Winston Chase- The Complete Trilogy

by Bodhi St John

  Shade noticed his tension. “What’s your issue? Nobody recognized us.”

  “That’s right,” said Winston. “You’re on a national missing kids list, and I’m a wanted nuclear terrorist. Why is no one grabbing us?”

  Shade smacked him on the shoulder. “You need to shut that pizza hole before you jinx us. We’re a long way from Beaverton, and I’m sure cops have more important things to tackle. Like…dogs pooping on the sidewalk.”

  “I hate it when people don’t pick up their poop.”

  “Three months hard labor, minimum.”

  Winston nibbled at his lower lip as he kept examining the street. “They know we were in Astoria. And if I’m right that Agent Smith was using a modded scanner to track Alpha Machine pieces, then they could know enough to follow our direction. This place should be crawling with feds looking for us.”

  “Unless they don’t really want to catch us because they prefer to keep the public scared and glued to the news.”

  “That…” Winston rolled his eyes. “Or…they know where we’re going.”

  “Pfff!” Shade leaned back on his stool, head lolling in one big as if. “How would they know that when we have the clues?”

  Winston swallowed. “I don’t know.”

  Shade peered at him more closely. “What? I mean, there’s no—” His eyes grew wide. “Mr. A? You think they cracked your dad?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Shade had no reply, which meant that he couldn’t shoot down the theory.

  “Come on,” said Winston. “Let’s hit the restroom again and catch that last bus.”

  Three dollars and over an hour later, the number 3 bus dropped them in the Fred Meyer parking lot just north of Tillamook. Thankfully, the rain had stopped an hour before, but the sky remained leaden, and the deepening gloom meant that sunset had to be getting close. That suited Winston just fine. He preferred the cover of darkness so long as they could stay warm.

  “Ugh!” Shade gagged slightly. “The smell!”

  Winston couldn’t miss the light but unmistakable aroma of cow dung on the air. Tillamook, the milk and cheese capital of Oregon, was home to more cows than humans, and reminders of the fact were never more than a breeze away.

  Winston wrinkled his nose and pointed to the store. “It’ll smell better inside.”

  “We should check both toys and sporting goods,” said Shade. “There could be a good sale.”

  Winston shrugged. “If you want to bike eight miles on a pink five-speed built for a second grader, that’s cool.”

  As they strode across the parking lot, Shade turned his finger on Winston. “Don’t sell that last gold piece. You’re gonna owe me for all of this. I only brought three hundred bucks, you know.”

  “We could get a tandem bike.”

  “Right. Because that wouldn’t stick out at all.”

  In the end, the top bargain was a lavender Flower Princess bike for $85. The boys considered arguing over it but soon opted for a pair of 26-inch Huffy Adult Good Vibrations bikes at $99.99 each. They traded a snickering glance over the model name as the clerk rang up the bikes, along with an assortment of bottled water, sports energy bars, pocket-sized mylar blankets, wet wipes, a local map, and a pair of mismatched brown winter jackets that looked as if they’d been on the rack since the late 1970s.

  They spent the next half hour assembling the bicycles, then asked the most forgetful-looking teen employee for directions to the Air Museum. His first suggestion was to follow Highway 101 straight south until they saw the signs for the Air Museum, although it would probably be closed by the time they got there. Winston asked if there was a more scenic route, without all the highway traffic. The clerk stroked his chin stubble and said he figured they could head east along the Wilson River Loop. It would almost double the ride, but they’d only have a tiny bit of time on Highway 6 heading east until they hit Olson Road, which turned into Trask River Road and then Long Prairie Road. It would be fields and mobile homes the whole way.

  All too aware that they had only one rear reflector each, no lamps, and no helmets, Winston and Shade set out at dusk for what was hopefully the next piece of the Alpha Machine.

  “If this were a movie,” said Shade, “it would be the lamest final approach ever.”

  Winston, who hadn’t been on a bike since he’d outgrown his last Huffy in the fifth grade, wobbled as he fought for balance and nearly skidded off the jagged right edge of the pavement.

