the yoke full back when we taxi. This keeps the tail down and gives us better control on the ground. And while we taxi we'll keep checking the gauges as the engines warm up.'
They stopped well short of the active runway. Another checklist, another litany of shouted calls and checks and rechecks. They ran the engines to full power until the Ford rattled and shook as if it had palsy.
Both Cromwell and Foulois turned to grin at Indy. 'You remembering everything?'
'Huh? Oh, sure!' Indy said hastily.
'There's a great American saying, my friend.' Cromwell laughed. 'In a pig's eye, you are. But you'll learn. Now, we'll break a rule. You should be strapped into a seat, but being the magnificent pilot I am,' he showed a broad toothy smile, 'we'll let you stand where you are. Get a good grip on the seat backs and don't touch anything that moves. Got it?'
'Got it!' Indy told him.
'You're clear to the active and for takeoff,' Foulois told Cromwell. The Briton worked the outboard engine, tapping the brakes gently, and lined up the airplane on the runway centerline. He moved all the controls again to their limits, held the yoke full back, adjusted the friction knobs for the throttles, and nodded to Foulois.
'Ready?'
'Like a French goose,' Foulois told him.
Cromwell held full pressure on the brakes, and moved the throttles steadily forward to their stops, the propellers screaming. He scanned the gauges, nodded to himself, and released the brakes. The Ford surged ahead, howling.
Almost at once the tail came up and Indy had a clear view of the runway.
Cromwell held in right rudder pressure to keep the Ford tracking true, the speed building up swiftly. In less than four hundred feet the main wheels were off the runway, and Indy looked around to see the ground fall away.
It didn't. Engines and props howling, the Ford tore down the runway barely above the concrete, building its speed steadily. The grin on Cromwell's face told Indy more than enough. These guys were going to pull a surprise on him.
Unknown to them, he'd read the pilot's operating handbook on this airplane, and he knew that even with a full load it was flying and climbing very well, even as slow as eighty miles an hour. He saw the gauge needle on the airspeed indicator tremble at 100, and it kept right on moving around as the runway end rushed at them.
'And it's upsadaisy!' Cromwell sang out as he hauled the yoke back suddenly. Indy was already braced, but he was still surprised and delighted as the 'old lady' trimotor lunged skyward in a wild climb, and then seemed to hang vertically as Cromwell wracked her over in a steep bank. The three men were laughing and whooping it up together; Indy glanced back into the cabin where Gale had a grin from ear to ear, and Tarkiz showed a face turning green as his stomach tried desperately to flee his body. I'm going to learn to fly this thing myself, Indy swore.
There wasn't time for anything else but their checkout schedule. Once in the restricted airspace reserved for them, Tarkiz staggered back to the circular container near the cabin rear. He pulled back and locked the sliding hatch atop the fuselage, then turned a crank handle that lifted the machine gun mount and the weapon into the airstream. Lying flat against the fuselage was a panel of curving armor glass.
Tarkiz pushed this upward and locked it into place with folding metal braces; now he had a buffer against the powerful winds of flight. He released the securing pins of the machine gun, slid a heavy round canister with two hundred rounds of ammunition, and shouted at the top of his lungs: 'Give me something to kill! It makes better my stomach!' Gale went back, tugged at his sleeve, and handed him a leather helmet with earphones and a mike within the helmet so he would be on intercom.
'Just hang in there and enjoy the scenery, old chap,' Cromwell instructed him. 'You'll get your chance to play with your new toy.'
'Hurry up,' growled Tarkiz.
Foulois pointed out their objective, a wide plain of several thousand acres. A huge circle had been painted on the ground and in its center was a small cluster of buildings. 'That's our target,' Indy announced. 'Let's see you two mugs tear it up.'
Without hesitation, hurling Indy's body against the entrance side to the cockpit, Cromwell slammed the Ford into a winghigh rollover, coming back on the yoke, rolling in full left aileron, stamping left rudder, and shoving the throttles full forward. He kept his controls moving as the trimotor swung up and around to peel off for the ground, and the next moment their speed went right through the gauge's reading of 150 mph. It was a breathless rush earthward at a terrifying angle.
Cromwell seemed like a madman intent on reaching the ground in the shortest possible time. Indy noticed what he'd failed to see before; a vertical line with crosshairs marked on the windshield. 'Damn it, Will,' Foulois shouted, 'what's the redline on this thing!'
Redline, redline, thought Indy furiously. Of course, that's what they call neverexceed speed. I think it's about oneforty or something. But we're already doing onesixty and—
'I don't know and I bloody well don't care!' Cromwell shouted back to the Frenchman. 'You can't hurt this thing and you know it. Now shut the devil up and get with the systems! Guns charged?' 'Charged!'
'Tank jettison armed?' 'Armed!'
'What the blazes are you going to do?' Indy shouted. 'Drop our fuel tanks?'
Cromwell glanced about for only a moment. 'Yahooooo!' he shouted in a very unmannerly British war yell. He brought the nose of the Ford up slightly, eased in right rudder to line up his sight markings, and the next moment depressed the button on his yoke. The airplane vibrated and shook from nose to tail as the two wing machine guns roared. Fountains of dirt leaped up along the ground, and then boards splintered and shattered as Cromwell fired dead center into the target buildings. He pulled out of the dive perilously close to the ground, and with their speed still high, hung the Ford on its wingtip in a screaming vertical turn. 'Tarkiz! Your turn! Get the center building!'
They heard the machine gun in back firing in staccato bursts, the wind backdraft bringing acrid gunpowder to their nostrils. Above the screaming wind, howling engines and propellers, and firing gun, they heard a terrible strangling noise. 'What's going on back there?' Cromwell called to Gale.
She could hardly speak. She seemed to be choking. Indy rushed back, staggering from side to side of the cabin through the wild ride, the hammering gun, and thundering bedlam. Gale grabbed Indy close, spoke into his ear. 'It's our hero! Tarkiz! He's throwing up out there!'
