In the Shadow of Falcon's Wings

CHAPTER 1 PARTY CRASHERS

“Gosh. What happened next? How ever did you escape?”

David Dalton — “Dodge” to both his intimate friends and the thousands of Americans who eagerly devoured his Sunday syndicated feature “The Adventures of Captain Falcon” — glanced over at the breathless young woman and the man with whom she was conversing, curious to see how the question would be answered.

The mountainous hulk that was “Hurricane” Hurley shifted nervously in his chair and averted his gaze, glancing down at the newspaper clenched in his massive paws. He had been reading aloud the latest installment of Falcon’s adventures — as one of Captain Falcon’s trusted confidants during the Great War, he was not only a contributor to the ongoing serial, but also a key player — eager to impress his pretty young blonde tablemate with this most recent tale of derring-do.

It wasn’t at all like Hurricane to be caught with nothing to say. Dodge considered letting the big fellow suffer a little longer, but then decided to affect a rescue worthy of Falcon’s chronicler. “Sorry miss,” he interjected, gesturing with his champagne flute, “but you’ll have to wait a week like everyone else.”

The blonde girl’s lips turned down in a pout, but Hurricane seized the opportunity and recovered his composure. “We had been in situations a good deal worse than that. I remember the time Jocasta Palmer nearly drowned us in fish eggs.”

Dodge smiled absently and took a sip of the bubbly, letting his attention wander. He felt partly responsible for Hurley’s embarrassment. In the past year, the Falcon adventures had relied less heavily upon the historical account inarticulately recorded in Hurricane’s unpublished — some would say ‘unpublishable’ — memoirs, and more on Dodge’s own imagination. Hurley had not objected; the Falcon stories had never been more popular, and ostensibly as the only member of Falcon’s coterie of heroes still in circulation, he was more than happy to be the sole focus of attention at sporting events, county fairs and other public gatherings frequented by attractive, starstruck young ladies. Unfortunately, the hero of the story didn’t have a clue about how some of these latest adventures would end.

Dodge didn’t feel too guilty over taking creative control of the serial. It wasn’t like he was rewriting history. Hurley’s magnum opus read exactly like what it was; a pulp adventure worthy of the Sunday comics. While the man was certainly an imposing physical presence, and had probably served with distinction in the Great War, the outlandish exploits of Captain Zane Falcon, Father Nathan Hobbs and Brian “Hurricane” Hurley were simply too unbelievable to be anything but fiction.

It had been pure serendipity that Dodge, a sportswriter for The Clarion, had been buttonholed by an editor too intimidated by Hurley to say no, and given the task of cleaning up the meandering prose for publication. In only a few short months, “The Adventures of Captain Falcon” six column inches times two, and a single cartoon illustration — also Dodge’s work — had been picked up by King Features and now ran in every major Sunday newspaper in the country. Now, three years later and at the height of their popularity, all of Hurley’s stories had been told. The well had dried up, and it was up to Dodge to fill the void, which he had done admirably, boosting readership to a new peak. All of which had brought him here, to a garden party in the most famous garden in America.

“Another glass, sir?” inquired a voice at his shoulder.

He glanced up at the nattily attired waiter, but before he could answer in the affirmative, a ripple of anxiety passed through the group of diners and people began rising to their feet. He shrugged apologetically and stood up just as the band launched into the customary ruffles and flourishes. Dodge craned his head to get a look at the man who was both host and guest of honor but couldn’t see him through the crowd. Abandoning the effort, he simply followed the example of everyone else, standing at attention until the final note was played. He applauded along with the rest of the crowd and then queued up in the orderly reception line as the band segued from “Hail to the Chief” into “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Perhaps because he felt more dread than anticipation for the impending introduction, the time spent waiting flew by quickly, and in a matter of only minutes he heard a voice made familiar by weekly radio discourses speaking his name… well, almost. “Mr. Dodge, isn’t it?

It was a common mistake. “Dodge” was a nickname the sandy-haired athletically inclined writer had earned during a boyhood summer spent running bats out to the on-deck circle at Ebbets Field. Normally, he would have gently corrected the error, but this time he thought better of it.

“That’s right, Mr. President.” He shook the extended hand, mildly surprised to see the chief executive of the country seated behind a small café table.

“That’s a good firm grip you’ve got there,” observed the President. “You must get your exercise.”

“I played a lot of ball as a boy, sir.”

“Aha. And do you tag along with Falcon and his team on their adventures?”

