Magnolia Gods (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 2) Page 19

  “We can enter the Tabernacle here,” said Hobble. Jonathan stepped forward into the mass of brush and showed them a carefully hidden path that skirted the thorns.

  Chapter Fifteen

  9:30 AM, July 3

  The Tabernacle, Maryland

  Hobble took them the last steps. The door into the Tabernacle had been framed into a wall of heavy brown canvas.

  Hobble explained, “While we were discussing how to hide the seaplane, my father was informed that a great carnival tent had been taken down and was rotting in a field about twenty miles away. The tent was from a bankrupt carnival, left behind by promoters who ran away. It was being offered for sale by the local town council which was trying to recoup the money advanced to the performers. The tent had sat unused in that field exposed to the weather for almost two years when my father sent out a team to steal it,” said Hobble. “Believe me, we didn’t get much.”

  Hobble opened the door and stepped aside to allow Jesse to enter. He pulled a cord to a hanging light bulb and the room was lit. The room was actually a small corridor, its sides lined with shelves holding a variety of special aircraft tools, wrenches, and the like that Mike immediately recognized. In the air was a distinct smell of grease and engine lube. At the end of the corridor, about ten feet in front of Mike, was another door. Beneath their feet Mike could just make out a dirt floor covered with stubble of long dead brown grass.

  Hobble opened the door and, beyond it, Mike could see a much larger chamber. The hall light extended inward showing rows of chairs set up in front of a simple pulpit.

  “We speak of God here too,” said Hubble.

  A large bearded man was near the pulpit.

  “So this is Jesse Lawson?” his voice boomed.

  “Regal, I want you to show them whatever they want to see,” said Hobble.

  Regal’s beard could not hide his pleasantly plump face and smile. The big man beckoned to them.

  “Regal is our steam expert, “said Hobble.

  “Engineer courtesy of the Merchant Marine, only I used to drink too much to stay on my ships,” said Regal, his voice as pleasant as his face.

  Regal had walked to a post behind the pulpit where he threw another switch. Rows of fluorescent lights suspended from girders in the roof blinked on. Mike had seen hangers before, but nothing like this one. Beyond the pulpit area was a huge space. It was not only large and equipped with a variety of high quality aircraft maintenance equipment, but a hundred feet in front of them was what they had sought for so many days.

  The seaplane stood resplendent and in what looked like perfect condition. Its paint was blue and shining. Twin motors of some kind with great propellers were mounted on its thin long wing. Its tail fin stood high and straight. In white script letters across the side of its bow, stark against the blue background, was the name, “Magnolia Whispers.”

  “We’ve found her,” said Mike, hardly able to believe what he was saying.

  Hobble followed them towards the seaplane.

  “Remember the two German submariners I told you about?” he asked. “They designed the hanger. It’s as much like a submarine pen as it is a storage hanger for a seaplane. While they were alive, they managed all this and when Regal came to us, they taught him and others.”

  Shadows from the girders above put simple lines across the dazzling blue seaplane. The smell of airplane fabric paint mixed with what Mike recognized as a background aroma of mold and rot in the old canvas. The room was hot. Even with large fans revolving up on the ceiling, the hanger was stuffy from the July heat outside beating down on the dark roof surface. The dark blue fuselage glistened, though, as if it were fresh from its manufacturer. Above them the wings on the seaplane were long, stretching across the room with small floats hanging at the ends.

  “Almost a black cat,” said Robin.

  “Yes,” said Mike.

  Mike explained to Jesse that was what the Navy called these planes when they were painted black and used as bombers in the Pacific. They were used as attack planes that came out of the night to bomb the Japanese.

  Regal pointed to a small curved metal ladder that was dropped from the hull. Robin impatiently climbed up and disappeared.

  Regal followed her. “I’ll have to start the generator so’s you can see inside.”

  Mike heard her ask, “What do we have to do to get her ready to take off?”

  “First off I work on the power plants. I get them turbines turned once a week. We even pressure test yearly. We’ll have to run them up full to check for takeoff revs.”

  Mike asked, “What is the purpose of the vents on top of the wings?”

  “Exhausts for the boilers,” said Regal.

  “Boilers?” asked Mike.

  “This seaplane runs on steam power,” said Regal.

  Robin called to Mike from inside the seaplane, “Not many Cats left with all this original equipment. This is quite a find, Mike.”

  Mike nodded, incredulous. A steam airplane. He had heard of them. His father had mentioned them. To the best of his knowledge, none had ever flown successfully.

  Jesse stood beside him. Mike turned and said, “What do you think, Jesse?”

  “I’m just starting to believe this is happening,” he answered. “I know one thing. If this baby runs on steam power, then I can begin to understand why Aviatrice wanted to get their hands on it.”

  Mike nodded. Jonathon spoke up. “The ship has all the manuals inside. All hand written by Captain Lawson. We used them all. The Germans added some routines too. All the maintenance has been done. We followed every manual. Even the boiler tubes are cleaned regularly.”

  “Did you hear him, Mike? Steam boiler flues,” said Jesse, as amazed as Mike.

