Crimson Skies - Manchurian Gambit

by Mike Lee

  Kahn leaned forward slightly and surveyed the sidewalk below. "You sound like I've got a plan or something, Artemus. I've never even seen this building before."

  "See, this is what I was talking about." Hayes said. "Why don't we get a room here at the Plaza and spend a couple days casing the joint? We don't want to go into this half-cocked."

  The pirate leader eyed Hayes. "Where's all that bravado you had at the farmhouse? You're the one who came all the way from Hong Kong to get this girl out, and now you're getting cold feet? Besides, the Machiavelli can't keep circling LaGuardia airfield claiming engine problems for days on end. At sunup, the airfield will send a tug to bring her in, and then the jig's up." He shook his head. "We go tonight, or not at all." Kahn gave him a wolfish smile. "Relax, Artemus. I have a plan."

  They made their way to the hotel's rooftop elevator, and down through the lobby. Once they were outside, they crossed the icy street and walked slowly down the sidewalk, alongside the Embassy walls. As they passed the gate, Kahn noticed that there were two guards keeping warm inside the guardhouse, their bayonet-tipped rifles close at hand.

  The embassy sat at the corner of Park Avenue and East 48th Street. Kahn led them around the corner, then across 48th, and into a nearby alley. He pointed to a call box a few yards away. "That's the fire box for this corner. Go and pull the lever."

  Hayes eyed him dubiously, but did as he was told. Kahn watched calmly as Artemus picked up the metal bar, broke the little glass pane, and pulled the alarm lever, before scurrying back to the alley.

  Kahn looked up at the embassy. "How long do you figure it'll take the fire department to get here?"

  "On Park Avenue? Five minutes, tops," Hayes said. "But Johnny, there's no fire. When the firemen check out the place, they'll tip off the Japanese that something isn't jake."

  The pirate glanced at Hayes with a slight smile. Kahn reached into his jacket and drew a bulky, black pistol from his coat pocket. He carefully took aim, cocked the hammer...and fired.

  The flare hissed across the street and punched through one of the embassy's second-floor windows. A red glow blazed behind the curtains as the magnesium ignited, then familiar flickers of yellow-orange firelight.

  "There's your fire. " Kahn replied. "Now let's go be good little Manhattan rubberneckers and gawk at the pretty lights for a bit."

  They crossed the street again and waited at the corner. Shouts went up from the building's entrance, and soon the wail of sirens could be heard down Park Avenue. "Where do you think they're keeping the girl?" Kahn asked.

  "It'd have to be someplace they can keep her out of sight." Hayes answered. "There's too many people that move in and out of there. I'd guess she's in the basement."

  Fire engines howled out of the darkness and pulled up in front of the embassy. Already fire and smoke were pouring from several upper-story windows. The guards pulled open the gates, waving to the firefighters. "That's our cue," Kahn said, and headed for the gate.

  As they passed one of the fire engines, Kahn snagged a pair of firemen's helmets and passed one back to Hayes. In the dark, their oilskin coats looked very similar to the ones the firemen themselves wore. The Japanese guards waved them through with the rest, shouting frantically.

  Pandemonium reigned inside the building. Kahn was surprised at the number of late-night workers still present, running and shouting through the grand foyer, clutching boxes or folders of important files.

  Kahn and Hayes shoved their way through and moved to the elevators which, mercifully, were empty. Hayes-scanning the Japanese characters on the lift buttons-quickly sent the elevator down.

  They stepped off the elevator and into a small stone room that smelled of diesel oil and mildew. There was a table in one corner, adjacent to a big steel door that was better suited to a jail cell than an embassy.

  There were four men in the room, talking back and forth in frantic voices. Each wore a Japanese army uniform, Kahn noted, and the most senior man carried a odd, slightly curved sword at his hip. They saw Kahn and Hayes, and the sword-carrying man shouted at them angrily.

  Hayes shouted back in a long string of Japanese. The guards' eyes went wide, and they bolted for the elevator. As they disappeared from sight, Kahn turned to Hayes. "When did you learn Japanese?"

  "What do you think they speak in Asia? Italian?" Hayes ran to the desk. There was a kind of log book sitting there, its pages crammed with dense lines of Japanese script. "Okay...here! They brought in a woman and put her in room 418. That's got to be her."

