In the Shadow of Falcon's Wings

CHAPTER 3 THE ULTIMATUM

The White House Rose Garden looked like a war zone. Given the events that had recently transpired there, that might have seemed an appropriate description, but the Presidential Manor and the surrounding grounds showed surprisingly little damage from the exchange between Secret Servicemen and the unidentified invading force. There were scorch marks on the polished white exterior and a few bullet scars, but for the most part, the distinguished residence, which had been gutted by British troops during the War of 1812, and then survived the Whig Riot in 1841 and the Christmas Eve fire of 1929, had weathered this latest assault quite well. It was only after the combatants had left the field that most of the damage had occurred, all due to a human hurricane of destruction named Brian Hurley.

Hurley did not deal well with failure, and although he was under no special obligation to protect the Chief Executive, nor had he in any way been prepared to defend against enemies using an incomprehensible technology against which bullets were completely ineffectual, he was coping with this latest rare defeat with his customary grace: he was breaking everything in sight.

Delicate flowers, lawn furniture and bone china, all suffered the same fate. Hurley destroyed anything that he could pick up, and there was very little Hurley couldn’t pick up. Three Secret Servicemen had tried to restrain him, but had been tossed aside as easily as it they were made of balsa wood. The fact that they suffered nothing worse than mild sprains and one possible concussion, belied the berserker expression Hurricane wore; had he not been holding back at least a little bit, the men would have been pulverized.

Most of the party guests had been evacuated to an inner conference room where they were being forcibly sequestered, while a small group of White House staff and military personnel, drawn by perverse curiosity, had trickled into the Garden. General Frank Vaughn was the latest to arrive.

Like the others, he gazed in humble awe at the destructive colossus as an entire family of wooden lounge chairs was crushed like matchwood. Only then did the officer turn to the rest of the assembled onlookers.

He found the Secretary of the Treasury conversing with the White House Chief of Staff and the senior Secret Service agent on the scene. He joined them and waited for the agent to recapitulate the events of the day and lay out the subsequent actions taken. “Police spotters are following the airship as it moves down the river. All of the reporters that were here have been isolated and a total news blackout is in force. The Vice President has been contacted, but no one outside knows the full situation.”

Vaughn was unimpressed. “I’ll wager very few inside know what’s really going on. What have you told the police?”

The Chief of Staff cleared his throat. “We’re reporting a runaway experimental weather balloon.”

“And the men flying…” He glanced down at the teletype report and read it again. “Is that right? Flying men?”

“Ground crew members who were holding the mooring ropes and inadvertently carried aloft.”

Vaughn waved the report at him. “And how does that explain them shooting lightning bolts from their hands?”

The man spread his hands in a gesture of surrender, but offered no comment.

“Do we know who is behind this?”

The Treasurer spoke for the first time. “It can only be a foreign government; Germany, if I had to hazard a guess. They have always been at the forefront of scientific and military development, and this sort of belligerence is just their style.”

Vaughn was wary. The Cabinet Secretary was known to be an advocate of aggressive foreign policy and was especially vocal about the threat posed by Hitler’s Nazi regime in Europe, but there were many others in Washington who felt that Hitler was a potential ally in the struggle against communism. The General knew he had to tread carefully in this particular political minefield. “If you’re right, this can only mean war.”

As they spoke, a group of Marines in full battle rattle and wielding riot batons was preparing to move in on Hurley and subdue him. Vaughn eavesdropped as they finalized their plan of attack. When he had heard enough, he excused himself from the war council and gently intervened. “Forgive me, sergeant, but I think you may want to reconsider. That’s Hurricane Hurley.”

The Marine bit back a caustic reply when he spied Vaughn’s stars and snapped to attention. “Sir, we’re going to do our best not to hurt him.”

“Son, I’m not worried about him.” Vaughn smiled forbearingly. “Look, he’s just blowing off a little steam. He’ll calm down in a few minutes and then we can get down to figuring out who the real enemy is.”

The Marine sergeant waited until the General turned away to roll his eyes, but the point became moot when Hurley’s rampage abruptly ceased. To the amazement of all onlookers, he froze in place for a few moments, then stooped down to pick up a silver serving platter. He stared at it for a moment, then turned it over and looked at the other side.

It was as if someone had thrown a switch. The transformation was nothing short of extraordinary. Hurley went from a raging, roaring behemoth to a gentle giant in an instant. He spied the general and with his new prize in hand walked over. Only the deluge of perspiration trickling out from beneath his curly black mop offered any testimony to the ferocity of his earlier behavior. From a few paces away, he threw a smart salute to Vaughn. “Good to see you again, sir.”

“Sergeant Major,” Vaughn nodded, returning the salute, then clasped Hurricane’s prodigiously large hand. “It’s been too long.”

“I’m surprised an old war horse like you hasn’t retired.”

“I’ve a few rides left in me before they put me out to pasture.” The general’s smile hardened to a look that was strictly business. “What happened here?”

Hurley shook his head. “I did my damnedest, but they had some kind of weapon… It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Dodge — that’s Mr. Dalton —”

“Dalton writes the…” Vaughn made a curious face that a mixture of displeasure and amusement.

