To calm himself he pulled out his headphones and put on some Jack Johnson. Melody wanted him to run diagnostics? Fine. He wouldn’t just do what he was asked. He would spit-polish this thing. He started in on the diagnostic, soft guitars strumming in his ears. Outside the last sliver of sun dipped behind the trees and the sky took on a midnight hue.
The captain found Charlie in his seat thirty minutes later, fast asleep. He shook his head and dropped into his chair. Charlie shot up, heart jackhammering, disoriented.
“What?” he said.
“Did you run the diagnostic?” Melody asked.
“Uh, yeah,” said Charlie, flicking switches. “It’s…everything looks good.”
The captain looked at him for a beat, then nodded.
“Okay. The first client is here. I want to be ready for wheels-up at twenty-two hundred hours.”
“Sure,” said Charlie, gesturing. “Can I…I gotta piss.”
The captain nodded.
“Come right back.”
Charlie nodded.
“Yes, sir,” he said, managing to keep all but a hint of sarcasm out of his voice.
He stepped out of the cockpit. The crew bathroom was right next to the cockpit. He could see Emma standing in the open doorway, waiting to greet the first guests as they arrived. Charlie could see on the tarmac what looked like a family of five, illuminated in the headlights of a Range Rover. He studied the back of Emma’s neck. Her hair was up in a bun, and there was a loose wisp of auburn arced across her jaw. The sight of it made him dizzy, the overwhelming urge he had to fall to his knees and press his face into her lap, an act of penance and devotion, the gesture of a lover, but also that of a son to a mother, for what he wanted was not the sensual pleasure of her naked flesh, but the maternal feeling of her hands on his head, the unconditional acceptance, the feel of her fingers in his hair, the motherly stroking. It had been so long since anyone had just stroked his hair, had rubbed his back until he fell asleep. And he was so tired, so profoundly tired.
In the bathroom he stared at himself in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks dark with stubble. This was not who he wanted to be. A loser. How had he let himself fall this far? How did he ever let this girl break him down? When they were dating he found her affection stifling, the way she would hold his hand in public, the way she put her head on his shoulder. As if she were marking him. She was so into him he felt it had to be an act. As a lifelong role player, he was certain he could spot another bullshitter from a mile away. So he went cold on her. He pushed her away to see if she would come back. And she did. It made him mad. I’m on to you, he thought. I know you’re fucking faking. The con is up. So drop the act. But she just seemed hurt, confused. And finally, one night, when he was fucking her and she reached up and stroked his cheek and said I love you, something inside him snapped. He grabbed her by the throat, at first just to shut her up, but then, seeing the fear in her eyes, the way her face turned red, he found himself squeezing harder, and his orgasm was like a white bolt of lightning from his balls to his brain.
Now, staring at himself in the mirror, he tells himself he was right all along. She was faking. She had been playing him, and now that she was done she’d just thrown him away.
He washes his face, dries his hands on a towel. The plane is vibrating as passengers climb the stairs. He can hear voices, the sound of laughter. He runs his hands through his hair, straightens his tie.
Professional, he thinks. And then, just before he opens the door and reenters the cockpit.
Bitch.
Chapter 44. Flight
Gus hears an automated voice on the tape.
“Autopilot disengaged.”
This is it, he thinks. The beginning of the end.
He hears the sound of the engines, an increase in rpm that he knows from the data recorder was the copilot putting the plane into a turn and powering up.
You like that? he hears Busch mutter. Is that what you want?
It’s just a matter of time now. The plane will impact the water in less than two minutes.
And now he hears pounding on the door, and hears Melody’s voice.
Jesus, let me in. Let me in. What’s going on? Let me in.
But now the copilot is silent. Whatever thoughts he has in the last moments of his life he keeps to himself. All that remains, under the sound of the pilot’s desperation, are the sounds of a plane spiraling to its death.
Gus reaches over and turns up the volume, straining to hear something, anything, over the low mechanical noise and the thrum of the jets. And then — gunshots. He jumps, swerving the car into the left-hand lane. Around him, car horns blare. Swearing, he corrects back into his own lane, losing count of the number of shots in the process. At least six, each like a cannon on the otherwise silent tape. And under them the sound of a whispered mantra.
Shit, shit, shit, shit.
Bang, bang, bang, bang.
And now a surge in rpms as Busch leans on the throttle, the plane spinning like a leaf circling down a drain.
And even though he knows the outcome, Gus finds himself praying that the captain and the Israeli security man will get the door open, that they’ll overcome Busch and the captain will take his seat and find some miracle solution to right the plane. And, as if in sympathy with his own held breath, the gunshots are replaced by the sound of a body slamming into the metal cockpit door. Later, technicians will re-create the sounds, determining which is a shoulder and which is a kick, but for now they are just the urgent sounds of survival.
Please, please, please, thinks Gus, even as the rational part of his brain knows they’re doomed.
And then, in the split second before the crash, a single syllable:
Oh.
Then — impact — a cacophony of such size and finality that Gus closes his eyes. It continues for four seconds, primary and secondary impacts, the sounds of the wing shearing off, the fuselage breaking up. Busch will have been killed immediately. The others may have lasted a second or two, killed not by the impact, but by flying debris. None, thankfully, lived long enough to drown as the plane sank to the bottom. This they know from the autopsies.
And yet somewhere in the chaos, a man and a boy survived. Hearing the crash on tape turns the fact of this into a full-blown miracle.
“Boss?” comes Mayberry’s voice.
“Yeah. I’m—”
“He did it. He just — it was about the girl. The flight attendant.”
Gus doesn’t respond. He is trying to comprehend the tragedy, to kill all those people, a child, for what? A lunatic’s broken heart?
“I want a full analysis of all the mechanics,” he says. “Every sound.”
“Yessir.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Gus hangs up. He wonders how many more years he can do this job, how many more tragedies he can stomach. He is an engineer who is beginning to believe that the world is fundamentally broken.
He sees his exit approaching, moves to the right lane. Life is a series of decisions and reactions. It is the things you do and the things that are done to you.
And then it’s over.