  The iron door was locked. Kahn rifled the desk, and found the key ring in the top drawer. The doors in the hall beyond were all marked in Japanese. Hayes took the lead, calling out the numbers. "421..420...419...here!"

  The heavy wooden door was locked. None of the keys on the ring fit. "The hell with it," Kahn said, then pulled a .45 automatic from his waistband and shot out the lock.

  The room beyond was little better than a linen closet, with no furniture other than a small chamber pot. A small figure huddled in the far corner, wearing only a torn satin chemise. Her arms and legs were covered with bruises, and when she looked up at the two men her eyes seemed to stare right through them. A bullet hole-Kahn's shot through the lock-was evident in the wall, just above the girl's head.

  "She's in shock," Hayes said grimly. "Can you carry her?"

  Kahn bent and hefted her unresisting form over his shoulder. "Let's go!" he said.

  The two men raced back down the hall. Kahn could see through the open doorway of the elevator room, only a few yards away. Suddenly, the call light on the elevator blinked. He heard the elevator open and a young Japanese officer in a dark blue uniform stepped out, followed by a group of rifle-toting guards.

  The blue-uniformed man took in the room with a single glance-and saw Kahn and Hayes in the corridor beyond. His lean face twisted in anger, and his hand flew to the curved sword at his side. He drew the weapon in a fluid blur, light flashing off the blade. The soldier pointed the sword at Kahn and roared an order to the guards, who reached for their weapons.

  Kahn didn't understand the officer's words, but the meaning was perfectly clear.

  Chapter Five: Caught in the Act

  The soldiers swept around the Japanese officer like an angry tide, leveling their bayonet-tipped rifles. The metallic sound of rifle-bolts cycling echoed menacingly in the normally quiet hallway.

  Jonathan Kahn, still carrying the unconscious daughter of a Chinese diplomat over his left shoulder, roared like an angry bull and charged right at them, blasting away with the .45 in his right hand.

  Three of the soldiers fell, knocked from their feet by the heavy slugs, and the rest opened fire, spending shots wildly. Bullets cracked and whined down the corridor as they ricocheted off the concrete walls in the elevator room. Two more of the soldiers fell, possibly struck by their own bullets; another shot flattened against the steel fireman's helmet Kahn wore and knocked it from his head.

  Kahn fired twice more and the remaining troops panicked, bolting for the relative safety of the elevator car, forcing their officer back along with them.

  Kahn staggered into the room, followed closely by Hayes. His head felt like it had been kicked by a mule. There wasn't any other way out of the room, and it would only take a few moments before the troops got their courage back and tried again.

  "Now what?" Hayes asked shakily. Blood flowed down his cheek from a cut above his eye.

  A glint of metal on a dead guard caught Kahn's eye. He put away the pistol and crouched, plucking out a small, dark cylinder.

  "Tell those goons to throw out their weapons and come out with their hands up or I'm throwing in a grenade," he said, hefting the small bomb in his hand.

  Hayes blurted out an order in Japanese. Moments later, the remaining soldiers slid their rifles out onto the floor and emerged one at a time, their hands held high.

  The Japanese officer came last, stalking into the room like an angry panther, sword in hand. He glared def
iantly at Kahn. "You won't escape, Mr. Kahn," he said in flawless, unaccented English. "There are a dozen more men waiting in the lobby. Surrender now and I promise you a quick death."

  "I think I'll hold out for a better offer," the pirate replied dryly, motioning Hayes towards the elevator. They circled around the guards and stepped into the car. Hayes grabbed the car's operating lever.

  As the doors closed, the officer fixed them with a malevolent stare. "We will meet again, Genghis Kahn," he hissed.

  Kahn glanced conspiratorially at Hayes. "He doesn't know me very well, does he?" The pirate pulled the pin on the grenade and tossed it into the officer's face as the elevator doors slid shut.

  Hayes rolled his eyes. "Johnny, you big oaf, their grenades don't work like ours. The pin's just a safety-you have to knock the end against something to strike the fuse!"

  "Now you tell me," Kahn replied sourly. "Don't just stand there...get this crate moving!"

  "He said there's a dozen men waiting in the lobby," Hayes protested.

