Paul Levine - Solomon and Lord Drop Anchor

“Flatfoot faggot,” she hissed.

“ Your preference?” I politely inquired.

The silken sky was endless, the stars infinite, the breeze sweet with a thousand promises. On a night like this, the past is forgotten and the future is forever.

Tony Kingston loved flying at night, the huge aircraft slicing through the tar black sky like some tri-masted sailing vessel on a great adventure. Which is what Kingston thought when feeling poetic, when he let the drone of the three massive engines wash over him, playing their serene song.

Other times, burdened with the reality of a discount air carrier in the era of deregulation, he thought he was flying a bus, an over-crowded, undermaintained, ancient clunker of a bus. Now, as he acknowledged instructions from Miami Center and descended to eleven thousand feet he felt the big jet’s power under his hands. It was still a remarkable beast, four hundred thousand pounds of muscle, one million separate parts in all. Looking as if it shouldn’t be able to get off the ground at all, this huge aircraft was a testament to man’s genius, he thought, just as surely as man was a testament to God’s genius.

Hell, the fuselage of the DC-10 looks like one of those fat Cuban cigars-the Robustos-I bring back from Havana.

Tony Kingston looked through the V-shaped windshield and into the night. To the left was the vast darkness of the Atlantic Ocean. Below and to the right were the twinkling lights of Florida’s Gold Coast, Palm Beach merging with Ft. Lauderdale and farther south, Miami Beach. In less than twenty minutes, they should be pulling up at the gate at MIA. Listening to the soothing white noise of the slipstream, he took the measure of his own life, calculating credits and debits, figuring he was solidly in the plus column.

A former combat pilot, Kingston sometimes missed the action, the camaraderie of the flight squadron. But he overly romanticized it, he knew, and flying a fighter was a young man’s game. What he had now was a career: chief pilot for Atlantica Airlines. The title almost sounded military. So why did the job often leave him wanting more?

Because commercial aviation is to flying what elevator music is to Mozart.

But what had he expected? Surely not the same rush he got from his beloved A-6 Intruder rocketing off the deck of a carrier, a load of HARM missiles slung under its wings.

“Miami Center, this is Atlantica six-four-zero at eleven thousand,” said copilot Jim Ryder into the radio.

“Roger, six-four-zero. Maintain eleven thousand,” came the scratchy reply.

In a few moments, they’d be handed off to Miami Approach Control, which would guide them from the ocean to the airport for landing. With a steady easterly sea breeze, they would make a sweeping loop over the Everglades to the west of the city and come back again, landing into the wind. It was routine. Tony would line them up with the radio signals that indicate the descent profile and the runway center line, then ease the big bird to the ground. Copilot Ryder would keep up the chatter with Approach Control, and Larry Dozier, the flight engineer, would scan the myriad gauges, which assured that hundreds of mechanical, electrical, and hydraulic systems were performing as intended. Within minutes, the passengers would be heading to their hotels or homes or cruise ships.

“Atlantica six-four-zero, expect Harvest Three approach for runway nine left,” Kingston heard in his earphones. On his right, Ryder opened the approach chart.

“Confirm intercept altitude at fifteen hundred feet and decision height two hundred,” Kingston told his copilot.

“Roger that,” Ryder said, consulting the chart. “Final approach fix is Oscar.”

Kingston looked forward to the landing. Even with all the computerized help, it still took a warm body to bring the plane home. For all its drawbacks, being a commercial pilot still beat a suburban commute and a nine-to-five job.

So why did he miss the adrenaline jolts he remembered from the Gulf War? He could still feel the G forces on takeoff from the John F. Kennedy that sunny and windy January day, the heightened heartbeat as he approached the target. One of the “Sunday Punchers,” he dropped a missile down the smokestack of the Iraqi cargo ship Almutanabbi, docked at a Kuwaiti port. The American public watched the whole thing on CNN, including an interview afterward with Kingston on the deck of the carrier. He was unshaven, his dark hair tousled by the wind. Behind him, a navy seaman was painting a hash mark in the shape of a ship on the nose of his fighter. Kingston smiled and spoke comfortably into the camera, his crooked grin and pugnacious chin seeming to symbolize American fortitude.

When he watched the grainy, black-and-white videotape of the bombing, Kingston was riveted by something he couldn’t see from his fighter: two men walking on the products jetty alongside the Almutanabbi. They paused and looked up. So strange. They must have heard the jet or the whistling approach of the missile.

One man said something to the other and shrugged. Then they continued walking. Several seconds later, the blast rocked the freighter, and the two men disappeared in a fiery cloud.

Why hadn’t they dived for cover? Why hadn’t they run?

Now Kingston derived a tranquil satisfaction from flying the fat Robusto filled with tourists. With all the computers and automated gear, he knew he was no longer so much a pilot as an operations director, troubleshooter, and systems manager. But in an emergency, he carried the lives of three hundred people on his strong shoulders. He was good at his job and figured he had finally grown up. He no longer needed the rush of a catapult takeoff from the deck of a carrier. He no longer needed the Top Gun macho swagger, the envious looks from men, the adulation from women. He had been a womanizer, a fault common to combat and commercial pilots alike. Now he had a committed relationship with a wonderful, intelligent woman, and if she was also beautiful and twenty years his junior-so what, some things don’t change.

“Atlantica six-four-zero, good evening,” Miami Approach welcomed. “Turn right heading two-two-zero. Descend and maintain eight thousand.”

Ryder acknowledged the message, and Kingston turned the aircraft toward the west. In a few moments, they were over Miami heading toward the Everglades. Both men listened to conversations between Approach Control and other aircraft. At forty-four, Kingston was older than his first officer but in better physical shape. Jim Ryder had grown a paunch from too much hotel room service. Tony Kingston still had a military bearing and rock hard gut.

“Atlantica six-four-zero, you’re number thirteen for approach.”

“Jeez, we’ll be halfway to Naples before they bring us back,” Ryder said. He turned around in his seat to face the flight engineer. “Hey, Larry, you want to hit South Beach tonight?”

“Sure. Berlin Bar, maybe Bash, finish up at Amnesia,” Larry Doziev said. “How about you, Tony?”

“No thanks. I’ve got to finish my report for the union.”

“That’s what happens when you get married,” Ryder said.

Kingston laughed. “I’m not married. You’re married.”

“Yeah, but you’re acting married ever since you and the mystery woman got together. When you gonna show her off?”

“Maybe she’s married,” Dozier said.

Not yet. But I’m going to change that.

He had never before committed to one woman, always thinking the next one was the fantasy creature who would fulfill all his needs. Now, with the passage of time and more women-flight attendants, models, executives with one-night layovers-in his past than he could remember, he finally had someone whose needs he wanted to fill, a woman he loved more than he loved himself.