CrimsonSkies-Briefcase Blues 3

Chapter 3   Backfire

‘The party is what?!’
Slamming her fist on the table in the Damocles’ lounge, Nora ‘Wicked’ Wickett was steaming with anger. She was a tall young woman, good looking, but with a rough outdoor-edge. Long brown hair fell down her shoulders and her hazel eyes were ablaze with shocked unbelief. They were locked on Jason Grant, who stood in front of the assembled crew of the Firebirds.
‘The party is cancelled,’ came his cool reply.
‘But…but…the ransom! Don’t we have the ransom?’ joined her twin sister Margaret ‘Wild’ Wylde. She wasn’t as tall and her hair was shorter. She had more of a ‘girl next door’ look to her, but her baby blue eyes and bright smile still turned men into idiots. Although not actual twins, both women had been together for as long as they could remember, growing up together in a New York orphanage. Their bond was so close, that everybody automatically assumed that they were, in fact,  twins.
‘All we have is this,’ answered Jason and slung a brown leather briefcase onto the table. It looked innocent enough. The entire assembled crew of the Firebirds stood in the lounge and none of them would have thought it could be the center of so much commotion. Jason opened it and spilled the contents on the table. Nothing but a thick stack of papers came out. It should have been a large pile of money.
‘Well, cap’n. What the hell is it?’ demanded Walter ‘Scalpalot’ Pratt. The wiry man of undeterminable age and serious expression usually kept to the background, but the tone of his Irish tinted voice showed his agitation.
Jason stood up slowly. He had some explaing to do to his crew and it wasn’t going to be easy. ‘During the crossfire, I must have grabbed the wrong briefcase. I have a strong feeling that whole shoot out was because of this briefcase and not because of Alicia Vanderlubsen.
Walter scooped up a few papers and glanced through them. ‘All that because of some scientific mumbo-jumbo. Nothing but math and physics.’ He squinted, ‘Extrapolated trajectory of single emissioned deuterium particles impacting… whatever! Is it valuable?’
‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ said Jason again. He had opened the briefcase in his private compartment onboard the Damocles, now hovering over the border with Canada. A leader’s perogative. He had worried his crew might get anxious when the deal they worked for so hard blew up in their face. So far, no accusations had been made, but something would have to be done to set it straight. Pretty damn soon too.
He turned towards a huge man standing at the back of the group. ‘Its certainly worth a lot of trouble to some people. Marty, what do you make out of it? Can you tell if it’s worth anything?’
The man detached himself from the back of the small crowd and stepped forward. Like most of the Firebirds, Martin (Marty for friends) Rogier still wasn’t past the age of thirty-five. Almost as tall as Jason, but with a much broader physigue, he could single-handedly lift a 70 mm cannon into an airframe without breaking a sweat. His character was the opposite however. Gentle and good humoured, he was always prepared to help the crew out with his unmatched technical talent. He took some of the papers and studied them more thorough then Walter had done. The whole room looked at him, waiting for him to say something. Finally, he spoke.
‘I have a faint idea what this is. It has to do with atomics, but for all I know, it could be just some lab results. I fix planes, not atoms. Some things are just fine they way they are and should be left alone.’
That raised a few eyebrows. Marty was known as a man that took everything apart, just to find out how it worked. Even in his spare time, he was still fiddling with odd bits of equipment or inventions. Jason sighed, this was getting them nowhere. ‘I don’t care anyway. This isn’t what we came for. I want our money and we’re going to get it back.’
The twins whooped, so did Patrick and rest of the maintenance crew, who also doubled as gunners, cooks, first aids and fire fighters. It was an odd mix of Americans and Russians who had stayed after the Firebirds had taken over the zep. They had decided that the risky life of a pirate was still better then the certainty of facing the Gulag. Walter and Marty kept serious however. Going back to the scene of the crime meant that they would be risking patrols of local militia or security corporations.
That was when the door to the lounge slammed open and a stunningly beautiful woman walked in holding a newspaper. Long reddish-brown hair flowed down her shoulders. Her hazel eyes had an expression of perpetual sensuality and her body looked like it belonged in the movies. With perfect control she walked in, knowing very well everybody was looking, almost drooling at her. Jason noticed that Antoinette ‘Bonnie’ Fortescue still liked a big entrance. Her air of an irresistable femme fatale caused everybody except Jason to call her by her callsign. When she reached the desk, she threw the newspaper on it. Even though her French accented voice was low and sultry, Jason couldn’t help noticing the tension in it.
‘What the hell happened back there? I picked up this newspaper when I was getting supplies and look what it says; the Pacifica Princess has been shot down! Everybody’s dead!’
Jason came round the table so fast, he knocked his chair over. Snatching the newspaper, he saw the two major headlines on the front page. One said ‘VANDERLUBSENS PAY!’, the other was much more sinister.

AIRSHIP EXECUTIONS
Last night the Pacifica Princess, on her way to the Empire State,
was raided by dastardly air pirates and brutally pillaged. Only
two people survived the massacre as afterwards, the cowardly
pirates shot down the unarmed passenger zeppelin over the
Disputed Western Territories.
Government officials  have no explanation for this outrageous
act of terrorism.

The couple who managed to escape with their own parachute
commented: “They came from everywhere! They ramparted
through the cabins and kept shooting. When they were gone,
we thought we were safe at least. Then the explosions came
and the fire.
We always travel with our own parachutes within reach.
We managed to open a window and jumped out. It was hours
later before a search party found us.”

There was no need to read any further. The lounge fell silent again, but with a sharp edge. The entire crew was looking at Jason and Patrick.
‘Ramparted?!’ bursted Patrick as he turned to Jason, ‘I distinctly do not recall any ramparting. No ramparting from this guy, no sir. Did you do any ramparting?‘
‘This report doesn’t add up,’ he replied. ‘When we left, the Pacifica Princess was in bad shape from that grenade, but that was just the cargo hold. She sure as hell wasn’t going down. If this news is real, somebody came in after us.’
The tall pilot picked up his chair and sat down. To his relief, some of the others did the same. First the whole mission goes sour, then this weird briefcase pops up and now this. He plucked his eyebrow while lost in thought. What he needed were some facts to base their further actions on.
‘All right, it’s time we get down to business. It looks like we have three separate groups. The two guys who were sitting in the dining compartment, the two in black suits who came in later and those so-called pirates. If that is what they are. First we check out what really happened. The last thing we need, is the militias on our back, thinking we are mass murderers. Then we go after them. You need a few planes to gun down a zeppelin and somewhere somebody’s got to know something. There are masses of moonshiners, smugglers and other pirates in the area and I know a few of them. It’s time to call in the favors.’

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