Night Flight
It seemed to Rick that his head scarcely had touched the pillow when
the ringing of the phone penetrated his slumber. The luminous dial of
his watch showed quarter past three. For an instant he shivered. The
ringing could mean only one thing.
He heard the creaking of his bedspring and the soft pat of Scotty's
bare feet as his pal swung to the floor. Scotty had the faculty of
waking instantly and moving into action. By the time Rick reached the
hall, he was already lifting the phone from its cradle.
"Yes?" he said softly. "Okay, Cap'n Mike. How long do you think it
will take him to get out past the fishing grounds? All right. Give us
a call about breakfast time and we'll let you know how we made out."
The boys hurried to Rick's room. Rick snapped on the light and stood
blinking in its sudden glare. "What did he say?"
"Brad just left. He was phoning from Jake's Grill. I guess that's the
only place in Seaford that's open all night."
"My guess that he wouldn't go out tonight was certainly bum," Rick
said. "The smuggling business must be good. How long did he figure it
would take Brad to reach the other side of the fishing grounds?"
"About an hour."
Rick looked at his watch again. "That doesn't give him much time
before daybreak. It starts to get light at about half past four at
this time of year. Well, let's get dressed."
Rick slipped into slacks and a heavy woolen shirt, because it would be
cold before dawn. Then he put on woolen socks and moccasins. He was
getting his motion-picture camera from the closet when Scotty came in,
fully dressed. Rick tucked an extra reel of infrared film into his
shirt pocket and grinned at his pal.
"How's your nerve?"
"Mine doesn't matter," Scotty returned cheerfully. "How's yours?
That's what counts."
"We'll soon know." Rick paused as his mother called softly. "Yes,
Mom?"
He walked to the door of his parents' bedroom.
"Be very careful," Rick's mother cautioned. And Hartson Brant added,
"Don't forget distances look different at night, son, even with
landing lights."
"I'll be careful," he promised. "We'll be back in a little while."
He motioned to Scotty and then snapped out the lights and went down
the stairs. He left the camera on the porch and they walked to the
boat landing, hiking briskly because it was chilly. Their plan was to
take both boats to the Whiteside landing and leave one of them there,
to provide a means for getting back to the island after they had
landed at the airport. Probably it would have been more sensible to
have left the plane at the airport, too, but that meant a walk from
the boat landing and Rick hadn't been sure how much time they would
have.
In a short while they were back at Spindrift. They picked up the
camera and walked past the orchard to where the Cub was parked,
looking a little unfamiliar with the landing lights shining in the
moonlight.
Rick stopped for another look at the sky. He had studied it
periodically from the moment they left the house. There was a little
fair weather cumulus cloud scattered here and there, but nothing that
would interfere with visibility. There was a good moon, between a half
and three-quarters full. Rick would have preferred the brightest of
full moons, but he philosophized that he shouldn't expect maximum
conditions.
A glance at his watch showed that slightly less than a half-hour had
elapsed since the phone call. It would be another half-hour before
Brad reached the probable contact point beyond the fishing grounds,
and it would take the Cub only about twelve minutes to reach it. There
was no use in starting just yet. He sat down on the grass under the
wing of the Cub and hurriedly stood up again. The dew already had
fallen and the grass was wet.
Scotty chuckled. "Something bite you?"
"Thought we could sit it out for a little while," Rick explained. "But
it's too wet." He knew he couldn't sit still, anyway. He wanted to get
into the air, to get the feel of things. "Crank 'er up," he requested.
He slid into the pilot's seat and placed the camera beside him.
Scotty walked around to the front of the plane and started the engine.
Then, as Rick warmed it, he untied the tie ropes, removed the wheel
chocks, and got in. "Relax," he advised.
"I'm trying to," Rick returned. "Buckle in. Here we go." He fastened
his seat belt and Scotty did likewise.
The grass landing strip stretched ahead for a distance that seemed
much shorter in the moonlight. Rick glued his eyes to the point where
it ended and pushed forward on the throttle. He wouldn't need lights
for the takeoff. The plane shuddered and he released the brakes. The
tail came up and the Cub rolled, picking up speed rapidly, then lifted
smoothly from the grass. Airborne!
The horizon was clearly defined and Rick breathed a sigh of relief. No
trouble in flying level now. Their only bad moment would come in
landing. He climbed to almost a thousand feet, then set a course for
Whiteside. He wanted to get a look at the airport approaches by night.
In a short space he saw the field beacon and then the red boundary
lights. He throttled back and let the nose drop, crossing the field at
less than two hundred feet. It looked easy. The tension left him and
he flew easily, automatically. He had been flying the Cub for so long
that it behaved like part of him, without conscious effort. He climbed
steadily in a shallow turn until his altimeter read two thousand feet
and he was heading out to sea. Far below, Spindrift Island was a dark
extension of the land, almost completely framed by silvery, moonlit
water.
