Robert Butler - The Empire of Night

The hull was still dark.

I held tight to the handrail along the walkway and shined my flashlight forward and I moved as quickly as I dared let myself, with this constant tugging in my chest threatening to fling me headlong into the darkness.

I passed over the gondola engine. Along this stretch of the walkway the sound of the forward Maybach, which was straining to help lift us, jackhammered in my head. It was a bit of a struggle to think in the midst of this but I knew at once I needed to do my work close to this place. The sound of my Luger plugging a gas cell would be masked here.

I pushed on aft for now. I needed to do two things before I could get to the matter of making fire.

There was no light up ahead. The forward hatch — my hatch — was, of course, closed. When I desperately needed for this to be open, I would not have time to open it. So I pressed on, pushing my center of balance downward, down into my legs, into my knees, pressing hard at each footstep, leaning my torso backward, holding tight to the handrail, my flashlight beam bouncing before me, lifting as far out on the path as I could throw it.

And then I saw in my beam the walkway turn up ahead, where it skirted the hatch.

I arrived.

I braced myself against the starboard turning of the railing and I flashed the beam to the closed hatch and then, beyond it, to its portside. I was looking for a lever or a handle or a wheel, some way to open this thing. It wasn’t there. I scanned the beam and I found it, at the forward end of the hatch, a wheel with protruding handles set in the bulkhead.

I moved toward it.

The rail along the walkway ended and I angled my body hard to my right — the ship’s upward incline seemed greater now by a few degrees — and my target, clear in my flashlight, was another rail along the bulkhead.

I lunged for it.

I had it.

I made my way along to the wheel, and with my left hand I grabbed one of its handles and then, needing the wheel to both open the hatch and hold myself steady, I grasped a second handle with my right hand.

The dispatch case lifted off me. My chest clamped in panic even as the shoulder strap grabbed at my neck.

It was okay. The strap held. The bag and the tin box were safe. The angle backward was a good fifteen degrees. Perhaps more. It felt like fifty. Two powerful hands pulled at my shoulders.

I strained at the wheel. It turned, bit by bit, bearing my clinging weight with each torque of the gears of the hatch. Light was dilating into the keel behind me.

And then the wheel would turn no more.

I looked. The hatch was fully open.

I let go of the wheel, one hand at a time, quickly grabbing downward and reattaching at the handrail. And now I had both hands secure there and I dragged myself along the bulkhead and approached the corner going forward.

I stopped.

I clung hard. The pull on me was strong, trying to fling me aft. I knew the danger. The light was all around. I sensed the hatch gaping behind me. The maw of a bright-faced beast. If I let go I would tumble directly out of the Zepp.

I turned my head. I looked.

We were running over rooftops and now over a paved road, and now a dense stand of trees was passing and passing. Had we circled back over Spich? A public relations move upon takeoff?

I looked away.

We were up a good three hundred, four hundred feet. I remembered newsreel clips of parachutes being tested off the London Bridge and the Eiffel Tower, so I figured I needed about six hundred feet minimum to jump.

I inched along. And I turned the corner into the walkway.

I climbed, the spill of the light of the hatch fading behind me. I switched on the flashlight, and up ahead I saw the silver flank of the nearest fuel tank. I approached and flashed the beam into the deepest shadows beyond.

The parachute was there. I would carry it forward with me. The ticking would really begin after the fire was lit. I’d need to have this thing attached to me when I struck the match.

I needed an extra hand. I extinguished the flashlight.

I bent to the parachute, drew it out. I wrapped my right arm around it and held the rail with my other hand. The next milepost was based on sound anyway.

I climbed onward.

The hammering approached, the piston roar of the Maybach. I moved into the very center of it.

The walkway was elevated a foot or so from the aluminum skin of the keel, and the fuel tanks were welded to the keel and set about the same distance off the walkway edge. I lifted the parachute over the railing and wedged it between two tanks for now, and I moved forward one fuel tank.

I turned and faced aft and sat down on the walkway, bracing myself with a foot against the near edge of the next tank.

The engines were hammering through me not just as sound but as a bone-deep vibration, from where I sat, from where the bottom of my foot pressed against the side of the fuel tank.

But I was thinking just fine. I was thinking clearly.

If the army played a few minutes to the locals before heading out to do its business — and the German imperial propaganda machine was already as well oiled and powerful as the Maybach engine I was sitting over — then perhaps we’d level off soon and give the people a good look at the new Zepp in flight and feed their war fervor. This was the newest model, after all. Lately delivered.

I had to make a tough choice. Sit and see if my guess about our location and heading was right and risk a more remote blast if I was wrong or work in this tilt-floored Coney Island Pavilion ride and risk fumbling the tin box and letting it tumble down the walkway.

I drew the box from my case.

I opened the lid but kept the box in my lap for now, my flexed legs holding it more or less level.

I found my matches and pulled them from my pocket. I laid them on the cotton wool.

Where would I set the box so that it wouldn’t slide while the cotton burned?

And what about the parachute? Trying to put the harness on and carry the chute rucksack down this incline and hook it properly for a launch would be a terrible challenge at this angle.

I had to roll the dice.

I had to wait.

And I did.

I sat for a few moments and a few moments more and I thought that the angle was softening a little, but then perhaps not.

And then yes.

And we began to turn again.

Another portside turn.

If we’d passed over Spich, as I’d thought, and then over the Alten Forst, we’d now be turning north again, finding our bearing toward England, and in lovely, level flight we’d pass once more over the good citizens of Spich, who’d been alerted by our first passage and now were crowded into the streets to wave and cheer and throw their hats in the air. Gott strafe England.

I had no intention of blowing up the LZ 78 and its payload directly over Spich.

But it was a small town.

We’d cross it quickly.

And the upward angle was declining.

I felt I was right.

I waited.

We were leveling.

I waited.

And now we were level.

I rose up. I placed the tin box on the walkway and I stepped aft to the parachute and unwedged and withdrew it from its place against the fuel tank.

I turned back and flashed my beam to the box sitting open there on the walkway, matches on top of cotton wool. I approached it, the parachute cradled in my right arm.

And the lights came on.

It came from above and from below. The light was muted — the bulbs and their fixtures double-contained in glass — but the hull was illuminated clear enough. Plenty clear enough for me to look far ahead along the walkway and see a figure coming this way.

I glanced back aft to see if I’d soon be surrounded.