Chapter Eight
Scalding water showered down on Indy’s skin as it was scrubbed raw by a decontamination team in white suits and masks. They seemed determined to take revenge on every bit of dirt that had ever touched him since he was born. Normally he would have tried to make conversation while stuck in a place for so long, but in this particular place it felt a bit awkward. And the scrubbers didn't shy away from his awkward places either.
Finally the leader of the team signaled, the water stopped and Indy was allowed to move stiffly out of the shower. The scrub had left him red all over, but at least he wasn’t a pile of irradiated dust. The team leader checked him over with a hand-held Geiger counter, which didn't beep. “Clean,” he declared.
“I'd better be after that,” Indy said. “That’s as close as I ever want to get to a nucular blast. But supposing I ever did,” he added out of more than simple curiosity, “what should I do?”
The team leader looked at his companions, who all shrugged. He looked back at Indy. “Well, I suppose you could climb into a fridge or something,” he said.
“And that would keep me safe?”
The others laughed nervously.
“Not likely,” the team leader said, “but it would cool you off, and you wouldn’t see the end coming.”
With that comforting thought, Indy stepped into the dressing area where the General and Bolander sat waiting for him. Without wasting time on greetings he said, “It was Cheslav.”
“Impossible,” Bolander said. “Our people have Cheslav under surveillance in Bulgaria right –”
“Well, your people are wrong. I know him from the war. Where is Elaine?”
“She’s, ah, disappeared,” the General said, looking sheepish.
“Disappeared?” Indy said, his temper rising even as his spirits sank. “How could she disappear at a top security military base?”
“We were wondering the same thing, Dr. Jones,” Bolander said, his eyes boring into him.
Indy scowled at him. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” He finished toweling off and began to dress.
“Could it be that your associations with the Russians are more than just passing acquaintance?” Bolander mused, sounding as casual as if he were discussing the weather. “Your background has always been suspect, Jones.”
Indy moved toward Bolander with such speed that the OSS man backed away. “Listen, baby breath,” he snapped, “I’m the one who was in the trunk of the car, remember? You’ve got a mole in this operation, but it isn’t me. Cheslav knew exactly what he was after. Somebody was helping him.”
“Did you get a look at him?” the General asked.
“No...” Indy said. “But I recognized his voice. He spoke Russian, but with a German accent.” Who could that be? It was on the tip of his tongue, but he’d dealt with so many Germans in his life that they all blurred together now. “Hand me that shirt,” he said, reaching for it.
Bolander started to hand it to him, then stopped, seeming hesitant to get close to him after his brush with radioactivity.
Indy smiled at the man. “The atom is our friend, Bolander, remember?”
Bolander handed him the shirt at arm’s length.
“A German accent?” the General said. “Great. That rules out all but about two hundred of the scientists I got around here.”
“Something else, Jones...” Bolander said. “Those calculations Elaine was working on when the computer went down came back.” He handed the computer printout to Indy.
As Indy read it, his face tightened. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all.
“What is it?” the General asked.
“She was right...” Indy said. “The numbers represent a descending scale...”
“A descending scale?”
“A countdown.”
The General looked a little flustered. “You mean it’s... a bomb? We’ve got to find it.”
“Find Elaine and we’ll find it,” Indy said. He hardly gave a damn about the bomb, or whatever it was, while she was missing. He could worry about it after he found her, and they’d already wasted enough time. He started to the door, but two MPs blocked his path.
“We’ll take it from here, Dr. Jones,” Bolander said behind him.
Indy spun around. “What?”
“You’re under arrest,” Bolander explained.
“For what?” Indy demanded, wanting to wring the man’s neck. This was no time for jokes.
“Conspiracy of espionage,” Bolander said, looking just a little smug. “You are to be sent back to Washington under a military escort.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Indy said. He looked to the General for support, but McIntyre just spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
“I’m sorry, Jones,” he said. “We can’t risk a leak at this stage. Nothing personal.”
“Take Dr. Jones to the brig,” Bolander said, sounding very personal.
As Indy fumed, the guards handcuffed him and led him out. The last thing he saw in the room was Bolander looking smug.
