Trent Reedy - Stealing Air

“We nailed him!” Brian yelled. He put Blackbird in a tight low curve. “Alex, you timed it perfectly!”

“Dude, it plastered him!” Alex laughed, but then stopped. “Ground Control, this is Blackbird , go ahead. Over.”

Brian brought them around toward the Runaway Bridge and did a dive run under it. He pulled up to gain altitude.

“Max says everyone is cracking up,” Alex said. “Frankie is spitting manure out of his mouth and wiping it from his eyes and nose. He’s not sure, but he thinks Frankie might be crying.”

“Let’s go check it out,” Brian said. They’d turned around and were coming up on the park again. He brought it in at a low twenty feet. Frankie saw them and started running out of the park toward home. “There he goes!” Brian laughed. “But we’re still here. Looks like you won your bet.”

“I always win!” Alex said.

Down below, their classmates clapped, laughed, and cheered. Brian dipped a wing to them and then took Blackbird up high. They’d done it.

“Brian, Max says he has no idea how fast Blackbird burns fuel, so we shouldn’t take any chances. We should go ahead with Phase Five and bring it in for a landing heading north on First Street. It’s at the bottom of the hill and should be level enough.”

“Roger that,” Brian said. He put Blackbird through a series of maneuvers that lined them up with First Street.

“Watch for cars and power lines,” Alex said.

They were coming in nice and shallow, maybe twenty or twenty-five feet up, just like Dad bringing the Cardinal in for a landing on some little grass airstrip. Brian eased the throttle lever forward and felt the engine power down a little. The flyer began to descend. “Be ready on those brakes,” he shouted to Alex, but he did not look away from the street. Twenty feet. Ten. Five feet up. They were just above the pavement. He eased the yoke forward and throttled all the way down. The skateboards made smooth contact. Brian hit the kill switch to shut the engine off. “Brake! Brake! Brake!”

“I can’t… stupid things…” Alex muttered. A horrible screeching noise came from the rear of the aircraft.

Brian felt them slow down a little, but there wasn’t much more he could do. He lowered the horizontal stabilizer to push the nose down a little, but given that they were rolling on two skateboards, they could pretty much move only in a straight line.

They had maybe two blocks to go until First Street intersected with Lincoln Street. The yellow house directly ahead loomed closer and closer. “Why aren’t we stopping?” Brian turned around. Two trails of thick black smoke rose from the ground below Blackbird .

“I got ’em locked down! The door stopper things are just burning up!” Alex said.

One block to go. They were still moving too fast. “Dude, these brakes are useless!” Alex’s whole body jerked as he tried to push them down harder, then he jumped back as sparks shot out. “The rubber’s all burned off. We’re grinding metal!”

“Flintstones brakes!” Brian shouted.

“What are you talking about?”

“Come on! Do it!” He leaned back in his seat and pressed the soles of his shoes to the street.

“Do you know how much these shoes cost?” Alex said.

“Do it now!” Brian’s legs shook as his shoes skidded along the pavement. He heard another scraping noise and saw Alex was dragging his feet as well.

“First my pants. Now my shoes. Want to ruin my shirt next?” said Alex.

Blackbird rolled across Lincoln Street and up a slightly sloped driveway. They were eight feet from smashing right through the Iowa Hawkeyes mascot painted on the white garage door. They rolled closer and closer. Brian cringed and instinctively held his hands up in front of him. “Stop, stop, stop, stop!”

Blackbird scraped to a halt about two feet from the garage door.

Brian finally let out a breath. His heart pounded in his chest. He looked back at Alex. “Touchdown.”

Alex was shaking. He slowly nodded as he fumbled for the radio handset. When he picked it up, he took a deep breath. “Ground —” He swallowed and licked his lips. “Ground Control, this is Blackbird . Blackbird has landed. I say again, Blackbird has landed. We’re at First and Lincoln. How copy? Over.” Brian could hear the faint sound of Max’s voice on the radio. Alex frowned. “Negative, Ground Control. I just said ‘ Blackbird has landed.’ I didn’t say it was a safe landing. Blackbird out.” He switched off the radio and clipped the handset to the wire basket. Then he looked at Brian and pointed at Herky the Hawk on the door right in front of them. “Whoa.”

Brian nodded. “As Max would say, ‘precisely.’”

Brian and Alex stepped down off of Blackbird and onto solid ground. They picked the flyer up, each carrying a wing. They intended to hide it in the north woods until dark, when they could safely sneak it back to the Eagle’s Nest, but before they could carry it very far, Max rode up on his two-seat bike. Wendy was pedaling in the back.

They put the flyer down as Max ran up to them. “I believe the mission was a resounding success! I’m a little concerned by the trails the brakes seem to have made in the street, but the flying was impressive.”

“Yeah, Max, about those brakes…” Alex said as he checked the worn bottoms of his shoes.

Brian left the two of them and went over to talk to Wendy. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” said Wendy.

Was she angry? Did she hate him for what he’d done? Maybe she’d come here to say she never wanted to talk to him or to slap him or something. “I um… sort of poop-bombed your brother.”

“I saw that.” Wendy shook her head. “I suppose you had to do something. Frankie needed to be taught a lesson.”

“It was the only one we could think of,” Brian said.

She laughed quietly. “Really? Poop? That’s all you could think of?”

“Sorry.”

Wendy reached out and squeezed his hand. His heart beat heavier than it had when they’d nearly crashed into the garage. She smiled at him. “I’m just happy you didn’t fight him.”

“I thought I’d try something new.”

“You… kept your promise… I guess.” She moved closer. He looked into her amazing green eyes, and she looked back at him.

“Hey, you two,” Alex said. Brian and Wendy jumped apart. “We need help carrying Blackbird . We have to hide it before everyone finds us or we’ll never get it put away tonight.”

“I gotta go,” Brian said to Wendy. He hoped she’d understand.

Wendy stepped away from him and picked up Max’s bike. “I’ll take this to Max’s house. Then I’ll call you tonight,” she said. “And you don’t have to worry about my brother. If Frankie ever manages to get the stink washed off, he’ll think twice before bothering you again.”

Brian ran to take hold of Blackbird . They carried it around the back of the house they’d almost hit, across a grassy field, and deep into the north woods.

“Dude, do you have my dad’s camera?” Alex asked once they’d hid the flyer under some thick bushes. Max unslung his backpack and pulled out the device. Alex took it from him and checked it over. “Whew. It looks okay. If it was messed up, I’d be a dead man.” He hit a couple buttons. After a minute or two, video came up on the little flip-out screen. “Beautiful.” He showed the screen to Brian. “Check it out. In high def too.”

The zoom on the camera was impressive. Close-ups showed Blackbird in flight with her Plastisteel wings and tail shining in the afternoon sun, and long-distance shots caught the flyer swooping over buildings or dodging around trees. Max had even filmed their crazy banking maneuver between the grain elevators. With a little editing, the video was sure to razzle-dazzle Mrs. Douglas. Max had also scored perfect footage of Frankie getting nailed by the wet manure bomb.