The Race by Clive Cussler (red white royal blue .txt) 📗

“He did. Yellow as this tent.”

“I don’t see her.”

“She doesn’t circle around with the others. She flies off by herself.”

“How long has she been gone?”

Archie pulled out his watch. “One hour and ten minutes, this time,” he reported, clearly not happy to admit that the young woman whose safety and very life were his responsibility was nowhere in sight.

Bell said, “How in heck can we watch over her if we can’t see her?”

“If I had my way,” said Archie, “I’d ride in the machine with her. But it’s against the rules. If they carry a passenger, they’re disqualified. They have to fly alone. That Weiner accounting fellow explained that it wouldn’t be fair to the others if the passenger helped drive.”

“We’ve got to find a better way to keep an eye on her,” said Bell. “Once the race starts, it will be a simple matter for Frost to lie in wait along the route.”

“I plan to post men on the roof of the support train with field glasses and rifles.”

Bell shook his head. “Have you seen all the support trains in the yard? You could get stuck behind a traffic jam of locomotives blocking the tracks.”

“I’ve been considering a team of autoists to run ahead.”

“That will help. Two autos, if I can find the men to drive them. Mr. Van Dorn’s already complaining that I’m gutting the agency. Who is on this machine approaching? The green pusher?”

“Billy Thomas, the auto racer. The Vanderbilt syndicate hired him.”

“That’s a Curtiss he’s driving.”

“The syndicate bought three of them, so he can choose the fastest. Six thousand apiece. They really want to win. Here comes a Frenchman. Renee Chevalier.”

“Chevalier navigated that machine across the English Channel.”

Bell’s eye had already been drawn to the graceful Blériot monoplane. The single-wing craft looked light as a dragonfly. An open girder of strut work connected the cloth-covered wings to the tailpiece of rudder and elevators. Chevalier sat behind the wing, partially enclosed in a boxlike compartment that shielded him nearly to his chest. He was switching his Gnome rotary engine on and off to slow it as he landed.

“I’m buying one of those when this job is over.”

“I envy you,” said Archie. “I’d love to take a crack at flying.”

“Do it. We’ll learn together.”

“I can’t. It’s different when you’re married.”

“What are you talking about? Lillian wouldn’t mind. She drives race cars. In fact she’ll want one, too.”

“Things are changing,” Archie said gravely.

“What do you mean?”

Archie glanced around and lowered his voice. “We haven’t wanted to tell anyone until we’re sure everything’s O.K. But I’m not about to start a dangerous new hobby now that it looks like we’re going to have children.”

Isaac Bell grabbed Archie underneath the arms and lifted him joyfully off the ground. “Wonderful! Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” said Archie. “You can put me down now.” People were staring. It was not often they saw a tall man raise another high in the air and shake him like a terrier.

Isaac Bell was beside himself with happiness. “Wait ’til Marion hears! She’ll be so happy for you. What are you going to name it?”

“We’ll wait ’til we see what sort of ‘it’ it is.”

“You can get a flying machine soon as it’s in school. By then flying will be even less dangerous than it is now.”

Another machine was approaching the grass.

“Who’s driving that blue Farman?”

The Farman, another French-built airship, was a single-propeller pusher biplane. It looked extremely stable, descending as steadily as if it were gliding down a track.

“Sir Eddison-Sydney-Martin.”

“He could be a winner. He’s won all of England’s cross-country races, flying the best machines.”

“Poor as a church mouse,” Archie noted, “but married well.”

The socially prominent Archibald Angel Abbott IV, whose ancestors included the earliest rulers of New Amsterdam, could gossip as knowledgeably about Germans, Frenchmen, and Britons as about New York blue bloods, thanks to a long honeymoon in Europe—sanctioned by Joe Van Dorn in exchange for scouting overseas branches for the agency.

“The baronet’s wife’s father is a wealthy Connecticut physician. She buys the machines and looks after him. He’s extremely shy. Look there, speaking of having a wealthy benefactor, here comes Uncle Sam’s—U.S. Army Lieutenant Chet Bass.”

“That’s the Signal Corps Wright he’s driving.”

“I knew Chet at school. When he starts in on the future of aerial bombs and torpedoes, you’ll have to shoot him to shut him up. Though he has a point. With the constant war talk in Europe, Army officers haunt the aviation meets.”

“Is that red one another Wright?” Bell asked, puzzled by an odd mix of similarities and differences. “No, it can’t be,” he said as it drew nearer. “The propeller’s in front. It’s a tractor biplane.”

“That’s the ‘workingman’s’ entry, Joe Mudd driving. It started out as a Wright, ’til it collided with an oak tree. Some labor unionists trying to improve their reputation bought the wreck and cobbled it together out of spare parts. They call it the ‘American Liberator.’”

“Which unions?”

“Bricklayers, Masons and Plasterers teamed up with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. It’s a good little machine, considering that they’re operating on a shoestring. Whiteway’s trying to bar them.”

“On what grounds?” Bell asked.

“‘If workingmen find themselves with excess funds,’” Archie mimicked Whiteway’s pompous delivery, “‘they should contribute them to the Anti-Saloon League.’”

“Temperance? I’ve seen Preston Whiteway drunk as a lord.”

“On champagne, not beer. Drink is a privilege, to his way of thinking, which should be reserved for those who can afford it. Needless to say, when he had Josephine’s flying machine painted ‘Whiteway Yellow,’ Joe Mudd and the boys varnished theirs ‘Revolution Red.’”

Bell searched the sky for her. “Where is our girl?”

“She’ll be back,” Archie assured him, peering anxiously. “She’ll run out of gas soon. She’ll have to come back.”

A scream at a high pitch suddenly pierced the air like a pneumatic siren.

Bell looked for the source. It sounded loud enough to rouse a sleeping firehouse. Oddly, none of the mechancians and birdmen in the infield paid it any mind. The noise ceased as suddenly as it had begun.

“What was