Unaccompanied Minor

by Hollis Gillespie

  “It’s in the mountains somewhere, at a high altitude. He travels there in a plane—”

  “A plane!” Officer Ned exclaimed, like it was a big breakthrough.

  “Yes, a plane. It’s a small Cessna aircraft. He and the kids are flown there by a pilot who has a heart attack and dies on the way back from picking them up—”

  “Heart attack!” Another breakthrough for Officer Ned.

  “Yes, the pilot dies mid-flight. Mac has to land the plane in the mountains and they all end up stranded.”

  “Hmmm. What else?”

  “Um… I don’t think there’s any more important information from the episode.”

  “Young lady.” Officer Ned attempted to puff out his chest and sound authoritative, but the bullet wounds and the painkillers prevented that. “I am an officer of the law,” he continued as best he could. “I am an expert in detection. I am trained to look at the most minuscule of details and develop a theory! Now, what else happens in the episode?”

  “Uh, okay,” I said, and continued to describe the details of the episode, about how the delinquents were a group of four—three guys and one girl—and how they all came from rival gangs, how one got saved from a rattlesnake when Mac used a smoldering piece of wood from the fire to create warmth to attract the snake away from the sleeping bag, and how another got saved from a mountain lion when Mac used a hollow log to divert water to splash on it because everyone knows cats hate water, and how Mac tried to dissipate the infighting of the delinquents by assigning them tasks to create camaraderie, and how, in the end, he was able to repair the damaged aircraft and fly them all to safety.

  Officer Ned and Malcolm began to theorize amongst themselves. Soon they were dissecting every detail and even delving into the subliminal side of things.

  “A group of four delinquents, I bet that signifies the four cabins on the L-1011 plane,” Malcolm began.

  “Oooh, good one,” Officer Ned interjected, “and the mountain lion must represent the flight attendant who shot me, and the rattlesnake represents the man who shot Flo….”

  “I hadn’t thought of that! Of course they do!”

  “And the tension between MacGyver and the group of kids represents the struggle between innovation and authority….”

  “Uh… oh-kay.”

  “Like, how you could be turned down for promotion four times even though you took two bullets for your partner, who got his promotion, didn’t he? Yes he did, but me? No, not me. All I got was stuck doing these prisoner escort assignments, and why? Because I don’t bow to The Man, that’s why….”

  “Officer Ned, let’s bring it back to the message in the MacGyver episode,” Malcolm urged patiently. I had a feeling Malcolm was experienced in bringing people back from the precipice of a prescription drug–induced rant. Remember, I’d met his mother.

  “Right, yes.” Officer Ned immediately returned to the task at hand. “Uh, okay, there’s four kids, maybe that’s the number of hijackers we’re dealing with….” His previous rambling did make me remember something, though. It was an incident early in the episode in which MacGyver plucks a canister of pills from the dead pilot’s breast pocket and murmurs to himself, “Nitroglycerin.”

  Nitroglycerine is famous for two things. One, it’s super highly explosive; in fact it’s the ingredient that make dynamite sticks go boom. And two, nitroglycerin, taken in minuscule amounts, can be used as a medicine that opens blood vessels to improve blood flow in order to allay a heart attack, or simply to alleviate chest pains during angina. Plenty of passengers experience chest pains on long flights—in fact, I’m sure there were plenty above us right then, clutching their chests and being ignored by the imposter-laden cabin crew—which is why World­Air always keeps a canister containing twenty-five tablets of nitroglycerin on every aircraft located in the emergency medical kit!

  “Malcolm,” I said, interrupting his and Officer Ned’s florid attempts to decipher the symbolism of every scene in the MacGyver episode. (“The plane, you see, represents our soaring dreams, only to come crashing to the ground.”) “Malcolm, can you hand me the EMK?”

  “What’s an EMK?” he asked.

  “Emergency medical kit,” I clarified. “You brought it with you, right?”

  “You bet I did.” He handed it to me.

  I plunked it at my feet and crouched down to rummage through the transparent pockets on the inside sleeves where all the medications reserved for physicians’ use were stowed. Malcolm situated his Mountain Dew lantern to aid me.

