'Well, I'm getting on that plane in a moment. You call the colonel immediately and tell him you saw us taking off.
Keep him on the phone until you see our wheels leave the ground, got it?'
'Sir, it's the middle of the night—'
'Captain, you want to live to a ripe old age?'
'Why, of course, but I—'
'Call him! Besides, he's an early riser. Move!'
Indy didn't wait to see what the captain did. He took off on a dead run for the Ford where Gale was holding open the rear cabin door. The moment Indy was inside the cabin Gale slammed it shut and threw the lock. Will was looking back into the cabin from the cockpit, and Indy made a fist and pumped his hand up and down in the air. Cromwell nodded and a moment later his hand was shoving three throttles forward to their stops. The three Pratt & Whitney engines howled their nowfamiliar song, and in less than ten seconds the earth began falling away beneath them.
19
They climbed slowly and steadily, in darkness broken only by isolated points of light from a ranch or small town far below. Those began to disappear beneath thickening clouds they estimated at four thousand feet. Cromwell and Foulois kept the Ford in its climb toward Puerto de Luna to the southeast. The town stood along the banks of the Pecos River. More important, it lay between Las Vegas and Roswell, and their course would take them along a line just west of Clovis and Portales on the New MexicoTexas border. Puerto de Luna also had a radio station that broadcast through the night and this gave the pilots a navigational backup. They were able to tune to the station frequency at Puerto de Luna to the south, switch to an allnight station broadcast from Albuquerque to the west, and by drawing lines on their charts with headings and positions from the stations, maintain a running check on their progress. If Chino had figured the terrain and the weather as well as they hoped, the airship, which must stay away from towering thunderstorms, would follow the best route to get into position for its long flight eastward. And that would be over the Valley of Fire, on to Bitter
Lake just north of Roswell and then, at extreme altitude, they needed only to maintain an eastnortheast heading. By now Indy knew enough of homing in to commercial broadcast stations to understand that at the great height the airship would fly, they would be able to use the homing signals from one town to the next on a crude but effective radio highway in the sky.
Then he put that all aside. Cromwell called on the intercom. 'Better suit up, chaps. It's going to get dreadfully cold a lot faster than you think. When you're into your coldweather gear, each of you check the other. And make absolutely certain that when the temperature gets down below zero, which it will do distressingly soon, never touch any metal with your bare hands. If you do, you'll leave your skin behind.' 'Got it, Will. What about you two?' 'I'll stay on the controls. As soon as the young lady is in her gear, send her forward. Frenchy can leave his seat then to get suited up while Gale takes right seat. When Frenchy comes back he'll take his seat, Gale will take mine, and I'll suit up. Be sure you people check us out. One mistake where we're going can be very costly.'
'Got it,' Indy confirmed. He turned to Gale. 'You hear all that?'
'Yes. Let's do it.' She chuckled. 'It's nice having two gentlemen at the same time helping me get dressed. I feel positively risque.'
'For a grizzly, maybe,' Chino told her. Ten minutes later she was ready to agree with him. In a heavy fullbody flight suit of fleecelined leather, thick boots, leather helmet and goggles, and heavy gloves, she felt like an overstuffed bear.
'I can barely walk in all this stuff,' she complained.
'So waddle,' Indy told her.
She shuffled forward. Moments later Foulois came
back into the cabin, and the three men assisted one another into their thick and clumsy altitude gear. Each checked the equipment of the others, and Foulois returned to the cockpit, sending Cromwell back. When Gale returned, they donned oxygen masks, the lifegiving oxygen fed from portable bottles slung about their shoulder to their waist, the straps modified Sam Browne dress belts.
'Each tank is good for two hours,' Indy told Gale and Chino. 'You've got to be ready to switch tanks at least ten minutes before that time. Will insists that whenever you switch tanks, one other person must be with you. If any one of us messes up with the tank valves or fastenings and we don't get oxygen from the tanks, at our top altitude we won't have thirty seconds of consciousness to correct any mistakes. But if you have somebody with you, they can get the air flowing right away.'
Chino nodded. 'With all this noise, engines and the wind, how do we talk to each other?'
'These masks are the latest army issue. They've got radio intercom. Since it's real short range, like just inside the plane,' Indy related what he'd been taught by Henshaw, 'the system ought to work real well. However,' he warned,
'if one of us calls someone else and there's no answer, get to that person immediately. They may be out of air or a valve has backed off. Five minutes without air up high is a death sentence.'
Everything worked perfectly, although physical movement was clumsy and slow in their heavy gear and the increasing cold. They looked back and to the northwest. What had been darkness was now a sky split with almost constant lightning exploding from cloud to cloud in the stillbuilding thunderstorms. Huge thunderheads flashed like beacons from within.
'God, I'm glad we're not in that,' Gale remarked. 'It could tear us to pieces.'
'Thanks,' Chino said with obvious sarcasm.
Indy clapped him on the shoulder. 'We won't get anywhere near that,' he reassured the big Indian. 'Joe, it's going to be daylight soon. We'd better check out the guns.'
The Ford had been well prepared for the planned encounter with the airship.
The innerwing baggage compartments, modified to hold one machine gun each, with a heavy load of ammunition, gave Cromwell and Foulois powerful forwardfiring effect.
Both men were experienced combat pilots, and that experience was invaluable now.
