by Simon Wood
parking lot, but Jack Murphy intercepted him by coming out from his workshop.
Damn. The aircraft mechanic was the last person to whom Josh wanted to speak. It wasn’t that Josh didn’t like the man; he did. Murphy was a conscientious mechanic and paid loving detail to the aircrafts he maintained.
He nurtured the machines like prize blooms,
and like all keen gardeners, the product of his labors was evident on his hands. Engine oil and grease were always caked under his fingernails and the same cocktail of fluids stained his meaty hands. Though not obvious at first glance, his hands had the delicate control of a surgeon’s. Josh knew the mechanic would want to meticulously tell him every minute detail of the overhaul, but he didn’t have the time or the desire to talk about his aircraft; he wanted to know what James
Mitchell was after. “Hey, Jack,” Josh said.
“Josh, I suppose you’ve spoken to Mark about the
overhaul, but I wanted to let you know what I found,”
the mechanic began.
Josh feigned interest for about ten minutes before he managed to get a word in and made his excuses. Murphy seemed a little upset by Josh’s brush-off, but he would have to live with it. Josh would make it up to him and let the mechanic bore him for an hour when he had his life back in order. Finally, he got back to the Caravan and set off to Bob’s house to get some answers.
The professional cursed from the protection of the sun bleached brush. Where’s he going? Goddamn it. He
saw his plans trashed, again. Michaels had survived the drowning in the Sacramento River and it looked like he was going to escape death again. He watched Michaels’s minivan drive out of the parking lot.
His target wasn’t doing what he was supposed to do.
From his undercover work at the party, he’d discovered Michaels was meant to be flying this morning, but the view from his binoculars told a different tale, one that didn’t follow the plot. How could something so good go so bad?
Getting invited to his target’s barbecue had been the perfect example of serendipity. He’d only gone to Bob Deuce for background information, but finding out the insurance agent and Michaels were friends was fortuitous to say the least. He could have been knocked
down with a feather when Deuce asked him to the
party. And it got better when his target and his flying buddy blabbed about their plane—their pride and joy.
The plan that came to him was so simple, so obvious.
He’d come out to the airfield after the party and gone to work. The plane was easy to spot with its ostentatious paint job. All it needed was a sign: “I’m Josh
Michaels’s plane. Cripple me.” The lack of airport security made his deed simple. There were no gates or rent-a-cops. He had all the time in the world to do what he wanted.
The professional ran over to the aircraft with a few simple tools in his hands. He stared into the nose of the aircraft. It was child’s play to tamper with a light aircraft.
All its sensitive parts were exposed. It had pathetic door locks, no immobilizer, no alarm system,
nothing. The professional got to work.
He disconnected the unions to the oil cooler in the aircraft’s nose with a pair of wrenches. He snipped the split pins to the nuts on the elevator and rudder and loosened the nuts, just for luck. His work done, he slipped back into the night.
All had gone to according plan until he watched his target rendezvous with his partner, then walk away, get in his car and leave. The professional wasn’t upset because the wrong person was about to fly the unsafe
plane, but because it ruined his good work. Nothing could be done now. He couldn’t remedy the situation.
He watched the multicolored airplane trundle onto the runway, wind up its engine, roar down the runway and lift off for the skies. He took the binoculars from around his neck, wrapped the leather neck strap around them and returned to his car. Michaels hadn’t been aware he’d parked next to his predator. The closeness of their vehicles amused him. He got into his car and drove off to plan another accident.
As Mark Keegan roared down the runway, he failed to notice the oil dripping from the Cessna’s cooler hoses.
The plane climbed slowly. Mark leveled out at 2500
feet and saw the world below him. It was certainly a perfect day for flying—the crisp spring day brought with it an endless view of the San Joaquin Valley. He had to take advantage of days like these as often as he could. When the long California summer began, a yellow layer of smog smeared over the landscape would
blight every flying day.
Josh will be kicking himself when I tell him what it’s like up here. He enjoyed the solitude flying gave; the world and its problems stayed below while he rode above it all. Once he was in the air, his heart rate seemed to slow by five or more beats. This was therapy, not a hobby.
Thirty minutes into the flight, Mark didn’t like the Cessna’s performance. This was the third time he had to apply more throttle to maintain the engine revs and air speed. The aircraft has just been serviced. Nothing better be wrong with it, Mark thought. Even an aircraft as small and as simple as the C152 cost a lot of
money to keep in the air. To Mark’s and Josh’s credit they took every precaution, but something was wrong with this airplane. Nervousness held him like the three point harness that fixed him to his seat. He checked his coordinates and ETA to Stockton.
Mark’s agitation made him cautious. He made a
safety sweep of the instruments for some clue to his plane’s poor performance. He closed his eyes for a moment, took a breath and let it out with a curse. He
didn’t want to believe what the oil pressure and temperature gauges told him. His nervousness changed to fear.
The two indicators were in the red. The oil pressure had disappeared and the oil temperature was too high.
The dangerous levels meant this was an emergency.
