The Complete Cooper Collection (All 97 Stories)

by Bernico, Bill

  “And here I thought you were some sort of aviation wizard,” Clay said. “I guess that means we won’t be landing in Denver until sometime between twelve-thirty or one o’clock.”

  “That sounds about right,” Bonnie said. “That’ll leave me a couple of hours to unwind before my meeting. You know, Clay, you never did tell me why you were flying to Denver.”

  “That’s right, I didn’t,” Clay said. “I’m afraid it’s not for something as exciting as a meeting with a lawyer. I’m just visiting a friend. I’ll be staying with him for a week and then flying home to L.A. again.”

  “Well,” Bonnie said, “if you’re going to be in town for a week, maybe we can have dinner some night and you can bring your friend along with you.”

  “The dinner part sound good,” Clay said. “But maybe I won’t bring my friend along, if that’s all right with you.” Clay thought he saw Bonnie’s face flush.

  The two of them sat there, enjoying each other’s company and losing track of time. They were reminded when a voice came over the intercom announcing the departure of the Flagstaff to Denver flight. Passengers were instructed to board at gate four.

  “That’s us,” Bonnie said, sliding out of the booth.

  She and Clay walked to gate four and handed their passes to the clerk. When they got inside the small plane, Clay noticed that his assigned seat was two rows ahead of Bonnie’s and across the aisle. The seats were arranged with only one on each side of the aisle and four deep. There was a gentleman in a business suit and overcoat sitting in the seat across the aisle from Bonnie. Clay stood over the man and looked down on him.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Clay said. “Could I possibly change seats with you? I’m two seats straight ahead.”

  “Sure,” the man said, rising. “I didn’t want to sit this far back anyway.”

  “Thank you,” Clay said and took the seat across from Bonnie. He buckled his seat belt, settled in and sighed.

  Bonnie stowed her carry-on bag overhead and buckled herself in as well. She looked across the aisle at Clay and smiled. “Here we go,” she said.

  Once they were in the air and at cruising altitude, Clay unbuckled his seat belt and leaned over toward Bonnie, who had already unbuckled her belt. “Not quite as cozy as the first plane,” he said, “but we can still talk for a while.”

  And talk they did. Before they realized it, half of this last leg of the trip was behind them. Bonnie looked out her window and then over at Clay. “Did you know that right now we’re probably right over the only place in this whole country where four state’s borders meet?”

  “Really,” Clay said. “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “It’s a fact,” Bonnie said. “Right below us is where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado come together to form kind of a plus sign. If you were down there, you could actually stand in four states all at the same time.”

  “No kidding,” Clay said. “Do people really want do that?”

  “Hey,” Bonnie said, “they actually have a place down there called Four Corners Monument with four parking lots. Of course there’s only one road to and from it. New Mexico put it up so it you want to visit it, you have to come through New Mexico.”

  “Learn something new every day,” Clay said and smiled across at Bonnie.

  They talked for another twenty minutes, occasionally holding hands like a couple of teenagers. Clay released Bonnie’s hand and leaned the other way, looking out his window at a combination of mountains and forest below. “Gees,” Clay said. “It looks like there’s enough lumber down there to build another Spruce Goose.”

  “A what?” Bonnie said, glancing out her own window.

  “A Spruce Goose,” Clay repeated. “Remember Howard Hughes and that big wooden airplane he built during World War II? The press dubbed that The Spruce Goose. It flew briefly just one time and it’s been in mothballs ever since. What a waste of time and perfectly good lumber.”

  Bonnie opened her mouth to ask Clay something but was interrupted by a sudden drop in altitude before the plane leveled off again. “Turbulence,” she said to Clay. “Nothing to be alarmed at.” She started to say something again and once more the plane dipped before righting itself again. She could see into the cockpit from where she sat. Out in front of the plane she spotted the familiar V shape of a flock of Canada Geese. They didn’t swerve and neither did the plane. Three of the geese hit the plane in the right propeller, causing the small aircraft to tip to the right. Bonnie nearly fell out of her seat from the impact.

