Indiana Jones and tyhe Sky Pirates

by Martin Caidin

  The approach was a dazzling, exhilarating, terrifying, and engine-thundering series of turns and twists through the narrowing walls of the fjord. Then, abruptly, the airstrip appeared before them, and Cromwell brought the trimotor down as if descending on a slope of glass. He taxied to the small operations building. They were expected, and a small tractor towing a trailer with fuel drums moved immediately to the airplane. Both pilots worked with the ramp workers to fill their tanks as quickly as possible. They filled the oil tanks to capacity, and then Cromwell and Foulois went over the airplane from nose to tail, checking everything they could touch. By the time all work had been completed, it was early afternoon.

  Cromwell went to talk to Indy. "We can stay overnight and leave in the morning before first light. Or we can take off right away, take turns sleeping, and go in to Iceland while it's still dark. If this wind keeps up, however, we'll have more than enough fuel to overfly Iceland and the Faeroes and make Scotland by sunrise. Then we can pick wherever you want to set down."

  "You're the pilot, Will. What do you say?"

  "Press on, mate."

  "Do it," Indy said. Twenty minutes later they were flying down the fjord toward the open sea.

  Two hours later Gale grasped Indy's arm and shook him madly. "Wake up!" she shouted, her mouth close against his ear. If he didn't come out of his sleep fog she swore she'd clamp teeth down on that ear.

  Indy fairly shot up from his slouched position. "What's wrong?" he asked immediately. He glanced about him; everything seemed normal.

  "The ship!" Gale exclaimed. "You've got to see this ship!"

  She half dragged Indy to the opposite side of the cabin. They were at four thousand feet, a mixture of clouds another thousand feet beneath them, partially obscuring the view of the ocean surface. Then there was a break. Indy pressed his face to the window, eyes wide, and turned with a snarl. "The camera! Use that camera now!"

  In a moment he had his own camera working. Nearly a mile beneath them, plowing the sea with a huge V-wake behind its passage, was the largest oceangoing ship he had ever seen. And he had never seen anything like this incredible tanker. It was at least a thousand to twelve hundred feet in length. Instead of the booms and deck equipment of the average tanker, the entire vessel from stem to stern was a huge flat deck. On each side of the ship, long cross-braced beams extended outward. Thick smoke plumed from the huge stack that curved across the right side of the decking to hang over the vessel, its smoke casting a pall that extended out of sight. Indy shot half the roll in his camera, then grabbed a headset and mike and clamped it on his head.

  "Will, this is Indy. You got me?"

  "Right. Go on."

  "Do you have that ship below us in sight?"

  "We have had for quite a while. I've never seen anything like it. It's absolutely gargantuan. And that deck. You could land anything on it. If that's what it's for."

  "Never mind that right now. But you're right," Indy said in a rush. "Look, I want you to swing out to the side, use as much cloud cover as you can, and then I want you to make a run on that thing from its right side—"

  "Starboard, yes."

  "Hang the starboard! Just come up from astern along the right side, got it? And when you do, give us all the speed this bucket's got. As soon as you clear the bow, break away sharply for a mile or two, and then climb as fast as you can."

  Will and Rene were already following his orders; as they continued their exchange, the Ford dropped its nose, Indy felt and heard an increase in power, and the wind howled louder as their speed increased. "Take her down as fast as you can, Will. And be ready for anything, understand?"

  "What in the devil are you expecting down there?"

  "We may have company. If we do we'll be getting pictures of it from back here."

  "You expecting—" Will Cromwell halted his words for several moments as the Ford slammed into turbulence, shaking the airplane as if it were bouncing over railroad ties. Then they were out of the rough air. "You expecting aircraft this far out in the ocean?"

  "No."

  "Then what, man?"

  "You'll know when you see it. I'll stay on the intercom with you all the way through." Indy hung onto a seat brace as the Ford's nose swung violently from side to side, then straightened out again. "Can't you go any faster?"

