Storming: A Dieselpunk Adventure (23 page)

“Ladies and
gen-tle-men
!” Livingstone shouted. “We now have something rather special for your enjoyment. Our next qualifier, Captain Hitchcock, will attempt to best all performances with his raw courage and, for the first time in this or any professional competition, an
untried
assistant. I ask you to please applaud this brave young woman who risks life and limb to attempt the impossible!”

Hitch’s heart started doing hammerhead turns. He scrubbed his palms against his pants. “All right,” he said to Jael. “Come on around here.”

Earl circled to stand ready at the propeller. Jael followed him, still bobbing, this time with a definite limp.

Hitch’s stomach flipped. “Did you step in a hole?”

She shook her head. “It is not something to worry about. Getting that close to lightning has given me stiffness.”

“Oh, heck. The lightning.” It
would
be too much luck to ask for her survival and an immediate recovery all at once. He caught her arm. “You’re not doing this. You’re going to need balance and strength up there. It’s not worth falling off and getting killed, not after you made it out of yesterday alive.”

She scrunched her forehead. “Let me have practice. This I can do. If I did not think I could, I would be telling you.”

Livingstone was still selling it to the crowd: “In light of these special circumstances, we will be giving Captain Hitchcock and his lovely assistant a ten-minute warm-up period—which will provide you a first-hand look behind the veil of secrecy that shrouds a barnstormer’s carefully planned routine.”

Earl snorted. “Carefully planned, my bunioned foot.”

In this business, you either winged it—literally—and maybe died flying, or you stayed grounded.

Hitch looked at Jael. “I’m not getting you hurt.”

“I have knowledge of what I am doing. Give me my own decision.” Her eyes were clear. Except for the wrinkle in her forehead, she looked totally unafraid.

If she couldn’t do this, he’d lose the Jenny right here and now. But even that was nothing to somebody’s neck. He could start over if it came to that—eventually. He always seemed to land on his feet, one way or another.

But that look in her eyes.
She
believed she could do it.

Livingstone had fallen silent. It was now or not ever.

“We’ll just roll around on the ground for a bit to start with,” Hitch decided. “If you feel wobbly at all, or you’ve got any kind of notion you’re not going to be able to stay up there in the wind, you tell me, you got it?”

She dipped her chin in a terse nod.

He looked at Earl. “Get her some goggles and gloves.” He walked Jael right up to the wing, supporting her so her limp wasn’t so noticeable. “Stay on the wing’s ribs, all right? You’re going to feel a wash from the propeller. Don’t forget that once we’re up, I won’t be able to hear you and you won’t be able to hear me.”

“I have understanding. I am not afraid of height.”

“You’re not afraid of much, I guess.” He pulled on his own helmet and goggles. “Be careful.” He hauled himself into the rear cockpit and checked the fuel selector.

Jael accepted the goggles and gloves from Earl. Then she reached for a strut and started to step aboard. The back of the wing wasn’t even a foot off the ground, but she had trouble bending her knee that far. She set her teeth, hard and unflinching, and put a hand under her thigh to pull her leg up.

This was bad. Really, really bad.

On the sidelines, Rick’s high-pitched laugh carried. Standing beside him, Lilla jumped once and waved. Rick joggled her elbow to make her stop, his sneer never wavering in its aim toward Hitch.

Hitch looked back around.

Jael had made it onto the wing and was crouching on the ribs, balanced with one hand on the strut and the other on a guy wire. She nodded at him, all business, as if her joints hadn’t about rusted shut on her.

In front of the propeller, Earl gave Hitch a strained look.

They were all in trouble. No way Jael could go into the air, and no way Livingstone would give him another chance if she didn’t. But right now, the only thing Hitch could do was play along and taxi around the runway. She couldn’t get into much trouble that way, even if she tumbled.

He nodded to Earl. “Let’s do it.”

“All right. Fuel on?”

“Fuel on!”

“Switch off?”

He checked the magneto switches on the panel. “Switches off!”

Earl raised a leg and gave the propeller a mighty heave, then another and another. “Contact!”

Hitch flipped the magneto switch. “Contact!”

Earl swung the prop once again.

One of the cylinders coughed smoke. A second later the whole engine caught, chugging at first. He opened the throttle a bit, and the noise rose to a steady roar. He checked the stick and the rudder pedals, then gave the Jenny enough juice to start her taxiing.

The crowd watched them, intent and quiet. Only Lilla cupped her hands around her mouth and whooped, oblivious when Rick turned his scowl on her.

Jael crouched, her back braced against a strut, and clutched the wires. She was panting, and her eyes were big and unblinking. But she still wore that determined grit of her teeth. It was a mighty familiar look: she was in over her head and too proud to admit it.

How stupid had he been to get himself—and her—into this fix? He growled deep in his chest. Right now a little anger was better than a whole lot of scared.

As they bumped down the runway, she slowly eased herself up to a standing position. Chin raised, she turned to duck under the wires, so she’d be facing the same direction he was. This time, there was no mistaking her wince. She might even have whimpered; it was hard to tell over the engine noise.

“Take it slow! Just go slow!” he shouted. So long as they were on the ground, she should still be able to hear him. “There’s no rush here!”

She nodded.

At the end of the runway, he turned the plane around and started to taxi back. Now she was on the side of the field facing the crowd. Time to perform if ever there was a time.

She gave them a wave, then started to walk down the wing toward them. This time, her whole right leg gave out under her. She hit her knees, landing on a rib. The crowd’s gasp was audible even over the engine.

He ground his teeth and kept on grinding them all the way back to the other end of the runway.