  “What the hell was that?” Clay said.

  “I think we hit a goose or two,” Bonnie said.

  The other six passengers were excitedly talking now, most of them looking out their windows at the terrain below. The captain came on the intercom and informed the passengers that one of the engines had been disabled by a goose hitting it. As he talked, the goose at the end of the V impacted with the windshield across from the pilot. On its way into the windshield, the goose had come in contact with the tip of the left propeller, throwing off the prop’s balance. The plane shuddered and shook violently before the pilot killed the power to the left prop. His voice came back on the intercom.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the captain said, “it looks like we’ll be forced to make an emergency landing. Stay in your seat and buckle your seat belts. This may be a hard landing. Hang on.”

  Both engines were off now and the pilot was struggling with the yoke to try to glide the plane to the ground. Clay looked out his window and saw a clearing in the trees. It didn’t look very large from his vantage point and he hoped the captain possessed enough skill to set the small plane down in that clearing. The ground got closer and closer and the clearing appeared much bigger now, but the plane was drifting to the right. People in the other seats ahead of Clay were screaming or bending over in their seats. Some held their hands over their heads while others grabbed the arm rests of their seat and just gritted their teeth.

  Clay could see the treetops now, mostly pine and spruce. The plane drifted lower and lower until the treetops were level with Clay’s window. He wondered why the captain hadn’t lowered the landing wheels, but then realized that with all the snow on the ground, that the plane could probably slide on its belly easier than rolling through the snow.

  When the plane finally impacted with the ground, it jolted Clay in his seat. The plane bounced twice and then slid across the snowy terrain. It skidded sideways for a while and then came the crash. The plane’s left wing connected with a pine tree and ripped it from the fuselage. The plane spun halfway around and was now sliding backwards. Before the plane came to a complete stop, Clay glanced over at Bonnie. Her eyes were closed tightly and her lips were moving but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. Clay tried to see ahead of him, through the cockpit. Just then the right wing caught another pine tree and spun the plane around again so that they were now sliding forward again. Through the cockpit, Clay could see a really large pine tree directly in their path.

  “Hold on,” he yelled to Bonnie and then braced himself for the impact.

  The plane’s nose made a dead center impact with the pine tree, smashing the rest of the windshield. Large branches broke off the tree and sailed through the windshield into the cockpit and up to the first two rows of seats. The plane finally stopped moving and it actually took Clay a few seconds to realize that he’d come through the ordeal alive. His nose was bleeding, but it was nothing serious. He looked over at Bonnie, who was leaning against the left side of the fuselage. He unbuckled himself and stepped over to her seat, unbuckling her seatbelt as well. He held her head and turned it toward him.

  “Bonnie,” he said in a panic, “are you all right?”

  Bonnie opened her eyes and blinked a few times and then took in a deep breath. She looked into Clay’s eyes and blinked again. “I think so,” she said. “I don’t think anything’s broken.” Then she saw the blood on Clay’s face. “What happened to you?”

  “It’s just a bloo
dy nose,” Clay said. “I’m fine. We’d better check the other passengers.”

  He and Bonnie started up the aisle, checking the condition of the other passengers as they proceeded. The guy sitting directly ahead of Clay was sitting with his head in an unusual angle. Clay touched the man’s head and it flopped to the other side. He was beyond help.

  The woman in the seat ahead of Bonnie’s looked worse than Clay. Her face was covered in blood and the top of her skull was caved in, but her eyes were fixed wide open. Bonnie quickly looked away.

  Two seats ahead of where Clay was sitting was the man he’d traded seats with. When Clay saw what the pine branch had done to this poor man, he turned and vomited in the aisle. That should have been me, Clay thought. Everyone else sitting forward of Bonnie and Clay was also killed in the impact.

  “Stay here,” Clay said, holding Bonnie back with his arm. “I’m going to look in on the captain.” He stepped up to the cockpit, pushing pine branches out of his way as he approached. A quick look into the cockpit confirmed what he had feared. The captain was still buckled into his seat but his head was gone. Clay jumped back away from the cockpit and turned toward Bonnie. “Don’t look,” he told her.