  "Certainly. But we won't have any wings to pull out of the dive. Never fear, we're flying faster than old Mr. Ford ever dreamed."

  The trimotor came out of a screaming, curving descent, and as they leveled out Cromwell poured full power to the engines. As fast as they were flying, they seemed to be crawling against the huge structure of the ship plowing through the sea. Indy and Gale snapped pictures as fast as they could. They saw men, tiny stick figures against the backdrop of the massive vessel. They were almost to the bow when Jocko rushed to Indy's side, shouting over the roar of engines and wind.

  "Company! Behind us to our right!"

  "What is it?"

  "You were right, Boss. Them are crazy things out there! They look like discs!"

  "Gale! Save your film! Get over to the other side. There'll be something coming past us on our right, moving fast! Go, go!"

  He was back on the intercom. "Did you get that up front?"

  "What's back there, Indy?"

  "Jocko called them discs. They should go ripping right past us. They'll have to go far ahead of us. Will, the moment you see them break in front of us, give me everything you have for a climb. Get us into some clouds as fast as you can."

  "Right, Guv." Put on the pressure cooker and Cromwell was Mr. Smooth himself....

  Indy scrambled to the opposite side of the cabin.

  There they were!

  Two of them.

  Golden disc shapes coming up behind them at tremendous speed. They'd pass the Ford like it was going backwards. Gale was snapping pictures as fast as she could; Indy had his camera ready and started moving film through it. He couldn't take time to look for details. There'd be time for that later when the film was processed and he could study the prints.

  He saw a blur of movement from his right, and sunlight splashed off bronzelike metal. The "disc" was more in the shape of an oval with a central circular bubble cockpit, and he'd bet his bottom dollar it was armor glass made specifically for strength. Despite the speed with which it hurtled past them, he had a moment to see that the glass dome wasn't glass all around, but sheets of flat-paned glass buttressed with metal stringers. It looked almost archaic against that oval shape.

  The oval flashed out of sight. Indy tore off his headset and ran to the cockpit. "Get right behind that thing!" he shouted to Cromwell.

  "Hang on!" Cromwell shouted back, working the controls in a wild skidding maneuver to place them directly behind the path the disc had flown. Moments later Indy smiled grimly to himself. It was exactly what he'd expected. But he'd chew all that over later. For now it was important to execute that time-honored maneuver of getting the blazes out of here while the getting was good.

  "Will, climb. Climb as fast as you can and get us into some clouds. Head for Scotland, but do whatever you need to do to stay in the clouds."

  As he spoke Will was coming back on the yoke, the throttles rammed forward for maximum power to haul the Ford up and around in a climbing turn.

  "Indy, the way those things move, they'll be coming around right at us and—"

  "No, they won't. Not that fast, I mean. Rene, you keep your eye on them as best you can. They'll have to go way out before they can come back to us, and if I've figured this right, we'll be in the clouds by then."

  Both pilots gave him startled looks. "How can you possibly know," Foulois asked slowly, "the way those things will fly?"

  "Because I was expecting this meeting."

  He left the cockpit, two dumbfounded pilots staring at him.

  14

  Until two years ago this very day, his family, his friends, his country, and much of the industrial, economic, and political world had known him as Kon
stantin LeBlanc Cordas. Each name represented powerful family ancestry and vast financial holdings in Russia, France, and Spain, with branch offices and holdings in a dozen other countries throughout the world.

  Konstantin LeBlanc Cordas was a billionaire many times over. Not in terms of currency or stacked ingots of gold and platinum, of which he also had many, but in the real wealth of the world. He owned shipping lines, factories, mines, railroads, huge agricultural holdings on three continents. His closest friends were the power magnates of their homelands: owners of steel mills and ironworks and vast munitions plants. Chemicals, synthetics, trucks, shipyards; they had it all.

