Crosswind
Page 11
“Oh.” Winch blushed. “I didn’t say anything untoward, did I?”
“You mentioned a Jesca…”
He winced. “That’s the mayor-general’s niece. She’s our person to contact.”
“Hmm.” Jesca’s eyes narrowed. “So he has you off chasing some mystery woman, does he?”
Best not to delve into this subject. “Did I say anything…else?”
“With the exception of the foul names you called our dear mayor-general…”
Winch groaned, and Lysanne laughed softly. The sound cheered Winch more than anything. He kissed her. He wanted nothing more than to stay here and kiss her, all day if possible.
An aeroplane engine buzzed overhead.
Winch lay back his head on the pillow. “I have to do this, don’t I?”
Lysanne sighed. “I wish it could be someone else. But I trust Cope to protect you.”
Well, now. He needed a protector? As in, Cope would be a better man for the job? Winch reached for his glasses on the bedside table. “I’ll see what I can do.”
• • •
Cope was waiting for them both at the aerodrome, in the shadows of one of the smaller hangars. Mayor-General Keysor and Miss Plank stood with him. No one else was in sight. Cope had on his thin blue sweater and brown work trousers. Winch had opted for a similar sweater, only green, with identical work pants—Cope had said this would give them more the look of aeromen.
Winch craned his neck as a silver dirigible angled skyward, its engines buzzing loudly overhead. A pair of teratorns glided by, shrieking at the bulbous interloper in their skies. The massive avians flapped their wings and cast huge shadows with their 30-foot wingspans.
As he and Lysanne approached the knot at the hangar’s entrance, Winch noticed Cope’s two-seated Buzzard had undergone a refit. He couldn’t say he liked the dull tan covering every inch of the fuselage.
Cope scowled. “I’m not partial to the paint scheme, so don’t ask.”
Winch adjusted the canvas knapsack’s leather strap slung over one shoulder. “I assume this is a disguise?”
Keysor cleared his throat. “Cope does not fly down the south end of the valley much, but enough Trestleway eyes have seen his biplane that they would instantly recognize the black and yellow.”
Cope snorted. He kicked his own knapsack soundly. “I think you should have paid a mite more attention to our own charade. Fake papers are one thing…”
“They will pass inspection,” Miss Plank said firmly.
That cut Cope off. But Winch finished the words he was sure to come. “Aren’t you concerned that Trestleway left someone here to report on us?”
Keysor nodded. “I am. But again, the Perch Advocate has proved its worth. Miss Plank?”
She produced a copy of yesterday’s newspaper. “Page three. Second column. ‘Local pilot Copernicus Sark recently departed our city on a three-day expedition south by southwest to the Megunticook coast. He was accompanied by his brother, the Advocate’s own Winchell Sark.’”
Winch made a face. More lies. It made for a fragile house of cards. He struggled for a way to put his thoughts into speech. As usual, Cope beat him to the delivery.
“Lunk-headed, if you ask me.”
Keysor ignored him. He turned his attention to Winch. “I see you brought company. I don’t remember that as part of the terms.”
“The terms are that my wife is my equal partner in this.” Winch held Lysanne’s hand. “I don’t expect to lie to her about this or anything else.”
Keysor frowned. “I don’t like it. But I assume she knows the value of secrecy?”
“She does.” Lysanne’s eyes narrowed in a look usually reserved for Winch when he’d inserted his shoe squarely in his mouth. “And she does not prefer people using her husband for their dirty work, running off to retrieve someone else’s damsel in distress.”
“Don’t think of it as dirty, Mrs. Sark.” Keysor smiled. “Think of it as a valuable service to the city-state.”
“It’s best not to think about it much at all, Lysanne.” Cope had a silver bottle in hand. Steam rose out of its mouth it in the morning air. He took a swig and grinned. “Coffee?”
“No, thanks.” Lysanne turned Winch toward her. “Be careful. And pray unceasingly.”
Winch nodded. “I will.”
Lysanne kissed him hard. For a second Winch was embarrassed, standing there with her, in front of the others. After that second, he stopped caring. He dropped onto the tarmac the knapsack he’d been carrying.