  “Found it!” I exclaimed, brandishing the canister.

  “What is that?” Malcolm asked. Officer Ned was beginning to look worried again.

  “Nitroglycerin tablets.”

  “So totally awesome! Are you gonna use them to blow your way through the cockpit?”

  Officer Ned stepped between me and Malcolm. “Wait, hold on now, just what are you planning to do?”

  “We need to blow through the hatch in the floor of the flight deck in order to gain control of the cockpit—”

  “No, not on your life, no.” Officer Ned shook his head and actually wagged his finger at me. “You are not using those to blow anything up. Hand them over to me.”

  I tucked the tablets into the pocket of my apron. Officer Ned was not the only one who could ignore directions. “You didn’t let me finish.” I was starting to get exasperated. “Of course I’m not gonna use these tablets to blow anything up. These are not explosive, they’re medication.” Believe me, I knew. Flo had set me straight when I’d griped that MacGyver had neglected to use the tablets to his benefit when we’d watched the episode together.

  “Then what were you planning to use to blow into the cockpit?” he asked.

  “These,” I said, producing the three bullets I’d collected from the bottom of Flo’s bag.

  “Are you nuts?” Officer Ned asked. “Those are just bullets! You need a gun to use them.”

  “We see that differently,” I told him.

  CHAPTER 14

  We continued our progress along the catwalk in the cargo bay. I was in front, Malcolm behind me with the lantern in his hand and Captain Beefheart snuggled securely to his chest in the improvised baby sling, and Officer Ned bringing up the rear, limping along with his hand on Malcolm’s shoulder. On either side of us were the passengers’ checked bags, stacked with all the order and care that big banks might give to the possessions of people evicted from their foreclosed homes.

  When I reached the avionics area, I directed the others to follow me as I climbed past the shelves and crawled through to get to the platform on the other side. Malcolm and I made it through easily, even with Beefheart strapped to Malcolm’s chest, while Officer Ned ambled up and over with the grace of a wounded water buffalo. True, he was shot up and all, but still, it amounted to a moment of much-needed comic relief for me and Malcolm.

  “Stop laughing!” he admonished us. “Seriously, you kids, this is serious.”

  He was right, of course, but, and I realize I’m speaking for Malcolm here, we really could have used a little levity right then, considering the day’s events, which included the dead air marshal, the dead real Brighton McPherson, the dead imposter Brighton McPherson, the almost-dead Malcolm, Beefheart, and Officer Ned, and I don’t even want to talk about Flo, and this doesn’t even count my dead friend Jalyce Sanders. Yes, this was serious—very, very serious—but such seriousness can weigh on you like a necklace of anvils. Unless you take it off, you can’t move because you’re so paralyzed. So we laughed.

  Because we had to move.

  Once Officer Ned had climbed to our side, I had Malcolm raise the lantern to illuminate the ceiling above us. We were looking at the other side of the floor hatch that opened into the cockpit, the one a pilot would use if he wanted to come down and access the avionics area from the flight deck.

  This was not a cockpit door. The cockpit door was an opening that led to the passenger cabin. That door had been retrofitted and fortifi
ed with enough security measures to keep a cavalcade of elephants from breaking it down. The flight deck floor hatch on an L-1011 exists for the purpose of utility, not as a formal aircraft exit or entrance. It’s accessed on the ground when mechanics and engineers need to address any adjustments in order to maintain the operational health of the aircraft. It’s accessed during flight when pilots need to address equipment failure. Officially. Flo had regaled me with stories, though, of back in the day when many a pilot and flight attendant, or even pilot and passenger, earned their “mile-high” status by descending through the hatch to engage in amorous activity. Of course, she included herself in that group.

  But never in the history of aviation—and I’m not exaggerating here—has the flight deck hatch been breached from beneath during flight. To achieve that would have meant someone had cut a hole through the bulkhead wall beneath, traversed the catwalk through cargo, and climbed past the avionics area to stand where we were, looking up at it from below. So no small feat, right?

  Right?

