“What the heck are you d-d-doing?” he said.
“Farley! You’ve gotta help me,” I babbled. “Somebody just tried to kill me.”
“Yeah? Good.” He turned around to head back into the chicken coop.
“You don’t understand. Deputy Steyer is the spy! He’s the one who killed your father.”
He looked back at me. “You’re nuts.” Then he started walking away.
“Wait!” I grabbed him by the sleeve. “I found this.” I unwrapped the newspaper clippings I’d put around the knife. He instantly recognized the knife and snatched it out of my hand.
“Where d-d-did you get this?”
“I found it—”
But he choked me by the collar of my shirt before I could finish.
“Where?” he demanded.
“In Deputy Steyer’s basement!”
He rolled the knife over in his hand. “My dad g-g-gave this to me when I was six.” He touched it slowly, the same way I held my dad’s dog tags. Then Farley, the big bad bully, started to sniffle. He turned away to wipe his nose on his sleeve.
“It’s the deputy,” I said. “It has been all along. He’s the spy. Everyone wanted the killer to look like Kenji or Uncle Tomo. They never thought he might look just like us.”
Farley clenched his fist under my chin. “If you’re lying—”
“I’m not. Swear on my dad, I’m not.”
He looked me in the eyes, and maybe it was because I looked so scared, or maybe it was because he just realized I had lost my dad, too, but for once he actually believed me.
“What do you need me to do?” he asked, with no stutter at all.
“I don’t know.” I tried to think for a moment. I happened to glance down at the newspaper clippings in my hand. The ones I had wrapped the knife in. The ones from Deputy Steyer’s workbench. One of them wasn’t really a news clipping. It was just the weekly train schedule. The 8:00 a.m. arrival time for Providence was circled. Another one was from the front page of the Geneseo Post in March. The headline read: PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT TO STOP IN PROVIDENCE THIS SUMMER.
“Oh my God!”
“What?” Farley said.
“It’s the President. That’s who the deputy’s really after. He put a bomb in Kenji’s record player, and if we don’t stop him, he’s gonna use it to kill the President.” I gave Farley the circled train schedule and the newspaper clipping about President Roosevelt. “Find Agent Barson. Show him these, and tell him everything.” But Farley didn’t move. That jerk! He just couldn’t stand to help me or Kenji. Even if it meant saving the President!
I shook him. “What’s the matter with you!?”
“It says here the President’s train arrives at eight. It’s at least seven-fifteen right now, Bird. The deputy’s got too much of a head start for anyone to catch him by car. And the local train already left for Providence. There’s no way to catch him.”
He was right, of course. It was hopeless. I plopped down on the ground. Right onto the P-40 manual in my pocket. The manual that said—on page 13, section 3, if I remembered correctly—that the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk could reach a top speed of 362 miles an hour. Providence was about 180 miles away. At top speed, the Warhawk could get there in about thirty minutes.
I leapt back to my feet, looked around, and spied a rusty bicycle that was leaning against the chicken coop. I mounted it and told Farley, “Find Agent Barson.”
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To try and catch a plane.”
By the time I made it to my house, my legs were aching so much from pedaling Farley’s rusty piece-of-junk bike, I felt like I’d been running through knee-deep pancake batter. I bet Farley never once oiled that darn bicycle chain. I flopped the bike against the barn and spotted Alvin playing in our backyard.
“Where’s … Mom?” I asked, between gasps for air.
“Out looking for you.”
“And Margaret?”
“They went looking for you, that way.” He pointed toward the pond at the back of our field, and I was off and running.
When I made it to the weeds near the pond, I found Lieutenant Peppel’s motor scooter on its side, but no sign of Margaret or the lieutenant. I cut through the weeds and followed the sound of laughter and a trail of discarded outer clothes leading to the pond.
“Margaret?” I called out.
“Oh God! It’s my little sister.” I heard a splash, like someone diving underwater, just as I burst into the open to find Margaret swimming in her underwear.
“Margaret! I need your help,” I called out.