  Cordas was blessed with a powerful, keen and inquisitive mind. His thoughts probed like cold lances through problems and challenges. His memory was phenomenal, and he made a voracious daily study of global affairs. He was also blessed, although he had come to regard this sense of mood as possessed, with a curse that would not let him rest. It was the feeling—no; the absolute certainty—that it had been ordained he assist the world through torturous times to stave off, hopefully to avoid completely, the Ultimate War that he and his closest associates knew was inevitable. It was wildly ironic: the War To End All Wars that ended in a final gory burst in 1918 had simply created the breeding ground for even greater and deadlier conflicts to come.

  These were the men—Cordas and his closed circle—who knew of the terrible mass-destruction weapons formulating in the minds of soulless scientists and evil, grasping men coveting the ultimate of all pleasures: power. The Great War with its submarines, bombers, poison gases, automatic weapons, tanks rumbling like ironclad dinosaurs across the battlefields—all this had been but a portent of what was already boiling in the cauldron of the next war.

  It must be stopped now, Cordas had finally concluded two years before. It must be stopped by the only means possible. Overwhelming power exerted along every front: political, military, industrial, economic. The minds of men must be controlled, or they would one day respond to the blaring trumpets and waving banners that had sent millions of them to agony and death, and now promised to repeat that horror.

  Cordas and five of his closest friends, five of the most powerful and wealthy people on the planet, agreed with one another. They would sacrifice their families, their friends, their very lives in order to gather unto their control the ultimate power that could manipulate the destiny of their planet.

  The preparations were meticulous, exacting, shrouded in the tightest secrecy. They knew of the most advanced systems of the military, of science and engineering and flight, many of which were yet unknown to the public.

  And when they were ready, they knew they must be ruthless. Six people were paid handsome sums to assume the personas of Cordas and his group. They underwent surgical changes to their faces. Their dental makeup was altered to match exactly the six for whom they would become doubles. Their families were sent to distant parts of the world, provided with homes and financial security. When they were safely out of the way, a grand trip was arranged for Konstantin LeBlanc Cordas and his five best friends.

  For their doubles. A grand trip, indeed. Cordas Mountain Industries chartered a huge four-engined Domier Super Wal II flying boat. In two expansive cabins, located fore and aft in the hull, were twenty-six people: the industrialists, a few family members, and friends from across Europe. Tremendous publicity was afforded the occasion. The Super Wal would take off from a Swiss lake on a tour from Norwegian fjords southward beyond the Mediterranean to an African safari.

  A huge banquet launched the festive event. The most powerful group of industrial leaders in the world entered the Super Wal with family and friends. Newsmen by the hundreds were on hand to record every moment of the final good-byes, the famous men and women waving to the newsreel cameras. Fireworks flared over the launching dock and two bands played furiously to be heard above the barking roar of four Bavarian Motor Works engines. The Super Wal taxied to the far end of the lake so that it could take off directly into the wind. Conditions were perfect, with a mild breeze and an open water run of at least four miles. As the flying boat began its final turn the music stopped, so everyone could hear clearly the growing thunder of engines going to full power. Faster and faster it rushed across the lake, a great winged wonder about to grasp lift from the air. Faster, faster; a breathless rush and then—

  The explosion began as a searing point of light from the fuel tanks in the wings. In a moment flame lashed outward, and the great quantity of fuel transformed into a searing fireball that covered the tumbling, disintegrating, exploding airliner, its hapless human cargo being incinerated and ground into bloody pulp. The newsreel cameras ground away, recording the horror, capturing the screams and gasps of the onlookers.

  Later, the few scattered parts of flesh and bone either floating on the lake waters, or dredged up from the deep bottom, were identified positively as Konstantin LeBlanc Cordas and his select entourage. Funeral services, speeches, sobbing, and statues rushed to completion slowly wound down the aftereffect. But Cordas was satisfied. Completely. He and his elite group were "dead." Six dead; six alive, but the latter unknown to the world except as Cordas planned the slow leakage of information about their names and their control of staggeringly vast resources. Five men and one woman. The loss of Wilhelmina von Volkman was especially a tragedy to her following. She had sponsored musicians, poets, scientists—young men and women of every walk of life seeking an opportunity to become skilled in their arts and professions. And now she was gone.

