Crash Landing

by Lori Wilde

  She owed him no explanation about her relationship status. She would let him think whatever he wanted.

  “So no one serious?”

  Why was he asking? She lifted a shoulder. “I’m too young to get serious.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Did anyone ever tell you that it’s not polite to ask a woman her age.” She maneuvered the plane through puffs of late-afternoon cloud.

  “I’m thirty-two,” he volunteered.

  He was older than she would have guessed. “Twenty-six,” she admitted.

  “And you’re still not ready to settle down?”

  “Are you?”

  He chuckled. “No, no, I’m not.”

  That killed the conversation.

  Good. She needed to concentrate on what she was doing. They were about to cross over into Nicaragua. She radioed the nearest air tower with her intentions and was cleared. They were cruising along at seven thousand feet and a hundred and thirty knots per hour.

  But soon, the silence got to her, which was odd. Normally, she was happy as a clam when she was in the air and nothing upset her equilibrium. She canted her head, studied him from the corner of her eye.

  He was handsome enough to be a movie star, especially when he flashed that grin. He was such an enigma. On the one hand, a serious workaholic, underneath though, there was a playful side he’d buried long ago to please a stepfather who, from Gibb’s account, withheld affection while at the same time, freely gave him material things. Such mixed messages must be very confusing.

  “May I ask you a personal question?” she asked.

  “Nothing has stopped you so far,” he said.

  “You do not have to answer if you don’t want to.”

  “Let’s hear it. What’s on your mind?”

  “What is it that you want most in life, Mr. Martin?”

  “Gibb,” he said. “You can call me Gibb. Maybe you should tell me what I want, Sophia, since you just did such a good job of reading me.”

  “Ah, but if I do it for you then you don’t have to do any soul searching.”

  “Soul searching is overrated. I’m more goal oriented than emotive.”

  “You’re avoiding the question.”

  “You said I didn’t have to answer.”

  “I’ve changed my mind. Emote.”

  “Anyone ever tell you that you can be a bit bossy?”

  “In other words, you have no idea what it is that you want from life?”

  “I want for nothing. I’m living the dream.”

  “And yet, you do not seem happy.”

  For a long time he said nothing. “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind. I don’t know you. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “No, really. Go on. I want to hear your thoughts.”

  “It’s just that...”

  “What?”

  “When will you have enough money to earn your stepfather’s love?”

  “That’s not what I’m doing.”

  “All right.”

  “It’s not.”

  “You never did answer my question about what it is you want.”

  “Food. I’m starving. I forgot to eat lunch. You got anything to eat?” he asked.

  She didn’t poke his answer. She’d done enough prodding. “There are snacks in a box in the seat behind you.”

  He undid his seat belt; twisted around, found the box of snacks. “Hey, graham crackers. I haven’t had those since I was a kid.”

  “They’re my favorite.”

  “You ever make s’mores?”

  “I’ve got the makings for s’mores in that box.”

  “And so you do!” he said, pulling out a bag of marshmallows and some chocolate bars. “How come you fly around with the makings for s’mores in your plane?”

  “I take my nieces and nephews out camping sometimes.”

  He crunched a graham cracker, held one out to her.

  She took the cracker and their fingers brushed in the handoff. His touch ignited something hot and irresistible inside her. To distract herself, she stuck the cracker in her mouth.

  “I haven’t made s’mores since Scott and I camped out in his parents’ backyard, like I said,” Gibb mused.

  Sophia tried to imagine him as a young boy, but she couldn’t picture it. “Maybe you two could make s’mores again. Once you break up his wedding.”

  “You’re making me sound like an ass.”

  “I never said that.”

  “You didn’t have to.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re feeling guilty,” she commented.

  “About how long do you think it will take for us to get to Key West?” he asked.

  “Factoring in fuel stops, depending on the weather, I’d say at least fifteen hours. Maybe fourteen, if we’re lucky and don’t run into a headwind, but it could be longer.”

  “Is this as fast as the plane will go?”

  “Yes. If you wanted faster, you should have called for a private jet.”

  “Privacy is more important than speed at this point,” he said.

  “Then sit back and relax and let me do my job.”

  “I’m not very good at that.”

  “What? Letting go of control or relaxing?”

  “Either. Both.”

  “All the more reason to surrender,” she said.

  “Easy to say, not so easy to do.”

  “Close your eyes and take a deep breath.”

  “I’d—”

  “I’m the pilot,” she interrupted. “It’s an order.”

  “Are you always this bossy?”

  “Only with certain clients.”

  He surprised her by closing his eyes and taking deep breaths.

  Sometime later, she peeked over at him again. Gibb was sound asleep. Good.

  They had passed over Nicaragua and were above the Caribbean Sea. She peered out the window and through the wisp of clouds, spied a petite lush green jungle island with a thin apron of beach lying due south. The island looked completely uninhabited, no roads, no structures, too small and isolated for anyone to live there. It wasn’t even on the aerial map. What a thrill. Discovering a place she’d never known existed.

