John Gilstrap - Damage Control

Tristan just stood and watched as his rescuers moved on to the rest of their jobs. The Big Guy messed with the control surfaces of the airplane while Scorpion loaded stuff into the back of the plane. Their bulky backpacks went in first, followed by the other two rifles they’d taken from the dead Mexican soldiers.

The two of them moved with a precision that seemed to be practiced, though it wasn’t possible that they’d stolen a lot of airplanes together. Or maybe they had. Given the way the last few days had gone, absolutely nothing was out of the question anymore.

It was almost as if the two men thought each other’s thoughts. Tristan envied that kind of friendship.

Oscar stirred. Then he moaned miserably. Tristan went to him and kneeled by his side. “You okay?” He spoke at a whisper, but he had no idea why.

Oscar groaned, “Ungh. What did he hit me with?”

“His hand,” Tristan said. He tried to keep the admiration out of his voice. “Really, his hand. Not even his fist. You’ll be okay, though. Scorpion said your jaw didn’t break.”

Oscar moaned again, and his shoulders twitched as he tried to move his hands. “Handcuffs are a nice touch,” he said. “They’ll help sell the story.”

“What about your backpack with the money?” Tristan asked. “Do you want me to hide that somewhere for you?”

Oscar shook his head and winced. “Shit, it’s like my brain is bruised,” he said. “No, leave the backpack where it is. I always have it with me. If it was missing, they’d be suspicious.”

A shadow fell over them, and Tristan knew without looking that it was Scorpion. “Hey, kid,” he said. “Howya feeling?”

“Like you tried to kill me and missed,” Oscar said.

“Yeah, well, your face looks like hell,” Scorpion said. “In a half hour, I doubt that you’ll be able to see out of your left eye. Don’t worry about it when it happens. It’s just the swelling. I don’t think I broke anything, so if you can handle the headache, you shouldn’t need any medical time at all.”

It seemed like the appropriate time for Oscar to say thank you, but Tristan understood that that would have been weird.

“You ready to go?” Scorpion asked Tristan.

“Sure,” he said. As if any other answer was possible.

“All right, then,” Scorpion said. “Mount up.”

Tristan rose from his haunches and waited for a few seconds for Scorpion to come with him.

“You go ahead,” Scorpion said. “Give me a minute with Oscar.”

Tristan felt himself blush. He didn’t like being dismissed like that. What did Oscar do to deserve alone time? He realized that it was foolish to think such things. He should be champing at the bit just to get the hell out of here. It shouldn’t matter to him who Scorpion talked to or what he said when he did. Still, what made Oscar special?

He approached the airplane from the front, but stopped when he saw the Big Guy’s arm waving at him through the open cockpit window, motioning for him to go around the back side to get to the door that was on the opposite side-the right-hand side-of the airplane.

Readjusting the body armor for the thousandth time, Tristan followed directions. He’d only gone a few steps when the engine started to turn, and the propeller caught, launching a hurricane of dust and grass back at Tristan.

The inside of the airplane looked like the backseat of an old car that had been packed for a long vacation. Tristan’s seat was too small with all the shit they made him wear. He had difficulty getting his seat belt fastened. Up front, the Big Guy made the pilot seat and the controls look like they’d been designed for a child.

“Put your seat belt on,” the Big Guy instructed.

“Already done,” Tristan said. “How long a trip is this going to be?”

“A little over five hours. Call it five and a half. More, if the winds don’t cooperate.”

Tristan scowled as he remembered a previous conversation. “And how much fuel do we have?”

“Barely enough.”

Tristan considered letting it go, but in the end, he couldn’t. “Doesn’t that mean we’re going to run out?”

“That’s a possibility.”

“It’s a probability, isn’t it?”

The Big Guy caught Tristan’s eyes in the mirror. “The boss says we only tell the truth, so are you sure you want to hear it?”

No, he thought. “Yes,” he said.

“I give us a forty percent chance,” Big Guy said.

“Of landing or crashing?”

He responded with just a look.

“Oh,” Tristan said. “Shit.”

“Cheer up,” Big Guy said. “It ain’t worth doing if it ain’t exciting. And relax. It’s not like we have a better option.” He reached onto his lap and lifted his night vision goggles onto his head, with the eyepieces tilted up out of the way.

Off to the right, Scorpion arrived at the door and climbed in, closing it behind him. With only one door for everyone to climb in and out of, it took some maneuvering for him to make his way to the right front seat. All the weapons didn’t make it any easier. Once he’d settled, it took him maybe two seconds to read the mood in the plane. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“The kid asked about the fuel situation,” Big Guy said. “So, I told him the truth.”

Tristan thought he saw the boss’s jaw twitch, but it was gone in an instant.

“Oh,” Scorpion said. “Okay. Let’s go, then.”

The Big Guy reached forward with his right hand. The engine noise built to a crescendo, and they started to roll. “Thank you for flying Rescue Airways,” the pilot yelled over the noise. The runway, such as it was, was made of grass, and the plane bounced like an old stagecoach as it gained speed. Bright lights from the wings illuminated their path as they sped toward the line of trees that blocked the far end of the runway.

“Our cruising altitude this evening-if we ever get this piece of shit off the ground-will be about thirty feet, at a cruising speed of one hundred eighty knots.”

The wall of trees approached at an alarming rate, and as the plane moved faster, it didn’t seem to be getting any lighter. Without thinking, Tristan pressed himself deeper into his seat. Up front, he could see Scorpion doing the same thing.

It’s hard to judge distances at night, but on the approximate scale of close to very close, Tristan had them pegged at a distance of holy shit when the wheels finally lifted off the turf and they gained altitude.

As they closed to within holy freaking shit the trees still had more altitude than they did.

Just inches short of holy freaking shit, we’re all going to die, the plane finally found whatever it was that planes found to give them real altitude, and they were airborne.

For the better part of a minute, no one said anything.

The Big Guy broke the silence. “Okay,” he said. “That was exciting. Now, sit back and enjoy the flight.”

Sometimes, Dom D’Angelo wondered what the bishop would think if he knew the real details of how he sometimes tended to his flock. This was one of those times. As he climbed down the stairs of the private Gulfstream jet that had delivered him to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport, he wondered how many of his seminary classmates had even seen the inside of such an aircraft.

It was nearly eleven o’clock when he stepped down onto the tarmac and into the car that was waiting for him. If he’d waited for a commercial flight, the earliest he could have arrived in Phoenix would have been tomorrow morning, and the nature of his business couldn’t wait that long.

His FBI seatmate in the back of the nondescript Ford said little, allowing him to absorb the details of the file he’d been given. He’d get only one shot at this, so he needed to get it right. He told himself that God would understand the lies that he would have to tell to put the plan in action, and that the deception was for the greater good.