by Andrew Watts
Because the aircraft rested on a tail wheel, the fuselage angled up sharply. The cabin windows were just forward of the rear passenger door. Trent had the car positioned in a blind spot, just aft of the passenger door. Right now, Max and Trent couldn’t see any of the passengers, and the passengers couldn’t see them. But the vehicle would need to come forward in order for Max to reach the door.
“Get ready,” said Trent. Max saw that he had his silenced pistol in his right hand, relying on his left hand to drive.
Max stood on the rear seat and prepared himself to exit out the window. They were only going about forty miles per hour, but looking at the pavement below, it still seemed fast. But they were running out of time. Max’s best guess was that they had about twenty seconds before the plane turned sharply left onto the active runway and he missed his chance.
He stuck his head out the window and the wind met his face. Max looked forward along the length of the plane and could make out the pilot’s eyes through the reflection of the aircraft’s right side-mounted mirror. The pilot’s mouth opened, and then closed as he saw the car driving along next to them and recognized what was happening.
Max continued climbing through the window, grabbing on to the car’s “oh shit” handle with his right hand, balancing himself on the door frame and reaching with his left hand for the door latch of the Ford Trimotor.
Trent began moving the vehicle forward. Here it came. The leap of faith. Hot exhaust and deafening noise all around him. The taxiway pavement whizzing by below. A two-foot chasm waiting to break his bones.
Remarkably, the door opened from the outside without much effort. But keeping it open as the wind pushed against it was a challenge.
Then the gunshots sounded. The passengers had seen Trent. He was firing with one hand on the wheel.
Shattering glass and muffled yelling.
Time to commit. If any of the gunmen were looking back this way, he would be a dead man. But this was his only chance to save Renee.
Max pulled open the door with his left hand, reached out with his right, and dove forward. He landed with a sharp pain, his chest now on the floor of the aircraft cabin, then felt the terror as his legs began to fall, their weight starting to pull him back out the door.
Max dug deep and swung his legs up, pulling his body over the precipice. Then he used his arms to wriggle forward the rest of the way through and onto the aircraft cabin floor.
He was on board, heart pounding in his chest.
Max looked up to see one of the gunmen standing over him, aiming a submachine gun at his face. Then the man’s chest popped with two red holes and he fell backward toward the cabin wall.
A burst of gunfire forward and a lurch as the aircraft veered left and Trent’s vehicle slid away.
Yelling and cursing in Spanish. Max realized Trent had shot several of the men on board through the windows. Max reached across the aisle and picked up the weapon of the now-dead sicario from the floor. Then he craned his neck around the seat that had been concealing him from the front of the plane.
Max took a mental snapshot of the aircraft interior, then hid back behind the rearmost row.
The aircraft had a narrow column of seats. One seat on either side of the aisle. Five rows, ten seats total. An incredibly steep incline up toward the cockpit. No door between the cockpit and cabin. Max guessed he was looking at a twenty-foot ramp towards the bright white light of the cockpit windows. A difficult length to ascend.
Renee sat in the forwardmost left cabin seat, looking unharmed. Williams stood in the center aisle just aft of her. He was holding his hands to his face, bright red blood dripping through the cracks in his fingers. Glass from the window, or a graze, maybe.
Max saw two men on the ground, injured or dead, he couldn’t tell which yet. But one looked like Abdul Syed. There was a white guy gripping the back of the right-side pilot’s seat, holding a gun to the man’s head.
Now all Max had to do was get past the gauntlet and tell the pilot to halt his takeoff.
Max felt the aircraft make another sharp left turn onto the runway. Then the engines roared to full power, and both of the remaining men in the cabin—Ian Williams and the man holding the gun to the pilot’s head—tumbled backward along the steep aisle as the aircraft accelerated forward on its takeoff roll.
Renee felt her head press back into her seat as the aircraft throttle was moved to takeoff power. She felt like she was launching in the space shuttle the way she was angled up so sharply.
The assassin who’d been pointing his gun at the pilot hadn’t been prepared for the force of the acceleration combined with that steep an angle. His only grip had been one hand on the pilot’s seat, his other hand holding a pistol. The man fell backward through the air, landing on his back halfway down the aisle, rolling and then sliding towards the aft end of the aircraft. Renee saw the flying pilot look backward, the aircraft still rumbling through its takeoff roll.
A decisive moment. Would he abort the takeoff with two gunmen still on board and remaining runway disappearing before him? Renee hoped he would, but even she was fearful of the repercussions.
Her hopes were dashed seconds later when they became airborne, gliding up and banking slightly to the right, the air now rushing through cracked and broken windows on the right side of the cabin. Renee let out a breath of defeat. Out her window were thousands of planes parked next to each other in the grass. Rows of tents and the massive static display of jumbo jets and military aircraft in the center of the air show.
And Max.
He was down there. She hoped she would see him again.
Then she turned around and did.
Impossibly, Max was now locked in a wrestling match with the assassin who had just fallen backward from the cockpit. They were fighting for control of a gun.
