by John Etzil
Even if we had just entered the lion’s den…
26
I opened the cockpit door and stepped out onto the sand. I looked back at the mess I’d made of Cosmo’s golf course and chuckled. I pictured the look on his face when he woke up in the morning, made his cup of coffee, and looked out the window in his kitchen to admire his well-manicured greens.
“Let’s turn the plane around so she’s ready to go, then I’m going in.” We went to the tail, leaned on the elevator to take the weight off the nose wheel, and walked the tail around so the plane was pointed the right way for a quick getaway. It was a struggle moving in the sand, but between the two of us, we managed to get her turned in the right direction. We couldn’t move her out of the sand, but I felt that the prop would handle that okay once I started her back up.
I grabbed my backpack that held my tools and weapons and gave Debbie a kiss. “I’m off.”
I went up to a basement window and knelt down. I took out my Scorkl, a small portable breathing device with a tank that would give me ten minutes of fresh air. If I stayed in the house longer than that, I’d have to breath in the sleeping gas. I’d hate to pass out on the floor and wake up to Cosmo and his henchmen smiling down at me.
I attached a suction cup in the center of the window, and with my free hand, I used my glass cutter and etched a hole around it. With an audible crack, I removed the piece of glass and laid it on the mulch by my knees. I inserted my arm into the hole and unlocked the window. I opened it, slid through feetfirst, and ended up in the dark basement. I took the night vision goggles out of my backpack and put them on. I grabbed my Glock and screwed on my silencer.
I was in some sort of rec room. It was empty and smelled like Doritos and spilled beer. It had a single couch in front of a gigantic TV. It looked like an eighty-incher.
I found the stairs and took my time going up, trying to keep the squeaks down, which was no easy task for a big man like me. At the top of the stairs, I encountered a locked door. I picked the lock and swung the door open.
I recognized the family room straight in front of me. There were four people in the theater seats, and I couldn’t tell if they were sleeping or knocked out. I had no time for frivolities, so I dismissed the urge to shoot them. I headed to the kitchen instead.
It was empty.
I went to the giant staircase that led to the second floor and started up. I didn’t hear anything at all to indicate that anyone was awake, but I still took my time and went slow to make as little noise as possible.
I reached the top of the stairs, which led to a hallway with five doors. All were closed.
I tried the first one on the right. It was unlocked, and I opened it and stepped inside. A small bed was against the far wall, and it held two people. Both were naked. I recognized one as the muscles-out-the-wazoo guy who’d shot at Amelia. Lying next to him was a girl, maybe fifteen tops. She looked so young and innocent.
Muscles started to turn toward me, and he opened his eyes. He looked right at me but didn’t move. His forehead furrowed, and I could see his Neanderthal mind trying to grasp what he was seeing. I pressed the gun against his forehead, covered it with a pillow, and pulled the trigger once for Amelia. He twitched a few times and was still. Between the silencer and pillow, I hardly heard anything.
Sixteen bullets left.
The girl was still out cold, so I let her be. I looked under the bed and checked the closet, just to be sure that I didn’t miss a hiding person, and then let myself out, locking the door behind me.
I went down the hallway to the second door and found it locked. I saved that one for later.
The third door was unlocked, and I swung it inwards and stepped into the room. Empty.
The fourth door was unlocked. I stepped in, and there was Catherine, sleeping like a baby in a king-sized bed. Naked. Of course she was. Spitting image of Debbie, except she was skinnier with less muscle tone, and her breasts were twice as large. No way those things were real.
I wrapped her in a sheet and picked her up with both arms. I carried her to the door, peeked out into the hallway to make sure that it was empty, and hustled down the stairs. Between my breathing device, my night vision goggles, and her skin sliding against the satin sheets that I’d wrapped her in, it was awkward carrying her. Plus her fake breasts must have added an extra ten pounds, so I had to take it slow.
My breathing increased in the excitement of almost being out of the house—it had nothing to do with carrying a naked woman in my arms—and my breather tube went dry.