  For the next several minutes, she navigated smoothly through patches of harmless midlevel, horizontal altostratus clouds with a flat, uniform structure. The fine mist of the altostratus parted easily and caused no turbulence.

  She had radioed the last tower before leaving Nicaraguan airspace. She’d wanted an update on the tropical storm brewing in the Caribbean and received an all clear about the weather. So it was something of a surprise when she sailed through the last batch of stratus clouds and came face-to-face with a wide, vertical band of wooly clouds. They were in the exact direction where they needed to fly.

  Sophia sighed. “Shoot.”

  Gibb opened one eye. “What is it?”

  “Cumulus.”

  “Cum what?” He straightened in the seat, opened his other eye and instantly wore a cocky expression on his handsome face.

  She ignored his innuendo, ignored the spark of sexual awareness zipping through her. “Cumulus clouds. Although at this elevation they’re called alto cumulus. A small street of them might be just bumpy, but they can be dangerous for small planes to fly through because they are formed in unstable air that is always trying to rise higher.”

  “So there is a chance for updrafts.”

  “Yes, and if the cumulus clouds gain moisture at higher altitudes, they turn into cumulonimbus clouds.”

  “Sounds like sex on a bus,” he teased.

  “It’s not funny,” she said. As happy-go-lucky and adventuresome as Sophia might be, when it came to flying, she did not make jokes or take weather lightly.

  “What does this mean?”

  “It means I’m not laughing about the cumulus clouds.”

  “Not that,” he said. “Can we fly through them?”

  “We could, but it could be much more than just a bumpy rid
e. Look how wide and thick they are. I wouldn’t know the extent of how far they ranged until we were in the middle of them. And it might take as long as an hour to do it and I simply can’t risk that.”

  “Don’t you have some kind of radar or sonar or something to tell you this stuff?”

  “Who do you think I am? The weatherman? You see anything on this 1971 control panel that looks like it could track a storm?”

  “No.”

  “This plane isn’t built for long-haul flying. I tried to tell you that.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We fly around the clouds.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “It’s weather. I don’t have a crystal ball.”

  “Can you call a tower and ask?”

  “There are no manned towers out here. I could call UNICOM, but they’d just tell me to fly around it.”

  Gibb drummed his fingers against the door. “Dammit.”

  “You said earlier that privacy is more important than speed. I’ll get you there in plenty of time to break up your friend’s wedding, even with the delay.”

  “I thought the tropical storm was two days away.”

  “This isn’t part of the storm. If it were, the air traffic controllers in Nicaragua would have advised me to land. We’re okay on that score.”

  Gibb chuffed out his breath, stabbed his fingers through his hair.

  “You don’t take detours in stride, do you?” she asked.

  “Why should I?”

  “Can’t control Mother Nature.”

  The cumulus clouds were getting closer, stretching out across the corridor of their immediate path. The only part of the sky clear of cumulus clouds was due south. The opposite direction of where they needed to go.

  Having little alternative, Sophia headed south. She wouldn’t admit it to Gibb, but she was nervous. She’d never flown over the Caribbean and the army of cumulus clouds was not making life any easier. Still, there was no reason for any real alarm.

  Everything was looking good, until she directed the plane eastward, hoping to skirt the cumulus clouds, and got caught up in a ferocious headwind. It pushed back against El Diablo with a speed of more than a hundred and sixty knots per hour.

  Sophia battled against the wind, trying to hold the plane steady. The nose kept dipping and she struggled to keep it up. They rolled like a body surfer trying to navigate the waves off Oahu’s North Shore. Her hands tensed on the yoke, tightening muscles all the way up to her shoulders.

  “What’s going on?” Gibb demanded.

  “Hush!” Sophia snapped.

  To her surprise, he did.

  She took the plane lower, hoping the maneuver would lessen the push of the headwind, dropping down to four thousand feet. The Caribbean sparkled impossibly blue below them.

  They were making no headway. Salmon swimming upstream had a better chance of getting where they were going. Initially, she’d hoped the headwind would slack off, but it only seemed to grow stronger. Her gaze focused on the gas gauge, less than half a tank remaining.

  “We have to go back,” she told Gibb.

  “Why?”

  “We’re running low on fuel.”

  “We’re running out of gas? I thought you fueled up before we left.”

  “We did, but a headwind this strong pulls fuel from the tank like water running out of a flushing toilet. If I don’t make a decision right now, we won’t have enough gas to make it back to Nicaragua.”

  “Is there somewhere closer we could land, fuel up and wait for the weather conditions to improve?”

  Or even put him on a commercial liner. Truth be told, she was ready to get rid of Gibb Martin and get back to her nice, simple life of ferrying tourists back and forth from Libera to Bosque de Los Dioses.

  “Well?”

  She blew out her breath. “There’s Island de Providencia.”

  “Let’s go there.”

  “One problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The island lies due north. We’d have to fly right through the cumulus clouds to get there.”

  “Do we have enough gas to make it?”

  “Theoretically, but there’s no guarantee. Not with the strength of these headwinds. Not in this plane where I cannot fly above the cumulus clouds.”

  “So returning to Nicaragua is our best option?”

  “Yes.”

