The Martian Pendant

by Patrick Taylor

  After giving the rental clerk the card of her family’s London attorney, she and Bobby went with the police to report the circumstances. It seems they needed only an official statement. There had been no bank robberies or other such crimes in Illinois that day, and neither the State Police nor the Chicago PD had any reason for them to be held. With the report filed, the Inspector went out of his way to be helpful, driving them to the railroad station across town. After buying a change of clothes for each of them, they took the Union Pacific Challenger west. She planned to vary their methods of transportation in an attempt to foil any further pursuit.

  “Bobby, if we can just get to L.A. without being detected, we’ll be fine.”

  His adolescent logic was hard to fault. “Aren’t the headquarters of the CIA and the FBI on the East Coast? How does our going west make us safer?”

  She didn’t have a certain answer to that, but she knew that the Buell organization, now alerted to the dangers, would be a formidable barrier to any aggressor. And, after all, she was still their employee. Changing into their new clothes after showering in their deluxe compartment, they went to the dining car, the tables set with crisp linen and silver plate. After being greeted by the headwaiter, resplendent in black tie, they began to feel more secure. As they dined on the best food the Union Pacific had to offer, their pursuit was, for a time, forgotten. Surely, she thought, they wouldn’t be able to trace them now.

  That night they slept well as the muted sound of the train’s wheels on the track lulled them. But the next morning, during a stop in Des Moines, Iowa, while they were breakfasting, she was jolted over her coffee upon seeing two stocky blond men board. Their bearing was somehow familiar, and the sight of them brought back the terror of the day before.

  “Bobby, we’ve got to get off this train immediately!” Pulling him away from his second helping of ham and eggs, and clutching her precious attaché case, she raced to the front of the diner, down the steps and onto the platform, just as the train began to move, gathering speed. As it passed, she glimpsed the cold-eyed men in the vestibule of the car behind the diner. Russians, she thought. They seemed not to notice them, to her relief.

  Bobby was not so encouraged. “Mum, did you see them? Two agents are still on our trail. Different, aren’t they?”

  “I’m afraid so, son, likely Soviets. We have to move, and with speed. Why is there never a taxi when one needs one?” When one finally pulled up in response to her frantic waving, she told the driver, “To the airport, and make all haste!”

  The driver chuckled, saying, “Lady, you don’t know what you’re asking. Today is the annual Spring fly-in from all over the Midwest. The skies are clear, and 10,000 people will be heading to the airport for the air show. We’ll be lucky if we can get there in under an hour.”

  Her immediate disappointment was quickly overcome by the possibilities presented. An air-show. Plane rides. Aircraft perhaps for rental or even purchase! Halfway there, in the increasing traffic, she smiled at Bobby, squeezing his hand.

  Responding, he smiled back. “Mum, judging by your look, it’s obvious you’ve hatched a plan. What is it?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get there, lad. Just sit tight and keep your eyes open.”

  When they reached the airport, it was an eye-opener indeed. Every manner of aircraft could be seen, ranging from light private planes to multi-engine commercial ones. But the ones that caught Bobby’s eye were the military craft of World War II. Diana felt a stab of pain when they passed a B-17 on their way to the entry gate. Bobby’s father had died in one of those. Her brief sorrow gave way to pride when she glanced at her son, looking on in admiration. So much like his father, she thought, and for a moment the warmth of some wonderful memories flooded back, suppressing the urgency of their mission.

  At the airport gate, despite Bobby’s protests, they hurried through the crowd around the military craft until they came to the rows of parked private planes, most of those that had been flown in.

  “Look, Bobby, there’s even an office here offering rentals and sales. Let’s see what they have. I’ll wager you’d like to take a flight about now. Am I right?”

  “Right, as always, but what I’m interested in has four engines and machinegun turrets.”

  “Oh. I see. Just like your father, love at first sight. But I’m not rated for multi-engine. And I’m sure you realize that we can’t tarry long here.”

  “Okay, mum, I know you’re a fine pilot, with your African experience and all, but America’s a big country, and just how far can we get in a little single-engine plane?”