  Fine. I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the enormity of what we were about to do, since we didn’t have time to while we were actually doing it.

  Agent Kowalski:

  Just finish your statement, please.

  April Manning:

  Okay, we were looking up at a watertight deck hatch like the kind you’d find on a boat. Back in the fifties and sixties when luxury airliners were being built by Lockheed and Boeing, they used nautical references all the time in their designs, because aircrafts were considered ships in the sky, kind of. That’s why you’ll hear the cabin crews use terms like “forward” and “aft,” and why some airlines refer to the cabin-crew coordinator as “purser.” The word “cabin” itself is even a nautical term.

  So, again, the floor hatch was literally like a deck hatch on a boat, secured by medium-weight slip-click hardware with a single lock. The hinges were on the opposite side from us, so I couldn’t disassemble them, but I could discern from the bolts opposite them where the locking lever was located.

  I produced one of the bullets from my pocket and tried to bite the base off of it, but I wasn’t doing a good job.

  “What are you doing?” Officer Ned whispered.

  “I’m trying to bite off the base so I can remove the gunpowder.”

  Officer Ned thrust out his hand. “Give me one.” I passed one to him and continued struggling with my own. In the end, Officer Ned opened both bullets (he had really strong teeth) and I folded the gunpowder from them into a large square bandage from the first aid kit, careful to make sure the sticky edges were sealed together to make a snug little pouch for the powder, which I then crammed into the seam of the hatch directly under the lock. I shoved the remaining bullet in after it and was pleased to see it stuck in there pretty well, with the base protruding out about a quarter of an inch.

  “Okay,” I whispered to Officer Ned. “Gimme one of your boots.”

  “What?” He took a small, protective step back. “No! I need these boots!”

  “Officer Ned,” I addressed him impatiently. “We need something to bang against that bullet. Malcolm is wearing tennis shoes, and I just have on a pair of loafers. The heel of your boot is the hardest thing we have.” I refrained from saying “other than your head,” because that was just too easy. “So hand it over.”

  He glared at me sternly, like he was really going to fight me on this, then he deflated and rolled his eyes. “Fine!” He leaned against the metal access ladder and pulled off his left boot. “Take it. Just… take it.” He handed me the boot. Seriously, what was it about Officer Ned and his boots?

  I thanked him, and asked him and Malcolm to stand aside in case there was any, like, shrapnel or something from the fallout of blowing the hatch open. Officer Ned then tried to insist that he be the one to bang the bullet with his own boot, but I talked him out of it for two reasons. One, he already had a bullet in his ribs, which really diminished his ability to swing in an upward thrust. And two, I didn’t trust him to really give it a whack, seeing as how he was so attached to that boot and all.

  Then Malcolm tried to insist that he be the one to swing the boot, but all I had to do was point to Captain Beefheart all swaddled to his chest like a papoose and say, “Think again, Pocahontas.” So they both stood aside and braced themselves while I used Officer Ned’s boot to wallop the base of that bullet as hard as I could.

  My advice would be to never try this at home. In fact, don’t ever try it on an aircraft, either, unless said aircraft happens to be getting hijacked and you really have nothing to lose. Because we were not exactly sneaking up on them with this approach, what with the deafening Bang! Pow! that resulted in the explosion, albeit a controlled explosion. Kind of. Because there was a bit of shrapnel, which explains the black stippling on the side of my face right now. And the smoke. I haven’t even mentioned the smoke!

  We didn’t wait for the smoke to clear. Instead, the three of us held our breath and quickly pushed up on the underside of the hatch, expecting some resistance. Surprisingly, there was none. It flew open and the three of us burst through like a trio of coughing, dirty, bleeding jack-in-the-boxes with fists flying.

  I was the first to clamber up the ladder and into the cockpit, with Officer Ned following close behind. Again, that man can move fast, even injured and hopped up on OxyContin. He simply sprang up and landed crouched like a cougar at my side, he even somehow had time to put his boot back on. Malcolm made it in about as far as the tops of his shoulders, with little Beefheart’s face peeking up curiously from under his chin. All of us were tensed and ready for a fight, just as soon as we finished coughing and waving the smoke from our eyes. In the confusion, I could have sworn I heard a familiar voice. I fruitlessly tried to rub the sting from my eyes and steel myself for the inevitable enemy assault. I flailed my arms madly, but only encountered air and smoke. Then I heard it again. The voice.