***
Indy was led down a hallway toward the hangars where crates of the crash wreckage were being loaded onto planes. “Wait here,” one of the guards said, stopping him by the doorway and moving off to find transport.
Indy stood with the second MP and began to plan his escape. He’d escaped from much tighter spots than this – earlier today, for example – so his only real concern was doing it quickly enough to track down Elaine. As he was thinking, he was distracted by a very familiar and unexpected sound – the voice of the unidentified spy. He was speaking in English, but his German accent was unmistakable. Indy carefully moved into the doorway and looked inside.
“I should have known,” he muttered.
Dr. Avril Bernard was supervising the loading of a large crate marked “HAZARDOUS MATERIAL” onto the back of one of three vehicles. As it started to slip from the workmen’s grasp, he snapped, “Be careful, you fools!”
On an impulse, Indy started through the doorway after him, when the MP grabbed him. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Thinking quickly, Indy pretended to suddenly wrench his ankle. “Owww!” He bent down to rub it and when the MP bent down too, Indy gave him a two-fisted undercut, caught the now-unconscious man in his arm and slipped the handcuff key out of his pocket. Too easy. These military boys were getting soft.
Bernard signaled the two drivers, then climbed into a Jeep between them. As the mini-convoy pulled away, the third driver shifted into gear and his fuel truck fell in line with the other two vehicles. He didn’t notice Indy running after him.
Outside at the gate, a guard looked over Bernard’s papers and motioned the three vehicles out of the base. As the fuel truck pulled through, he didn’t notice Indy holding onto the railing of its roof.
The three vehicles roared along the desert road. Bernard stared at his watch and looked to the sky. He motioned to the driver to take a dirt ranch road, and the Jeep turned onto it.
A few miles later, the mini-convoy pulled into a decrepit gas station off the old dirt road. The wind blew through screenless windows. A pair of ancient gas pumps standing guard at the front were the closest thing to any sign of life. The convoy stopped and Bernard brushed the dust from his coat as a cloud, churned up by the tires, billowed over them.
Indy, still clinging to the roof, was completely coated in dust. He spat it out of his mouth and then froze as he heard a car approach. It also stopped by the gas station. Cheslav climbed out. A moment later, another Russian pulled Elaine from the back and brought her to face Bernard.
Seeing her, Indy suppressed the urge to leap down and take on the whole lot of them at once. That wouldn’t do her any good right now, and he needed answers.
Elaine wanted some answers too. “What did you do with Indy?” she demanded.
“Alas, Dr. Jones was in an accident,” Bernard said. “All I can tell you is that it was over quickly.”
Elaine turned pale. “Indy’s dead?”
“Yes,” Bernard said. “Very.”
Elaine seemed unable to speak for a moment; then she regained her composure and her face hardened. She knew her duty and that was just another thing Indy loved about her. “Right this minute,” she said, “every soldier in the state is out looking for that device.”
“That may be so, Doctor,” Cheslav said, “but they aren’t looking here.” He stepped and cocked his ear to the sky, then smiled. “It’s coming.”
Elaine listened but didn’t hear anything other than the desert wind. “What?”
Cheslav didn’t answer, but after a moment the sound of a plane became audible. He motioned to the guards in the truck. One ran inside the gas station and reappeared with an orange wind sock.
Indy looked up at the sky and saw a Tupolev TU-4 flying fortress bank over a distant mountain range and swing toward the area. At just short of one hundred feet long, with a wingspan nearly one and a half times that length, it seemed incongruous with the Soviets’ mission of stealth. However, as a reverse-engineered copy of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that had been designed and built on this country’s soil, it appeared right at home. Only context clued Indy in to the difference this time around.
As the guard climbed to the roof and raised the wind sock from the top of the gas station, the transport dropped its landing gear and floated down to the roadway, making a perfect landing.
“Where are we going?” Elaine asked.
“You’ll love Moscow this time of year,” Bernard said. He smiled and waved to the fuel truck. The fuel driver started the motor and eased it up to the taxiing aircraft. The plane’s freight door opened, and two Russian crew members with machine guns climbed down to supervise the loading.
“You won’t get away with this, Cheslav,” Elaine said.