  He swore under his breath.

  “What is the big deal? Is stopping your friend’s wedding worth risking our lives over?”

  “I just wish there was an alternative to returning to Nicaragua.”

  “Well, there’s not.” Sophia turned the plane back in a southerly direction. Once they were headed west, the headwind would become a tailwind, and at that point, an advantage.

  That’s when the engine sputtered.

  It was probably just an air bubble in the fuel line, nothing to worry about. She kept turning El Diablo, but to be on the safe side, she went down another thousand feet.

  “What was that?” Gibb asked.

  “Just a stutter in the engine,” she reassured him.

  “It doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s an old plane. These things happen sometimes.”

  Gibb looked skeptical. “You’re worried about it, too. That’s why you’ve dropped altitude.”

  “No reason to be alarmed. It’s always better to be safe than sorry,” she said. Okay, she could handle this. She’d been trained by the best—her father.

  “Yes, but your plane should at least be airworthy.”

  She glared at him. “My plane is plenty airworthy.”

  The engine sputtered again.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Most likely it’s a cylinder misfiring from running the fuel mixture too rich,” she said, ignoring the prickle of anxiety crawling through her stomach. She kept El Diablo in peak condition, but still... “Easy fix. I’ll just lean up the mixture.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Leaning it up adds air to the fuel ratio.” She pulled back on the orange handled fuel rod, while at the same time, keeping her eye on the tachometer, until the needle hit the optimal revolutions per minute on the gauge.

  “Why didn’t you already lean it up?”

  “Because you want richer fuel at a higher altitude.” She paused, listened to the engine, and heard nothing. Felt nothing. Good. That seemed to have fixed it.

  She settled back into the seat. They were headed due west now. The tension eased from her shoulders. Sophia was about to reach for the radio to call into the nearest tower, when the engine sputtered again, this time louder and longer.

  “So much for the fuel mixture theory,” Gibb said.

  Alarmed, but determined not to show it, she ran through her head all the possible causes for the engine cutting out. Maybe it was bad spark plugs? But she’d just changed them out a couple of weeks ago. Maybe she hadn’t tightened down a wire?

  She dropped down another five hundred feet.

  “You take this puppy any lower and I’m going to need to put on my swim trunks.”

  If she hadn’t had all her attention on the plane, she might have teased him and told him she didn’t know he owned a pair of swim trunks. Or had an erotic fantasy about how sexy he would look bare-chested and dressed for a swim. As it was, she clenched her teeth tight and remembered everything she’d learned about how to make an emergency landing. It was something every pilot was taught, but hoped never to use.

  The engine sputtered a forth time.

  Her heart pounded. Don’t panic, don’t panic. “Gotta get this plane on the ground and take a look at that engine,” she muttered to herself.

  “What?” Gibb sat up straighter. “Where?”

  “There.” She pointed at the small, uninhabited island they’d flown over earlier.

  “What’s that?”

  “An island.”

  “The size of a breath mint.”

  The engine sputtered, shudder
ed. “You got any better ideas?” she asked.

  “You mean besides a crash landing?”

  “An emergency landing,” she corrected. “I’m going to do my best not to crash.”

  “We’re going to crash!”

  “There’s a small strip of beach,” she persisted as they flew closer. However, at this lower altitude she could see the spot was not nearly as big as she’d first thought and what there was of it was littered with driftwood and coconuts.

  Not ideal at all, but it was their only option.

  The engine sputtered again, cut out. Had to be the stupid carburetor. What could be wrong with the carburetor?

  “Hang on,” she yelled. “We’re going down.”

  5

  THE BELLY OF the plane skimmed the tops of the thick jungle forest. Fronds and branches slapped and scraped against metal producing a loud screeching noise. Gibb cringed, and grabbed on to his seat with both hands to brace himself for the fall and speared a glance at Sophia.

  Sweat beaded her brow, her top teeth were sunk deep into her bottom lip, but her eyes were narrowed in grim determination and her expression declared, Come hell or high water, I’m landing this plane on this island.

  That is, unless they overshot it.

  Which, considering the compact size of the island and the thinness of the beach, seemed more likely with every passing second.

  Damn those spies who’d freaked him out so much he’d chartered a plane that had no business doing anything more than ferrying tourists from airports to mountaintop resorts. Damn Scott for being so irrational and marrying a woman he’d only known for a month.

  Hey, while you’re at it, why not damn yourself? You’re the one who allowed emotion to overrule common sense and you’re the one who told her to keep flying instead of turning back like she wanted to.

  Yes, okay, damn his hide for that.

  Honestly, he was amazed at her calm skill. He knew grown men who would be whimpering like little girls in a similar situation. Hell, a yelp or two might have jumped out of his throat.

  But Sophia was in complete control. Well, as much as anyone could be in control during a forced landing. Nervous as he was, he still had the utmost confidence in her ability to land this thing without killing them.

  Unsecured items bounced around the cockpit. The box of snacks flew open, raining cookies, crackers, candy bars, marshmallows and bags of chips all around them. Stuff in the back of the plane shifted, slid, skidded.