Dancing around clouds was something he enjoyed, was good at. More turbulence, there was plenty of rain in them. Still in the right bank, he saw a hole and climbed up through it and found Heaven. Blue sky above, rolling white cotton below. He hung in the air as if suspended by the hand of the god he didn’t believe in.
A quick look at the altimeter, Eighty-five hundred feet. He’d climbed farther than he’d thought. There was a cloud bank ahead. More Cumulus fluff. He checked the oil pressure, the compass, the radios, the VOR needles. Off course, but he knew that.
He was cold. The sweat under his arms, chilly rivulets dripping under his shirt. His teeth chattered. “Born in the USA.” He leaned over the body, pulled off the harness and seatbelt. He unlatched the door. Still leaning, he pushed on the body’s shoulder with the palm of his hand. Virgil tumbled sideways, half in the plane, half out. The plane went into a downward right turn, the open door acting like flaps.
It was the rigor. Virgil had dropped onto his right side. His body from the waist up was outside the plane, but his legs were still bent, like he was sitting. He couldn’t fit through the doorway.
Horace pulled the wheel to the left, countering the drag on the right. He checked the altimeter, he was losing altitude. The cumulus in front didn’t seem so innocent now. The sweat under his arms seemed frozen. Icicles stabbed his heart.
He pulled back on the wheel, added power, slowed the descent and grit his teeth as the plane slipped into the soup. He was flying blind, still losing altitude. The stall warning sounded, buzzing loud. He pushed the nose downward to avoid the stall. He had to get the body back in the plane.
With his left hand on the controls he stretched, grabbed onto an arm and tried to pull it back in. No joy, it was stuck in place, and the altimeter said he was dropping at two-hundred and fifty feet a minute. He had to get Virgil gone.
He pulled off his harness and seatbelt. More cold sweat. He took his feet off the rudder pedals and the plane turned more to the right. He spun around in the seat. Using the door on his side as a back brace, he pulled his feet up onto the seat, planted them on Virgil’s ass and pushed.
Nothing. Virge was wedged in. Back solid against the door on his side, Horace tucked his legs to his chest, then lashed out, slamming his feet into his brother’s rear end. Movement. Some. It was gonna work. He pulled his knees back again, slammed them into Virgil’s rear again and Virge moved a little more, but he was still stuffed tight in the doorway.
Breathing hard, head spinning, fighting panic, Horace pulled his knees to his chest, grabbed a great breath, heaved it out, screaming like a kung-fu fighter as he hammered his feet into Virgil’s rump.
Virgil popped out of the plane like a Champagne cork, pulling the bricks after himself as he disappeared into the clouds. “Born in the USA.” And Horace slid after, his feet dangling out of the plane. He spun around, hands flaying for something to grab onto. Frantic fingers found the seatbelt. He grabbed onto it. The plane was in a spiraling descent now, any second it was going to go into a spin.
Horace felt his hands slipping from the strap, but a quick vision of an uncontrolled plunge into to the water below gave him the extra strength he needed to pull himself up toward the seat. He grabbed onto it, pulled more, got his legs out of the sky and into the plane. He grabbed onto the wheel, turned it to the left as he struggled into place. Panting, he got a foot onto the left rudder peddle as he pulled on the seatbelt.
“Holy shit,” he muttered over and over as he tried to find the right combination of rudder and aileron to take him out of the turn. If he wasn’t careful, he’d pull the wings off the plane. He eased back on the wheel, sweat dripping from his forehead into his eyes. He blinked it away. He was still going down, still in the soup, still blind, but he was out of the rotation.
He reached over, latched the door, checked the level control. He’d done some flight time under the hood, all he had to do was concentrate. He could get out of this. He could.
The altimeter said sixty-five hundred feet. He had the wings level. He eased back a bit on the wheel, stopped the descent. But now he had other problems. Up or down, back the way he’d come, or continue on toward Catalina?