“On the contrary, my dear,” the Russian responded. “You are the one not getting away.” He motioned for one of the guards to put her on the plane. The other guard began unloading the crates to be put aboard.
The fuel truck driver dragged the hose to the wing and started to refuel, bouncing his knees and looking around idly at the dull, drab scenery. It took him a moment to realize the fuel had stopped. “Hey,” he called out to the available guard, “check the line!”
The Russian guard moved to the hose and followed it to the rear of the truck, where he found a belt tied around the fuel line. “What the –”
He looked up just as Indy’s fist hit him square in the jaw.
Growing impatient, the driver was about to check on the fuel line himself when suddenly the fuel began flowing again. “That’s good,” he said to himself.
From behind the truck Indy emerged wearing the Russian guard’s jacket, cap and parachute and carrying his machine gun. He moved to the rear door of the aircraft and slipped inside. Simplest thing in the world. He’d worn so many disguises in his time that sometimes he thought he should have taken up acting. His father might have preferred that.
As the four propellers started up again outside, he moved among the boxes in the storage compartment, noting that they were all labeled as U.S. Army weapons. Maybe this was a Boeing B-29 after all. Whatever, didn't matter. The other guard yelled at him to close the door. Indy moved to do so, but found to his surprise that it wouldn’t budge. He grunted and tried again. He could have moved it with one hand ten years ago.
The guard yelled at him again. “Yeah, yeah, I’m getting it,” Indy muttered.
The guard impatiently came back to help; then a look of recognition dawned on his face as he realized this wasn’t his comrade. Before he could shout a warning to the others, Indy elbowed him out the door and onto the ground, then closed it.
“I told you I’d get it,” he said.
Cheslav was watching the plane taxi away when he noticed the guard laying on the runway. He looked up at the plane just in time to see Indy’s smiling face through the rear window. The American gave him a wave as it roared into the sky. Indy had learned the hard way about the potential consequences of such cockiness, but he knew Cheslav wouldn’t risk a radio communication with the plane this close to the military base.
In the plane’s main compartment, Bernard lifted the device out of its case. Two of the rings had changed color, lit up in a bright lime green. “Every millennium something comes along to propel one civilization light years ahead of the rest,” he said as he looked it over. “This is it.”
“You have no idea what you’re holding,” Elaine said beside him.
“No,” he admitted, not looking at her, “but we Russians will unlock its secrets and when we do, we will rule the Earth for centuries. The Earth – and who knows where else?”
“All this time I trusted you.”
Bernard finally took his eyes off the device, giving her a pitying look. “You Americans are so foolish,” he said. “You look for the enemy in all the wrong places. Poets, artists... Take heart that the device is going to a place where such research is given its place of highest scientific regard.”
“You don’t know what that is,” Elaine said again.
Behind them, unable to hear through the wall, Indy moved through the cargo hold looking for the device. On the other side, two more Russian soldiers were taking the American weapons from their crates and examining them. One picked up a bazooka, put it on his shoulder, tested its weight and peered down the barrel. The other one chose that moment to walk up behind him and yell, “BOOM!”
The first soldier jumped back and nearly dropped it. He glared as his comrade roared with laughter.
Still chuckling, the second soldier noticed Indy and called out to him. “Hey, Yuri, come see the American weapons.”
Indy froze. This was not an ideal situation. Who would have thought Soviets could be chummy with each other?
The first soldier narrowed his eyes. “You’re not Yuri.”
Well, so much for that approach. Indy wheeled and aimed his machine gun at them. “Stay right where you are,” he said in flawless Russian.
Immediately both soldiers throw their hands up. Before he could say anything else, however, they started laughing. Indy frowned. Had his Russian been less flawless than he’d thought?
They started toward him. Indy pulled the trigger, but nothing happened.
“We have the same problem with Russian weapons...” one soldier began.
The second Russian held up the machine gun’s magazine and smiled. “They only work with bullets.”
They threw open the door to the forward compartment and shoved Indy inside. “Indy!” Elaine cried out, jumping up from her seat and embracing him. He was so happy to see her that he returned the embrace, heedless of the weapons aimed at his back. Everything he had been through faded away, didn't matter now that he was finally in her presence.
