The Rocketeer (26 page)

The Rocketeer’s foot lashed out to catch Lothar in the head, and the giant showed his lack of appreciation for that by grabbing the booted foot and shoving back as hard as he could, considering that he was off balance and not fully emerged from the hatch. All things considered, it could have been worse. The Rocketeer fell back, but landed on his shoulder and was immediately back up again, balancing lightly on the balls of his feet to compensate for the steady gusting of wind.

By this time Lothar had fully emerged from the trapdoor and had snapped a safety tether to his waist. The Rocketeer took some measure of cold confidence in this; the giant thus far had given every indication of being virtually indestructible. How nice to know that he was as concerned about falling off as mere mortals might be.

Lothar advanced on the Rocketeer, and the helmeted adventurer came in fast with everything he had. He gut-punched the giant, hit him in the chest, delivered a fast and furious volley of lefts and rights. Lothar’s body quivered under every single punch, and the Rocketeer felt a surge of hope. The giant was helpless before his onslaught. The giant was stunned. The giant was—

Smiling. He had let the Rocketeer take his shots to show him that he posed no threat at all.

The giant swung a massive paw around and caught the Rocketeer on the side of the head. One punch to answer for the dozen or so landed, and it was more than enough. The Rocketeer went down as if pole-axed, the wind knocked out of him.

He tried to stagger to his feet, but now Lothar had gripped him firmly by the ankles and the scruff of the neck. He lifted the Rocketeer over his head and started to exert pressure. The Rocketeer felt an awful grinding in the area of his hips, a pressure deep in his spine, and then he realized what was happening. The monster was trying to bend him backward in half, snap his spine, kill him with as much ease as he himself would crumble a sheet of paper.

And he would have accomplished it too, except the bottom of the rocket pack jammed into the small of the Rocketeer’s back, momentarily adding strength and, literally, stiffening his spine. The giant grunted, confused by the resistance, and then he realized what was causing it. By the time he had, though, the Rocketeer had brought both his fists around and bashed Lothar in the skull, using the hand controls as if they were brass knuckles.

Lothar’s brain, or what passed for it, slammed around inside the cranial casing from the impact of the metal-enhanced fists. Dazed, the giant lost his grip on the Rocketeer. The hero fell, struck the side of the zeppelin, and, unable to stop himself, plummeted down and away, his arms and legs waving madly like a puppet severed of its strings.

Lothar, shaking off the dizziness, stared down after where the Rocketeer had gone and suddenly realized, in a dim fashion, that he had screwed up. Sinclair had wanted the rocket, and now it was plummeting to earth on the back of an idiot who was no doubt unconscious from smashing against the zeppelin before falling.

Sinclair was going to be mad, and Lothar briefly wished that he could have another shot at the rocket pack.

His wish was granted, although not the way he would have liked, as the Rocketeer shot up and around from the opposite side of the zeppelin. He smashed into Lothar with the velocity of a missile and knocked the giant clear of the zeppelin. A safety tether he may have had, but suction cups on his feet he most definitely had not, and Lothar fell down the side of the zeppelin, completely and satisfyingly out of control.

In the gondola, the sweating pilot was fighting to control the zeppelin’s flight. The Nazi agent, in the meantime, was still screaming at Sinclair, making it painfully clear that Adolf Hitler was not going to take kindly to a failed mission. Obtaining the rocket was not something about which Hitler had offered many options. He wanted it done, and therefore it had to be done. And now it wasn’t done. Which meant the Nazi agent was going to be undone.

Sinclair, trying to ignore the torrent of German flooding his way, was holding Jenny firmly by the wrist as he snapped at the captain, “Do I have to fly the ship myself?! Keep us on course, dammit!”

“Do not worry, Herr Sinclair,” said the captain with the calm that only a veteran could command. “My pilot is the finest in Germany.”

Sinclair started to reply, “It’s a pity we’re not in Germany.” But all he got out was “It’s,” and then Lothar’s body swung through the gondola windows, exploding into the gondola like a wrecking ball.

