Indiana Jones and tyhe Sky Pirates

by Martin Caidin

  He turned to another officer he recognized as the chief of communications for the local military force. "You the one who keeps contact with Colonel Henshaw?"

  "Uh, yes, sir."

  "Well, I'm getting on that plane in a moment. You call the colonel immediately and tell him you saw us taking off. Keep him on the phone until you see our wheels leave the ground, got it?"

  "Sir, it's the middle of the night—"

  "Captain, you want to live to a ripe old age?"

  "Why, of course, but I—"

  "Call him! Besides, he's an early riser. Move!"

  Indy didn't wait to see what the captain did. He took off on a dead run for the Ford where Gale was holding open the rear cabin door. The moment Indy was inside the cabin Gale slammed it shut and threw the lock. Will was looking back into the cabin from the cockpit, and Indy made a fist and pumped his hand up and down in the air. Cromwell nodded and a moment later his hand was shoving three throttles forward to their stops. The three Pratt & Whitney engines howled their now-familiar song, and in less than ten seconds the earth began falling away beneath them.

  19

  They climbed slowly and steadily, in darkness broken only by isolated points of light from a ranch or small town far below. Those began to disappear beneath thickening clouds they estimated at four thousand feet. Cromwell and Foulois kept the Ford in its climb toward Puerto de Luna to the southeast. The town stood along the banks of the Pecos River. More important, it lay between Las Vegas and Roswell, and their course would take them along a line just west of Clovis and Portales on the New Mexico-Texas border. Puerto de Luna also had a radio station that broadcast through the night and this gave the pilots a navigational backup. They were able to tune to the station frequency at Puerto de Luna to the south, switch to an all-night station broadcast from Albuquerque to the west, and by drawing lines on their charts with headings and positions from the stations, maintain a running check on their progress. If Chino had figured the terrain and the weather as well as they hoped, the airship, which must stay away from towering thunderstorms, would follow the best route to get into position for its long flight eastward. And that would be over the Valley of Fire, on to Bitter Lake just north of Roswell and then, at extreme altitude, they needed only to maintain an east-northeast heading. By now Indy knew enough of homing in to commercial broadcast stations to understand that at the great height the airship would fly, they would be able to use the homing signals from one town to the next on a crude but effective radio highway in the sky.

  Then he put that all aside. Cromwell called on the intercom. "Better suit up, chaps. It's going to get dreadfully cold a lot faster than you think. When you're into your cold-weather gear, each of you check the other. And make absolutely certain that when the temperature gets down below zero, which it will do distressingly soon, never touch any metal with your bare hands. If you do, you'll leave your skin behind."

  "Got it, Will. What about you two?"

  "I'll stay on the controls. As soon as the young lady is in her gear, send her forward. Frenchy can leave his seat then to get suited up while Gale takes right seat. When Frenchy comes back he'll take his seat, Gale will take mine, and I'll suit up. Be sure you people check us out. One mistake where we're going can be very costly."

  "Got it," Indy confirmed. He turned to Gale. "You hear all that?"

  "Yes. Let's do it." She chuckled. "It's nice having two gentlemen at the same time helping me get dressed. I feel positively risque."

  "For a grizzly, maybe," Chino told her. Ten minutes later she was ready to agree with him. In a heavy full-body flight suit of fleece-lined leather, thick boots, leather helmet and goggles, and heavy gloves, she felt like an overstuffed bear.

  "I can barely walk in all this stuff," she complained.

  "So waddle," Indy told her.

  She shuffled forward. Moments later Foulois came back into the cabin, and the three men assisted one another into their thick and clumsy altitude gear. Each checked the equipment of the others, and Foulois returned to the cockpit, sending Cromwell back. When Gale returned, they donned oxygen masks, the life-giving oxygen fed from portable bottles slung about their shoulder to their waist, the straps modified Sam Browne dress belts.

  "Each tank is good for two hours," Indy told Gale and Chino. "You've got to be ready to switch tanks at least ten minutes before that time. Will insists that whenever you switch tanks, one other person must be with you. If any one of us messes up with the tank valves or fastenings and we don't get oxygen from the tanks, at our top altitude we won't have thirty seconds of consciousness to correct any mistakes. But if you have somebody with you, they can get the air flowing right away."

