Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 (123 page)

"Nice to get a break, huh, Mrs. Segura?" the field manager offered, as she went to the counter to pay for the hangar space and the fuel. "Did you want me to get her fueled?"

"Yes, please," Alma said, and followed him out to supervise the loading. The sky was looking brighter still, though the air still had the peculiar damp that usually meant snow to come. As long as we stay north of it, she thought, squinting at the clouds. Right now, the winds weren't too bad, and the forecast said they would die off through the day.

She collected Jerry and Tesla from the terminal and led them across to the Dude. "I'm afraid it's likely to be a bit bumpier today than yesterday, Dr. Tesla. I'd like you to strap yourself in, please."

"Of course, my dear." Tesla fumbled with the belts, and Alma helped him adjust them to his thin frame.

"And I'm sorry to have to ask this, but — are you subject to seasickness?"

"Not in the slightest." He sounded almost offended at the thought.

"Good." Alma handed him the packet of waxed paper bags anyway. "Just in case, though."

Tesla raised an eyebrow, but took them. "Is it likely to be that bad, Mrs. Segura?"

"If it is, we'll put down and wait it out," Alma answered. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jerry give a sigh of relief. "There is a snowstorm to the west and south that's may make for rough flying, but I should be able to go north around it."

She closed the cabin door, double-checking the latch, and eased herself into the cockpit. Jerry was already in the right-hand seat, his shoulders hunched under his topcoat.

"It feels like snow," he said.

Alma nodded. "I know. But the Weather Service says it's going south of us."

She rolled down her window without waiting for an answer and waved for the nearest mechanic to turn over the big propeller. The engine started easily, and she went over the last checklist before taxing toward the runway. The windsock was flapping heavily, a variable wind out of the west, and she lined up on the rutted runway. The Dude lifted easily, rocking slightly as the wind hit, and she let it climb toward the ceiling, hoping to find cleaner air.

She leveled off at four thousand feet, not wanting to brave the cloud deck two hundred feet above her, and set her course for her planned fueling stop at Union Airport. The air was choppy, requiring strength to keep the Dude level, and now and again they hit a pocket of turbulence that jolted them sideways, like an invisible pothole in the sky. It wasn't getting better as they continued west, and she risked a glance at Jerry.

"How's Dr. Tesla doing?"

Jerry looked over his shoulder. "All right, I think? He's got his eyes closed again."

From a normal passenger that could mean either relaxed or terrified, but there was no telling with Tesla. "Let me know if he looks like he's having problems," she said, and turned her attention back to the controls.

The ceiling began to close in after they'd been in the air forty-five minutes, the clouds pressing down, heavy with precipitation. Alma grimaced, fighting the controls now as the air got rougher. There was a headwind, too, cutting down her range, and she put the Dude into a shallow dive, looking for calmer air lower down.

There wasn't any, of course. She leveled out at two thousand feet, flinching as the Dude leaped under her. The air was better higher, but the clouds were down to twenty-five hundred feet already, and the first thin needles of sleet were starting to hit the windshield. So much for the storm staying safely to the south, she thought. She should have trusted the way the air felt, not the forecast. Jerry was looked nervous, his hands closed tight on the armrest and an exposed spar, and she forced a smile.

"We're not far out of Cedar Rapids," she said. "I'm thinking we'll put down there."

Jerry nodded, his hands white-knuckled. Alma craned her neck to see out the window, spotting the road that was her main landmark, the Lincoln Highway crawling across the broken ground. As long as she had that in sight, it would take her into Cedar Rapids, and she couldn't help a sigh of relief. Stay on the highway, and she couldn't miss the airport beacon.

The sleet was changing to snow, filling the air like smoke. The clouds were closing in, too, and she brought the Dude down another thousand feet, wincing as the headwind bounced her against her seat belts. Jerry clung to his seat beside her, pale and silent, and she didn't dare spare a glance for Tesla.

