Magnolia Gods (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  “What to do? I have no one to turn to in Aviatrice. The pioneer flier who started the company is long dead. The Navy? I suspect it is, and probably innocently, beholden to Wall. The post war officers are all new faces. They know nothing of the Great Boat and the original plans for her. Who can I trust? The police, but that will take time. Hiram might be alerted. Politics might enter this. People in high offices who hate the Soviets could help Wall. Hiram and Wall could simply cause an incident another way. Meanwhile the plane will be in the hands of Aviatrice.

  “If I steal the plane myself, when to go? I know I must destroy all the records so the plane can never be built by anyone else. We had known since the beginning of the war how to scramble, how to destroy the lab if it is attacked. For years we thought the Nazis would send a submarine into the harbor and lob shells at the lab. All the documentation can be removed. I have the explosives so that I can blow up the machines here that I have designed to build the seaplane’s controls. The destruction of this lab was planned, if attacked. Now those plans can be used.

  “July 4

  “Today I find more papers in Hiram’s safes, recent communications from Wall. Thank God I found them. I know why he is here. I know what I must do. I have no choice.

  “My God, he plans to bomb the Soviet battleship that is approaching New York City. He plans to kill hundreds in that old ship. Maybe even sink her. The United Nations will not recover from such an incident. Hiram will claim it was an accident and, with Wall’s influence, probably receive no punishment, but the harm will be done. Soviet and American suspicions of each other will be fanned to threats of war and all dialogue between them will stop.

  “Vallery. I do have hope with him. I have spoken to him again. He has often talked about the peaceful use of the technology. An international forum might use the potential of the Magnolia Whispers in a beneficial way for all nations. In all events, Hiram and Wall have to be stopped, and I have no time left.

  “Hiram keeps asking me to take some leave, get out of the office myself. He will take the night work he says. In my opinion he intends to fly out in the Magnolia Whispers after I have left. He will do this soon.

  “Hiram would try to get out of Philadelphia airspace by either flying under the radar or waiting until the system goes down, which it often does. He must be ready to fly at a moment’s notice. That radar goes down some nights but it is only for a few minutes.

  “I learn that Hiram has put bombs on my plane. He’s probably going to fly sometime after the Fourth. He’s not here today. Taking leave time for a short vacation, he said.

  “It is nighttime and all is quiet here at the lab. I will fly Magnolia Whispers tonight.

  “The radar has gone down. I must hurry.

  “All data has been taken from the safes. I have set explosives at the lab. The materials I can’t take will be burned, along with the tooling, the dies, and the special machines. Not even Wall or his people have seen the latest drawings of the valves that control the turbines. They were installed by me for testing next month at high altitude.

  “I write this as I fly.

  “The seaplane was easy to maneuver tonight. She almost wanted to leave her berth when she knew it would be the two of us again. As I taxied down the river I thought about all the flights over our farm in River Sunday, the signals of love to my wife. The Magnolia Whispers shudders as the lab explosions go off behind me.

  “I will fly out to the east and then go down the coast to the Eastern Shore. Hide out at the old farm in the back country. The villagers will take care of me. My wife will know I am there. They have no love for the outsiders and they know me from the many times I have flown in that little creek. Then I will have time to contact Vallery. I’ll let that great body of countries decide. When it’s time, I’ll fly her right up to the doorstep of the United Nations buildings at Lake Success, New York, and let Vallery take possession of Magnolia Whispers right there at the lake.

  “I hear one of our wartime songs on my broadcast band, a song that so many men carried on their lips as they died in the agony of battle,

  “You leave the Pennsylvania station at a quarter to four,

  “read a magazine and then you’re in Baltimore,

  “dinner in the diner, nothing could be finer,

  “ then to have your ham and eggs in Carolina,”

  “As the song dies away, I think of those men, some of them my young engineers, who died, their deeds often unknown and not witnessed in the fury of combat. If I die on this flight, no one will know what I was about, but that is the risk of all soldiers. At least Hiram will not be able to bomb that innocent ship and start another war.”

  “That’s all he put down,” said Jesse.

  He closed the diary and glanced at Mike and Robin. “We’ve got to do this,” he said.

  Robin nodded and said, “Let’s take her to New York. Let’s finish what he started.”

  Hobble came up then, Jonathan and Regal beside him. Mike looked at Robin, new worry in his eyes for her safety.

  “I’ll worry about me,” Robin said, smiling at him and touching his arm tenderly.

  “If we make it to New York, we insure my grandfather’s bravery means something,” said Jesse.

  “You’re right,” said Mike, rubbing his neck. “The flight has to be made.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  11 AM, July 3

  The Tabernacle, Maryland

  “This is a flight I’ve always dreamed of making,” said Robin. “Piloting an old fashioned aircraft and facing the same danger as the old timers.”

  She looked at Mike. “You could fly it. You could pilot again if you’d try.”

  “No,” Mike said, pausing for a moment as he looked at her thoughtfully, “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Everyone fails, even your father,” she said. “His biggest failure was letting you down.”