He cursed himself for not getting the morning’s aviation weather. Really dumb. He’d never flown without it before. “One fucking time,” he muttered. He hit the button on the player, popped out the CD. Between the Boss and Virgil, his thinking got so messed up he almost went out the plane, too.
He decided to drop under the cloud cover. Keeping his eye on the gauges, he tried to pretend he was back with a flight instructor doing his instrument training. Halfway through, he’d dropped out. Who wanted to fly in bad weather anyway, he’d reasoned. But he’d learned enough not to panic.
Using the gauges, he kept the wings level as he trimmed up for a controlled descent at a hundred feet per minute. Then he set the auto pilot for Catalina and took his hands off the controls.
The altimeter said he was flying at forty-five hundred feet. He was tense, almost frightened. It was important he calm down, so he snaked an arm back in the pouch on the passenger door and came out with a couple more CDs. Billy Joel, Goodnight Saigon, Virgil loved that one, but it was guaranteed to heighten Horace’s apprehension. The other, Mozart’s Concertos for French Horn. He popped it in, turned up the volume. Now it was just him and the master till he broke through the clouds. His fate was in Mozart’s hands now, Horace wouldn’t be touching the controls till he saw the water below.
At three thousand feet, he closed his eyes as a horn solo soared through the cockpit. This was what made him exceptional, the ability to remove himself, to take himself away till the crisis passed. If there wasn’t anything he could do, then there was no reason to stress himself out. He pictured Sadie in his mind. Sexy Sadie. Would she remember him if he called? No woman had ever affected him like that and he’d only spent a couple of dances with her, knew nothing about her.
He felt the light and opened his eyes to a bright sun. The cloud mass was behind, the altimeter said seventeen hundred feet. Catalina was dead ahead. He set the autopilot for straight and level flight. He’d always been lucky. He hummed along with the horn.
Then he thought about the old woman he was coming in to do. It was typical Striker. Getting someone to behave the way he wanted by attacking his family. Horace bit his lip, chewed on his tongue. It didn’t seem right, the poor woman probably never hurt a fly and she was gonna get killed just for being some asshole’s mother. It was as if someone was gonna kill Ma because they were pissed at Horace.
It wasn’t fair. But that Kenyon bitch killing Virgil wasn’t fair either. Also it wasn’t fair Ma sitting blind in her rocker, a tumor swelling in her brain, while cancer ate up her body. No, life wasn’t fair. It sucked.
He heard some chatter on the radio and it jerked his mind back to the controls. He took the plane off auto and flew it himself. The small airport on Catalina Island was atop a mountain. The wind sock told him he had a slight headwind. Piece of cake landing.
On the ground, he took a cab down to Avalon. It was after 10:00. He was hungry enough to eat raw fish. Fortunately, he was able to get a quick burger and fries at one of the many seaside restaurants. He would have liked to linger, to watch the girls stroll by, but he had a job to do, distasteful as it was, and he wanted to get back to the mainland before dark.
He found the house without trouble. Striker always gave precise directions. He pulled a pair of surgical gloves out of the inside pocket of his bomber jacket, put them on. A light knock on the door. Calm, not even a foot tap to the music in his head. Bruce Springsteen again.
No answer to the knock. Maybe she was hard of hearing. He tried the bell. The door opened. She was old, like Striker said.
“Can I help you?” She had a thin lipped smile, happy grey eyes. She probably never had a bad day in her life. Well, she was about to have one now.
“Yeah.” Horace stepped into her, pushed her back into the house, closed the door. He had the Beretta in her face before she had a chance to think. “Where’s the children?”
“They’re not home.” She had panic in her eyes now.
“Here’s the deal, lady. You swallow these pills and if you’re dead before they come back from wherever they are, they get to live.”
“Why?”
“My boss needs to distract your son.”
“How do I know you won’t harm them?” she said. Horace had to admire her. She was worried about her grandkids, not a care for her own safety. She was a plucky lady. She wouldn’t whine.
“There’s no reason to do the kids. Besides, alive they’re a bigger distraction, but I’ll do them if we don’t get
