behind the noses of those cliff gunners and plunder Cape Suzette! As an added bonus check, we will ransom off those filthy rich people to the highest bidders!” Karnage gloated as he, Gibber and Mad Dog strutted towards the hangar.

“Not if I can help it,” Baloo murmured under his breath. He rattled the stolidly-built door.

“I vouldn’t try anything funny if I vas you,” Dumptruck warned, shoving the barrel of his musket between the bars.

“Eep!” Trembling slightly, Baloo backed away.

Mindless of her fancy dress, Rebecca plopped down on a dingy cot, stating gloomily, “I guess that’s that. All of Cape Suzette including our kids will be at the mercy of Don Karnage. What are we going to do, Baloo?”

“He said not to do anything funny...” A smile dawning on his face, Baloo snapped his fingers. “Becky, remember that movie we saw last week with the Three Stooges?”

Rebecca rolled her eyes. “What a waste of time that was! Three grown men doing slapstick comedy for two hours straight. No plot. No purpose. I could actually feel my brain shrinking.”

“Do you remember any of their routine?”

“Unfortunately. Why?” She warily watched a cockroach climbing up the wall.

“If we can get him laughin’ hard, we might have a chance of escapin’. An’ who can fight better’n us?”

Rebecca smiled, catching on to his train of thought. “You’ve got a point, Baloo. What have we got to lose,” she chuckled ruefully, “besides my self-respect?”

“Who do ya wanna be - Harry or Joe or Frizzy?”

“Does it matter? Let’s get on with it, get it over with, and get out of here,” the bearess said sharply, shooting a nervous glance at the door. “I hope I can look back on this some day and laugh.”

Baloo took the blanket from the cot and spread it on the floor in front of the door. “Ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

“Whoop, whoop, whoop!” Baloo hooted loudly, feigning poking his fingers in Rebecca’s eyes.

In retaliation, Rebecca socked him in the stomach - hard.

“Oof!” Baloo groaned, doubling over and clutching his stomach. “Not so hard, Becky!” he wheezed in pain.

“Sorry. Reflex,” she hissed contritely.

He lightly bopped her on the top of her head with his fist. She toppled to the floor with an “Ay-yi-yi!” She pretended to bite his ankle.

“Ow!” Baloo hopped around the cell as if he were in pain. Scowling at Rebecca, he stalked over to her and ‘stomped’ on her foot.

By this time Dumptruck was extremely interested in the ‘fight’. Leaning his musket against the wall, he peeked through the tiny bar-crossed window, a grin on his heavy canine features. Barring the popular cockroach races, entertainment was rare on the Iron Vulture.

When Rebecca flipped Baloo over her shoulder, the pirate laughed at the big bear’s pained face.

“Why you!” Baloo puffed.

Rebecca took Baloo’s hands to help him up, but Baloo did a backwards somersault, and she ended up on the floor pinned under him. “Get off of me, you big oaf!” she shouted, her slender arms and legs flailing wildly. She roughly shoved Baloo over.

Hearing Dumptruck’s guffaws, Baloo whispered, “It’s workin’, Becky. Keep it up. Speakin’ of up...”

Baloo picked Rebecca up and swung her around - faster and faster until she dizzily yelled out, “Stoooooooop! I’m going to be sick!” When he put her down, she twirled like a top before collapsing on the floor in a heap.

To see the action better, Dumptruck unlocked the door and stuck his head in.

Baloo helped Rebecca to her feet, making a big show of kissing her hand. He gave her paw a little squeeze.

“This wasn’t part of the routine,” Rebecca whispered, squeezing his hand back.

“So? I’m improvisin’.” He winked, grinning.

For a split second, the dingy jail cell, the burly pirate, the danger they were in, everything disappeared. They were the only two people in the world. But then the moment passed and Baloo remembered where they were.

“Slap me,” the big bear hissed, eyeing Dumptruck standing in the doorway.

The pirate was giving the bears a suspicious look as if he was catching on to their charade. He wasn’t laughing anymore.

“What? Why?” Rebecca looked at Baloo as if he were crazy.

“Slap me, Beckers. Irate-pay,” he reminded her in pig Latin, gesturing with his head towards the doorway. “Remember? Irate-pay in oor-day?”

Following Baloo’s troubled eyes to the door, she shrieked, “Oh!” She lightly slapped his cheek, causing Baloo to spin around on his toes.

Baloo heard Dumptruck’s maniacal laughter resume as he shook his head like a maraca. Furtively signaling to the blanket that the pirate was standing on, Baloo ‘kicked’ Rebecca’s backside. “Last stop. Everybody off. Whee-he-he!”