  “Good thing we’re not attacking the Death Star,” he said.

  “That’s no moon,” intoned Shade in a droning Obi-Wan impression. “It’s a blimp hangar.”

  Both boys realized the ominous overtones of their joke and pedaled in silence.

  24

  When Recon Goes Wrong

  The bike ride wasn’t that bad. Being farmland, Tillamook was mostly flat. The Wilson River Loop was well paved and nearly empty of traffic. They paused once for water after crossing Highway 6 and double-checked the map in the faint light of passing traffic. Winston wondered what sort of freaks they would have looked like studying a paper street map if they’d been back in the halls of Shifford Middle School.

  They rode single file along the white line at the road’s right edge. Whenever a car approached from behind, Winston steered as far as he dared into the two-foot strip of slippery, loose gravel between the lane and the gutter. Each time, Winston felt like he was playing Russian roulette as he fought the urge to close his eyes at the looming possibility that he would be struck by the next pickup.

  At last, after over an hour of pedaling, Winston saw Long Prairie Road widen and develop a left turn onto Blimp Boulevard. Just beyond the turn, train tracks cut across the street. A sign immediately at their left noted that the collection of squat, white buildings behind it was the Port of Tillamook Bay Industrial Park. Far beyond this, barely visible against the dark sky, sat the squat, sawed-off cylinder of a blimp hangar. A massive concrete crossbeam ran above the main door on the hangar’s end, leaving small, blocky wings jutting from its top corners.

  The boys pulled off the road and set their belongings down on the embankment near the industrial park’s entrance sign, which left them screened from direct sight by anyone at the blimp hangar. Winston wanted to remain vigilant if not paranoid, even though he strongly suspected that they had outrun Bledsoe. That freighter had been swarmed by press, police, and Coast Guard. Surely, Bledsoe would be embroiled in all kinds of political explaining and paperwork, if only to defend Lynch’s presence there. Moreover, they had made good time coming directly south. Even if people were tracking them with those scanners, Winston had to believe they operated at least a little like metal detectors, trying to differentiate between strong and weak signals, using triangulation to determine a target’s direction and distance. It wouldn’t be an instantaneous process. They might not have much time, but Winston guessed they had at least some. The trick was not to take that lead for granted.

  “Now what?” asked Shade.

  Despite their brief catnaps on the bus, Winston found himself starting to feel deeply weary. He was glad they had picked up waterproof jackets, but his hair hung in damp clumps across his forehead, and the light drizzle carried a chill with it that he found ominous.

  “We should have grabbed binoculars,” he said.

  “From what?” asked Shade. “A cereal box? In case you didn’t notice, that last stop tapped us out unless you want to cash in that gold coin.”

  Winston barely made out the shape of vehicles next to the hangar, but there was no way to discern their type or color at this distance. If he and Shade biked into the parking lot, they might be spotted anywhere along the way, which Winston figured to be about five hundred yards. Even now, Winston wasn’t sure if someone with night-vision goggles could see them sitting in the road. He growled with frustration.

  “I wish we could get a better look at those cars,” he said.

  Shade took in the flat terrain and scrunched his mouth into
a flat line. “Possible. I mean, we could keep going and maybe find a better approach on the far side. Although…that would bring us back to the main highway. If I remember right, it’s even flatter and more exposed than this side.” Shade leaned forward and squinted into the dim distance down Blimp Boulevard. “If you wanted to be super paranoid like me, we could backtrack and find a way up onto that hill. The forest would give us cover for a while. But no, dude. I don’t see any way we’re getting to that hangar without being spotted if someone’s waiting for us.”

  “All right.” Winston walked his bike over to the corner and up a small dirt embankment to the line of shrubs that lined the industrial park. Careful to keep his jacket between his bottom and the damp ground, he sat cross-legged and set his backpack in his lap. “Let’s try to do this the smart way.”

  Shade sat down beside him. “Remote recon. That works.”