  “Christ, kid,” Flo groused. “What took you so long?”

  CHAPTER 15

  “Flo!” I yelped. It would have been a scream, but I had a throat full of gunpowder smoke, which tends to constrict your ability in that regard. “Flo!” I threw my arms around her.

  “Watch it!” she warned, careful to keep from burning me with the tip of her cigarette like a bad crack mother. Then she realized I was crying and gave into my embrace. “Oh, okay now,” she said, the cigarette held at a distance. “There, there. Okay, stop your blubbering. C’mon now. You, too, Thor.”

  “I’m not crying,” he insisted. “The smoke is stinging my eyes.”

  “Why didn’t you just open the hatch from your side to let us in?” Malcolm asked.

  “I don’t have the key to that thing. Do you see any keys on me?”

  “I thought you were dead!” I sobbed. “I thought he shot you!”

  “He did, the bastard.”

  I pulled away to assess her condition. She looked even worse than I did. The customary wedding cake–sized bun on her head looked like it had been detonated by a land mine. Blackened tufts spiked up through the teased white wonderland that was her regular hair color. Then the realization struck me.

  “Your bun!” I said. Of course! That bun had been deceiving people into thinking she was an inch and a half taller for forty-six years.

  “Yep, saved by the bun.” She patted the mess on her head. “It even took a minute for them to realize I wasn’t dead.”

  “And they didn’t come back to finish the job?”

  “Well, yeah, but somebody intervened.”

  “Who?”

  She took a drag on her cigarette, then she studied the smoke wafting from its tip and said, “Ash.”

  “Ashtray’s right there.” I pointed to the ashtray in the armrest of the pilot’s jumpseat, a design feature left over from the days when smoking was legal on aircrafts.

  “No, April. Ash.”

  I looked at her in puzzlement. Why did she keep saying “ash?” I was showing her that the asht
ray was right….

  “Wait, what? You mean Ash? Ash Manning?” I shook my head. “He’s the one who got them to get you to come up from the lower galley. Since when does he show a molecule of compassion for anyone? Why would he suddenly grow a backbone?”

  “Well, maybe it’s because I’m kind of related to him.”

  “What? How?”

  “He’s sort of my son.”

  “What do you mean, ‘sort of your son’?”

  “I don’t know, kid, the seventies were such a blur. For all I know, Thor here is my son, too.”

  Officer Ned chuckled at that. It was the closest thing to an actual laugh I’d ever seen come out of him.

  “Flo,” I implored, “how come you never told me this?”

  “He’s not exactly something to brag about, kid. We haven’t spoken in years. He didn’t even intervene on my behalf until after they’d already shot me!”

  Huh, she was right about that. I was relieved I could continue to hate him as intensely as always, the spiky old bag of asses that he was. Malcolm cleared his throat to remind me we had important business at hand, and we should readdress it immediately. I looked down at his head sticking up from the floor hatch, and he nodded it sideways to direct my attention to the pilot’s seat.

  Right! The plane, who was piloting the plane? I turned my head to see Cinderblock at the wheel.

  CHAPTER 16

  Officer Ned intercepted me before I could attack him.

  “Calm down, April,” he said.

  “That guy tried to kill me!” I hissed. “He killed my friend Jalyce! He’s a murdering, mean old kidnapping… and he is not a pilot!”

  “April, I said calm down,” Officer Ned repeated.

  Cinderblock turned to face us and rested his elbow on the back of the pilot seat. “I am too a pilot, little miss wildcat,” he said. “Or I used to have a private pilot’s license, anyway.”

  “Arrest him!” I demanded of Officer Ned.

  “April, this is the third time now I’ve told you to calm down.” He was clutching his side in pain. I ignored him, plunked myself down in the engineer’s chair, and began digging through my bag. “What are you doing?”