  “You’ll see. We’re heading west. Short hops for petrol will get us at least as far as Denver at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Then, if all goes according to my plan, we’ll employ a commercial airline for the flight over the mountains to the West Coast. There, with my connections, I’m sure we’ll be safe.”

  Even at thirteen, Bobby doubted the logic of that. But maybe, after all, he had read too much James Bond.

  The office handling sales of aircraft was far worse than the auto rental agency. While surplus WWII planes saved from the scrapyards were still widely available for sale at rock-bottom prices, they had to go through a far greater hassle to secure one than with any car. The biggest problem, aside from her non-citizen status, was that Diana didn’t have her pilot’s log. U.S. dollars, as usual, did take care of any doubts on the part of the salesman, and after that it went smoothly. When the preliminary paperwork was finished, they were shown the planes that were available.

  One of them caught Bobby’s eye immediately. It was a war surplus North American AT-6 Texan, an all-metal low-wing advanced trainer. She knew it was fast enough to outdistance most private planes, a feature that appealed to her, but it was much more powerful than anything she had ever flown.

  After a perusal of the flight manual for the craft, she asked for a flying lesson to check it out. She was concerned about risk, not only to her own life but especially to that of her precious son. After an instructor was found, she quickly discovered that the plane handled easily, impressing him not only with her flying skill, but also apparently with her beauty. She was used to that, so after the lesson, she thanked him for his help with a dazzling smile followed by a speedy escape into the sales office.

  While she was accustoming herself to flying the AT-6, Bobby had wandered back to the parked array of military planes that had been flown in for the occasion. As he stood admiring the B-17, he was spotted by Zhukov, who had landed there in his P-63 after being contacted by the GRU agents at the train station. Correctly guessing that Diana and Bobby were preparing to leave by air, he had returned to his newly serviced fighter to wait.

  When Diana returned from her hour-long checkout, final documents were signed. Parachutes came with the plane, and warm flight suits were purchased. Before departing, they were given maps and weather reports for the western mid-Continent.

  Putting her case in the stowage compartment for loose equipment, they took off at noon, setting a course due west, following what was known at that time as U.S. Highway 40. She knew that just as in Tanganyika, following the railroad or the highways was the most accurate navigation method possible. Through the intercom she instructed Bobby, who was in the rear seat, to report any air traffic to her.

  “Mum, I’ll keep a lookout for other planes and landmarks on the ground, but what happens if the weather closes in and we can’t see either highway or rail line?”

  “Why, we just put down somewhere before that happens. I’m not qualified in instrument flying, but I’m adept at improvisation. Landing on a postage stamp is a specialty of mine.”

  “From the letters you wrote me from Africa, the plane you flew then was designed for that. I doubt that this bird is suited for grasshopper work the way that one was. I’m reading the manual right now, and the shortest landing possible is seven hundred feet at the altitude of the ground now below us.”

  They flew on at cruising speed, landing at the litt
le airport at McCook, Nebraska, late that afternoon. As they came in for the landing, both were captivated by the still air and the smoothness of their skimming the ground just before setting down on the runway. After seeing to the servicing of the plane, they found a hotel in town for the night and for their evening meal. Later, Bobby fell easily asleep, but she lay awake for hours. She knew there would be a relentless search for them, with information gathered on their plans and means of transportation. Well, she finally decided, we can’t keep them from the hunt, but we can outwit them in the chase.

  After purchasing the plane, she had filed the mandatory flight plan before being allowed to take off at Des Moines. Salt Lake City was specified as her destination, via Cheyenne, Wyoming, rather than heading to Denver, which was her intent. If they were being followed, they would prove an elusive prey.

  She underestimated the ingenuity of her adversary in tracing her path, plus their resources and their ruthlessness. At the aircraft sales office, at the point of a gun, access had been gained to her itinerary, and the type of plane she was flying. Where would they go from Cheyenne? Was it really to be Salt Lake, or was that flight plan just a ruse?

