I turned away, wondering how long it would take the airship to reach the valley. Probably not long, I thought. And when it did, Elsa and her trained killers would slip away, out of the grasp of the authorities and leaving me nothing but a hearsay explanation of the murders of Mercy Attentater, Klaus Lang, and Edward Ross. I wasn’t looking forward to that conversation with O’Neal, but I figured there was nothing else for it. Armed with nothing but a two-inch blade and some righteous indignation, I wasn’t about to bring down three assassins and a well-armed Nazi scientist.
The best I could do, I realized was pursue them and possibly draw the attention of the authorities before the airship crossed the border into Mexico.
Moving as quickly as I could, I slunk through the underbrush, trying to remember any landmarks that would tell me which tree I’d hidden the flight pack in. Everything looked the same, and when I looked back at Gold Rush Gulch to get a sense of how my angle of vision compared with what I’d looked at the previous night when I’d first been among these oak trees, it was no help at all. The change from darkness to light had made everything seem different.
Before long, I began hearing the drone of the airship’s propellers in the distance, and I figured it wouldn’t be too much longer before Elsa made good her escape. If nothing else, I would be pleased that she’d had to get away mostly empty-handed—without Carmelita or the satisfaction of killing me. I imagined myself walking out into the field and waving goodbye once the airship was high in the air, wondering at the choice words that would be bouncing off the cabin’s walls, louder than the hum of the turbines.
I finally found the flight pack but opted to leave it in place for the time being. Pulling it out of its hiding place would require me to stand in front of the oak tree where I’d stashed it, and I knew that could wait. Instead, I maneuvered into a spot where I could watch Elsa and the assassins, expecting the shadow of the airship to cover them and Gold Rush Gulch at any moment. Not long after, a rope ladder would likely descend, and then I’d watch four criminals climb up and away. I wished I’d managed to secure a gun before my escape rather than the little pocket knife.
And then, as all of us were waiting for the airship to finish its approach, I saw one of the assassins point into the sky, a look of alarm on his face. Soon the other two were following suit. Elsa, however, remained impassive, holding her hand up to shield her eyes from the rising sun while looking skywards without any reaction.
Using the drone of the airborne propellers to cover any sound I might make in the underbrush, I risked a shift in my position to be able to look around a tree limb and into the sky. The airship was there, large and majestic as they always are. It was still a few hundred feet in the air, and none of its guide ropes had been dropped from the cabin yet. But there was something else in the air with it. Dwarfed by the size of the airship, a smaller craft was approaching, and it was heading straight for the gas-filled structure that kept the airship afloat. I could hear the assassins yelling now, as the smaller craft looked like it was going to collide with the airship in only a few seconds, and when I looked in their direction I saw all three men waving their arms as though their actions could really change what was happening high above them. Turning my gaze back to the sky, I squinted to try and get a better view. Immediately, I wished I hadn’t.
I felt my stomach drop.
The smaller flying vehicle looked surprisingly like an old Patterson pick-up truck.
Chapter Nineteen
Seconds later, I heard Elsa’s voice join the chorus of shouts. “Nein!” she yelled. “Nein, nein, nein!” The sound prompted me to look in her direction, and I saw that she, too, was gesticulating wildly, her face twisted in rage. When I looked back toward the sky, I understood why she had gone apoplectic.
The airship had changed course, its nose no longer at a descending angle. Still approaching the airship, the Patterson looked like it had changed course as well, the pick-up looking like a fly buzzing around a cow but still having an effect despite the size difference. Instead of looking like it was set to collide with the airship, the flying truck now appeared to have turned so it was flying parallel to the bigger machine, and it had gotten terribly close to the cabin suspended below the airframe structure.
As I watched, it became clear that the airship had begun ascending, and soon I could also see that it was changing direction. Unless something significant happened quickly, it didn’t look like Elsa and her charges were going to be lifted out of California anytime soon. Elsa saw this, too, it seemed, and she appeared to be on the verge of pulling out chunks of her black hair in a fit of impotent rage.
