“Hey,” he said, “do you think we should’ve spent some more money on that stunt pilot?”
“Nah,” the assistant said. “I found him on Craigslist. How bad could he be?”
“Shit,” George Lukas said. “People still use Craigslist?”
The assistant shrugged. “At least one, apparently.”
Neal the Stunt Pilot sat in the cockpit, about to head down that long, dark, winding alley of fear for the very first time in his life.
And I—denizen of destruction, cheater of death, master of basic helicopter safety—knew exactly what was going to happen.
Yep, just minutes after taking off, the damn thing crashed.
It was actually going pretty well at first. Then this crazed hawk came out of nowhere, forcing Neal the Stunt Pilot to swerve. The Apache collided violently with the drones, spinning out of control, plummeting out of the sky, and finally, in a giant ball of smoke and sparks and raging fire, exploding against one of those fountains with the pissing Cupids.
It was cool as fuck.
Thankfully, the crazed hawk was unharmed. Especially because it was my crazed hawk. I’d released the little bastard thirty seconds earlier from my own private aviary after telling him, “Hey, bro, let’s make shit interesting. That’s between me and you.”
Oh yeah, I guess it was also good that Neal the Stunt Pilot was pretty much okay. Lucky for him, those Cupids he crashed into peed all over everything and helped put out the fire. So Neal the Stunt Pilot was basically unharmed except for the fourth-degree burns covering 60 percent of his body, a shattered femur, an obliterated spleen, and a left eyeball that was just kind of dangling out of the socket in this really gross but also totally awesome way.
Yeah, he’d probably never fly a helicopter again—he’d be lucky if he could ride a Rascal with those injuries. But let’s be honest, the skies are much safer without him. He had no idea how to conquer his fear, no ability to embrace danger, to walk down that long, dark alleyway and never turn back.
And he also wasn’t very good at dodging crazed hawks, but mostly his problem was fear.
“What are we gonna do now?” George Lukas shouted as the medics carted away the pathetic screaming stunt pilot. “We can’t just call off the shoot! This is fucking Airwolf!”
His assistant sighed and shook his head. “Craigslist doesn’t seem to have any other—”
“Wait!” George Lukas said. “What’s that sound?”
A deep, steady rhythmic thumping echoed over the smoky field. It was the sound of ancient Native American warriors beating their sacred drums before battle. It was the sound of your enemy’s heart, still beating after you tear it from his chest. It was the sound of Dr Disrespect piloting his own personal Russian Kamov Ka-27 Helix attack chopper.
I flew low over the horizon, parting the swirling clouds and landing just inches away from the Apache’s wreckage. I was also blasting a favorite song from my prototype Bose XV-9000 sound system—
Bump-tsshhh.
Bump-tsshhh-tsshhh.
“They call him Doc!”
Because I know how to make an entrance.
“What the…?” George Lukas said.
He and his assistant stared, stunned, their mouths open, their eyes wide. They looked like a couple of idiots. It was pretty funny.
My chopper’s blades slowed. I stepped out as the smoke and flames of the wreck whirled around me, along with some extra smoke from the dry-ice machines I’d brought along. My frame was massive, my superiority obvious. My hair’s black steel caught the light of the fire and my tactical goggles gleamed as I surveyed the destruction around me.
“Looks like you’ve had some helicopter problems,” I said.
Fuck, what a line.
“That’s my Kamov Ka-27,” I continued, gesturing at my helicopter. “I had it custom-designed by the world’s tippity-top engineers. All blacked out, of course. Your stock Apache is a decent chopper, nice range, solid maneuverability. But if I get in a dogfight up there, if it’s just me and the enemy, one on one, staring each other down with blood in our eyes and hatred in our souls, I’m taking the Kamov every time. We’re talking firepower, we’re talking explosiveness. We’re talking speed, violence, and momentum. And it’s great at dodging crazed hawks.”
George Lukas looked at me funny.
“Not that I would know anything about that,” I said.
He stared at me for a long time. Like, it was getting super awkward.
Finally he spoke.
“Well,” George Lukas said, “I think we found our stunt pilot.”
I threw back my head and laughed loud and hard. And suddenly I stopped, looked at him, and said super-dramatically like a total badass:
“Stunt pilot? I don’t think so. The Two-Time is nothing less than a star.”
George Lukas arched his eyebrow, and the assistant blurted out, “What?! Sir, no—you can’t possibly make this random guy the lead of the show. Sure, he’s got the presence of a modern-day black-ops Apollo, and his mustache is sublime, but our careers are riding on this, not to mention the entire reputation of Snapchat as a creator of groundbreaking dramatic television. We cannot make this no-name the star! What will I tell Mark-Paul Gosselaar? He’s waiting in his trailer now, sipping a Coke Zero!”
George Lukas stared at me again, but not as long as the first time.
“We’re doing this,” he said quietly.
“But—”
“We’re doing this!” he shouted. “I’ll fire Mark-Paul Gosselaar myself if I have to! I don’t know much in this world. I don’t know a thing about cameras, sound, narrative structure, or television production. I have no idea how the hell I got this job, except maybe they got confused by my name.
“But,” he said, pointing at me, “I know one thing. That man standing there is a star.”
I smiled. Pointing is kind of rude, but I let it slide. “You made the right move, George Lukas,” I said. “Probably your first right move since you killed off Jar-Jar Binks in Episode II.”
“Um,” he said, “I’m not—”
“Here,” I said, tossing him a little piece of wadded-up paper. “I wrote down the number to my private flip phone. Direct line. Call me when you’re ready to roll.