“Where the heck have you been, Bird?” she said, trying to hide the fact that she was standing in our pond—in her bra! “Um. We’ve been, I mean I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“Tell Lieutenant Peppel we need his P-40!”
“Lieutenant Peppel? He’s not here.”
“It’s important, Margaret!”
Something swirled under the water next to her.
Some bubbles came up, the water thrashed, and finally, the lieutenant couldn’t hold his breath any longer and popped up for air. “Sorry, Margaret.”
“Lieutenant! Deputy Steyer is going to blow up the President!” I yelled. “We have to beat him to the train station!”
He rolled his eyes. “Kid, I tell you what. I promise, I’ll take you flying tomorrow.”
I saw I was getting nowhere fast, and there wasn’t a lot of time to convince him. Then I spotted his uniform. A pilot’s uniform.
“Thanks!” I snatched it up and was on the run again.
“Hey!” the lieutenant hollered to Margaret. “She’s taking my clothes!”
“Bird!” Margaret screamed after me.
But I had a pretty good head start. By the time they’d splashed their way ashore, I was already bouncing through the field on Lieutenant Peppel’s motor scooter.
I hadn’t stopped to think that I’d never ridden a motor scooter before, and since my legs didn’t quite reach the running boards, it was even harder to balance. So every time I started to swerve and fall, I ended up cranking the throttle on the handlebar to compensate. This kept me from wiping out, but my lack of balance combined with the burst of power every time I used the throttle left me swerving left and right like I did when I first learned to ride a bike.
As I approached the gate outside the airfield, I could see that the sentry was already looking suspiciously at the wiggly trajectory I was taking, not to mention my wildly oversized uniform and helmet. This was never gonna work. I acted like I was slowing down.
“Hold your horses there, Lindbergh.” The sentry held out his hand.
I hit the gas and tried to swerve around, but instead headed straight for him. He had to dive into the mud to avoid getting hit. Then he scrambled into the guard shack and hit the siren.
I nearly wiped out as the scooter tires got caught in the deep muddy truck grooves that had been cut into the field after the recent rains, but I regained my balance and raced toward the hangar. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw that a military police jeep was already speeding onto the tarmac and heading toward the guard shack.
Moments later, I dumped the scooter against the hangar wall by Lieutenant Peppel’s P-40. The uniform obviously wasn’t gonna work as a disguise, so I tossed it aside and clambered up the wing into the cockpit. Just as I did, I spotted Lieutenant Peppel pedaling Farley’s rusty bicycle. He was wearing the only thing he must have been able to find—Margaret’s summer dress! He knew exactly where I was headed, so he blew past the sentry and took off toward me in the hangar.
I settled into the P-40 cockpit, switched on the magneto, and the starter began to spin up and whine. The twelve cylinders fired over and the stacks coughed that lovely smell of airplane exhaust. It wasn’t until I stretched out my feet to test the rudder pedals that I realized something was wrong. My feet didn’t feel anything. I looked down and saw that my legs were about six inches too short.
When I looked up, Li
eutenant Peppel had already pulled on his uniform and was scrambling onto the wing. I quickly hand-cranked the cockpit canopy the rest of the way shut, just before he could reach in and grab me. He pounded the glass.
“Bird! You’ve got to stop,” he commanded.
I shook my head. “Deputy Steyer’s going to kill the President! He already tried to kill me.” I must have looked pretty scared, because the stern look on his face kind of melted away. I crossed my heart. “Honest,” I said.
That was when he noticed the rope burns on my wrists. And the bruise on my forehead. “Did he do that to you?”
I nodded.
Then Lieutenant Peppel got a really angry look on his face. “Open the cockpit. I’m coming with you.”
I cranked back the canopy and he climbed in behind me.
“You really believe me?” I asked.
“I reckon I do,” he said with a smile.
Meanwhile, the M.P. jeep was heading straight toward us.
“If we stop now, we won’t get there in time to save the President,” I told him.
“Okay,” he said.