  “This must be what was described in the information we dug up. Work was being done by Captain Lawson on something called the Giant Boat. This must be a prototype of the Giant Boat program. Let’s take a look,” Mike said as he started to climb into the plane. He looked up and saw the huge tail fin above him. It reached up at least fifty feet, touching the top of the hanger.

  Just before he entered, he heard a small gasoline engine splutter to life. In a few more moments small lights on the side walls of the plane illuminated the fuselage.

  Robin called from up front in the pilot’s compartment. “It’s huge, Mike. All the comforts. Beds for the crew. Kitchen for in flight food.”

  Then he climbed inside. He had to push aside the big anti-aircraft machine gun mounted at the opening, which was also used as a window gun mount. He turned to his left. Ahead was the radio room.

  “Let me look at that radio, Mike.” Jesse pushed by to sit in the radioman’s chair. He took down from their shelf several of the manuals and began to read.

  “I’ll look this over right away,” he said. “I can be useful. My father taught me code when I was a little boy. I could send and read with the best of them. We’ll need communications when we fly.” He held up one of the spare tubes sitting in a nearby box, brushed dust off it and grinned as he showed it to Mike.

  “This is wonderful,” called Robin from the cockpit.

  “Mike, come with me. You‘re an airplane expert, so you’ll enjoy seeing this,” said Regal proudly.

  Mike followed him into a large area with a wall of valves. A seat was mounted high up above the walkway. A small corridor led further forward to the pilot’s compartment where Robin was.

  “This is the engineer’s station,” said Mike. “He has to climb up there.”

  “You got that right,” said Regal. “All these dials are his. You’re looking at the boiler and fuel controls.”

  “Just like in a ship,” said Jonathan.

  “Smaller, more efficient. Lawson was a genius at making everything small and lightweight.”

  Regal smiled and said. “Like Hobble says, we can teach you guys to run this. Works pretty much like any aircraft except the power is steam.”

  “Same as in your ships or in those old tractors?” as
ked Jesse from behind them.

  “Pretty much. Lot of new steam technology here though. We taught ourselves the changes.”

  “I believe you,” said Mike. The experience of the last few hours was so strange he was ready to believe that a group of farmers could run a sophisticated turbine system.

  “We’ve still got to get her in the air,” said Mike. “A fifty year old airframe. Old Alcad aluminum. She might fall apart.”

  “She’s tough,” said Regal, tapping the fuselage wall. “She’ll get you there.”

  Robin called back, “I’ve got air navigation charts here. We might be able to figure out where Captain Lawson was intending to go.”

  Mike looked at Jesse. “We’ve found the airplane for you. What do you want us to do?”

  Jesse said quickly, “The only way any of us are going to strike back at Aviatrice is to get this plane back to the authorities. We have to take it back. The only question I have is whether Robin can fly this boat.”

  “She’s in good shape,” said Robin. “I won’t have any trouble. You guys are about the best aircraft mechanics I’ve ever seen.”

  “Then it’s settled,” said Jesse.

  Mike said, “You’re sure, Robin?”

  She looked at him. “It’s a little bigger than the float planes I have been aboard.”

  “We got one big other difference,” said Mike.

  “I know,” she said. “The steam turbines. Lawson had to learn how to fly it. I guess I can.”

  “You say take it back, Jesse. Where do you want to take it back to? Some Navy base?” asked Mike.

  “We’ll have to talk about it,” replied Jesse. “Come look at this.”

  Mike went back to where Jesse was looking out a small porthole.

  “What is it?”

  “You were wondering about whether she was armed,” said Jesse.

  “Yes.”

  “Look at those,” said Jesse, pointing outside.

  Mike looked and saw, against the Tabernacle wall, two rows of neatly stacked cylinders.

  “I think those are hundred pound bombs,” said Jesse.

  Mike nodded. “That solves the problem of whether she was armed,” he said. “It still doesn’t explain why.”

  Hobble stood behind them. “I see you have found our arsenal. These are the armaments that were taken off the ship.”

  “Do you know why they were on the plane?” asked Mike.

  Hobble held a small book in his right hand. “This will tell you better than I. I think Jesse should read this.”

  Jesse took the book. The embossed cover said, “Captain Edward Lawson, USN”

  Hobble continued, “Your grandmother told us that she gave her husband this diary Christmas, 1945, for him to use to think out the future for himself. She said the Captain was going through a lot of problems about what was coming for him and his research after the war. She said that he had looked up from opening the present and had said to her,

  “‘I’ll put it all down, all of it, and when you read this, you’ll know everything and how hard it has been to do the right thing, make the right decision for the country.’

  “She said that the way he said this, made her worry even then that something terrible, perhaps deadly, would come to pass in the coming year, a kind of foreshadowing that he was facing a great personal decision. You might want to turn to the months right before the Fourth of July. This man had more weight on him than any man deserves.”

  Jesse moved forward and sat in the copilot seat next to Robin. Mike stood behind him. The words were written in a careful script like a logbook on a ship, written to be easily read as in a report to a superior officer.

