“Just got the word,” she said. “This is it. End of the line. I am officially off active duty.” She said this like it was cheery news, but I knew it was eating her up. “I’m headed home to Maine. And you know what? I’m taking the train. Why not? Something different, right?”
Jinx continued to pack. I looked at Gunny. He gave me a nod of encouragement. I wasn’t exactly sure what to say, but I had to think of something fast.
“Jinx,” I began. “We need a favor.”
“Whatever I can do, boys,” she answered.
“Can you fly us somewhere?”
Jinx stopped packing. She looked at me, as if it were a strange request, then sat down on the edge of the bed.
“I told you, Pendragon, I’m grounded. No more joy rides.”
“This isn’t a joy ride,” I said. I tried to be as convincing as possible. “We need to get down to Lakehurst, New Jersey.”
“Lakehurst?” she said. “That’s where the dirigibles come in. TheHindenburgis due today.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“What’s so important? You want to be there with all the other lookey-loos to see her float in? To be honest, I think those blimps are a lot of hot air. Get it? Hot air.”
I got it. I wasn’t laughing.
“That’s not it,” I said seriously. “I don’t really know how to say this. It’s a long story and there’s no way you’d believe it. But what I’m going to tell you is the absolute truth. If we don’t get down there right away, I mean now, something horrible is going to happen that I can’t even begin to describe.”
“Really?” she said with surprise and a touch of curiosity. “What is it?”
“I can’t tell you. I know that sounds stupid, but it’s the truth. I’ll tell you this much, though, we’re asking you to fly the most important mission taken by any pilot, man or woman, ever. I’m not exaggerating.”
“He’s telling you the truth, ma’am,” Gunny added.
It was now up to Jinx. I want to say that it was my brilliant powers of persuasion that convinced her to take us. I want to say that I was smart enough to know she wanted to do something important with her flying and not just be a sideshow. I even want to say I used my Traveler mind powers to convince her. I want to say all those things, but none of them would be true.
“To be honest, Pendragon,” she said, “you didn’t have to tell me all that other stuff. I was ready to go the second you asked me if I’d fly you somewhere.”
I had to smile. Could Jinx be any cooler? “You aren’t worried about the Coast Guard?” I asked.
“Nah,” she scoffed. “What are they going to do? Ground me? If I’ve gotta go, I’m goin’ out with a bang!”
It was nearly an hour later when we found ourselves strapped into Jinx’s V-157 Schreck/Viking, ready for takeoff. I was in the front cockpit next to Jinx because Gunny was a much bigger guy than Spader. He needed the rear cockpit all to himself. The monster engine pounded away as we bounced over the swells of the Hudson River. The weather was still nasty, so the water was pretty choppy. My aching head throbbed each time we hit a swell. I was miserable, but had to gut it out. My bigger worry was that if the weather got any worse than this, I didn’t think we’d be able to take off. I looked to the sky and saw that there were still thunderstorms dancing around.
“Can you fly in this weather?” I shouted to Jinx over the roar of the engine.
Jinx gave a quick look around, then said, “What weather?”
That was good enough for me. It was now almost 4:30p.m. The flight was going to take about an hour and a half, getting us to Lakehurst around 6:00p.m. TheHindenburgwas going to land at 7:25p.m. Not much time to find Spader and Max Rose and figure out a way to stop them. We were cutting it very close.
I looked back at Gunny and shouted, “You ready?”
Gunny was doubled over in the back, puking. He looked up, smiled, and gave me a thumbs up. It was going to be a long flight. Jinx gunned the throttle, the plane bounced over the swells, and after a gut-rumbling thirty seconds, we were airborne.
Just as I feared, the flight was ugly. The little plane was constantly buffeted by gusts of wind and downdrafts. Jinx tried to fly at different altitudes, searching for smooth air, but nothing helped.
Most of the time, we were flying blind. The gray, angry clouds were thick and low. Every time we entered one, I gritted my teeth and held my breath. If there were another plane coming from the other direction, we’d be history. But this was 1937. There wasn’t as much air traffic back then, so we were fairly safe. At least that’s what I kept telling myself.
A few times I looked back to check on Gunny. The poor guy was having a rough time. His face looked green, but he still gave me a brave thumbs up. At one point I wondered if Gunny thought the thumbs up meant “I’m going to puke again,” because that’s pretty much all he was doing.
They didn’t have radio beacons or radar back in those days. All Jinx had to navigate was a compass, her eyes, and a great sense of direction. As it turned out, she had been down to Lakehurst before, so she knew what landmarks to follow. I think back on that flight and I realize that Jinx’s cockiness was deserved. She really was a great pilot. It was too bad nobody recognized her for it.
There was one whopper of a hairy moment that still makes my palms sweaty when I think back on it. We had been flying for almost two hours. That was bad. The flight was taking way longer than Jinx figured. It was because of the weather. We were fighting head winds the whole way. I was getting more anxious by the second.
We then entered a huge cloud bank. This was the darkest, longest one we had been in yet. I kept looking ahead, praying to see light on the far side that would mean we were about to break out. But it wasn’t coming. This cloud was huge. No sooner did we enter than we were pelted with more rain. Remember, we were in open cockpits. When it rained, we got wet. We had to keep wiping off our goggles or we would have been totally blinded. I kept reaching forward to wipe off the glass shield in front of Jinx so she could see better. Total waste of time. Visibility was pretty much zero.
I had just finished wiping off the windshield and sat back in my seat, when I saw something that made me stop breathing. There in front of us, only a few yards ahead, was a sight so unbelievable I thought I was imagining it. But I wasn’t. It was a giant, floating, black swastika on a white circle, surrounded by a red field.
“Look out!” I shouted.
Jinx banked the plane hard to the right. The engine groaned, the g force built up so hard that I was crushed back into the seat. I think our wings went vertical. I shut my eyes, ready for the collision, but it never came. Jinx had dodged it. It wasn’t until a second later that I realized what we had nearly hit.
It was the tail of theHindenburg.
It had crossed right in front of us. We didn’t see it because of the cloud, and we didn’t hear it because our own engine drowned out its engines. I swear, we couldn’t have missed it by more than a few inches.
Jinx looked at me and smiled. “That was exciting.”
Exciting. Okay, that was one word for it. I looked back at Gunny…and he wasn’t there! My first thought was that he had fallen out. But a second later he sat up and looked at me with watery eyes. He had been doubled over, losing it once again. He couldn’t even give me the thumbs up this time. The poor guy wouldn’t be the same until his feet were back on solid ground.
“Does that mean we’re getting close to the field?” I shouted to Jinx.
“We’ve still got a few minutes,” Jinx shouted back.
That’s when we finally blasted out of the cloud bank. I looked down to the ground and saw something that made me sit up straight. It was a long, silver bus moving along the narrow highway. This was a pretty empty section of New Jersey. There wasn’t a whole lot of traffic down here. I motioned for Gunny to look down.
“Could that be the bus Spader is on?” I shouted.
Gunny looked, then nodded and gave the thumbs up. Either this was the bus, or he had to puke again. I figured it was the bus. It was a huge stroke of luck. If we could get to Spader, we could stop him from going after Winn Farrow. Then all we would have to worry about was Max Rose. I quickly turned to Jinx.
“You gotta put us down,” I shouted.
“What?” she shouted back. “Why?”
“We’ve got to get to that bus!” I shouted over the roar of the engine.
Jinx looked down at the ground. She banked the plane right, then left, so she could get a view of the landscape.