  Chino nodded. "With all this noise, engines and the wind, how do we talk to each odier?"

  "These masks are the latest army issue. They've got radio intercom. Since it's real short range, like just inside the plane," Indy related what he'd been taught by Henshaw, "the system ought to work real well. However," he warned, "if one of us calls someone else and there's no answer, get to that person immediately. They may be out of air or a valve has backed off. Five minutes without air up high is a death sentence."

  Everything worked perfectly, although physical movement was clumsy and slow in their heavy gear and the increasing cold. They looked back and to the northwest. What had been darkness was now a sky split with almost constant lightning exploding from cloud to cloud in the still-building thunderstorms. Huge thunderheads flashed like beacons from within.

  "God, I'm glad we're not in that," Gale remarked. "It could tear us to pieces."

  "Thanks," Chino said with obvious sarcasm.

  Indy clapped him on the shoulder. "We won't get anywhere near that," he reassured the big Indian. "Joe, it's going to be daylight soon. We'd better check out the guns."

  The Ford had been well prepared for the planned encounter with the airship. The inner-wing baggage compartments, modified to hold one machine gun each, with a heavy load of ammunition, gave Cromwell and Foulois powerful forward-firing effect. Both men were experienced combat pilots, and that experience was invaluable now.

  Beneath the wings, in place of the external fuel tanks, the army had installed rocket-launching pods. The outer casing was the same size and connections as the fuel tanks, but the fuel lines had been replaced with electrical connections to fire the rockets. At the front end of each tank, the metal structure had been replaced with multi-layered thick canvas, heavily doped for stiffness. Before the solid-fuel rocket motors would ignite, a small charge would blow apart both the frangible nose cone and the aft covering of the pod, so that the rockets would be free to fire forward without interference, and the rocket flame would shoot rearwards from the pod without any backlash from the rear covers. Each pod held three rockets, much advanced from those Foulois and Cromwell had fired in combat in the war twelve years earlier, Foulois from his fighter plane with which he attacked German observation balloons, and Cromwell in his diving attacks against German submarines.

  But the warhead of each rocket was the hoped-for key to the success they sought against their huge adversary. The full explosive charge had been removed from each warhead, replaced with a smaller charge about which white phosphorous incendiary material had been packed. To add to the incendiary effect, the metal casing of the warhead was of magnesium. Both materials, white phosphorous and magnesium, would burn through fabric and metal with equal ease, and the magnesium particles, once ignited, would continue to burn even under water.

  These were the keys with which Indy hoped his team in the Ford would unlock the security of the airship, opening up the huge structure like a hot knife slicing through soft butter.

  It wouldn't be quite that simple. They would be fighting the cold, and the absolutely-no-mistakes procedures with their oxygen systems. Hopefully, they'd get a visual on the airship that was their prey.

  There were so many unknowns! Indy had made certain to keep his serious reservations to himself. He'd listened enough time
s to the pilots to realize they were sailing into largely uncharted waters with the Ford Trimotor. At this altitude there simply was no way to know how the thick-winged machine would handle. Rarefied air brought on strange characteristics to aircraft. Despite the superb ability of Cromwell and Foulois, the three people in the cabin who would be fending off a possible attack from those superfast jet-powered discs had all the experience with machine guns that a dog might have riding a motorcycle.

  Their one real advantage was that Indy, Gale, and Chino were all highly experienced at shooting and hunting. The basics wouldn't change. You always led your target with your aim to bring your bullet into a block of space at the same time your target got there.

  Foulois had spent time with Indy on the matter of firing the machine guns. "In the air, you have tremendous wind. That affects your fire, no? Of course, yes. The path of your bullets is affected by the wind. They will curve away, flying with the wind. Even a machine gun can waste all its ammunition because of the wind. But you will have incendiary rounds, my friend. Every fourth round will be incendiary, so it will be a bright, bright glow in the air as the bullets fly away from you."

