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48.
The night was cold and drizzly around Volcan Mountain. Fog rolled through the thick forests, and clouds reared up charcoal and black as if the whole mountain were smoldering, on fire. This was the weather that sucked planes out of the sky and threw them against the mountain with deadly force.
At the Anaconda Chemical plant on Atasca Ridge, perimeter lights burned with cold brightness. Fog rolled through the wire fence as if trying to deny their existence. Every hour, the white guard SUV labored along the perimeter ridges.
Down in the basin 500 feet below, several Cessnas still sat at the end of the runway. Corner lights illumined the several rectangular buildings at the far end of the valley.
It was a silent scene. Nothing was flying tonight, not even toward the dawn hour. Several dark figures worked on the Cessnas, getting them ready to fly as soon as daylight came and burned off the drizzle and fog.
In that silence, suddenly, a loud noise echoed across the valley. The main gate above on the road burst open as its chain and lock were destroyed. The gate flew open in both directions as a heavy, dirty SUV barreled through—belonging to Ernie Walesky, but driven by Linsey Simon. Beside her sat Jack Simon, who held his hands over his eyes and mouthed a silent scream. The SUV barreled down the main street, into the valley below, toward the air strip. "Keep an eye out for that guard hummer, and have your camera ready," Linsey instructed.
Jack said: "Aye aye, Sir." As the SUV bounced along, fishtailing at times, he had trouble keeping the camera straight. He was trying to film the whole escapade, as she'd instructed. Half the battle would be the film evidence. The other half would be getting scrapings off the exhaust nozzles of the rain making foggers on at least one of the Cessnas. Ideally, they should have brought a pilot along to fly one of the planes out, but that couldn't happen on such short notice and under these conditions.
Suddenly inspired, Linsey stopped. "I've got an idea, Jack."
"Oh God not another one!"
While Linsey sat deliberating her next move, Jack kept filming. Ernie Walesky's SUV sat growling quietly and powerfully at the edge of the runway. The nearest Cessna was about 200 feet away, facing toward them. Linsey eyeballed the plane, while simultaneously looking around for that white guard vehicle with those two scary dudes. She and Jack had come armed, of course, with handguns, assault rifles, and shotguns, plus enough ammo for an extended siege, but the evidence collected under such circumstances would probably not be admissible in court.
"Look in the back, see if there's any rope—extra thick rope."
Jack clambered back and said: "There is a coil of something back here. Looks like inch thick braided nylon, blue and white, like for boating and stuff."
Linsey looked at it in the rear view mirror. " Ernie is or was a sailor, so that makes sense. I'm going to collect those scrapings from the plane." So saying, she drove down the runway toward the nearest Cessna.
"Honey, are you nuts?"
"I'm not going to hit him, Jack. Just relax." Driving past the plane, she eyeballed it and made sure the chocks were under the wheels front and back. Also, the propeller was horizontal. Good. She made a U-turn behind the plane and drove around it, so that she was in front of it facing in the same direction."
"What have I done?" Jack said. "I married an insane person."
"Sweetheart, this isn't our car, and those aren't our planes, so who cares? Duck your head—there may be some glass!" She backed into the Cessna at a high rate of speed. Jack ducked, holding his head in both hands. The SUV collided with the Cessna. Jack bellowed, and for a moment Linsey thought she might have made a mistake. Then she saw that her plan had worked. The car had gone under the plane's front end, forcing it on top of the car. "Quick, Jack, the ropes. Let's go!"
Eyes wide with terror, Jack helped her toss the nylon rope over the plane's wheels and around the SUV. They got the plane tied down, at least somewhat, when the guard vehicle's spotlight found them and started playing over the scene. Arriving up at the ridge, the guards driving the vehicle must have seen the gate sprung, and then noticed the commotion on the runway. They turned the SUV toward the air strip and raced down the road.
"Hand me the shotgun," Linsey said. As Jack fumbled with the heavy weapon, Linsey raced up the road. For a moment it was a duel of high beams.
Jack said: "You drive. I'll take care of them."
"That's the spirit!"
As the two vehicles neared each other, it looked like a near miss was about to turn into a deliberate ramming. "Those guys are crazy," Jack yelled. He leaned out the window and unleashed a series of shotgun blasts into the engine and front tires of the guard vehicle. The guards veered left, then right, then left again. Linsey tried to steer opposite their direction in the hope of flying past them. At the last moment, Linsey went left and they went right. As they sailed past, Jack unloaded several more shotgun blasts at the rear of their vehicle in hopes of flattening their tires.
As Linsey drove uphill and neared the gate, she looked back and saw that the guard vehicle had burst into flames. Must have hit the gas tank. Two figures bailed out as the vehicle exploded.
"My career is probably over," she said as she drove through the broken gate. "I enjoyed it while it lasted."
"Stop," Jack said. She did, and he potted the security cameras above the gate. Emptying another round of shotgun shells, he explosively demolished the camera and cut its mast in half. "If you go to jail, I might as well do the same. We can send each other notes."
"There's our car," she said. "I'll drive this thing. You get our car out of here, but pronto."
Minutes later, a strange sight could be seen heading south on a winding mountain road: a sports car racing full tilt, followed by a dusty SUV with an airplane on top.
Linsey kept looking in the rear view mirror. Beyond the broken fuselage, and the tail section hanging limply, rocking, over the back of Ernie Walesky's SUV, nothing was following her. The tie-down job wasn't too good, and the nylon rope appeared to be stretching, so that the airplane yawed back and forth. She spotted a parking lot for some large church, empty at this hour, and sailed into there. A row of street lights in the parking lot had caught her eye. She raced along, severing first one wing, and then, going the other way, severing the other wing. With the plane's landing gear firmly wrapped around Ernie's SUV, the plane wasn't going anywhere now.
Jack waited on the road. She followed him down the grade, past Julian, and down to Interstate 8. As luck would have it, the Highway Patrol didn't pull her over, and eventually she managed to drive into the parking structure of Louise Trost's high rise.
Timing was great, because Louise was just getting out of her car, and stood gaping as the SUV with the airplane wreck embedded in its roof pulled up along side her. It barely cleared the ceiling, by an inch. Jack pulled up in the sports car with a screech of tires. "Hello, Louise," Linsey said. "We did manage to grab one of those planes. Get Nolan over here to get samples from the rain dusting nozzles." As Louise gasped for breath and leaned back over her own car, Linsey said: "Are you okay?"
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