“Don’t move,” Jerry muttered. “Do. Not. Move.”
No way around it, he was going to have to walk somewhat in the direction of Don if he was going to get the baggage cart. Well, unless he took a circular route. That’s what he’d do. He held the flashlight and the gun on the dude on the ground and he circled to his left, walking sideways, never taking his eyes from the man covering up with falling snow.
Cough.
There it was again.
Then another sound. A click. It didn’t take a firearms expert to recognize it.
Somewhere in the darkness, someone had a gun. Lyle froze, hoping whoever was aiming at him was equally blind in this darkness.
Eighteen
“I don’t think I should breathe on you, Captain Hall,” Alex said. She held a blue-and-white scarf over her nose and mouth, blue eyes visible over the top.
Eleanor barely registered the comment. She was too busy vacillating between duty and fury. Duty told her to retreat to a triage checklist. Not that she’d ever prepped for anything exactly like this. Who could have? But she’d prepped for disaster. Fury told her she’d already failed. She’d allowed herself the ignominious thought: all her passengers were dead, and she was the only one who hadn’t gone down with the ship. Who gave a shit if this last passenger got her sick? What was left? Not honor? Not the rest of the world?
“Jerry!” No answer. “Damn it.”
Eleanor felt light-headed. She wondered when she last ate; it was the two homemade powdered-sugar-coated lemon bars she’d stuffed into her jacket pocket in the Ziploc. She turned to the slight passenger pressing her back against the flight deck wall; the captain felt like the day she lost Frank. Outside on the windshield, white flakes blotted out the coal-black night.
The body was down again. So maybe, Jerry thought, he’d only imagined it had been sitting up. He stood ten feet away, gun out, scanning the area around him. Suddenly, he realized he was in the midst of the very fantasy he’d had a thousand times if he’d had it once; in the fantasy, for some reason set at a football stadium, militant gunmen had descended by parachutes and were killing everyone in sight until Jerry leapt on one from behind, stole his gun, started the heroic mutiny that saved the day. One of the presidential candidates in the last election had said he’d never sit around and just watch militants kill people. He’d do something. Jerry thought, Damn right. The thought of it now made him brave. With his gun, he could handle one crazy, virulent person who, anyhow, seemed paralyzed. So what, he remembered, that he’d lapsed on his gun training. At this distance, it didn’t matter. He shook off the cold that was trying to nestle in the exposed areas around his neck and wrists. He allowed himself a step forward. He trapped the flashlight right next to the muzzle of the pistol. It shone on the guy being covered up with snow, who had more of the icy slivers concentrated on his legs. That suggested that, yes, he’d sat up. The snow on his torso had dropped to his legs. Poor fucker, Jerry thought. God, just like his mom, dying right in front of him, second by second, in her case from booze, and not a damn thing he could do about it. Just watch the silent angel.
Gun on the guy, he wound a semicircle around Don to get to the luggage rack. He kept himself facing the fallen man and pulled the cart so he’d never lose eye contact. Then he pushed the cart until he reached the plane, finding confidence with each step in the ease with which he was pushing. At the base of the plane, he let himself relax a touch. He locked the wheels of the luggage cart and stepped up to the second level, which allowed him to pop his head inside the hold.
“Eleanor!”
His voice echoed without response. Huh.
“Yo, Eleanor, the cavalry is back.”
Again, nothing.
He bent and stuck his head out, trying to peer, neck craned low, wondering if she’d slipped out when he was getting the cart. But why wouldn’t she have said something? Then he fought off a malignant thought: What if she somehow was in cahoots with that manipulative doctor? He saw how she looked at that cunning shit. Stop it, Jerry. That makes no sense. C’mon, Jerry, he told himself, you’re the guy with the gun. Eleanor needs you. You have been called.
“Captain Hall,” he said, “I’m coming up.”
He pulled himself into the airplane’s gelid belly.
“You should know,” Lyle said into the darkness, “that I really don’t give a fuck.”
He almost laughed; for whose benefit was he being so honest, cavalier, or fraudulent? Or, fairly, some combination thereof—regardless, a recipe for danger in practically any ratio. He stepped forward into the cavern. Cough. Then a scuffling of feet. One, two. Lyle closed his eyes. What had he always told students? Drop the textbook and use your senses. Given the blackness in here—he was essentially blind—he could toss out sight so he closed his eyes and took in the rest of it. Now, silence. A mausoleum. Then a dampened scuffling sound, echo, then nothing. Quietly as he might, Lyle reached again into his pocket and fished. Bingo, a dime. Lyle pinched the chilly coin between his thumb and forefinger and flipped it into the nothingness in the direction of the cough and other sounds. Tink, tink, it hit cement, then skidded—clink—into something metal.
Would it prompt more movement?
Quiet. Nada. That was telling. Lyle was getting a picture.
Eyes still closed, he inhaled deeply. Bacteria smelled like roadkill, decomposition. But that wasn’t here. Nor anything smoky from fire or metallic that he imagined resulted from an explosion. He detected a whiff of almond, sweetened. Probably, he thought, oil and oxidation. Okay, so? Machine shop, Lyle told himself, and then took comfort in two things the air didn’t carry: fire or blood. Fire would’ve meant gunpowder, ignition. Blood, that spoke for itself. Another scent then. Was that coffee? No, couldn’t be.
Cough.
Cough.
Scuffle.
Aha. Lyle opened his eyes. Nearly smiled with epiphany. What he’d suspected.
“I’m Lyle Martin. I’m a doctor.” Eyes now open, he walked forward. Anyhow, what difference would it make if he was wrong? So what if he was walking into his own death when he’d been as good as dead for years?
He considered turning on the light and decided against it. The closer he got to whatever light source was back there, the better he could make out the objects he passed. To his left, a forklift then an industrial tool cabinet. To his right, empty space and then, wow, the sleek nose of a small private plane that, for a second, reminded Lyle of a dolphin’s snout.
Cough.
Lyle took a false sense of refuge beneath the small plane’s hull. The vantage point unblocked some light, and Lyle now guessed he was looking at that kind of diffuse gleam from a field lamp. The source remained hidden by what Lyle could now see was another small jet to his left. But right behind that, the source and the sounds he’d heard. Lyle closed his eyes one more time and he pictured Melanie on the night that he found his clothes piled on the doorstep. The drought had already started but, wouldn’t you know it, rain. A neighbor had craned her neck out of the house next door until she saw Lyle and withdrew. He’d won $130 playing pool and then given the entire wad to a guy outside the bar singing “American Pie.”