  Unknown to all, of course, reborn as Marcia Mason.

  He stared through the thick plate-glass window in the High Tower of the Chateau of Blanchefort, several miles from a second heavily-defended ancient structure, rebuilt within to provide structural strength and add the most modern scientific and technological devices available for world communications. The second great edifice was Rennes-le-Chateau, a virtual duplicate, internally, of Blanchefort. Halvar Griffin had made a rule that the Group of Six, as he had named them, must never be all in the same place at the same time. It was simple enough to communicate by telephone cable and wall speakers; watching lips move and faces going through various expressions was superflous.

  Halvar Griffin missed his wife and children, and wondered how they fared now that their husband and father, none other than Konstantin LeBlanc Cordas, had been sliced and seared in that awful tragedy of the flying boat. But each day Madelon became less real, more ethereal, as did the children, for that was how it must be. They belonged to another life, another time.

  The program to assemble the many elements of international power, despite its success, continued to wind a torturous and at times rocky path. Halvar Griffin had been known in his former life as a financier and industrialist, but at heart, and throughout his days at schools and universities, he had become an extraordinarily gifted evolutionist, a man mixing everything from history and anthropology to the psychological and social sciences into a single frame of reference for what constituted the human race. It was not, despite what the moralists claimed with such shrill vehemence, a single race. It was not true that all men were created equal, or that they thought alike, or yielded to the same desires and dreams, or enjoyed the same opportunities for health and wealth.

  Mankind was a polyglot of fierce and demonizing emotions, a great field of reeds able to be bent by the slightest wind, poisoned by greed, avarice, selfishness, and, above all, that eternal and infernal need for the power to dominate as many other men as possible, no matter what the cost in lives and destruction. The very survival of the race was at stake.

  It was Griffin—and he was slowly disconnecting the final traces of his former self from even his manner of thinking and speaking—who understood that the key to the success they sought as benevolent masters of the planet's future lay in mastering the workings of the social sciences. They must develop the means, through semantics, lust, reward, fear, and every other emotion available, to bring all men to believe that survival and their great
est rewards could come only through this benevolence.

  That was their goal. So long as none of the members of the Group of Six sought open recognition as power brokers, their task, attempted so many times by so many great empires in the past, had every opportunity to succeed. And they had planned well, and so far had executed very well indeed their opening moves to command the attention, then the fear and wonder, of the world. Acquiescence and obedience would follow.

  There is nothing so deeply believed, accepted, feared, and even revered more than what Griffin knew had been a dominating power through all history. The Great Lie. Calculated disinformation could disintegrate powerful armies, suck the energy from national drive, turn millions of people as easily as a shepherd and his dogs drive a flock of sheep. You did not have to prove to the masses what you wished them to believe; you needed only to bring them to a condition of acceptance. Then they would believe in whatever they wished, from sorcerers and witches to gods and goddesses.

  And an alien race of vast scientific, technological, and military superiority, come here to Earth.

  At first the concept seemed ridiculous. Would people really be brought to accept space aliens as real? Griffin laughed at the idea, but his laughter, soon joined by that of his elite group, was one of belief rather than rejection.

  "Think of what people believe," he told the others. "There are spirits in the water, the air, in wheat and temples and lightning and clouds. There are powerful, full-bosomed women who carry dead heroes on winged horses to Valhalla. There are gods who rise from the waters, gods who dwell in the clouds, spirits of trees and bears. Millions of filthy little cats are demonic messengers and servants of Satan. Men turn into werewolves. Vampires are men by day and winged horrors at night. If you lack the wooden stake or the silver bullet, you cannot kill them. The world is flat and you may fall off its edge; millions of people still absolutely believe this is so.