She told Joe that marrying him was the happiest moment in her life, and she asked if he remembered holding Jessie an hour after she was born, all of her fitting neatly on his forearm. He’d called her Peanut, because that’s what she had looked like all swaddled, her face so red and wrinkled. And she said that they’d have to put off their anniversary celebration until another time. She wanted to say “until you are better,” but Mary was a no-bullshit girl and Joe liked getting the truth straight, no chaser. Honesty was their bond. They did not lie to one another.
“I looked pretty good in that LBD,” she said. “Don’t know what you’re missing.”
Joe’s hand remained slack.
The EEG didn’t budge.
His chest rose and fell with the respirator.
“Goodbye, hon,” she said. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Joe’s body jumped as if he’d been given a jolt of electricity. An alarm sounded. Code blue. Mary stood. Her eyes locked on the heart-rate monitor as the numbers dived and nurses rushed into the room.
“Don’t do anything,” she said. “Let him go.”
“Excuse me, ma’am,” said one. “You’ll have to leave.”
Dr. Alexander was there a moment later. Mary looked at him, pleading, and he nodded.
Outside the ICU, she placed her palm against the glass and searched out her husband’s face. A nurse wheeled the defib cart to the bed and took hold of the paddles, raising them above Joe’s chest. Dr. Alexander stopped her, giving a firm shake of the head.
For a moment Mary caught a glimpse of her husband, the proud profile, the raised chin. She closed her eyes, wanting to see him as he was, as she remembered him when he was away.
It was in Samui. Joe walked ahead of her on the beach, Jessie and Grace to either side. He kicked water at them and they kicked it right back. She heard him call their names and laugh. A happy man.
Mary opened her eyes to say goodbye.
“Safe journey.”
5
It was the third lap and Ian Prince was falling behind.
He curled the fingers of his left hand around the throttle of the P-51D Mustang and eased it forward, keeping one eye on the rpm’s, the other on the panorama of earth and sky that wrapped itself around the Perspex canopy and the planes flying above and below him. His right hand gripped the stick lightly as he approached the third pylon, a red-striped oil can set atop a fifty-foot telephone pole. The plane whipped past the pylon, Ian pushed the stick over, and the plane banked sharply, wings tilting to ninety degrees, the Nevada desert an adobe blur. He clamped his mouth shut, holding his breath and tightening the muscles of his core. He was pulling five g’s through the turn, shoulders digging into the seat, jaw burrowing into his neck. The engine whined magnificently, a buzz saw cutting hard lumber. He completed the turn and leveled the wings, the g’s easing, shoulders freed from gravity’s grip.
Ian focused on the tail of the bird in front of him. It was Gordon May’s bird, the Battleax, a P-51D like his. Stalwart of the Second World War. Packard piston engine. Four-bladed propeller. May had painted the plane fire-engine red, his company’s logo covering every inch of the fuselage: MAY MICROCHIPS.
By contrast, Ian’s plane looked factory-new, silver steel skin without a blemish, the Stars and Stripes of the United States Army Air Corps decorating the wings. It had looked no different in May 1945, when George Westerman, a pilot with the 477th Fighter Group, had flown it above the fields of Bavaria and shot down fourteen German aircraft.
Ian had rescued the machine from a scrap-metal yard and, after extensive reconstruction, renamed it Lara, after his mother, which was a nicer name than she deserved. Like his mother, Lara the plane was a mean, hot-tempered bitch who’d kill you as soon as look at you.
Ian feathered the throttle and scanned the instrument panel. The temperature gauge was running high. He looked at the white needle tickling the red. To hell with the heat. He couldn’t wait any longer or May’s lead would be insurmountable.
Ian didn’t like Gordon May.
He disliked losing more.
He pushed the speed back up to 400 knots. The plane shook, reverberations rattling his spine. He held the stick steady. He had thick wrists and large, strong hands. His grip surprised people. Executives in the information technology industry were not renowned for being fit. Somehow it had been ingrained in the public that there was an inverse relationship between IQ and strength. Ian confounded the perception. He was nothing like what people thought he should be.
A fat, slow Grumman Bearcat slipped below him to his left. A relic. A Commodore to his Cray. The comparison pleased him. A smile formed beneath Ian’s goggles and helmet. The smile hardened when he saw May’s tail flash in the sun, only a second or two ahead.
Ian was gaining.
Approaching the last pylon, he brought the plane down to fifty feet, low enough to see the faces of the crowd below. Twenty thousand people had gathered in the high desert north of Reno for the race. The course measured eight miles, an extended oval around ten pylons. Eight times around determined the winner. Pedal to the metal all the way. A sky full of screaming eagles.
Ian had won two and lost two, both losses to Gordon May.
“Not this time,” he said aloud.
He executed a hairpin turn around the outermost pylon, the colorful oil drum threatening to tear off the canopy. Nearer he drew to May, and nearer still. If he could just reach out…
He zipped past the control tower.
Lap four was complete.
Ian held his position through the next two laps, content to hang on May’s tail. The temperature needle had moved firmly into the red. There was nothing to be done. The engine would make it or it wouldn’t. He would win or he wouldn’t. It was a binary universe.
Yet even as he raced and part of his mind swore victory, another part was focused on business. Today was momentous for a number of reasons, of which the air race was the least important. On this day twenty years ago he’d sold his first venture, ONEscape, for $200 million to U.S. Online. And it was exactly a year ago that he’d begun his quest to acquire Merriweather Systems. The deal hadn’t been without a hiccup, but he’d taken the necessary measures to emerge victorious. The acquisition had brought the value of ONE Technologies to a wafer over $200 billion.
Ian completed lap six. Battleax’s flaming red tail remained a plane’s length out of reach, but May was played out. If he had any juice left, he’d have used it by now.
Ian pushed the throttle forward, Lara’s nose nipping at Battleaxe’s tail, twenty feet separating them. He eased himself closer, and closer still, his plane bucking in the slipstream.
Faster, he dared May, the taste of victory on his tongue, filling his mouth.
Ian pulled the stick right, going for the pass. May took his plane outside in an effort to block. Ian feinted right as if trying to go abreast; May kicked out again. It was a reckless move, inviting disaster. Ian saw it coming and ducked to the inside, pushing the engine as hard as it could go. His airspeed jumped to 450 knots. He cruised past May, buzzing his aircraft, essentially leapfrogging him. May’s plane juked in the wake. To save himself, he pulled out of the loop and flew high and clear.
May was done.
Ian never looked back.
He won the race by ten seconds.
–
Ian Prince walked across the tarmac, helmet in hand. He was nearly six feet tall, forty years of age, narrow-beamed but sturdy, with Ray-Bans hiding his eyes, at ease in his flight suit.