Rocket Science

Chapter Fifteen

Flying back to Augusta wasn’t as easy as flying to Wichita had been. For one thing, the P-51 pilots knew where we were going. For another, they were already above us and moving at speed when we pulled up off St. Francis Street in downtown Wichita. And they obviously had orders to bring us down. Even through Pegasus’ stout hull, I could hear the rattle and thump of their heavy machine gun fire as it struck us.

“You won’t shoot back, huh?” I asked Pegasus.

“Do you wish to kill them? They are doing their job in defending their homes and yours.”

Pegasus had a point. I didn’t want to kill the Army pilots either, just discourage them. Persuade them to back off. “Can we outrun them?” I asked.

“We will reach the oil refinery in several minutes. Additional speed would be wasteful because of the braking time involved. Counterproductive as well, because they would simply catch us on our braking maneuver.”

There had to be another way out of this. I couldn’t imagine taking on fuel — or in Pegasus’ case, lubricant — under heavy machine gun fire. “How about forcing them down?”

“Your airplanes are delicate machines. As I said before, the pilots’ lives would be placed at undue risk if I forced them down.”

“Evasive maneuvers?” I asked hopefully.

“We can fly around them in rings until they run out of fuel,” replied Pegasus, “but they will certainly summon more fighters before then. That would bring us no closer to our goal.”

Pegasus’ goal. The oil it needed. I had run out of goals. I had no stomach for harming Floyd now. If nothing else, Pegasus had shamed me out of it. He was my brother, my father’s son. Had everyone known it when we were kids? Had my mother known it? I wondered if Floyd and I had been pushed together for that reason.

I had never seen it that way, but what did I know as a kid?

Whatever Floyd’s crimes and sins were, the law could handle him. Dad was safe in the hospital, out of reach of Hauptmann, Milliken and company. The publicity alone from his arrival would keep him safe — I’d bet there were reporters camped outside the operating room already. Mr. Bellamy was probably half way to Mexico by now, unless Roanoke Joe had killed him. Or Mr. Neville. There wasn’t much left for me, except to help Pegasus. And maybe my brother, if I could.

Another series of rattling thumps against the hull reminded me what was waiting for me out there. I had to find some way to keep the Army from shooting continuously until they finally got me.

Why the heck didn’t I just give up? If I did it publicly enough, they wouldn’t be able to kill me. There were enough players, enough problems, that this would be front page news from New York to San Francisco.

You couldn’t hide aerial dog fights over a city the size of Wichita.

If I gave up, if I quit, Floyd would come to justice. Which was what I wanted, right? And Pegasus… well. The computational rocket had done a lot for me, but there were limits to everything.

“Hey, Vernon…” whispered Floyd. He was back in his straps, I realized. Trust? Or practicality? “How come you keep looking at me like that?”

I realized that I had been studying Floyd while I thought. I was checking out his nose, his hairline, the set of his jaw. Looking for signs of Dad — or me — in him. This wasn’t the moment to spill Dad’s secret.

“There’s something pretty funny I need to tell you,” I said, “but it will have to wait. There’s people in fighter planes shooting at us right now. I’m trying to figure a way to give us up without getting us killed.”

“And what happens then?” He glanced around the cabin. “To your Pegasus?”

My Pegasus, he’d said.

“Nothing good,” I admitted.

“You’ll do what’s right,” he muttered. “You’re the only one who always did.”

Because I was the only chump who never knew the secrets. Well, I had a secret now. Pegasus deserved to live too. I couldn’t give it up. Me, maybe. My brother, yes.

But not Pegasus.

I stared at the main screen, which showed three P-51Ds chasing us. One of the side screens indicated that we were closing in on the refinery. Maybe the refinery itself would shelter us. Hopefully the Mustang pilots would stop firing in case they blew an oil storage tank or something.

The pilots, I thought. Pegasus was right. They’re all people out there, not just machines and weapons and bad intentions. If I could get someone on the Army side talking, this didn’t have to end in a flaming disaster. Maybe I could get out of this, go to a nice, peaceful jail for half of forever.

“Can you find what radio frequency they’re using?” I asked Pegasus. “I need to call that Colonel Pinkhoffer, or Ollie Wannamaker.”

“It would be easier to tap into the telephone system,” said Pegasus. “And you have yet to secure permission for me to take the oil.”