  "I know," Indy said quietly.

  "Aha! Perhaps you have experience with such matters?"

  "Belgian Army. Africa, France," Indy said tightly. "Yes, some experience."

  "Voila! Then I do not need to tell you to fire in short bursts." Foulois grasped an imaginary weapon and his arms shook as if he were feeling the recoil of a machine gun. "No firing like you are watering your lawn. No hosing away your ammunition, for it is limited. And even the Belgians knew not to fire too steadily for too long so they would not burn out the barrels of their weapons, no?"

  "Yes."

  "One more thing, my fine professor. Never forget your ammunition supply is limited. Once it is gone," Foulois shrugged, "it gets very quiet when you squeeze the trigger."

  "My God, it's cold...." Gale Parker shivered beneath her heavy flight garments. "It's already well below zero.... How much worse can this get?"

  Indy shrugged, a movement barely visible in his own heavy outfit. "Count on forty or fifty below zero. That's what Henshaw told me. That's why they used special lubricants on our equipment. Regular grease or oil becomes sludge."

  Cromwell broke in through the intercom. "Move around back there, you three," he told them. "Keep moving as much as you can. Flex your toes in your boots. Beat your hands together. Do whatever you need to keep your blood flowing. Now you know why the Eskimo has so much blubber on his body. Miss Parker, don't you wish you were fat and blubbery?"

  "If... if it would make me warmer," she said, shivering, "yes!"

  Indy looked at Gale and Chino. "We're getting up there. We could find our friends at any moment now." He glanced through a cabin window. "We're so high it already seems like we've almost left the world." He shook off the sudden introspection. "Let's check the weapons."

  "Wait a moment." Indy turned. Chino continued, "Look, I've been checking the gun positions. You're working the single gun in the belly hatch, right?"

  Indy nodded. "That was a last-minute decision. Henshaw's people installed a ball socket mount and cross-bracing. If one of those discs comes up at us, or we're right over the airship, that position could be critical."

  "I agree, Indy. But the flooring isn't the strongest. You figure my weight, or even yours. I've been pushing down on the flooring," Chino explained. "It yields. And the cold is going to make things brittle. I suggest we put Gale in that position. Secure her with webbing clips to the seat legs so that if anything goes wrong, she'll still be safe."

  Indy accepted Chino's observations. Valid, realistic. "Anything else?"

  "Yes, there is. You told me to use that open hatch just behind the cockpit. The same ball socket system as we have with the belly gun. But, Indy, I think it would be better if you were closer to the cockpit. We could lose intercom or have some other problems and the pilots would be right next to you if they needed you. I can take the main position in the back, and—"

  "If you ladies would like to interrupt your sewing bee for a moment," Cromwell's voice broke in, impatient with all the talking, "you're five minutes past your oxygen checks. Get with it, mates!"

  Indy and Chino nodded to one another, went through their systems, exchanged near-empty bottles for full tanks, and did the same for Gale.

  "Gentlemen, I thought you'd like to know we're at twenty-three thousand," Cromwell said to them by intercom. "And, blimey, it's already twenty below zero and going down."

  Chino shook his head in mock disbelief. "If the old chiefs could see me now," he said in wonder. "The closer we get to the sun, the colder it gets. They would believe the world was mad."

  They were near the end of lighthearted exchanges. It was too cold, and getting colder all the time as the Ford pounded upward, the three engines hammering out full power in the steady climb. Even the slightest flaw in the cabin that permitted an inflow of air was like a knife striking a body. The moment belied their senses. The thunderstorms were now distant battlements, first red, then orange, and now blinding white as the sun rose higher. The sky directly above them was darkening strangely to a deeper and deeper purple, and the view all around them was of a steel blue sky, startlingly clear, extending to a horizon that seemed a thousand miles away.

  They were shockingly alone, a tiny metal creature throbbing painfully upward. Indy checked the forward machine gun for the fourth time, looking for parts that may have frozen solid. He turned to see Chino weaving on the cabin floor, legs spread apart, one hand gripping a seat back.

  "Chino!" Indy called sharply.