The Patterson flew one more circle around the airship, and then its flight pattern changed—if you can call suddenly dropping through the air a flight pattern. I almost shouted, expecting the truck to plummet to the ground, but it appeared to regain its ability to fly after just a second or two, now heading up again, back toward the airship. The same pattern played out two more times, and I knew that Carmelita was trying the same trick she’d come up with on our unscheduled flight on Friday night, cutting the power and then reengaging in an attempt to get the truck’s flight controls to reset.
“Come on, Carmelita,” I found myself whispering as I stared intensely into the sky.
And then, after one more jolt, the tactic must have worked, as the truck started heading more directly and deliberately toward the ground. While it was a relief to see that the truck’s controls must have been working again, there was now a new problem, as the Patterson was descending at an angle far steeper than I wanted to see. Just when I had reached a point where I could have gotten away from Elsa on my own and kept Carmelita out of danger, I was in a position where I could do nothing but watch her fly unsafely toward the ground. After everything I’d done to keep her out of harm’s way, it looked like she was going to die anyway. I couldn’t watch, but I couldn’t look away either.
At what must have been the last second possible, the truck’s velocity slowed, and its angle of descent changed. The pick-up’s windows were rolled down, and now it was close enough for me to see Carmelita’s hair waving in the wind that rushed through the cab. I also saw that, despite having flown the truck once before, Carmelita hadn’t remembered to get the truck’s nose up so it could land smoothly on its back tires first and then set down gently on the front. Instead, she came in almost level and still faster than I would have advised. The truck set down on its front wheels first but only for a second; it bounced into the air again and then the back tires touched down. That was when I noticed one of the rear tires was flat. As the wheel dropped onto the grassy plain, the truck fishtailed and wobbled. For a second, I thought Carmelita was going to roll the Patterson, but she held the wheel tightly and brought it to a stop in a cloud of dust, the pick-up’s nose no more than twenty feet from Elsa’s big black car.
I was relieved but also scared, glad that I wouldn’t have to spend the morning gathering pieces of Carmelita to return to Guillermo but worried now that Carmelita was so close to an enemy whose ferocity and cunning she could not guess at. And with the Patterson now within Elsa’s grasp, she had a method with which to reach out to the airship pilot, possibly entreating him to set down somewhere else so she and her new charge could come aboard.
None of that was going to happen. At least, that’s what I told myself as I broke cover and started running toward Elsa and the assassins. Armed only with a pocketknife, which I held before me as I ran, I felt about as effective as a honey bee flying into a tank battle, but what I lacked in firepower I made up in determination.
Not wanting to shout a warning and give away my approach, I kept quiet as I ran and watched as Carmelita emerged from the cab. I could only imagine the ingenuous look on her face as she regarded Elsa and the young Klauses, probably about to ask if any of them had seen me.
Then two of the killers rushed toward her. One had a gun, and he pointed it at her.
I couldn’t stop myself from shouting, “No! Carmelita!
Get back!”
But no one seemed to hear me. Besides, it was too late.
Carmelita came forward in the face of the gun, seemingly oblivious to the danger it represented. I could hear Elsa shouting something in German, probably telling her minion not to fire, as I’m sure she recognized the woman from the flying truck as the quarry she’d been hungering after since I’d first appeared the night before. The assassin paid no attention.
I saw his arm recoil from the kick of the bullet firing before I heard the report, and I also saw Carmelita stagger backwards for a second. She didn’t go down, though. Instead, she regained her balance and then ran at her attacker with greater speed than I had thought her capable of. The assassin—whether Hans or Heinrich or Bruno, I couldn’t know—seemed too stunned by her recovery to fire again, and seconds later he felt the force of a back-handed slap across the face that sent him reeling to the ground, the gun flying out of his hand.