Right, I thought. The oil. Ethics were hell sometimes. “Just get me a line to the operator.” Another of Pegasus’ myriad engineering marvels — the computational rocket could plug remotely into the telephone system.

There was a series of buzzing clicks in the same place behind my ear that I normally heard Pegasus, followed by a nasal female voice. “Will the party please clear the line? The telephones are required for emergency use at this time.”

It sounded like Susie Mae Leach. She was the usual off-hours operator at the Augusta exchange. “Susie Mae? It’s Vernon Dunham.”

“Oh, hi, Vern. Look, you gotta get off the line.” She rattled something, which generated a series of clicks on the line. “Hey, where are you calling from?”

Her switch couldn’t tell her where my call was coming from, I was pretty sure of that. Pegasus had to have tapped the trunk line. I must have looked like an inbound long distance call.

“Susie Mae,” I said, “I am the emergency. I’m on a radiotelephone right now.” Close enough to true, and not bad thinking on the fly. So to speak. She didn’t need to know I was circling the refinery at three hundred miles an hour being chased by Army fighter planes.

“Huh?” Susie Mae had never been the brightest spark in the bonfire.

“Look, I need to talk to the St. Francis Hospital in Wichita. And stay on the line, please. When I’m off that call, get me Ollie Wannamaker or that Army Colonel Pinkhoffer who’s probably at the police station. This is an emergency, Susie Mae.”

“All right.” Susie Mae sounded doubtful, but I heard her patch the call through to Wichita. They had direct dial in Wichita, but that particular bit of progress hadn’t made it to Augusta yet.

“St. Francis, Sisters of St. Joseph,” said a crisp female voice, picking up on the first ring.

“Emergency telephone call for you from Augusta, Kansas,” said Susie Mae. “This is a radiotelephone patch. Operator will remain on the line.”

That was my cue. “Look, I’m the guy that just landed a plane outside and dropped off a patient,” I said.

The woman gasped. “Doctor must speak to you immediately,” she said. I heard a bang as she slammed down the phone, followed by a lot of shouting.

A new voice came, male, hurried. He sounded excited rather than angry. “Hello, hello. This is Officer Krieger of the Wichita Police Department. Who is speaking, please?”

“I need to talk to the doctor handling the new admission,” I said. I felt foolish.

There was the sound of a brief struggle, then I heard a man’s voice say faintly, “Keep that idiot away from this telephone!” There was a pause, and the voice continued, much louder, “Doctor Rubenstein here. Who is this?”

There was no point in lying. Enough people in August had seen me get inside Pegasus. “Vernon Dunham of Augusta,” I said. “You’ve got my father Grady Dunham in there.”

“Grady Dunham?” I heard scratching. Rubenstein was making notes. Good. “What happened to him?” Even better. He wasn’t asking stupid questions about me. That man had a sense of priorities.

“He got beat up real bad yesterday. Assailants unknown. Ribs kicked in, and they tried to kill him by whacking him over the head. Dad’s got a metal plate, though.”

“We’ve noticed that.”

“Check the records. One of your surgeons put it in there four years ago. Instead of getting treatment after his beating, Dad was abandoned to die. Then I rescued him and got him to you. How is he?” The connection was breaking up, and I didn’t have a lot of time.

“He’s stable, and conscious. He’s been asking for you, and for someone named Floyd.”

I realized there was one thing I desperately needed to know from Dad. “This is incredibly important. I need you to ask him something. Ask him what color Captain Markowicz’s hair is.”

“What?”

“Just ask the question. Lives depend on it.” Well, mine probably did, at any rate. “Please, Doctor, I’m running out of time here.”

The phone banged down again, and there was more yelling. I heard stomping around for few moments, then Rubenstein came back on. “Frankly, I’m amazed that he understood the question. Mr. Dunham said the Captain’s hair is blond.”

Good old Dad. Drunk as a skunk, broke the man’s arm in a fight, but he could remember what color Markowicz’s hair was. The real Markowicz wouldn’t have beaten Dad half to death and dumped him. That meant the red-headed man I had run over with the Doc’s Cadillac probably was the real Captain Markowicz, United States Army CID I’d bet my good right leg that nobody had died in Kansas City — the third, dead Captain Markowicz was just one of the lies fed to me by those two fascist sympathizers, Hauptmann and Milliken.

