toward the island.
Cap glanced out the starboard window as he banked to the right over the island Dandridge engineered. He smiled with satisfaction to see the bomb hit squarely in the mouth of the elemental mountain.
Instead of exploding, though, the bomb burst open to release an inky black cloud into the cavern. Cap maintained a two-minute circle and watched as the stark columns and pillars and patterns of the artificial island lost their luster. The chambers of Dandridge’s laboratory collapsed in on themselves as Cap’s own scavenger microbots stripped the foul island apart. Within minutes, the towering monument to madness turned fluid and ran into the sea like a melting ice cube.
Just then a scream of unstoppable rage erupted from amidships.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Last Resort
Captain Anger’s meditation on one man’s folly ceased the instant he heard the commotion in back. Engaging the plane’s powerful artificial intelligence computers, he left the plane flying itself toward California to make his way back to the cargo bay. He had one more fight to break up.
Johnny Madsen squeezed Dandridge’s throat with one hand while the other formed a fist that pounded the man’s temple with unrestrained fury. Rock wrapped an arm around the boy’s waist, trying to separate assailant from target.
Captain Anger clasped Jonathan’s wrist in his powerful grip, freezing the boy’s arm in mid-swing. His other hand released its grip on Dandridge, who curled up into a fetal ball, whimpering and speaking to himself in a disturbing sing-song whisper.
Cap said, “I think there’s someone onboard more deserving of your attention.” Cap led a stunned Jonathan Madsen to the small man sitting dazed in one of the folding flight seats.
“Gramps?” he said, staring at the old man with eyes wide in grateful amazement. “Julie?”
Julius Madsen gazed up at his grandson and started to weep uncontrollably. He reached out to hug the young man and whispered in a
hoarse, parched voice, “Johnny boy—you found me.”
His grandson crouched down to look the old man straight in the eyes. “I thought you were dead. The man the scavengers killed first—they said it was you!”
The elder Madsen shook his head weakly. “Dandridge and Campbell replaced several key world figures with imposters in the hope it would give them time to perform the surgery on the real people they‘ve kidnapped. Then real people would switch places with the imposters and be high-level zombies under Dandridge’s control. I was his first captive, but he wanted my knowledge, so no implant for me.”
Tex tapped on Cap’s shoulder. “I’ve patched up Dandridge’s bullet holes; do y’all think we could put the spurs to this filly? Mr. Arafshi’s got to get some critical care within a couple of hours or his brain won’t be worth a plugged nickel.”
“Sure,” Rock interjected. “With your ten thumbs in his head, it’s wonder he can lie flat on his back without falling over!”
Tex slowly turned his head toward his stocky antagonist, saying, “At least I didn’t get caught with my pants down, robot bait.”
Tex and Rock traded barbs all the way back to Long Beach. Sun Ra used one of the onboard computers in the rear compartment to study in depth the medical/legal ethics of surgical personality alteration. Cap and Tex might need his advice when it came time to dezombify Dandridge’s victims. Leila Weir—after Tex treated her bullet wound—spent the time in the co-pilot’s seat, watching the moon shimmer on the sea and imagining great floating cities resistant to wind, water, sun, and rust. She occasionally conversed with Flash, whom she filled in on the details of their recent exploits.
Jonathan and Julius Madsen simply held each other, grandfather and grandson, happy that a mysterious red- bearded enigma named Captain Anger had saved their lives and vanquished a madman. The freed prisoners conversed among one another, wondering what would happen next.
What happened next was a night landing in Long Beach Harbor followed by disembarkation. The Seamaster was left to its ground crew and everyone took refuge in a dockside hangar. Cap dispersed the crowd with a few quick directions.
“Rock—take anyone with implants back to the institute. Leila— the same goes for the Madsens. Put them up in the guest quarters.
Tex—you’ve got your work quite literally cut out for you. Sun Ra—handle all the legal problems for our prisoners and find out how to remove quietly that imposter at the United Nations.
“As for our visiting professor.” He turned toward the huddled mass that had once been the arrogant and self-possessed William Arthur Dandridge. In a mock TV announcer’s voice, he said, “Well, Bill, you didn’t win the world this time around, but you did come in second. Wait till you see the lovely parting gift you’ve earned.”
Dandridge, bloodied, shot up, black and blue, cringed at what might come next.
What came next was being dressed in a high altitude pressure suit and strapped into the cockpit of Cap’s SeaDart. Ground crew used thick zipcuffs of an odd-colored plastic to fasten Dandridge’s wrists and ankles to the ejection seat so that he could not cause any further mischief during the flight.
Captain Anger—dressed in a similar flight outfit—slapped a helmet on Dandridge’s head, locked it down, and climbed into the pilot’s seat.
Like the Seamaster, the SeaDart used the Los Angeles harbor as its runway, but this jet was a two-seat fighter capable of supersonic flight. Based on the design of the Convair F2Y-2 (officially designated the F-7), its multi-compartmented lower fuselage sat in the water supporting a pair of delta-shaped wings.
Cap sealed up his own helmet, cycled shut the acrylic canopy, and strapped in for takeoff. He ignited the single Pratt and Whitney J-75 turbojet engine, sending a bright orange flame shooting across the water and up the concrete ramp leading from the hanger to the harbor. Steam roiled upward in the pre-dawn air, glowing from within like a ghost. The jet immediately surged forward, breaking the still waters with its prow.
Throttling up, the engine roared to its full 15,000 pounds of thrust, pushing the plane up onto a single extended ski. Shaped like a thin titanium surfboard, the ski lifted the plane out of the water, supporting the entire aircraft on three oleo struts.
Dandridge gazed blearily out the canopy to observe sea spray race past with hurricane speed just inches from his face. The pilot controlled the plane with deft ease, making the bizarre liftoff procedure smooth and certain.
Screaming across the LA harbor at nearly 200 knots, Cap eased the
control stick back. The elevons on the rear edges of the delta wing moved slightly and the plane nosed up twenty degrees. Suddenly, the mild buffeting of ski-on-water ceased and the SeaDart’s delta wing took over. With a whine of motors, the ski retracted into the hull of the sea-jet. The SeaDart became a jet with its all-important supersonic area-ruled fuselage. Blazing into the sky with sunrise at his back, Captain Anger raced upward out of southern California at climb rate of 17,100 feet per minute.
William Arthur Dandridge blacked out from the g-force of the climb. Richard Anger III felt nothing but exhilaration.
Leveling off at 36,000 feet, he coaxed the jet to Mach 1, ripped through the sound barrier, and cruised over the sun-goldened Pacific at Mach 1.1, far below the jet’s Mach 1.5 potential.
Over his headphones, Anger heard a tired voice from the rear seat ask, “Am I so evil that you have to dispose of my body at sea? You could have just shot me through the head and thrown me in a grave. Or let some