Before Carmelita’s arm had returned to her side, the second assassin was on her. This one wasn’t armed, and he set upon her the same way I’d seen him—or one of the others—go after Edward. He wrapped both hands around Carmelita’s neck and started squeezing.
By this point I had almost reached Elsa’s car. She and the third killer had their backs to me and must not have heard my earlier shouts, as they gave no indication that they were aware of my approach. I could see that the assassin had a gun in his hand, probably mine. Elsa was on the other side of the car’s front end, so I couldn’t see if she was armed or not. I wasn’t sure if my next move should be to stab this version of Klaus in the neck, retrieve my gun and turn it on Elsa, or if I should do something less drastic and lethal. All I was sure of was that I needed to get Carmelita free of the hands that were closing on her throat.
And then, of course, she took care of that herself.
Without lungs, she had no need for fresh air, so the killer’s attempt to choke the life out of her had no effect. If anything, his assault on her person only revved Carmelita higher. Still ten feet away from the third assassin, I watched as Carmelita raised her hands and wedged them between the forearms of the man who was attacking her. Then she burst her arms outward, breaking the killer’s grip on her throat. In the same fluid motion, she headbutted her assailant, and he went down at her feet.
I remembered Guillermo telling me not long after I’d met him that Carmelita had a very strong sense of self-preservation. That instinct must have kicked in now, like a switch had been flipped in her mechanical mind. I watched as her attention went straight from the attacker she’d just subdued to the two figures in front of the big black car. And then, without pausing, she lurched forward at a full run, ready to take on Elsa and the remaining assassin.
And that was when I realized where I was. It was dark. I was near a car. There was a woman nearby. Carmelita had been shot and was advancing regardless, clearly on the rampage. I saw now that she was even wearing the same floral print dress I’d seen when I’d crossed over in the High Note. And while she wasn’t coming after me, I knew that could change in a heartbeat. In this frenzy of self-preservation, what was to stop Carmelita from thinking I was one more person who meant her harm? Seeing the wild look in her eyes as she ran at Elsa now, I knew there would be no convincing her that I was one of the good guys. She’d figure it out eventually, I was sure, but by that time I would probably either be dead or seriously damaged.
Would I have to shoot her if it came to that? In that alternate world, had it been the other Jed rather than a Klaus Lang copy who had put that hole in Carmelita’s chest in an attempt to slow her down? I didn’t want to think about the possibility, but I knew it was there.
Knowing that staying out of Carmelita’s way was the only thing that was going to protect me—or her—I sought shelter in the only place I could think of—the interior of Elsa’s car. Not caring if either of the Nazis noticed me now, I opened the car’s passenger door, ready to jump inside and seal myself in if Carmelita turned her wrath on me. Sitting on the car’s seat within easy reach were Guillermo’s phone and the little book that I assumed Klaus Lang’s killer had liberated from the wreckage of his cluttered apartment after his murder.
Before I could make my move into the shelter of the car, motion from Elsa caught my eye. She had the voltage gun aimed at Carmelita. When I turned my head, I saw that Carmelita had stopped her charge, and I knew that Elsa must have just pulled the trigger. Instead of subduing Carmelita the way it had done to me, however, the zapper merely slowed her down. Carmelita shook her head, a dazed look on her face, and started lurching forward rather than running.
This was clearly different from what had happened in my crossover experience. Elsa must not have had her zapper there, I realized, and for half a second I was glad that she had the weapon here, in this world. Its presence meant that we were on a different path, a different branch of reality, as Guillermo’s diagrams had illustrated for me. And though I didn’t want to see Carmelita hurt by the weapon, I also didn’t want to have to face down her wrath, knowing only one of us was going to walk away from the encounter.
Still ready to leap into the car’s interior, I saw the assassin on the other side of the car’s open door start to raise his weapon to take aim at Carmelita. I didn’t think—just slammed the door closed to create a distraction. The younger version of Klaus turned immediately, the gun aimed at me now. I was already on the move, though, ducking my head and charging forward, hitting him in the midsection with my shoulder and taking him down. I expected to hear the gun go off and to feel the burn of a bullet ripping into me, but it didn’t happen—I suppose because I’d been too quick for him to take aim.
