In the Shadow of Falcon's Wings

CHAPTER 5 THE MISSION

Technically speaking, Dodge’s passage aboard the US Army Air Corps torpedo bomber was not his first time aloft, but as his virgin experience aboard an airplane, it was memorable for all the wrong reasons.

Unlike the lavish appointments which made a ride aboard one of Pan American’s small fleet of clippers into something like a luxury cruise, the darkened bomb bay of the B-10 was strictly no frills. An engineer at the airfield had rigged up some web belts for the passengers to hold onto during take off, landing and the occasional patch of mid-air turbulence, but that was the extent of creature comforts. He, Hurricane and the relief flight crew sat on their luggage amidst the empty bomb racks. Early on in the voyage, Dodge had accepted the invitation to sit in the forward gunnery turret, but once aloft and away from recognizable landmarks, the novelty faded and the only change in the scenery was a darkening sky.

Their route was chosen by the availability of refueling outposts. From Baltimore, they flew south to Florida, then Havana, Maiquetia in Venezuela, French Guiana and finally Rio de Janeiro. Brazil was the jumping off point for a long journey over water, where any mechanical problems could easily spell the end not only of their trip, but their lives as well. The only interruption in the trans-Atlantic voyage was a stop at Wideawake Field on Ascension Island, a remote outpost run by the Eastern Telegraph Company. Their flight mechanic gave the plane a thorough check up before pronouncing it fit to fly the remaining sixteen hundred miles to Leopoldville.

Hurricane seemed ambivalent about the journey. An accomplished world traveler, he had crossed this ocean in almost every imaginable means of conveyance; it took a lot to get him excited. He spent most of the trip asleep. As they stretched their legs on the remote knob of volcanic rock that was Ascension Island, Dodge caught up with him.

“Why did you bring me along?”

Hurley gazed at him sidelong. “You didn’t have to come.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Well, I guess it ain’t at that.” The big man chuckled. “I could say because you might very well be the world’s leading expert on Zane Falcon.”

Dodge laughed humorlessly. “I don’t know anything about the real Captain Falcon.”

“You know more than you realize. The way you write him… that’s his ideal; the hero he always wished he could be.”

“But that’s not the reason.”

“It is, at least a little bit. If and when we find him, he might need some persuasion of the kind that’s more your forte than mine — gentle persuasion.”

This time Dodge’s chuckle was more heartfelt. Hurley wasn’t the big, dumb brute everyone thought he was. “You don’t give yourself enough credit. I happen to know that head on your shoulders is good for more than just cracking walnuts.”

“He’s lost his way,” Hurley continued, ignoring the platitude. “I tried to help him once before but it wasn’t enough.”

“What happened?”

“Who knows? It wasn’t any one thing really.” He sat on the ground Indian-style and took out a hand-rolled cheroot. “Maybe he just buried one too many friends in a war none of us really understood. You know, it wasn’t just the three of us. He took a whole company of kids over there. Seemed like it was always me ‘n’ the Padre there when things got ugly, but there were others too. Most of ‘em are still over there, if you take my meaning,”

It was odd hearing Falcon described this way, not as a pulp hero, but as a real man, conflicted by human emotions. “Quite a lot for one man to bear.”

“A company of ghosts.” Hurricane shrugged and savored a mouthful of sweet smoke. “Well, like I said, there are other reasons why I wanted you along.”

“Such as?”

“You’re good in a fight. I couldn’t believe how you tackled that fellow, and flew off with him and took away his wings. That was pretty bold… heroic, even.”

Dodge looked away quickly, hoping that his friend wouldn’t see the rush of color in his cheeks. “I’m no Captain Falcon.”

“Nope,” agreed Hurley, blowing a perfect smoke ring. “You might be better.”

Dodge was no stranger to Africa. He had been there many times. He had crossed mountains and deserts with Quatermain, roamed the jungles with Lord Greystoke, and even steamed up the mighty Congo with Marlow. As he disembarked the B-10 shortly before midnight onto a muddied airstrip under the full fury of a tropical downpour however, the Dark Continent seemed a bit more prosaic than he expected.

They were met on the tarmac by Pieter Demme, an expediting agent recommended by the diplomatic service. Demme shuttled them from the airfield in a lumbering Citroen P45 — more vehicle than they needed for just themselves and their duffle bags, but a far better means of getting around on dirt roads turned to quagmires by the heavy rain than anything else available. It was their next stop, at the Hotel Imperial in the sprawling city of Leopoldville, where Dodge got his first real taste of Africa.