"Pretty," Scotty said.
Rick nodded. He knew his mother and father were listening to the
plane's drone down there. They wouldn't sleep much until he was back.
They had spent ten minutes making the long sweep over Whiteside. Rick
glanced at his watch, then banked around on the predetermined course.
He put the Cub in a slow climb.
"We'll arrive a little north of the grounds," he said. "Watch for ship
lights. We may see the supply ship before we see Brad Marbek."
"Maybe they've already met," Scotty remarked.
Rick shook his head. "They can't have met yet. Brad would have to go
pretty far out. Otherwise, the trawlers going to fish would be able to
see him and his supply ship on the horizon."
Scotty shivered. "It's getting cold."
They were climbing steadily. The altimeter read slightly less than
four thousand feet. At that height, the men on the ships below
wouldn't know what kind of plane was overhead. They flew in silence
for several minutes, then Rick warned, "We're getting there."
"I'm watching." Scotty had taken the binoculars from behind the seat
where they had been left. Suddenly he grabbed Rick's arm. "There. Dead
ahead."
Rick banked the plane a little so he could see from the side window.
Far ahead and below, red lights and white lights twinkled against the
sheen of the sea. Some distance separated the lights and he knew he
was seeing both vessels. They had not yet met. His pulse began to
pound a little. He pulled back slightly on the control wheel and let
the Cub climb.
"We'll continue straight on," he told Scotty. "Then we'll turn and
come back at a lower altitude."
"Okay." Scotty leaned out into the slip stream and put the binoculars
on the lights. When the ships were behind, he pulled his head in again
and rubbed his cold face. "That other ship is a freighter, but not
very big. I'd say less than four thousand tons. It's probably a
coaster."
Rick wondered, if it was a coastal vessel, why he hadn't found
anything in the New York paper at the _Morning Record_. It was
probable, he decided, that the ship was heading for some other port,
maybe Boston.
"Funny," Scotty said. "The other ship is heading south."
"South? No wonder we didn't find anything in the shipping news.
Listen, Scotty, what if that's just an American coaster? You know what
that would mean? That ship would have to rendezvous with some
ocean-going freighter, or maybe several of them." His voice hushed.
"What if we've run into something that's only a small part of a really
big smuggling ring?"
His ready imagination pictured the coastal vessel sailing regularly
between Baltimore and Portland, Maine, meeting ocean-going smugglers
and in turn supplying small contraband runners like Brad Marbek and
the Kelsos all the way up and down the coast.
"I expected some big ocean freighter," Scotty remarked.
They had been flying steadily out to sea. Now Rick banked around so
Scotty could look through the glasses once more.
"I can see them on the horizon," Scotty said, glasses to his eyes.
"They've met. The lights are almost together. Hey! The lights just
went out!"
"Probably turned out so as not to attract the attention of any passing
ships," Rick guessed. "They can't see, as we can, that they're the
only ships around. We'll stall for a while before going back. Give
them time to get rigged for passing cargo."
He lifted the camera to his lap, then trimmed the Cub so it would fly
by itself. Scotty took the power pack on his own lap and checked again
to see that the dynamo-driven spring was wound tight.
Rick had connected the infrared attachment so that a switch was handy
under his thumb when his left hand held the camera in position. The
camera itself, run by its own spring, was operated by his right hand.
He pressed the infrared switch and heard the dynamo whine softly.
Scotty immediately wound it another half turn to bring the spring up
to full tension again.
"Wish I had enough hours to do the flying," he said regretfully. "Then
you could photograph without worrying about the plane."
Scotty had his license, but he had not yet accumulated the experience
that would fit him for an adventure like tonight's. Or rather this
morning's.
Rick twisted the lens barrel, making sure it was full open, then he
twisted the focusing ring until it stopped. Now the camera was focused
on infinity. All he needed to do was aim and shoot. He looked at
Scotty. His friend's face was a white blur in the dimness inside the
plane. "Think we've given them enough time?"
"I think so. They wouldn't need much. The supply ship would have cargo
booms all rigged and the first load in the cargo net. Better turn
back."
Rick banked, letting the Cub slip as he did so. They lost altitude
rapidly and he watched the silvery sheen of the ocean resolve itself
into waves. There was not enough wind to make foam or whitecaps. The
two ships would have no trouble coming alongside and moving cargo. He
leveled off at five hundred feet on a course that would take them
directly over the vessels.
Both boys strained to see ahead, and both saw the blurred outline on
the horizon at the same time. Gradually the outline became clearer
until finally they flashed directly over the two ships.
"Here we go," Rick said, and the calmness of his voice surprised him.
