Indiana Jones and tyhe Sky Pirates

by Martin Caidin

  "Do you have any concept of the financial burden you're talking about?" Pencroft broke in. "The university board of governors would never approve of—"

  "No one outside this room is to know of our relationship," Treadwell said, a bit too sharply. He was all business now. "The only exceptions would be those Professor Jones at his own discretion chooses to inform. As for the costs, all will be taken care of. It won't cost this establishment so much as a tuppence."

  "That's different," Pencroft said with open wonder.

  "You said there was a gift," Indy reminded Treadwell. "You apparently have something very special up your sleeve."

  "Oh, I do," Treadwell smiled. "It's the offer you can't refuse. There will be other teams on this mission, of course—men with other skills and connections. But if you are the first to find that cube, or whatever is the artifact rumored to have been with the diamonds—it's yours to keep."

  "You mean it is ours!" Pencroft burst out.

  "That is your affair, sir. My point is that the Crown will relinquish all claim to the object." Treadwell had almost a Cheshire cat smile on his face. "Professor Jones cannot turn his back on something that might have a direct relationship with Christ. That is strictly an unfounded supposition about the cube, of course, and I am out of my depth as to what else it might be. But I do not need to know more. My interest is specific and unambiguous."

  Treadwell rose to his feet to face Indy. "Your answer, sir?"

  Indy extended his hand. Treadwell took it firmly to end the questions. "Done," Indy said.

  Treadwell turned to Pencroft. "Is there anything you wish to add or to ask, Professor?"

  Pencroft pondered the issue. Then he shook his head slowly. "The entire affair seems quite mad, Mr. Treadwell. My interest, however, also lies in that area you described as an offer that could not be refused. Such a find is beyond all monetary consideration. I also am agreed."

  "Thank you, sir."

  Treadwell opened his briefcase and handed a sealed packet to Indy. "Everything you need is in there, including protected telephone numbers and a schedule of times you can reach me."

  Indy took the packet. "I'm not sure if I should thank you for all this," he said.

  Treadwell didn't smile. "Only time will tell, sir."

  Suddenly, Pencroft began to cough harshly. He pulled forth a handkerchief with shaking hands and brought it to his mouth. Treadwell and Indy glanced at one another; by trading nods, they agreed to wait until the old man could catch his breath. Finally Pencroft dabbed at his watery eyes and took a deep lungful of air.

  "You two," he wagged an accusing finger at them, "sound like a bunch of old women at a tea and crumpets party, the way you are gaggling at each other. Get out of my sight and let this school get back to its function of illuminating young minds!"

  Treadwell and Indy left the room together. Without another word between them they went their separate ways in the corridor, Treadwell departing the university through the main entrance, Indy returning to his office. He waited fifteen minutes, finished the coffee Frances Smythe had waiting for him, closed his briefcase, and started for the exit.

  Smythe stopped him with a piercing look. "It must have been quite a session for you not to say a word to me," she said with a touch of criticism to her voice.

  Damn, she's right, Indy thought. Saying nothing is worse than any kind of story. He turned to her. "Some sort of government nonsense," he said airily.

  "Like I'm hearing right now," she countered.

  "You're too smart for your own good," he chided her in a compliment she couldn't miss.

  "I'll ignore the poisoned blessings." She smiled. "You have forgotten, Professor, to give me whatever story it is you wish people to hear that will explain your continued absence from your classes."

  He started to offer a spurious tale, stopped, started again, and thought better of story-telling to this woman. "Make up what sounds best," he directed her, "and leave a memo on my desk as to what it is I'm supposed to be doing."

  "You are devious," she remarked.

  "Enough, Sherlock. Just kindly attend to whatever fabrication passes through that lovely brain of yours."

  "Ta-ta!" she called as he left.

  Twenty minutes later he slipped into the Wild Boar Pub. Indy stood at the bar, ordered an ale, picked up his mug, and wandered slowly toward a back door. With no one paying attention to him, he slipped through the door to climb a narrow winding stairs to the private room that was his destination.

