The other two came down the metal steps, boots echoing in the nearly empty hangar. Jamie followed the quartet of cosmonauts out into the baking sunshine toward the plane. A wide metal hatch had been cut into its side. There were no stairs. When he hiked his foot up to the rim of the hatch, Jamie’s side twinged with pain. He grabbed the sides of the hatch and pulled himself inside the plane. Without help. Without wincing.
It was like an oven inside. Two rows of bucket seats, bare, unpadded. The two men who had been sitting in the back of the car with Jamie pushed past him and went into the cockpit. The pilot’s and copilot’s chairs were thick with padding; they looked comfortable.
Zavgorodny gestured Jamie to the seat directly behind the pilot. He sat himself in the opposite seat and pulled the safety harness across his shoulders and thighs. Jamie did the same, making certain the straps were tight. The parachute pack served as a sort of cushion, but it felt awkward to Jamie: like underwear that had gotten twisted.
One by one, the engines coughed, sputtered, then blasted into life. The plane shook like a palsied old man. As the propellers whirred to invisible blurs, Jamie heard all sorts of rattling noises, as if the plane was going to fall apart at any moment. Something creaked, something moaned horribly. The plane rolled forward.
The two pilots had clamped headphones over their heads, but if they were in contact with the control tower, Jamie could not hear a word they spoke over the roar of the engines and the wind blowing fine, sandpapery dust through the cabin. The fourth cosmonaut was sitting behind Jamie. No one had shut the hatch. Twisting around in his seat, Jamie saw that there was no door for the hatch: they were going to fly with it wide open.
The gritty wind roared through as the plane gathered speed down the runway, skidding slightly first one way and then the other.
Awfully long run for a plane this size, Jamie thought. He glanced across at Zavgorodny. The Russian grinned at him.
And then they were off the ground. The sandblasting ended; the wind was clean now. Jamie saw the airport dwindling away out his window, the parked planes and buildings shrinking into toys. The land spread out, brown and dead-dry beneath the cloudless pale-blue sky. The engines settled into a rumbling growl; the wind howled so loudly that Jamie had to lean across the aisle and shout into Zavgorodny’s ear:
“So where are we going?”
Zavgorodny shouted back, “To find Muzhestvo.”
“Moo . . . what?”
“Muzhestvo!” the cosmonaut yelled louder.
“Where is it? How far away?”
The Russian laughed. “You will see.”
They climbed steadily for what seemed like an hour. Can’t be more than ten thousand feet, Jamie said to himself. It was difficult to judge vertical distances, but they would have to go on oxygen if they flew much beyond ten thousand feet, he thought. It was getting cold. Jamie wished he had brought his windbreaker. They should have told me, he complained silently. They should have warned me.
The copilot looked back over his shoulder, staring directly at Jamie. He grinned, then put a hand over his mouth and hollered, “Hoo-hoo-hoo!” His version of an Indian war whoop. Jamie kept his face expressionless.
Suddenly, the plane dipped and skidded leftward. Jamie was slammed against the curving skin of the fuselage and almost banged his head against the window. He stared out at the brown landscape beneath him, wrinkled with hills and a single sparkling lake far below, as the plane seemed to hang on its left wingtip and slowly, slowly revolve.
Then it dove and pulled upward, squeezing Jamie down into his seat. The plane climbed awkwardly, waddling in the air, then flipped over onto its back. Jamie felt all weight leave him; he was hanging by his seat harness but weighed practically nothing. It dived again, and weight returned, heavy, crushing, as the plane hurtled toward those brown bare hills, engines screaming, wind whistling through the shaking, rattling cabin.
And then it leveled off, engines purring, everything as normal as a commuter flight.
Zavgorodny was staring at Jamie. The copilot glanced back over his shoulder. And Jamie understood. They were ragging him. He was the new kid on the block, and they were seeing if they could scare him. Their own little version of the Vomit Comet, Jamie said to himself. See if they can make me turn green or get me to puke. Much fun.
Every tribe has its initiation rites, he realized. He had never been properly initiated as a Navajo; his parents had been too Anglicized to allow it. But it seemed these guys were going to make up for that.
Jamie made himself grin at Zavgorodny. “That was fun,” he yelled, hoping that the other three could hear him over the engines and the wind. “I didn’t know you could loop an old crate like this.”
Zavgorodny bobbed his head up and down. “Not recommended. Maybe the wings come off.”
Jamie shrugged inside his seat harness. “What’s next?”
“Muzhestvo.”
They flew peacefully for another quarter-hour or so, no aerobatics, no conversation. Jamie realized they had made one wide, circling turn and were starting another. He looked out the window. The ground below was flat and empty, as desolate as Mars except for a single narrow road running straight across the brown, barren wasteland.
Zavgorodny unbuckled his safety harness and stood up. He had to crouch slightly because the of the cabin’s low overhead as he stepped out into the aisle and back toward the big, wide, still-open hatch.
Jamie turned in his seat and saw that the other cosmonaut was on his feet, too, and standing at the hatch.
Christ, one lurch of this crate and he’ll go ass over teakettle out the door!
Zavgorodny stood beside the other Russian with one hand firmly gripping a slim
