Uncrashable Dakota (11 page)

From his hiding spot, Hollis had to agree with Bill: Jasper’s acrid smoke had begun to fill the hallway and was burning his eyes. A sharp and insistent tickle scraped the back of his throat. He stifled a cough. His whole head felt itchy. It would be such sweet, instant relief to sneeze.…

He pinched his nose and clamped a palm over his mouth until the urge subsided.

“I’m tellin’ you,” said Bill. “Soon as this is over, I’m buying me a bona fide ranch. Montana, maybe. Or Wyoming.”

“You Yankees don’t know the first thing about the life of a rancher.”

“I’ll hire some good old country boys to do the work while I enjoy a never-ending river of fine spirits from my porch swing.”

“I truly cannot believe how many of you Yanks signed up for this here ride.”

“Not for the ride, Jasper. We ain’t aboard this death trap for our health.”

“What about the cause, then? You with us on that?”

“Sure, sure. South will rise, and all that. Long as I get my cut of the ransom, South can rise all day and all night till the end of time, for all I care.”

Hollis wanted desperately to continue eavesdropping—were they holding his mother for
ransom
?—but this might be his only chance to travel undetected. He scuttled backward beneath the credenza, silently begging Rob not to transmit another message. The shuffle of his knees and toes against the carpet was drowned out by the escalating pitch of the men’s argument. He wiggled around the corner as Bill said, “What’s my
sister
got to do with any of this?”

Jasper erupted into a fit of hacking coughs, while Hollis found himself in front of the unguarded door to the bridge. He pulled it open a crack and peeked straight down the central walkway to the windows, where the sky had turned as gray and flat as a stage backdrop. Strange crewmen glided back and forth across the aisle, emerging from one great chugging machine only to disappear behind another. Hollis slipped inside the door and darted behind the stabilization gauge. Entranced despite the circumstances, he reached up and slid his hand along one of the smooth glass tubes. Inside, the suspended silver ball hovered slightly left of center: the
Wendell Dakota
was tilting starboard. The other tubes curved around him like a rib cage, measuring the invisible axis that stretched from bow to stern. He crept forward to the front of the gauge, where a switchboard arranged a coiled mess of wires into rows that fed a bank of telephones marked
PROP TOWER 1, LIFT CHAMBER, TURBINE
3
, and a dozen more onboard locations.

He eased around the edge of the machine and hugged the wall, running toward the front windows with his knees bent and his upper body in a low slant. When he was almost there, he squeezed sideways down a narrow, dusty space between the backs of two long chalkboards that weren’t quite pushed together. He wiped away the sudden mess of dust and cobwebs that coated his sweaty face. At the end of the chalkboard tunnel, he managed to contort himself so that he could peek out into the center of the bridge.

Ten feet away, a man wearing a crisp uniform with gold trim around the cuffs and collar sat in a chair with his back to Hollis. His hands were tied behind him. His hair was as white as a blank sheet of Miss Betzengraf’s writing paper.

Captain Quincy.

The
Wendell Dakota
had officially been hijacked.

10

HOLLIS COUNTED
two dozen armed men on the bridge—porters, stewards, low-ranking officers, and telephone operators. And according to Rob’s transmission, more were swarming the corridors of the ship like the deadly viruses in
Journey to the Center of a Human Being
, the only Julius Germain book he’d ever managed to slog through.

Captain Quincy flexed his gnarled fingers and struggled in vain to free his wrists. Hollis couldn’t help but picture his mother’s hands scraped raw against a tightening twist of rope.

Suddenly, Jefferson Castor appeared, hands also clasped behind his back, but
comfortably
, like he was out for a stroll. Hollis rubbed his eyes, convinced the stress of the last few hours was playing tricks on him. Castor stopped in front of Captain Quincy, regarding him as if he were a tedious chore to be avoided until it absolutely had to be dealt with. Hollis looked from one man to the other. This was no hallucination, and yet he couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of what he was seeing.

Beneath the chalkboard to his left, several pairs of black boots gathered. Someone began tapping the board with a metal pointer. Hollis shrank back into the shadows.

