Pilot Error

by T. C. Ravenscraft

  First Ray, then Fizz, now Dirk. How many more before the nightmare ended?

  Somewhere behind her, Luke was yelling for her to keep her head down. The boat clunked into gear. Momentum threw her sideways as it swooped away from the beach at full speed. Chased by Reynolds' angry shouts for his men to open fire, Micki's attention was on the man dying in her arms.

  "It's okay," she said soothingly, when Dirk tried to speak and no sound came out.

  He coughed, spitting up blood, and tried again. Micki leaned closer so she could hear him over the roar of the outboard, the movement drawing Luke's distracted gaze in a series of sharp glances.

  "Files," Dirk croaked faintly, his eyes wide and scared and locked on hers.

  "I have the flash card thingy, it's safe." Aware that Luke was watching her, but unable to tell if he could hear what was being said, she tapped the tiny, barely felt lump in her bra as way of a visual explanation. "Just hang on," she said, her focus still on Dirk. She took his blood-covered fingers in her hand and squeezed tightly. "We'll get you to a hospital."

  The boat zigged and zagged, tossing them on the pitching deck, as Luke did his best to evade the gunfire still erupting sporadically from the beach. Micki fought to hold Dirk still to ease his agony, but another bout of more intense coughing made his face contort with pain.

  "Dirk?" With the wind whipping her untamed hair and the spray of saltwater on her face, Micki fought back her tears. "Don't you die on me, you hear?"

  Dirk opened glazing eyes and looked up at her. Slipping his hand from hers, he lifted it to her cheek. "All I... ever wanted," he said laboriously, "was for you to... love me..."

  Then, with a starkness that Micki knew she would remember for the rest of her life, he was gone; his hand dropping back to the deck and his head lolling gently to one side with the motion of the boat. The wetness of the red smudge he left on her cheek was as sweet and tender as a whispering kiss.

  Micki pressed her lips together in an effort to hold back her cry of despair. How many more? Another of Luke's tight, sweeping turns sent a wall of white foam into the air and had her clutching for a desperate handhold.

  "Hang on!" Luke called, a tad late. "Damn, we've got company!"

  As bullets whizzed into the ocean around them, Micki dared raise her head to look. A line of three more boats was closing fast. Reinforcements. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the gunfire from behind them stopped.

  Micki glanced over her shoulder, and saw Reynolds and his men clamber for the Jeeps, turning tail. "They've stopped shooting."

  Luke grinned. "No wonder. Look!"

  She followed his nod toward the boats approaching from around the rocky headland to the south. A heartfelt sense of relief thundered through her as they drew close enough to read the white lettering on their blue hulls. They were reinforcements, all right, but not for Reynolds and his thugs. Her radio call, made yesterday from the smuggler's cave, had apparently been treated as more than a prank.

  It was the Hamilton Harbor Police.

  "Put down your weapons and put your hands in the air." The instructions that came over a loud speaker in a welcomed British tone were directed at the group of scrambling men onshore. Luke cut their boat back to idle and let it jostle on its own wake as one of the police boats drew alongside. The remaining two sped straight for the beach like cowboys on horses headed for a roundup.

  It was over. Help had arrived. The nightmare was finally finished.

  As Luke began to talk to the concerned policeman on the boat alongside them, Micki slowly rose to her feet, and found she was shaking so hard she could hardly stand. Horrified, she regarded Dirk's body, lying still and pale between the seats. There was blood everywhere; on the deck, on her hands, on her clothes. So much blood.

  She backed away in a move that took her astern, until a single shot, fired from behind her, drew her dazed attention. Reynolds' Jeep had turned around and was now making a run for it, ignoring the warning shot fired by one of the dozen harbor cops spilling onto the beach to arrest those men who had wisely given themselves up.

  Luke called her name in a raw, shouted warning that did not penetrate the fog of shock that had engulfed her. It was unthinkable that Reynolds might get away, even though he motioned to his driver to head up the sand dune, and began blasting at the Harbor Police as she watched. This could not be happening.

