Peggy was backing out of the passenger-side cockpit door. “I put another two water bottles in,” she said. “I thought you might need them.”
“Thanks, Peggy.” Clare kept her eyes on Russ as he tossed the lawn chairs through the cargo doorway and then clipped his headset over his ears. He adjusted the mike into the proper position. He may not have liked choppers, but he had certainly done this before.
“I didn’t have a chance to tell you because”—Peggy tilted her head toward Russ, indicating his attempts to keep his problem under wraps hadn’t been entirely successful—“but I phoned the Glens Falls Hospital while I was down in the office and told them what you were attempting. The triage nurse I spoke with said you should take him straight to Albany Medical Center.”
Clare bit her lower lip. “Without stopping for any medical personnel first?”
“That’s what she said.”
Clare gestured at the sailcloth bag, which was drooping on the ground near the tail boom. “You didn’t bring your phone with you, did you?”
Peggy spread her hands. “I forgot. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m having a hard time stringing two thoughts together.”
“That’s natural. Look, are you going to be okay to drive yourself?”
“I think I will be. I know the route so well from here that it’s like the old gray mare returning to the barn.”
“Okay. We’ll let you know what’s happening as soon as we get into Albany.” Clare stuffed the bag of rags under her arm and placed the headset on her head, tilting the mike into position. “Better get back to the edge of the tarmac. Don’t approach the ship once I’ve got the rotors going.”
Peggy nodded, scooped up her bag, and retreated to the trailhead. Clare switched on the set-to-set transmitter. “Russ?” she said. He didn’t respond. She glanced over to where he stood staring into the cargo area. She walked over, tapped him on one of the headphones, and switched him on. “Can you hear me?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah,” he said.
She pointed up to the cargo boom jutting out over the open door. “That’s what the net hangs from, obviously.” She tossed the rags inside, jumped up into the cargo area, and found the manual control. She unlocked it and cranked the handle, letting the wide web strap clipped to the net spool through the boom until several feet of it lay on the tarmac at Russ’s feet. She secured the control and squatted at the edge of the door. “Can you wrestle that in here?” she asked. He gathered up the pile of netting and tossed it through the doorway as Clare scrambled to get out of the way. She dragged the net toward the opposite side of the ship, pulled back the edges, and slid the folded lawn chairs and the plastic rag bag inside. She looked around for something to secure the stuff during the flight. Hanging from a grommet in the bright orange safety web were half a dozen short bungee cords.
“Perfect,” she said, hooking the end of one through the D ring connecting the net to the boom strap. She hooked the other end through another grommet. It wasn’t very ship-shape, but the bungee cord held the boom strap off the floor and away from the cargo door, so that even if she should have to angle hard during the flight, the net wouldn’t be able to slip though the door and out of Russ’s reach.
She squatted at the edge of the door again. “Hop on up here,” she said. Russ backed against the door and levered himself up until he was sitting beside her. In the small cargo area, his head almost touched the roof. “Okay, I’ve secured the net back here,” she said, thumbing toward the pile on the floor. “This is what we’re going to do. When we reach Waxman, I’ll hover overhead. You take off the bungee strap, drag the net over to the doorway, and get inside.”
“Right.” His tone was so flat, she couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or was just scared.
“Once you’re in the net, I’ll use the cockpit control to pull the boom strap up tight. That’ll swing you out the door. Then I’ll lower the netting nice and easy until you’re on the ground.”
“Nice and easy.”
She ducked her head. “You may take a couple of bumps when you reach the ground. I’ll do everything I can to set you down smoothly.”
He bent over and put his head between his knees. “Oh, God,” he said. She thought it might be as authentic a prayer as she had ever heard.
“If anything happens, if you need me, I’ll be right behind you. Look.” She pointed to where one of the passenger seats rested against the partial bulkhead. “You’ll sit there. You can see the pilot’s seat right behind it. I can be up and over in a few seconds.”
“I have to tell you that’s not a big comfort right now.”
“You ready?”
He nodded. He looked like a man going to his own execution, but he gave her a thumbs-up.
“Then let’s fly.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. Russ had been there before. Pilots could never just get you on board and go. They had to stretch it out, playing with switches and revving up the engine until it sounded like it was going to explode, and all the time poor jackasses like him had to sit in a puddle of sweat and misery. His skin was itching and creeping, until he wanted to scratch it off, tear off the headphones that made his skull feel like a china cup in a vise, jump out of the chopper, and run far enough away that he would no longer hear the thwap-thwap-thwap noise that was the sound track to all his nightmares.
He was strapped into the left-side passenger seat, hands on knees, eyes forward. He fixed his field of vision on the hunter’s orange of the safety web hanging between him and the cargo area. He tried not to look out the open cargo door, or out the window to his right, although that was damn hard, because the thing was as big as a minivan’s windshield. He tried not to listen to the whine of the engine and the beat of the rotors, which, although muffled by his headphones, penetrated straight into the back of his neck.
Instead, he listened to the sounds of Clare getting ready for takeoff. She had the same habit as one of the helo jocks he had flown with in ’Nam. She was singing under her breath as she worked her controls.
“I don’t know why I love you like I do, all the things you put me through,” his headset sang. Jesus Christ, he thought, I think that’s the same song. What do they do, give them a sound track in flight school?
“Take me to the river,” his headset sang. “Drop me in the water.” Over his head, the rotors powered up into a dull roar. Under his feet, the skids shifted. He braced his elbows on his knees and shut his eyes. Clare was making ch-ch-ch sounds between her teeth, accompanying her mental music.
“Here we go,” she sang out. The floor lurched beneath him and then they rose slowly, slowly into the sky. Beyond the open cargo doors, the world sank out of view. He thought if he looked at the seat to his left, he would see his buddy Mac, his transistor radio blasting between his boots, his hands slapping out the rhythm of the song.
“I-I-I want to know, can you tell me?” his headphones sang.
Mac would have liked Clare. Except she was sixteen years older than he would ever get. And he, Russ, would look like an old man to Mac. How had he gotten to be so old when he still felt the same inside?
“I need your help here.” Clare’s voice cut through his reverie. “I don’t know where the gorge is. I’m having a hard time sighting the road through all these trees.”
He opened his eyes and looked out the window in the cabin door. Forget the minivan. This was a frickin’ picture window. He shifted sideways in his seat and pressed his hands against the solid metal edges of the door to hold back the sensation of falling. “Um,” he said, taking a deep breath. They were creeping along a dozen yards above the trees. “That’s it, down there. The road. Keep heading in that direction and you’ll be over the gorge.” If he turned his head, he could look at the back of Clare’s.