Hurley needed no translation. “That’s right. He managed to grab one of them, but…” He shook his head again, this time with a sorrowful sigh.

“Any idea who we’re dealing with?”

Hurricane raised the silver plate. “This is made from the same metal as their ship and flying packs. It’s the only clue they left, and I’d say they wanted us to find it.”

Vaughn now saw that it was neither truly silver nor a plate at all, but a smooth disc eight inches in diameter and half an inch thick. As Hurley turned it over, it separated into two matching halves, and nested inside was a reel of film. He unwound a strip of celluloid and examined it. “It’s a Movietone reel.”

Vaughn turned to the Chief of Staff. “We need to see this. Do you have a projector?”

“In the theater. Follow me.”

Hurley and the general joined a procession of men moving into the halls of the Presidential mansion and entered the private movie theater. The film reel was given to the projectionist who threaded it onto a newsreel device. The Fox Movietone projector used a special film upon which was recorded not only visual images, but also a synchronized audio soundtrack. The quality was not as sharp as that used by feature motion pictures, which employed a separate soundtrack recorded on a vinyl album, but the advantage of the Movietone system was that it required only one piece of machinery to display both sound and moving pictures. The villain had no doubt taken this into account when choosing the medium in which to make his intentions known.

As everyone took their seats, Vaughn addressed the group: “This film is our only clue to the identity of the men who abducted the President. I don’t think I need to tell anyone that whatever you see stays in this room.”

There was a chorus of affirmatives, and then the lights went down and the screen filled with a scratchy pattern of light through dark film. This continued for a moment, and then resolved into a scene of almost total blackness. At the center, mostly hidden beneath the shadow of a dark cowl, was a lone human figure. Only his lower jaw and cryptic humorless mouth were visible, starkly white in contrast to the rest of the picture. For a long time the figure was motionless; the image was awkwardly static for a medium characterized by activity. Similarly, the strident musical score that most moviegoers had come to expect from weekly newsreels and serials was absent; there was only the soft hiss of film passing through the projector.

At last the dramatic silence was broken by a pronouncement even more profound: “People of America, I have your leader.”

A mournful exhalation rippled through the benighted room but no one spoke except the mysterious figure on the screen.

“By now you must realize that no weapon in your arsenal can vanquish me; no scheme of yours can hope to succeed. The fate of your leader is in my hands, and only by complete compliance with my demands can you hope to effect his release.

“The ransom for your leader cannot be paid with any coin in your treasury. I demand only one thing, and my demand is absolute.”

Vaughn held his breath. From the sudden hush, he knew he wasn’t the only one.

“I seek to prove myself in mortal combat with your greatest champion. I have studied your news journals and identified America’s greatest warrior; the only man who could hope to stand against me in battle: Captain Zane Falcon.”

The general felt as though all the blood had drained from his body. He slumped in his chair, almost deaf to the closing statement of the ultimatum. “I will give instructions to Captain Falcon in one week’s time; the location of his final battlefield, and the place where I have imprisoned your leader.

“Do not break faith with me. If you attempt any act of defiance, your leader will be the first victim of my wrath. He will not be the last. I await your pleasure, Captain Falcon.”

The reel ran out almost as soon as the final word was uttered, leaving the hushed room to ponder the threat to the rhythmic flapping of the loose end. Abruptly, the noise stopped and the interior lights came on.

Hurley let out a heavy sigh. “Falcon.”

Before anyone else could comment, the door opened and a Secret Service agent rushed in with a report. “The airship was spotted rendezvousing with a barge near the mouth of the bay. The… ah, hostage was transferred to a large amphibious airplane, which immediately took off.”

Vaughn rose to still the murmur that followed. “I sent up a squadron of P-36 Hawks from Baltimore before I came here. I will direct them to follow this plane.”

“They can’t shoot down the President,” gasped the Treasurer.

“The planes aren’t armed, but even if they were, I wouldn’t give that order. I will have them follow this boatplane. I’ve also called for a pair of B-10’s from Wright Field. They’re more than an hour out, but they are just about the fastest thing we got. They ought to be able to pick up the scent before those fighters have to turn back.”

“And what do we do if they run the plane to ground? We can’t risk the President’s life by defying this villain openly.”

“Mr. Secretary, I respectfully suggest that figuring that out is our most immediate course of action.”

“Sir,” interrupted the messenger. “There’s more. The spotters report that one of the flying men is coming back up the river.”

“Damnation,” rasped the Chief of Staff. “Do you suppose this fiend has another message for us? Or does he just want to gloat?”

Vaughn came to his feet, poised for action. “I’ll divert one of the planes to intercept and keep an extra eye on him. By God, I’ll be damned if I let him rain Hell twice in one day. We have enough artillery lining the river to ruin his day.”

“It won’t be enough.”

All eyes in the room turned to the source of the low rumble that was Hurricane Hurley’s thoughtful voice. He elaborated: “They use some kind of… invisible shield. Stops a bullet like a fly on the wind — shield of your car. When I tried to hit these guys, my fists never touched ‘em. This shield of theirs surrounds them like a turtle shell.”

