She shook her head, sweat tracking down her grimy face and darkening her normally blond hair to muddy brown. "Sorry. The last time I ran emergency procedures on a Cessna 195 was like...never." She skimmed her hands over the panel and controls. "My father was only a kid when this plane was made. But hey, I'm sure you'll have the whole squadron studying these, too, at our next safety summit."
Ah, a dig at what the squadron called his micromanaging at safety briefs. Normally she wouldn't have made such a comment, but these weren't normal circumstances. "A capital idea, Captain. Are you volunteering to lead the discussion?"
"Sorry, sir." A smile dented her exhausted, grubby face, in spite of the increasing gunfire, not closer, but more frequent.
Even the old man was packing up his tequila and heading inside his wooden office. Time to get this rust bucket off the ground.
"No problem." He couldn't help but think the comment was actually damned funny—more of Sara's influence that he be human. "Let me study it for a second."
Seabrook pointed. "I remember that's the throttle."
"Yeah, I got that." More gunfire stuttered. Closer? He couldn't be sure. "If there was a key, you'd think the old man would have given it to us."
"Uh, is that a start button?" She pointed again.
"Well, look at that. It certainly is. All right, let's see if we can remember how to do this. We need to open the gas tank. That must be this here." Training and instincts took control of his hands as he sank into routine. "Then we make the mixture rich by pulling out this knob. So we've got gas and air, and now we need spark."
Lucas pressed the start button. The engine coughed twice and finally roared to life. He pushed the mixture knob in...waited...prayed....
The engine smoothed.
He increased the throttle. The engine revved, yes, louder, yes, until with a tiny jolt the aircraft rolled out of its parking spot, rattling. Yesss. Only fifty feet to get a feel for the craft before he reached the dirt stretch.
Since he couldn't see over the nose of a taildragger aircraft, he swung the tail back and forth so he could look out the side windows for a view of the end of the runway, increasing speed.
Thirty knots.
The vibration increased, harder until he wondered if the whole thing would shake apart in his hands before they left the ground. He held the plane together with the force of his will and finessing of the yoke.
Fifty knots. Come on. Come on, damn it.
No one spoke. He regulated his breaths, in and out. The tail lifted off before the nose, finally giving him a clear view forward.
Seventy knots.
Now! He lifted the nose. Prayed again. The Cessna soared upward, skimming over brush, higher over an adobe steeple, then cresting above the tree line.
The exhales from his passengers swirled in the dusty cockpit. Behind him, Sara snorted with laughter.
Was she hysterical? Adrenaline overload? She was certainly due a meltdown, but he didn't want her to spook Lucia. "Everything okay back there?"
"Wonderful. Simply wonderful." She laughed harder, then lowered her voice to male decibels. "Oh, I can fly anything. Just call me Chuck Yeager, oh, and is that the start button?"
His mind winged back to their first date in the glider. His mouth twitched. "I'm flying this plane, aren't I?"
Seabrook chuckled beside him. "You told her that?"
He shrugged.
The Captain turned to look over her shoulder. "We're pilots. We brag. It's what we do." She pivoted back to the front. "You were trying to impress her, weren't you?"
"Duh." Trying to impress her in the past and present. Although it hadn't escaped his notice she still hadn't said yes to staying with him now, either.
Except this time, he damn well wouldn't let anyone harm a hair on her head.
Seabrook shook her head, eyes forward on the tree-filled horizon. "The Colonel said 'duh' like a regular dude. They're never going to believe this one back at the squadron."
Ramon kicked aside a rocking chair in the living room of the abandoned apartment.