Cope whistled. “When you two lovebirds are quite done, we have a plane to catch.”
Winch gave Lysanne a hug. She held him tight.
Keysor gestured. Miss Plank stepped forward and handed Winch a small pouch. He turned it over in his hands. It was sealed with a single button and loop of string.
“You will need this to help you locate Jesca,” Keysor said. “There is a bookshop in Trestleway—the owner’s name and address are written on a slip of paper in the pouch. Read and memorize his name and address.”
Cope made a face. “And then what?”
“Burn the paper.”
Winch and Cope shared a look. “What else is in there?”
“Please do not open it until you’re airborne. We’ve already breached enough security as it is.” Keysor extended his hand. “You’d best be going. Good luck, and may Nature’s fortune shine upon you.”
Winch shook his hand. Cope followed suit.
They clambered aboard the biplane. Winch found everything in the cockpit about the same as it had been the last time they’d flown together—just Monday, he recollected. He slipped on the flight jacket.
“Contact!” Cope hollered. The engine roared to life. Winch was surprised Cope didn’t bounce up and down in the seat. He did twirl the talisman once around his finger after he rubbed it.
As the plane hurtled down the runway, Winch ignored his fear and watched Lysanne out the window. She waved her arm high. Winch yanked the canopy back and stuck his hand out into the wind as the Buzzard leapt off the runway.
He wanted his last view of her to remain forever.
• • •
Most of Winch’s aerial excursions had been north or west. Now, as they soared through the valley with the Sawteeth mountains framing their view, he gazed in awe at the green plains and verdant forests below.
Mastodon herds were everywhere, their bodies tufts of brown and ochre among the brush. Cope’s aeroplane overflew several small hamlets, like the Proctor-Soong fuel depot along the Ridge Road, but Winch didn’t pay much attention to the individual settlements until they overflew Fort DeSmet. The town of about four thousand souls was almost completely enclosed in a square of four thick stone walls. The ancient site had been rebuilt many times, and Winch squinted for a better look at the modern town laid out with precision in a grid of streets and squares.
There were few aerocraft around, but Cope did waggle his wings at a squad of three twin-engine passenger planes bearing Megunticook Aero markings. Then, as they went around one bend in the valley, veering to the southwest, Cope rapped on the side of the cockpit. “Skull Cliff.”
The cliff was a jagged slab of white on the otherwise greys, browns, and greens of the mountains. He marveled at the sheer drop of nearly two thousand feet to the massive and ancient slag pile on the valley floor. “They say nearly four hundred people were buried when it collapsed on the village below,” Cope said.
“When?”
“Five centuries ago.”
“Did they ever find anyone?”
“Plenty! How do you think it got its name? Now they have a makeshift cemetery for some of the remains.”
“Ah. Right.” Winch peered down but couldn’t make out any memorial stones.
“Say, check out that pouch, will you?”
Winch nodded, even though Cope couldn’t see him. He’d been hesitant to open it—why, he couldn’t say. His glasses fogged up. He rubbed them clean and then unwound the loop
of string from around the button. The contents dumped into his lap.
There was the slip of paper Keysor had mentioned—and something else. Winch picked up the long, curled punch-tape. “Well, that’s interesting.”
“Do we have a name and location?”
“Yes.” Winch peered at the paper. “Ah, looks like Oneyear Hines, Seventy-Seven Joyce Lane.”
“Oneyear?”
“That’s what it says.”
“Huh. Odd name. Anything else?”
“There’s a punch-tape.”
“Huh. What’s that?”
“You know, it’s the same as the tapes we use at the Advocate to feed stories into the printing press,” Winch said. “The printers run it through the machine, triggering the type and printing the text onto the broadsheet.”
“Sounds thrilling.” Cope grinned over his shoulders. “So what good does that do us?”
“Well…” Winch scratched his beard. “Perhaps this Mr. Hines can tell us.”
“You are the brains on this, dear brother.”
“What does that make you?”