She went sprawling to one side of the blanket with a disgruntled ‘oof!’. Her heavy petticoat and skirts flew over her head. “Mmm...mmmm! Get me out of here!” She staggered to her feet, pushing her skirts down; her hair, on which she had spent so much time perfecting, was an abominable mess. It hung in her face in wispy curls with hairpins sticking out of it like porcupine quills.

By this time, Dumptruck was laughing so hard that tears of mirth were rolling down his cheeks. He didn’t notice that the two bears had grabbed the blanket until he was flying in the air. The hulking canine pirate landed with a ‘thwack’ on the metal floor.

“Laughin’ Boy’ll have a major, mondo headache when he wakes up.”

“I can’t believe that worked.” Rebecca stood over the pirate’s prostrate form. She smoothed her hair down and pinned it back up.

“Like I told ya, the Three Stooges leaves ‘em fallin’ in the aisles,” Baloo chuckled, tying the unconscious Dumptruck up with the blanket. “Let’s take our act on the road, Becky.”

Rebecca took the key ring from its hook outside of the door and locked Dumptruck in the cell. They snuck down the hallway to the hangar. Through the open beak, they could see the zeppelin floating towards Cape Suzette.

“C’mon, we gotta head ‘em off,” Baloo hissed, edging against the wall to one of the pirates’ brown, battered tri-wing CT-37s. When the pirates’ backs were turned, he climbed in and pulled Rebecca in with him.

When he started up the single-engine plane, the pirates all turned towards them. It took the dim-witted pirates a few seconds to grasp the concept that a plane was being stolen, but finally, Hacksaw shouted out, “Look, the prisoners are escaping!”

“Fire!” ordered Hal.

“Where? Where’s the fire?” Hacksaw cried, running around in a tight circle. “Gotta put the fire out!”

“No,shoot! Shoot at the prisoners!”

Every single air pirate whipped out a firearm and began firing at the CT-37. Bullets ricocheted off of the hangar’s floor and ceiling as well as other aircraft.

“Ah!” Rebecca screeched, ducking down further.

“Hang on!” Dodging bullets, Baloo taxied the plane through the hangar.

“To what?” Rebecca screamed over the noise of the gunfire and the engine. Sitting on his lap, she clung to his tuxedo jacket with all her might and buried her face in his shirt.

“To me!” The pilot yanked back on the stick and they soared out of the beak, headed towards the cliffs.

Pirate cannonballs exploded all around them.

“Great,” Baloo panted, clutching at the steering yoke until his knuckles turned white. “Just what we need ta liven up the party. Fireworks, an’ me without my Duck.”

The Cape Suzette gunners, thinking that the CT-37 was being piloted by a pirate, began firing on them also.

“We’re not air pirates, you idiots!” Rebecca yelled in the direction of the cliffs, shaking her fist. “We’re trying to save the city!”

The CT-37 spiraled out of control as a cannonball clipped their bottommost starboard wing.

“Whoa!” the two bears screamed.

Because she wasn’t strapped in, Rebecca was flung out of the plane and plunged head over heels towards the ocean. “BALLLLOOOOO! AHHHHHHH!”

“Rebecca!” Sweat dripping from his face, Baloo set his jaw and pulled the airplane out of the tailspin, swooped down, and caught Rebecca. She landed neatly in his lap.

“Nice of ya to drop in, Becky,” the big bear joked with a relieved smile.

Baloo fought the controls when the plane tried to jerk left, then right. “Don’t see how Karny can fly this thing. It’s more temperamental than...” Shooting a glance at Rebecca, he abruptly curtailed his sentence.

“I am not temperamental!” Rebecca exclaimed forcefully, poking her forefinger in his chest with every syllable. “I’m a spirited woman with a lot of business sense, and if you think differently...”

BOOM went a cannon shell a few short feet in front of them, rocking the plane.

Steadying the aircraft, Baloo said, “Man, that was too close for comfort! Can we finish this fight later, Becky? Like when we’re safe on the ground? In one piece?”

Five CT-37s piloted by pirates zoomed towards them out of the Iron Vulture.

“Baloo, pirates at six o’clock!”

“Pirates up our tailpipe. Pirates on our windshield. Cliff gunners tryin’ ta rock us ta sleep. All I wanted was a nice, quiet dinner, not a second Great War. Just goes ta show ya there ain’t no such thing as a free meal!”

“I’ll take care of the cliff guards.” When Rebecca picked up the microphone to radio the gunners, the cord was severed by one of the pirates’ bullets.

“What else can go wrong?” Baloo groaned. In answer to his question, the engine began to sputter. “Oh, great. Outta gas.”

“What!” Rebecca cried, looking at the fuel gauge. They were indeed out of gas, and ‘E’ didn’t mean ‘enough’.

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