“Dr. Jones,” Bernard said coolly, “what a surprise.”
“I bet,” Indy said, letting go of Elaine and getting down to business. He still needed to get her out of here and save the world. “If you’re heading to Moscow, Bernard, I’d think twice about it. This thing won’t make it.” He pointed to the device.
“What?” Elaine said, sounding startled despite her own warnings to Bernard a couple minutes earlier.
“Oh,” Bernard said, “is it a time bomb now, Jones?”
“Take a look at it,” Indy said. “Two of the concentrate rings are lit. The countdown has begun.”
Bernard barely glanced at it. “We have mountains back in Russia, Dr. Jones,” he said. “And I’m biased, but I daresay they’re superior to the ones in your country. What a shame you can’t stay for the trip... something about a weight problem.” He motioned to one of the soldiers, who stripped off Indy’s parachute.
A moment later, Indy was being held by both guards in front of a set of opening bomb bay doors, wind blasting him in the face. This wasn’t the first time someone had tried to throw him out of a plane – it wasn’t even the first time someone surnamed Bernard had tried to throw him out of a plane – so he wasn’t as frightened as he otherwise might have been. “You’re making a big mistake, Bernard,” he called back. “I hold a grudge.”
“I’m not afraid of ghosts,” Bernard retorted, signaling the Russians to toss him.
Indy closed his eyes. The plane suddenly rocked, nearly sending all three of them flying out, then rocked back the other way as the guards steadied their footing.
Bernard grabbed the radio. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
“Comrade,” came a worried-sounding voice in response, “something is following us.”
“The Americans?”
“We – don’t know.”
“Lose it!” Bernard motioned the guards to move away from the opening. “We may need you as a hostage. A temporary reprieve, I assure you, Dr. Jones.”
“It always is,” Indy said.
***
At an Air Force tracking facility in Colorado, a radar dish slowly swept through its usual circle, while inside a fresh-scrubbed but rather bored radar operator stared at the tiny screen. Day in, day out, he watched the line move around the circumference of the circle, like a fast clock with no numbers. He had jumped at the chance to protect his country from danger, but if there was danger, it wasn’t taking this route and his presence here was superfluous. Perhaps the only thing worse than the boredom was the feeling of futility.
But today, right now, for the first time since he’d worked here, a blip moved rapidly across the screen. It was so fast he almost thought he had imagined it, but then it moved back the other way. No craft he was aware of could move, let alone change direction, that quickly. It was probably a glitch with the machine, or he’d finally begun to lose his mind, but there was no taking chances. And either scenario would still be more exciting than the usual routine.
“Sir,” he called out, “I’ve got a blip over Tri-Wing south southeast.”
His shift commander approached and looked over his shoulder. “Do we have aircraft in that quadrant?”
“Negative,” the operator said, his heart pounding a little. What if it was something real? What if some new and unfamiliar technology was out there, above American soil? Another blip appeared, this one moving at a normal speed, but it hardly seemed important now.
“Scramble intercept,” the commander said, a trace of concern creeping into his voice.
Almost as soon as he had spoken, two U.S. Sabre Jets roared off the runway outside, into the sky. The operator wished for a moment that he were in one of them, then reconsidered. Whatever the drawbacks of this job, at least it was safe.
***
The pilot and co-pilot had seen something flash past the windshield of the plane and disappears into the clouds, and they had no idea what it was, but it didn’t look like any plane they had ever seen. They were craning their necks to look for it when the clouds ahead of them parted to reveal, coming straight at them at frightening speed, something out of a nightmare.
They braced themselves for impact, but the flying saucer stopped less than a hundred feet ahead of them and hovered at the same speed as the plane, staying just in front of them. It was a silver disc, plain aside from the ring of lime green lights along the outer edge and the bump in the middle that probably indicated a control center. It had no visible instruments, hatches, or windows. And it was easily twice the size of the flying fortress.
“Bozhe moy,” the pilot said, suddenly no longer an atheist.
In the back, Indy, Elaine, Bernard, and the soldiers were tossed about as the plane rocked and the windows glowed with an eery light. The soldiers panicked and reached for their weapons, but there was nothing inside to shoot.
