Clive Cussler: The Race

The aviatrix looked her in the eye. “I like him.”

“Why?”

“He gets things done.”

“That is the one good trait he inherited from my husband.” She took Josephine’s hand and said, “Let’s get on with this,” and walked her back to the altar.

Mrs. Whiteway was settled in the front pew, and the bishop’s stand-in was repeating for the third time “We are gathered here today. .” when through the skylight above Josephine and Preston the heavens suddenly glowed a steely green.

“Twisters!” cried the Texas plains dwellers who knew that weirdly tinted sky could only mean tornadoes.

Fort Worthians fled to storm cellars, inviting as many guests as they could squeeze in. Visitors who had steamed in on special trains retired to their dubious shelters. Those without cellars or trains found saloons.

The tornados roamed the rangeland until long after dark, roaring like runaway freights, hurling cattle and bunkhouses to the skies. They spared the city, but it was past midnight before a grateful congregation finally smelled the wedding feast cooking and at last heard the words “I now pronounce you man and wife.”

Preston Whiteway, flushed from reciprocating multiple toasts to the bridegroom, planted a kiss on Josephine’s lips. Maid of Honor Marion Morgan assured all who asked that, from her close vantage, she had observed that Josephine returned it gamely.

A roar of “Let’s eat” drove hundreds to the tables.

Whiteway raised his glass high. “A toast to my beautiful bride, America’s Sweetheart of the Air. May she fly ever higher and faster in my arms and-”

However Whiteway intended to continue his toast was drowned out by the distinctive grinding clatter of two pump-driven, eight-cylinder Antoinette motors clawing Steve Stevens’s overburdened biplane into the night air.

JOSEPHINE JUMPED from the bridal party’s table and ran full tilt through a canvas flap that covered a cattle chute leading to the flying field. Spitting fire from both motors, Stevens’s machine cleared a fence and Mrs. Whiteway’s locomotive, headed straight at a line of telegraph wires, cleared them by inches, lurched over a barn, and disappeared into the night.

Marco Celere was standing with the chocks he had pulled from its wheels at his feet, waving good-bye with his Platov’s slide rule and his red-banded straw boater.

“I told you I’d think of something for your wedding night.”

“Where’s he going?”

“Abilene.”

“That sneaky, fat. .”

“I convinced him to go ahead so we’d have time to work on the motors.”

“How can he see where he’s flying?”

“Stars and moon on shiny tracks.”

Josephine yelled for her mechanicians to pour gas and oil into her flying machine and spin it over. Marco raced after her as she ran to it, dragging her wedding dress like a cloud of white smoke. He pulled the canvas off the monoplane’s wings while she knelt by tent pegs to release the tie-downs.

“I have to warn you. .” he whispered urgently.

“What?” She loosened a taut-line hitch, tugged the rope off the strut, and knelt to loosen another.

“If something were to happen to ‘Dmitri Platov,’ don’t worry.”

“What do you mean?. . Hurry it up! ” she shouted to her detective-mechanicians, who were tipping cans of gas and oil into the tanks. “What are you talking about? You’re Dmitri Platov.”

“‘Dmitri Platov’ is being watched by Bell’s detectives. He may have to suddenly disappear.”

Josephine untied the last tie-down, jumped up on the soapbox, and scrambled onto her machine, desperate to get up in the air. The train of her wedding dress tangled in a stay. “Knife!” she yelled to a detective-mechanician, who flicked open a sharpened blade and slashed the train off her dress.

“Keep it out of the propeller!” she ordered, and the mechanician dragged it away. Marco was still standing on the soapbox, his whiskered face inches from hers. “What about you?” she asked.

“I’ll be back. Don’t worry.”

She plunged her control post forward and pulled it back and tilted it sideways, checking that her elevator, rudder, and alettoni moved properly. “O.K., I won’t. Get out of my way. . Contact! ”

She raced off the ground ten minutes behind Stevens.

Isaac Bell was already circling the field, having instructed Andy Moser to keep the motor warm and gas and castor oil topped off. From high in the air, he saw the North Side Coliseum, and all of Fort Worth, as a dull glow lost in the infinite sea of darkness that was the night-blackened Texas rangeland.

Josephine raced west, following the railroad tracks by the light of the moon.

The tall detective was right behind her, tracking the aviatrix by the pinprick of fire that marked her Antoinette’s exhaust. For the first ten miles, he kept slowing his engine so as not to overtake her. But when the glow of Fort Worth had completely disappeared, and the ground was as dark behind as it was ahead, he fixed his eyes on the double line of moonlit steel, took his finger off the blip switch, and let the Eagle fly.

HARRY FROST THOUGHT he heard something coming from the east. He saw no glow of a locomotive headlamp. But he knelt anyway and pressed his good ear to the cold steel rail to confirm that it was not a train. The track transmitted no tuning-fork vibration.

Dave Mayhew hunched over his telegraph key. It was he, eavesdropping on the railroad dispatchers, who had suddenly reported the startling news that several flying machines had ascended from Fort Worth in the dark. The blushing bride Josephine’s was among them.

“This time,” Harry Frost vowed in grave tones that chilled the hard-bitten Mayhew to the bone, “I’ll give her a wedding night she will never forget.”

He had been watching the eastern sky for nearly an hour, hoping to see her machine silhouetted against first light. So far, nothing. Still dark as a coal mine. Now he was sure he heard a motor.

He turned left and called into the dark, “Hear me?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Frost.”

He turned right and shouted again.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Frost.”

“Get ready!”

He waited for a return shout, “Ready!” turned to his right, shouted again, “Get ready!” and heard, “Ready!” back.

Sound carried in the cold night air. He heard the distinctive metallic snick when, to either side of him, the machine gunners levered open their Colts’ action to chamber their first rounds.

There were three men on each gun, knee-deep in rainwater left by the evening storms: a gunner, a feeder to the gunner’s left guiding the canvas belt of cartridges, and a spotter with field glasses. Frost kept Mike Stotts standing by to run with orders if they couldn’t hear him.

The noise grew louder, the sound of a straining machine. Then Frost distinguished the clatter of not one but two motors. They must be flying very close to each other, he thought. Too close. Something was wrong. Suddenly he realized that he was hearing two poorly synchronized engines driving Steve Stevens’s biplane. Stevens was in the lead.

“Hold your fire! It’s not her. Hold your fire!”

The biplane passed over, motors loud and ragged, flying low so the driver could see the rails. Josephine would have to fly low, too, making her an easy target.