Castor pulled a hand from behind his back and raised it across his body, letting it waver for a moment alongside his head. Then he brought it down in a vicious backhand across Quincy’s face. The old man’s head whipped to the side. The muted crack of knuckle on cheekbone gave the moment a sickening clarity, and Hollis knew exactly what he was seeing: his stepfather had taken the ship by force. Castor shook his wrist and winced.

Quincy spit blood and growled, “That all you got?”

Castor nodded at one of his men, who drew a pistol and pressed the barrel against the captain’s temple. Rather than flinch away, Quincy seemed to push his head into the weapon, driving the hijacker’s hand back a few inches and forcing him to apply even more pressure. Hollis pictured a braver version of himself running from his hiding spot, wrenching the gun from the man, taking control of the bridge. In a series of rapid-fire fantasies, he was freeing the captain, testifying at Castor’s trial, getting his picture taken for the front page of—

Dit dit dit dit.

His transmitter crackled. The men on the other side of the chalkboard fell silent.

HEY DAKOTA ANY SIGN OF YOUR MOTHER?

Nope
, he thought.
But I found your father.

Hollis had started to edge back through the narrow gap when a head wreathed in a mane of hair appeared ahead of him.

“You there!” The crewman pointed straight at Hollis as if there were other kids sneaking around the bridge. The man turned to get Castor’s attention.

Hollis’s mind hurtled through several stupid ideas and came to rest on one sure thing: if he stayed in this chalkboard tunnel, he would certainly be trapped and caught. He changed direction and crawled toward the man, bursting out inches from his legs before scrambling to his feet. The man spun and swiped at him, missing the strap of the satchel by an inch as Hollis ducked sideways. Castor froze in the middle of buttoning his blazer.

“
Hollis!
”

The man holding the gun to Captain Quincy’s temple transferred his aim.

My stepfather is about to have me shot
, Hollis thought with an oddly calm inner voice. Jefferson Castor, the man who just last week took him on a sightseeing trip to the private sky-dock atop the Statue of Liberty’s crown. Moving automatically, Hollis cut left past a table full of open books and maps, around which a few hijackers were gathered. One of them, he was surprised to see, was a tall, willowy lady wearing reading glasses. Another one managed to yell, “
Hold it!
”

Hollis clenched his teeth, waiting for the bullet to tear through the flesh of his back. He’d once overheard a sky-dock security guard say that being shot was like getting hit with a searing-hot sledgehammer, and he was fully prepared to be knocked off his feet by a fiery blow. Instead, Castor barked orders.

“Alive, I need him alive! He doesn’t leave the bridge!”

Hollis heard the scrape of wood against the floor, followed by a clattering scuffle. He risked a glance over his shoulder. Captain Quincy had tripped Castor, and they were flailing together in a heap along with the chair.

Nice move, old man.

Up ahead, hijackers rushed to block the exit. Hollis slid around a boxy machine topped with a glass dome spitting ticker tape that heaped, unattended, in curlicues on the floor. He turned down a passage of archived sky-charts. Up ahead was an exit. For all he knew, it was locked or it dead-ended inside a closet, but he had no other choice.

With footsteps pounding behind him, he slammed into the door and spun the knob.

It swung open.

Hollis sprinted up a stairwell lined with hazard signs that warned of terrible danger to unauthorized personnel. He took the steps two at a time, trying to control his ragged breathing. If his mother wasn’t being held alongside Captain Quincy, where was she? Not that he’d be much use to her right now, even if he succeeded in discovering her location. The hijackers bounding up the steps behind him left only one open lane: a steel pathway that took him on a winding tour through the forest of pipes that delivered exhaust from the bridge machinery to the air outside. A sudden rancid smell almost knocked him flat. It wasn’t until Hollis was almost on top of them that he became aware of the nests stuffed in the gaps between the pipe-work. At some point in the ship’s construction, birds had colonized the ventilation chamber, and now their feathery remains seemed to be guarding the exit. Gagging, Hollis nudged the gristle out of the way and spun the wheel in the center of the door. He burst out onto the highest promenade deck, not far from where he had greeted passengers in what seemed like a previous life.