  Her true destination, Denver, was early confirmed by a spy they had in NORAD, the Air Force facility deep in Cheyenne Mountain in northern Colorado. Tasked to monitor hostile flights from the Soviet Union as part of the North American Air Defense System, their radar also tracked air traffic along the continental divide, and the progress of the AT-6 was constantly monitored among the other flights.

  Fifty miles out of McCook, she set their course for Denver and the still snow-covered Rockies, 250 miles away. Their twin seventy-gallon tanks had been topped off, and would get them there with plenty of fuel to spare. Despite his long night’s sleep, Bobby slept most of the way, until the turbulence near Denver began to make things uncomfortable enough to awaken him.

  “Mum,” he asked sleepily, “are we there yet?”

  Despite her concerns, she had to laugh at what he had always come up with on their travels when he was a little boy. “No, lad. This weather is too rough for us to set down at Denver. We’re heading for Boulder, to the northwest. We’ll leave the plane on consignment with another dealer, and then book a flight to Los Angeles.”

  At that moment, Bobby spotted an aircraft off their wing. He hastily switched on the intercom. “I say, mum! There’s an aircraft on the right. It’s a fighter plane with the markings of the Red Air Force. He’s putting down his landing gear now. What does that signal mean?”

  He wants us to land. How they know who we are escapes me, but there it is. Because they want the Martian manual, it’s rather unlikely that they’ll shoot us down. We’ve only one chance now. It’s an old strategy. We’re heading for the hills. Hang on!”

  Kicking the plane into a split “S,” their dive temporarily left the surprised pilot of the Kingcobra retracting his landing gear.

  The Soviet major was reminded of his unhappy experiences with that woman pilot in his squadron outside Kiev. She was good--better than most of the men, scoring more consistently than any of them. He had been angered when she resisted his advances. He recalled how pleased he was when she was shot down and killed late in the war. Now he had another woman to contend with. In his rage at being outwitted, and losing sight of his mission to capture the Martian prize, he determined that he would show her who was the better pilot.

  Diana held the trainer in a dive past the red-line, knowing their only hope was a mountain canyon where their greater maneuverability might save them. Her dive had just taken them past the Front Range, northwest of Denver, when a burst of machinegun fire shook their aircraft, hitting the hydraulic lines, causing the landing gear and flaps to come down.

  That convinced her. Maybe they would spare Bobby, at least. She meant to surrender then, but the AT-6 slowed so rapidly that the pursuing fighter shot past them. As the major, now thoroughly enraged and totally bent on their destruction, kicked the P-63 around in a steep turn, she looked around frantically for a place to land.

  That gave Bobby a chance to help her. “Mum! That canyon ahead! There’s a rail line through it. We could follow the tracks, hugging the ground, and maybe evade that fighter!”

  At that instant, the engine began to labor. Looking at the instruments, she saw that the oil pressure was zero. “There had better be a way out, because this engine is about to seize up!”

  Just then the fighter made another pass, setting fire to the left wing. Over the intercom, she said to Bobby, “This is it. We must land this craft now! Do you see any clear areas?”

  When Bobby answered in the negative, she knew they had only one chance. As the fighter began another run, white tracers flashing past their plane, with her heart in her mouth, she put the nose down, and throttling back, lined the faltering craft up with the tracks, neatly setting it down on the rails. The right-of-way was just wide enough to accommodate the plane’s wings for a hundred yards, but the tracks led into a tunnel that was much too close for them to stop!

  Touching down at eighty-five miles per hour, the unlocked landing gear collapsed. As she grimly held the plane on the tracks with rudder control, the still-speeding craft entered the tunnel, neatly stripping off the wings, and with them, the fire. At the same moment, the determined Zhukov, intent on one last machinegun burst, misjudged the slope of the mountain ahead. He was unable to pull out in time, and the fighter slammed into the nearly sheer cliff, exploding in a roaring ball of flames, echoes reverberating through the canyon for a full minute.