Below her, the Lincoln Highway stretched west, a blurred line between fields that were rapidly becoming snow-covered. Alma muttered a curse, and dropped to five hundred feet so that she could see it clearly, but a gust of snow pitched the Dude sideways and almost made her lose her mark. There it was, not as clear as before, snow beginning to blend the edges of the road into the fields on either side. A truck loomed, headlights dirty yellow in the storm's dark, struggling through the drifts.

It took all her strength to hold the Dude more or less level, and she wished again that Lewis was here. But a second pair of hands was a luxury, not a necessity; she could manage on her own as far as Cedar Rapids. And, yes, there was the beacon, white then green, cutting easily through the roiling snow. She banked the Dude carefully, not giving the wind any chance to upset them, settled on a new course.

"Jerry. Can you set the radio for me? The Cedar Rapids frequency should be in the book there." She pointed her chin at the pocket beside Jerry's seat.

Jerry reached for it, flipped pages quickly. "Ok. Hunter Field?"

"That's it."

He looked at the book again, then adjusted the dials. "Ok. That should — how's that?"

Alma reached for the microphone. "Hunter Field, this is Gilchrist Aviation. Come in, please."

There was no answer, just static, and she repeated the call. Still no answer, and she was about to tell Jerry to twiddle the tuner when there was a new crackle in her ears.

"—Gilchrist — Tower."

"Hunter Tower, this is Gilchrist. You're breaking up." Alma held her breath. Worst came to worst, they'd at least know she was on her way —

"Gilchrist Aviation, this is Hunter Tower." The voice was suddenly strong and clear, and she gave a gasp of relief. "Read you now. Over."

"Hunter Tower, this is Gilchrist. I'm about twenty miles out on heading 115. Request permission to land, over."

"Gilchrist, this is Hunter. Roger your position — no visual but we're looking for you. We're plowing the runway, do not land without authorization. Repeat, don't land until you get clearance. Over."

"Hunter Tower, this is Gilchrist. Roger that. We will not land until you give us clearance, over."

"Thank you, Gilchrist. We'll be looking for you. Tower out."

Alma allowed herself another breath of relief. Not long now, she thought. Just follow the beacon home.

She had the field well in sight before the tower radioed that they could see her, and then they waved her off, making her circle the field three times before they proclaimed the runway clear. She lined the Dude up on the strip of tarmac, the wind buffeting them, began the careful descent. She kept the power up until the last minute, needing the control, dumped the Dude with a thud and a bounce before she'd killed the lift and steadied the plane on the ground. A flagman was waving from an open hangar, and she turned toward him even before the Tower sent her there. She brought the Dude into shelter and shut off the engine, then glanced over her shoulder.

"Dr. Tesla? I'm sorry, that was a bit of a rough ride…"

Tesla opened his eyes, blinking in the hangar lights, and gave a grave smile. "It was very different from an ocean liner. I wonder how that affects people's reactions?"

Alma left him to consider that, and climbed out of the Dude to make arrangements. Hunter Field's manager professed himself happy to have them stay until the storm passed, and promised overnight space if needed; in the meantime, Jerry and Tesla had retreated to the terminal, and were sitting in the little coffee shop warming themselves over cups of coffee. Tesla was looking himself again, Alma was pleased to see, and the color had come back to Jerry's face. Alma ordered coffee herself, and suggested sandwiches, and they ate in silence. Outside the long windows, the snow was falling heavily. The field plow swept past, but the concrete was gobbled up almost as soon as it had gone through. Tesla excused himself, and disappeared into the back of the terminal — looking for the men's room, Alma guessed, or perhaps a telephone.

Jerry pushed aside his empty plate. "That was exciting. I thought you said the storm was going south."

"That's what the Weather Service promised," Alma answered

"Apparently they were wrong."

Alma gave him an uneasy look. "You never used to get airsick."

"I wasn't airsick. Or are you telling me that wasn't at all dangerous?"

"It wasn't." Alma stopped. "Not seriously. Not really. We put down in plenty of time."

Jerry smiled. "Oh, Al. You're damn good. But please don't do that again."

"I'll try not to." She hesitated. "And there's really no need to give Lewis any of the details."

