I am not experienced as you at matters aeronautical . . .”
Rucker hadn’t noticed they’d poked their heads in until then.
“What the hell are you two . . . ? Look, this is supposed to be a professional air service. Passengers in the back, crew in the cockpit and all. Ah, never mind. Take the jump seats if you want a good look. But don’t touch anything,” Rucker said.
The Raposa flew steadily on into a huge cloud bank, bringing visibility to zero. Still, the gauges showed no change in attitude or altitude.
“As I was saying, I am not experienced in flight as you, er, claim, but shouldn’t we be descending to something like sea level so we can actually touch ground at whatever grass hut, bamboo, and coconut airfield you have in mind?”
Chamberlain, looking nervous, threw in a “Yeah, what he said.”
Rucker muttered to his copilot, “That starboard manifold is still losing pressure. Chuy, lock in the auxiliary. Tower calls it at twenty-three, twenty-two . . .”
Rucker turned around to the two passengers and just smirked at them from behind his aviator sunglasses. Over Rucker’s shoulder through the cockpit screen, Deitel saw the clouds begin to part.
“Gentlemen, on behalf of myself and my copilot, Chuy Lago . . .” Rucker said, pausing dramatically.
Then Deitel saw it.
The doctor’s eyes widened. He closed his eyes and rubbed them. He looked again.
“. . . we’d like to thank you for flying Far Ranger Air and tell you . . .”
It had to be a mirage, the German thought. Or he’d been drugged. But Deitel could see that Chamberlain saw it, too.
There it was, floating steadily like God’s own hand had carved out a place in the firmament of the sky.
A city. Almost two miles up.
A flying city.
The Caribbean sun danced off the metallic structure that defied nature’s laws.
“. . . welcome to Airstrip One . . .” Rucker said as the Raposa touched down atop the floating edifice.
Deitel saw flying above the control tower the tricolor, canon, and single star banner of the Texas Freehold.
“. . . the weather outside is breezy and fifty-three degrees . . .”
Deitel fainted.
“. . . watch for falling coconuts.”
CHAPTER TWO
Airstrip One
Two miles above the Caribbean Sea
Northeast of the Yucatan peninsula
Deitel awoke to find he was lying in the jump seat with Rucker absently flapping a wet rag in his general direction. The captain’s attention was focused on the commotion at the passenger door, where Deitel could hear Chuy unceremoniously removing Chamberlain from the plane.
“Now see here, see, where’s my luggage?”
“I’m sorry, sir, you’ll have to speak to our lost luggage department.”
“Dammit, I told you to put my bags on the plane!”
The voices were lost to the noise in the terminal outside, which brought Deitel back to the fact that he was on a plane that was on the “ground,” only the ground was 9,000 feet in the air. He grabbed the rag Rucker was slapping his face with.
“Herr Kapitan, enough.”
“Oh, hey, Doc.”
Rucker got Deitel on his feet.
“Where—Where are we?”
“Airstrip One.”
“A city in the clouds?”
“Not a city. Just a little airport. With a small hotel. A couple of restaurants. Some shops. Oh, and a small hospital. Come on, I’ll show you.”
The Raposa was inside a terminal, a level below the landing platform. There were more than a dozen passenger and cargo planes spread through an area the size of several soccer fields. Massive elevator pads raised and lowered planes to the flight deck. To one side lay a passenger terminal complete with little shops, and off to the other side, maintenance and refueling equipment. The bulkheads on all sides were lined with windows.
“This is Airstrip One. She rides on the backs of thirty-eight superzeppelins, which are driven by some fourteen propellers that are bigger than yachts. I think she can handle up to twenty m
edium-size planes at a time. Busy days like today, she’s the point of transfer or the waypoint for about forty flights. No tennis courts, though, dammit. I love tennis.”
Deitel stumbled, his mind not quite accepting all that he was seeing.
Chuy escorted Chamberlain over to the passenger terminal, where two men in black suits and hats confronted Chamberlain. The men flashed identification and were now escorting him off to one of the small office suites.
“She has accommodations for a hundred crew and fifty guests. Decent Cuban restaurant on the fiesta deck, but the French bistro on the bow is the best place to grab a bite.”