Cope laughed. “The looks, muscle, guns, flying, and skirt-chasing, of course”?
Winch shook his head. He turned back and craned his neck for another look at Skull Cliff. Perhaps he could still dig out his camera in time…
That was when he saw the black silhouette dip beneath the clouds.
“Cope!”
“Are we being followed?”
Winch nodded. Then he remembered Cope could not see him. “Looks like a biplane—maybe five miles back? How did you know?”
“I had a notion. That, and I thought I saw something peculiar when we made that last heading change.” Cope sounded perturbed but not afraid.
Winch had a feeling he relished a challenge such as this. He prayed for safety.
He wasn’t sure whether to expect some kind of outlandish aerial maneuver from Cope, or perhaps some effort to signal for help from below. But Cope simply flew straight on, without changing either his course or speed. “Ah, Cope?”
“Yes?”
“Aren’t you going to…?”
“To what?”
“I don’t know.” Winch tried to keep the irritation from his voice. It didn’t work. “Perhaps try to escape?”
“That was in my thinkin.’ Would you just be patient?” Cope turned and grinned. “Trust me.”
Winch blew out a breath that fogged up the side of the cockpit. He wiped off a patch with a squealing swipe of his hand on the glass. The plane was still behind them. Winch couldn’t make out any markings, nor could he see anything distinguishing about the biplane, save that it bore no paint scheme other than the drab factory finish.
“Winch, how far does he look?”
“You would ask that. Ah…maybe five miles?”
“The same as when you first saw him, or closer?”
“Ah…” Winch peered through his glasses. “Skies above, Cope, I can’t tell for certain.”
“Don’t worry. Look. Down by your left knee—there should be a thick, braided wire with a rubber loop. See it?”
Winch scoured the cockpit. His rucksack, his boots…suddenly he turned hard right and his seat swiveled around. Levers behind him—ah! “Found it.”
“Good. Wait for my signal.”
“To do what?”
“Never ruin a good surprise.”
Cope kept the plane flying steady on, but something felt off to Winch. He watched the mountaintops—they seemed to rise. They must be descending, albeit at an injured diprotodon’s pace. A teratorn swerved suddenly to avoid them, its huge wings flapping alarmingly close.
Their pursuer was now quite a bit closer. “I think he’s decided to down us, Cope.”
“Wondered when he’d make his play. All right, stay steady.” The tension in Cope’s voice had Winch thoroughly distressed. All he could do was hope Cope knew what he was doing.
The pursuing plane rapidly closed on them. It was near enough that Winch could see the tiny fuzzy disc that was the whirling prop. Then he spotted twin flashes of light. The thunder crack of gunfire reached his ears soon thereafter. “Cope!”
“Heard it, thank you!” Cope did not change speed.
“By the Allfather, Cope! I think we’ve played him on well enough…”
“Now! Pull the loop!”
Winch immediately snapped his mouth shut and yanked on the loop. Somewhere below and behind him, he heard a muffled clunk in the fuselage of the aeroplane. A tremendous, bright red cloud billowed forth from under the Buzzard’s tail.
Up front, Cope whooped. Winch’s stomach lurched as the plane suddenly dropped. The wings angled sharply down and to the left as they shed altitude faster than Winch’s sons shed their vests after school. He pressed his hands against the fuselage and did his utmost not to be terrified—or to throw up.
“We’ll see how he likes flying through that fog!” Cope laughed. He leveled out the plane so close to the treetops that Winch could see their shadow wiggle and shimmy across the forest. The pursuing biplane soared on, its front half coated in red. It weaved back in forth, evidencing distress.
“What in the blue skies was that?” Winch hollered.
“A little something I borrowed from the Hunt-Hawes factory. Mrs. Hawes likes to improve upon things, you see…” Cope paused as he threw the plane into a sudden right turn than had Winch squeezing his eyes shut. When they straightened and Winch opened his eyes again, he saw that they were perilously close to the walls of a narrow canyon. “Anyway, she showed me this fog that the boys at Hangar Zero dreamed up for putting out prairie fires. It has a clay thickener that is rather…adhesive.”
