Page 46 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm
“Huh?”
“What was that?” Rath asked, unfamiliar with the words Bell used.
“Airplane jargon,” Bell told him, eyeing Holmes to see if his presumably boarding school education would pay off. “The elevator is the control surfaces in the tail.”
“And the shank and brute?”
“The shank is the hinge pin that holds it on,” Bell answered.
With a wink to Bell, Holmes said, “The brute is what we call the double cross of bracing wires between the tail wings.”
Kudos to a classical British education, Bell thought.
They returned to the ladder. Rath said a few words to Georgi that seemed to make him feel a little better about the flight. He gave a small smile and vanished into a bear hug from his mentor before climbing up onto the wing to take his place in the seat behind the pilots.
Rath turned to Bell and Holmes. “This is a real blow you are about to strike. Be proud of yourselves, and by tonight we will have you and the others safely over the border into the Netherlands. When you take off, fly due north. Georgi will know when to turn to find the rail line to the marshaling yard.”
“Thanks. We’ll be back before you know it.” Bell shook Rath’s outstretched hand.
The partisans returned to their truck, while the mechanic stood by to remove the wheel chocks once the engines had fired. Bell led Holmes up the ladder and was in position to turn his back on thecockpit door and hold a finger to his lips just as the Brit was about to ask a string of questions. Holmes looked puzzled.
Bell tossed his head in the direction of their passenger, who was within earshot. “Could be the same trick the Germans tried to pull back in your cell.”
His suspicion was that Georgi could speak English and was along for this mission to prevent the pilots from deviating from Rath’s mission. He wouldn’t understand the context of what Bell had just said, but wouldn’t divulge his secret for something so innocuous.
They entered the massive bomber and secured the cockpit door. Bell shot Georgi a thumbs-up, which the young man didn’t return. He was playing with the collar of his coat again. Bell gave Holmes the command seat on the left side of the plane and settled into the right-hand seat. Turning the wheel and moving it forward and back took some effort. In the air, with an eighty-knot slipstream making the control surfaces even more sluggish, flying this beast would take some serious muscle.
They strapped themselves in using the lap belt provided and Holmes repeated the instruction on how to start the plane. When Bell concluded he had it right, he began working the toggles and switches that primed the engines with fuel and prepared them for the ignition process. With a final push of two buttons, the leading engines on both the starboard and port sides roared to life in a blast of noise and exhaust.
Neither man could help but grin at the raw power now coursing through the airframe, and when the other two motors started, the grins became toothy smiles, for that power was now double. They had a tiger by the tail.
Though the cockpit was enclosed, the noise of the big engines was near deafening. Any conversation now would have to be shouted.
Holmes worked the throttles to even out how the motors were running before giving the mechanic a signal that he could pull the wheel chocks. He vanished under the fuselage for what seemed like an inordinate amount of time before finally emerging from under the nose with the big wooden chocks in hand.
With that final task complete, Holmes edged the throttles a bit, drawing more power from the plane’s four engines. The noise and vibration grew, but hadn’t yet become unbearable. The prop blades no longer looked like solid things. They were now just a blur that confused the eye when witnessed from any distance. At last the heavy bomber started to trundle over the grass, slowly at first, but steadily building speed. When he deemed their speed fast enough, Holmes hit the rudder to turn them toward the runway. Bell could see the strain it put on his leg, and added his own strength to the task.
The Zeppelin-Staaken came around in a ponderous quarter loop that left the plane rocking a bit when they aligned with the runway. Bell looked back. Georgi was staring out the window and playing with his lapel. He had a pocket watch in his other hand, which rested in his lap. He didn’t look particularly afraid of flying, but he was definitely concerned about something.
Holmes set the throttles against their stops. What had been a throaty roar turned into an echoing thunder that made the hairs on Bell’s arms stand up. He and Holmes exchanged another boyish grin. The plane started accelerating down the field, jolting and bouncing like an unbroken horse, picking up speed with each passing moment, but it certainly wasn’t an exciting level of acceleration.
Halfway down the long grass strip, the tail had enough lift to unstick the rear skid plate. The nose dropped down so that the front landing gear hit the earth. The ride became a little smoother and their acceleration grew noticeably quicker. The plane was nearingfull gallop now. Holmes gave the wheel a gentle tug to judge if they were going fast enough, waited another fifteen seconds for that last bit of speed, and then fully eased back on the wheel. As before, Bell assisted by pulling back on his synchronized wheel, but always making sure Holmes was leading the effort.
The jouncing ride evened out the moment the wheels left the ground and the wings took up the burden of holding the plane aloft. She climbed like an overweight goose, slow and stately. A minute after taking off, they were less than four hundred feet above the ground. Holmes still felt comfortable enough to put her in a shallow turn until the compass pointed north. It would take twenty minutes or more to reach ten thousand feet.
“She feels lighter than I expected, but a slow climber,” Holmes yelled over the engines’ roar.
Bell looked back to see Georgi studying his watch. “Kid’s acting like he’s waiting for a date.”
“Odd duck, that one.”
Bell looked at Georgi every couple of minutes, and each time he was checking his watch. Whatever appointed time finally came and he stuffed the pocket watch in his jacket and stood. He came up behind the pilots so he could stand in between them.
“Change of plans,” he shouted in a high, breaking voice. He pointed to the compass. “Forty degrees is your new heading. Do not deviate from it.”
“That’ll take us toward Holland,” Holmes shouted back, surprised that Bell was right and Georgi was like one of the English-speaking spies the Germans tried to intermix with their captives.
A snub-nosed revolver appeared in Georgi’s hand. “You will follow my order or one of you will die.”
