ocean, Baloo pulled down on a lever to elevate a flap, causing
the plane to pull out of the steep dive, skim the ocean’s surface, and
soar away. Two pirates who weren’t so lucky slammed into the ocean.
“Have
a nice swim, fellas!” Baloo grinned triumphantly over at the
navigator’s seat. “Those pirates can never seem ta get the hang of
that.”
Rebecca and Kit returned his smile; Rebecca held up her left hand, wiggling her fingers to show him the ring on it.
Baloo
blinked a couple of times before it sunk in. A radiant smile slowly
spread across his face before he could finally squeak out, “Really,
Becky?”
Rebecca nodded her head, arm around Kit’s shoulders. Her broad smile mirrored Baloo’s. “Really, Baloo.”
“YAHOO!” Elated, the big bear increased the seaplane’s throttle. With a quick burst of speed, the Sea Duckgained altitude to do a Baloo Corkscrew, which evolved into every
acrobatic trick that he knew. The remainder of the CT-37s - all two of
them - crashed into each other, and, consequently, the ocean.
“Ha!
Ha! We ditched those pirates but good!” With the victory over the
pirates and Rebecca’s acceptance of his proposal, Baloo felt like he
was on top of the world. Everything was going his way. Or was it?
Kit
glanced out the window. His smile faded. A red-and-black CT-37 was
hurtling right at them at a reckless speed. “Not quite, Papa Bear.
Bogey at twelve o’clock!”
“Huh?”
A volley of gunfire blasted through the cockpit, causing the bears to cringe in their seats.
“Man, what’s got Karny’s engines in an uproar?”
“You’re
still alive, Baloo,” Rebecca replied, struggling to keep her voice
calm; she failed miserably. She hugged Kit so tightly that her arms
ached.
Baloo performed every trick to shake off infuriated, livid, enraged, just plain ticked-off Don Karnage. Nothing worked.
All
of his plans had fallen to pieces, like usual; therefore, Karnage was
mad and nothing was going to deprive him of the complete and total
annihilation of his arch-nemesis. Guns blazing, he swooped down over
the seaplane, tattooing two rows of bullet holes in the fuselage.
“Maybe I can lose him in town!” Because the Sea Duckhad no guns, Baloo had to rely on his fast reflexes. He hoped that
Karnage couldn’t follow him through the maze of skyscrapers in downtown
Cape Suzette.
As the Sea Duck flew towards the Cape Suzette cliffs and to safety, Baloo gasped, “Hey, what gives?”
The control yoke moved on its own volition. It set them on a collision course with the cliffs themselves.
“Pull
up, Baloo!” Rebecca screamed, still protectively embracing Kit. The boy
buried his face in her shoulder, yet was unable to tear one eye away
from the quickly approaching cliffs that were going to be their certain
doom. “Pull up!”
“I’m tryin’, honey!” Eyes shut tight, teeth clenched, the big bear strained all of his might against the steering yoke, but the Sea Duck wouldn’t respond.
“Try harder!” Rebecca shouted, her voice quaking with fear.
In a split second, Baloo and Kit realized what must be wrong with the Sea Duck. They exclaimed simultaneously, “Karnage’s remote control!”
Kit
slipped from his seat and began combing the cockpit for a
suspicious-looking object, anything that might be linked to that remote
control.
“It’s me that Karnage wants,” Baloo reasoned. “Becky, you an’ Kit gotta jump.”
“Not without you, Papa Bear,” Kit said quietly, but decisively.
“But...but yer sittin’ ducks in here!”
“We’ll
be sitting ducks out there, Baloo. Do you honestly think that Don
Karnage will let us float to the ground without taking shots at us?”
Rebecca stated in a curiously calm manner. In defiance to Baloo’s
suggestions, she hung onto the armrests. “We’re staying and that’s
that.”
Kit, who was on his hands and knees at Rebecca’s feet, nodded in agreement. “I second that, Baloo.”
“Thanks, guys,” Baloo whispered, furtively passing the back of his hand over his eyes.
Rebecca
stuck her head out the open starboard window only to see Don Karnage
pull a bazooka from the CT-37s’ innards. “Oh, no!” she shrieked.
“We do not need another ‘oh, no’!” Baloo said, returning to his struggle to bring the Sea Duck back into submission. “We got enough trouble without ‘oh, no’!”
“I
have you now, Bahloo! This time, I will have the last ha-ha!”
maliciously chuckled Karnage, peering through the bazooka’s ocular
sight. He had a perfect shot of the seaplane.
Seven hundred yards, six hundred yards...the Sea Duck hurtled straight at the massive cliffs.