  Thomas Treadwell greeted him with a wave of his own half-finished mug of ale. Indy slipped into an easy chair. "I really hate doing this to the old man, you know," he said abruptly.

  "It's necessary," came the immediate response. "The whole purpose of that meeting at the university was to keep Pencroft involved in a position of authority, but not to let him know too much. At his age he could easily slip and give away the game. Besides, right now he feels completely justified in springing you free of your duties."

  "I know," Indy sighed. "Do we bring him up to snuff before any more meetings?"

  Treadwell shook his head. "We can't risk it. Professor Pencroft not only appears to be the soul of innocence, he is, and that's what we need from him."

  Indy laughed without humor. "He'd kill me with his own two hands if he knew I was partly responsible for that blamed cube."

  "You're being too hard on yourself. That was a masterful job you did with your cuneiform markings. Good Lord, Indy, that artifact is as real as anything from the past I've ever seen."

  "I know, I know," Indy broke in. "When does the real word get out?"

  "All in good time. Right now whoever it was that forced down the flying boat, the whole bloody lot you already know about, is still convinced the artifact is, or may be, real. That means they'll try to unlock its secrets. Failing that, as only you and I know they will, they'll try to move it to a high-paying buyer. So long as that pattern is followed, Indy, it remains our very best opportunity to start identifying people."

  Indy raised an eyebrow. "That's your problem, Thomas. All that cloak-and-dagger dashing about isn't my game."

  "But you're very good at it. Your background suits the situation perfectly, you know. And we do need somebody willing to become a target for this gang, whoever they are. You'll have to keep on the alert, just like any M.I. operative."

  "I'll ignore your lumping me with spies and assassins, if you don't mind," Indy retorted. Then, in a more serious tone, "Do we have anything more on those saucer things? I'm not even certain as to how to describe them. I've heard saucers, discs, crescents, a whole porridge of names."

  "Tell me, Indy, what do you think of them?"

  "Assuming that they're real and they perform as we've been told?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, all I can say is that they're really remarkable."

  "Do I detect a note of subtle evasion there, Indy?"

  "Not at all. Listen, Thomas, not being fully informed doesn't justify drawing conclusions based on a lack of data. You can go dead wrong in a hurry that way."

  "I'd like you to remember the name of an American you'll be meeting up with soon," Treadwell said abruptly.

  "What's that got to do with those machines?"

  "More than you may think. The name is Harry Henshaw. He's a colonel in your military flying force. Brilliant man, really. He's in technical intelligence. That means he's everything from a test pilot to an investigator of anything and everything that flies. He's part of our team. Hands across the sea, that sort of thing. And right now he is turning heaven and earth upside down trying to find anything and everything in the present, and in the past, that may relate to disc shapes in flight."

  "What's his opinion?"

  "The things are real. They fly as we've heard. Blistering speed and all that."

  Treadwell went infuriatingly silent. "And?" Indy pressed. "Are they, in his opinion, ours, or," he looked upward, "theirs? Whoever and whatever they may be."

  "Too early for c
onclusions, but he leans to a huge leap forward in aerodynamics, not something flitting about in space."

  "Why?"

  "You'd better find out from Henshaw directly. By the by, he's given me a message for you. One with which I concur completely, I might add."

  "Sounds serious."

  "It is," Treadwell said. "Henshaw said for you to watch your step and to keep your eyes open. No matter how smart we think we've been, the people we're trying to identify know more about us than I like."

  Indy's eyes narrowed. "How?"

  "Henshaw suspects—no; he's convinced there's a traitor in our little group. Which means as well, Indy, that you would be wise not to let your own people know too much of what we've discussed."

  "My people are fine," Indy said defensively.

  "I hope so." Treadwell was unruffled by Indy's sudden change in mood. "I dearly hope so. But I'll tell you this much from my own experience. You will always be surprised in this game."