  "Uh, hear you. Who... what... world shaking... can see bright stars..." Chino's voice came over faltering and wavering.

  "Get to that bleedin' Indian now!" Cromwell shouted, his voice crackling in their earphones. "He's losing oxygen! Do it quick!" Indy moved backward, and bent down to check Chino's oxygen gauge. He had almost a full tank. Then Indy saw the problem just as Chino began to sag. He had unknowingly brushed against the valve wheel and reduced his oxygen flow. He was already into the first stages of hypoxia. Oxygen starvation was insidious. Indy turned the valve to full on and grasped Chino.

  "Speak to me," Indy snapped. "Count to ten, now."

  "Uh, I do, two, four, no..." He shook his head. Indy looked into his eyes. The dim glaze was disappearing. That quickly, he was out of it. "Uh, all right, thanks, Indy—"

  "Count!"

  Chino rattled off the numbers perfectly. Indy patted him on the arm. "Check your gun. I want a call every five minutes. That goes for you too, Gale."

  "I'm having trouble seeing, Indy," she said, pain in her voice.

  He checked her oxygen. Everything was fine, including the mask fit. Then he saw what he'd missed. "Your goggles. You've got to keep them on. Your eyes are tearing, and the tears are freezing as fast as they come out on your cheeks. Gale, here—" He pulled her goggles over her eyes. "Keep these in place. You can freeze your eyeballs up here."

  "God, it hurts. It's all right." She fended off his arm. "I'll be fine."

  Cromwell and Foulois were better protected against the cold in the cockpit, where heated air was blasting from bleed manifolds off the nose engine, blowing the hot air across their feet. They could have had more heat within the airplane from wing engine manifolds, but both pilots had insisted the heat from those sources must go to the rocket canisters and the wing guns.

  "Twenty-eight thousand," Foulois called back from the cockpit. "We're picking up ice."

  He wasn't wasting words. It took only a glance to see frost collecting on the engine-mount struts, icing up the cabin windows and external control cables, all blasted by the equal of a screaming Antarctic storm.

  In the cabin Indy, Gale, and Chino worked desperately to keep their bodies warm, beating their hands together, swinging their arms, working toes in their boots. Each time they checked their weapons they had to expose parts of their bodies to the howling gale. The outside temper
ature was down to fifty-four degrees below zero. The Ford was a block of ice still pushing its way upward.

  "Twenty-nine thousand," Cromwell announced. His voice seemed pained. "Check your oxygen, everybody. Call in when you've done that with your gauge readings."

  They stumbled over the words but followed Cromwell's orders.

  "Controls stiffening," Foulois said.

  "Amazing how these engines keep running," Cromwell murmured. "The temps are down in the basement."

  Chino's voice came into their reports. "We do not need to fly higher," he said.

  "W-why n-not?" stammered Gale.

  "Pilots, to our left, a few, maybe two or three thousand feet lower," Chino said carefully. "There it is."

  They all looked to their left and slightly below. There was the huge dirigible, reflecting sunlight like a great beacon in the sky.

  "Thank the saints they're below us," Cromwell said stiffly. "I don't think the old girl had much left in her. Leveling off, Rene. Gently, gently... No, no, keep full power on. We'll need everything we can get. Indy, you with me?"

  "Y-yes. Go ahead."

  "We've got company, laddie. Look behind and just below the zep. You see what I mean?"

  "Uh... I don't... Got them, Will." Indy had seen sudden bright reflections.

  "There's three of them," Cromwell said. "Count on them coming in for a visit."

  "Agreed. Gale, Joe... your guns. Confirm."

  "In position. Strapped and hooked up. Oxygen content seventy percent. Valve full on." Gale was wisely talking in staccato bursts.

  "I am with you," Chino called.

  "What's your tank showing?" Indy demanded.

  "Sixty-five percent. Indy?"

  "Go."

  "It is cold out here." Chino's head and shoulders were exposed to the wind blast down the fuselage.

  "It'll be warmer in a few moments, bucko," Cromwell told Chino. Then: "Indy, you still have them in sight?"