“It’s them,” Elaine said quietly.
Bernard gave her an irritated look to mask his fear. “Who?”
“The aliens...” She gestured at the device. “They want it back.”
Next: Chapter Nine
Finally the leader of the team signaled, the water stopped and Indy was allowed to move stiffly out of the shower. The scrub had left him red all over, but at least he wasn’t a pile of irradiated dust. The team leader checked him over with a hand-held Geiger counter, which didn't beep. “Clean,” he declared.
“I'd better be after that,” Indy said. “That’s as close as I ever want to get to a nucular blast. But supposing I ever did,” he added out of more than simple curiosity, “what should I do?”
The team leader looked at his companions, who all shrugged. He looked back at Indy. “Well, I suppose you could climb into a fridge or something,” he said.
“And that would keep me safe?”
The others laughed nervously.
“Not likely,” the team leader said, “but it would cool you off, and you wouldn’t see the end coming.”
With that comforting thought, Indy stepped into the dressing area where the General and Bolander sat waiting for him. Without wasting time on greetings he said, “It was Cheslav.”
“Impossible,” Bolander said. “Our people have Cheslav under surveillance in Bulgaria right –”
“Well, your people are wrong. I know him from the war. Where is Elaine?”
“She’s, ah, disappeared,” the General said, looking sheepish.
“Disappeared?” Indy said, his temper rising even as his spirits sank. “How could she disappear at a top security military base?”
“We were wondering the same thing, Dr. Jones,” Bolander said, his eyes boring into him.
Indy scowled at him. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” He finished toweling off and began to dress.
“Could it be that your associations with the Russians are more than just passing acquaintance?” Bolander mused, sounding as casual as if he were discussing the weather. “Your background has always been suspect, Jones.”
Indy moved toward Bolander with such speed that the OSS man backed away. “Listen, baby breath,” he snapped, “I’m the one who was in the trunk of the car, remember? You’ve got a mole in this operation, but it isn’t me. Cheslav knew exactly what he was after. Somebody was helping him.”
“Did you get a look at him?” the General asked.
“No...” Indy said. “But I recognized his voice. He spoke Russian, but with a German accent.” Who could that be? It was on the tip of his tongue, but he’d dealt with so many Germans in his life that they all blurred together now. “Hand me that shirt,” he said, reaching for it.
Bolander started to hand it to him, then stopped, seeming hesitant to get close to him after his brush with radioactivity.
Indy smiled at the man. “The atom is our friend, Bolander, remember?”
Bolander handed him the shirt at arm’s length.
“A German accent?” the General said. “Great. That rules out all but about two hundred of the scientists I got around here.”
“Something else, Jones...” Bolander said. “Those calculations Elaine was working on when the computer went down came back.” He handed the computer printout to Indy.
As Indy read it, his face tightened. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all.
“What is it?” the General asked.
“She was right...” Indy said. “The numbers represent a descending scale...”
“A descending scale?”
“A countdown.”
The General looked a little flustered. “You mean it’s... a bomb? We’ve got to find it.”
“Find Elaine and we’ll find it,” Indy said. He hardly gave a damn about the bomb, or whatever it was, while she was missing. He could worry about it after he found her, and they’d already wasted enough time. He started to the door, but two MPs blocked his path.
“We’ll take it from here, Dr. Jones,” Bolander said behind him.
Indy spun around. “What?”
“You’re under arrest,” Bolander explained.
“For what?” Indy demanded, wanting to wring the man’s neck. This was no time for jokes.
“Conspiracy of espionage,” Bolander said, looking just a little smug. “You are to be sent back to Washington under a military escort.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Indy said. He looked to the General for support, but McIntyre just spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
“I’m sorry, Jones,” he said. “We can’t risk a leak at this stage. Nothing personal.”
“Take Dr. Jones to the brig,” Bolander said, sounding very personal.
As Indy fumed, the guards handcuffed him and led him out. The last thing he saw in the room was Bolander looking smug.
***
Indy was led down a hallway toward the hangars where crates of the crash wreckage were being loaded onto planes. “Wait here,” one of the guards said, stopping him by the doorway and moving off to find transport.