Despite the lateness of the hour, the saloon of the Imperial was bustling with activity, or to be more accurate, debauchery. The tables and the long hardwood bar were lined with a motley group of weathered, hard-looking Caucasians; the only Negroes in the establishment were the bartender and a loose assortment of prostitutes that wandered from table to table plying their trade. The latter group immediately took note of their arrival and began gravitating toward their table, but a stern look from the expediter deflected their advances.

“You’re welcome to sample the local fare,” Demme explained in English, clipped with an almost guttural Flemish accent, “but just now, we’re awaiting Monsieur Marten, a riverboat operator.”

“Can he be trusted?” inquired Hurley, intuitively recognizing that this requirement was of foremost importance.

Demme shrugged. “You are not carrying a great deal of money, so he has no reason to resort to skullduggery. If he fails to deliver you to your destination, he will receive no payment from my office.”

“Not exactly a ringing endorsement,” Dodge observed.

“It is a rough place, Monsieur, and sometimes one is required to do business with rough men. Ah, speak of the Devil and he appears; here is Monsieur Marten.”

Marten looked like a cross between a character from a Joseph Conrad tale and a Brooklyn longshoreman. Almost as tall and burly as Hurricane, he wore a permanent scowl on his pockmarked face and had a curious Oriental dragon tattooed on the right side of his clean-shaven skull. He offered Demme an indifferent greeting in French, then sat at the table where he regarded the Americans as an alley cat might observe a mouse and the bulldog that keeps him company.

“Monsieur Demme tells me you want to go upriver,” he began, disdaining polite preamble. “How far?”

Hurley seemed unperturbed by the coarse Belgian. “We don’t know for sure. We’re looking for a man: Father Nathan Hobbs.”

“Oui, I know him. He preaches to the Kongo who clear the forests to plant rubber. I stop there on my way to Stanleyville.”

“We’d like you to take us there.”

“But of course. There is only the question of price.” He sucked through his teeth as if trying to clear a piece of food lodged in his molars. “I have no cargo, so if I take you now, you would bear the entire cost of the journey. I could not take you upriver for less than…two thousand francs.”

Dodge did the arithmetic in his head. Two thousand francs was more than four thousand US dollars. He wasn’t clear on who was picking up the tab for their little jaunt, but that was a lot of money by anyone’s standard.

“How long to get us there?” Hurricane pressed, ignoring the issue.

“If we make no stops? Two days.”

“Two more days,” groaned Dodge. “We’ve only got a week. It’s not enough time.”

His friend made a comforting gesture. “For two thousand francs, you will take us to Father Hobbs’ mission, agreed?”

Marten’s scowl turned into an avaricious grin. “Oui, monsieur. We have a deal.”

“Excellent, we leave immediately.”

The riverboat captain’s smile slipped a notch. “Ah, but monsieur….”

There was a gleam in Hurricane’s eye and Dodge realized the big man had set the hook. “If you can’t do it, maybe we should talk to someone who can.”

“Non.” Marten wore the look of a man who knew he had been had. “A deal is a deal, monsieur. Je vais le faire immédiatement!”

“Excellent.” Hurley turned to Demme. “Listen, I’d like you to wire your office in Stanleyville and have ‘em buy a whole mess of rubber. We can have Mr. Marten here bring it back on the return trip, seeing as how we’re paying for him to run an empty boat.”

Demme’s face also fell and Dodge, in a moment of clarity, saw the game the two men had been playing. Demme and Marten, recognizing that the urgency of their need would translate into a willingness to pay an exorbitant fee, had already made plans to bring their own cargo back from upriver, essentially doubling their profit. It wasn’t that much different from an unscrupulous New York cabbie, taking advantage of an out-of-town fare. What really amazed Dodge however, was how Hurley had so easily seen through their scheme and outplayed them.

Marten and Demme both rose, their movements almost synchronized. The boat operator spoke first. “You must give me one hour, monsieur. I must buy fuel and provisions for the trip if we are to make no stops. You cannot ask for more than that.”

“And I must contact Stanleyville,” added Demme. “I will collect you in an hour.”

“Say, that’s just fine. It’ll give me a chance to… how’d you say it Mr. Demme? Sample the local fare?” Hurricane grinned broadly then winked at one of the working girls.