  "Who said we're going to the lobby?" Kahn pushed Hayes aside and grabbed the lever. The car started to move. "We're heading for the roof."

  "The roof?" Hayes echoed. "The roof is probably on fire right about now."

  "If we're lucky," Kahn agreed. "Keep your fingers crossed."

  The air grew steadily hotter as the elevator rose towards the roof. Smoke seeped through the ventilators. Hayes stared worriedly at Kahn, but the pirate simply shrugged.

  It seemed like an eternity before the car lurched to a stop. The doors opened, letting in a furnace-like blast of air, and Kahn dashed out into a scene straight from hell.

  Flames writhed and roared from the embassy's fourth-floor windows and sent cyclones of heat and smoke curling up over the edges of the roof, washing back and forth like angry tides with every shift of the wind. Hayes snatched a handkerchief from his jacket and pressed it to his face; Kahn narrowed his eyes, coughing harshly, and tried to make out the embassy's taxipad.

  "Find some way to jam those doors," he shouted to Hayes, and then staggered towards the center of the roof.

  He couldn't find the taxipad in the smoke and the darkness, so he got as close to the center of the roof as he could and set the girl down. Kahn pulled the flare gun from his overcoat pocket and broke the pistol open to remove the spent shell inside. There were two spares in his left pocket; he quickly reloaded the gun.

  Squinting through the dense smoke, he lifted the gun high and fired. A flare hissed up and vanished through the swirling haze; a moment later, there was a muffled report as the flare ignited.

  Kahn pulled off the heavy overcoat. It was getting harder and harder to draw breath. Waves of heat beat at his face and hands. He wondered how long it would take for the Japanese officer to figure out where they'd gone, and whether he'd even bother to come after them; another few minutes and the fire would probably do his dirty work for him.

  The smoke was getting thicker. Hayes ran over and joined him, shaking his head. "No way to jam the doors," he said, his voice muffled by the handkerchief. "What do we do now, jump?"

  "No," Kahn answered. "We fly."

  As if on cue, a loud drone cut through the roaring of the flames and an autogyro appeared out of the smoke, flying low and slow over the building. The autogyro, emblazoned with the insignia of the New York Fire Department, swept past and pulled into a sharp turn. A moment later it was bouncing across the rooftop towards them, its brakes squealing as it slowed to a stop a few yards away.

  The autogyro was stripped down and fitted out for rescue work, little more than a frame, engine, rotor, and pusher prop, supporting a pilot and a passenger seat, plus a stretcher running lengthwise along each side of the vehicle. The fireman waved, and Kahn picked up the delegate's daughter and rushed her over to one of the stretcher mounts.

  "Saw your flare and got here as fast as I could," the pilot yelled over the sound of the engine.

  "You're a real lifesaver," Kahn replied. He finished strapping the girl down and pulled out his pistol. "Now get out of here."

  The fireman's jaw dropped. "Are you nuts?" he exclaimed. "The fire-"

  A bullet ricocheted off the autogyro's frame, then another. The fireman leapt from his seat, and Kahn looked back to see the officer he'd left in the basement leading more troops from the elevator onto the roof.

  Hayes was less than ten yards away, pistol in hand, firing slowly and deliberately at the oncoming troops. Kahn leapt into the pilot's seat and fired a few wild shots of his own. "Artemus!" he shouted. "Let's go!"

  The pilot looked back and caught Kahn's eye, then fired another careful shot in the direction of the enemy officer. Instantly the soldiers fired back in a ragged volley and Hayes cried out as he fell to his knees, one hand pressed to his gut.

  "Hayes!" Kahn cried. He fired another shot at the oncoming troops, and the pistol's slide locked back, its clip empty. "Hang on!"

  "No!" Hayes shouted, waving him away with a blood-slicked hand. "Get the hell out of here! His soot-smeared face contorted in pain. "Just take the girl to Hawai'i, Kahn. Do that and you and I are square. Go!"

  Another bullet zipped past Kahn's head, smashing into the autogyro. Sooner or later, he realized, they'd hit the engine...or something more vital.

  Hayes crumpled onto his side, gamely raising his pistol and thumbing back the hammer as the Japanese troops drew nearer.