Totally out of control, he smashed into the best pilot in Germany. The pilot was sent flying backward into the door, and he hit it with such impact that it burst open, propelling him outward. He promptly was reduced to the status of best pilot in midair without benefit of propulsion systems, and then he became the best falling and, ultimately, dead zeppelin pilot in the vicinity.

Lothar, for his part, dangled for a moment like a broken marionette before drifting away into the darkness, still at the end of his tether.

The panicked Nazi agent whirled on Sinclair, wishing to hell he’d volunteered for something safer, like that endless dig for archaeological treasures in Tanis.
“Das ist deine Schuld!
” he babbled.
“Wenn wir ohne die Rakete nach Hause kommen, werden wir
beide
aufgehängt!”

The captain, with a slight crack finally appearing in his professional demeanor, said worriedly, “We’re losing altitude! We must drop some weight from the gondola!”

With no trace of hesitation, Sinclair pulled out his automatic and blew the Nazi agent backward out the open doorway. He allowed a small smile. He wasn’t going to miss that idiot one bit.

Abruptly the roof hatch opened and the Rocketeer leapt down. The remaining German crewman jumped at him, and the Rocketeer dodged his punch, grabbed his wrist, and, blood pumping with excitement, threw him against the gondola wall. The crewman was knocked senseless.

“Jenny!” Cliff shouted.

Sinclair pressed the gleaming muzzle of his automatic pistol beneath Jenny’s chin. His eyes were wild. “I’ve had a bellyful of you and your cheap heroics. You hand over the rocket,”—he yanked back on Jenny’s hair for emphasis, eliciting a squealed cry of pain—“or I’ll blow her brains all over the cabin!”

Jenny couldn’t stand the thought of Cliff being helpless once again because of her. In as brave a voice as she could muster, she cried out, “Cliff, don’t give it to him . . . you can’t!”

The Rocketeer looked deeply into her eyes.

“I have to,” he said.

His shoulders sagging in frustration, Cliff Secord slipped the rocket’s straps from his back as Sinclair said, “Slide it across to me.” But as he obeyed, he pulled the wad of good-luck gum from the creased fuel tank.

Sinclair brutally pushed Jenny to the airship’s captain and handed him the automatic. “If she moves, kill her.”

As for Jenny, her nerves were utterly frayed to the breaking point. She was sick and tired of being a liability for Cliff, for the government, for the entire free world, it seemed. She muttered, “If one more man puts a gun to my head . . .”

The captain put the gun to her head.

“That’s it!”
howled Jenny, and in total disregard for her own safety—and frankly, the captain hadn’t expected her to move anyway—she slammed her sharp heel into the captain’s instep. He grunted in pain and she whirled free of his grasp, pushing him hard against the control panel.

Jenny completely lucked out. The captain smashed his head against the upper portion of the panel and slumped to the deck, the gun falling from his hand. Instinctively she lashed out with her foot and kicked it across the floor and out the open door. It was only then that she realized that picking it up and pointing it at, say, Sinclair, might have been the sharper move.

Cliff lunged at Sinclair, throwing a punch that knocked the actor to the gondola floor. The pilot stood over him, fists clenched and poised, and he snarled, “Where’s your stunt man now, Sinclair?”

Abruptly, Sinclair leapt to his feet and threw a punch that connected squarely with Cliff’s jaw. Cliff staggered back, the lower half of his face tingling from the impact.

“I do my own stunts,” Sinclair informed him.

Cliff, his face a mask of grim determination, charged him, and the two men slammed together. They pounded each other, all the anger and frustration that each of them had caused the other in this brief span of time now driving them to try to reduce the other into bruised slabs of meat.

Cliff felt his left eye starting to swell shut, and his upper lip was split, but Sinclair’s nose had crunched satisfyingly under one of his jabs and he wasn’t sure, but he thought he’d knocked out one of Mr. Wonderful’s teeth. He didn’t know which would be better—if Sinclair died in an out-of-control zeppelin, or if he had to live with a puss that had been battered by yours truly.