  In her peripheral vision, Micki saw Luke scramble toward her, almost knocking the policeman beside him into the water in his haste. At the same time Luke moved, the gunfire ceased. In slow motion, she watched Reynolds make one last vengeful move. Throwing down his emptied assault rifle, he pulled a handgun from the belt of his trousers, and swung around to aim it directly at her.

  Luke's voice was a roar. "MICKI, GET THE HELL DOWN!"

  A single gunshot, fired from the stolen Beretta, erupted over the sound of lapping waves and the putter of idling boats. Luke tackled her just as something hard stung her in the left temple and bright light flared behind her eyes. She went down unexpectedly with Luke on top of her.

  The back of her head collided with the deck and something darker exploded in her skull with the impact. Through a fuzzy haze of pain, Micki watched Luke talk at her, but his urgent words made no sense. The world had taken a swift and unexplainable turn into a jumbled hodgepodge of images and sounds.

  She looked away, suddenly sleepy. Luke shook her, and she wished distantly that he'd just leave her alone. Dirk's body, the centerpiece of an oozing red puddle on the polished white fiberglass deck, was the last thing she saw before the darkness tunneling her vision pushed in.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Her head hurt like hell.

  Coming back to consciousness was like surfacing through layers of varying pain; the closer Micki got to full awareness, the more the agony in her brain grew. The best thing was to sink back down to where the ache was farther away, and stay there for a long, long time.

  She heard a whimper and distantly wondered if it could be her own.

  "Micki?" The voice was coming from up top somewhere. Up top. Where the pain waited. "Come on, Jacinto, I know you're in there."

  The memories came flooding back in a rush; Luke, the Cessna crash, Reynolds, losing Fizz, the cave, Dirk. Swirling like blood in water, they pushed her closer to the surface of full consciousness. It was like swimming up through an ocean blanketed with a slick of black oil.

  Fighting, Micki broke free. The ache sluiced over her, potent enough to nearly send her spiraling downward into the safer depths again. But there was warm pressure on her hand and that comforting voice, buoying her where she was and refusing to let her sink. "Micki? Can you hear me? Come on, darlin', give me a sign."

  Could she hear him? What a stupid question. Of course she could hear him. Why did he think she was there, floating in the pain, if not to communicate?

  It took two tries before her voice would work, but finally she remembered what it took to make the words audible, if not totally articulate. "Don't... call me that."

  Her companion chuckled lightly, and she felt him lift the hand he held for a quick kiss. "That's my Micki."

  "You wish." Her voice was slurred, and her eyes, it seemed, just didn't want to open. When she forced her lids apart, the first fuzzy thing she saw was a military uniform. "Luke?"

  "It's Tex, Micki." Her eyes lifted, and focused in time to catch his welcoming smile shading a little more toward concern. He sat forward in the chair pulled close to her bedside, as if he had been there, keeping a watchful vigil, for an unspecified but lengthy amount of time. "You recognize your old buddy, don't you?"

  "Tex?"

  He stood, moved closer to her mattress, and threw her one of his best cocky flyboy grins. That was the familiar thing that helped settle an unfamiliar reality around her. Four white, sterile walls and a window came into focus, none of which she was certain she'd ever seen before. There were flowers in the room; lots of flowers, giving off a glorious scent. This wasn't her bedroom at her trailer
in Marathon, and this wasn't even the room Dirk had prepared for her at Dominic Van Allen's estate.

  "Where am I?"

  "St. George's Hospital, in Hamilton."

  So, she was still in Bermuda. "Why am I here?"

  "Well, the Constable there," Tex said, nodding over his shoulder toward the closed door. Micki followed the gesture, looking down past the dreary lightweight blanket covering her legs, and saw a policewoman sitting on a chair just inside the room. "She tells me you've been shot."

  The word brought back the memories. Guns. Reynolds shooting. Dirk's blood all over her. Micki raised a shaky hand, tentatively fingering the soft gauze dressing her left temple. "No, I meant... why am I still in Bermuda?"

  Tex grinned again. "Probably something to do with the fact that you've been unconscious ever since I got here."

  Determined, Micki focused her full attention on him again. "When was that?"