The sky was streaked with storm clouds. The wind whipped around him, sliding behind his back and curling between his arms and legs in wild figure-eight gusts. He wished for heavy sky-boots, but as soon as he heard the footsteps behind him, he was glad for his loafers. He ran past the few passengers left on deck, who pressed their floppy hats to their heads and squinted against the wind as they made their way to the Grand Staircase. The only person at the long bar was Edmund Juniper, who was pouring his own moonshine julep and struggling to keep the sprig of mint from blowing off the surface of the overflowing drink. He seemed to be enjoying the weather and greeted Hollis with a friendly wave.

“Bracing day we’re having!”

Hollis tried his best to indicate that he needed help, but the wind changed direction with a vicious about-face. He pumped his arms and lowered his head; the wind beat him back with such force that it stopped his forward progress and turned him into a flailing octopus struggling to run.

Sir Edmund was torn from his chair, moonshine julep in hand. He tumbled down the deck and slammed into one of the two hijackers who had managed to follow Hollis outside. The other man planted his feet in a wide stance and drew his revolver. Hollis grabbed one of the bolted-down barstools, hoisted himself over the top of the bar, and dropped behind it. Stray bottles and highball glasses rolled back and forth. The wind howled over his head, but the sturdy oak bar provided enough shelter to pull out the transmitter and send a message to Rob.

STEERAGE NOW

He packed the book away and crawled along behind the bar until he reached a dumbwaiter, which had very quickly become his preferred method of interdeck travel. With a swipe of his hand, he cleared the small metal cube of snack trays and clean glasses that were still warm and steaming from the dishwasher. Hollis stuffed himself inside, knees pressed against his chin. He released the brake lever and descended into darkness, the abrupt silence broken only by the hysterical pounding of his heart and the echo of Jefferson Castor’s betrayal.

THE HISTORY OF FLIGHT IN AMERICA

PART

THREE

PRESIDENT LINCOLN
agreed to pay Samuel Dakota fifty thousand dollars a month to build and test flying machines, with the United States government as his exclusive contractor. Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase balked at this exorbitant sum, which he called “a gross miscalculation” on the president’s part.

“Would you care to provide me with an estimate of what you think each individual soldier’s life is worth, then, Mr. Chase,” the President responded, “so that when Mr. Dakota’s secret weapon ends this terrible conflict in months rather than years, we can compensate him in a manner more to your liking?”

Secretary Chase signed the check.

Samuel Dakota promptly bought and consumed two strawberry-rhubarb pies from the best bakery in Washington. Then he scoured the ranks of the Union Army engineer corps for smart, hardworking, trustworthy men. He assembled one team to harvest sap, another to hand-pick the proper beetles from the soil, and a third to distill vats of moonshine—reverse-engineering the precise recipe from the original bottle—to be mixed with the sap for beetle food. They traveled south under heavy guard to the spot where he had made his discovery, marked by the gaping hole and disturbed earth left by the tree that was probably still soaring up into the heavens, toward God or at least some other world unknown to man. In three weeks, they built an office, employee barracks, and the first of several warehouses. Samuel surrounded his compound with a high fence like a prisoner-of-war camp, keeping away the curious onlookers who never seemed to run out of questions for the men in the guardhouse. After that, a few persistent locals returned every day to peek through the fence. Samuel supposed the construction was free entertainment for them. While the sap was being harvested and the beetles transferred from the countryside to dirt farms within the compound, Samuel busied himself with the design of the very first airship.

Dakota Aeronautics was born.

*   *   *

ONE DAY,
sitting at his drafting table alternately scribbling and chewing on his pencil, Samuel recalled a boyhood trip down the Susquehanna River. He began idly sketching the old, rickety boat his uncle had made for their journey. As he retraced his lines and shaded the edge of each chopped and sanded strip of bark, a thought began to buzz around in the back of his mind. By the time he finished sketching the thick braided rope that attached the boat to his uncle’s dock, the nagging buzz had become a full-fledged idea. Samuel grabbed the drawing and ran outside to find Solomon Pembroke, his chief builder, who was sitting beneath a tree whittling a toy train out of a stick. Pembroke had been whittling every day since he’d been hired, waiting for Samuel to deliver the first design.