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65.
Jimmy Mendez was grateful for Maribel's presence on the chopper whizzing over San Diego. Often, they had fought like cats and dogs. Now they held hands and clung together.
"Pretty cool," he admitted as he looked down over the trees around the San Diego River as it wended its way through Mission Valley toward its delta and the Pacific Ocean.
"I wish my mom could see this," Maribel said.
"You kids hang on tight and stay put," the pilot said kindly. Jimmy admired the man's uniform and gun. He wore a brown bubble helmet like an astronaut, and a brown jumpsuit with these really cool lac-eup boots. "I'm gonna get mom and dad to get me some of those and a toy gun," Jimmy said.
Maribel said sadly: "I don't think we're ever going to see them again, Jimmy." She squeezed his hand.
"Stop reminding me!" he yelled, but held her hand tightly.
It was supposed to be a flight of no more than 15 minutes from Linda Vista, crosswise over Mission Valley, over downtown San Diego, across the harbor and bay a mile, to set down safely on the runways at the Naval Air Station.
As the helicopter roared over the rooftops downtown, it started making bucking motions.
"What's going on?" Jimmy and Maribel yelled in fear.
The pilot's expression behind his dark visor was unreadable, but he was gripping the stick with both hands and making body motions to one side as he tried to bicycle his floor pedals.
What happened next was all in slow motion, or so it seemed.
Maribel started letting go with that piercing scream of hers.
Out of the corner of his eyes—while he held his ears and tried to kick Maribel to make her stop screaming and hurting his ears, which was hard because they were strapped together in the seat—Jimmy saw the tail come swinging around on his right. As he watched, one of the rotor blades broke off. It glinted in the sunlight as it flew twirling away.
"Got to set down," the pilot said. They were the last words he would ever utter. The chopper lost altitude fast. Below were the empty streets—littered with abandoned vehicles and debris. Below to their rear were the highrise office buildings and condo towers. Ahead and below was the long, multi-story glass tube that contained the main passages of the Convention Center—at least two blocks long, a quarter mile of curving, slightly tinted glass. The sail-like roofs of the Convention Center loomed ahead. To the right were the towers of two huge high rise hotel towers joined to the Convention Center by passageways, garages, and storage areas.
For a moment it looked as if they were going to crash at over 100 miles per hour into those white roof-sails. Maribel was still screaming. She could hold a blimp worth of air in her lungs, Jimmy thought. He held his ears and sat paralyzed watching the great roof structure fly at them. Then the chopper dropped straight down as the pilot made some desperate moves to avoid hitting the roof. The tail spun all the way around in a dizzying circle. The chopper crashed through the glass roof and one second later smashed into the upper story walkway. As the chopper went through the roof, the right side was sheared off—so close that Jimmy felt the wind on his fingers like a hammer.
Maribel's scream ended suddenly.
The chopper's fall was broken and it landed on its side and did a little dance in a half circle while the top rotors beat themselves into pieces on the carpeted floor and concrete showed through.
Jimmy went black as the cockpit shattered around him
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