Karnage’s index finger paused for a second on the trigger as he reveled in the well-deserved, long-anticipated victory.
Four hundred yards...three hundred yards until the Sea Duck smashed into the cliffs.
“I
love you, Baloo. I love you, Kit,” Rebecca said, her voice infused with
tears as she lightly caressed Kit’s cheek. She gave the boy a wan
smile; Kit smiled up at her with false bravado and briefly hugged her
legs before returning to his search. Under her breath, the bearess
whispered to herself, “I love you, Molly. You’ll always be in Mommy’s
heart.”
“Love ya, too...Honeylips,” Baloo replied, prompting a
queer half-laugh, half-sob from Rebecca at the reference to one of
their screwball adventures. When he reached over to grasp her hand with
a sad smile, his eyes were abnormally bright.
“That thingy’s gotta be here somewhere!” Kit said in determination, feeling around underneath the control panel.
Two hundred yards...
“Ta-ta, Bahloo; it was not nice knowing you,” Karnage sneered.
One hundred yards...
Clinging tightly to each other’s hands, Baloo and Rebecca squeezed their eyes shut in preparation for the horrible impact.
And then Karnage pressed the trigger.
End of part 3
Karnage’s Revenge
Part 4
But instead of the rocket being launched at the
seaplane that he was pursuing, the entire firearm exploded,
disintegrating the CT-37 to cinders. Karnage himself hovered, a
dumbfounded charred mess, for a split second in the air before plunging
into the ocean. “I’ll get even, Bahloo, if it’s the last thing I
dooooooooooooo!”
With the demise of the remote control joystick, the Sea Duck’s swooped suddenly, vertically up.
“Whoa!"
the three bears screamed, thrown back violently in their seats. Rebecca
dug her fingers into the armrests while Kit, underneath the control
panel at Baloo’s feet, clutched at something, anything to keep from
sliding to the back of the cockpit. His fingers closed around a small
metal object, which popped off the control panel. Oops! Hope that wasn’t important, like that googleschlocker gyrocompass, he thought as he hung onto the legs of the pilot’s seat for dear life.
White-knuckled, Baloo struggled to keep the Sea Duckunder control on its bumpy course. “C’mon, baby. Co-op-per-ate!” he
muttered through clenched teeth. The underside of its fuselage scraped
along the rocks in the cliffs, causing sparks to fly. When the cliffs
were cleared, Baloo leveled the plane out, soared over the cliffs, into
the Cape Suzette harbor.
“Man, that was one close shave!” the big bear gasped out, shaking a tense kink out of his hand.
Rebecca, breathing heavily with fright, nodded emphatically and peeled her aching fingers from the armrests.
“You could say it was a cliffhanger,” Kit chuckled wanly from his position on the floor. He held the remote control receiver up for Baloo to see.
Rebecca groaned at the pun, but Baloo beamed, tousling the boy’s hair fondly. “He does his ol’ man proud.”
A short while later, a bruised and battered Sea Duck landed in front of Higher for Hire. The seaplane lightly bumped against the dock; its engines slowed, then stopped.
Following a long pause, Baloo looked over at Rebecca. He ventured softly, “Well...I guess we’re home.”
Rebecca smiled back at him. “Yes...home.”
“What’s left of it,” Kit murmured, gazing out of the port window. “Jeepers, what a mess!”
Higher
for Hire looked as if it had been through a blizzard. In fact, it had.
Half of the tin on the roof was missing, and the other half was curled
back. Chunks of siding were gone. A rowboat’s prow protruded from one
of the windows. The windsock had been completely torn away. Branches
and leaves from the elm tree behind the building were strewn all
around. The entire dock was drenched with seawater. Limp brown seaweed
was slapped up against the Higher for Hire sign. Drifts of melting snow
lay everywhere.
However, Baloo and Rebecca didn’t seem to notice
Higher for Hire’s dilapidated state. They were staring at each other
with star-struck smiles on their faces. Deciding that they needed to be
alone, Kit slipped out of the cockpit into the cargo hold. Out of the
corner of his eyes, he saw Rebecca fling herself into Baloo’s eager,
outstretched arms. Kit heard her say, “I’m still holding you to that
dinner and moonlit stroll, darling.”
“You got it, sweetheart,” Baloo replied with a husky chuckle.
Buzz
didn’t pay much more attention to Kit than Baloo and Rebecca had. He
was scribbling fast and furious on his notepad and muttering insensibly
about invisible spectacles.
Kit hopped onto the dock, brimming
over with happiness at the recent turn of events. He looked at the
remote control receiver for a second, then dropped it into the harbor
with a soft ‘ploop’. “There,” he said,
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