  “It’s hard to think of my father failing at anything.”

  “No one is so brave that he is never a coward,” she answered.

  Regal spent time with Robin going over the controls. He touched every knob on the board with respect and as he did, he talked, “You see, when we get to steam, every valve and handle has a history, developed through hard experience, sometimes loss of life. Years of tradition and hard-working engineers that the diesels and the gasoline engines don’t share.”

  “Kinda like sailboats and motorboats,” said Robin.

  “Yes, ma’am, just like that. Steam is kinda like sailing. It’s beautiful like that. No engine in the world has the soft whisper of a steam engine. “

  “First,” Regal said, “We drain the water out of the system. That’s done to prevent locks when the engine starts running. Water don’t move like steam does. It could bust her wide open if the water isn’t drained.”

  “Same as draining oil out of the big gasoline engine pistons,” she said.

  “Same idea,” he said as he adjusted several valves. “We want to get her steam up to pressure.”

  “She burns mineral oil,” she added.

  “Yes Ma’am, she does. We touch her off and she heats water through this long tubing to get up the high pressures. We got her batteries charged up so she has juice for her blower. That cleans out the combustion chamber, then we send in the fuel and spark it. That gets some heat in and makes your steam. Once she is running, she don’t need the starter. She has auxiliaries to run the blower and pump the water in.”

  He smiled at Robin. “When you got your steam up, you can let it in to turn the turbines up on the wings. After that the spent steam comes back to the condensers on the wings and converts to water to start the process again.”

  “I need to keep up the pressure so I always have steam,” said Robin.

  “That’s the beauty of this machine,” said Regal proudly. “The engineer built this system knew his stuff. Controls automatically increase the boiler heat or pump in more water so you always get the steam you need. Also, this rig will produce steam no matter how
high in the atmosphere you take the plane.”

  “Best keep her in level flight, though,” observed Robin.

  “I think so, too,” said Mike. “The Catalina wasn’t much for aerobatics. With all this steam material I would not want to trust her if she got too far off level flight. Remember it’s a test model. Keep it level in flight and we won’t have any trouble.”

  Robin thought for a moment and said, “So the boiler heats water to make steam, that goes up to the turbines, then comes back down as water again. Pretty simple.”

  “Well I don’t know how simple it is, but it’s different from your gas engine,” said Regal. “You get your power right away, don’t have to wait for the revs to build up. Course folks don’t like sitting on all that boiler with the pressure.”

  “How much?” asked Robin.

  “1600 pounds per square inch,” he said. “It’s all in small tubes though. Not as dangerous.”

  She whistled. “How fast do those turbines run?” asked Robin.

  “20,000 rpm when she’s going.”

  “That’s a lot right up above your head,” said Mike.

  “Well,” said Regal, “they got the props geared down to what they need to fly this boat, but you’re right, those turbines are running pretty good.”

  “How much power does this plane have?” asked Robin.

  “She ought to fly just about the same as a piston engined seaplane,” said Regal.

  “They were going to put a nuclear powered boiler in her,” said Robin.

  “That’s what I figured,” said Regal. “Just like the submarines.”

  The team outside had started to cut the vines. The maze of vines in front of the Tabernacle had to be cleared. At the same time a path down to the water had to be cut free of small trees and other rough growth that might damage the plane’s undercarriage or puncture the thin surface of the hull and wings.

  Hobble was directing. “Make sure that it doesn’t show we’ve been through here,” he said. “Bend trees down and tie them. When we pass by with the aircraft, then snap the tree back up. Pull to the side all the vines so they can be put back. We always have the chance we might be observed from the air.”

  When all was ready, sections of the tent building were opened and panels of canvas were hoisted one by one, several men working with ropes to roll them up carefully. These panels would go back into place as soon as the aircraft was out in the open.

  Then, using more ropes secured to the aircraft, the machine was pulled forward, into the sunlight. The seaplane began its trip to the water, first over an open field to the right of the village houses, then through the center of the cornfields. To get through the field without the wings destroying plants, the villagers had ingeniously prepared a flattened area of corn that could be straightened after the plane had passed by.

  Two men walked along at the ends of the wings to insure that no branches from trees alongside the field would snap into the aged and brittle metal surfaces. Some of the wing surfaces were made from stretched fabric, and Robin was especially worried that brush, even something as weak as a cornstalk, might tear the cloth.

  Some men and women, the smallest in stature and weight that Hobble could select from his townspeople, were stationed on top of the wings, their arms ready to immediately cover the plane with net fabric. Everyone watched the tree lines, alert to any over flying aircraft or sudden arrival of helicopters. Hobble informed Mike that fortunately the area was distant from the normal flight patterns of the Baltimore and Washington terminals and, over the years, the village had witnessed few flights overhead. Even so, everyone knew and planned for the real threat, observation aircraft that Aviatrice might have sent to look for Mike and Robin after their escape from the airfield nearby.

  “What about satellite tracking?” said Robin.