  “I’ll try. Without Little e, doing this sort of stuff is harder. I have to push a lot more.”

  “Can I help?” asked Shade.

  Winston smiled and put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I wish. Although, if you want to split a Snickers, that probably wouldn’t hurt.”

  “Now you’re talking,” said Shade, and he began to rummage about inside his pack.

  Winston excavated the geoviewer ring. Its polished black surface gleamed faintly with reflections of industrial-park lamps and distant house lights. He ran a fingertip along its glossy exterior and found it almost warm to the touch, as if it anticipated his use. He thought about adding the slightly larger chronoviewer ring, but he suspected that the more pieces he used, the more energy the Alpha Machine would drain from him.

  With a deep breath, Winston closed his eyes. Previously, he had operated the chronoviewer simply by holding it, but the experience had been stronger and easier when he’d used Little e, which allowed the ring to spin freely within its arms. As his mind connected with the geoviewer, it warmed further and seemed to apply the slightest pressure within his fingers. He brought his left hand up and rested the other side of the ring on his palm. As he opened his eyes, Winston extended his fingers and released his grip. The geoviewer balanced upright between his hands for a moment and then slowly, millimeter by millimeter, elevated into the air above them. The black ring began to turn and rotate, slowly cycling around and around like a coin spinning on a table, as its bulge gradually progressed around the circle.

  Shade whistled, impressed. “Not quite as creepy.”

  This close to their target, navigation was easy. Winston’s second perspective whisked down Blimp Boulevard. He crossed the parking lot and approached the main side door, above which hung a sign that read VISITOR ENTRANCE. He saw that two of the vehicles closest to the building were large, unmarked black vans. That wasn’t good.

  Feeling like a ghost, Winston pushed his spectral self, as he increasingly thought of it, through the building’s wall and into the main lobby. The room was dark and motionless. A few racks of tourist clothing crowded the main walkway. Beyond these sat a cash register counter. A gift shop sprawled away to the right while rows of glass counters filled with artifacts and explanatory cards stretched to the left. The only light spilled into the lobby from an open door beyond the register, and Winston pushed himself toward it.

  Even in this dim, slightly hazy form, the cavernous hangar was breathtaking. Winston felt like a flea inside a titanic Pringles can, except the inner wall, rather than being silvered and shiny, was dark and blanketed with dizzying, never-ending, X-shaped patterns of support beams. There must have been twenty or thirty planes scattered about. However, the room was so immense that all the planes together hardly seemed to take any space. Magnifying this effect, Winston noticed that the back third of the building was cordoned off and stocked with rank after rank of RVs and trailers wallowing in deep storage. Apparently, being a museum wasn’t quite enough to keep the operation in business.

  Winston’s first instinct was to pause and admire the beauty of these planes, all of which appeared to be decades old. He recognized an early fighter jet, probably from the 1950s. On the far side of the chamber, a red biplane beckoned. Placards announced names such as British Tiger Moth, A-26C Invader, F-14A Tomcat, and PV-2 Harpoon. Winston couldn’t help but notice a naked woman painted on the last plane’s nose, pistols in each hand raised overhead, with the golden words ROSE’S RAIDERS flanking her.

  Winston’s curiosity was cut short by the six suited men roaming about the hangar, and his heart sank. Four of them carried radiation scanners like the one Winston had seen in Agent Smith’s hands. Their attention remained glued to each scanner’s screen as they panned the flat end of the device slowly from side to side. In the middle of them, Agent Lynch stood with one arm in a sling. To Winston’s utter bewilderment, his other arm gripped a long, wine-bottle shaped object that glinted in the hanger’s many lights.

  Winston swore under his breath. “I see your buddy,” he muttered. “And he has Little e.”

  “Lynch?” replied Shade. “Dang. I hate that guy. How’d he get your thing out of the river?”

  “Who knows? But he probably hates you, too. I think you broke his arm.”

  “Ha! Wait — how did he know to get here? They can’t have known to come here based just on tracking us.”