  "About noon—three hours ago." Tex leaned closer to whisper, as if sharing a secret that only she was meant to hear. "Don't worry, you're going to be okay. The doc said the bullet just grazed you, but they want to keep you here overnight for observation. I think they're more worried about the knock you took on the noggin."

  Well, that would explain the awful headache. She vaguely remembered hitting her head on the boat deck when Luke tackled her. Quite possibly, his actions had saved her from taking Reynolds' bullet smack between the eyes. Luke had saved her life.

  Her gaze strayed around the room again. So where was he?

  Tex straightened and resumed a normal speaking voice that the female bobby would have no trouble overhearing. "After that, little lady, you and me got us two first class seats back to the good old U.S. of A. And don't you worry none about the details, it's all taken care of."

  Her head pounding, Micki put words to a far greater ache. "Where's Luke?"

  Tex gave her a funny look, as if not comprehending the question. "You mean... Hardigan? That jerk we met at The Sandpiper the other night?"

  Micki's head began to whirl at the idea of Tex not knowing anything about Luke or the events that had put her life into a tailspin these past few days. She drew a deep, steadying breath then devoted all of her efforts to clarifying the question. "Yes, Luke Hardigan. Is he okay? I'd like to see him."

  Tex gave her an uncertain smile that said now he was really worried about her. "Micki, I haven't seen the guy since last Thursday night, in the Keys. If he was here, he's long gone."

  The knife through her heart was a far greater agony than the pain in her head. Micki screwed her eyes shut. What was going on here? Now that Luke had his hard sought after evidence on a data storage card, had he just dumped her in the Emergency Room and left for greener pastures?

  But he... said he loved her.

  "I'm afraid Commander Hardigan had to leave," the policewoman spoke up.

  Commander? That's right, Luke was Navy. Navy JAG.

  Standing, the uniformed bobby crossed to Micki's bedside and offered a sympathetic smile. Shoulder to shoulder with Tex, she said, "He's all right. His injuries were superficial, nothing a long rest won't cure. He wanted to stay until you regained consciousness, but other circumstances warranted his full attention." She gestured at one of the dozen bouquets littering the room. "All the flowers are from him."

  Tex snorted in disapproval. "For Pete's sake, Micki's lying in a hospital bed after being shot! If that jerk really cared about her, he wouldn't have let 'other circumstances' drag him away. No amount of damn flowers can make up for that."

  The policewoman threw him a disapproving glance, but her words were for Micki. "I'm sure he'll be in touch. He's taken the information you obtained to the proper authorities." Her gaze softened sympathetically. "When you're feeling better, we'll need your statement, too."

  Micki began to nod, and immediately regretted it when the pain in her skull swelled to new proportions.

  "But not until later," Tex said protectively. "Or even tomorrow. Right now you should just rest."

  Opening her eyes, Micki caught the pointed glance the woman shot toward Tex, which he ignored in favor of a worried look at her. She couldn't rest. Not yet. There was another question to be asked.

  "Did... Commander Hardigan say when he'd be back?"

  The policewoman offered another understanding smile and shook her head. "I'm sorry, no."

  Micki closed her eyes, trying to settle the confusion whirling in her brain with all the new information. When she opened them, she found the policewoman had returned to her chair by the door, and Tex still regarding her with a concerned frown.

  "You okay, Micki?"

  Probably not. But that wasn't something she was ready to tell him right now. It was obvious he only knew snippets of what had happened, so how he had tracked her there, all the way to Bermuda, was a mystery.

  That seemed a safer subject than her current state of mind. "What are you doing here, Tex? I mean, how did you find me?"

  He grinned. "Darlin', you've had me running on caffeine and nerves for days now, looking for you."

  "You found my ELT, right?" she guessed. She had left the emergency transmitter on a sandbar, turned it on at an appropriate time, all just like she was supposed to do.

  "I told Padre you would have activated it!" he said in her defense. Then he shook his head. "Nope, we didn't find it. Didn't hear a blip. But I knew you would have done the right thing."

  The right thing. Micki's eyes closed under a frown. She always did the right thing. She had done exactly what her father had taught her to do in an emergency situation; exactly what he would have expected. Only this time it hadn't worked.

  Looking at Tex, she asked, "Then how—what led you to Bermuda?"