“It’s . . . it’s . . . impossible,” Deitel said finally.
“Le monde progresse grâce aux choses impossibles qui ont été réalisées,” Rucker said with a shrug.
That snapped Deitel out of his daze. What was this bush pilot saying?
“What?”
“The world progresses thanks to the impossible things which were carried out,” Rucker said.
“Your government created all this?”
“Government? Oh no. Pegasus Petroleum and a consortium of three of the larger airlines own this place. Keep it flying in a regular two hundred mile radius. Cuts flight times like you wouldn’t believe. Not that they don’t charge an arm and a leg for petrol . . .”
“How have they kept this secret?”
“Secret? Doc, they spend lots of money advertising this thing. They fly it over the stadiums at the World Cup.”
“Why have I never heard of this, then?” Deitel asked, though he knew. The national socialist government could never acknowledge an accomplishment like this. Very little information ever slipped out of increasingly isolated Germany, and very little got in, either.
Deitel didn’t notice Chuy come up behind them.
“That should keep him distracted for a few minutes,” the large Brazilian said.
“Should I be presenting myself to your customs agents?” Deitel asked.
Chuy and Rucker cocked their heads and then looked where Deitel was pointing—the office suite to which Chamberlain had been escorted. They both laughed.
“What? Oh. No, who you are in the Freehold is no one’s business but your own, good doctor,” Chuy said in his baritone, with a melodious Carioca accent. “Customs control in the Freehold? Never had it, never will.”
“But, those men . . .”
“Friends of ours, Doc” Rucker said.
“Vos . . . What?”
“A confidence trick we learned from a British friend back when we were guests in one of your country’s stalags. You’d be surprised—or not, I conjure—how often Yankees fall for that one on account of how conditioned they are to say ‘sir’ to anyone with a badge.”
Deitel took a step back from the two, his guard up.
“What is going on? What do you want with me?”
“Right now we want you to get back on the plane. We’re due in Austin in three hours, and we had to ditch that fat man,” Rucker said. “The man you’re on your way to meet with radioed us to get rid of him.”
“I don’t understand,” Deitel said.
“Chamberlain’s working for the SD,” Rucker said flatly. The Sicherheitsdienst, or Secret Service, was the intelligence and foreign espionage agency of the SS.
That, of course, sent a chill up Deitel’s back. He stuttered and stammered. “I—I . . . I have my papers. I am a medical doctor and I am on a study sabbatical and—”
Rucker cut him off.
“ ‘A word to the wise . . .’ ”
Deitel did a double take. It took a second for the words to come to him.
“ ‘A sight for the eyes,’ ” he said, finishing the prearranged recognition, then relaxing a little.
“So, Doc, now you and me are getting back aboard my bird and we’re flying to Austin.”
“I thought that the engine . . .”
Rucker and Chuy could see the lightbulb flick on. There was no engine trouble. It was all to throw Chamberlain off track without making it look like they were throwing him off track.
“And you weren’t really drunk this morning?”
Rucker nodded.
“Another ruse,” Chuy said. “Our friends can only double-talk the fat Yank for so long. Chamberlain’s not an official SD man, from what we know—he really is some kind of button-sorter for some muckety-muck on the Union States payroll. But he’s an asset for the Germans,” The Brazilian nodded toward the office suite. “Still, he’s not really a direct threat.”
“Ergo,” Rucker said, “You and me have to get moving if you want to make your appointment in Austin without the black jackets knowing you’re doing anything more than medical research.”
Deitel gripped his satchel tightly “It is the most vital information, it could mean—”
Rucker cut him off with a wave. “Don’t care. Save it for Austin. Not my business.”
Chuy was frowning, staring across the flight deck at one of the passenger lounges. He tapped Rucker’s shoulder. Rucker followed his gaze.
“You see them?” the Brazilian giant asked.
“Yep,” Rucker nodded. “And they see us. Dammit. German SD, and they are a direct threat.”
Deitel strained a bit too obviously to see what Rucker and Chuy were discussing. Two men in the starboard aft passenger lounge in dark overcoats and fedoras were looking their way and then at the office where an exasperated Chamberlain was being told to strip off his shoes, coat jacket, and to empty his pockets.
