by Alan Austin
She was dressed like a prissy Englishman’s wife, but there was no doubt it was her. It took only a second for her face to change from the faux shock of a maiden in distress to utter frustration.
“Who’s…” the man with her started to ask, but her elbow caught his face before he could finish and he tumbled to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
“Damn you to hell, Samuel!” she shouted at him. “It took me four months to set all this up and you blew it for me in five seconds!”
Yep – that was Rosalyn, alright.
“You owe me a ride now. Wait… how exactly are you getting away? We’re in the middle of the Atlantic!”
“There’s no time to explain,” Ben shouted.
“He’s right,” Sam agreed. “Come with me.”
They stepped over the poor bastard who Rosalyn had knocked out cold and out into the loud, open air. Ben began climbing and Sam led Rosalyn across to the next car through the upper walkway. It shifted and bounced just as much as the lower level, but it was mostly enclosed and they were able to run through, bouncing off the wall on occasion, but with no fear of falling. A quick wave of his pistol was enough to get folks to move aside as he ran through the next several cars. Security would be following behind from each of them now, but that was of no real concern. Sam’s only worry was whether or not he’d be able to fit Rosalyn in the diver with him and, if so, whether or not it would be able to get them both back to the mothership.
When they finally arrived at the car he’d landed on, Sam tossed his bag up onto the top of the car and ascended the top few feet of the ladder. He made sure Rosalyn was able to get up in her dress and then led her to the side of the diver.
“Take off your dress,” he shouted over the wind. “It’s too big!”
She gave him a suspicious look, likely wondering if he was just messing with her, but when he opened the canopy, she could see he was telling the truth and started undressing in a panic.
Just as Sam was pulling his goggles back over his eyes, he saw Mac’s diver lift off the car in front of him and then a loud whir as its rear propellers shot him forward at a surprising speed. Looking back, Sam could see all the others either already in their craft, or getting in at that moment. At the rear of the train was the carrier. He couldn’t see that far easily, but Sam didn’t think he saw any movement. Grease had a little more time to finish her part of the job. The fact that Mac was away meant that she was likely all set to go.
Rosalyn had stripped down to her corset and a white petticoat which looked more comfortable and also held Sam’s eyes a moment as he recalled just how attractive she was. He was about to climb into the seat of the diver when a shot rang out from behind them.
A guard had come up the ladder and had his pistol out, but he’d missed and hit the diver instead. Sam pulled his own pistol back out, but not before the guard fired again. The second shot was another miss, but Sam heard it hit the diver again, causing something inside to snap. Sam took his shot, hitting the guard and sending him tumbling backward, falling between the cars and likely into the water below. There was no time to waste now as more guards were sure to follow any second.
Turning back to the diver, Sam was horrified when another snapping sound rang out from the rear of the craft. The propeller churned to life, dragging the small ship across the top of the car by its magnetic feet before the legs snapped and it veered off to the side and into the ocean, where it broke into several pieces on contact.
“What now?!” Rosalyn cried.
Sam’s mind already had the answer. “RUN!” he shouted. “FOLLOW ME!”
He entered a sprint toward the rear of the train and shot one more guard right in the face as he appeared over the side of the car. When Sam reached the end of his car, he leapt. With the wind behind him, he sailed over the long gap between cars and landed nearly four feet past the edge of the next car. It was harder not to fall than it was to make the jump. He stopped himself and helped to catch Rosalyn who landed right behind him.
“Don’t worry about me!” she shouted, frantically gesturing for him to keep going.
Sam turned back and started to run again. He could now see movement by the carrier and knew that Grease was getting ready and was going to lift off at any moment. They needed to move – FAST!
Car after car, Sam and Rosalyn sprinted and jumped, stumbling from time to time, but never falling and never stopping. Just as his feet hit the car right in front of Grease, Sam looked up and saw the bright red wings deploying. Grease was in the cockpit looking right at him and he knew that she must be out of time. They could still make it.
“FASTER” he shouted, never looking back as he ran.
Using every last bit of energy he had, Sam pumped his legs as hard as he was able to cross that final car. The red wings of the carrier spread wide to either side, bowing upward as they caught the air rushing below them. It began to rise along with the car under it. Sam reached the end and jumped, knowing that he was either going to make it or die trying.
He caught the metal ladder right above the second floor of the car and looked back immediately to see Rosalyn in midair behind him. Time slowed as her arms flailed in the air. Sam could see every detail of her panic-stricken face as she flew forward, fingers stretched wide in a desperate attempt to lengthen her reach. She grabbed the lowest rung of the ladder with both hands, swinging wildly. One hand slipped, and for the briefest of moments, Sam was certain she would fall.
With a look of defiance, she held on. The wind was fierce against Sam’s back as he climbed down to her as quickly as he could. All Sam could see was her hand, slowly losing its grip. He climbed onto the ledge at the bottom floor and lay down on his stomach to reach under for her. There she was. Both the train car’s huge pontoons seemed to frame her body as it bounced gently on the underside, and if she fell it would have been a race to see if she dropped out of the way before the giant hydrofoil ski hit her on the way down.