"You're as bad as Gil," Jerry said.

T
he phone rang just a few minutes past eleven am, and Stasi snagged the receiver with one hand, lifting the stem to her mouth a moment later. "Gilchrist Aviation. May I help you?"

"Hi Stasi." Alma's voice was crackly with the long distance connection. "I wanted to check in with you and let you know what was going on. Is Lewis there?"

"No," Stasi said. "It's Monday. He and Mitch have taken the Santa Fe run. They left three hours ago."

"Oh right." Alma sounded annoyed at herself for forgetting that. "Listen, we're in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. We ran into some lousy weather and it's snowing buckets here. How are you looking there?"

"Clear and cold," Stasi said. "We had snow yesterday but it ended early in the evening. It's nice and clear today, but the temperature is still in the teens. Mitch and Lewis went on to Santa Fe because that's behind all the snow and it's supposed to be in the forties there today." She was beginning to feel that she was quite an authority on western weather.

"We can't take off until this mess ends," Alma said. "So Jerry and Dr. Tesla and I are just pacing around waiting. We'll get in the air as soon as we can. Anything going on there I should know about?"

Stasi sat down in the desk chair, crossing her legs. "Not really. Mitch and Lewis will be back this afternoon. Joey Patterson called in and said he couldn't come to work today because his wife is in labor, which seems like a good excuse to me. And Mr. Tyler finally paid the freight bill for the Omaha trip. I'm going to put the check in the bank today. It's almost two hundred dollars."

"Ok," Alma said. "Go ahead and do the deposit. We'll be along as soon as we can be. Which may be tomorrow at this rate. We're having forty mile an hour wind gusts and the visibility is a couple of hundred feet."

"There's no reason to hurry," Stasi said. "Everything is fine here, so you be safe."

Alma chuckled. "Ok."

"Why was that funny?"

"You said that last bit just like Mitch," Alma said. "I think you're picking up his accent."

"Surely not, darling," Stasi said. "After all the work I did to acquire a Russian one!"

Alma laughed. "We'll take care," she said. "And tell Lewis I'll ring him up tonight at the house if we're not going to be in. Which I'm suspecting is going to be the case."

"I'll tell him," Stasi said. They hung up and she got out the check, carefully registering it in Alma's big ledgers and stamping the back with the rubber stamp, For Deposit Only Gilchrist Aviation. She supposed she might as well go ahead and take it to the bank when she went to lunch.

The day was bright when she came out of the diner, tucking her purse with the receipt over her arm. A very nice day, really. The sidewalks were neatly shoveled and salted, and it looked like the Variety Theater had posters for the new features out. "Three on a Match -- a daring film of addiction, affairs and suicide," Stasi read aloud. "Too much like real life." She moved on to the next poster, a trench-coated man with his hat pulled low, a pistol in hand. "Under-Cover Man. There's only one way to avenge murder, and that's to take the law into his own hands!" The actor looked a bit overly polished for the role of a hard-bitten dick, but a distinct possibility. "Much better," Stasi said. At least it looked less likely to start a fight than Three on a Match. And a lot less depressing. If she wanted that sort of thing she could save her dimes and move back to LA.

Because she was thinking about LA, it took a moment for her to register the man across the street coming out of the hardware store, even when she saw him. It took a moment in which he paused, lit a cigarette, and turned to walk away from her up the street -- Albert Kirsch. He was wearing work khakis and a heavy jacket instead of a three piece suit, but it was definitely Kirsch, and just as definitely he had no business being in Colorado Springs. Well, no business except her.

Stasi stepped back into the shadow of the theater's ticked kiosk. She'd seen him and he hadn't seen her. She could run. He'd never know she was there. But he knew where she worked and nobody was there but her. Lewis and Mitch had gone to Santa Fe. Of course if she didn't go back to the field, he wouldn't be able to find her. She could find somewhere to hide in town for the rest of the day. But then what? He knew where she worked and it would be easy enough to find out that she boarded with Alma Segura. He could find her anytime. She'd have to skip town today, without telling anyone, without any warning.