  "Let's just say that I couldn't have done it without the help of a couple of old folks from Ohio who, when asking for directions to the country club, just didn't think things looked right. Of course, they were only one piece of the puzzle. It wasn't until I found Fizz that I really started believing you'd met with foul play."

  "Fizz." Micki sobbed once, but was able to regain control. Tex had recovered Fizz's body; at least now she could properly lay him to rest.

  Much to her amazement, Tex's smile widened. "Man, was he happy to see me! Just about licked me to death." He shook his head in fond amusement. "I swear that dog of yours thinks he's a bird. Wanted to ride up front in the helo with me and Padre all the way back to Marathon. What have you been doing? Teaching him to be your co-pilot?" Noting her stunned expression, he finally stopped babbling. "What?"

  "Fizz is..." Micki hesitated, hardly daring to even hope. "He's alive?"

  "Of course he's alive! Wait, you mean you thought he was—?" Tex blew out a long comprehending breath and reached to take her hand again. He gave it a reassuring squeeze, as if to reinforce that he was telling the truth. "Darlin', Fizz is fine. We picked him up on an uninhabited island off Big Pine on Sunday afternoon, when we were out looking for you."

  Tears of joy slipped from her eyes. Fizz was alive!

  "Hey," Tex said, patting her hand, "you'll see him soon enough. In the meantime, he's living it up big at my place. 'Course, we did have one slight difference of opinion over his bath."

  Micki squeezed his hand hard. "Thank you."

  His grin faded. "I wish I could say I rescued your Cessna the same way, but I'm afraid it's totaled. The storm must've rolled it a few times."

  "You found the wreckage, then?"

  "That's a long story." Tex perched on the side of her bed, keeping her hand tucked in his. "See, Dirk told me you guys had gotten back together and were driving to Key West for a romantic weekend. But when I checked your hangar, your bike was there, the plane was out, and someone had trashed your office."

  "A break-in?"

  "That's what I thought, at first. I was about to call the cops when those Ohio seniors came by looking for a scenic tour. We got to talking, and one thing led to another, and I showed them the photo of you and your folks—the one on your office wall. T
hey swore the woman they saw being forced into a brown van on 62nd Street Gulf on Saturday morning was you."

  "It was. I remember them."

  "None of the puzzle pieces fit; the timing was all wrong. I checked Dirk's Key West reservation and no surprise, it was bogus—like everything else that came out of his mouth. So when Padre and I found Fizz miles from the Cessna wreckage, we knew Dirk had taken you, we just didn't know where."

  "Bermuda," she announced, her brain pounding too much to play connect the dots much longer.

  "Yeah, darlin'," he said with an affectionate grin, "Bermuda."

  "Don't—"

  "I know. But I'm probably always gonna, anyway."

  Tex slid off the edge of the hospital bed but remained standing close, unwilling to let go of her hand. "Scariest part of all this? Dirk's plans were almost flawless. We'd never have found you if the Hamilton Police hadn't called. I kind of wish he was here right now... so I could introduce my fist to his face."

  Micki lowered her gaze. "Dirk's dead."

  "So I've been told," Tex said, nodding stonily. "Guess that lying two-faced SOB got what was coming, huh."

  "Don't say that!" Her defense of Dirk surprised her even more than it surprised Tex. She drew a slow breath, finding sympathy, not resentment, for the man she remembered as both her lover and her friend. "In the end, Dirk did the right thing. He deserved to go to jail. He didn't deserve to die."

  Tex relented grudgingly. "I'm sorry, Micki, I know you two were close."

  Close. Like she and Luke had been 'close?'

  She turned her face away on her pillow. The events of the last few days flipped through her head like a series of private flash cards, culminating with the single haunting image of Luke, stuck in that damn cave and looking up at her through the hole, the candor on his face—the truth in his voice—when he told her that he loved her.

  Micki screwed her eyes shut against the onslaught of fresh emotions that threatened to overwhelm her. If he truly loved her, then how could he have just left her? It seemed she was right about not wanting to let herself fall for him. At least she hadn't spilled her heart; at least she hadn't told him that she loved him too.