Sam grabbed her arm and pulled her forward. Rosalyn grabbed the bar with her other hand and eventually managed to climb along Sam’s body to get up to the platform. As soon as she was up, Sam opened the door and then entered the safety of the interior where the wind vanished and the freezing cold air no longer cut them to the core.
It had worked!
Chapter 3
The Big Heist
The nearly vantage point from the carrier’s cockpit offered Cora a magnificent view as she began her descent from the airship. She watched as the large mothership passed overhead, still accelerating in order to maintain her position for their return. Her first stage wings were deployed, which would only slow her descent. The craft was still dropping quickly enough to make her feel lighter in her seat. She nosed down below the horizon and picked up speed, passing back under the airship before the first divers were released.
Her ship had mirrors mounted to the sides and she watched as the divers released, one by one, and dropped quickly out of view. They would be turning back toward the oncoming train while she continued to glide in the same direction, allowing it to line up right under her. The carrier was painted to remain hidden in the sky so long as she did not drop too low before the train went passing by. Cora counted all five divers as they detached from the mother ship and then watched as DaVinci cranked up the speed and the airship began accelerating toward her maximum speed.
If all the estimates were correct, Cora would be setting down on the train in just under ten minute’s time. Her ship was too large and heavy to dive straight down without deploying her lift wings, and those were far too big to go unnoticed. Even if everything went to plan, she had her doubts that this was going to work. It was worth a try, and she could abort if it didn’t work, but it seemed far too fantastical to actually go as DaVinci had predicted. Nothing like it had ever been attempted and Cora had to believe that her ship was going to set some sort of record if the wings didn’t snap from the weight.
She’d helped build and install them, but it was all Ulysses whe
n it came to the calculations and estimated weights of the cars. In their last discussion, he’d told her that he guessed the odds of her success were around eighty percent, which was a hell of a lot higher than she’d have put them after seeing the wings fully deployed on the ground. They were big enough – that was certain. The question was if they were strong enough.
Cora was about to try lifting an object bigger and heavier than anything that had ever flown by wing flight in history. The carrier had three independent sets of wings when fully deployed, but it would be the largest of them – the giant red sails – that would need to do most of the lifting. It was akin to trying to strap wings to a building and slingshot it into flight. The face of the train car was flat, not aerodynamically designed for flight at all. The car was full of lockboxes, cash, and gold, increasing its already impressive weight. And finally, the car would be skimming across the water on its hydrofoil ski, not causing much drag, but enough to make it want to pitch forward the moment it was no longer being dragged by its forward connecting pin.
All of these factors made the attempt dangerous, but the last one was the most alarming. If the car rolled forward, it would mean certain death. Cora would have a fraction of a second to release before her ship was slammed forward into the ocean. No one was fast enough to manage that. Fortunately, she was inclined to trust the math, and she’d checked it many times over. If her wings did their job right, she should pull the ship back out of the water.
She checked her descent many times to ensure she had enough speed to pull up when the time came, and before she knew it, the train appeared off to her left. She’d been flying toward her shadow to maintain a steady course, but it had caused her to drift wide of the train. Cora rolled her ship to the left and entered a dive to pick up enough speed to stay with the train. All five divers were already perched atop different cars and she spotted her target as she pulled up and leveled out behind the massive train of water-skipping cars. She was fast approaching and began to pump her flaps open to slow her approach. As her speed lessened, she began to drop lower and was forced to extend her upper wings for additional lift.
The added drag of her second wings slowed her some more, and she settled right onto the top of the last car. Her magnets locked in place, and she immediately pulled the anchoring mechanism lever. A few clanks and thunks from below her preceded the vibration as three drills ground their way through the metal roof of the car and discs expanded underneath. That would spread the weight of the car over a larger surface area when she attempted to lift off. The easy part was done!
Cora unsnapped her canopy and leaned forward into the wind as she proceeded forward along the car. When she reached the front, she spun out onto the ladder and descended to the top floor balcony where she was able to enter. This was the vault car, and Cora knew that it would be empty if the others had done their jobs. These fools believed that there was nothing that could be done to effectively rob a trans-Atlantic train, and word would have just come that the chairman of the bank was being robbed at gunpoint. All security would have moved to apprehend the suspects, leaving her path down much, much easier and warmer.
Rather than descending the ladder, she made her way down the rear stairs inside the car until she reached the bottom. There were no signs of any guards; just as they’d planned. She exited on the first floor and found the maintenance ladder that lead down under the hull of the car. The wind was mostly blocked by the car in front, but Cora was keenly aware of the water racing by beneath her as she lowered herself over the edge and down under the train. Her safety from the wind was gone down here, and it felt as if the wind was somehow three times stronger in the channel between the car’s pontoons. She looked back at the three pillars that dropped into the water below and was stunned at their sheer enormity.
