“Hang on!” he shouted, more for the Jenny’s benefit than Jael’s. If he miscalculated this, it either wouldn’t work—or his landing gear would get ripped clean off.
They zipped past the propeller.
He exhaled and craned his neck. The wheels were still there. So was the ladder.
He’d missed. To bring down the ship, they first had to knock out its engines. This was the only way to do that. And he’d missed.
On the walkway atop the envelope, a man stood and started shouting.
So much for the element of surprise. Hitch pulled up hard to keep from crashing against the ground.
The cannon sat on its track, down toward the bottom of the envelope, but it wasn’t moving. Maybe Zlo hadn’t had time to get the pulley system back together.
Jael looked at him again and twirled her finger in the air, like she’d seen Earl do.
He nodded. One more shot. Good Lord willing, there’d be time. He pulled back on the stick, and the Jenny shot straight up, all the way past Schturming, right to the point of stalling. Then, with a roar, he yawed the nose around into a hammerhead turn.
The sentry atop Schturming must have gotten word to the engine room. Slowly, slowly, the mismatched propellers started to turn. Even busted, they had enough power to inch the dirigible forward.
The Jenny swooped down once more. Hitch got her lined up with the propellers and pushed her in even closer. It’d be the landing gear or the ladder this time. One way or another, something was coming off and sticking to that thing.
In a whoosh, the dark bulk of the propellers shot past the plane. The Jenny’s whole frame shuddered. The stick twitched in his hand.
In front, Jael, who had been watching over her shoulder the whole time, broke out a wide grin. Her laugh was almost audible.
His heart pounded so hard he could barely see straight. He dared a look under the plane.
The wheels still hung in place, revolving in the airflow. At least whatever else happened, Earl wouldn’t kill him once he got back to the ground. He turned to look over his shoulder.
The dirigible’s propellers still turned. But with every turn, they pulled the sturdy rope ladder deeper into the gears. A few more revolutions and the whole thing would be stuck fast.
If he’d had any breath left, he would have laughed too. But that had been the easy part.
He faced forward and pulled the plane up for a low pass over the field.
The two dozen motorcars were careening across the prairie meadow, some of them bouncing dangerously high over the grass tussocks. Half of them rumbled right under _Schturming_’s bow. The other half got in close to the stern. Twelve of them—six from each end—stopped long enough to spin all the way around until they were facing away from the Bluff and the other dozen cars.
Jael looked back again and raised her eyebrows, questioningly.
He gave her a nod. “Your turn, kiddo.” Then he eased the plane around for another climb.
Jael tossed the end of one of the long ropes out of the cockpit and let it slip down off the lower wing. She fed it out and kept feeding it as the Jenny screamed back over _Schturming_’s choking props. By the time they reached the motorcars on the far side, Jael had come to the end of the first rope and tossed it out. It hung, beautifully, right over _Schturming_’s propeller shaft, both ends nearly touching the ground below.
He swung the Jenny around to make another pass. Jael waited until they were once again lined up over the propellers, then immediately started spilling the second rope.
Below, the men from the motorcars ran to collect the rope ends and secure them to their bumpers.
Jael dropped the tail end of the second rope, and more of the motorcar drivers raced to secure their ends.
Now to get the prow equally trussed.
Inside Schturming, barely visible in the crack between the bottom of the envelope and the top of the gondola, men scrambled, most of them headed aft toward where the propellers strained and groaned against the net.
The dark spot, where the cannon had been, had disappeared.
By the time the significance of that sank in, Hitch was already over the top of the envelope, headed for the bow.
The cannon appeared on the far side. It trundled up its track, headed straight for the Jenny. Two men clambered after it. They were taking no chances with their aim this time—or maybe the pulley system for moving it around still didn’t work. At any rate, as soon as they saw the plane, they started shouting. The cannon stopped. One man reared it up to point at the Jenny. The other man fired her.
Hitch pulled on the stick. The plane pitched up. In the corner of his vision, the cannon exploded, and a great black ball hurtled at them. Every muscle straining, he willed the plane higher. An inch—just a bare inch—was all he needed to escape the dad-blasted thing.
With a mind-numbing thud of displaced air, the ball hammered past. From the feel, it was just beneath the fuselage. The Jenny bobbled in his hand, but that was it.
He held his breath all the way up over the top of the Bluff, then turned around and swept back. If those mugs reloaded and started shooting at the drivers on the ground, this whole thing could get messier than mud in a bare second.
The first set of drivers had caught the ends of the two ropes over the propellers and were securing them to their automobiles. Some of the other men were hurriedly chaining car to car to create a better anchor.
But they were too slow.
_Schturming_’s tremendous buoyancy hoisted her skyward. She dragged the two foremost automobiles right off their front wheels. Another two seconds, and she’d be floating away with both the cars and their drivers.
The men—Griff chief among them to judge by his slouched fedora—scrambled among the cars, fastening the locks on the chains.
Schturming kept right on going. She hoisted the first set of cars completely off the ground and hauled the second set forward yard after yard. The front wheels of the second set of cars inched off the ground.
Then the full weight of the train of twelve motorcars caught up with the dirigible. They yanked her to a stop. She bobbed for a moment, suddenly looking ridiculously flimsy for all her great size. The rearmost autos started up their engines, followed by all the rest. They hit reverse and started pulling.
_Schturming_’s stern resisted for a moment, then slanted toward the ground. Her great bow tilted skyward, so that she hung diagonal in the cloudy sky.
That was Hitch’s cue—again.
Two more passes, two more ropes—and his and Jael’s part of the job would be finished.
They crossed in front of the high-ended front of the dirigible, and Jael dropped another rope to hang over the bowsprit projecting from the front of the ship. One more pass—one more drop—and that was it. Jael’s fourth and final rope zipped out of her gloved hand, the end flying.
She hung over the edge of her cockpit and watched it go—without a safety belt once again, durn her.
He circled for a final pass. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.
Zlo’s men scrambled all over _Schturming_—up her cannon track, across the walkway on top, out over the side of the gondola with ropes tied around their waists. Every last one of them had a knife in hand and was sawing away at the thick ropes. Even if Campbell’s crew got her on the ground, they’d have to secure her right away to keep Zlo’s men from snapping the ropes and letting the ship drift skyward once more.
“C’mon!” Hitch shouted.
The team of cars assigned to the ship’s front end secured the ropes. They’d already had the benefit of the time necessary to chain themselves together. In an instant, they fired up their engines and hauled Schturming back to level. And now she was well and truly stuck.