He reversed to sit next to her, and picked up her hand to trace the lifeline in the palm. “I’m in a pretty good mood at the moment. Pump away.”
“Why is Campbell so interested in that wreck?”
“I don’t know. I don’t, Jo. I really am just along for the ride. It’s not every day somebody so low on the food chain gets a ride on an F-15. My number came up and I lucked out.”
“That’s you. What about him?”
He linked their hands together. “He’s determined to haul out this wreck. I repeated everything that pilot friend of yours said to him, but he is determined.” He paused.
“What?”
“I think he was always going after it, even before the trooper said anything about the gold this evening. Colonel Campbell was on the phone all afternoon. Every time I tried to call him to find out when we were leaving the line was busy. After a while I figured it must be out of order and I went to his room. I heard him talking through the door.” He kissed her hand.
“Don’t stop there.” He turned with a grin and kneed her legs apart. “I didn’t mean that and you know it.”
He kissed her, eliciting a long, low purr. “I do like the sounds you make when you’re getting some, Dunaway.”
Her toenail made a line up the back of his leg. “Tell.”
He explored her ear with the tip of his tongue. “It sounded like Colonel Campbell was ordering up some kind of helicopter, one equipped for high altitudes, low temperatures and rough terrain, capable of hovering for long periods. And he wanted it stripped. One pilot, one loadmaster, and nothing else.”
She shivered and bit his shoulder. “Room for cargo.”
“Be my guess.” His lips traveled to her earlobe.
“And this was when?” She hooked one leg around his waist.
“This afternoon. About three o’clock.” He moved over her, settling fully into that good old standby, the missionary position, and smiled into her eyes.
She shifted her legs and slid her hands down to his ass. Her voice was a little breathless. “Four hours before dinner, when Liam told him about the coin, which seemed to trigger Colonel Campbell’s decision to recover the wreck, which he seemed until then to be willing to leave until next spring, or forever.”
“Yeah.” He sounded distracted, his attention elsewhere.
“Ahhhh,” she said.
“Any more questions?” he whispered.
“No.”
“You sure? I can talk and fuck at the same time.”
“Not tonight you can’t.”
“Jesus!”
“Told you.”
December 17, 1941
March says were making a special trip to Krasnoyarsk not a ferry job this time were bringing the same plane back instead of catching a ride. I asked Roepke and he said how did I know so I guess we are. I saw the CO talking to Roepke and they shut up when they saw me and the old man was pretty snappish when he told me to get back to work.
No letter from Helen. I wish I could call. I hate not knowing whats going on I hate it I hate it. I hope shes allright. I hope Moms with her.
I talked to Peter. I’m going down to his house again tonight.
He couldn’t believe she’d talked him back into the plane.
He couldn’t believe the plane had actually made it back into the air. He couldn’t believe it had actually managed to stay in the air over the river to Newenham. Most of all, he couldn’t believe it had brought them safely back to earth, rolling out down the length of the one runway the Mad Trapper Memorial Airport boasted with the engine vibrating like a three-legged washing machine.
He especially couldn’t believe it when she kicked an abrupt right rudder and they swung off the runway before they’d reached what he would have considered a safe taxi speed. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I don’t want anyone to see us. I got enough problems without filling out forms in quintuplicate for the goddamn FAA.”
He bit his tongue as they narrowly missed a Beaver tied down at the end of a row of small planes, swung in behind it and taxied briskly down to Wy’s shed.
When she killed the engine he sat there for a moment, staring at the sign nailed to the top of the shed.NUSHUGAK AIR TAXI SERVICE, and Wy’s phone number, beneath which new paint added in smaller letters,WWW.NUAIRTAXI.COM. He felt he’d never really looked at it before, noticed the brightness of the colors, even in the dark, the inventiveness in the arrangement of the words, the sheer artistry in the lettering.
In fact the whole night felt pretty damn good to him. He stretched out his legs and touched the rudder pedals. “What do these do again?”
“They push the rudder back and forth. Liam, don’t-”
“And what does the rudder do, exactly?”
“The force of the wind against the rudder pushes the plane in the direction you want it to go,” she said, dumbing it down for her audience.
“You’re so cute when you’re playing teacher.” He grabbed Wy and kissed her, hard. Since she was halfway out of her harness, this proved awkward, but doable.
“Whew!” she said, emerging. “What was that for?”
“General principles,” he said, and grabbed her again.
She squirmed. “We’ve got a perfectly good bed at home.”
“It’s a twin.”
“It’s a bed.”
“I’ve always wanted to lay you in a plane.”
“Don’t con me, Campbell; the only thing you’ve ever wanted to do in a plane is get out of it.”
He was fumbling at the buttons on her shirt. “We’re on the ground. Against all odds, against any realistic expectation, we were shot out of the sky and we made it home alive and in one piece. Gimme.”
She giggled. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard her giggle, if ever. They were always so everlastingly serious about everything. “I wanna have some fun,” he said. “I want you to have some fun. Come on, Wy.” There wasn’t a lot of room and the damn yoke kept getting in the way. He finally found the lever that pushed the seat back. It gave suddenly and his seat slid back with a bang. She was half-on and half-off his lap, half-dressed and half-not, and she was laughing so hard that she was no help at all.
“Shit.” He rested his forehead on hers. “What am I going to do with this?”
“No point in wasting it,” she said. In some fashion best known to pilots she managed to eel backward down into the rudder well, and he forgot the world.
“Oh, yeah,” he said lazily, a little later. “That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it’ll do. I owe you.”
She snickered, buttoning her shirt up cockeyed. “You’ll pay, Campbell. Oh, yeah, you’ll pay. Come on, let’s get out of this bucket and go home.”
“I’ve got to check in,” he said.
“Why?” She almost wailed it.
He stepped from the Cessna and snatched her up into a comprehensive embrace. “Because it’s what I do. Come on.”
They drove to the post in the Blazer, and if the state of Alaska had been peering in the windows it would have been shocked at the behavior going on in the front seat of this vehicle, purchased and maintained for the purpose of enforcing the law and apprehending the violators thereof. Once Liam pulled off and for a few breathless moments Wy feared that they were going to do something Liam could arrest them for. A little farther down the road he drove into the ditch, churned through the snow, uprooted a birch and a couple of alders, and skidded back up on the road. “Keep your hands to yourself next time,” he said severely.
The post, not surprisingly, was empty, since it was nearly four o’clock. “Five minutes,” Liam said, giving Wy a brief, fierce kiss.
Inside, he found Prince’s notes in the computer and scrolled through them. The stuff on Karen was interesting. Mad about something in the will, was she? Something Betsy and Jerry and Stan Jr. got that she wanted? Something even loser Jerry noticed she wanted? Badly enough to confront one of them for it? Bad enough to start a fight over it, and lose?