In the Shadow of Falcon's Wings

CHAPTER 13 HARD LANDING

Hurley fluttered at the end of the rope like a tattered flag in a windstorm. The chaotic air currents turned him in the gyre and repeatedly threw him up into the hull of the plane. Every time he hit, the aluminum buckled with the impact, but the bell was still made of tougher stuff than the clapper. Bright spots of blood dotted the fabric of his shirt, and would have been streaming from his nose and mouth were the drops not snatched away instantly in the turbulent headwind.

He felt none of it.

Dodge, what have I done?

Another brave soldier lost on his watch. It was a wound struck deeper than anything his physical body was enduring. In his mind’s eye, he saw the company of ghosts — the men that had died fighting under his leadership — welcoming Dodge into their ranks. No, damn it! No more.

The rope was an appropriate metaphor; he was dangling at the edge of an emotional precipice. But nothing would be served by surrendering to gravity, and there might yet be a chance to avenge his fallen brother. Like an automaton, he found the taut umbilical connecting him to the airplane, and began to haul himself in.

The ground continued to rush up. Molly had angled the plane down for maximum airspeed, but very soon she would have to bring the nose up to start slowing their downward plummet. Once she did that, they would be only seconds away from a hard landing on the plain below.

As he advanced up the safety line, Hurricane managed to do what he had always done; he found the strength to drive on. Dodge had sacrificed himself to save the rest of them; himself, the Padre and Molly, even the three hapless mercenaries who would have slit his throat for the change in his pocket. He couldn’t let that be for nothing. Using his legs to propel himself faster, he reached out and found the open frame of the side hatch. He left the door as it was and took only a moment to struggle out of the harness before charging up to the flight deck.

Hobbs turned at the sound, and a gasp escaped his lips — whether because of beholding Hurley’s bloodied form, or perhaps because he saw the ghastly horror of Dodge’s demise written in the big man’s eyes.

“Where’s Dodge?” Molly did not look away from the windscreen, but her tone evinced more concern for the absent member of the group than for the safety of the plane.

Hurricane sank wearily into one of the remaining cockpit chairs, but tried to fill his voice with urgent enthusiasm. “He did it. The force fields are in place. Take her down, Molly.”

Hobbs continued to hold his gaze and saw the unspeakable truth. His lips parted in a silent prayer and he surreptitiously crossed himself before turning back to the co-pilots’ controls. “Tell me what to do, Mol.”

“Get ready to pull back on the stick,” she instructed. “I’ll need both hands to feather the flaps. We’re only going to get one chance to do this right.”

Though she didn’t dare let it show, Molly felt like she was in over her head. She had pulled off more than her share of hairy landings, but always in a single engine aircraft where she could at least see the ground. Even the Duck — their Grumman amphibious plane, currently in the possession of Krieger and his river pirates — had a fully glassed canopy that could be slid back in-flight for a better view of the water when coming in for a landing. With this bird, she was flying blind. The flight deck windows looked out over the nose, and the only land she could see was the distant horizon.

She checked the altimeter, but didn’t put much value in the reading. Twenty-five hundred feet above sea level might mean as little as a thousand feet between the belly of the aircraft and the savannah below. And knowing when to haul the nose up, stalling the plane at exactly the moment they made contact, was the difference between a good landing — one they would walk away from — and getting smeared across half of French Equatorial Africa.

Airspeed was a whole lot more important right now. She trimmed the plane, watching as the needle dropped steadily, then nosed down again at about 120 knots. She didn’t know what the enormous craft’s stall speed was, but she figured that would put her in the general neighborhood.

“That’s it,” she declared. “Nothing to do now but wait for the ground to come up.”

The altimeter had just tipped a thousand feet when Molly spied brown earth over the crest of the nose. That was the cue she had been waiting for. “Pull up, now!”

Hobbs gripped the wheel and drew back with steady pressure, even as Molly joined the effort. The plane seemed to hop upward for a moment, the nose once more eclipsing the horizon, but then their stomachs dropped again as the aircraft settled into a stall — still moving forward, but without enough speed to achieve lift.

Below their feet, unseen by any eyes, the force fields brushed against the arid soil, and exactly as Dodge had predicted, pushed back with equal energy. Three furrows appeared across the savannah, trailing out behind the X-314 as it almost landed — almost, because although the energy bubbles were squashed nearly flat, there remained a few inches of space between the fuselage and the ground.

The plane slid across the grassy plateau like a skater on slippery ice. Molly deployed the braking flaps, but there was little else she could do to slow their headlong slide across the terrain. The force fields created almost no friction as they plowed up the landscape. The airplane’s considerable mass slid along for nearly a mile before aerodynamic resistance brought them to a halt.

On the flight deck, there was a general sense of exhausted relief. Molly collapsed back into the pilot’s chair, with perspiration beading on her forehead.

“Well done girl,” Hurley boomed. “That was some crackerjack flying.”

Molly blew a stray lock from in front of her face. “Thank Dodge. Those wheels of his made for the smoothest landing I’ve ever pulled off.”

Hobbs shot Hurricane a sharp look, and this time Molly had nothing else to distract her attention. “Where is Dodge?” she asked, unable to staunch an eruption of worry. When Hurley did not immediately answer, she rushed him and grabbed the lapels of his bush jacket. “Where the Hell is he?”

“He fell Molly,” Hobbs intoned, placing a calming hand on her shoulder.

“Then he’s all right, isn’t he? He had one of those things on; he said he could just fly down.”

Hurley shook his head sadly. “He saved us all Molly; never forget that.”

He expected her to break down in hysterics, but instead she released his shirtfront and averted her eyes. A lifetime in the hardest place on Earth had inured her to loss. Africa had taken her parents and many other loved ones; it was a hard place and only hard people survived.