All the other cars had two pillars that ran straight down the center of the train, held in balance more by momentum than anything else, but this one had a triangular pattern. Cora knew why and it gave her goose bumps. This car needed to support more weight. They weren’t just trying to lift a massive structure into the air; they were trying to lift the heaviest of the massive train cars.
There was a very small metal grate walkway across the underside of the car that led to the connection with the car in front. The steel rods and pins were bigger than she was, but if Mac did his job, all she would need to do was blow a small chain that would be holding the final pin in place. Mac was breaking into the engine and releasing the safety clamps for this car which would allow her to blow the chain and separate the car on a timed explosive.
Cora still wished Boomer was doing this job, but the men had insisted that they needed to be the ones robbing the passenger cars. The silly boys didn’t think a girl could be intimidating enough. That’s what they’d said at least. Cora thought it was more likely that they were worried she’d actually shoot someone. If that was their issue, it was a fair criticism.
She found the chain under the car and wrapped the explosive around it, leaving the fuse line out and running it back along the walkway; she pulled some slack out and shoved the rest in her pocket. After climbing the ladder back to the first level, she pulled the remaining fuse from her pocket and ran it back to the door. She tied it off to a railing and checked her watch. It was time. Pulling a matchbook from her pocket, Cora shielded the match from the wind and sparked it to life before touching the flaming red tip to the fuse. The sparks began to fly immediately, running along the cord, down to the floor, and heading toward the ladder where it would descend. The fuse ran along a leather cord so that it would not fall away as it burned.
Seeing that the timer was set, Cora pushed back into the car and sprinted up the five flights of stairs to the top floor where she once again emerged and climbed the last length of the ladder. She dashed for the carrier and checked the anchors quickly before getting inside. Just as she was turning back toward the cockpit a sound rang out in the air. She looked toward the front of the train and dialed her right goggle to magnify the image. Sam and another woman were standing near his diver and a guard was shooting at them. Who was the other woman?
There wasn’t any time for her to waste watching. The explosive was going to blow any second and she needed to be in the glider or she’d be fish food. She climbed into her seat, listening to several more shots ring out and shut the canopy, locking it into place. The watch that she’d welded in place on her dash showed that she had approximately fifteen seconds before detonation. To make this work, Cora needed to deploy her wings JUST before that happened. Too soon and the strain on the wings would certainly snap them. Too late and she’d be smashed into the water as the car somersaulted a few times before sinking to the bottom of the ocean.
Cora steadied her hand on the release knob for the final set of wings and looked up to see Sam and his mystery woman running back towards her. His diver was gone and she realized that he was desperately trying to get on her car before she lifted off.
She checked her watch again and saw that there were only five seconds remaining. It took nearly that long for the lift wings to fully extend and she pulled hard on the knob and braced in her seat. The carrier rattled as the wings exploded from the side of the ship, unfolding and extending out hundreds of feet to either side. She could hear the snapping sounds as the wings’ frame locked into place one joint at a time in rapid-fire succession. It was far more exhilarating in this moment than it had been in testing!
She felt the ship rock back slightly as the wings caught the air like sails above the car, but a sharp jerk let her know that she was still very much attached to the rest of the train. The wings continued to arch back and Cora could hear the joints where they anchored through the hull of her ship groaning with the pressure. Then – all of a sudden – the groaning stopped and she felt the push of gravity forcing her down into her seat as she began to rise up into the air. She hadn’t felt anything when the car broke free, but clearly it had done just that.
She looked forward and was blown
away to see Sam still running toward her. What had felt like a full minute of tension had been little more than five seconds. She reached over and pulled the knob that controlled her central charge release and took a calculated risk by pulling it out for a split second before letting it go. The roar of gears and mechanisms winding behind her came to life for a second before stopping with a loud clang, and Cora watched as her ship pushed the car back closer to the rest of the ship. Sam and his lady friend were both out of her view now, obstructed by the car she was lifting, but she’d done all that she could to give them a fighting chance. Now, she needed to focus on keeping herself alive and getting into position to finish the job.
A quick glance from side to side confirmed that the wings were holding strong. The carrier had done it! It had hauled the entire vault car right up out of the water. She only imagined how ridiculous this must look from the train and longed to have seen the rich bastards watching as their money sailed away into the darkening sky above.
Cora was fast losing speed and had to be quick about making her first maneuver after liftoff. After flipping on her exterior lights to alert DaVinci that she was on her way, she banked the carrier to the right and pulled the central charge handle back, locking it into place this time. The noise picked back up behind her and she felt a very gentle push as her ship picked up some speed through a very wide and gentle turn back toward the mothership which she knew was now far behind them and doing its best to reach her before time ran out. It took nearly a minute to complete the turn without risking the integrity of the wings. With the sun now set, there was just a faint glow on the horizon to tell her that she’d found west again, but it would be gone entirely in a matter of minutes.