The general wasn’t convinced. “But you were able to knock them around, right? Believe me, an anti-aircraft shell packs a lot more punch than even your fists, old friend.”

Hurley remained skeptical. “Sir, it almost seemed like the harder and faster I hit, the harder the shield got.”

Vaughn rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “These fellows used some kind of electrical weapon, right? I’m willing to bet that this fancy shield works off electricity as well. The fragmentation jacket on an ack-ack shell is made of steel, which conducts electricity a whole lot better than a lead slug from a Tommy gun… or your fists. If we put enough steel in the air over the river, it might be enough to short-circuit this device of his.”

“Short circuit. I think you’ve hit on it, sir. But firepower isn’t the answer.” Hurley bounded from his seat, a fallen champion eager for a rematch. “You don’t really fight fire with fire.”

There was no time for a concentrated effort, but in the few minutes that were available, a strategy was devised and implemented. A single fire hose was attached to the White House standpipe and unfurled onto the lawn.

To minimize the risk of shock, the members of the fire brigade manning the hose wore their rubber boots; it was no guarantee of safety but then nothing about this plan was guaranteed.

General Vaughn’s aide-de-camp, a young first lieutenant, established direct wireless contact with the chase plane that followed the lone sky raider up the Potomac, reporting on all his activities and measuring his progress. There seemed little doubt concerning his ultimate goal. The general himself was scanning the horizon with a pair of field glasses. “I see the plane.”

Hurley, who loomed over the uniformed officer like a small mountain, squinted up at the sky. He could just make out the speck that was a P-36 Hawk patrol aircraft, but his unaided eye could not discern the figure of the flying man. “Sir, may I?”

Vaughn passed the binoculars over without hesitation. He knew of no finer marksman than Hurley; if anyone could spot the approaching enemy, it was Hurricane.

The big man quickly located the plane, a low-slung fighter with a single radial engine and stubby wings. The distant pilot was turning wide circles in the sky, desperately trying to keep his plane from stalling as he tracked the much slower target. Hurley followed him through a series of spirals, then lowered his field of view to a point roughly at the center of the circle. There, more than a thousand feet below the Hawk, still out over the river, was a black shape that might have simply been a soaring bird.

“Got him,” Hurley announced. “He’s a few minutes out.”

“Do you know the range of his weapon?”

“No, but it’s a safe bet that he can shoot lightning a lot further than we can pump water.”

“Let’s see if we can’t bring him down a little before he gets here.”

“Tell your man to be careful. Those lightning bolts weren’t lethal down here, but up there… Well, if the pilot gets knocked out or his engine catches fire, he’ll be done for.”

Vaughn nodded crisply, and relayed his instructions to the pilot of the P-36. The plane immediately executed a rolling loop and drew up behind the lone raider. Hurley couldn’t tell, given the distance, if the flier was aware of the chase plane; if not, he was about to get the surprise of his life.

The plane made a dive-bombing run at the flier, swooping down like a hunting raptor from more than a thousand feet. The pilot pulled up well short of a collision, but the effect was nonetheless quite dramatic. The sky raider seemed unaware until, at the very last second, he lurched in mid-air and then dropped almost straight down. The evasive maneuver abruptly took him below the horizon created by the structures of the capital city, but Hurley reckoned the fellow was now over land and only about a minute away.

“It’s working,” Vaughn announced, relaying the pilot’s radio transmissions. “He’s down to about two hundred feet. One more pass should put him right where we want him.”

Hurricane nodded grimly and kept the glasses trained on the fighter plane. The pilot was playing a dangerous game now; to corral the flying villain into the range of the makeshift water cannon, he would have to walk the tightrope between overhauling his quarry and dropping out of the sky. The planes that had flown two decades before, during the Great War, would have had an easier time matching the pace of the flying attackers, but today’s monoplanes were built for speed; they had to go fast to keep from stalling. At two hundred feet, there would be precious little time to correct any mistakes.

“Here they come! Ready on the fire hose!”

The Hawk executed a broad loop and lined up on its unseen target. Even without fixing the man in his binoculars, Hurley was able to approximate his position by the trajectory of the incoming aircraft. It was close enough now that all on the ground could hear the roar of the 840 horsepower Wright Cyclone power plant as the plane began its final dive. The Doppler effect caused the pitch of the engine’s whine to grow with its approach, punctuating the impending climax. Then, when it seemed the plane must surely crash, the pilot nosed up with full flaps, showing the belly of his aircraft to all on the ground below. It seemed almost close enough to touch.

At that same instant, the man who flew without wings burst into view directly above the garden. Hurricane was unable to focus his glasses on the man before Vaughn’s stentorian voice commanded: “Let him have it!”

Something was wrong though. Hurley had an overwhelming urge to take another look at the attacker; there was something familiar about his sun-bleached hair and the silhouette of his jaw, but it was the clothing he wore under the metallic outline of his flying pack that really caught his eye. The group that had shanghaied the President had been wearing the attire of laborers, dungarees and T-shirts, but this man was crashing the party in formal attire; he was wearing a tuxedo.

The answer came to him in a rush of understanding. “Wait!”

But his roar was drowned out by the eruption of water blasting from the hose.