David Golemon - Primeval

"Go on, Lieutenant, she's waiting."

"Yes, sir," Jason said as he nervously popped his own belt loose. At that moment the door to the restroom opened just as Alice pulled up to avoid a small hill just outside of Riverside, California. Before anyone could see Mendenhall clearly, he ducked back inside and slammed the door.

Ryan made his way up front and pulled the curtain aside and stepped into the small cockpit. He hurriedly slammed down into the copilot's seat and fumbled with the seatbelt until he finally managed to get it locked.

"Not like flying F-14 Tomcats is it, Mr. Ryan?" Alice asked with a smirk, managing a quick glance over to her right.

"No, ma'am, not at all."

"Listen, I need you to watch what I'm doing, because you're going to have to take the controls in a minute. I suspect we may have to do some evading."

"Take the controls?" he said as he pulled the belt tighter. "But this thing has propellers, and frankly, ma'am, I don't see any controls, just a steering wheel — I think."

"Yes, it does have propellers, young man. It's called real flying. Now, take the wheel, don't worry, she's real responsive. Use your rudder and stabilizers for up and down, and don't worry about the wing flaps, got it?"

"Why not worry about the wing flaps?" he asked as he took the half-moon wheel in front of him.

"Because we won't use them in flight — stabilizers, tail and engine acceleration and deceleration, that's all. Now, I need to find us a good place to land this thing where we won't bring every policeman in two counties down on us." She let go of the wheel and pulled a map from an oversize front pocket of her coveralls.

"Ma'am, don't take this the wrong way, but you're one crazy…" — he stopped and looked quickly at her smiling face—"lady."

"Good choice of words, Mr. Ryan," she said as she unfolded the map, while the former fighter jock tried desperately to see out of the half-oval windows to his front.

"I think here would be the best place." Alice held the map out so Ryan could take a glance, but he was so intent on keeping the plane in the air, that he only looked for a split second and then turned back.

Ryan was getting a quick feel for the ancient Grumman and his vision was picking up far more than he should have been able to, thanks to the advanced windscreen installed in the plane that picked up ambient light and made seeing easier in the darkness. As he turned slightly to avoid a string of power lines on the far side of Upland, he knew he liked flying the old seaplane.

Alice reached out and turned a knob on the aluminum control panel. As Ryan watched a small green illuminated grid appeared on the windscreen, the copilot's side of the window showed the foothills to the right, and on the left side in front of Alice, the Chino Valley spread out as far as the glass allowed. Ryan was shocked at the modern hologram being projected onto the windscreens.

"A little gift from Pete Golding," she said when she saw the amazed look on Ryan's face. "He flew with me and the senator once, and decided we needed some upgrading — poor man almost had a nervous breakdown."

"I can't imagine why," Ryan said with a sheepish grin.

As Ryan flew toward Los Angeles, popping up over Kellogg Hill and then down over West Covina, he knew to hug the hills to his right side. Alice stretched her arms out and then flexed her fingers before she slowly placed the flying gloves onto her small hands once more. Then she reached beneath her seat and pulled out a small cylindrical object that resembled the casing for a small kitchen clock. She ran a cord to the console and then plugged the device into a small socket. When its face lit up, she slid it into an open space in the console.

"There," she said smiling, "now we have radar."

Ryan looked from the hologram in front of him to the avoidance radar on the console.

"If you don't mind my asking, why weren't you using that all along?" Ryan asked incredulously.

"Because, young man, I like to fly once in a while. Now we're heading into a place where buildings can pop up out of nowhere." She looked over at him after adjusting the radar sweep speed. "Pete was really the nervous type; he insisted we have a radar. He's a real wimp."

Ryan was amazed. Alice was either the bravest woman he'd ever met, or she had gone over the edge and into the bleakness of senility.

"Okay, Mr. Ryan, I'll take it from here. If you don't remember how scared you were during night landings on a carrier, you're about to be reminded."

As Ryan let go of the wheel, his eyes widened when Alice Hamilton pulled back on the throttles and allowed the seaplane to dip far too low to the ground.

"Uh, ma'am, there's nothing down here but houses."

Alice leaned back in her seat and then turned her head and shouted through the curtain.

"Everyone, hold on to your behinds, this is going to be pretty dicey," she called as a moment later the sound of the bathroom door being slammed sounded through the cabin.

Inside the passenger area, Sarah touched Carl on the arm and, unfastening her seatbelt, she hopped quickly across the small gap between the eight seats and then threw herself onto Jack's lap. She kissed him quickly and then rolled over to the seat beside him.

"I expect you to save me if we crash, you got that?" she said seriously.

"I was just thinking the same thing about you."

Up front, Ryan watched as Alice turned the wheel sharply to the left, at the same time slamming her small foot into the left rudder pedal as hard as she could.

"Pete could have suggested power steering for this thing!" she said, taking a quick look over at Ryan and winking.

The Grumman pitched over onto her left side and the large plane took a nosedive for the ground. Ryan wanted to close his eyes, but he watched the hologram on the windscreen instead. It went from showing greater Los Angeles to the front right, to nothing but houses, bridges, and streets. Then he saw a straight blank area.

"Uh, ma'am, can I ask what it is you're doing?" Ryan said as he reached out and steadied his slide from the seat.

"The report said this Chavez creep lived in Elysian Park, right?"

"I have no idea!" Jason said as the plane drew closer to the ground, the right wing tip almost touching some of the larger houses beneath them.

"Well, I was informed he ran his illegal operations out of there. Now, we can't very well land at LAX or Burbank now, can we? The police are looking for you and your little merry band if I heard right, so that leaves us one place where we can land that won't put us thirty miles from Elysian Park."

"Where is that?"

"Right here — the Los Angeles River."

Ryan wanted to scream that Los Angeles didn't have a river in the remotest and loosest sense of the word. He knew the river to be a concrete canal that ran through L.A. like a winding snake, and at most this time of year it had about an inch of water running right down its center. He also knew there to be bridges every six hundred feet.

"Oh, shit," he said as Alice leveled the seaplane and then in a blur of motion, pulled down the landing-gear lever on her left. She fought with the old-fashioned wheel and then started furiously pumping the wing flaps down as the Grumman's engine screamed power as she hopped over three houses and then over a small bridge. She cut power to the engines and the eerie silence belied the sheer terror of everyone on the plane.

Finally, the large wheels that had popped free of the boatlike body of the plane struck concrete. She bounced once, twice, finally hitting a foot-deep rivulet of water in the center of the river. Alice pumped up the wing flaps to their stops and the plane slowed after rising again into the air. Finally, she bounced down and then the next bridge in line rose up before them only a hundred feet away. Alice calmly started to apply the brakes, squealing and grinding as the seaplane slowed. Now realizing they wouldn't slow in time, Alice Hamilton turned the wheel as sharply as she could to the left while at the same time slamming down on the left rudder pedal once more, turning the Grumman's rear wheel. The large plane skid and then finally turned to the left, finally fishtailing to a stop.