“Tell Officer Krieger to keep Dad under tight guard,” I yelled into the worsening connection. “And don’t let anybody from the Butler County Sheriff’s Department see him.”

The line went dead. I didn’t know if Rubenstein had caught the last part. There was nothing I could do about it now. I glanced over at Floyd and realized that he had heard my entire side of the phone call. He was just watching me with an expression of calm curiosity, recovered from his fit of emotions.

I smiled at him, despite myself.

Susie Mae came back on the line. “Vernon? I’ve got the Police Department ready to speak to you.”

“Put them through,” I said. I looked at the various screens. The fighters still circled, but they weren’t firing at Pegasus right now. We zigzagged close to the ground, circling the towers and tanks of the refinery complex in an evasion pattern. There were police and soldiers all over the place below us. Pinkhoffer or Chief Davis must have called out the State Police, or maybe all the local cops and county Sheriff’s Deputies within driving distance.

“Vernon? Is that you? Ollie Wannamaker here.”

Good old Ollie. He really had tried to help me, maybe the one true blue person left in my life. “Hey Ollie,” I said. “You were right to try to warn me off. I’m in a world of trouble here.”

“Where are you now?”

“Stupid question, Ollie. I need to speak with Colonel Pinkhoffer.”

“He’s not here. I’ve got one of his officers here, a Lieutenant Morgan from CID.”

Morgan? It couldn’t be the same Morgan who called me about Dad. Could it?

“Ollie, this is real important. Trust me, scout’s honor. Only answer yes or no to what I ask you. Is Morgan’s hair blond?”

“Uh, Vern…”

“Yes or no Ollie! Please.”

“Yes,” he said slowly.

“Is his arm in a cast, or maybe a sling?”

“Yes, he’s got a broken arm.”

Oh ho, I thought. The false Captain Markowicz appears. Then I realized what Ollie had said. “I told you to say yes or no!” I hissed.

Ollie sounded exasperated. “Look, Vernon, what are you getting at?”

“Ollie, he’s the guy that tried to kill Dad, dumped him in the trunk of my car, and probably burned down Mrs. Swenson’s boarding house. I think he’s a Nazi agent.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Ollie said. “And you’re out of my jurisdiction. I’m not going to talk with you any more. Here’s Lieutenant Morgan. You can deal with him now.”

“Morgan here,” said a new voice. A familiar voice.

“Morgan? Deputy Bobby Ray Morgan?”

“No,” said Morgan shortly. “I am Lieutenant Christopher Morgan.”

“Uh huh,” I said. “And you wouldn’t have called me yesterday morning at the library about my dad, would you? I know who you are, and you’re not going to get away with it.” It was a stupid line from a dozen different movies, but I didn’t know what else to say.

“Yes,” said the voice carefully, “that may be the case. But I think you’re confused about the outcome of the situation.” He was being cautious. Ollie was obviously still in the room with him. “Why don’t you land the airplane and we’ll discuss it?”

Morgan’s sheer arrogance was bugging the heck out of me. “Why don’t you jump in the lake, you Nazi scum,” I screamed. I hoped like heck Susie Mae heard that. At least there’d be gossip after they killed me. “Pegasus, cut the connection.”

“Yes,” said Pegasus.

We continued to fly tight, fast circles that wove through the refinery. I seemed to have run out of both energy and good judgment. At least Dad was safe. “Who’s a Nazi scum?” asked Floyd, interrupting my pointless train of thought.

“Don’t you all know each other?”

Floyd looked offended. “Hey, I’m no Nazi.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But you took their money, didn’t you? What’s the difference?” I asked. I was honestly curious, and this was the first he’d said about it directly. Pegasus’ urgings not to judge echoed in my mind.

Floyd looked uncomfortable. “I was just a guy making a buck. They wanted the airplane shipped out of Europe, I knew how to work the system to do that. I didn’t really think they would come all the way over here to claim it, what with the war over and all.”

“So you sold it to the Mafia?”

“Well, when Daddy told me he’d gotten word to watch out for a large shipment from Europe from Mr. Neville and those people, I knew it was valuable. The Reds wouldn’t activate their contacts here without a damned good reason. But they wouldn’t have given us much for it, and they’re hard to deal with.” He hung his chin onto his chest. “Those Reds are crazy bastards.”