Indy stood with the second MP and began to plan his escape. He’d escaped from much tighter spots than this – earlier today, for example – so his only real concern was doing it quickly enough to track down Elaine. As he was thinking, he was distracted by a very familiar and unexpected sound – the voice of the unidentified spy. He was speaking in English, but his German accent was unmistakable. Indy carefully moved into the doorway and looked inside.
“I should have known,” he muttered.
Dr. Avril Bernard was supervising the loading of a large crate marked “HAZARDOUS MATERIAL” onto the back of one of three vehicles. As it started to slip from the workmen’s grasp, he snapped, “Be careful, you fools!”
On an impulse, Indy started through the doorway after him, when the MP grabbed him. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Thinking quickly, Indy pretended to suddenly wrench his ankle. “Owww!” He bent down to rub it and when the MP bent down too, Indy gave him a two-fisted undercut, caught the now-unconscious man in his arm and slipped the handcuff key out of his pocket. Too easy. These military boys were getting soft.
Bernard signaled the two drivers, then climbed into a Jeep between them. As the mini-convoy pulled away, the third driver shifted into gear and his fuel truck fell in line with the other two vehicles. He didn’t notice Indy running after him.
Outside at the gate, a guard looked over Bernard’s papers and motioned the three vehicles out of the base. As the fuel truck pulled through, he didn’t notice Indy holding onto the railing of its roof.
The three vehicles roared along the desert road. Bernard stared at his watch and looked to the sky. He motioned to the driver to take a dirt ranch road, and the Jeep turned onto it.
A few miles later, the mini-convoy pulled into a decrepit gas station off the old dirt road. The wind blew through screenless windows. A pair of ancient gas pumps standing guard at the front were the closest thing to any sign of life. The convoy stopped and Bernard brushed the dust from his coat as a cloud, churned up by the tires, billowed over them.
Indy, still clinging to the roof, was completely coated in dust. He spat it out of his mouth and then froze as he heard a car approach. It also stopped by the gas station. Cheslav climbed out. A moment later, another Russian pulled Elaine from the back and brought her to face Bernard.
Seeing her, Indy suppressed the urge to leap down and take on the whole lot of them at once. That wouldn’t do her any good right now, and he needed answers.
Elaine wanted some answers too. “What did you do with Indy?” she demanded.
“Alas, Dr. Jones was in an accident,” Bernard said. “All I can tell you is that it was over quickly.”
Elaine turned pale. “Indy’s dead?”
“Yes,” Bernard said. “Very.”
Elaine seemed unable to speak for a moment; then she regained her composure and her face hardened. She knew her duty and that was just another thing Indy loved about her. “Right this minute,” she said, “every soldier in the state is out looking for that device.”
“That may be so, Doctor,” Cheslav said, “but they aren’t looking here.” He stepped and cocked his ear to the sky, then smiled. “It’s coming.”
Elaine listened but didn’t hear anything other than the desert wind. “What?”
Cheslav didn’t answer, but after a moment the sound of a plane became audible. He motioned to the guards in the truck. One ran inside the gas station and reappeared with an orange wind sock.
Indy looked up at the sky and saw a Tupolev TU-4 flying fortress bank over a distant mountain range and swing toward the area. At just short of one hundred feet long, with a wingspan nearly one and a half times that length, it seemed incongruous with the Soviets’ mission of stealth. However, as a reverse-engineered copy of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that had been designed and built on this country’s soil, it appeared right at home. Only context clued Indy in to the difference this time around.
As the guard climbed to the roof and raised the wind sock from the top of the gas station, the transport dropped its landing gear and floated down to the roadway, making a perfect landing.
“Where are we going?” Elaine asked.
“You’ll love Moscow this time of year,” Bernard said. He smiled and waved to the fuel truck. The fuel driver started the motor and eased it up to the taxiing aircraft. The plane’s freight door opened, and two Russian crew members with machine guns climbed down to supervise the loading.
“You won’t get away with this, Cheslav,” Elaine said.
“On the contrary, my dear,” the Russian responded. “You are the one not getting away.” He motioned for one of the guards to put her on the plane. The other guard began unloading the crates to be put aboard.