“What now?” Chuy asked.
Rucker scanned the flight deck. He spotted an older model, long-range cargo plane that bore a painting of a cartoon warthog on its nose. He smiled.
“Hey, you still in good with Jimmy M’Benga?” he asked Chuy.
The two men in fedoras were forcing their way through a line of passengers crowding the terminal gate, intent on the office where an angry but obsequious Chamberlain was now stripped down to his shirt and underwear.
Chuy nodded. “If by ‘in good’ you mean does he still owe us for those two crates of engine parts? Yes.”
“I got an idea,” Rucker said. He grabbed hold of Deitel’s arm and told Chuy the plan. Meanwhile, through the glass, the men in fedoras were gesticulating, yelling, and pointing, first at Chamberlain and then at Deitel, and then at Rucker’s friends who’d been playing Chamberlain for a mark.
Deitel was terribly confused. Rucker took off and yanked him along by the collar. They clanged down a metal stairway to the belowdecks while the SD men were still pushing past crowds of passengers. Once down the steps, the clang of heavy machinery fought with the droning sound of diesel and steam engines in what Deitel imagined was an active intent to deafen him. There was a chalkboard with a duty schedule at the base of the stairwell. Rucker grabbed a piece of chalk and went to his right, dragging Deitel by the collar, as Chuy went left.
The height of the ceiling in the cargo loading deck was twice as high as the terminal deck. Wooden crates were stacked upward of nine feet high in what amounted to a maze of goods bound for ports of call up and down the eastern seaboards of North and South America, and most islands in between. Steam-powered cargo pulleys on ceiling-mounted rails, controlled by crew loaders inside enclosed cabs at regular intervals throughout the expansive deck, allowed for movement of the boxes to and from cargo elevators to the flight deck above.
The German SD men bounded down the steps, Lugars drawn, on the hunt. Knowing their prey was only seconds ahead, they chose the likeliest looking route through the cargo boxes. They turned three corners and stopped short, surprised to find Deitel standing just six feet in front of them, his hands raised in surrender, his back to a line of cargo boxes stretching a hundred feet in each direction. One SD man trained his pistol on Deitel while the other swept his in a circle, looking for Rucker.
Deitel said something, but they couldn’t hear it over the din of the steam and diesel engines. The first SD man took a few steps closer. Hands still raised, Deit
el pointed down at the man’s feet. Cautiously, the SD man looked down and saw he was standing on an X marked in chalk. Confused, he looked up at Deitel, who waved goodbye. He never saw the two-hundred-pound wooden crate that crashed into him, sliding along the guide rail above. The other SD man turned around just in time to see Rucker leap from where he was clinging to the cargo netting on the crate that had smashed his partner.
As a doctor, it was hard for Deitel to watch Rucker land on top of the SD man and then punch him in the face repeatedly. As a German of good conscience, it was a guilty pleasure.
Rucker stood up and waved to Chuy, sitting in the control cab for the cargo pulley system.
Ten minutes later the three were back on the flight deck as the Raposa was being refueled.
“Chamberlain is being detained by our friends,” Rucker told Deitel. “They’ll keep him on ice until we’re away.”
“And the SD agents?”
Chuy smirked. “Captain M’Benga makes the regular supply run to Île du Diable, the Devil’s Island prison in French Guyana. By the time those two wake up, they’ll be in the tender custody of the French authorities there, many of whom are war veterans who will be delighted to have boche guests.
Rucker checked his watch. “Time to fly.”
Rucker and Chuy exchanged a handshake where they grasped one another’s forearms instead of their hands.
“Give Tracy a kiss for me,” Rucker said.
“Take care, Fox.”
Then they were off in different directions.
“And your man . . . I mean, Mr. Lago? I mean Chuy,” Deitel said. He couldn’t get used to the familiarity these people insisted on. “Why isn’t he coming with us?”
“He’s on his way back to Rio. Hasn’t seen Tracy in three weeks, and it’s gettin’ on their third wedding anniversary.”
The doctor and the pilot climbed back into the Raposa, and Rucker invited Deitel to take the co-pilot’s seat for the short leg to Austin.
Black Sun Reich: The Spear of Destiny: Part One of Three Page 3