  3

  Willard Cromwell lifted the bourbon bottle in a slow, deliberate motion to his lips, neatly surrounding the mouth of the bottle with his own, and took a long, gurgling swallow. He brought down the bottle slowly, smacked his lips, belched, and with the ease of long practice replaced the cork. His powerful hand banged the bottle on the table of the living room in the isolated farmhouse Indy had rented for a month. They felt they were in the middle of nowhere, the fields and farmhouse nestled along the banks of the Maquoketa River in eastern Iowa. But for the moment his companions seemed fascinated with Cromwell's every move.

  Cromwell had flown as a squadron commander in Britain's Royal Flying Corps against the best of the Kaiser's sharpshooters in their Albatross and Fokker and Rumpler machines. Flying the wicked-handling Sopwith Camel, he'd twisted and whirled through enough battles to send sixteen of Germany's finest spinning earthward, giving up their lives for the Fatherland in the Great War raging across the continent. Then some snot-nosed young replacement, terrified by his first taste of combat and watching his comrades burning to death as their planes whirled crazily earthward, had panicked in the midst of battle and flown wildly through a huge dogfight. Cromwell saw him coming, knew he stood no danger from another Sopwith, but could hardly have imagined that the fear-frozen young man would in desperation have squeezed the triggers of his Vickers machine guns. And kept down the trigger handles, spewing fragments of death in all directions, friend or foe notwithstanding. What the Germans could not do, a spindling youth in terror managed quite well, placing three of his bullets into the legs and one arm of Willard Cromwell.

  He made it back to his home field only moments before he passed out from loss of blood. Four months in hospital, every single day of that time cursing the unknown blithering idiot who'd brought him down. Cromwell didn't know if that madman survived the battle. "Bloody good luck if he didn't, because I'd like to finish him off with my bare hands," he snarled at his visiting fellow pilots.

  Cromwell earned good-natured laughter for his toothy profanity, but he accepted the laughter along with the whiskey smuggled into hospital to him. Then he could walk again, a bit stiffly, and he had a magnificent long burn scar on his arm from the incendiary bullet that had nearly done him in. He insisted on returning to the fight, but fighters were out. "You're rather scrunged up, you know," his squadron commander told him. "A bit sticky trying to match the young men in maneuvering, eh? But I'm with you, Willard. I'm posting you to the navy."

  Cromwell nearly choked. "You're putting me aboard a bloody ship?" he howled. He smashed his cane across the other man's desk, scattering papers and personal items throughout the office. "Never!"

  "Come off it," his commander said affably. "No warships or ground duty for you, old man. You're being given command of a flying boat. It's an important job, Captain. You may not shoot down many aeroplanes, but see what you can do with a few of the Hun submarines, would you?"

  Off to Coastal Command, to special training for the cumbersome huge machines. Not one to wallow—like his seaplane bomber in the air—in his own rotten luck, he applied himself to what could be either a lump of an assignment or, he judged well, a rare opportunity. No need to hone his piloting; he was one of the best. But now he learned the idiosyncracies of heavy machines and the special touch they required. He spent his ground time with the mechanics and became as adept as any man with a wrench and wiring. He learned to repair and rebuild and in the process he became the equal of any aeronautical engineer.

  All this, of course, to "see what he could do with a few of the Hun submarines." Most attacks against German U-boats were made in a careful, level approach for bomb dropping, which had the unfortunate result of providing the German gunners on the sub deck with an excellent steady target for their weapons. The casualties were horrific. Willard Cromwell considered all aspects of the situation, and at the conclusion of his survey, Madman Cromwell came into being.

  He modified his own flying boat. With mechanics and his own flight crew working together, they strengthened the struts and wires and rigging of their machine, fine-tuned their engines for extra power, and stole stove lids from wherever they could be found to surround their crew positions with armor plating. Then they mounted a long-barreled 37mm recoilless cannon in the nose gunner position, doubled the number of machine guns on the flying boat, and went hunting.