The fuel truck driver dragged the hose to the wing and started to refuel, bouncing his knees and looking around idly at the dull, drab scenery. It took him a moment to realize the fuel had stopped. “Hey,” he called out to the available guard, “check the line!”
The Russian guard moved to the hose and followed it to the rear of the truck, where he found a belt tied around the fuel line. “What the –”
He looked up just as Indy’s fist hit him square in the jaw.
Growing impatient, the driver was about to check on the fuel line himself when suddenly the fuel began flowing again. “That’s good,” he said to himself.
From behind the truck Indy emerged wearing the Russian guard’s jacket, cap and parachute and carrying his machine gun. He moved to the rear door of the aircraft and slipped inside. Simplest thing in the world. He’d worn so many disguises in his time that sometimes he thought he should have taken up acting. His father might have preferred that.
As the four propellers started up again outside, he moved among the boxes in the storage compartment, noting that they were all labeled as U.S. Army weapons. Maybe this was a Boeing B-29 after all. Whatever, didn't matter. The other guard yelled at him to close the door. Indy moved to do so, but found to his surprise that it wouldn’t budge. He grunted and tried again. He could have moved it with one hand ten years ago.
The guard yelled at him again. “Yeah, yeah, I’m getting it,” Indy muttered.
The guard impatiently came back to help; then a look of recognition dawned on his face as he realized this wasn’t his comrade. Before he could shout a warning to the others, Indy elbowed him out the door and onto the ground, then closed it.
“I told you I’d get it,” he said.
Cheslav was watching the plane taxi away when he noticed the guard laying on the runway. He looked up at the plane just in time to see Indy’s smiling face through the rear window. The American gave him a wave as it roared into the sky. Indy had learned the hard way about the potential consequences of such cockiness, but he knew Cheslav wouldn’t risk a radio communication with the plane this close to the military base.
In the plane’s main compartment, Bernard lifted the device out of its case. Two of the rings had changed color, lit up in a bright lime green. “Every millennium something comes along to propel one civilization light years ahead of the rest,” he said as he looked it over. “This is it.”
“You have no idea what you’re holding,” Elaine said beside him.
“No,” he admitted, not looking at her, “but we Russians will unlock its secrets and when we do, we will rule the Earth for centuries. The Earth – and who knows where else?”
“All this time I trusted you.”
Bernard finally took his eyes off the device, giving her a pitying look. “You Americans are so foolish,” he said. “You look for the enemy in all the wrong places. Poets, artists... Take heart that the device is going to a place where such research is given its place of highest scientific regard.”
“You don’t know what that is,” Elaine said again.
Behind them, unable to hear through the wall, Indy moved through the cargo hold looking for the device. On the other side, two more Russian soldiers were taking the American weapons from their crates and examining them. One picked up a bazooka, put it on his shoulder, tested its weight and peered down the barrel. The other one chose that moment to walk up behind him and yell, “BOOM!”
The first soldier jumped back and nearly dropped it. He glared as his comrade roared with laughter.
Still chuckling, the second soldier noticed Indy and called out to him. “Hey, Yuri, come see the American weapons.”
Indy froze. This was not an ideal situation. Who would have thought Soviets could be chummy with each other?
The first soldier narrowed his eyes. “You’re not Yuri.”
Well, so much for that approach. Indy wheeled and aimed his machine gun at them. “Stay right where you are,” he said in flawless Russian.
Immediately both soldiers throw their hands up. Before he could say anything else, however, they started laughing. Indy frowned. Had his Russian been less flawless than he’d thought?
They started toward him. Indy pulled the trigger, but nothing happened.
“We have the same problem with Russian weapons...” one soldier began.
The second Russian held up the machine gun’s magazine and smiled. “They only work with bullets.”
They threw open the door to the forward compartment and shoved Indy inside. “Indy!” Elaine cried out, jumping up from her seat and embracing him. He was so happy to see her that he returned the embrace, heedless of the weapons aimed at his back. Everything he had been through faded away, didn't matter now that he was finally in her presence.
“Dr. Jones,” Bernard said coolly, “what a surprise.”
“I bet,” Indy said, letting go of Elaine and getting down to business. He still needed to get her out of here and save the world. “If you’re heading to Moscow, Bernard, I’d think twice about it. This thing won’t make it.” He pointed to the device.