  *****

  Elliott Copper glanced at his watch and then over at his wife, Gloria. “Well,” he said, “Dad should just about be in Denver by now.”

  Gloria looked up at the wall clock above the office door. “Most likely,” she said and returned her attention to her laptop screen.

  *****

  Clay stepped back over to where Bonnie was waiting. “We’d better get out of the plane for now,” he said. “You know, just to be safe. We have to make sure there no fuel leaking beneath us or we could be joining the rest of these poor souls before long.”

  Bonnie grabbed her carry-on bag and followed Clay through a gaping hole in the front part of the right fuselage wall. He helped her down onto the ground and walked her away from the plane. They stood under a large pine tree and waited, watching for signs of fuel leakage. After fifteen minutes of not seeing anything wet under or around the plane, Clay walked with Bonnie back to the plane. He helped her step up into the body again and then looked around the inside of the plane.

  “We’re better off staying with the plane,” he told Bonnie. “If rescuers find the plane, we’d better be in it or near it. And they might not find us right away, so we’ll have to use whatever we can find to shelter us from the cold outside.” He gestured with his chin toward the front of the plane. “Go through whatever luggage you can find and see if you can find anything to wear. I’ll look for any blankets. We’re going to have to block off the back end of the plane from all that open space in the front.”

  Bonnie dug through several suitcases that she’d found under the seats. She pulled out several sweaters and shirts and pants and piled them all in the back of the plane, behind the seats she and Clay had occupied. In one suitcase, Bonnie had found a box of fancy chocolates, probably a gift for someone in Denver. Clay found eight blankets, one above each seat, and put them with the clothes Bonnie had found.

  “You’d think that out of those other six passengers that someone would have brought some bottles of water,” Bonnie said.

  “There’s plenty of snow outside,” Clay told her. “Probably best not to eat it, but we can always melt it down into drinking water. I’ll find some kind of a container to put it in and we can have a fire. See if anyone on board has matches or a lighter.”

  Bonnie winced and turned her head away from the dead passengers. Clay put his hands on her shoulders. “Why don’t you see if you can find something to melt the snow in?” He said. “I’ll check them for a lighter.”

  Clay began going through the coat pockets and pants pockets and purses of the other passengers. The poor fellow who had the bad fortune to switch seats with Clay had three hundred dollars in his wallet, several credit cards, and a driver’s license identifying him as one James Mitchell. He had all he needed to get by, but no matches or lighter. The woman across the aisle from him had a small bottle of aspirin and an envelope full of coupons, but was apparently not a smoker, either. The man with the broken neck, who had been sitting directly in front of Clay had one of those disposable lighters in his pants pocket as well as half a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. Clay left the cigarettes where they were but kept the lighter.

  Beneath the seat ahead of him was a small carry-on, maybe twice the size of a box that might hold a pair of boots. It was leather and had a shoulder strap and several zippers. Clay pulled the bag out from under the seat. It was heavy and fully packed. When he unzipped the main compartment and pulled the flaps back, Clay’s eyes opened wide and he stood upright again.

  “Bonnie,” Clay called out the hole in the plane. “Bonnie, come in here, would you?”

  A minute later Bonnie returned with a jagged piece of metal from the plane’s right wing. “I think we can bend this into something to melt snow in, don’t you?” she said.

  “Hold that thought a moment, would you?” Clay told her. “You have to take a look at what I found in one of the bags.” Clay lifted the leather bag onto his vacant seat and pulled the flaps apart to let Bonnie have a look inside.

  She stared at the contents and then looked at Clay. “Is that what I think it is?” she said.

  “Looks like it,” Clay said, pulling one of the small plastic bags of white powder out of the leather bag. He took the jagged piece of metal from Bonnie and poked it into the bag of white powder, handing the metal back to Bonnie. Clay touched his finger to the powder and dabbed it on his tongue, spitting immediately and turning to Bonnie. “Cocaine,” he said, “and lots of it. Someone’s going to come looking for this stuff and we’d better hope they don’t find us before the police do.”

