Chapter 14

Ace chewed her own wad of double mint gum and zoomed east. With rudder pedals and joystick she tested the ailerons, elevators, and rudder. The Sopwith 1 ½ Strutter responded nimbly. With a pencil stub she scribbled a short note on a navigation card, but didn't pass it back right away. Instead, she started scanning the moonlit highway. If the two vehicles had stuck to the main road and continued to drive fast, they could be as far as Avis by now.

Behind her, Gilbert's joy evaporated. He wrestled with the heavy motor and even heavier doubts. Ace had called the motor a torpedo, and Gilbert the bombardier. That sounded like Gilbert was supposed to drop the motor on the truck. He hefted the motor with a grunt. He could lift it up to his chest with effort. Any higher, though, seemed impossible. He could maybe heave it over the side, but only if he unstrapped from the seat belts and kneeled on the seat.

"Why me?" he muttered to himself, the words utterly lost in the noise and whip of the wind. But it was obvious. Ahead of him, Ace's pilot seat sat right between the biplane's wings. If she released the torpedo, she'd rip a hole in the wing. A sudden mental image of his mother suffocating in the lightless cargo bed of the black truck set his mouth to a grim line.

The Sopwith zoomed low and sped past a car crawling along the narrow highway. Its yellow headlights fanned out in front of it, illuminating a tiny wedge of winter farmland. Between one heartbeat and the next, the car zoomed backwards out of sight.

Vivian shouted, her voice tinny and distant in the rush of wind and engine noise, "Nope! That car was green!"

A few electric lights floated below them, marking the tiny town of Avis. The biplane droned on. Ace did not look back.

The homey smell of wood smoke tickled Gilbert's nostrils. In that moment, he felt intolerably lonely. His sister, father, and mother hadn't gathered around the family fire in months, maybe years. It was too late to patch over holes that big. Even if they found the truck and rescued Mom, it wouldn't really change anything.

The plane dived low once again, buzzing over another car.

"Yellow!" screamed Vivian. "Got him!"

Ace passed her note back to Gilbert.

It fluttered. He almost lost it trying to get it straightened out. The plane dipped a third time.

Vivian yelled, "Black truck!"

Gilbert held the note close to his eyes. It read, "I will roll upside down. Hold on to the motor until I say DROP."

Gilbert's forehead wrinkled.

The Sopwith 1 ½ Strutter banked left, steeply.

The motor wanted to roll left. Gilbert grabbed at it and the note flew away into the night. "Upside down?" he mumbled to himself, the words eaten by the rushing wind.

The biplane banked right, even more steeply.

Gilbert swallowed hard and gripped the motor hard, wrapping his arms around its steely bulk.

For a count of three, the plane leveled out. It seemed to Gilbert that the plane flew only ten feet above the road. Ace turned and gave Gilbert a thumbs up.

Gilbert's answering smile fluttered and failed.

In one smooth motion, up became down. The biplane rolled and stabilized perfectly inverted. The motor cradled in his arms tried to fly away. Gilbert's body snapped into the seat belts and his rear end left the seat. With a grunt, his arms strained to the breaking point, fire racing through his forearms and biceps. But he held. He mashed his cheek to the cold steel and his goggles dislodged.

The biplane skimmed the ceiling of the world, and a dark ribbon of highway made a stripe across it, sparkling in the light of the moon somewhere below. Yellow headlights approached on a collision course, but Gilbert did not see them. Blind, his world had narrowed to the agony in his arms and shoulders and the belts cutting into his chest and hips.

"When? When?" he panted against the motor. His muscles screamed, their white hot torture flaming hotter than any pain Gilbert could remember.

"Drop!"

Gilbert's arms flew open. The motor catapulted away. The inverted biplane accelerated away from the ground. Gilbert and Vivian pressed harder into their seatbelts, dangling.

The cockpit sat under the top wing, so only Vivian caught a visual impression of the torpedo. The dark blob of steel seemed to float upwards into the sky-ribbon of paved road. It flickered yellow, lit by headlights. It hit the road, and sparks flashed.

And then the truck swept by, obliterating vision.

A boom crashed like every percussion instrument in the orchestra, all at once. The biplane quivered in the sonic onslaught.

Ace rolled halfway out of the barrel roll into a steep bank. The teens bounced and dangled in their restraints as the world spun around them. The bank reversed. Barely had it straightened level again, when the wheels touched pavement with a chuff.

Belatedly, the twins realized that the world was right side up again, and the plane ran along the road. Somehow, their direction had reversed. They approached the black truck from the rear. It lay askew, but still mostly on the road. Its blocky silhouette loomed closer and closer at an alarming rate. The teens exhaled in relief when they felt Ace brake.

Even as they rolled, Ace cut the airplane motor. The propeller fluttered to a lazy leftover spin. The plane halted and Ace shot a grin backwards. "Nice work, bombardier! Now, let's open that tin can."