Demme affected a supercilious expression, but nodded and took his leave, close on Marten’s heels.

Dodge shook his head. “That was amazing. You really hustled them.”

Hurley’s smile never faltered, but his eyes grew hard. “Just letting them know that we didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. But I’d be lying if I said this is the end of it.”

“How’s that?”

“Like Demme said, the Congo is a rough place. There’s a gang of pirates that pretty much own the stretch we’re headin’ into.”

“Pirates? It’s the twentieth century for God’s sake.”

Hurley chuckled darkly. “Forget about Captain Blood or Long John Silver. These guys are more like Scarface Al Capone; we tangled with them once or twice back in the day. Anyone who wants to run the river either pays ‘em off, or works for ‘em.”

“So which is Marten?”

“Exactly, my boy. Never turn your back on that rat. I’m banking on him leaving us alone since we’re no good to him dead, but who knows? He might decide we’re not worth the trouble and knife us in our sleep.”

Chastened, Dodge sat back in his seat as his companion flagged the barman. Barely on the ground and already I’ve fallen in with pirates and cutthroats, he thought. So much for adventure.

As Hurley ordered food for them both, Dodge let his eyes roam the room, as if by his scrutiny he might be able to identify the pirates in their midst. The room was abuzz with conversations and arguments, but Dodge recognized none of what was said. The Belgian Congo, like most of Africa, was a melting pot of rogues from all over Europe. French and German were the official tongues of the place, but even within those linguistic divisions, there were dozens of dialectic variations.

Then, from the midst of the auditory pandemonium, he heard a familiar utterance. He didn’t know what it meant, but the exclamation — a curse shouted by a man who had just been caught cheating at cards — set alarm bells ringing in his head. He picked the man out of the crowd and mentioned the incident to Hurley.

“What language is that?”

Hurricane focused his attention on the card game. “He’s an Afrikaaner. Probably got caught cheating at cards in Jo’burg and had to sneak up here. Why?”

“The man I took that flying rig from was speaking the same language; I’m sure of it.”

The giant pondered this. “Mercenaries; they’re as thick as flies over here. It’s a good bet that whoever is behind all this hired his men in Africa. Come to think of it, he’s probably set his base of operations hereabouts. It’s a big, lawless place.”

“Then we’re not just here to find Father Hobbs.”

Hurricane shrugged. “We might get lucky, but for now, finding the Padre is our first priority.”

Their discussion went fallow as the waiter arrived with drinks and bowls of a strange, pungent stew. Dodge chewed a mouthful of tough meat, much as he chewed on this latest bit of information. The identity of their foe remained an evolving enigma; a villain with other-earthly technology at his disposal and the means to hire a small army of soldiers-of-fortune, had pulled off the greatest abduction in history, yet his demands were the ravings of a lunatic. Mortal combat with a comic book character? It defied logic. There had to be something else at work, some ulterior motive that was the method behind this seeming madness.

Demme returned within the hour and drove them to the port, where Marten waited. The Belgian had one white mate, who appeared to be cut from the same cloth as his skipper, and a crew of five dark-skinned natives. Dodge noted that the latter group looked positively haggard; their scarred and diseased skin was stretched over emaciated and deformed skeletons. One was missing a hand, another had lost part of his left foot and two others had lost fingers during the short course of their lives. Marten and his second bellowed orders imperiously and although the crewmen reacted promptly as directed, Dodge saw in their eyes that they had long since abandoned hope of earning any sort of reward for hard work; they were slaves, living on a diet of terror and empty promises.

Marten hastened them under the cover of a tin awning as the boat cast off and begin plowing the muddied river. The heavens continued to deluge them and more than an inch of water sloshed about on the deck, but as Marten was quick to point out, the rain kept the mosquitoes at bay and provided them with barrels of fresh water; in the Congo, being soaked to the skin was preferable to the paroxysms of malaria or dysentery.

From Leopoldville, they traveled the broad waterway known as Stanley Pool, a section of the river just above Livingstone Falls. Leopoldville along with its sister city Brazaville on the opposite bank in the French Congo territory had become one of the busiest trade hubs in Equatorial Africa; all of the natural resources harvested from the interior region along the Congo Basin wound up in Leopoldville before being loaded on rail cars bound for the coast.