  “Working on it…” Winston studied the other agents more closely. “He’s got several men with him. They’re using radiation scanners, searching around… But…”

  Shade waited as Winston paused, then prompted, “But?”

  “I don’t think they’re getting a signal. They’re all looking in different directions and moving slowly.”

  “So…” Shade gripped the thick curls atop his head. “There’s no piece?”

  Winston grimaced. “I could go back a few hours and figure out how long they’ve been looking, but I don’t think so.”

  “Well, that sucks.”

  “We came here for nothing.”

  Winston felt a knot of desperation coil and tense within his chest. Shade bowed his head, deep in thought.

  “Should we go back into town and find somewhere to sleep for the night?” he asked at last. “Eventually, someone is gonna grab us if we stay here.”

  Winston fought the urge to release the geoviewer and pound his hands into the earth. He’d made it so far — the Astoria bridge, the freighter, the clues that seemed to point here. For that matter, they’d come here only to find Lynch ahead of them. That had to mean they were on the right track. And the only way Lynch would have known to come here was from Bledsoe, who could have only gotten the information from Winston’s dad, assuming there wasn’t another copy of the clues somewhere.

  Unless Elvis and Phaedra were spies, Winston thought.

  That felt all wrong. The couple had pointed them to the hangar, after all.

  Winston cursed under his breath and was on the verge of breaking away from the geoviewer when he noticed one of the agents pass his scanner along the length of a strangely shaped plane. It was a white biplane with a long, banana-shaped curve that jutted out and up from under the nose’s single propeller. It had to be a pontoon of some sort for water landings. A smaller pontoon hung from under each of the lower wings, and a white star in a black circle adorned the fuselage near the cockpit. A sign by the plane’s landing gear labeled it as a J2F-6 Duck.

  Winston moved closer, reading the sign over and over.

  “No way,” he whispered.

  “What?” asked Shade.

  The agent finished sweeping the plane and moved on.

  Winston struggled to solve the puzzle.

  “No frickin’ way. But…it has to be.”

  “What?!” demanded Shade.

  “There’s a plane called a Duck.”

  Shade thought it over, then shrugged. “A Duck. So?”

  “Grumman J2F-6 Duck.” Winston peered closer at the sign mounted under glass a few feet from the plane. “Single-engine amphibious biplane… Used by the U.S. armed forces from 1936 through Worl
d War II.”

  “There’s that connection,” said Shade.

  “Over three hundred units made for the Navy and Coast Guard. Used for mapping, submarine patrols, rescue work. Fitted with underwing bomb racks. Sometimes coated with beeswax for protection against seawater and the elements.”

  “Wait — beeswax?”

  “Beeswax. Like in my dad’s picture. And what makes a V in the sky?”

  “Ducks! Dude!”

  Winston shook his head. “But there’s no piece in the plane. The guy just scanned it.”

  “Maybe the battery is dead.”

  “While the other pieces are fine? Not likely.”

  “Maybe the plane came here from somewhere else,” Shade suggested. “What if the piece is there?”

  Then Winston had it. “Not somewhere else. Some when.”

  “Another time?” Shade asked.

  Winston smiled grimly. “I’ll bet you another Snickers that my dad picked that Led Zeppelin cover on purpose. He could’ve used any Hindenburg photo. Why that one?”

  “The release date,” said Shade. “It was 1969. January…?”

  “Twelfth,” said Winston. “January twelfth. I almost never forget a number. We’re in the right place, but the wrong time.”

  Shade put his head back and laughed. “Oh, Mr. A! You tricky old goat. There’s no way to finish the trail to the piece without already having the chronojumper.”

  Winston started to release his mental grip on the geoviewer, but he paused as a pair of headlights swung into the hangar’s gargantuan outer door. He could see the vehicle from two perspectives, a distant one from where he sat at the road’s edge and a much closer vantage from his spectral position near the Duck. The vehicle stood nearly as tall as a double-decker bus and looked to be even longer than one. Its sides were painted black, and its windows were tinted impenetrably dark.