  Mike responded, “We have a pretty good possibility that this whole Eastern Shore area has been targeted by Aviatrice with that kind of photography. Assume that for years Aviatrice observers have been trying to pick up anything that might look like the plane. I’m sure they have the resources. That photography works well during the daylight. We have no way to really avoid the observers if they have our coordinates. If we had the time and tried to move her out at night, the observation might still get us through infrared imaging. We also might have more chance of hitting some brush, tearing the plane up. It’s a toss, anyway you do it.”

  Mike walked ahead to scout the shoreline with Robin. After several hundred yards, they broke through the cornfield and looked at Magnolia Creek over a hedge of tangled honeysuckle that ran forward another hundred feet to reach the small beach. Out in the creek several hundred yards further were moored several small outboard boats belonging to the village.

  “Your people better move those boats if we’re going to get a flyway,” Mike said to Jonathan who was following just behind them.

  Robin found an opening to the beach. She looked at the creek. “I think that this water is wide enough to fly the seaplane out of here. They flew these planes into smaller creeks than this in the Pacific. It’s the takeoff, I’m most concerned about. What do you think, Mike?”

  She looked down the creek, where on the opposite bank a few hundred yards off, trees hung their leafy branches down into the water.

  Mike said, “A small floatplane could make it. I’m not sure about something the size of the Magnolia Whispers.”

  “Captain Lawson got it in here,” said Robin, over her shoulder. “Anyway I want to test the depth out there.”

  In a few moments she had stripped to her panties and was in the water. She swam out to the boats with swift strong strokes. Mike waded in after her.

  “What’s it like out there?” he called.

  “Why don’t you come and see for yourself?”

  “OK,” he grinned and threw his shirt back on the shore. He dove out into the creek. In a few moments he had reached her.

  She smiled at him. “You’re going to get in over your head.”

  He reached over and playfully dunked her before she could react. Then, from under the water, he felt her hands on his belt pulling him down into the chill of the deeper creek channel. Under the water he could see the shape of her, her breasts, her hair flowing out behind, against the light of the sun up above. They came together, clasping, until their lungs were straining for air. Then they rushed toward the surface, Mike knowing that neither wanted to be untangled, both finally breathing the fresh air deeply. They held to one of the boats, side by side, laughing.

  “I remember,” she said, breathing more easily, “the time you and I went up in the old biplane.”

  “You remember the day because I lost my pants,” said Mike, grinning.

  “No,” she pushed at him. “I remember the day because we were together. We’d jumped in the plane in our bathing suits. We got up to about four hundred feet and were circling the field when I noticed a small bird’s nest in the top brace of one of the starboard wing struts. I pointed to it. You took a little while to spot the nest, I remember. Then when you saw it, you said, ‘A bird is in the nest, a little one. He’s falling out. He’s too young to know how to fly. He’ll die.’

  “It was true,” said Mike. “The nest was disintegrating. Bit by bit, pieces of cotton and little twigs were tearing loose. They were whipping by our faces.”

  “Mike to the rescue,” she said. “You stood up from your seat and climbed up towards me over the cowling. I told you to get back in your seat, but you were determined. Your bare foot was on my thigh for a moment as you climbed by me and got your hand on the edge of the top wing. Then you pulled yourself over me and were crawling over the engine compartment. Your head was only a few feet from the propeller. I was scared but you didn’t seem to be bothered at all. You just kept climbing toward that bird nest like getting to it was worth giving up your life.

  “In a few moments you were out on the lower wing moving out to the nest which was about half way from the fuselage. You were holding on to the strut
s and wires.

  “I held the plane as steady as I could,” she said. “That biplane was a nice flier anyway. I just hoped that we would not get any sudden air currents that might tip the plane. Down below I could see a crowd gathering, your father and some of the mechanics and others who were at the Museum that day. Over at the Wilmington Airport next door I saw people starting to move out on the tarmac, pointing up at us.

  “We had no radio. No one could reach us. We couldn’t tell anyone what was going on. Your father told me afterwards that he thought you were trying to wing walk.

  “You got to the bird nest, and, just as the last of the twigs gave way, you grabbed the tiny bird who became very excited and started pecking at you.

  “You started to work back toward the fuselage, the bird still pecking away. You were holding on only with your left hand and what struts and wires you could lean against. The air was coming at you, forcing you backwards.”

  Robin looked at him across the surface of the water between them. “That’s when we got the gust of air. Any other time it would have just been a little bump and the plane would recover. This time that little bump nearly cost you your life.”

  “I was hanging on with one hand, my feet out in the air beyond the trailing edge of the bottom wing. I was slowly sliding back off that wing,” said Mike

  She nodded, making her wet hair create small circles in the creek water, “You would not let go of the bird. If you had, you could have grabbed with the other hand and you would have been all right.”

  “Then I slipped some more, and that’s when I lost my shorts,” laughed Mike.

  She smiled. “Your swimming trunks went flying out into the air stream behind us. I thought as quickly as I could and decided to bank the plane to port and put the nose down. I figured for a moment that might give you a chance to get your feet around a strut before the plane picked up speed. I couldn’t help you myself. I kept yelling to you to drop the damn bird.