pick him up. Mark guided the plane on its downwind leg for landing.
The Cessna’s rate of descent increased, increasing airspeed as a result. Mark eased back on the column to get the airspeed under control. Nothing happened. The plane continued to fall at a faster rate. He pulled back on the controls even more. The column moved without resistance. Something else was wrong. Mark stared back at the tail and pulled back on the column again.
The elevator didn’t move.
“No. This can’t be happening.”
He stamped on the rudder pedals. The rudder didn’t obey his inputs either. The tail-plane was dead. It was still there, but it wasn’t responding.
It can’t all be going wrong. He’d kept his panic in check, but he couldn’t prevent it from overwhelming him now. His aircraft was going down and he was just a passenger at its controls. He glanced at the altimeter— four hundred feet. It would all be over in less than a minute.
Mark fought to control the Cessna. The plane descended and the speed increased. Every knot in increased
airspeed reduced his chances of survival. With
a paralyzed tail, he’d never be able to bring the plane down for a soft landing.
The airspeed indicator read seventy knots … seventy five knots… eighty knots…
The altimeter read three hundred … two hundred and fifty… two hundred…
Mark stared at the field rushing up at him with increasing velocity, pulling on controls that didn’t comply
while keeping his thumb on the radio transmit
button.
He screamed, “Mayday, mayday, mayday,” over and
over again.
Josh peeled off the freeway to Bob Deuce’s home. He listened to an alternative rock station pump out track after track from its latest playlist. He’d passed through Sacramento and was in the residential district of Laguna when the newsflash interrupted the next scheduled track.
“Some tragic news. A small airplane has crashed between Sacramento and Stockton, not very far from Interstate Five. Rescue services have arrived and are at
the scene,” the disc jockey said.
Josh stamped on the brakes, bringing the Dodge to a shuddering halt. Vehicles behind did likewise, but with angry hands on horns. Fortunately, nobody hit each other. Tires fighting for traction on the asphalt, Josh made a U- turn on the two-lane road. The minivan
roared off in the direction of 1-5.
Josh instinctively knew the downed aircraft was his and he had to see if Mark was okay. Not a believer in clairvoyance, premonitions or anything else found on the X-Files, he still knew the news report was linked to him. Without a care for himself and other road users, Josh tore along the interstate. He listened to the rest of the DJ’s announcement for the approximate location site. He kept his eyes trained on the fields to either side of the four-lane highway. To his left he saw drivers rubbernecking out of their vehicles at something in the
field.
Josh veered off 1-5 onto the exit ramp at a steady seventy-five, ignoring the thirty-five miles per hour speed limit with impunity. He braked hard, the vehicle weaving under the stress. Without halting, Josh turned left onto the road, taking him over the highway and toward the spectacle in the field.
He closed in on the field and the concentration of people and vehicles came into clearer view. All the emergency services were represented—police, fire and paramedics. In the field, people were gathered around an object.
Josh’s Caravan came to another shuddering halt,
stopping with two wheels on the road and two wheels in the dirt. He saw it, recognizable from two hundred feet, the colorful tail of his Cessna C152 pointing skyward.
It looked like a toy discarded by an angry child.
The emergency services people and their vehicles obscured the rest of the plane from sight. He clambered
out of the minivan and raced across the road without paying any attention to other vehicles.
The policemen keeping everyone back from the
scene closed upon him. “Where do you think you’re going, sir?” one officer demanded.
Josh ignored him and ran on. He didn’t have time for questions.
Two officers engaged him and swiftly halted his
progress before he got to the three bar fence. They unceremoniously brought him to the ground. All three
men crashed sprawling on the highway.
“I’m Josh Michaels and that’s my plane!” he
shouted, as one policeman started to handcuff him. He repeated himself twice more before they listened.
The cop uncuffed Josh and said without apology,
“Next time have the presence of mind to approach an accident scene with more sense.”
The officer led Josh to the scene, but Josh half-ran, half-walked and it looked like Josh led the cop. He ignored the whining pain from the cuts he’d taken to the
hands, knees and chin when the policemen had brought him down.
“What makes you think this is your aircraft?” The cop’s speech sounded choppy over the rough terrain.
“That tail section.” Josh pointed at the colorful design.
“Those are our colors. And I left my flying partner an hour ago before he took off for Stockton
Metropolitan.”
“How did you know the plane had crashed?”
Josh ignored the cop’s question as he made it to the constellation of people circled around the crash site.
Men tried to stop Josh from getting too close.
“Let him through. He may be the plane’s owner,”
the out-of-breath policeman said.
The men parted to let him through. Josh came up on the rear of the plane, giving him his first sight of the Cessna. People were asking him questions. Josh didn’t listen.
His plane was buried nose-down in the ground, resting on its starboard wing. The wing had buckled and
split, dumping its fuel load onto the plowed earth.
There’d been no fire, but fire extinguisher foam had been sprayed over the spilt fuel. Josh moved around to the side of the aircraft. Everything on the front end of the plane had been destroyed. The undercarriage was bent and twisted, the nose wheel invisible. The propeller had embedded itself into the ground. Struts had
been torn from fixings. A spiderweb of cracks speckled the Plexiglas window. A trickle of blood ran along the dashboard. The plane’s artwork looked vandalized on its wrecked canvas. Josh read his and Mark Keegan’s names on the door.
“I’m Josh Michaels.” He pointed at his name on the plane. “This is my plane.”
Josh saw Mark Keegan’s body flopped over the control column like an unwanted doll. Over twenty men
from emergency services were just standing around. He went to open the copilot’s door. A paramedic restrained him.
“Why aren’t you helping him?” Josh demanded.
“There’s nothing we can do for him. He’s dead.”
Mark was dead. Everyone could see that.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Again, Josh was talking to the police. He spent the next few hours at the aircraft crash site. For reasons of safety, the police had manhandled him away from the wreckage.
The site had to be cleared, the crash area staked off and the downed plane screened from prying eyes.
