by Ken Renshaw
Unknown to Dave, somebody was using this night to visit CrystalSky airport and tamper with Dave's sailplane.
Mr. S drove his white van with the lights off, in the light of the quarter moon, down the dirt road to where the enemy kept his sailplane trailer, thinking to himself, I will destroy this agent of the forces of evil, those who would move the world back into superstition and fear by promulgating false beliefs in the name of a false science. The attorney will die a deserved, terrible death. He chuckled to himself. The Skeptimos Order will honor me for this feat. He visualized the ceremony. The members in their hooded white robes, emblazoned with the flame red crosses, would chant and place a wreathe of laurels on his head.
Mr. S parked his van near the sailplane trailer, went into the back and pulled the black curtains over the windows. By a dim light, he assembled his bombs. The first was a flare that made a poisonous smoke, one that was intended for killing gophers and varmints in their tunnels or dens. The second, a half stick of dynamite, was rigged to detonate two minutes after the smoke bomb. He laughed to himself as he set the smoke bomb altitude detonator to go off after the sailplane had gained two thousand feet above the airport. He used a marking pen to draw the Skeptemos symbol on the duct tape holding the bombs together.
After turning off the light, he left the van for the sailplane trailer. Fortunately, an outside night-light on a nearby hangar provided him with enough illumination to do his work. He put on surgical gloves to prevent fingerprints, and used the key he had made from a wax impression to unlock the trailer. He slowly opened the trailer, reached in and removed the cockpit canopy. Watching pilots rig their sailplanes in Ogden had carefully planned his procedure. He gingerly placed the bombs behind and under the pilot's seat, in a place that wouldn't be discovered in assembling the airplane.
He removed the parachute and turned it over and, placed a locking pin in the ripcord to prevent it from being pulled to open the parachute. The parachute was carefully replaced in the cockpit and the canopy was restored. He closed and locked the trailer and returned to his van.
Mr. S was jubilant as he drove away, laughing to himself about the cleverness of his plan. When the attorney took his next flight, being towed to altitude, the smoke bomb would go off filling the cockpit with black, poisonous smoke. If the pilot could open the canopy in time to not be overcome, he might try to fly the sailplane back to the field. The second bomb would kill the pilot if he tried that. If he managed to bail out, the parachute wouldn't open and the attorney would fall in terror to his death. He wanted to be there to observe his creation.