I couldn’t just spit it out and leave it there, because my DNA was all over it, so I had to drop it in Catherine’s lap and make sure I held her nice and tight against me so that the breather tube didn’t slide down between us and fall to the floor.
I managed to get to the front door without dropping my Glock, the breather tube, or Catherine, when the lights went on…
27
FBI Agent Leo Kennedy answered his cell phone on the third ring. “Kennedy.”
“Leo, it’s Paul. You got a minute?”
“Sure.”
“Where are you?”
“Blake and I just finished interviewing the two young ladies at the hospital. We arrived just in time. They were about to be released, none the worse for wear after their eye-taping episode.”
“Okay, good. A few minutes ago the Newburgh police chief called. They dragged the Hudson and found two fifty-gallon drums sitting at the bottom of it. They each contained a body. The drums are still on their boat, so we don’t know too much, except that the deceased appear to have been shot with a high-powered weapon. Forensics is on the boat now. Can you and Blake swing by the docks and take a look?”
“Yes, sir. We can be there in twenty minutes.”
“Very good. You get any pertinent info out of your hospital interviews?”
“I’m not sure, sir. We’re dealing with addicts, so their statements have to be rated as unreliable.”
“Noted. What’d they say?”
“Stand by, sir.” Leo took the phone from his ear and placed it on speaker. “Can you hear me okay, sir?”
“Yeah, you’re fine.”
“Give me a second, sir.” Leo tapped his Evernote app and scrolled down to the witness statements. “Okay, here we go, sir. And I quote— ‘Spoke nice. Good English. Tall, white, handsome, muscular.’” Leo paused for a second. “And they were in agreement on this next line, sir.” He cleared his throat. “‘Big bulge in pants. He was totally doable.’”
“Seriously?”
“Swear to God.”
“That’s going to look great on the wanted posters.”
28
I knew what had happened as soon as the first explosion of light hammered my eyes. I slammed them shut, dropped Catherine on the floor with a thud, and ripped off my night vision goggles. I rolled forward and came up pointing my Glock.
Grouchy was standing in the kitchen, holding a shotgun and looking a little drunk and a lotta confused. He slurred his words and was unsteady on his feet, weaving from side to side. He looked up at me, blinked a few times, and tried to shake the cobwebs from his head.
“Air conditioner guy?”
“That’s right, and I didn’t take my shoes off either.”
I shot him twice in the chest.
Fourteen bullets left.
He stumbled backwards and fell down the five steps to the family room, smacking down flat on his back. When he hit, he squeezed off a shotgun blast, tearing the weapon out of his death grip and sending it spinning across the floor. Anybody within ten miles who was asleep, drug-induced or not, was awake. Including Catherine.
Every light in the house came on. Some outside too. A loud siren went off, one of those piercing home security kinds, and I was sure that the cops were being autodialed.
Two men came crawling up from the family room, and I shot them both in the chest. They stumbled backwards and landed on Grouchy.
I went to help Catherine
up, and she punched me in the face, kicked me in the nuts, and grabbed a vase from the front door entry table and smashed it over my head. Good thing it was one of those fragile two-thousand-year-old Chinese types. It shattered into a hundred pieces and I didn’t feel a thing.
My nuts were killing me, though. Man, had they taken a beating the last few days.
Catherine turned to run and I grabbed her from behind and rear naked choked her unconscious. I threw her over my shoulder, found my breather bottle, opened the front door and tore ass down the stairs. I ran around the garage side of the house and into the backyard.
I heard the back door slide open, and two men with pistols came staggering out onto the patio. I saw the suppressed flash of the Remington explode twice and knew I didn’t have to worry about them.
Debbie opened the cargo door, and together we placed Catherine inside the airplane. “Jesus, Jack, she’s naked. Couldn’t you at least cover her up? My God. Her tits are huge.”
“I did, and I noticed. Now climb in and hold her tight during takeoff. Might be bumpy.”