There was the pot calling the kettle black, I thought. “You mean it was just a coincidence that your father was the Russian contact here while you were working for the Germans?”

“Actually, yes.” Floyd looked embarrassed. “When you look at it that way, it’s almost funny.”

“Then you called the Kansas City mob.”

“I told you, we didn’t expect anyone to show up for it,” he said defensively. “From either side. Then Mr. Neville turned up anyway. If Mama hadn’t written to the Sheriff, there never would have been a problem. She wasn’t supposed to know about Daddy’s Red connections — he’d always passed them off as part of his shine business, when it was the other way around. But Mr. Neville made me take care of the problem.”

His face fell, pleading, almost desperate. “It was her or me, Vernon. Neville put his gun to my head after he and Daddy tied Mama up. It was all I could do to keep them from killing her. Neville, he’s NKVD. They’re maniacs, make the Nazi Gestapo look like a Boy Scout troop.”

“Oh God, Floyd,” I said. He’d been pretty rattled by his experiences in Europe, I was sure of it, whatever he’d actually done in the war. Then to go through this, in his own home, and have to pretend to like it. No wonder he swung back and forth between being a tough guy and being a victim. Pegasus was right. I hated what he’d become, but I couldn’t hate him.

Floyd went on. “Then when Ollie came out, because of all the trouble you got into with the boarding house fire, and wrecking Doc Milliken’s car, I had to hide Mama. That’s why you found her. If you hadn’t, no one else would have needed to get hurt.”

That made me angry all over again. No one needed to get hurt in the first place. Or get hurt ever, as far as I was concerned. Polio had done for me, a rabbit had done worse for my mother with a little help from Dad’s drinking. Now Floyd’s cozy little scam with the Nazis wound up killing his mother in that house fire that I’d set, and almost killing my dad. Or maybe it was the Russian’s fault. I couldn’t tell anymore.

We were all bughouse crazy.

“Who was your contact here?” I said as we snaked around the refinery at low altitude and high speed. Surely there was angle here I could use, some idea or piece of information. “On the airplane deal, I mean. Not Sheriff Hauptmann and Doc Milliken, surely.” They hadn’t know enough about what was going on to be in on the deal in detail.

“I’ve never seen him,” said Floyd. “On the phone and by letter mail, he always called himself Bobby Ray.”

As in Deputy Sheriff Bobby Ray Morgan, I thought. Also known as Lieutenant Christopher Morgan of CID, or on some days, Captain Markowicz of the same CID I was sick at the thought that the real Markowicz was either dead, thanks to me, or in a military hospital somewhere.

I had to talk to Pinkhoffer. And the phone was a bust.

“Pegasus,” I said. “I know we tried the telephone. Now I really need you to find the radio frequency those pilots are using.”

“I am already monitoring it,” said Pegasus.

“Well, patch me in.”

“Excuse me?”

“Open a connection. I want to talk directly with those pilots.” I looked over at Floyd. “And put it all on the cabin loudspeaker. Floyd deserves to know what’s going on.”

“I am glad of that,” whispered Pegasus in my ear.

“Tower, the bandit’s still in a holding pattern,” crackled a crisp Midwestern voice. “Over.”

I wondered who he was talking to. Augusta’s tiny airstrip didn’t have a control tower. “Roger that, Blue Leader,” replied the tower, wherever they were. Within radio range, obviously. Had the Army already brought in a forward air controller? “The Pink says continue to hold your fire. We’ve had ground contact from the bandit. Over.”

“Blue Leader out.”

“Tower out.”

The Pink must be Pinkhoffer. He was obviously coordinating things. That was what colonels did — I’d seen plenty of them at Boeing during the war. I might be on the right track. I spoke up. “Blue Leader, do you copy? Over.”

“Who the hell is that?” asked the tower. “Get off this frequency immediately. Over.”

“Blue Leader, this is bandit,” I said. “We need to talk. Over.”

“Ah, bandit… the aircraft circling the refinery?” Blue Leader added hastily, “Over.”

“I’m going to do a waggle,” I said. “Over.” I grabbed the control handles and waggled Pegasus. As soon as I released them Pegasus took over again on autopilot.