As we hit the ground, he must have dropped the gun. Or maybe he let it go, preferring to use both hands on me. At any rate, that was what he did, slipping his hands around my throat before the dust had begun to settle. He had a genetic knack for murder on his side and years of Nazi training, but I’d had my fair share of training as well and more hand-to-hand combat experience than I care to recall. Before the killer’s fingers could begin to tighten, I’d managed to free Edward’s little knife and had it pressed against the other man’s gut. I poked him hard with it, and he took his hands away from my neck.
“Good boy,” I said. “Now get up, nice and easy.”
We got to our feet, me first with the knife’s point still making contact. When we were up, I got behind him and quickly moved my hand so the blade was now at his throat. I knew this wasn’t the best position, as he could have elbowed me or tried some other Kraut move to get away, but I was pushing that knife into the flesh of his neck pretty good, banking on the fact that he didn’t want to take a chance on my hand moving the wrong way if things got suddenly chaotic.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that I’d gotten Elsa’s attention. She turned toward the killer and me, and then back toward Carmelita, who had still not completely shaken off the effects of the zapper. Elsa was clearly vacillating as she tried to determine the greater threat. When I saw her raise the voltage gun in my direction, I stepped in close to the assassin and said, “Finger off the trigger, or he dies right here.”
It was a bluff, I suppose. I’m no killer, or at least I try not to be. There was blood on my hands from the war and the bits of chaos I’d been involved in since I got to Los Angeles, and it weighed on me. I suppose Elsa must have seen that weight hanging around my neck like a cameo of the grim reaper, as she responded to my threat with nothing but a smile. I’m sure she would have preferred to have gotten her underling away from me, but she was running out of options; plus, she’d made it pretty clear to me during the night that she’d about had it with the Klauses, which was something I hadn’t really considered when I threatened this one’s life.
At any rate, a second later I felt the zap for the third time and went down with my captive.
I didn’t lose consciousness this time, but I was in a momentary daze. The other man’s body must have taken the brunt of the little weapon’s power,
leaving me on the ground and disoriented while he looked almost dead. I had a vague sense that something was happening nearby that I really should have been doing something to stop, but I couldn’t figure what it was. The gun on the ground beside me got my attention, but when I reached for it, I felt like I was trying to pass my hand through a wall of transparent sand. My every move was painfully slow.
My guess is that the effects of the voltage gun wore off this time in less than a minute. That was long enough, though, for Elsa to have gotten into her car, started it, and driven off. All I knew for certain was that I was sitting in a cloud of dust with a gun in my hand; one of the assassins was on the ground beside me, and Carmelita stood a few feet away, staring dumbly into space.
Her rampage appeared to be over, short circuited by the hit she’d taken from the voltage gun. I knew I was safe from her now, which gave me only a small measure of comfort, as I knew that Carmelita had also been shot with a bullet, and I wondered if it hadn’t done more damage than had initially been apparent.
The tail end of Elsa’s car wasn’t so far away that I couldn’t have fired the gun and hit it. Lifting the gun, however, as well as aiming and firing with any kind of accuracy was more than I could ask of myself in my current state, so I ended up letting her go.
Another time, Elsa, I thought as I struggled to my feet and turned my attention toward Carmelita.
I approached carefully, still wary lest she read me as one more attacker and give me a wallop with one of those powerful hands. My eyes were drawn to the little hole in her chest where she’d been shot, a black circle in the middle of her dress, just like I’d seen it when I’d crossed over.
“Carmelita?” I said softly, bending into a bit of a fighter’s stance in case I needed to bob or weave.
She gave no indication that she’d heard me.
I tried again, this time reaching out with a timid right hand to touch her forearm. “Carmelita?”
The Double-Time Slide: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 2) Page 22