  No one had ever attacked a submarine before with a screaming plunge in an aircraft infamous for its plodding gait and painfully clumsy response. Infamous the other machines were; not this wide-winged bird. As Cromwell dove against his target, the forward gunner pumped heavy shells against the submarine, supported by three men hammering away with machine guns. Cromwell aimed to drop his bombs right into the conning tower of his target if at all possible, and the only way to do that was to go right down to the deck in a steep dive so that the bombs would follow a properly curving ballistic arc and explode inside the submarine.

  He sank two submarines, fought off several more, saved ships and lives, and met his comeuppance once again through no direct action of the enemy. Attacking a German sub on the surface in his usual brash dive, his bow gunner pumping shells at the enemy machine gun crews on deck, he was short of his aiming point for the conning tower. One bomb struck the flat deck and bounced wildly back into the air to smash into the tail of Cromwell's flying boat. By the good graces of the angels who look after such madmen, the bomb fuse failed to trigger, but the heavy bomb ripped through the airplane's structure, severing the controls to the tail surfaces. Cromwell and crew tore past the submarine just as his first bomb exploded within the U-boat. The explosion not only ripped outward from the submarine hull, but also struck the flying boat like a giant hand slapping a mosquito. Into the water they crashed. The airplane shed pieces in a rapid but steady progression, each structural collapse easing the shock of deceleration.

  When the moment ended, the submarine was sinking in a spume of steam, smoke and spreading oil, and Cromwell and crew in life jackets were clambering onto a section of the hull still floating as a somewhat leaky lifeboat. A British destroyer raced to their aid and hauled everyone from the sea.

  Cromwell ended up in another hospital, this time with a broken shoulder, minor burns, and many lacerations about his body that produced scars he would spend years displaying to awed friends. In the years that followed, Cromwell added to his already distinguished abilities by becoming expert in weapons and demolition. Judged by his superiors to be the recipient of a charmed life, he was sent on missions to trouble spots where British control slipped into disrepute and no small danger. He was as adept in learning languages as he was blessed with an extraordinary memory, and he became as much at home in dark alleys and back streets as he was in the cockpit of any flying machine.

  By now, with the war years well behind him, Cromwell was a portly man of large stature and a huge handlebar mustache, assuming the appearance of the typical "Colonel Blimp" of colonial England. And it was all appearance, for Cromwell beneath his outer flab was massively muscl
ed, adroit, and flexible, and a dangerous man indeed with weapons of any kind, as well as with his powerful hands. He had spent two years in Turkey training with their professional wrestlers, a field exalted and held in honor for multiple generations. They taught him well, soaking his hands and much of his skin in stinging brine so they became tough and as hard as boards.

  This was the man Indiana Jones had selected as his "shotgun," able to perform duties as a mechanic or weaponeer, a pilot or a skulker among the alleys of almost any city in the world. He was lethal in hand-to-hand combat and yet, strangely, well steeped in academic lore, master of a dozen languages and with a memory that forgot nothing. Those people who thought they knew Indiana Jones well found it hard to comprehend his friendship with the hard-drinking, unpredictable Cromwell. But Indy had chosen very well indeed. Cromwell was worth a dozen men.

  And at this moment, in this remote farmhouse, amid wide fields in every direction, Cromwell was thick with whiskey and impatience. He brought shudders to the others in the room with another gut-wrenching belch. "When in the blazes is Indy getting back here!" he thundered, a question they all knew to be rhetorical. Indy would return from Chicago when he had accomplished the needs of his trip, and he had insisted on going it alone. Something very special and secretive had them on edge. Even the powerful and tough Ford Trimotor hidden alongside the biggest barn nearby seemed chained to the ground. They wanted to do something. Waiting scraped against their nerves, and they would have been surprised to know that this was precisely the situation Indy had carefully maneuvered. His team had to be able to function in perfect harmony, whether in action or in stop-motion, waiting as they were now without knowing the reasons why. If there was to be friction or a falling out, this was the time to reveal the problem and remove the fault at once.