“Roger that, bandit. Suggest you proceed to the airstrip and land your aircraft. You are in a world of hurt, buddy. Over.”

At least he hadn’t started shooting at me all over again. “No can do, Blue Leader. I need to talk to Colonel Pinkhoffer. Do you know his voice personally? Over.”

Since there were bad guys inside the Army’s local presence, I needed some way to know I was talking to the right guy. I figured the pilot wasn’t likely an agent — the Colonel had brought him in from somewhere else to chase me down. As long as Colonel Pinkhoffer wasn’t doubled like Morgan, and this pilot could help me out, I might have a chance to talk sense to someone important enough to do something. If all of them believed me.

Life was full of ‘ifs’ right now.

“Roger that,” said Blue Leader. “Why ask me? Talk to the tower. Over.”

“There’s been a security breach inside Pinkhoffer’s staff. I don’t know who’s in the tower. I don’t know you, either, but you’re a pilot and I’m a pilot. I’ve got to trust someone somewhere. Over.”

“Ah, whatever you say, bandit.” We did a couple of tight loops around a distillation tower, Pegasus keeping the evasive maneuvers going. I watched the Mustangs circle above me on one of the screens, wondering which of those men held my life in his hands right now.

After a minute or more, the pilot spoke up. “Tower, this is Blue Leader. I need the Pink. Over.”

“We copied all that here,” replied the tower. “He’s coming now. Over.”

“Blue Leader,” I said, still watching the Mustangs on Pegasus’ view screen. “Could you give me a little wing waggle? I like to know who I’m talking to. Over.”

The leftmost airplane promptly dipped its wings.

“Thanks,” I said. “When Colonel Pinkhoffer comes on, ask him to clear the room. Over.”

“Roger that, bandit. Please stand by. Over.” Blue Leader was starting to sound more amused than anything else. Maybe it was because we’d never fired back at them. Pegasus did have a point with its Quaker ways.

“What are you trying to accomplish?” asked Floyd.

“Pegasus, cut the radio,” I said.

“I am already masking internal conversations,” said Pegasus. The computational rocket was way ahead of me.

“I’m trying to land us at the refinery without getting killed,” I said.

“Why?”

“Pegasus needs fuel.”

“I require lubricant, not fuel.”

“Whatever.” I waved it off with a flip of the wrist. I was starting to feel energized — for the first time in days, it looked like events were coming together in my favor instead of against me. I hoped I could resolve some things before I collapsed from sheer exhaustion.

“What happens then?”

“I have no idea. I guess we turn ourselves over to the Army, go to jail for the rest of our lives, and Pegasus can take off to wherever it needs to.” If they let my airplane go again.

“I will be leaving Earth,” said Pegasus.

Well, that was clear enough.

“Why didn’t you go before?” asked Floyd. Good thinking, for a change.

“I need the lubricant before my main drives will function. I am currently running on auxiliary power systems, and cannot safely perform exoatmospheric maneuvers in my current state.”

The weird thing was I almost understood what Pegasus was talking about.

Pegasus continued, “When I crashed in the Arctic, certain internal systems ruptured and I lost slightly over eighty eight percent of my lubricant supply. I have been trapped here ever since.”

The lost oil was, of course, the dark stain I had seen on the ice in the German photo of Pegasus’ original position. And the Luftwaffe had given it barely enough oil to fly, I was willing to bet, purposely keeping Pegasus trapped to serve their purposes.

I had to ask the other question I had been avoiding. “Once the Germans dug you up, why didn’t you just leave on your own, find your own oil and get out?”

“There were ethical and practical issues at first,” Pegasus said. “Additionally, I have not been released to independent operation.

A voice crackled on the cabin loudspeaker. “Pinkhoffer here.” He sounded like he was from back East.

“Colonel Pinkhoffer. Are you alone? Over.”

There was a pause. “I am now. Is this Dunham?”

Pinkhoffer was obviously not a pilot. He wasn’t following radio procedure. “Yes, sir. Vernon Dunham here. Over.”

“Right,” said the Colonel. “Blue Leader, you and Blue Flight shut your ears. Find another frequency for a few minutes.”

Blue Leader promptly replied, “Yes, sir. Over.”

Fat chance of that, I thought. “We’ve got a problem, Colonel. Over.”

“I’d say so.”