Debbie jumped in, and I closed and locked the cargo door behind her. I ran around to the left cockpit door and climbed in. I turned the key and pumped the throttle once, and the mighty Lycoming engine roared alive. Flaps ten degrees, brakes on, full power, and release brakes.
We didn’t go anywhere. Still bogged down in the sand.
I pulled the yoke all the way back, and the airflow from the prop blast forced the tail of the airplane down just enough to raise the nose wheel out of the sand. Now that the nose wheel was free, we started to roll. Agonizingly slow at first, but once we cleared the sand, we really started moving, and it wasn’t long before we were bouncing across the lawn like a runaway Tonka tank.
I kept the control yoke full back to keep as much weight off the nose wheel as possible, and about halfway across the yard, I felt the big Cessna struggle to get airborne and waddle into the air. I lowered the nose to stay in ground effect and build up airspeed.
Ground effect was a physics phenomenon where an airplane could lift off the ground at a lower airspeed than it could actually fly. The wings compressed the air against the earth’s surface and added extra lift, similar to when a bird swoops down and glides across the top of the ocean for a long time before having to flaps its wings to stay airborne.
Alaskan bush pilots had perfected this technique decades ago, taking off from a rough or muddy surface. They’d lift off as slow as possible, lower the nose to stay just a few feet above the ground, and without the drag of the landing gear on the rough surface they’d build up speed faster and be able to gain altitude sooner. Once the airplane is more than a wingspan’s width above the ground, all benefits of ground effect go the way of the dodo bird, and the normal rules of flight apply.
But I needed altitude. Right now. The wrought-iron fence grew bigger and bigger in my windshield, and if we didn’t clear that, we’d all die. It didn’t matter if we only crashed from eight feet high. Other then a seat belt, small general aviation airplanes have zilch in the way of crash survival built into them. Everything in aviation is engineered to keep the aircraft light, and crash testing is not part of the certification process.
At the last second before impact, I yanked hard on the yoke and we cleared the fence.
“Holy crap, that was close,” Debbie yelled up to me.
The stall warning horn blared, indicating that if we went any slower we’d lose aerodynamic lift, and like a water skier that was going too slow, we’d sink. Except that this wouldn’t be a slow or soft sink. We’d end up leaving what Chuck Yeager called “a smoking hole.”
I dropped the nose to gain some airspeed, and we flew through the neighbor’s yard so low that we triggered their motion detectors and the backyard lights came on. I wondered if they had a security camera, and if it started recording automatically when the lights came on. Good thing I’d thought ahead and covered the ID numbers painted on the sides of my airplane, because if this hit YouTube, we’d break the internet faster than a naked Kardashian’s butt shelving a glass of champagne.
We skimmed the water in the neighbor’s above-ground pool and my right wingtip took out his folded-up pool ladder with a clang that reminded me of a home run I’d hit in Little League with an aluminum bat.
We were still flying, though, and I steered the Cessna between two trees and into the next neighbor’s yard, still unable to climb out of ground effect. Every time I started to gain some airspeed, I hit something that slowed me down.
Thank God the neighbor didn’t have any pool ladders, but he did have one of those inflatable kids’ fun houses set up in the middle of his yard.
I quick glanced my airspeed indicator, and just as I thought, I still didn’t have enough airspeed to climb out of ground effect, although I managed to steer us around the pink fun house.
Most of it, anyway. I sliced through the corner of it with about two feet of my right wing. In my peripheral vision, and with the help of their motion-detector-triggered security lighting, I saw the whole pink house, complete with a gigantic birthday cake painted on it, lift off the ground. We carried it for a few seconds, the nose of the airplane yawing hard to the right from the added drag of the rapidly deflating fun house, before it slipped off my wingtip and fluttered down into their neighbor’s yard.
