“Never been so sure,” I said. “What’s a grand adventure without a plane ride?”
“It’s adventure, all right. And possibly a huge mistake. But you know what they say. When the going gets tough, the tough steal a mail plane.”
“It’s only stealing if we don’t bring it back. And we will! Now, can we please leave this frozen hellscape? My nose is going to fall off.”
He laughed. “If you think it’s going to be any warmer in that cabin, you’re in for the shock of your life.”
JOURNAL OF RICHARD FOX
July 10, 1937
Târg?oru Vechi, Wallachia, Kingdom of România
Interesting discussion with an airdrome owner in what was once a medieval trading village called Târg?or, where a major road led from Bucharest in Wallachia to Bra?ov in Transylvania. I’d read about the ruins of a church here, one that was possibly built by Vlad’s father—and where the Impaler may have sheltered after a battle with the Turks, eight months before he died.
Turns out I wasn’t the first to discover this. The airdrome owner said a Hungarian gentleman by the name of Rothwild had been out here, looking for the site of the old church a month ago. He had a team of men dig up an acre of land. Why is Rothwild withholding all of this information from me? Is he paying me to run around Romania, working the same leads he’s already investigated? How does that help him?
The airdrome owner told me one interesting thing. Rothwild was raving about politics, saying that change was happening in Europe. That Hungary and Romania needed to stand their ground or allow their land to be taken. And that he was going to ensure this didn’t happen. Just a rant, I thought. But then the mansaid Rothwild told him that the Order of the Dragon protected these lands years ago and that Rothwild was searching for something that would help him resurrect the order.
Am I working for an unhinged man?
16
I’D RIDDEN ON MY SHAREof airplanes. Mostly Puddle jumpers, for short distances, and in Huck’s little biplane, Trixie, over Hudson Valley.
But this aircraft was no Trixie, and we weren’t flying over fields and rivers while the sun shone.
This was a ramshackle postal plane, and we were flying in a snowstorm, two thousand feet above the Carpathian Mountains.
“Stop clutching the instrument panel,” Huck’s voice said inside my headset. He sat next to me in the cramped cockpit, and though I had the volume turned up as loud as it would go, I was still having trouble hearing him over the insane racket of the single-engine plane. “Grab the coward strap up there, if you feel you must.”
“I’m not a coward!” I said, clutching a leather strap above my window.
“No need to yell in my ear. Relax. We’re fine.”
Liar. None of this was fine. Snow drove against the windshield so hard, I couldn’t see past the propeller on the nose of the plane—which meant he couldn’t see, either. When I dared to look out my window, I occasionally spied a single light in the mountains below, but mostly I just saw darkness. And the plane was rattling so hard, I was almost positive my tailbone was bruised.
Whose idea was this anyway, taking a stolen airplane up in a snowstorm?
Oh, right. It was mine.
“We’re going to die,” I said.
“I swear to all the saints,” Huck complained, “if you say thatone more time, I’m going to open that airdrop door in the back and shove you out.”
My teeth chattered as I glanced over my shoulder at the belly of the plane and felt a twinge of guilt. Dirty canvas postal bags filled the narrow space. Pretty sure stealing mail was a worse crime than borrowing a plane.
“How far have we got now?” I asked.
“Twenty minutes, if this equipment is accurate. Let’s add that to our list of prayers.”
Several excruciating minutes passed in which my thoughts dwelled on the decrepit state of the airplane, how it was over a decade old and had been retrofitted with several improvements, half which didn’t work, according to Huck. There wasn’t even a working parachute onboard, which was the one thing that had truly given Huck pause before we took off. Why oh why hadn’t I listened?
As I was thinking about all this, Huck suddenly changed the plane’s direction and altitude.
“Um... what’s happening?” I asked.
“Storm’s too bad. I’ll have to take a different route.”