  “I’m going to share this with you two,” said Jesse, as he began to read aloud.

  Chapter Sixteen

  10 AM, July 3

  The Tabernacle, Maryland

  Captain Lawson’s words, penned several decades ago, sounded like gentle tapping against the metal walls of the bomber, as Jesse read.

  “June 28, 1946

  “The time is drawing near to make my final decision. As I write each day, I move away from reporting the daily activities of my life in the lab, such as I can with the security restrictions placed upon me, and toward some deeper reflections. I know, that since I began this diary, this record of daily thoughts, several months ago, I have written of many activities of camaraderie and excellence, but little of my gradual dissatisfaction with my effort to build a perfect machine. Today, as I prepare to change the direction of my life and my work much as I would adjust a trim tab to take advantage of better winds, I must be more truthful.

  “First, it is important to me and to the memory of other engineers, all now perished, who worked with me over the years on the Giant Boat project that all that has transpired be understood. In a way, the next pages of this diary tells not only of my own thoughts and growth in understanding of the great issue of war and the construction of weapons which lose and win wars, but of the friendship among my coworkers as we produced our machine, the seaplane we code name the Giant Boat. To us, the Giant Boat seaplane would be precursor to a gigantic seaplane capable of carrying great cargoes. To others, we would learn that they thought of the plane as the precursor of a much more malevolent purpose. I called our test craft my own special name, Magnolia Whispers.

  “Let me say, that propulsion was always the issue in our lab. While design of aircraft was important, the engines were paramount. Years ago, even before the war, when we began the research, we were determined to find an alternative to the small and not so powerful gasoline powered internal combustion engines being designed for aircraft. Steam was the best alternative in those days since jet and rocket research was still in its infancy. Steam had been a familiar source of power for over a hundred years and engineers throughout industry thought it worth researching to power aircraft.

  “What we had to do was overcome certain problems with steam. Steam plants in comparison to internal combustion engines are heavy. The combined weight of the boiler, or what some call the generator, and the engine itself, and the condenser to reconvert the used steam were together more than the weight of the gasoline engine for the power provided, unless the application was a very large airplane. Thus was born the original concept of the Giant Boat. The Giant Boat was large enough to take advantage of the power of steam and also to manage the weight of the steam plant. The Giant Boat project itself was not even of our own making. It had been developed by pioneers before we came to the Factory and discontinued due to lack of funding. We essentially became a new team of believers.

  “We had to consider other issues such as reliability, economy or internal efficiency, durability, compactness or drag, flexibility, and behavior at high altitudes. Steam engines could be made very reliable so that they would run for hours at a time. The efficiency in getting energy out of fuel could approach that of an internal combustion engine, but some energy would have to be used in the condenser to change the spent steam back to water, that is, unless we used up our water, in other words, did not condense it back, and that didn’t make sense. We had to somehow cut down the drag and improve the aerodynamics of large radiator-like condensers and boilers. Steam engines can be pretty flexible if the valves are properly controlled. Behavior at high altitude might even be on a par with internal combustion engines with improved boiler burners and combustion. Certainly we were not going to design fighter planes. We gave that to the internal combustion camp, but for a long range reconnaissance plane or bomber that would fly straight and level, steam could be versatile enough. Our purpose was to solve these problems and design and test the Giant Boat. In the early days, this seemed like a good project but with the development of more powerful air-cooled radial engines for aircraft, our steam system was soon far outdistanced as a viable power plant for the new aircraft.

  “In the Thirties our Giant Boat project began as a minor project in the back rooms of the Navy Factory. Four of us began the work, myself and three younger engineers, a
nd we devoted all the time we could to the project. We were increasingly assigned to work on steam catapults and other types of seaplanes. When the war came we had even less time.

  “That was when Bernard Wall came into my life and into the project, providing the beginning of light for our program, or so we thought. Wall had an interesting history and was well known in the aviation world. He had been befriended by the family of Amanda Gibson, the woman pioneer who was lost at sea trying for one of her many world records. Even though she was an American, the French government had awarded her a medal for her exploits and the French people called her ‘La Aviatrice.’ Her family developed a new type of aluminum for her airplanes, and had invested millions of dollars, in a new aviation research company, called Aviatrice to encourage any manufacturers who could build safer aircraft. Wall was young in those days, a sales oriented businessman with a gift for closing deals. His primary work was selling fighter planes to different armed forces around the world. His planes were known for their connection to Aviatrice safety designs and were bought by air forces wanting the most safety for their valuable pilots. Wall was a handsome man, usually accompanied by a good looking woman, some of them even being, for lack of a better description, movie starlets in search of a well paying part. Wall was taken in hand by the Gibson family to develop the company. As the reader might imagine, the company was involved in extensive research when the war broke out. Wall traveled back and forth to Europe with designs for the various manufacturers and had a strong reputation as the man to see if an engineer had a good idea.

  “Naturally I was very excited when Wall came into my office in 1942. At that meeting I was impressed with his sincerity. All that I had heard about him, his horse trading and his untrustworthiness, did not seem apparent or important.