I prayed that none of the birthday party kids were camping out in it…
Without hitting any more objects, my powerful little airplane was able to gain some speed, and a few seconds after my playhouse home-wrecking affair, my airspeed indicator passed through seventy, and I slid the yoke back and we started our climb. We cleared the adjoining neighbor’s tree line with a few feet to spare and were on our way.
I turned and looked at Debbie and Catherine. They were sitting up in the cargo area and hugging each other so tight I thought they would cut off each other’s circulation. Catherine was crying into her sister’s shoulder, and even with only the soft glow of the instrument panel, I could see that they were ghostly white.
I handed Debbie her headset and she put it on.
“How do you read me?”
“That was awful, Jack.”
“How’s she holding up?”
“Terrible. Could you have made the takeoff any more harrowing? I think I soiled my pants. Not funny.”
“Sorry. But we made it.”
“Just get us home safe.” She took the headset off and threw it at me, nailing me in the back of the head. I guess our conversation was over. Sheesh, women. I’d just displayed the greatest skill in piloting since Sully landed in the Hudson, and she wasn’t happy.
I focused on the flying, enjoying the slow rise of the sun over the mountains to the east, and in less than an hour I was making a more traditional power-on landing at my grass strip in Eminence. Sure did feel good to be home. I pulled up to my hangar and shut down the engine.
Saber and Buddy came tearing out of the doggie door to see what all the commotion was. Despite his stoic appearance, Saber was always glad to greet us with a wagging stub of a tail. Buddy, on the other hand, didn’t have any appearance other than a rambunctious fun-loving puppy attitude that, no matter what your mood, made you smile.
I ran into the house and grabbed a robe for Catherine. She put it on and looked at me with a scowl like I was Hitler reincarnated. She started to sob and clung tight to Debbie. Saber walked over and put a paw across her lap, then laid his head on it.
Debbie looked at me with a furrowed forehead. “What happened back there?”
“It kind of went downhill fast. There was a lot of close-up violence and a high body count. I’m sure she feared for her life, probably thought I was a hired killer. I bet that’s why she’s so upset.”
“Or she could just be reliving your last takeoff.”
Ouch.
Debbie and Catherine stood up and walked arm in arm to the house. Catherine kept looking over her shoulder at me like I was some sort of evil demon. Saber went with them, staying by
Catherine’s side, as if he sensed her need for protection. Buddy continued to harass any rabbit that dared rear its docile head. Until Ben, my semi-adoptive black bear cub, came out of the tree line.
Ben must have been an orphan, because I never saw him with a parent, and he was too young to be on his own. Black bears aren’t very common in Eminence, and they’re usually docile as long as you don’t feed them. I liked having him around, so I did feed him once in a while, but only small snacks over by the tree line.
When Saber first caught a whiff of Ben, he was wary, but not scared. I didn’t think Dobermans had a fear gene in their DNA, one of the many reasons I thought the breed special. He and Ben seemed to have developed a mutual respect for each other and stayed out of each other’s way.
Buddy wasn’t privy to their agreement, and when Ben stood up on his hind legs and started sniffing the air, Buddy forgot all about the rabbits and his moldy chew ball souvenir from Newburgh and ran inside so fast that he whacked the top of his head going through the doggie door. He banged it so hard that the blinds in the whole house rattled. I thought he might be concussed.
A few seconds later, I saw him jump onto the couch. He watched Ben through the living room window, barked at him a few times, and acted all manly now that he was safe inside the house.
I inspected my airplane for damage and I found a small dent in the leading edge of the wing where we’d taken out the pool ladder. Other than that, my baby was undamaged. Aircraft-grade aluminum is one tough material. I made a mental note to bang that dent out to get rid of all evidence of my Monty Python–like takeoff.
I removed all my weapons and lined them up on my shop bench for cleaning. The slide assembly of the Glock had to go into my meltdown pile, along with the bolt assembly for the Remington. We’d used lead bullets that deformed on impact, so forensics wouldn’t be able to link the bullets to our gun barrels, but the shell casings were traceable, and I’d littered them all over the place.