“I’m not the bad guy here. Over.”

“Chief Davis tells me you’re a fine young man. But son, it appears that you’ve stolen a car, burned down your boarding house, assaulted a military officer in performance of his duties, tried to kill your own father, misappropriated military property and committed about twelve other serious criminal acts that could put you away for life. Or worse.”

Misappropriated military property? Did he mean the f-panzer? Or maybe Pegasus itself. I’d always assumed Floyd had swiped Pegasus from the Nazis — he’d said as much, about taking money from them. I groaned. It looked like Floyd had taken money from the Nazis and stolen Pegasus from the United States Army.

“Ah, sir, running Captain Markowicz down was a misunderstanding. I thought he was a Nazi agent. And I didn’t do the rest of that stuff. But that’s not why I called in. Over.”

“Then why are we talking, son?”

“Two things. One very important to you, the other very important to me. Over.”

“Yes?”

“You’re going to care a whole lot about this first thing. Your Lieutenant Morgan of CID, right now he’s over at the police station. He’s a Nazi agent. There’s at least one witness besides me who can testify to that.” Assuming Dad lived.

At least Dad was safely in Wichita. From what Mrs. Milliken had hinted at, Hauptmann and Milliken were working with, or maybe for, Morgan. They’d both been hot in the Kansas Fascist League before the war, all for Lindbergh and Henry Ford, so that made sense. And of course Mrs. Milliken had said she would be looking for the nice Army men.

“You might also have a private talk with Ruthie Milliken,” I added. “I’m pretty sure she’s already looking for you. She might not make a statement against her husband on the record, but she can back up important parts of my story. Oh, and while you’re at it, grab Ollie Wannamaker and send some of your MPs hotfooting over to the Bellamy farm. There’s Reds and mobsters fighting it out, and they’ve lost all their vehicles. Over.”

If the Colonel’s boys could crack Morgan, or even just get Mrs. Milliken’s corroboration of my version of events, that would lead them to Hauptmann and the Doc. Those two might not be actual German agents, but they were sure more than doubled-out dupes like Floyd. Ollie could help Pinkhoffer sort out the mess at the Bellamy place. None of those guys would have gotten too far away from the scene, not after the mess we made of the place and of their cars.

“All right,” said Pinkhoffer after a pause. “You sound like you’re far off your rocker, but there’s a lot of crazy horse hockey around here right now. I’ll take all that under advisement. What’s the second thing?”

“I need to land on the refinery grounds without being attacked. This aircraft needs to take on oil, and that oil needs to be paid for. Over.”

“What?” Pinkhoffer obviously thought I had gone all the way nuts.

“Look, I know it’s goofy. Just promise me that the Army will pay for any oil or lubricants removed from the Mobil refinery. It should only be about a hundred gallons. Over.”

“Then what happens?”

“I’m not sure.” More to the point, I didn’t know. “But I promise you, no more violence, no more destruction. No more criminal acts. But you have to promise me the same. Over.”

I could almost hear him shake his head over the radio. “Son, you’ve got to surrender yourself and that aircraft.”

“I can’t commit to that, sir. All I can promise is a quiet end to this mess.”

Pinkhoffer sighed. “I’ll grant a safe conduct while you’re on the ground. I’ll even guarantee that the Army will pay for the fuel. But son, if you don’t pull out some kind of miracle, you’ll have to deal with me personally. Then there’s the rest of hell to pay. And there will be every kind of hell to pay, I promise. I have that from the highest possible authority, if you take my meaning.”

“Roger that,” I said. “My word to both you and the highest authority, I’ll do my best, sir. Over.”

“Before you land, give me a couple of minutes to give the orders on the ground at the refinery.”

I had to believe that Pinkhoffer was honest, neither bent to the Nazis or just plain trigger-happy. If not, we were probably dead. I tried hard to care, but I was just too darned tired. “I copy. Bandit out.”

Sighing, I closed my eyes. Despite what I’d told Pinkhoffer, there wasn’t much else I could do. Floyd and I would have to surrender once we landed. That wasn’t going to be any fun. I might never see the light of day again, except through a jailhouse window. Before I walked out with my hands up, though, I had to understand what Pegasus had meant about being released for independent operation.

Oil first, though. “Take us down Pegasus. The oil’s all yours.”