Dodge forced a chuckle. “Only in my daydreams. I fight Falcon’s villains with the pen, not the sword.”

“I’m a big fan,” the President announced with what appeared to be sincere joviality. “Big fan. Can’t wait to see how Falcon gets out his latest scrape. Keep up the good work, young man. You’re a national treasure.”

Dodge correctly read the exit cue and moved on, letting the Commander-in-Chief have the final word. He strode away, but not before he heard: “Hurricane Hurley! Why, you’re even more impressive that I had imagined. How did you get so strong?”

The walking mountain gave a thunderous guffaw to the delight of everyone in line. Even Dodge couldn’t resist a smile as he heard Hurley, with the barest of prompting, launch into an elaborate anecdote about his childhood on the Cumberland Plateau.

He and Hurley had become friends after a fashion, and while the six-and-a-half foot giant wouldn’t have been his first choice for company on a Friday night, there was no denying that an aura of rough charm surrounded the man they called Hurricane. Part of that was most certainly his proclivity for exaggeration, which had played no small part in the creation of the Captain Falcon legend. Dodge had heard this particular tall tale before and knew it always grew with the telling. Leaving Hurley to his admirers, he went in search of the waiter with the champagne service.

To his chagrin, he found that the beyond the reception line, the party seemed to have ground to a halt. Instead of the gentle rumble of multiple conversations, there was only a faint hum of awed whispers. The attention of the group, more than three score in number, was fixed skyward. Movie stars stood alongside cocktail servers, gaping in consternation at what appeared to be a flock of birds around a distant airship. Curious, he joined the stilled crowd. “What’s all the fuss?”

“Barnstormers,” suggested one man. “Some kind of aerial circus.”

Frowning, Dodge looked again, squinting into the mid-morning sun. The array was much nearer than he had first realized and steadily moving closer. He now saw that what he had first taken to be birds were in fact… “Those are men up there.”

“Parachutists,” ventured the man.

“There aren’t any parachutes,” argued one woman. “But they aren’t falling; they’re flying!”

Dodge verified her statement with a glance, then looked to the airship at the center of the formation, thinking perhaps that the men were suspended by fine wires. What he saw however only further confounded a logical explanation.

The aircraft, if it was indeed that, was like nothing he had ever seen, save perhaps in dime novel artwork. The vessel looked like a round cake pan and was just as featureless. There appeared to be no means of propulsion — no spinning propellers or rocket flames — yet it was moving far too rapidly to be a dirigible carried on the wind. One thing was certain however: the aerial display was moving inexorably toward the White House.

“I’ll wager this is something the Army cooked up; some new secret flying machine. The President probably arranged this stunt as entertainment for the party.”

There was little conviction in the tone of the man voicing this opinion. It sounded more like an unsuccessful attempt to hide growing panic. Dodge’s gut reaction was similar; something bad was about to happen. “I think we should take cover.”

It was as though a dam had broken. In an instant, the quiet group of onlookers became a pandemonium of shrieks and frantic purposeless running. Dodge was buffeted by the human tide, and then just as suddenly found himself standing alone near the perimeter of the garden. After the chaos of the fleeing mob, the ensuing quiet was eerily peaceful.

Then the sky fell.

The next moment was surreal; something glimpsed in a dream or spawned from his pen in the latest chapter of Falcon’s adventures. An invisible hand slapped him against the perfectly manicured lawn. He had only a dull memory of the collision; it felt something like a belly flop dive into a warm swimming pool, rather than a forceful trauma such as might accompany being struck by a solid object. He lingered there, pressed to the ground by a blanket of pressure that seemed everywhere all at once.

“Hellfire!” Hurricane’s voice thundered above the din, but any further imprecations were lost in a deafening hail of gunfire.

In the corner of his vision, Dodge could just make out a contingent of dark-suited men — the President’s Secret Service bodyguards — forming a skirmish line. Their backs were to him, their faces set against the entrance to the West Wing, which was the only means of egress from the Rose Garden, and each man’s Thompson sub-machine gun spat a lethal volley of lead at the unseen attackers.

Then a different noise split through the chaos. It was a crack like the discharge of a pistol, but louder in volume and longer in duration. There was a blinding flash of light and when his ability to see returned, Dodge saw a break in the line. One of the Secret Service men had been pitched backward several yards and lay motionless with wisps of smoke trailing from his scorched clothing. However, Dodge’s gaze was riveted elsewhere, for through the gap in the wall of bodyguards, he got his first good look at the party crashers.

