“Just great!” she said, grabbing the seat to avoid her head smashing into the roof.
“We’re going to pave all this over before they start rolling out those golf carts,” Ray explained loudly.
“That’s g—ouch!”
“Sorry,” Waxman shouted. “Rock. Here we are.” The tree-shrouded road opened into more brilliant July sunshine. Waxman stopped the Jeep. Ray hopped out, flipping his seat forward and extending a hand to Clare.
She staggered out of the backseat, feeling a sudden kinship with airsick passengers she had seen over the years. Her gratitude at touching the ground must have been the same as theirs. She took a deep breath.
The air was heavy with the smell of pine, warm asphalt, and oil. “Oh my,” she said. “I was expecting a little touch-down space. This is…professional.” The clearing was the size of a house lot, squared off and leveled. It had been fitted out with four pole-mounted lights in each corner for night landings, with a remote refueling tank parked next to a prefab shed, which she guessed held tools, compressors, and other maintenance requirements. Smack in the middle of the clearing was a tennis court–size asphalt square painted with directional markings that glowed whitely in the sun. Taking pride of place was—
“There it is,” Ray said. “It’s a helicopter. You seen one, you seen ’em all, if you ask me.”
“It’s a Bell Four Twenty-seven.” She prowled around the edges of the pad, taking it in from all angles. “A real classic. You can configure it in a half dozen ways. Very versatile. Like here, they’ve opted for a cargo door and boom.” The cargo door was shut, but the boom, a pair of struts holding a cigar-shaped winch pod, was still rigged with a net, which puddled on the tarmac like abandoned rigging from a long-ago sailing ship. Just the sight of it made her long to be up and away.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Waxman and Ray exchange glances. Waxman tugged his baseball cap farther down over his eyes. “Are you a big, um, helicopter buff?”
“I was a pilot in the army,” she said. “And my folks have a small aviation company.” She ducked under the tail boom and peeked into the cabin window. There were two comfortable seats backed against the partial bulkhead separating the cockpit from the cabin, with a curtain of wide webbing to protect traveling VIPs from shifting cargo in the rear. She moved up a step to look into the cockpit and rested her hand on the handle of the pilot’s door. It turned in her grip. It was unlocked! She hissed in excitement and twisted the door open.
“Oh, hey, Reverend!” Ray protested, but she had already hiked herself over the lip into the cockpit.
“Hello there,” she said. She dropped into the seat. The controls were neat and streamlined, much simpler than the bulky instrument displays she had been used to. Must be the new digital systems. She hadn’t ever flown a 427, but she had logged a lot of hours in its military version, the Kiowa.
“Reverend! You shouldn’t be in there!” Ray’s voice came from behind her, through the open cargo door.
“I just want a peek at the cockpit,” she said. “Then I’ll get right out, I promise.”
“Reverend!”
The windscreen was huge, much larger than the ones she had seen in the army. The view from the air would be fantastic. She tapped at the key snug in the ignition, then looked at the fuel gauge. It was reading half-full.
The old ache to fly rose in her chest. She knew exactly what it would feel like to bring these panels to life and begin the preflight check, each movement as much of a ritual as those she used when consecrating the Host during the Eucharist. She could imagine the moment when the rumble and whine grew muffled, her headset connecting her to a world that turned and centered on the machine. The fierce vibrations through metal and bone, her eyes and hands moving over the instruments, and then, at that moment when she lifted away from earth, frustrated gravity pressing her into her seat as she broke its grip and soared into the sky.
She suddenly thought of a verse from Matthew: “Lay down all you have and follow me.” She smiled one-sidedly. God certainly shouldn’t have any complaints in that department. She had given up all this, every lovely leaping moment, to follow Him to Millers Kill, and for what? A congregation that was largely nonexistent in the summer and a man she shouldn’t try to be friends with. She let her head drop back until it almost touched the edge of the passenger seat behind her. A man whose feelings she had unexpectedly lacerated with her big mouth and her insistence that she had a monopoly on truth. The only truth was that a man was dead. And two men had been beaten. And she had no business with any of it.
Make whole that which is broken. Her head came up again. She wrapped her hands around the steering yoke. What was that? Was that a verse from Scripture? Along with the words came a memory of Paul Foubert’s face in the flashing emergency lights. Todd MacPherson’s brother in the waiting room, holding back tears. Russ’s expression when she blindsided him in his patrol car. Make whole that which is broken. “Is that it?” she said. “Is that for me? Does this come from You, or am I just remembering something? Are You there, or am I talking to myself?”
Of course, there wasn’t any answer. Just the rising heat in the cockpit and the familiar comfort of the pilot’s chair. But it wasn’t familiar. This was someone else’s ship, and she didn’t belong here. She suddenly felt stifled by the small enclosure. She kicked open the door and jumped out, nearly landing on Ray Yardhaas.
His big, broad face was crinkled with worry. “I don’t think you should have done that, Reverend.”
She laid her hand on his arm. “I know. I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry, Ray.” She turned, shut the door, and twisted the handle, sealing it tight. “Let’s head back, shall we?”
Waxman was looking at her with a peculiar expression.
His face twitched with the strain of not showing what he thought of that offer. He shook his head. “Um, I’m headed back now, if you want a ride.”
She didn’t, particularly, but Ray was already opening the door for her. She stifled a resigned sigh and climbed back into the battered vehicle. “So why does BWI keep a fully equipped heliport out here? That costs a lot to maintain.”
Ray grunted as he took his seat. “The way I heard it, they install one of these at every one of their project sites. Most of their resorts are in pretty hard-to-reach places. That’s Opperman’s strategy: buy up good land before the roads get put in and everyone and his brother catch on to it. I guess it’s not worth their time to drive to a local airport.”