Then Sinclair knocked Cliff back, and the pilot stumbled hard against the cabin wall. Cliff’s head bashed against an emergency case, and the contents spilled out across the floor—including a wide-barreled pistol. Jenny, seeing it sitting there, took the opportunity to make up for her tactical error of eighty-sixing the other gun.

Bruised and bloodied, Sinclair seized Cliff by the front of his jacket and slammed him hard against the cabin wall. He drew his fist back and Cliff was about to try to muster what defense he could when suddenly Jenny’s voice rang out with authority, “Stop! I’ll shoot . . .”

They turned to see her aiming the wide-barreled pistol directly at Sinclair. “I swear I will,” she said, and there was no trace of indecision in her tone. Her hands, however, were trembling.

Cliff, shaking the sweat and blood from his eyes, saw what Jenny was holding. Sinclair might not realize what she had, but any pilot knew it immediately. “Jenny—no!” he shouted.

And just as he did, Sinclair lunged at her. She screamed and yanked the trigger and, much to his credit, Sinclair was nimble enough to dive out of the way.

It was not a bullet he dodged, however. It was a signal flare.

The last thing anyone could possibly want anywhere near a vehicle filled with hydrogen was a berserk incendiary device, but that was exactly what the occupants of the gondola had. The flare ricocheted, leaving fire wherever it touched. And then, as if to spitefully make sure that they didn’t have a hope in hell, it finally buried itself in the control console, where it burst into flame.

Cliff looked around frantically and spotted a fire extinguisher on the wall beside the smashed windows. Wrenching the cylinder from the bracket, he sprayed the liquid on the flaming console. The flames laughed at the extinguisher and continued to spread, and smoke was filling the cabin.

Insanely, Jenny thought that if somehow they lived through this, that definitely, beyond all shadow of a doubt, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” was definitely going to be “their” song.

“Sinclair!” shouted Cliff. “Help us get this fire out!”

And then he heard a distinctive click, and spun just in time to see Sinclair fastening the rocket pack’s waist belt. He poised in the open gondola door, frantically adjusting the harness.

“Good-bye, my darling!” he called, the height of drama. “I’m going to miss Hollywood.”

Cliff watched the fuel leaking from the rocket pack as Sinclair leapt from the gondola and fired the rocket.

“Don’t be so sure,” Cliff said with astounding calm.

Sinclair rocketed away from the doomed zeppelin, the Hollywood Hills spread below him. The wind rushed past him, the rocket roared on his back, and for a brief moment he understood why Secord had fought so hard to hold on to the rocket pack. This was truly a taste of what it meant to be totally divine.

He didn’t notice the fuel spraying through the now-unplugged hole until it ignited the rocket pack’s contrail. The fire was immediately sucked into the rocket pack, and the brainchild of Howard Hughes burst into flame.

Sinclair twisted around, trying to control his first and last flight. It was no use. The flame was spreading across his back, and he felt a heat so overwhelming, he thought he was in hell. As it turned out, it was a preview.

Rocket man became comet man became human torch as he blazed through the sky, heading toward gigantic white letters that loomed before him like a greeting card from the netherworld.

He smashed into the right-hand side of the sign that perched on the hillside overlooking the motion picture capital of the entire universe, and there was a tremendous explosion that removed both Neville Sinclair and the last four letters of the sign from the face of the earth. The air crackled and burned, sparks flying everywhere and shards of white letters falling all about.

And when the dust settled, the flaming ruins illuminated the spy’s memorial—a gigantic sign which now simply read,
HOLLYWOOD.

While high, high above, the doomed zeppelin with its last living passengers embarked on what was going to be its final journey, with a very imminent terminal point.

C
liff and Jenny emerged from the maintenance hatch atop the zeppelin, and he helped her up onto the fuselage. Cliff held her tight, protecting her from the wind, although he bleakly realized he didn’t know what he was protecting her for.