He rocked the Cub up in a tight bank that would take them in a narrow
circle with the ships at the center. His hands made delicate
adjustments in the plane's balance so that it would practically fly
itself. His feet were light on the rudder pedals. He lifted his hand
from the wheel and the Cub held course without a waver.
"Now," he said. He took the camera and pressed it to his cheek,
gripping it firmly. His eye found the telescope and he pressed the
infrared switch.
Scotty's hand was poised, ready to grab the control wheel if the plane
started to slip. The power pack was held tightly between his knees,
and his right hand was on the winding handle.
The scene lighted up for Rick. He saw four men on the trawler's deck,
looking up at him. He saw the cargo net suspended almost over their
heads, and he saw men on the deck of the freighter. His right index
finger pressed and the camera started to roll.
The Cub held its tight circle and Rick kept his finger down. Then he
felt the camera stop and knew it had to be wound. Swiftly he shifted
balance and turned the winding handle until the spring was at full
tension again. But his shifting of weight had disturbed the plane's
delicate balance. He had to put the camera down and work the tab
controls that trimmed the plane with his left hand while his right
kept it steady.
It took a few moments. Meanwhile, Scotty had wound the dynamo tight
once more. When Rick looked out, the cargo net was no longer in sight.
The men on the freighter's deck were bent over another cargo net,
working at cases that evidently were heavy. Rick kept the camera on
them, shooting steadily, rewinding when necessary. Then he shifted his
view to the trawler. The men were standing over a gaping fish hatch.
Evidently they were stowing the first load while the men on the
freighter prepared the second.
"I have enough," Rick said finally. There was nothing more to be seen,
unless they wanted to wait for the second load to change ships.
"How much footage did you get?" Scotty asked.
"About fifty feet, maybe a little less."
"That ought to be enough. Let's go home."
Rick swung the Cub in a circle until they were facing the direction of
the mainland according to compass reading, then he leveled off. "I
wonder what they thought about the plane overhead," he said.
"It probably scared them stiff," Scotty replied. "Chances are Brad
Marbek had a good idea who it was."
The one thing they had overlooked in their plan was Brad's possible
reaction to seeing the plane, Rick realized suddenly. Great grinning
goldfish! What if he really got scared? They might have defeated
their own purpose by making him jettison his contraband!
Then he reasoned that Brad wouldn't dump his cargo if he could help
it. Anything worth smuggling was too valuable to be dumped just
because two kids saw it transferred. But still . . .
"If I were Brad," he said, "I'd get up a full head of steam for Creek
House and unload that stuff. How about you?"
"Because you'd be afraid those two wild men in the airplane would
report it to the police? Maybe you're right, Rick. We'd better get
Captain Douglas and his men on the job right away!"
The street lights of Whiteside were in sight now. Rick took a bearing
from them and swung slightly northward to pick up the airport. Then he
saw the beacon. He had not bothered to climb after leaving the ships,
so he passed over Spindrift at an altitude of five hundred feet. He
knew his parents would hear the Cub and know he had returned this far
safely. His palms were moist with perspiration and he had to swallow
to clear his throat. Now that the moment of landing was here, his
nervousness was returning. He leaned forward, watching for the airport
marker lights and saw them directly ahead. The airport wasn't big or
important enough to rate runway lights or a lighted wind sock, but
those wouldn't have helped much anyway. He knew from watching the sea
that the wind was negligible. And anywhere he landed on the field
would be all right.
He throttled down and the nose automatically dropped to the correct
glide position. Then, as he saw the red marker lights rushing to meet
him, he threw on the landing lights. White swaths of light picked out
trees and the boundary fence. The Cub flashed across into the open,
dropping steadily. The ground seemed to come up appallingly fast, but
Rick kept his nerve. It was only an illusion, he knew. The Cub was at
the correct approach angle. But the illusion made it hard to tell when
to level off. He waited a second too long, and his wheels touched and
the Cub bounced. He threw power into the engine and the little plane
lifted into the air once more.
"Tricky," he muttered when Scotty looked at him.
Scotty sat up a little straighter. "You're telling me?"
Rick went around the airport again and banked around tightly into the
approach. His jaw was set firmly and he watched the field so closely
that his eyes watered. He'd make it this time! He cut the gun and the
nose dropped. He waited as the runway came up, trying to gauge his
height by the grass that showed clearly in the landing lights. Slowly
he eased the control wheel back and the plane leveled off. Slowly and
more slowly. They were eating up runway rapidly. Scotty shot him an
anxious look. Then, with feather lightness, the wheels touched. The
tail settled gracefully and they were on the ground. Rick applied the
brakes and the Cub slowed to a stop. He wiped his forehead.
Scotty leaned over and solemnly shook hands.
Rick gave the plane the gun again and taxied rapidly to the hangar,
switching out his lights as he went.
Made it, he thought jubilantly. First night flight, safely over. And
that's not all. We got what we went after!