Mark had an agonizing decision to make. Did he shut the engine down and make an emergency landing or
did he chance it and fly on to Stockton? He checked his position through the Plexiglas window. He had passed over Sacramento and was over empty fields, a good sign. Mark wiped a clammy hand over his dry mouth and tried to swallow.
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Simon Wood
“Murphy, what have you done to this plane?”
He wanted to blame someone for the fear he felt; today, it was his mechanic. He avoided the decision, hoping for a miracle. Mark stared at the pressure and
temperature needles—they weren’t returning to green.
He knew they never would. He had to get with the program and follow his training. His training would save
him. He murmured the steps for landing an aircraft without power.
Made keen by fear, Mark’s oversensitive hearing
heard every missed beat of the engine. He swore he heard the pistons binding up with every passing second.
The plane jolted like a sledgehammer had struck it from beneath as it rode a thermal. Mark’s heart skipped again. For a moment, he’d thought it was the end.
With a shaking hand he initiated the safety procedure.
He pulled back the throttle to idle, the mixture to lean, switched off the fuel pump and turned the magnetos key to the Off position. The prop slowed and shuddered to a halt. The plane began to fall from the sky.
The silence was eerie. As a pilot, his ears had become accustomed to certain sounds in flight. Now, the whistle of the air flowing over the wings was the only sound to be heard. Mark’s heart raced. His sweat chilled him and his clothes clung to his flesh.
Rapidly losing altitude, the plane fell at more than six hundred feet per minute. Mark saw the increasing rate of descent on his gauge. He focused on the crash landing simulations he’d practiced so many times, but this wasn’t practice, it was for real. Josh had always ragged him about his compulsion to plan for the worst.
Josh would be thanking him if he were here right n
ow.
Mark wished he was here to share the burden of this task, the most frightening of events. A crash landing.
Mark quickly established a glide descent that left him approximately four minutes of flight time. He looked out for a landing sight and focused on the field directly below. He would circle the damned thing until he ran out of altitude. He made his distress call to the Stockton Air Tower.
“Mayday … mayday … mayday. Stockton Tower, this is November, two, three, seven, two, niner.” Dread filled Mark’s voice, his words slow, hindered by an inflexible tongue that clung to the roof of his mouth.
Relieved the words had come, the safety procedure started; he knew he could do it. The practice attempts never prepared him mentally to deal with the real thing, but he was coping. Silently, he thanked God that his mind hadn’t seized. Everything was going to be okay.
A concerned air traffic controller at Stockton came back and allowed him to pass his message. Mark gave his details—the plane type, the nature of the emergency, location, plan of action, and who was on board.
His monotone speech was textbook perfect—his instructor would be proud, although he probably would
have complained about his slow delivery. But how
many times had his instructor crash-landed? He gave cursory attention to Stockton Tower. He concentrated on landing the plane. They could do nothing for him. It was his bird to land. He just wanted them to know where to pick him up. Mark guided the plane on its downwind leg for landing.
The Cessna’s rate of descent increased, increasing airspeed as a result. Mark eased back on the column to get the airspeed under control. Nothing happened. The plane continued to fall at a faster rate. He pulled back on the controls even more. The column moved without resistance. Something else was wrong. Mark stared back at the tail and pulled back on the column again.
The elevator didn’t move.
“No. This can’t be happening.”
He stamped on the rudder pedals. The rudder didn’t obey his inputs either. The tail-plane was dead. It was still there, but it wasn’t responding.
It can’t all be going wrong. He’d kept his panic in check, but he couldn’t prevent it from overwhelming him now. His aircraft was going down and he was just a passenger at its controls. He glanced at the altimeter— four hundred feet. It would all be over in less than a minute.
Mark fought to control the Cessna. The plane descended and the speed increased. Every knot in increased
airspeed reduced his chances of survival. With
a paralyzed tail, he’d never be able to bring the plane down for a soft landing.
The airspeed indicator read seventy knots … seventy five knots… eighty knots…
The altimeter read three hundred … two hundred and fifty… two hundred…
Mark stared at the field rushing up at him with increasing velocity, pulling on controls that didn’t comply
while keeping his thumb on the radio transmit
button.
He screamed, “Mayday, mayday, mayday,” over and
over again.
Josh peeled off the freeway to Bob Deuce’s home. He listened to an alternative rock station pump out track after track from its latest playlist. He’d passed through Sacramento and was in the residential district of Laguna when the newsflash interrupted the next scheduled track.
“Some tragic news. A small airplane has crashed between Sacramento and Stockton, not very far from Interstate Five. Rescue services have arrived and are at
the scene,” the disc jockey said.
Josh stamped on the brakes, bringing the Dodge to a shuddering halt. Vehicles behind did likewise, but with angry hands on horns. Fortunately, nobody hit each other. Tires fighting for traction on the asphalt, Josh made a U-turn on the two-lane road. The minivan
roared off in the direction of 1-5.
