The plane was about to set down smoothly when they heard a loud thump under their feet followed by the tortured sound of metal tearing. The plane snapped around like an amusement park ride. The two men were flung against their seatbelts like rag dolls. The spinning plane came to rest at a drunken angle. Zavala had the wind knocked out of him but managed to kill the engine.
As the propeller spun to a stop Austin felt his head to make sure it was still attached to his shoulders. “If that was picture-perfect, I’d hate to see a rough landing. What happened to the head of a pin?”
Zavala adjusted his baseball cap and straightened his reflecting sunglasses on his nose. “Sorry,” he said with uncharacteristic humbleness. “They must be making pins bigger than they used to.”
Austin shook his head and suggested they inspect the damage. They climbed out onto the pontoons to be met by the local welcoming committee. A cloud of condor-sized Alaskan mosquitoes thirsting for human blood drove them back into the cockpit. After liberally dousing themselves with Cutter’s industrial-strength bug repellent, they ventured out again. They stepped off the plane into about two feet of water and examined the twisted metal around the right-hand float.
“We’ll have some ’splaining to do at the plane rental place, but we’ll be able to take off,” Zavala said. He sloshed back along their landing path. Moments later he bent over and said, “Hey, check this out.”
Austin came over and examined a metal post covered by a few inches of water. Metal gleamed brightly where the top was sheared off and copper electrical wires dangled out.
“Congratulations,” Austin said. “I think you found a landing beacon.”
“The unerring Zavala homing instinct never fails,” Joe said as if he had hit the landing light on purpose. He expanded his search and within minutes located another light. This one had the glass lens and bulb socket still intact.
Austin surveyed their surroundings and tried to get his bearings. It was easy to see why the remote spot was picked for a secret airstrip. The terrain was naturally as flat as an aircraft carrier and would have needed little grading. He looked toward the hills where the sun sparkled off a lacework of streams that pooled into the lake that hid the strip.
They unloaded the plane, slung their packs over their shoulders, and waded toward the hills less than a quarter of a mile distant. Although they wore boots that kept their feet dry, the water sloshed onto their waterproof Gore-Tex pants, and they were glad the temperature was in the fifties. The water became shallower and turned into spongy bog, then they were crunching on permafrost as they made their way through patches of buttercup, wild crocus, and poppies. They spotted more landing lights, all leading in a line toward the hills. At one point they stopped and looked off at a huge flock of eiders floating over the marsh like a dark plume of smoke. With the unearthly quiet they could have been on the surface of another planet.
Continuing their hike they came to the foot of an escarpment that angled sharply up from the ground. The elongated hill was round at the top and shaped vaguely like a loaf of Italian bread. Patches of black rock splotched with lichens and moss were visible through the thick vegetation that covered much of the hill. Austin thought it peculiar that the mound stood by itself, isolated from the nearest hills by several hundred yards. He mentioned his observation to Zavala.
“Notice how the land here is flat except for this bump?”
“If I were a geologist I might be able to make something of it.”
“I was thinking more of the landing lights. They lead right to the face of this hill.”
He stared at an exposed section for a moment, then put his face inches away and ran his fingers over the shiny surface. Using the large blade on his Swiss Army knife he poked at the rock and chipped off a thin piece about as big as his palm. He examined the material, then grinned and handed it to Zavala.
“Paint,” Zavala said with wonder. He ran his hand over the shiny area exposed by Austin’s knife. “Sheetmetal and bolts. Someone went to a lot of trouble to keep this thing hidden.”
Austin took several steps back and raised his eyes to the top of the mound. “I remember Clarence Tinook saying something about an old blimp base. Maybe there’s a dirigible hangar under this stuff.”
“That makes sense and goes with our theory that they used an existing base. The next question is how we get inside.”
“Try saying ‘open sesame’ and hope for the best.”
Zavala stood back and bellowed the famous command from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. When nothing happened he tried again in Spanish, also to no avail.
“You know any more magic words?” he asked Austin.
“You just exhausted my entire repertoire,” Kurt said with a shrug.
They walked around behind the hangar. Sticking out of the permafrost were the foundations of several small buildings that could have been Quonset huts. A dump area revealed piles of rusty tin cans and broken glass, but no entrance to the mound presented itself.
It was Zavala who stumbled, literally, on the entrance.
Austin was walking several steps ahead of his partner when he heard a yell. He turned quickly. Joe had vanished as if the earth had swallowed him up. Confirming this possibility, Zavala’s disembodied voice, swearing in the tongue of his ancestors, issued eerily from the ground. Austin carefully backtracked and found Zavala in a cellar hole that had been covered over by vegetation. Austin had walked right by the hole without seeing it.
“Are you okay?” Austin called out.
More mutterings. “Yeah, the brush that covered this damned hole cushioned my fall. C’mon down. There’s a short set of stairs.”
Austin joined Zavala at the bottom of the hole, which was about eight feet deep. Joe was standing in front of a partially open door of heavily riveted steel.
“Don’t tell me,” Austin grunted. “The unerring Zavala homing instinct.”
“What else?” Zavala said.