I checked our clearance, just like Dad had taught me, and Lieutenant Peppel taxied us out of the hangar, full speed ahead. I wasn’t really sure what the heck we were gonna do, but my heart was pumping way too fast for me to stop and think about it. Lieutenant Peppel pushed my feet out of his way so he could control the rudder pedals, and the big shark mouth roared out toward the runway.
The P-40 had such a big nose that you couldn’t see anything in front of you, whether you were eleven or one hundred eleven. The only way to see the ground was to swerve left and right, in a zigzag. As we zigzagged, the M.P. jeep pulled up alongside. It was Captain Winston, riding with the M.P.’s. And they all had their guns drawn.
“Lieutenant! Stop that plane this instant!” Captain Winston ordered.
“Can’t, sir. It’s a matter of life and death!”
“Then I’m coming aboard!” Captain Winston shouted to his men, “Move me close to the wing!”
The captain chose his moment and leapt onto the mighty Warhawk wing. The lieutenant ruddered hard right to try and shake him off. Captain Winston slid to the edge and rolled right off the wingtip.
The lieutenant shook his head woefully. “I’m gonna be court-martialed for sure.”
Behind us on the tarmac, the jeep skidded to a stop and the M.P.’s got out to make sure Captain Winston was all right.
As we taxied past the control tower to line up for takeoff, I could see the traffic controllers sticking their heads out the windows of the tower and pointing at us frantically. I heard someone shout over my helmet intercom: “Who or what is flying that plane?”
The lieutenant hollered to me over the engine, “Now can you tell me where we’re going?”
“The train station. In Providence,” I said.
I pulled on my goggles. Lieutenant Peppel shoved the throttle full-forward and we accelerated like a stone from a slingshot.
Suddenly I was aware of yelling and the roar of an engine. Only it wasn’t our engine. I poked my head out the side of the cockpit and oil splattered all over my goggles. I quickly wiped them clean and screamed, “Watch out, Lieutenant!”
Dead ahead of us, a T-6 trainer, a tank of an airplane, had just landed on the opposite end of the runway, blocking our escape.
“Dad-gum pilot trainee, he landed on the wrong end of the runway!”
I checked the instruments. “We’ve already built up too much speed to stop!”
“I don’t know if there’s enough runway to clear it!” Lieutenant Peppel screamed back.
“Well, we can’t turn around.” I pointed to our rear.
Lieutenant Peppel poked his head out, looking backwards. “It’s Captain Winston again. And he’s gaining on us.” But when the lieutenant turned to face forward again, our Allison V-12 engine coughed a big spurt of juicy exhaust and Lieutenant Peppel was suddenly blinded by oil and gas.
“Aieeehhh!” he screamed in pain. He dropped the control stick and I instinctively grabbed it, fighting to hold us steady.
“I’ve got it!” I told him.
“Pull up, pull up!” he cried.
Directly ahead, the big barrel nose of the oncoming T-6 was only thirty yards away and closing. I shut my eyes and summoned all the guts I could. With all my strength, I pulled the stick to my belly.
The mighty Warhawk fighter nose lifted off the ground, clearing the oncoming T-6 by inches, and we tore into the air like a screaming hurricane.
“I did it, I did it!” I rejoiced.
But before Lieutenant Peppel could crank our canopy shut, the gusting wind blew my P-40 manual right out of the cockpit.
“My pilot’s manual!”
Lieutenant Peppel rubbed his eyes. “I can’t see, Peach-pit.” He gritted his teeth. “Looks like we’re both gonna have to fly her.”
With a lump in my throat I answered, “I hope one of us can remember how to land this thing.”
From the outside, the P-40 might have seemed to be flying pretty smoothly, skipping over the clouds as we traced the highway north.
But inside the cockpit was another story. Nothing in that manual could have prepared me for flying the real thing. My whole body was as taut as a tightrope as I white-knuckled the stick while the oil-blinded Lieutenant Peppel worked the rudder and guided my hands on the controls.
“Ease up a little,” he told me. “Take a breath. Dip your wings.”
I took a breath like he said. Then I tipped left and scanned the road below for the deputy’s car.
“Any sign of ’em?” the lieutenant asked.