They were men, the same men that had flown apparently unaided through the skies, but men nonetheless. The one who now blocked the President’s only avenue of escape wore no particular uniform, but the singular distinctive accessory to his ensemble defied simple explanation. At first glance, it looked like some kind of medical apparatus or perhaps a medieval torture device. A framework of metal rods outlined the man, reaching down from a rigid waist belt to hinged footpads, up to his shoulders and down the length of his arms, and finally connecting to a domed cap, like something worn by medieval infantrymen. The rods were jointed at the elbows and knees to allow fully articulated movement, but where hands ought to have been, Dodge saw what looked like heavy armored gauntlets. The intruder brandished these metallic fists at the Secret Servicemen, disdaining the muzzle flashes of his foes’ guns. Without warning, another brilliant flash arced through the air and blasted a second bodyguard from the line.

Dodge realized two things in that instant: First, that the blinding discharge could only be lightning — artificial lightning from a cathode in the attacker’s heavy gauntlets; and second, that the man wearing the strange exoskeleton seemed to be impervious to bullets.

One by one, the Secret Servicemen were scattered like so much chaff by the unknown enemies’ lightning bolts. There were at least half a dozen of the intruders, all wearing the metal gloves that shot electricity and all apparently invulnerable to any sort of counterattack.

Suddenly a new combatant appeared on the field of battle; a giant warrior who eschewed firearms and weapons in favor of the equipment Mother Nature had bestowed. Hurricane Hurley, roaring like an enraged grizzly bear, waded into the fray swinging his fists like war hammers. One of the intruders bounced away from a blow as if imprisoned in a giant beach ball. Two more were slapped aside as indifferently as buzzing flies; evidently the invisible armor that deflected bullets was no match for the human touch.

As the tide began to turn, it occurred to Dodge that he had not moved since the attackers’ untimely arrival. When he tried to rise however, he again felt the insistent pressure at his back, like an enormous rubber balloon filled with water. As he pushed harder, the opposing force grew, then just as abruptly vanished. He craned his head around to get a look at the cause of his temporary immobilization.

He digested what he saw in large chunks of incredulity. The first thing he noticed was an expanse of dull silvery metal looming overhead and eclipsing the sky; it could only be the airship he had glimpsed from afar. The craft was almost close enough to touch, at least fifty feet in diameter, and its surface was impossibly smooth, without and seams or rivets. Yet all of those observations paled when held against the next thing Dodge ascertained about the invaders’ aircraft: it was floating.

Except floating wasn’t exactly the right word. It didn’t bob or waver like a moored dirigible or hovering gyrocopter; rather it was absolutely motionless, as though the whole thing were the roof of a building supported on invisible columns. Momentarily overcome by journalistic curiosity, he reached up to touch the smooth underbelly of the craft, but the artificial thunder of the invaders’ weapons snapped him back into the moment.

Hurricane stood transfixed in the path of a sizzling lightning bolt. Astonishingly, the giant was not blasted aside as the President’s guards had been. His normally curly black hair stood straight up and his jaws were clenched, teeth bared in a rictus of pain, but he did not budge; he was as immovable as the airship. The tendril of electricity continued to lick at his torso a moment longer, then winked out. Dodge surmised that the weapon employed some sort of capacitor and that it had entirely expended its stored charge. Hurley shook his head, shrugging off the assault like a prizefighter, and charged at the now impotent attacker.

Lightning flared again, not from the man on the ground, but from the floating disc. Hurricane staggered back as the discharge struck him in the chest, but he recovered in an instant and renewed his advance. Another blast, this time a sustained tongue of sizzling blue fire, and then a second. To Dodge’s utter amazement, four more intruders, all wearing metal exoskeletons, descended from the airship on a ramp that had deployed unnoticed from its underbelly. The reinforcements concentrated their electrical weapons on that lone target, and even the prodigious Hurricane Hurley could not endure such a withering assault. As the juggernaut went down, the clamor of combat immediately ceased. A few Secret Servicemen remained upright, but had discarded their useless weapons in order to create a defensive ring around the man they were sworn to protect. It was a futile gesture. The intruders, ten altogether, advanced menacingly and peeled the bodyguards away to reveal the object of their quest: the President of the United States.

