The Rocketeer Read Online Free PDF Page B

ground. Just make it down and walk away from the landing, and that would be enough to make it a good landing. And he was going to be able to make it. The ground wasn’t spiraling as crazily now, and he’d managed to wipe away enough oil to get just enough vision.
    And that’s when he saw the car coming directly toward him.
    Moments earlier Wilmer had slammed the roadster forward and shot out of the hangar like a cannonball. He blew past the Plymouth, which skidded around the rear corner of the building and screeched to a halt.
    The Plymouth engine choked out and died, having given everything it could and more. Desperate, determined, Fitch leapt out of the car, crouched into a marksman’s pose, and fired on the fleeing roadster.
    Barreling down the runway, Wilmer’s back suddenly arched in pain as a bullet hit him square in the shoulder. It’s not fair! This was the last time! he cried out in his mind, his eyes slamming shut in pain.
    Then he heard a roaring in his head and, through the pain, his eyes opened, and he saw a smoking airplane descending toward him on an inevitable collision course.
    Wilmer threw open the car door and leapt out. He thudded hard onto the runway and rolled, the asphalt tearing up his clothes and skin.
    In the GeeBee, Cliff saw, through smeared goggles, the driver of the car leap clear, which wasn’t going to do him a hell of a lot of good. He cried out and yanked on the stick in what he knew was an exercise in futility.
    The GeeBee’s landing gear bashed into the roadster’s windscreen. The impact tore the wheels loose from the plane with an ear-splitting screech of metal, and then the crippled plane bellylanded in a shower of sparks.
    Cliff cursed his misfortune inwardly. Any other pilot would have done a nose dive. Not Cliff. Noooo, not Cliff Secord. He manages to land right side down, but just to make it more challenging, it’s without landing gear. He just couldn’t catch a break.
    The roadster, in the meantime, sped forward completely out of control—understandable, since no one was at the wheel to control it. Wilmer rolled to a stop and, every part of his body aching, managed to raise his head in time to see, a couple of hundred yards away, the roadster slam into a fuel truck that was parked at the runway’s edge. With an explosion as if hell itself had just blossomed up from down under, the Ford erupted into a churning ball of flame and smoke.
    Goose, Skeets, Malcolm, and Peevy were the first to reach the battered, unmoving hulk of the GeeBee. The former two were carrying fire extinguishers and, in the distance, a water truck and fire engine were roaring down the runway.
    Peevy moved quickly, seeing the smoke rising from the smoldering GeeBee. The last thing he was going to allow to happen was for Cliff, having survived the landing, to go up in a roar of fire afterward. “Goose!” he shouted as he clambered up on the wing. “Give me a hand!”
    Goose passed the extinguisher over to red-faced Malcolm, who was huffing and puffing heavily from the run and was remembering the days when he could dash the length of a runway on foot and not be the least out of breath. As Peevy and Goose worked on wrenching open the jammed cockpit, Skeets urgently waved Malcolm over. “Get the flames out,” he shouted, “before they hit the fuel tank!”
    Malcolm nodded, and he and Skeets turned their extinguishers on the smoking fuselage, fighting the cowling fire with everything they had.
    Peevy and Goose grunted and pulled one more time, and this time the battered canopy came loose. Cliff, miraculously, was conscious, and so it was only a matter of moments to pull him most of the way out of the cockpit. He stopped for a moment to snatch Jenny’s photo off the instrument panel, and then followed Peevy and Skeets down the side of the GeeBee to safety. They ran a safe distance and then turned and stopped. Cliff looked on helplessly as Skeets and Goose put out the fire on the wounded plane.
    “I