Ken Douglas - Scorpion

The noise was deafening, louder than the cranked up volume of any of the Texas honky tonks that Earl liked to take her to, louder than the giant speakers at the Weezer and the Wallflowers concerts she went to with her sister last year, louder than the dragsters at the Southern Texas Speedway, louder than God.

She battled with the prime minister as he tried to turn her around. In her normal, rational mind, she knew what he was doing, but she couldn’t help herself, she fought against him, afraid he was going to take the oxygen away. She pushed against his chest, fighting to get up and out of his lap. Then the plane lurched again, as if a giant boy had a giant fist wrapped around his giant airplane toy, and he was shaking it.

She stopped resisting and squirmed around so that she was sitting in his lap, but she lost the mask as she came around. She offered no resistance as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close, grabbing his hands onto his elbows in an effort to form a locking ring around her waist. She felt herself getting light, then heavy, then light again as the plane plunged toward the ground, lurched itself level, then plunged downward again. She grabbed onto the seatback in front of her for added support. Shivers zapped her body, but she fought to control her shaking. Something was smacking her in the head and she reached up and grabbed it. It was the oxygen mask. Without realizing what she was doing, she jerked on it with a maniac force, snapping the plastic tube, destroying the mask and cutting off any more oxygen for herself or the prime minister.

“ Please, God,” the man next to the prime minister murmured as the plane bucked and slammed through a convulsion from hell. It was a desperate plea, like a puppy dog whine.

She felt the prime minister’s hands slipping.

“ Help me, George,” he yelled, and she felt a second pair of hands wrap around her left arm just as the plane slammed and jerked further to the right. They were still going down. She felt them pull and strain, fighting to keep her in place, as the plane rocked and rolled through the clear sky.

Then the angle of descent slackened and they were flying straight and level again. A collective sigh escaped from first class and Maria felt her breath go out as she sighed, too. She relaxed, her shoulders sagged, her heart slowed its wild pumping. The deafening noise was down to a dull roar.

“ Thank you,” she said, disentangling herself from the two men by pulling up on the seatback in front of her. The attorney general gave her backside a gentle push. She wanted to be back next to the DEA man with the shaved head, safely belted in. She wanted comfort. She wanted a friend. The DEA man was all she had.

“ Sorry folks,” the captain’s voice soothed through the plane, “I had no control over that, but we have the plane back and she seems to be flying okay. I’ve alerted Port of Spain and they will have medical facilities standing by should we need any. We’re still about forty-five minutes behind schedule. I know it’s difficult, but please try and remain calm. We are doing the very best we can.”

“ It was a bomb,” Chandee said. She looked over at the man with the strong voice and the puppy dog whine. He hadn’t offered her any help until the prime minister demanded it and she saw why. Sweat ringed his forehead, his eyes were glazed like a rabbit caught in the headlights, his face was ashen, his hands were shaking and it looked like he’d peed his pants.

“ Shut up, George,” Prime Minister Ramsingh said.

Maria looked down at them. “Thanks again,” she said. “You probably saved my life.” The prime minister was beaming. The attorney general was not. She watched as he slipped out of his light suit coat and laid it in his lap.

“ You should go back to your seat,” the prime minister said. He seemed confident now, gone were the knitted eyebrows and the clenched teeth. His neck was no longer bulging and he seemed to be smiling, almost in a state of grace, she thought.

The attorney general, on the other hand, had bitten into his lower lip and drawn blood. A slight trickle oozed down his chin. That, coupled with his glazed eyes, gave him a crazed vampire kind of look. “Yes,” he said. “The prime minister is right, you should go back to your seat.” The words, whispered above the engine noise, weren’t mean in themselves, but the way he said it, they were threatening. She had seen his fear and he was the kind of man who would never forget it. She wanted to be away from him.

She turned to go back to her seat when she heard the baby cry again. A loud, long wail that seared her soul. There was only one lap child on board. A darling baby girl. She remembered seating them in the forward bulkhead position, right in front of the movie screen in second class. Just on the other side of the curtain. She prayed the child was okay, she had to know.

She turned around, away from her seat next to the DEA man, pushed aside the curtain and stepped into second class and chaos. The overhead luggage lockers had been stuffed to capacity with overweight carry-on bags and many of them had come open during the rapid descent, spilling their contents on the passengers below and out into the aisles.

The baby stopped crying. Her young parents were sharing an oxygen mask, taking turns breathing through it, like a pair of scuba buddies, allowing the baby to wear mom’s mask. She felt like reminding the baby’s father that they were low enough so that he could breathe without it, but she noticed his shaking hands. Sharing the mask with his wife gave him something to do. Made him feel like he was taking care of her.

“ Are we going to make it?” he asked, as his wife was drawing in oxygen.

“ Certainly, but like the captain said we’ll get into Port of Spain a little late.” Maria kept her smile, trying to project an image of calm security to the young couple, just the opposite of how she felt.

The plane lurched to the right and another overhead locker opened. She saw the black bag start to fall and she remembered how heavy it was. Full of bricks, she thought when she’d shoved it up there. She remembered mentally cursing the ground personnel for allowing the passengers to bring aboard carry-on baggage that was obviously too large and too heavy.

She lunged toward the open compartment as the plane careened through more turbulence. Someone screamed. The boy sitting below the falling bag was piercing Maria with innocent blue-eyed trust. The bag was halfway out of the locker. She wanted to scream, tell the boy to move, but she needed all her energy. She slammed her right foot into the deck and dove, hands outstretched. The boy started to look up. The bag was out of the locker. Her stretching fingers tipped it toward the aisle. She tried to loosen her body as she fell, she didn’t want to break anything. She hit the deck and wound up wedged between the bag and a seat stuffed with a large black man. Her right ankle was screaming.

“ Let me help you,” the man said in a rich baritone, and in the fluid movement of a professional athlete he was out of his seat, one hand lifting the bag and the other pulling her off the deck.

Standing, she caught her breath and looked up into his eyes. He looked as if he had played basketball when he was younger.

“ I think I might have sprained my ankle,” she said. She remembered earlier thinking that it was a shame that such a big man had to be folded into one of the cramped second class seats. “There’s an empty seat up in first, if you help me back, you can have it.”

“ No problem.” He looped an arm behind her legs and hefted her off the deck.

“ I didn’t mean you had to carry me.”

“ It’s the best way.” He turned sideways and sidestepped up the aisle toward first class. She pushed the curtain aside as he carried her through.