Амброз Бирс - Flight or Fright - 17 Turbulent Tales

Bill Montgomery had called a five-minute break and the management team met in the hall. “Goddammit, Roger, are you with us or against us on this one?”

Colvin had looked away.

“I’m serious,” snapped Montgomery. “The LCS division has brought this company 215 million dollars in profit this year, and your work has been an important part of that success, Roger. Now you seem ready to flush that away on some goddamn transient telemetry readings that don’t mean anything when compared to the work we’ve done as a team. There’s a vice-presidency opening in a few months, Roger. Don’t screw your chances by losing your head like that hysteric McGuire.”

“Ready?” said the voice from KSC when five minutes had passed.

“Go,” said Vice-President Bill Montgomery.

“Go,” said Vice-President Larry Miller.

“Go,” said Vice-President Steve Cahill.

“Go,” said Project Manager Tom Weiscott.

“Go,” said Project Manager Roger Colvin.

“Fine,” said KSC. “I’ll pass along the recommendation. Sorry you gentlemen won’t be here to watch the liftoff tomorrow.”

Colvin turned his head as Bill Montgomery called from his side of the cabin, “Hey, I think I see Long Island.”

“Bill,” said Colvin, “how much did the company make this year on the C-12B redesign?”

Montgomery took a drink and stretched his legs in the roomy interior of the Gulfstream. “About four hundred million, I think, Rog. Why?”

“And did the Agency ever seriously consider going to someone else after…after?”

“Shit,” said Tom Weiscott, “where else could they go? We got them by the short hairs. They thought about it for a few months and then came crawling back. You’re the best designer of shaped range safety devices and solid hypergolics in the country, Rog.”

Colvin nodded, worked with his calculator a minute and closed his eyes.

The steel bar clamped down across his lap and the car he rode in clanked higher and higher. The air grew thin and cold, the screech of wheel on rail dwindling into a thin scream as the rollercoaster lumbered above the six mile mark.

In case of loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will descend from the ceiling. Please fasten them securely over your mouth and nose and breath normally.

Colvin peeked ahead, up the terrible incline of the rollercoaster, sensing the summit of the climb and the emptiness beyond.

The tiny air tank-and-mask combinations were called PEAPs—Personal Egress Air Packs. PEAPs from four of the five crew-members were recovered from the ocean bottom. All had been activated. Two minutes and forty-five seconds of each five-minute air supply had been used up.

Colvin watched the summit of the rollercoaster’s first hill arrive.

There was a raw metallic noise and a lurch as the rollercoaster went over the top and off the rails. People in the cars behind Colvin screamed and kept on screaming. Colvin lurched forward and grabbed the restraining bar as the rollercoaster plummeted into nine miles of nothingness. He opened his eyes. A single glimpse out the Gulfstream window told him that the thin lines of shaped charges he had placed there had removed all of the port wing cleanly, surgically. The tumble rate suggested that enough of a stub of the starboard wing was left to provide the surface area needed to keep the terminal velocity a little lower than maximum. Two minutes and forty-five seconds, plus or minus four seconds.

Colvin reached for his calculator but it had flown free in the cabin, colliding with hurtling bottles, glasses, cushions, and bodies that had not been securely strapped in. The screaming was very loud.

Two minutes and forty-five seconds. Time to think of many things. And perhaps, just perhaps, after two and a half years of no sleep without dreams, perhaps it would be time enough for a short nap with no dreams at all. Colvin closed his eyes.

What’s worse than being stopped at customs in a South American country while trying to smuggle out contraband? How about being sealed in a 727 at 30,000 feet with a hellishly lively stolen artifact in your carry-on bag? In this story, Ryan Rayburn III is faced with both. Cody Goodfellow is something of a mystery. Did he really study literature at UCLA? Does he live in Burbank? Did he once earn a living as an “undistinguished composer of scores for pornographic videos?” Maybe some of the above, maybe all, maybe none. Two things are for sure: he knows how to chill your blood, and you’ll thank God Ryan Rayburn isn’t your seatmate.

Invisible and invincible, Ryan Rayburn III betrayed no trace of worry as he breezed through security and passport control of Nicoya’s Guanacaste Airport, a cool American tourist right up until they culled him out of the boarding line, took him behind a screen and ordered him to open his bag.

Smiling guilelessly, he presented his boarding pass, declaration form and passport to the hangdog customs agent. No big deal, you’re just doing your job. None of the other passengers looked his way as they filed by. It had to be random, but he was a white man traveling alone. He probably wasn’t going to blow up the plane, but odds were excellent he was holding contraband, maybe even a mule for las drogas …

This wasn’t some banana republic where tourists got disappeared. Costa Rica was almost civilization—hell, even better, since they didn’t even have an army, and a “safety patrol” in lieu of state police. But la mordida was still king. Ryan looked around for a supervisor or a camera, smiled nonchalantly and fished five twenties out of his money belt. The customs agent strapped on a pair of baby blue rubber gloves before commencing an autopsy of Ryan’s duffel bag.

Guanacaste was slightly fancier than most modern Latin American airports, but still had the ambience of a cheap 70s sci-fi film set in a futuristic prison. Signs everywhere tried to shame flyers with images of hooded and handcuffed prisoners with tormented thought bubbles: Why Did I Try To Smuggle?

Stiff upper lip. Don’t smile or try to chat him up. Don’t do their job for them. The idiots they caught always broadcast their guilt in creepy, toxic waves that would kill a canary. He was doing nothing wrong. The security checkpoint didn’t even know what they were looking at, and even if this guy did, it was hardly worth delaying the flight. He wasn’t smuggling drugs, or weapons. He was just another tourist, bringing back tourist stuff.

The customs agent laid out clothing, camera equipment and toiletries with the odd delicacy of a servant setting out a picnic. He excavated the whole bag, then reached in and peeled back the inner lining and unzipped the false bottom.

“It’s just a souvenir, sir.” Ryan gulped like he was breathing through a wet towel. “Is there a problem? I bought it at a souvenir shop—”

The customs agent did not acknowledge him. He just stared into Ryan’s bag with his hands planted on the scuffed stainless steel table. Then he coughed into his hand.

Ryan looked around, fanning the cash in his hand, pushing it at the agent. A steady stream of passengers filed through the metal detector towards the departure gate. “My flight leaves in ten minutes, friend.”

Still coughing, the customs agent dropped Ryan’s travel documents and waved him away like a mosquito cloud. Strings of mucus sprayed out around his fist.

Ryan hurriedly stuffed his bag and pocketed his cash, turned to go up a broken escalator and down a long, mostly unlit terminal to his gate before he noticed that his papers were sticky with saliva, dappled with blood.

Jesus, some security… Tries to shake you down and gives you TB . It wasn’t funny, but he had to laugh, or he’d scream. They’d had him—caught him red-handed. The look in the agent’s eyes when he opened the false bottom, just before he got sick… It had gone a sickly pale olive, and his eyes just about rolled down his cheeks to fall in with the thing in his dirty laundry pouch. The sad bastard had known what he was looking at. He’d known , but he’d said nothing, neither did he touch the money.