“Oh. I don’t suppose you use it for fighting fires.”
“I thought about it. But it worked better to dump it in the nose of some raiders who chased me down when I was last to Mintannic.” Cope winked over his shoulder. “By the clouds, it’s perhaps my favorite toy!”
“Well, nicely done.” Winch patted his hands all over himself. No, he had not been shot. Nor had he done anything embarrassing. The biplane had apparently lost them. All was well. He looked up at the steep canyon walls. The defile could not be any more than two or three hundred feet across. “Where are we?”
“The Raptor’s Cut. It gets us into a small, unmapped valley that I sometimes use for refueling when I…err…” Cope shrugged. “Want to avoid attention on my flight. There’s a ranch down in there. Folk who have about a hundred head of mastodon. We’ll set down to refuel there.”
“Oh. So soon?”
“Yes, for two reasons. One, if we have to make a swift flight out of Trestleway for unforeseen circumstances—”
“You mean if we botch our assignment.”
“Um. Yes.” Cope grinned. “In that event, I don’t want our possible pursuers thinking we have quite as much fuel as we’ll have. I want them thinking we’re almost out, as if we’d flown nonstop from Perch. See?”
“Ah. That makes sense.” It seemed to Winch that they were still losing altitude. But Cope hadn’t mentioned anything. “And the other reason?”
“Yes. That.” Cope seemed oddly reticent. “I didn’t want to alarm you, but some of those shots did impact the fuselage. More specifically, one of the fuel lines. We’re leaking.”
Winch’s stomach churned. “Is that…bad?”
The biplane dipped lower. “Probably not. We can make it. Most likely.”
“Most likely.” Winch covered his face.
“Winch?”
“Yes?”
“How’s about a letter off to that Exaltson of yours? We could use some support.”
Winch nodded. “I was working on that.”
They emerged from the Raptor’s Cut into a bowl-shaped valley bisected by a slender, winding creek. The shadows of the cut gave way to the bright morning sun coming over the valley’s peaks, which Winch figured to be a couple of miles apart. The Buzzard shook and bounced. Its engine gave a cough, but it soldiered on.
“If we have to bail,” Cope said, the strain evident in his voice, “pull your sail as soon as you jump. Do not wait one second—you give that ripcord a tug the instant your feet leave the fuselage. Understand?”
“Of course.” Allfather, preserve us.
Cope eased the stick over, and the plane swung to the left. Winch stared wide-eyed at a copse of pines that they cleared by maybe the length of the plane’s wings.
Suddenly Cope whooped. Winch thought they must be about to hit something, but Cope just pointed excitedly through the cockpit window. Winch craned his neck and could see a large house sitting up on a small knoll at a bend in the creek. Behind it were several barns and a cluster of much smaller stone and wood buildings.
The Buzzard went into a full-blown coughing fit, like a man suffering from the winter grippe. Cope tipped the nose of the plane down, toward the other side of the creek.
They were heading toward a pasture, but it was full of mastodons.
“It’s either them or the trees, and the trees won’t move for us!” Cope shouted.
“You’d better hope the mastodons do!”
Cope gave a thumbs-up.
The Buzzard shook in earnest now. Its engine sounded as if it would quit at the pinch of the game. It eased closer and closer to the ground…
The wheels hit grass with a jarring thud that shook Winch badly. It bounced up and down again twice, but on the third strike Cope kept it on the pasture. Shrubs lashed at the underside of the fuselage. Mastodons trumpeted in alarm. Even over the roar of the engine and the rattling of the plane, Winch could plainly hear the beasts’ thunder as they ran from this new, noisy interloper.
The plane staggered to a halt, and Cope cut the engine. It seemed to Winch that the aerocraft sighed in relief. Cope ripped back the canopy and threw his hands up. “Fantastic! Blue skies, Winch, I told you we could do it!”
Winch leaned his head on the side of the cockpit. His glasses had gone askew, but they were unbroken. Praise be to Ifan. He reached down for his rucksack. “Excellent. Good work. Now, help me out of here.”