Austin pulled a small but powerful halogen light from his pack. The door noisily opened with some persuasion from his shoulder. He stepped inside with Zavala close behind. A blast of cold and fetid air hit them in the face as if they were standing in front of an air conditioner for a mausoleum. The beam of light showed a corridor whose concrete walls and ceiling were inadequate insulation against permafrost and seemed to amplify the cold. Pulling their jacket collars tight around their necks, they started along the corridor.
Several doors led off the main hallway of the underground bunker. Austin flashed his light inside the rooms. Rusty bed frames and mattresses rotting with decay testified to the use of one space as a bunkroom. Farther along was a kitchen and pantry. The last chamber was a communications room.
“They left in a rush,” Zavala said. The smashed vacuum tubes and radio cabinets looked as if they had been attacked with a sledgehammer.
They continued along the passageway, skirting a large rectangular hole in the floor. The metal grating that once covered it had mostly rusted through. Austin pointed the flashlight down the deep shaft. “Some sort of ventilation or heating, maybe.”
“I’ve been thinking about what Clarence Tinook said about mines,” Zavala said.
“Let’s hope it was a concocted story they hoped would scare off hunters and fishermen,” Austin said. “Maybe he actually said mimes.”
“Now that would certainly scare me,” Zavala replied.
The corridor eventually ended in a short set of stairs that led to another steel door. They guessed that they were under the hangar. Not entirely convinced of his own argument against booby traps, Austin took a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped through. Austin immediately sensed a change in atmosphere. The cold was less biting and musty than in the concrete bunker. The staleness of the air was overpowered by the smell of gasoline, oil, and heated metal.
On the wall to the right of the door was a switch. A stenciled sign read “Generator.” Austin gave Zavala the go-ahead, and Joe yanked the switch down. Nothing happened at
first. Then there was a click from somewhere in the darkness and a series of sputtering pops as a motor coughed reluctantly into life. High above, lights glimmered dimly then glowed brightly, illuminating the vaulted ceilings of a huge artificial cave. Zavala was too awestruck to speak. Illuminated at center stage was what looked like a black-winged avenger from a Norse myth.
He walked over behind the scimitar-shaped craft, reached up, and tentatively touched one of the vertical fins extending down from the trailing end of the fuselage.
“Beautiful,” he whispered as if he were talking about a lovely woman. “I’ve read about this thing, seen pictures, but I never dreamed it would be so magnificent.”
Austin went over and stood beside him, taking in the broad sweep of sculpted aluminum. “Either we’ve stumbled into the Bat Cave or we just found the long-lost phantom flying wing,” he said.
Zavala walked under the fuselage. “I did some reading about the plane. These fins were added later for stabilization when they went from prop to jet power. She’s about a hundred seventy feet from wing tip to wing tip.”
“That’s half the length of a football field,” Austin said.
Zavala nodded. “It was the largest plane of its day even though she’s only about fifty feet from front to back. Check out these jet engines. In the original all eight were built into the fuselage. They slung these two underneath the wing to free up fuel space. Fits in with what you said about modifications to increase range.”
They walked around to the front of the plane. The swept-back aerodynamic lines were even more impressive from this angle. Although the plane weighed more than two hundred thousand tons, it seemed to balance lightly on its tripod landing gear.
“Jack Northrop really had something when he designed this lady,” Austin replied.
“Absolutely. Look at that slim silhouette. There’s hardly any surface for radar to bounce off. They’ve even painted it black like the stealth planes. Let’s go inside,” Zavala said eagerly.
They climbed up a ladder through a hatchway in the plane’s belly and made their way along a short ramp. Like the rest of the plane, the flight deck was unconventional. Zavala sat in the rotating pilot’s seat and used a hand-operated mechanism to pump the seat four feet higher into a Plexiglas bubble. He peered through the cowling, which was to the left of the wing’s center line. The conventional switches and instruments were located between the pilot and the copilot, who sat at a lower level. The throttle controls were suspended from the overhead, similar to Navy flying boats such as the Catalina.
“Fantastic visibility,” Zavala said. “It feels like being in a fighter plane.”
Austin had settled into the copilot’s seat on the right. He could see through window panels in the wing’s leading edge. While Zavala ran his fingers lovingly over the controls, Austin went to explore the rest of the plane. The flight engineer sat in front of an impressive array of instrument gauges about ten feet behind the copilot facing the rear. He would have been unable to see out. Austin thought the layout was awkward, but he was impressed by the headroom and the small bunkroom, head, and kitchen that indicated the plane was built for long-range missions. He sat at the bombardier’s seat and stared out the window, trying to picture himself high above the bleak Siberian landscape. Then he crawled into the bomb bays. Zavala was still in the pilot’s seat, hands on the controls, when Austin returned to the cockpit.
“Find anything back there?” he asked Austin.
“It’s what I didn’t find,” Austin said. “The bomb bay racks are empty.”
“No canister bombs?”
“Not even a water balloon.” He smiled at Zavala. “Fallen hopelessly in love with the old girl, have we?”
Zavala grinned lasciviously. “A case of love at first sight. Older women have always appealed to me. I’ll show you something. There’s still life in this baby.” His fingers played over the instrument console. The bank of dials and gauges in front of them glowed red.