  “What do we do with it?” Bonnie said, her voice a little shakier than before.

  “Nothing,” Clay said, putting the punctured bag back in with the rest of the bags. He zipped up the leather bag and slid it back under the seat. He looked at his watch and turned to Bonnie. “Our plane won’t even be due in Denver for another hour. No one will even start looking for at least an hour and a half, when they try radioing the plane and no one answers.”

  “What about this?” Bonnie said, holding the piece of jagged metal out to Clay.

  “I think I can shape this into a pot of sorts,” Clay said, “and then wash it out with snow before we try to make drinking water. Can you see what you can find that will burn?”

  Bonnie left the plane and started scavenging for wood and paper. Clay stepped outside and found a large, round rock and several smaller ones. He laid the piece of metal on the large rock and began pounding the edges down with the smaller rock. In no time at all he had fashioned a shallow vessel from the piece of metal. He filled it with snow and rubbed it around, trying to remove any debris and dirt. Clay brought the vessel back inside the plane and picked up one of the shirts Bonnie had found in the luggage. He wiped the inside of the vessel out with the shirt and then set it down.

  Bonnie was just coming back toward the plane, her hands full of small branches. Clay found a newspaper on the seat next to one of the passengers. That would make perfect kindling, he thought. He went back to the large rock outside and gathered some of the smaller ones, placing them in a small circle. Clay crumbled up a sheet of the newspaper and set it inside the circle of rocks. He instructed Bonnie to lay some of the smaller branches on top of the crumpled paper and he lit the paper. A moment later the branches caught fire and Clay set the vessel on top of the fire, resting it on the small rocks.

  He and Bonnie scooped up handfuls of clean snow and dropped them into the vessel. The snow quickly melted and Clay hurried back into the plane to get the shirt he’d used to wipe the vessel out. He wrapped it around one edge of the vessel and lifted it off the fire, setting it down in the snow. The water quickly cooled and a few minutes later they both took a drink.

  “Not exactly sparkling bottled water,” Clay said. “But it�
��ll keep us alive.”

  “It’s got a bit of an iron taste to it,” Bonnie remarked.

  Clay looked behind him and spotted one of the wings several hundred feet behind him. He turned to Bonnie. “I’ll be right back,” he told her. “I just want to go have a look at that wing. Maybe there’s still some fuel in it we can use to make a signal fire.”

  “I’m going back inside,” Bonnie said. “I’ll see if I can hang those blankets around the back of the plane. It’s getting colder and we need to stay warm.”

  Clay hiked back to the wing that had been ripped off the plane when it caught a pine tree. It was twisted and bent and there was a big wet spot beneath it. Clay touched his finger to the wet spot and smelled it. It was fuel. Most of the wing’s fuel had spilled out on impact, but he could see a pocket in the wing’s interior that still held five or ten gallons. Now all he had to do was find something to carry it in.

  *****

  I looked at my watch again and compared it with the clock above the office door. “Dad should have called by now,” I said. “Do you think anything’s wrong?”

  “Maybe he’s like you,” Gloria said, “and he just forgot to call. He probably got caught up in talking to Harry and it just slipped his mind. When he does remember, he’ll call. He’s a big boy and he can take care of himself.”

  “I guess so,” I said.

  “If you’re so worried,” Gloria said, “why don’t you call him on his cell phone?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Then he’ll think I’m some kind of worry wart.”

  “Well, aren’t you?” Gloria said. “Give him a little more time. He’ll call.”

  I sat back down behind my desk and tried to concentrate on my work.

  *****

  Clay walked back to the plane and looked up into the sky before he stepped back inside. Bonnie was busy hanging blankets all around. “Looks like a storm coming in,” Clay said. “We’d better make sure we have everything we’re going to need from outside. I’m going to melt some more snow for us, but I have to find something in here to put it in.”