  The wingless AT-6 skidded another hundred yards, bouncing off the tunnel walls on either side before it screeched to a grinding stop. For at least a minute neither Diana nor Bobby moved, shocked but miraculously unharmed in the battered wreck. In a daze, Diana absently unbuckled her parachute, draping her helmet and goggles over the headrest. Then reality returned.

  “Out!” she shouted, “I smell petrol!” She slid the canopy open and pulled Bobby onto the remnant of the wing root. “I don’t know how long this tunnel is, but the light behind us means it’s an inferno back there, and this plane may become one too. We’re must go farther along these tracks. Bring your parachute, Bobby, we may need to make a tent of it.”

  She grabbed her attaché case from its compartment, and both ran deeper into the tunnel. It was cold there, but not freezing, and as they reached the mid-part where the track seemed to level off, showers of icy water from above threatened to soak them. Luckily, their heavy flight clothing warded off much of the water. After running almost a mile, breathless in the thin air, a light could be seen ahead.

  “Does that mean the end of the tunnel, Mum, or is it the headlight of an approaching train?”

  “It looks like snow-reflected daylight to me. I don’t see the usual flashing that American locomotive headlights make. In this instance, the light at the end of the tunnel is, in fact, good news indeed.”

  When they emerged, it was snowing, and a raw wind was blowing. Nevertheless, the cold mountain air was like a tonic in contrast to the oily humidity of the run they had just endured.

  “Look for some type of shelter, Bobby. If we can’t find anything, we’ll have to consider using the parachute for a tent, but in this wind, that could prove difficult indeed. We can’t stay in the tunnel because a train could enter whilst we sleep. And keep dry! Despite this being April, it will be freezing at night, and no telling how long it will be before we can get back to civilization.”

  “Mum, what if a train comes? Won’t it run into the plane at the other end?”

  “Without some sort of warning, that certainly could happen. We shall have to do something to avert a possible train wreck if we can.” But something told Diana that caution came first. Instead, she took Bobby’s hand and scrambled up the hill to one side of the right of way. “Let’s find some shelter away from the tunnel while we gather our wits. With the way our pursuers have dogged our tracks, we may not be clear of them even now.”

  Diana’s intuiti
on had not deserted her. As they gained a little height, they heard a faint rumbling sound from farther up the rail line. “If that’s the train we were concerned with, it’s just coasting along. But trains don’t do that. Even on an easy downgrade, they have to use their power for braking purposes, so they make much more noise than that.”

  “I know, mum. And look! You can see some sort of rail car just coming around the bend up there. It’s a little two-man handcar. I’ve read about them. The motive power is two men pumping a double lever, making it an easy go up the slight inclines to which trains are confined.”

  “You’re right, Bobby. They may be coming to inspect the tunnel, warned by their signal system somehow of the plane wreck. But we can’t be too careful. We shan’t show ourselves just yet.”

  “I don’t like it,” he said, as the two-man crew stopped the handcar at the mouth of the tunnel. “They don’t appear to be railroad workers to me. And see, those are rifles, not shovels!”

  “Good God, keep your head down, Bobby, we can’t allow them to see us,” Diana whispered as she pulled him up the hill. To their relief, after some hesitation, the men resumed pumping and the handcar disappeared into the entrance.

  As they hid quietly behind a fallen tree, rapidly being covered with snow, they heard several shots faintly. Bobby laughed. “I can just see them fighting it out amongst themselves. The riflemen who just passed and the other chaps, friends of that fighter pilot, coming up the line after us.”

  “That’s quite an imagination you have, son. More than likely they were shooting at my parachute, flying helmet and goggles that I stacked up on the headrest. Apparently that made it look as if a pilot was still in the cockpit. And others coming up the line? Didn’t you see the flames at the entry to the tunnel? The Devil himself would have difficulty negotiating that inferno.”

  Twenty minutes later, the two men re-emerged. Dismounting from the handcar, they spent some time looking for tracks, but snow had covered everything. Correctly guessing that their quarry had headed uphill, they slowly approached the hiding place.