  Cursing savagely, Kahn released the brake and turned the rescue bird around, then opened the throttle and didn't look back.

  He could just make out the zeppelins against the overcast sky, their silvery undersides lit from below by the lights of La Guardia Airfield. He picked out the Machiavelli easily-a prominent red cross had been hastily painted on her flank.

  As far as the Empire State knew, the airship was on a mission of mercy, en route to deliver a load of medical supplies up north, into what was once Canada. Her gun mounts were covered with canvas tarps, disguising her true nature from distant observers, but the illusion wouldn't hold up to a daylight inspection.

  Kahn adjusted a knob on the autogyro's radio and managed to raise the airship, warning them to get the "flycatcher" ready.

  Kahn circled the huge airship twice before he saw the lights on the dorsal taxipad flicker to life. He brought the autogyro around, approaching the zeppelin from the bow and cutting the throttle until his airspeed was eighteen miles per hour, just above stall speed.

  He coasted down two-thirds the length of the zeppelin-more than seven hundred feet-gradually losing altitude until his wheels nearly scraped the airship's skin.

  The taxipad was a wooden platform ten feet square, the aft end of which was strung with a thickly-woven cargo net. The trick to landing was to bring the wheels down right at the edge of the pad and lean on the brakes hard to kill as much momentum as possible before the autogyro hit the flycatcher.

  The light craft touched the wooden platform, bounced slightly, and plunged into the net's embrace with a bone-rattling jar. The pirate cut the rear engine at once, and before he had unbuckled his restraints the Machiavelli's rigging crew were already swarming over the pad, lashing the autogyro down and preparing to lower the little bird down into the ship's small craft hangar. Kahn quickly gave instructions to carry the girl to the ship's infirmary, then left the riggers and made his way to the airship's bridge.

  The Machiavelli had once upon a time been the flagship of the Utah Aerial Navy, and her layout and design had more in common with oceangoing warships than her cargo-hauling kin. Unlike civilian airships, her bridge was plated in steel armor and located inside the ship's hull, with plexiglass viewports looking forward from the zeppelin's bow.

  The bridge was bathed in the red glow of battle lanterns to preserve the crew's night vision, and the men at the helm and trim controls were already wearing flak vests and helmets when Kahn stepped through the bridge's after hatchway. "Pour on the coal, Dugan!" he called out. "Turn us west and head for the nearest cloudbank. I want to be in the ISA b
efore dawn."

  "Deadeye" Dugan, the ship's captain, nodded curtly and barked orders to the bridge crew. Tall and gray-haired, the former ISA airship commander had been cashiered when he was badly disfigured in a refueling mishap. The left side of his face was a mass of scar tissue, surrounding a glass eye that glittered like a piece of jade. "All engines ahead full," he called. "Helm, come to course two-seven-zero."

  A map table dominated the center of the bridge, where a detailed map of New York was currently displayed. Holders lining three of the table's four sides were jammed with dozens of additional maps; Kahn rifled through them as Hetty appeared on the bridge.

  "Thanks for letting me know you'd gotten back," she said, eyeing him carefully. "You look like you've been rolling around in a campfire. How did it go?"

  "Well enough," Kahn muttered. "The girl's in the infirmary."

  "Hayes is with her?"

  "No," he replied. "He caught a bullet just as we were about to pull out."

  Hetty's eyes went wide. "No kidding? Well, thank God for small favors," she said. "This little 'favor' would have been the end of us. What do you want to with the girl?"

  "We're taking her to Hawai'i, same as before," Kahn said flatly. "Nothing's changed."

  Hetty was dumbfounded. "Have you lost your marbles? Hayes is dead."

  "But the debt remains," Khan replied, looking her in the eye. "And now this is the only way I can even the score."

  "What the hell are you talking about?" Hetty cried. "You owe money to half the people on this continent! You owed the Purple Gang, and now you owe big money to Giovanni DeCarlo, but you've never lost any sleep over that!

  "And what about what you owe us," she continued, gesturing angrily, "your crew, the ones who are going to go down in flames because of some damn fool favor you owe to a dead man?"

  Kahn's face went white with rage. He came around the map table slowly, his eyes locked on Hetty, who planted her hands on her hips and stood her ground, ready for a fight.