The Chief Executive sat motionless at his table, his gaze locked warily on the man directly before him. His lips were pursed tight; if he said anything in defiance of the assault, or heaven forbid, begged for mercy, it was spoken too softly to be heard by anyone but those who now held his fate in their hands. Two of the men seized hold of his arms and bodily lifted him away from the table. The President was again lost from view as the remaining attackers formed a perimeter around their prize and commenced escorting him to the idle airship.

Dodge remained where he was, paralyzed with fear and disbelief as the Commander in Chief was taken up the ramp into the hovering craft. It was simply too much to absorb; anonymous commandos equipped with exoskeletons that imbued their wearers with the powers of flight and invincibility, shooting bolts of lightning and kidnapping the President. It was like….

“Like something from a Falcon story,” he whispered. But Falcon wouldn’t be frozen in place, petrified with fright as the foes absconded victorious. Falcon would take action! He would….

What would Falcon do?

Four of the invaders, along with their captive, entered the disc after which the ramp vanished back into the craft. The silvery metal skin sealed over the opening so that it was impossible to tell where the entryway had been. Then, without any sort of preamble, the airship leaped into the sky. Dodge felt a push, similar to what one might experience when a descending elevator car halted abruptly, but that was all. Whatever force motivated the craft, it seemed to operate in defiance of Newton’s Laws.

The six remaining raiders formed a circle on the lawn, their steel gauntlets extended toward the defenseless guests that huddled for cover throughout the garden. One of them stood only a few paces from Dodge, so close that he could see the man’s dark brown eyes and the rivulets of sweat that beaded on his forehead and trickled along a furrowed scar that ran the length of his jaw. The hard man locked eyes with Dodge and flashed a menacing grin. The meaning was explicit: stay back or get fried.

“Move out!” shouted another of the invaders, and then acting on his own admonition, he flexed his knees as if preparing to jump and was whisked into the sky. Another followed on his heels, zooming into the air as if there were rockets on his back. There were no rockets, only a metal lump, of the same dull color as the airship, which extended from the rigid belt of the exoskeleton up across the man’s back. The scarred man threw Dodge a smug nod, then bent his knees in preparation to take flight.

Something broke inside Dodge. A sound, intimately familiar, but at the same time completely foreign, broke the ominous quiet. It was his own voice, and his words, while simple and ambiguous, felt like a declaration of war. He looked the man in the eye and in a grinding whisper said: “I don’t think so.”

Dodge had only one thought: seize the man to prevent him from escaping. Beyond that, he had only the vaguest idea of what might occur. Perhaps the police would be able to identify the culprit and compel him to betray his confederates… perhaps he could be used as a bargaining piece against the President’s safety. He didn’t explore all the possibilities; his attention was focused on the sole objective of restraining the man. In the instant before the man burst into flight, Dodge hurled himself forward and wrapped both arms around the intruder’s waist. His momentum should have taken both of them down in a typical flying tackle, but what happened next was anything but typical.

As his arms opened around the man, Dodge again felt the same subtle pressure that had flattened him beneath the airship. He recognized it now or at least was able to reconcile it with a known phenomenon. The closest likeness he could come up with was the effect of magnetic repulsion; two magnets, lined up a certain way, would push each other apart. But the strange corona of force around the men had proven capable of repelling bullets — lead slugs with no magnetic characteristics — and even human flesh. Dodge could think of only one explanation, and it wasn’t something he had read or heard about in the annals of science. Rather, it was the stuff of science fiction. The serials that shared the comics page with Falcon were always describing invisible force fields that could protect spaceships or superheroes. Dodge had always dismissed such stories as too fanciful to warrant serious consideration, but then again, he would have felt the same way about steel mitts that shot lightning bolts.

Whatever the cause, the energy field almost thwarted Dodge’s desperate attempt to restrain the escaping rogue; his arms couldn’t quite close together. He redoubled his efforts, hugging tightly to the shielded figure, but it was like trying to wrestle a greased pig. The force field seemed to squirm and ooze in his grip and for a fleeting second, Dodge knew he would fail. Then without any particular climax, the struggle ended and Dodge’s arms locked around the man’s metal shod ankles.

“Gotcha!” The momentum of his intended tackle maneuver had been lost, but Dodge had a taste of victory now. He tried to plant his feet, throwing his body weight to the side; but his shoes couldn’t find the ground. His legs thrashed about, trying to somehow gain a position of advantage, but terra firma eluded him. He didn’t have to look down for an explanation — somehow he knew with sickening certainty what had happened — but he looked anyway.