“She’s all gassed up and ready to go,” Austin said with disbelief.
Zavala nodded. “She must be hooked up to the generator. There’s no reason this stuff wouldn’t still work. It’s been cold and dry here, and she was maintained in mint condition until they deserted this joint.”
“Speaking of the joint, let’s take a look around.”
Zavala reluctantly left the cockpit. They climbed down from the plane and walked around the interior perimeter of the hangar. The space was obviously planned to service the plane efficiently. Within easy reach of the aircraft were hydraulic lifts and cranes, test equipment, fuel and oil pumps. Joe stopped to marvel at a wall hung with tools. They were as clean as surgical instruments. Austin poked his head into a storage room. He glanced around and called for Zavala.
Stacked from floor to ceiling inside the room were dozens of shiny cylinders like the one they had discovered floating in the water off the Baja. Austin carefully lifted a cylinder from the stack and felt its weight.
“This is much heavier than the empty can back in my office.”
“Anasazium?”
“The unerring Austin homing instinct,” Kurt said with a smile. “You’ll have to admit this is what we really came all this way to find.”
“I suppose so. But I can see why Martin fell in love with that plane out there.”
“Let’s hope it isn’t a similar case of fatal attraction. We’re going to have to figure out what to do next.”
Zavala eyed the contents of the storeroom. “We’ll need something bigger than the Maule to move this stuff.”
Austin said, “It’s been a long day. Let’s get back to Nome. We can call in for reinforcements. I’m not crazy about the way we came in. Let’s see if we can find another door.”
They walked around in front of the flying wing again. The plane was positioned so that it pointed toward the broad side of the hangar, facing onto the airstrip. They tried a door that would have led to the outside, but it was overgrown with vegetation and wouldn’t open. A big section of wall apparently moved up and down like a garage door. Austin saw a wall switch marked “Door.” Since they had good luck with the generator, he gave it a yank. The hum of motors filled the air, then came loud creaks and rattles and the squeal of metal against metal. The motors strained to move the door against the vegetation that had taken over on the outside, but finally it ripped free and rumbled to a clanking stop in fully open position.
It was near midnight, and the sun had partially set, casting the tundra in a leaden light. The two men walked outside and turned around. As they gazed at the strange craft resting in what Buzz Martin’s father had called its hidey-hole, they heard an intrusive clatter from behind them. They turned to see a large helicopter dropping out of the sky like a raptor.
The helicopter made a pass over the float plane, then stopped and hovered a short distance away. It did a three-hundred-sixty spin in place. There was a flash of light from the front of the chopper, and the float plane disappeared in a blinding explosion of yellow and red flames. A cloud of black smoke billowed from the funeral pyre that had been an aircraft seconds before, and the tundra was lit up for hundreds of yards.
“I think we just lost the deposit on our leased plane,” Zavala said.
Finished with its first line of business, the chopper swiveled so that its nose pointed toward the hangar. Austin and Zavala had been dumbfounded in the seconds since the helicopter arrived and began its deadly work. Now Austin realized how vulnerable they were. They dashed for the open door as the chopper leaped forward. White bursts of flame flowered from the guns on either side of the speeding aircraft, and the bullets threw up geysers of water and mud as they stitched their way toward the two running figures.
They ducked inside, and Austin hit the door switch. There was another grinding of motors and machinery, and slowly the door began to close. The chopper landed a few hundred yards away. Armed men in dark green uniforms spilled out and advanced on the hangar with automatic weapons.
Un
fortunately Zavala had left his machine pistol in the plane. Austin’s Bowen revolver filled his hand, and he let off a couple of shots to give the attackers something to think about. Then the door clanked shut, and the gunfire became barely audible.
“We’d better bolt the back door,” Austin said, sprinting for the rear of the hangar where they had come in.
They ran along the corridor to the cellar hole. The bolt was rusted away, and they couldn’t secure the door. Hoping their attackers were as stupid as they were bold, they dragged one of the mattresses out of a bunkroom and covered the ventilation hole in the floor in a makeshift pitfall. Then they dashed back and secured the door leading directly into the hangar. All was silent, but they had no illusions about their security. It was obvious that the attackers didn’t want to damage the flying wing, but a few well-placed rockets or explosives could peel back the hangar’s metal walls like a sardine can.
“Who are those guys?” Zavala said, trying to catch his breath.
There was a sharp hammering on the metal skin of the hangar as if someone were testing it for weakness. Austin’s coral-green eyes swept the hangar from one end to the other.
“If I’m not mistaken, we’re about to find out.”
31
THE SIEGE WAS ANNOUNCED with an ear-splitting explosion that echoed off every square inch of steel, as if the metal-enclosed space were a huge bell. Shards of hot metal and pieces of burning vegetation rained down from a hole high in the front face of the hangar. A patch of daylight opened, but the thick cushion of vegetation and earth that had grown up around the hangar over the decades had dampened the explosion.
Austin looked up at the ragged hole and said, “They’re aiming high so they won’t hit the plane. Probably hoping to spook us.”
“They’re doing a good job,” Zavala said. “I’m spooked.”