In the sixty years since American journalist Henry Morton Stanley had explored the Congo basin and laid claim to all that he surveyed in the name of King Leopold II of Belgium, the Congo Basin — the darkest place on the so-called Dark Continent — had become the chief source of income for its distant European landlord, but that wealth had been yielded up at great cost to the native inhabitants. In the words of Stanley himself: “the savage only respects force, power, boldness, and decision.” Of course, the “savage” occupants of the land prior to the Belgian conquest were not without culpability.

For more than three hundred years, the Kongo Empire had operated a highly profitable trade network in the region, dealing in ivory, copper, and that most evil of commodities, human lives. The flood of slaves sent up the Lualaba River and on to Zanzibar took such a heavy toll on the Kongo Empire that it had almost ceased to exist by the 17th century when Portuguese forces administered the coup de grace by defeating the Kongolese forces at the Battle of Ambuila, and subsequently executing the royal house.

Yet, for all the historic interest in the region, the Congo Basin remained largely unexplored. Although the river — the world’s fourth longest — was almost entirely navigable, the thick rainforests, second only to the Amazon region in South America, turned back even the hardiest adventurers. In his landmark expedition from Zanzibar to the Atlantic coast, Stanley lost more than two-thirds of his army of native porters. Although most of the Dark Continent was in reality very well-lit, divided between the arid Sahara desert and the vast sun-drenched veldt, the Congo was truly benighted, covered by an emerald blanket that eclipsed all illumination. Dodge got a taste of this as their boat rounded the broad curve of Stanley Pool, and the lights of Leopoldville were swallowed up in the rain and darkness.

Morning brought an end to the rain, but the resulting humidity soaked them even more thoroughly. Hurley remained placid, alternately cat-napping and reading a stack of well-thumbed pulp novels he had borrowed from one of the B-10 pilots. Dodge remained with him under the protective mosquito net, likewise motionless, but his languor was more complete; in the thick tropical air, he felt incapable of physical activity.

The mystery of the attack on the White House continued to rattle around his subconscious like a pebble in his shoe, but even more troubling was the matter of Captain Falcon. For three years he had chronicled the exploits of a man he believed to be largely fictional, only to learn that an inverse proportion of the tale was actually true.

He knew Hurricane well enough to believe that such a thing was actually possible; the big man was a character in the broadest sense of the word — a walking anachronism, heroic in deed as well as ideals, in a world ruled by men who were threatened by such superlative individuals. Were Falcon and Hobbs similarly larger than life?

As described in Hurley’s memoir, Father Nathan Hobbs was a tall, painfully thin man with lank black hair, possessed of an extraordinarily dour demeanor. “He was so thin,” Hurricane had said, “because he only ate when taking Communion; his only nourishment was the Sacred Host.” An exaggeration to be sure, but such gaunt joylessness bespoke a man given to asceticism. Nevertheless, Nathan Hobbs, a seminary-trained Roman Catholic clergyman who had traveled the world studying not just the religious beliefs but also the day-to-day customs of people in every corner of the globe, was at heart an American patriot. When the call to arms had come in 1917, he had signed up to do his part in The War to End All Wars. A commission had been extended along with an opportunity to serve as a chaplain, but Hobbs had demurred, choosing instead to relinquish his priestly collar and enlist as a combat soldier. It was in this capacity that he had been shipped overseas with the Fighting Falcons.

The company first sergeant, a monster of a man nicknamed “Hurricane” had quickly realized the inherent danger in telling a man of God to go forth and kill, and at the direction of his commander, gave “the Padre” a new set of orders. He would once more minister to souls, those of the men in his company, battling against the demons that constantly assaulted the morale of young men sent off to die in a foreign land. He carried his Springfield 1903, but never fired a shot in anger. Yet he was no pacifist; evil in all its forms was his enemy. In his travels, he had learned a method of unarmed fighting called te — the way of the open hand — which was, at least the way Hurley told it, as effective in close combat as a bayonet thrust. The Fighting Falcons did not suffer from the loss of a rifleman, but instead earned accolades for heroics above and beyond the call of duty, owing in no small part to the Padre’s ministrations. But the yearlong tour that culminated in the signing of the Armistice at Compiegne was only the beginning of Hobbs’ adventure with Captain Falcon.

The Great War had left the world in shambles, a fertile ground for opportunists to build phoenix-like criminal empires from the ashes of the past. Although the United States Congress had elected to return to the pre-war policy of isolationism and refused to join the League of Nations, the sitting President had by executive order, extended the Fighting Falcons’ mission to battle evil wherever it reared its ugly head. Their assignments were diverse; they traveled to every corner of the globe battling warlords and mad scientists, pirates and gunrunners. It was such a perfectly ludicrous premise that Dodge had always believed it to be a fabrication. Now, he didn’t know what to believe.