Josh instinctively knew the downed aircraft was his and he had to see if Mark was okay. Not a believer in clairvoyance, premonitions or anything else found on the X-Files, he still knew the news report was linked to him. Without a care for himself and other road users, Josh tore along the interstate. He listened to the rest of the DJ’s announcement for the approximate location site. He kept his eyes trained on the fields to either side of the four-lane highway. To his left he saw drivers rubbernecking out of their vehicles at something in the
field.
Josh veered off 1-5 onto the exit ramp at a steady seventy-five, ignoring the thirty-five miles per hour speed limit with impunity. He braked hard, the vehicle weaving under the stress. Without halting, Josh turned left onto the road, taking him over the highway and toward the spectacle in the field.
He closed in on the field and the concentration of people and vehicles came into clearer view. All the emergency services were represented—police, fire and paramedics. In the field, people were gathered around an object.
Josh’s Caravan came to another shuddering halt,
stopping with two wheels on the road and two wheels in the dirt. He saw it, recognizable from two hundred feet, the colorful tail of his Cessna C152 pointing skyward.
It looked like a toy discarded by an angry child.
The emergency services people and their vehicles obscured the rest of the plane from sight. He clambered
out of the minivan and raced across the road without paying any attention to other vehicles.
The policemen keeping everyone back from the
scene closed upon him. “Where do you think you’re going, sir?” one officer demanded.
Josh ignored him and ran on. He didn’t have time for questions.
Two officers engaged him and swiftly halted his
progress before he got to the three bar fence. They unceremoniously brought him to the ground. All three
men crashed sprawling on the highway.
“I’m Josh Michaels and that’s my plane!” he
shouted, as one policeman started to handcuff him. He repeated himself twice more before they listened.
The cop uncuffed Josh and said without apology,
“Next time have the presence of mind to approach an accident scene with more sense.”
The officer led Josh to the scene, but Josh half-ran, half-walked and it looked like Josh led the cop. He ignored the whining pain from the cuts he’d taken to the
hands, knees and chin when the policemen had brought him down.
“What makes you think this is your aircraft?” The cop’s speech sounded choppy over the rough terrain.
“That tail section.” Josh pointed at the colorful design.
“Those are our colors. And I left my flying partner an hour ago before he took off for Stockton
Metropolitan.”
“How did you know the plane had crashed?”
Josh ignored the cop’s question as he made it to the constellation of people circled around the crash site.
Men tried to stop Josh from getting too close.
“Let him through. He may be the plane’s owner,”
the out-of-breath policeman said.
The men parted to let him through. Josh came up on the rear of the plane, giving him his first sight of the Cessna. People were asking him questions. Josh didn’t listen.
His plane was buried nose-down in the ground, resting on its starboard wing. The wing had buckled and
split, dumping its fuel load onto the plowed earth.
There’d been no fire, but fire extinguisher foam had been sprayed over the spilt fuel. Josh moved around to the side of the aircraft. Everything on the front end of the plane had been destroyed. The undercarriage was bent and twisted, the nose wheel invisible. The propeller had embedded itself into the ground. Struts had
been torn from fixings. A spiderweb of cracks speckled the Plexiglas window. A trickle of blood ran along the dashboard. The plane’s artwork looked vandalized on its wrecked canvas. Josh read his and Mark Keegan’s names on the door.
“I’m Josh Michaels.” He pointed at his nam
e on the plane. “This is my plane.”
Josh saw Mark Keegan’s body flopped over the control column like an unwanted doll. Over twenty men
from emergency services were just standing around. He went to open the copilot’s door. A paramedic restrained him.
“Why aren’t you helping him?” Josh demanded.
“There’s nothing we can do for him. He’s dead.”
Mark was dead. Everyone could see that.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Again, Josh was talking to the police. He spent the next few hours at the aircraft crash site. For reasons of safety, the police had manhandled him away from the wreckage.
The site had to be cleared, the crash area staked off and the downed plane screened from prying eyes.
Still in sight of the screened plane, he explained all he knew about Mark and the aircraft’s history. He also identified Mark’s corpse when it was finally removed from the Cessna. The questions asked seemed to be coming from a long way away, as if via an old transatlantic telephone line, and he answered in the same
fashion.
Images of Mark flooded Josh’s mind, alternating
from the pilot’s dead body to their last conversation before he took off. He thought about the check he’d given to Mark still in his back pocket. The concept of profiting from the unpaid debt because his friend was dead
plagued him. Mark had no wife and Josh wondered
whom he should contact. He felt obligated to inform someone and repay the money he owed. The only person he could think of was Mark’s sister.
Eventually, the police told him to go home and expect an investigation from the Federal Aviation Authority and National Transport Safety Board. He didn’t do as he was told.
Josh drove back to Laguna and got to Bob’s house
just after five in the evening. Bob welcomed Josh in typical Bob weekend-wear—baggy shorts, a big T-shirt
and Teva sandals.
“Hey, Josh, I was expecting you earlier. C’mon in man.” Bob ushered Josh into his house. “Nancy said you called this morning—what’s up?”
“Mark Keegan’s dead,” Josh said.
“Dead?” Nancy asked, walking into the hall.