Survivors – A Novel of the Coming Collapse

They pulled the chocks and climbed aboard. Sitting in the plane’s left seat, he admired Blanca’s finesse as she worked the radio and rolled out to the taxi strip, craning her head to do repeated 360 eyeballs of both the plane’s control surfaces and her surroundings. She didn’t miss a beat. After getting takeoff clearance, she punched in the throttle and took off after a surprisingly short roll. Climbing out at seven hundred feet per minute, she took the plane up to ten thousand feet and headed west as they chatted about the plane’s characteristics.

“What’s this bird stressed for?” Ian asked.

“Four g’s pos, and two g’s negative.”

Doyle nodded approvingly.

Blanca continued, “It’s been upgraded to a 110-horsepower plant. She’ll do 145 miles per hour, at altitude. Redline is 5,600 rpms. Oh, and watch your sink rate if you pull more than a 60- degree bank. I think you’ll like flying it. It takes very light control forces. I love this plane because you don’t have to muscle the stick.”

Glancing at the GPS, she declared, “Okay, hombre, now we are outside of the TCA, and we can plaaay.” Banking sharply left and right to get a view under the plane’s wings and swiveling her head, she said, “I see empty skies.”

Doyle echoed, “Ditto, I confirm I see no traffic. Let’s play!”

Blanca snugged the straps on her X-harness and, with no cue needed, Doyle did likewise. Blanca then immediately launched into a series of aerobatics that would have made most other passengers puke. Doyle was whooping and laughing. She burned through seven thousand feet in less than a minute, doing rolls, loops, and spins. At one point Blanca’s flight bag levitated to the ceiling as they pulled negative g’s. Doyle snatched it and tucked it under his arm.

After climbing back up to ten thousand feet, Blanca put on a devilish grin. She launched into another series of maneuvers, even more violent. At one point Ian’s vision narrowed from the effect of pulling three g’s. Doyle never once felt tempted to take the controls, even when she intentionally put the plane into a flat spin. She deftly recovered and they both laughed. She climbed once again and put the plane through a pair of Immelmann turns and then a neat four-point roll.

“Now you show me something!” she said, making a show of throwing her hands up, off the stick.

Quickly drying his palms on his pant legs, Doyle grasped the other stick. He then took a couple of tentative turns, getting a feel for the aircraft. He throttled the engine up slightly and then adjusted the trim wheel to counteract the propeller’s torque. This took a couple of tries to get just right, since he was unfamiliar with the gradation of the wheel.

“Esta bien! You just showed me a very nice four-point roll. Now, this is an eight- pointer!” After completing the roll, he continued: “And this is a sixteen-pointer.”

After completing the second roll, he said, “Sorry, that was a little sloppy. I’m not used to a plane where I’m fighting prop torque like this. Flying jets spoils a man.” After a beat, he shouted, “Hands on stick!”

She obliged.

He then declared, “It’s your aircraft!” and dropped his hands.

She was quizzical. “What? That’s all you show me?”

As she resumed control, he explained, “Look, Blanca, I didn’t come up here to show off my fighter-jock stuff. I came to see you do your thing.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think you’re beautiful, and I think that your flying is just as beautiful. Muy bella.”

Blanca beamed and deftly banked to dive toward Lake Yojoa, visible in the distance. In the dive, their ground speed got above 160.

He truly was impressed by her flying ability. He recognized that she was a natural for stick and rudder as well as situational awareness. The thing that impressed him the most was her gracefulness in both right- and left-hand turns. Most pilots were good at only one or the other, depending on their handedness. He commented to her on this, and she explained, “Mi papa, he’s the tennis guy. Since I was a little girl, he insist that I learn everything ambidextrous-no, ambidextrously-even with the holding of a fork.”

“La tenedor,” Doyle reminded himself aloud, from a recent lesson.

“El tenedor,” she corrected.

“Sorry, I always get my masculines and feminines mixed up.”

She turned to give him another smile, “I think you are very masculine, Ian.”

With the aerobatic maneuvering over, they both loosened their harnesses. Back in level flight and approaching the lago, Blanca again pushed the stick forward to swoop down low over the water. The plane scared up a huge flock of ducks. Marveling at the size of the flock of multicolored brown and black birds, Ian asked: “What are those?”

“Here, we call them suiriri piquirrojo. In English they are called, I think, the black- bellied whistling duck.”

They flew well above the flock, safe from any bird strikes. Blanca repeatedly banked the plane to get a better view; then, after circling back, she pulled the throttle out, transitioning to slow flight to orbit the enormous flock. It looked like a veritable cloud of ducks. Ian snapped pictures with his camera. She then advanced the throttle to its mid-range and flew away from the lake, back toward Tegucigalpa.

Ian felt ecstatic. “Wow! That was an incredible sight, Blanca!”

Ian reached over to place his hand on Blanca’s shoulder. He realized that it was the second time he had ever touched her. He asked, “Will you marry me?”

She punched the throttle to the firewall and the acceleration threw Ian back against his seat. She looked straight ahead and then glanced down at the instruments. At first Ian thought that he had angered her. Then she turned and smiled. “Of course I will marry you, Ian. But I gotta land this plane first.”

25 A Tight Spot

“Anyone who clings to the historically untrue-and thoroughly immoral-doctrine that ‘violence never solves anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”

-Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

In the first week of July, several of the men from the compound, including Alex, Ian, and Doctor K., were part of a firewood-cutting expedition to the nearby Prescott National Forest. Traveling in a four-pickup convoy, they went beyond the ponderosa pines at the lower elevations to cut Douglas firs, mostly along the road that led to the Mingus Mountain campground. Three exhausting daylong trips each took twelve hours at three-day intervals.

On the third day of the woodcutting enterprise, Blanca was on guard duty. She was startled to hear the sound of breaking glass downstairs.

She left the ringer engaged for thirty seconds continuously, followed by three short rings. This signal told everyone that the compound was being attacked by infiltrators.

Blanca thought that it would be safest to get back in the hot-tub pillbox. She poked the muzzle of her M16 out of the hot tub, rotated the gun’s safety to “SEMI,” and held still. She sighted the gun on the bedroom door, looking through the screen door that divided the bedroom from the deck.

The man who walked into the bedroom was armed with a carbine that looked a lot like Alex’s Mini-14, except