“I’m going to see if there’s any damage,” she said slowly, not meeting anyone’s stare as she moved off the flight deck. “To the plane. I’m going outside.”

Hurley looked to Hobbs with an unspoken question, but the clergyman shook his head. Hurricane sank wearily into a chair. “I never should have let him go out there.”

“He seemed like a remarkable young man. I wish I had gotten the opportunity to know him better.”

The big man nodded dumbly, then began patting his pockets. He found his metal cigar case and opened it, but inside there was only a jumble of broken brown leaves. He closed it with a sigh. “It was him, you know.”

Hobbs chose that moment to also take a seat. “I know. When did you realize it?”

“I guess from the very start, but I didn’t want to admit it.” There was another long silence. “The question now is: what do we do about it?”

“There’s no ‘we’ Hurricane. I’m not going to fight anymore.”

A spark of anger enlivened Hurley’s countenance, but he kept it in check. “How can you say that, Padre? Didn’t you learn anything from Krieger?”

Hobbs gave a heavy sigh. It was an old argument, fanned to new urgency only because of the Hell they had just escaped. “What would you have me do? Kill him?”

“If that’s the only way, yes. We owe it to Dodge and every one of the boys we left behind. Damn it, they did not die for nothing.”

“I can’t kill again. The ghosts…” He leaned forward, cradling his head with his fingertips. He suddenly looked very old. “I’ll do what I can. Where do we start?”

Hurley thought a while before answering. “Those mercenaries down below. Since we saved their skins, the least they can do is answer a few questions.”

Hobbs brightened perceptibly at that. “Amen, brother.”

Hurley found Molly sitting on the sponson, just outside the hatch. The ground was a good eight feet below the dangling soles of her shoes. She looked up when she heard him, and self-consciously wiped her eyes. “I couldn’t figure out how to get down.”

He pulled the mooring line from the cabin and allowed it to drop down to the grassy plain, after which he conspicuously pushed the hatch door shut. “Let’s take a look, shall we.”

He took both her hands in his and lowered her down to the savannah, and then like a gymnast, swung down and landed lightly beside her. Molly was already gazing in fascination at the underside of the airplane, or more specifically, at the layer of air which separated it from solid ground.

“That’s incredible,” she gasped, sliding one flat hand into the void.

“See any damage?”

The girl seemed grateful for the distraction. “None at all. I couldn’t have set her down that smooth on water.”

“Do you think you could get her back up?”

Molly rose and put her hands on her hips. “I could certainly try. But she’s not going anywhere until we can refuel her.”

“Already done. The previous owners were flying around their own filling station. There’s a good five hundred gallons reserve stacked up in barrels inside the cabin. Ought to be enough to get us back to civilization.”

She glanced involuntarily toward the hatch, and as she did, made note of the fact that Hobbs had not joined them. “Where’s dad?”

“He’s…ah, talking to our captives.”

As if to underscore his ironic word choice, a bloodcurdling shriek resonated from the great hollow body of the aircraft. Although Molly, who had delivered countless babies and sewn up or cauterized dozens of machete wounds, had experienced a rich catalog of screams, she had never heard anything like the unnatural cries coming from the fuselage. It sounded as if a door to Hell itself had been opened and the damned were fighting to escape their eternal torment. She shuddered and looked to Hurley for an explanation. “Talking to them? What’s he saying?”

“He’s unburdening their souls.” The big man gently took her hand and led her away from the plane. “Let’s give him a few minutes. He knows what he’s doing.”

The screams continued to rattle her nerves. She couldn’t imagine what her father, a man of peace and God, could be doing in the plane that might elicit such outcries, but the thought chilled her to the bone. After a few minutes however, the deluge of agony abated. “So what’s next?”

Hurley stared at the distant horizon. “I don’t know how much you know already, or how much the Padre wants you to know, but I can tell you this much. There’s an evil out there, an evil we — your dad and I — fought once before.”

There was an undercurrent of sadness in his tone. She didn’t know him that well, but his voice was that of a man haunted. That was something she understood.

Before he could elaborate, the sound of a door banging against the side of the plane drew their attention. Hobbs emerged onto the sponson, drenched in sweat and seemingly on the verge of collapse, but wearing a grim smile. “We have him.”

Am I dead?

Dodge remembered falling… remembered a moment of pure, absolute horror… remembered also a feeling of acceptance and sublime readiness to accept this final fate… then darkness.

The darkness was absolute but he was conscious, of that much he was certain; conscious and corporeal. He lay prone on a hard surface and could feel something cool and solid beneath his fingertips.

“I’m still alive,” he said, curious to see what would happen to the sound of his voice in the strange, otherworldly blackness.

“Shhh!” The voice was a soft hiss, from somewhere to his right. “He’ll hear you. Here, drink this.”

A hard container — Dodge immediately identified it as a canteen — was thrust into his hand. Without questioning his unseen benefactor, he rolled over and fumbled with the offering until he located an opening. He then pressed this to his lips and tilted the whole thing up until tepid brackish water flowed into his mouth. “Thanks,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Where am I?”

“There’s not much time. He won’t be happy when he learns I saved you.”

“How? How did you save me?”

The disembodied voice again ignored his inquiry. “You are the Chronicler.”

It was a statement, not a question. “Chronicler?”

“He’s coming.” The voice was full of urgency now, as if the speaker were already taking flight. “You must find Falcon. Only Falcon can stop him.”

“Wait!” Dodge’s restraint was slipping. “You have to tell me who you are.”

The last whisper was barely audible: “Find Falcon.”

“Who are you?”

Then from the depths of the darkness, incandescent energy of the lightest shade of violet, began to burn and a different voice, one Dodge knew all too well, cut through the still. “Who am I, intruder? I am that which you fear the most.”