Many Words

“This is Whiskey One,” said Lecocq over the radio. “Do you see bandits?”

“Whiskey Three says negative,” Henderson replied.

“Whiskey Two, also negative.”

“No need to stick around, then,” Lecocq said. “Meet at rendezvous point one.”

The radio clicked twice. A few minutes south of the city, the two Falcons caught up and settled in behind the Albatross, and thirty seconds later, the Kestrels fell into formation ahead. Cannon looked them over for battle damage. Bullet holes marred two of them—one had taken fire to the wing, and the other showed damage behind the cockpit. He watched the latter for a moment longer, but no smoke or plume of fluid trailed behind it; the British gunner had missed both engines. That was a spot of luck, Cannon thought. They were low on spares already.

Ten minutes later, Lecocq lined up the Albatross’ arrester hook on the zeppelin’s main skyhook, goosed the throttles, and pulled them all the way back as the hooks engaged. The skyhook lifted the plane up toward Inconstant‘s hangar.

“Whiskey One,” the radio crackled, “Inconstant here. Is that the skipper in the right seat?”

Cannon reached for his radio panel. “Sure is.”

“Good to have you back. Lookouts just caught a British zep about twenty miles off. How do you want to play it?”

Cannon closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “Ready the air wing, and put the Royal Navy on our tail. If we can give them the slip without a fight that would be swell.”

Emma waved for the others to haul on the rope one more time, and then yanked Cannon in through the cargo door. “All aboard,” she said into her headset mic. “Good to have you back, skipper,” she added, sparing only the briefest moment before hurrying back to the crawlway.

With his hands together, Cannon lifted his elbows. Before they came level with his shoulders, he winced.

“Y’alrigh’, cap’n?” said Iseabail.

“I’ll live,” he said. The engine note rose as Lecocq throttled up, banked right, and began to climb. “Give me a hand over to the cockpit.”

Masaracchia waved Iseabail back into her seat. “Allow me.” He bent at the waist. Cannon put his arm around Masaracchia’s shoulder and hobbled to the crawlway, keeping his weight off his left ankle.

“You’re sure ye dinna need tha’ look at?” Iseabail frowned.

Cannon shook his head, grimaced, and knelt to crawl through to the other fuselage. On the far side, he got to his feet and hopped to the copilot’s seat. He sat—a barely-controlled fall—and pulled on the headset hanging on the side of the chair. “That was a niece piece of flying back there.”

Lecocq cracked a grin. “But of course, captain.”

The Albatross had turned out over the sea to gain altitude, and now, as the altimeter spun past six thousand feet, it circled back toward Alexandria. Traffic jammed the streets below, where wrecks littered the path Cannon had taken. A few enterprising British soldiers took potshots at the plane with their rifles, and tracers reached up from two machine gun emplacements on the city’s rooftops. All fell well behind the Albatross.

Off to the left—northeast—oily columns of smoke reached into the sky from the airfield. A flash of light drew Cannon’s eye to a fighter. It had just taken a hard enough hit to set it alight. Trailing smoke, it arced toward toward the ground, hitting just outside the city wall and throwing up a cloud of dust as it skidded to a stop.

Cannon caught sight of Masaracchia through the windshield, holding on for dear life as Emma and the others jerkily pulled him toward the plane. The cab’s roof bowed inward as Burr mounted it, then popped back to normal as the rope took her weight.

Two hundred yards. Cannon held the wheel with his left hand, put his left foot on the accelerator, and slid right so that the gearshift stuck up between his knees. One hundred yards. With his right hand, he worked frantically at Burr’s knot.

Over his shoulder, a British fighter slowed down and lined up for another try at the Albatross. The British truck, no longer harried by covering fire, pulled up closer. Bullets snapped past Cannon’s head.

Fifty yards. The knot came free at last, and Cannon grabbed the rope with both hands just before it snaked out the window. The truck drifted to the side, and slowed as Cannon’s foot came off the accelerator. Tires screeched behind him as the British truck’s driver slammed on the brakes.

Time seemed to slow. A sign reading ‘Danger’ spiralled past the windshield as the truck smashed through the barrier at the end of the road, then flew through the air. Cannon felt himself falling, then launched himself desperately out the cab’s passenger-side window. Searing pain shot up his arms, joined by a burst of agony in his ankle as his foot hit the window frame on the way out. Somehow, he managed to hold on, watching as his truck bounced on the rocks at the end of the breakwater, turned sideways, and rolled into the harbor. Turning in the wind, he saw tracers shoot all around the British fighter. It caught fire, trailing oily black smoke as it turned over and fell into the sea, launching a pillar of spray a hundred feet in the air. A pair of Falcons painted in Cannon’s blue and white thundered triumphantly by.