She reached down and unlatched her seat belt. Taking a quick breath, she forced herself out of the seat, ready to vault down the aisle, past the bloody bodies on the floor, and pummel the man who dared hurt her beloved Max.
Then Ian Williams rose up from his seat. One of his eyes was a mass of crimson. His face was smeared with wet blood. His other eye was wide and crazed. Mouth open with white teeth clenched down in a mad rage.
Williams raised a black pistol towards Renee and fired.
Max heard a gunshot and involuntarily snapped his gaze towards the shooter. Ian Williams had fired up near the front of the aircraft. Renee had been up there, but Max couldn’t see her now. A single shot rang out. Max kept trying to spot Renee but then felt a fist pounding him in the kidney.
He forced himself to fight one problem at a time.
The man was wrapped around him, off balance but trying to gain leverage. Max elbowed his opponent in the face twice and felt him go limp. Then Max got to his feet and brought his knee up hard under the man’s chin, breaking his jaw and sending him to the floor, motionless. Unconscious.
Renee.
Max turned back towards Williams. The Englishman had dropped his pistol and was searching around on the floor for another weapon. Max sprinted towards him and tackled him from his blind side, putting all his force into his right shoulder and wrapping up the way he’d been taught to tackle playing football as a boy.
Williams slammed forward with a grimace, landing on his chest and already-bloodied face.
“Max!”
Max looked up from the floor and saw Renee standing at the front of the plane. Then she began to have trouble balancing herself as the aircraft tilted sideways.
Max looked beyond her. The pilot was hanging lifeless from his seat.
Renee watched a squirming Ian Williams as he tried reaching for a weapon on the floor. Renee had sent her forearm into Williams’s shooting hand moments ago as he was trying to fire his weapon. He was half-blind from a vicious eye wound, and in his disorientation, she had managed to throw off his aim.
But while she was unharmed, it appeared that Williams had shot the pilot.
“Help the pilots!
” Max shouted, pointing with one hand.
Renee frowned and turned around, still holding on to the edges of the aisle seats so she wouldn’t fall over, the aircraft now in a sharp turn and an unusually steep climb.
The pilot was dead. Ian Williams’s gunshot had hit him in the back of the head. Renee panicked as she realized the copilot was the ninety-something-year-old Tuskegee Airman. She climbed up the stairs as fast as she could, fighting the pull of the earth’s gravity that seemed to want her to lie on the wall.
Renee heaved herself up to the pilot’s seat and grimaced as she unstrapped the dead man and pulled his body into the center aisle. Then she got in the seat, strapped in, put on his headset and grabbed the…steering wheel?
The plane had a steering wheel.
She said over the headset, “Can you hear me?” Then she tried to do what she thought Max would tell her to do during one of her flight lessons.
“Yes, I can hear you,” said the Tuskegee Airman. “I’m afraid I’m having a hard time seeing everything. I don’t have my glasses.” His hands were on his steering wheel.
“It’s alright. I’m going to try and level us out. I think I should just turn the wheel left. What do you think?”
“Yes, I think you’re right.”
Renee turned the wheel to the left, feeling a good amount of resistance. But sure enough, the wings banked over to the left and now they were only in a climb, not a turn.
The Tuskegee Airman said, “Now I think you need to push the stick forward.”
“Okay.”
Renee pushed forward on the steering wheel and the nose tilted down until they were flying almost straight and level.
She looked at the Tuskegee Airman and smiled. “We did it!”
A series of gunshots rang out from the rear of the plane.
Max had seen it coming. The man in the back, whom Max had thought was unconscious, rose up on his elbows and reached for a submachine gun that had been resting underneath one of the dead sicarios. Max released Ian Williams from his wrestling hold, reached out for the handgun four feet down the aisle, turned, and fired, single-handed.
Both shots missed, but they helped him gain the advantage over his opponent.
The man was now hunkered down behind useless cushioned seats. The only thing they did was put him out of sight. But Max knew exactly where he was. This was a thinking man’s game. The one who solved the problem the fastest won.
Max drew himself up from the floor and balanced his weight between his left foot and his right knee, holding the pistol firmly with both hands, steadying his aim as much as possible in the maneuvering aircraft…
And pulled the trigger.
He saw a quick jerk in the shadows beneath the seat. Then the man’s body collapsed into a heap on the floor.
Now it was just Ian Williams. Max saw Williams rise up in the middle of the aisle, standing defiant and unarmed. He started to turn and walk aft.
“Don’t move!” Max yelled above the howling wind.
Williams turned and stared at Max with one eye, his other just a swollen slit now. “Shoot me, then.” He slowly stepped backwards, holding on to the tops of the seats for balance. Looking Max in the face, daring him to fire on an unarmed man. And getting closer to the other weapons on the floor that had slid to the aft part of the aircraft.
Fine, Max thought. He wants to go this way? He deserves it.
Before Max pulled the trigger, he did a double take, looking down at the weapon in his hands. In the excitement of the moment he had missed it. The slide of his pistol was all the way back, the chamber empty.
He was out of bullets.