Once there, he shut off the engine and climbed out. “C’mon. It’s all right.” He reached up to swing her down.

Her breath came hard, but two hot splashes of color burned against her cheeks. Her eyes snapped, almost angrily. “Give to me time.” Her feet reached the ground and she turned away.

“We may not have time.” But he headed over to meet Livingstone halfway. “Let me have a few more minutes, will you? She’s not ready.”

Livingstone stared askance, past Hitch’s shoulder. “So I see.”

Hitch turned around. Jael was rolling somersaults in the dust, apparently trying to loosen herself up. Earl caught his eye and shrugged.

He turned back to Livingstone. “She was that close to getting hit by lightning yesterday.”

Livingstone sniffed. “You have no witnesses to that.”

“You want to give me a fair chance to win this bet or not?”

“That is what I am trying to do. No, I am sorry, sir, but this is your one chance to go up and qualify, just like every other contestant. If you cannot do so, then that’s the bet right there.”

“The bet wasn’t about
this
. You really are a rat, you know that?”

“Yes, I am, sir. I find it is good publicity.” Livingstone inclined his head. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a contest to oversee.”

Hands on his hips, Hitch hung his head back. Then he turned and trudged over to where Earl waited next to the plane. “That’s it. We’re done.”

Earl nodded. “Yeah.”

Jael trotted over, wincing a little, but looking more limber. “I will go up. I am ready.”

At the other end of the field, another pilot started up his engine.

Hitch shook his head. “We’re grounded looks like.”

She walked right up to him. She was on the tall side for a woman and she only had to tilt her head back a little to look him in the eye. “Let us go up. If we are high enough, maybe they will not have sight of what we do, and accept it for contest anyway.”

“Can’t hurt nothing now,” Earl said.

That was surely true. And anyway, if they had to go out with their tails between their legs, then at least they could do it thumbing their noses at Livingstone one last time.

“She can stay in the cockpit,” Earl said. “Just fly around a little.”

Hitch dropped his hands from his hips. “All right. Let’s do it.”

Earl helped Jael into the front cockpit and hand-propped the Jenny once more. As it rolled forward, the crowd’s attention split away from the other pilot and swerved back to them. Hitch picked up speed down the field and saluted Livingstone as he passed.

Livingstone scowled. He could holler at them through his megaphone if he wanted to, but then the whole place would know he’d lost control.

At the field’s end, Hitch lifted the Jenny off the ground and pitched her toward the sky. They leveled out some eight hundred feet off the ground.

That was when Jael stood up in the front cockpit and started climbing onto the top wing.

Seventeen

“DON’T YOU DARE!” Hitch shouted.

But just like he’d promised her, Jael couldn’t hear a thing. She hauled herself up and over the top wing’s edge and crouched there, hanging onto the strut wires that looped up from beneath.

The pounding of his heart filled his whole chest. Walking on the bottom wing was one thing. Down there, you had all kinds of stuff to hang onto and brace yourself against. But the top wing was a whole ’nother horserace. You wouldn’t find anything but a wall of wind and a few small wires in which to wedge either your hands or your feet.

His stomach flipped. The cockpit was safe; it was solid ground. But up on top, there was nothing but a long, long fall.

He held the plane steady. He needed to turn around, get this heap back to level ground before Jael lost her balance. But he couldn’t turn without the wind shifting around her and maybe pulling her over anyway.

“Get back in the cockpit!” he hollered so loud the words scraped his throat.

Maybe she heard him. She shifted one of her legs. But she didn’t extend it back toward the cockpit. She raised it, bending the knee, until her foot was flat against the wing. She wiggled, squeezing her foot into the wire.

“No! Don’t stand up!”

Slowly, slowly, hand still flat on the wing, she brought her other foot up and wedged it too. Then she started to straighten.

His lungs stopped inflating. Over the years, he’d worked with dozens of wing walkers. He’d seen more than a few of them break too many bones to survive. And none of
them
had about got hit by lightning the day before.

He braced the stick in both hands, feet against the rudder pedals.

She made it all the way up, body tilted forward, leaning into a fifty-mile-an-hour wind. And then, just like a pro, she raised her face to the sun and spread her arms.

She was doing it. She was
really
doing it. Of course, she could stop doing it any second. But for now, she was as good as any of the best of them. Her head started to move. She tilted it around, inch by inch, until he could see the corner of her eye. And then she grinned: a wide, exultant grin. The kind you grinned when you were as happy as you’d ever been in your life, and you knew you weren’t likely to be that happy ever again.

Durned girl. He grinned back.

He dropped the right wing the barest of smidges and started a big circle. If she wouldn’t get back into the cockpit, then he’d have to land sooner or later. Might as well do it under Livingstone’s nose.

The other contestant’s plane was in the air now, headed in their direction. Hitch gave it a wide berth to avoid the turbulence. As they passed each other, he offered the pilot and his staring parachutist a jaunty salute. Then he pitched down, still going slow to minimize the pressure on Jael as much as possible. By the time they reached the field, the Jenny was a bare twenty feet off the ground.

He gave her the gun and buzzed the field. Hats and scarves blasted away in every direction. White faces turned sunward to stare.

Let the Jenny crash and burn right now. It’d still be a heck of a way to go out. He laughed aloud.

Jael lowered herself to one knee and inched back until her hands could anchor themselves in the wires. He swung the plane around and came in low for a landing. Even above the engine, the sound of the whooping and clapping was colossal.

This girl was born to be an aerialist.

The wheels bounced. Jael bobbled and nearly fell over sideways.

His heart jumped into his throat.