Hurley’s memoir stated that the Great Depression had signaled the end of the Fighting Falcons’ secret war, and that the surviving members of the team had been blown to the Four Winds. In the three years since Dodge’s weekly feature had made its first appearance, no one but Hurricane himself had made a credible claim to membership in that elite force, further supporting the idea that it was a fiction. The Padre had evidently returned to the cloth and resumed his ministry here, on the edge of Hell itself. Dodge wondered how the real Nathan Hobbs would measure up to his literary counterpart.

In daylight, Marten’s boat proved a shock to Dodge’s nervous system. In the driving rain and darkness, he had paid little heed to the craft, but what he now saw filled him with dread. The boat was little more than a rotting wooden deck with low gunwales and a ramshackle superstructure. It was difficult to imagine the vessel hauling tons of cargo up and down the river, driven only by a smoky diesel engine. A small consolation was that the boat required constant attention from its crew, leaving the passengers mostly to themselves.

Dodge was not fooled by Hurley’s passivity. The big man knew that they were in dangerous company — dangerous enough that sleep was a luxury they could ill-afford — but by remaining almost dormant, Hurricane was saving his energy for the long night watch ahead.

The first day and night passed without incident. The boat chugged pedantically along, passing haphazard settlements where local villagers gathered on the dock to see if they would stop. It was the only human contact they had, but the river region teemed with other forms of life; a non-stop cacophony issued from the forest and Dodge caught glimpses of various primate species capering in the overhead canopy.

During the afternoon of the second day, Hurricane pointed out a column of smoke rising into the air high above the verdant ceiling.

“They burn the forest to make way for rubber trees,” explained Marten. “That is our destination; the village where your Father Hobbs is.”

Dodge saw that the explanation had not served to satisfy Hurley. The big man’s eyes were now fully alert, and his muscles were tensed like a spring ready to explode into action. As the boat churned onward, the smell of burning wood became a choking miasma hanging over the water. Marten and his crew tried to act nonchalant, but even Dodge could sense that something bad was about to happen.

“Stay alert,” Hurley whispered, “and follow my lead.”

The dock came into view first, a simple wooden pier floating on the muddy water anchored to decayed pilings. The rest of the village was surrounded by trees that hid the outbuildings from view, but there was no mistaking the source of the smoke that continued to waft skyward — it was coming from the village itself. Dodge stared aghast as the boat drew nearer to the scene of devastation. It was, he would later realize, exactly what Marten was counting on.

Hurricane knew it too, but even he was unprepared for the carnage that met them as the boat sidled up to the dock. Not a building had been left standing; there were only smoldering heaps to mark the places where they had been. Once the big picture came into focus, Dodge saw the smaller shapes that were enshrouded in dark clouds, not of smoke, but flies. He turned away in disgust, and found that he and Hurricane were now surrounded.

The crew carried only makeshift cudgels — pieces of pipe and lengths of chain. The five had formed a horseshoe around the pair of travelers, and hefted their weapons menacingly. Behind them, at the top of the arch, stood Marten and the first mate, both armed with revolvers.

Dodge’s heart caught in his throat, but Hurley’s veneer of calm held up. There was rage in his eyes, but his manner was almost blasé. “That was a nice touch, waiting until we were distracted. I knew you were a rat, but I didn’t figure that you would be willing to kill all those innocent people just to get at us.”

Marten’s menacing expression cracked just a little. “We had nothing to do with this. This is the work of Krieger’s pirates.”

“Krieger? That would be Johannes Krieger?”

“Ah, you know of him?”

Hurley gave a disappointed sigh. “I thought I killed him.”

Dodge found his voice at last. “I don’t understand. If you aren’t working with these pirates, why turn on us now? What’s in it for you?”

Hurricane answered, speaking loud enough for all to hear. “When the authorities investigate this massacre, it will be assumed that the pirates killed us as well. Mr. Marten will demand his payment, claiming that he brought here as agreed. He’ll still get paid.”

“Indeed. A win for me no matter how you look at it. I expected Krieger will be quite pleased when I deliver your heads.” He barked a command in French and in unison the crew of cutthroats advanced.