Renee had her head on a swivel. Just like playing defense on Princeton’s field hockey team. Except now she was trying to fly an ancient plane and make sure that the love of her life wasn’t being shot at.
“What is he doing back there?”
“What do you see?” said the Tuskegee pilot. He was holding the airplane’s controls with her. She could feel his inputs every few seconds. Flying by sight, judging the horizon. Unable to read any of the dials, but his decades-old aviation instinct helping nonetheless.
“Max isn’t shooting. I think the man who hijacked the plane is going for a gun. We need to do something.”
Renee looked forward again, making sure that they weren’t aiming towards the ground. They were probably thousands of feet off the altitude they had started at. Indeed, the air seemed cooler and hazier than a few moments ago. But her only real goal was to make sure they didn’t crash until Max could come help.
But he wouldn’t be coming to help if Ian Williams shot him.
“What can we do?”
“Land,” the old man offered.
“I mean right now. Is there something we can do to help shake things up back there?”
The old man looked at Renee and said, “We could try some maneuvers.”
She said, “What if we stall the aircraft? Maybe we can shake them up enough back there that…” Renee wasn’t sure if it would work, or help. But she didn’t have any other options. There was only one problem. “I have no idea how to stall this thing, do you?”
The old man said, “I would try to pull those levers right there. The throttle levers. No, not that. Yes, those ones. All the way…well, maybe not all the way…”
Renee pulled the three levers back to about one quarter of where they could be set. The engines wound down and became much quieter, and thankfully the propellers were still spinning.
“Now pull back on the stick as hard as you can. Don’t let go. After we go through the stall, push forward hard. Then, when we get speed back, pull up hard.”
Renee pulled on the steering wheel with sweaty hands. She reached her forearms around it to help. The nose of the large aircraft went up, and she could see the airspeed sliding back. A high-pitched whine sounded through their headphones.
She turned her head back and yelled as loud as she could. “Max, hold on!”
The airspeed slowed, the sun came into view, and then the bottom dropped out.
Max started running towards Williams but was going to be too late. Then he heard a female voice screaming about something, and Max realized the aircraft had changed configuration. As Ian Williams raised up the submachine gun from the floor, Max grabbed on to the metal base of the seat nearest to him and held on tight.
The next few seconds happened in slow motion. Ian picked up the weapon just as the stall began. As the nose of the aircraft dove down and they passed through zero g’s, Ian Williams floated up into the ceiling. Then the g’s came back on and he slammed to the floor, hitting it hard enough to stun him.
Max was crouched and holding on to the seats. He took two quick steps towards the rear of the aircraft.
Ian was now sprawled out right next to the exit door.
Which was fluttering ever so slightly.
The latch had taken gunfire, Max realized.
The only thing holding the door shut was the airflow over the fuselage. Which was considerable at this speed. But no match for the force of a man being kicked through it.
Before Williams could regain his balance, Max grabbed on to the two metal handles atop the rearmost aisle seats. He swung his legs forward and aimed his heels towards Ian’s sternum, extending himself, kicking and squatting with all his might.
The result was Ian Williams flying backward, slamming through the unlocked exit door, screaming as he disappeared into the wild blue yonder.
Max took Renee’s seat and contacted Oshkosh tower on guard, the emergency frequency for all aircraft.
The tower air traffic controller got one of the other Ford Trimotor pilots on the radio, and while the landing was definitely not Max’s finest, they were able to talk him down to the runway safely.
Max taxied the aircraft up to the central display area of the air show and shut off the engines. Renee embraced him and kissed him on the lips.
Then she did the same to the Tuskegee Airman, who was smiling, despit
e the chaos.
Firetrucks and ambulances converged on the scene. Police cars and news crews. Crowds of people, stunned and taking pictures and clapping and pointing. Max, Renee, and the Tuskegee Airman were helped out of the aircraft and taken to the hospital under police guard.
Max’s father Charles, Trent Carpenter, and Caleb Wilkes all met him there. After all the official interviews and medical treatment, Max asked Trent what had happened to the senator.
Trent gave him a look and said, “Later.”
Max understood enough to be patient.
Chapter 32
Max and Caleb Wilkes sat across from Senator Becker, a recording device resting on the table between them. They were in the senator’s home. The investigators were done with it, although they were still evaluating evidence at the mansion property across the cove. That was a crime scene, still being investigated several days after the events of last week.
No charges had been filed against Senator Becker yet. The problem was witnesses. For all of Ian Williams’s faults, he had done a good job of covering their tracks. Almost everyone who could point to Becker’s participation in the cabal was dead. Those who were thought to be alive were outside the country, being protected—or eliminated—by the remaining coconspirators.
But the digital and financial trails would eventually be uncovered, the FBI investigators had assured them. It was just a matter of time, now that they knew what they were looking for. And Max and Renee could testify to what they had seen.
Becker’s only hope to avoid a life in jail was to cooperate wholeheartedly. The news media had already begun putting the pieces together, and the cable news channels were featuring wall-to-wall coverage of the senator’s international conspiracy. Each night, the Washington Post and the New York Times tried to outscoop each other on another major revelation.