“What?” Elaine said, sounding startled despite her own warnings to Bernard a couple minutes earlier.
“Oh,” Bernard said, “is it a time bomb now, Jones?”
“Take a look at it,” Indy said. “Two of the concentrate rings are lit. The countdown has begun.”
Bernard barely glanced at it. “We have mountains back in Russia, Dr. Jones,” he said. “And I’m biased, but I daresay they’re superior to the ones in your country. What a shame you can’t stay for the trip... something about a weight problem.” He motioned to one of the soldiers, who stripped off Indy’s parachute.
A moment later, Indy was being held by both guards in front of a set of opening bomb bay doors, wind blasting him in the face. This wasn’t the first time someone had tried to throw him out of a plane – it wasn’t even the first time someone surnamed Bernard had tried to throw him out of a plane – so he wasn’t as frightened as he otherwise might have been. “You’re making a big mistake, Bernard,” he called back. “I hold a grudge.”
“I’m not afraid of ghosts,” Bernard retorted, signaling the Russians to toss him.
Indy closed his eyes. The plane suddenly rocked, nearly sending all three of them flying out, then rocked back the other way as the guards steadied their footing.
Bernard grabbed the radio. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
“Comrade,” came a worried-sounding voice in response, “something is following us.”
“The Americans?”
“We – don’t know.”
“Lose it!” Bernard motioned the guards to move away from the opening. “We may need you as a hostage. A temporary reprieve, I assure you, Dr. Jones.”
“It always is,” Indy said.
***
At an Air Force tracking facility in Colorado, a radar dish slowly swept through its usual circle, while inside a fresh-scrubbed but rather bored radar operator stared at the tiny screen. Day in, day out, he watched the line move around the circumference of the circle, like a fast clock with no numbers. He had jumped at the chance to protect his country from danger, but if there was danger, it wasn’t taking this route and his presence here was superfluous. Perhaps the only thing worse than the boredom was the feeling of futility.
But today, right now, for the first time since he’d worked here, a blip moved rapidly across the screen. It was so fast he almost thought he had imagined it, but then it moved back the other way. No craft he was aware of could move, let alone change direction, that quickly. It was probably a glitch with the machine, or he’d finally begun to lose his mind, but there was no taking chances. And either scenario would still be more exciting than the usual routine.
“Sir,” he called out, “I’ve got a blip over Tri-Wing south southeast.”
His shift commander approached and looked over his shoulder. “Do we have aircraft in that quadrant?”
“Negative,” the operator said, his heart pounding a little. What if it was something real? What if some new and unfamiliar technology was out there, above American soil? Another blip appeared, this one moving at a normal speed, but it hardly seemed important now.
“Scramble intercept,” the commander said, a trace of concern creeping into his voice.
Almost as soon as he had spoken, two U.S. Sabre Jets roared off the runway outside, into the sky. The operator wished for a moment that he were in one of them, then reconsidered. Whatever the drawbacks of this job, at least it was safe.
***
The pilot and co-pilot had seen something flash past the windshield of the plane and disappears into the clouds, and they had no idea what it was, but it didn’t look like any plane they had ever seen. They were craning their necks to look for it when the clouds ahead of them parted to reveal, coming straight at them at frightening speed, something out of a nightmare.
They braced themselves for impact, but the flying saucer stopped less than a hundred feet ahead of them and hovered at the same speed as the plane, staying just in front of them. It was a silver disc, plain aside from the ring of lime green lights along the outer edge and the bump in the middle that probably indicated a control center. It had no visible instruments, hatches, or windows. And it was easily twice the size of the flying fortress.
“Bozhe moy,” the pilot said, suddenly no longer an atheist.
In the back, Indy, Elaine, Bernard, and the soldiers were tossed about as the plane rocked and the windows glowed with an eery light. The soldiers panicked and reached for their weapons, but there was nothing inside to shoot.
“It’s them,” Elaine said quietly.
Bernard gave her an irritated look to mask his fear. “Who?”
“The aliens...” She gestured at the device. “They want it back.”
Next: Chapter Nine