“Negative,” I answered.
“We need to get the captain on the radio,” he yelled.
I adjusted the transmitter like he told me, and we eventually locked on to the crackly voice from the tower.
“Okay, here’s the lieutenant,” I announced nervously.
Lieutenant Peppel took my helmet and hollered into the mike, “Sir…. Yes, sir…. I understand, sir. It’s just, she needed the plane because someone is gonna bomb the President…. But sir, Captain Winston … I believe her.”
Someone else started barking questions and the lieutenant relayed what he was hearing to me. “There’s some kid there with news clippings about the President’s arrival in Providence. Said he saw explosives in Deputy Steyer’s basement.”
“That’s Farley! Just ask him. He knows I’m telling the truth.” Would you believe it? Farley had actually come through. Maybe it was true what Dad used to say: If you expect the best out of people, that’s just what you’ll get.
Lieutenant Peppel hollered, “Captain Winston. Get that FBI agent—”
“Barson,” I yelled.
“Agent Barson,” Lieutenant Peppel repeated. “Have him call the Providence station. Tell them to do whatever it takes, but the President’s train cannot stop there.” The lieutenant signed off, then told me, “They’re all gonna take a car and do their best to run him down before he can reach the station. That kid Farley said his father showed him a back-road shortcut.”
“There it is!” I shouted.
We dipped down out of the clouds and I spotted the plume of smoke from the President’s train as it neared a small town. There were red-white-and-blue welcome banners and flags flying over the crowd that had gathered to watch the President’s train pass through.
“That’s the Hampton station.” I checked my watch. “According to the train schedule, they’re right on time.”
I opened the throttle and we cleared some trees on the other side of an upcoming tunnel. But then I spotted the deputy’s black-and-white Ford coupe crossing the railroad tracks up ahead, and a sick feeling came over me.
“Are you sure it’s the deputy’s car?” the lieutenant asked.
I dipped the wing and we dove lower and pulled even with the car, five hundred feet above it. We were close enough that I could recognize the yellow Geneseo town seal on the car’s black hood. I d
ropped even lower and buzzed the car to make sure the occupants could hear our engine. It worked. Kenji stuck his head out the passenger window. I rolled back the cockpit canopy and I waved my arms and flashed the thumbs-down bail-out signal, the one I showed him when we were out in Father Krauss’s boat. Kenji flashed it back at me. He remembered!
“It’s them,” I said.
“We’ve gotta find a way to stop him, Bird.”
“But without hurting Kenji,” I said.
“That’s gonna make it tricky.”
I glanced down in the cockpit, looking for any kind of solution. But this was a training airplane. It had no bullets and no bombs. I felt under the seat.
“We could drop the parachute?”
Lieutenant Peppel shook his head and chuckled. “With the way you fly, we might need that.”
I studied the knobs and switches. I fingered the white handle on my left. It was marked FUEL.
“Could we drop a fuel tank?” I asked.
“Not without the risk of hurting Kenji. They’re five hundred pounds and they’d crush the car if you hit it.”
“I could always just land on the road in front of him … if I knew how to land.”
“That car is a ton and a half of steel. This plane is made out of stressed-skin metal to be as light as it can be. That’s not a fight you want to be in.”
“Hey.” I jiggled the red-handled lever by my right knee. “What about this?”
He grabbed hold. “Flour bombs?”
“Yeah. You knocked me flat with one, remember?” I said.
“It might work,” he agreed. “But you’ll have to aim it just right. You want to stop him, not make him crash. All right. Climb to five hundred feet and line up a bombing run. When we start the dive, stay about ten degrees left rudder. If I remember right, that there bombsight is a little off.”
“Roger,” I said. I pulled the stick and we climbed toward the clouds. I took a deep breath.
“Ya ready?” he asked me.
“Okay,” I said.
I dipped the nose and the mighty Warhawk picked up speed like a runaway roller-coaster car. I set my target gun-sight bead on the deputy’s car. The stick began to shudder under my hand against the gravity forces pressing on the plane.
Born to Fly Page 13
