Blood Orchid (Holly Barker 3)

“Why don’t you come flying with me? Nobody who’s looking for you would ever suspect that.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“Come on, Holly. Who’d be looking for you at the airport?”

Holly had a thought. “Ginny, you know that long strip at the Palmetto Gardens property?”

“You mean Blood Orchid?”

“Yes. I’m not too far from there. Could you land and pick me up? Then I wouldn’t feel too exposed.”

“Sure, glad to. When?”

“Are you at the airport now?”

“Yes.”

“In an hour, say?”

“Sure. Do you know if they have a CTAF?”

“What’s that?”

“A Common Traffic Advisory Frequency. Haven’t you been reading your flight instruction manual?”

“I’m afraid not, and I don’t know about the CTAF. I do know there’s no tower, though. But there’s not much traffic—two or three flights a day.”

“Okay, I can deal with that.”

“See you in an hour. Can Daisy come?” Holly asked.

“Sure.”

Holly made herself a sandwich from the fully stocked refrigerator, put on some jeans, and drove around to the airstrip. She could have walked, it was so close. She parked in the ramp area and got out of the car, scanning the skies for Ginny’s little airplane. As she looked around, a business jet entered the traffic pattern and was soon on final approach. Holly moved her car to allow the aircraft plenty of parking room, and watched as it taxied to the ramp and killed its engines. The rear door opened, and two men got out. They were casually dressed, not in the uniforms that corporate pilots wore, and they stood, looking around, waiting for something. They saw Holly, and one of them called out to her in Spanish.

She shook her head. “No hablo español,” she yelled back. They were maybe fifty yards away. Then a large van arrived, bearing the Blood Orchid logo, and backed up to the airplane. The two pilots began unloading boxes, quite heavy boxes, judging from their body language. The boxes kept coming, until Holly realized that there could not be any seats in the airplane, that it was being used for cargo.

The men finished their work, and the van drove away. The two pilots began arguing about something, and one of them gestured toward Holly. Then one of them got back into the airplane, while another made a cellphone call, occasionally glancing at her.

That was all right, she thought; he was calling the Blood Orchid office, reporting someone loitering on the airstrip. Then he finished the call, got aboard, closing the door behind him, and shortly, the airplane’s engines started and it taxied to the runway. The jet took off, headed north, and was soon out of sight.

Then Holly heard the sound of a small airplane and spotted Ginny’s Piper Warrior at about a thousand feet, seemingly on a base leg for landing. The airplane turned final, landed, and taxied to the ramp. Ginny shut down the engine and got out.

“You take the left seat,” she said.

Holly put Daisy in the rear seat and climbed aboard and ran through the startup checklist with Ginny. Soon they were rolling down the runway for takeoff.

“Let’s do some touch-and-goes,” Ginny said over her headset. “Just enter a left crosswind, then turn downwind and make a normal approach. The procedure is touch down, then apply full power and retract flaps, then take off again without stopping.”

“Okay,” Holly replied, turning crosswind and climbing. She climbed to a thousand feet, turned downwind, and began running through the landing checklist. She turned base leg, then final, put in full flaps, and set the throttle for landing. When she touched down she applied full throttle, retracted the flaps, and watched the airspeed indicator climb toward sixty knots, her takeoff speed. As she pulled back on the yoke there was a loud noise, and the windshield exploded.

“I’ve got the airplane,” Ginny shouted. She grabbed the controls and continued climbing “What happened?” Holly shouted over the newly increased noise.

“I don’t know,” Ginny said. “Maybe we hit a bird. I’ll come back around and land.”

Then, as they turned crosswind, Holly felt something jar the airplane, and a hole appeared in the Plexiglas window next to her head. “Get out of here!” she shouted at Ginny. “Somebody’s shooting at us!”

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