Wings for Nurse Bennett

by Adeline McElfresh

  "Al," she said to the unconscious co-pilot. "Al—"

  A tender finger touched the ugly abrasion just over and -behind his left ear. "You didn't need to hit him so hard. Nor there."

  "You heard me, girlie. Get him out of here."

  He didn't raise his voice, or move. He didn't have to. From where he stood with the muzzle of the gun nuzzling the back of Paul's neck, he had but to swerve it a fraction, or merely to squeeze the trigger and she, Paul, all of them—

  A desperate strength was in her as she slid her arms around Al Malcolm and tugged his long, limp body from the co-pilot's seat.

  "Al!" she pleaded, once again. "Can you h—"

  He groaned.

  "Steady, All" Paul Fergis's voice whiplashed through the small compartment. "Watch yourself!"

  With another low moan Al Malcolm struggled to sit up. "Wh—"

  "Take it easy, bud," said the man with the gun as the co-pilot started to lurch to his feet. "Smith!"

  It was the first time he had raised his voice. When the door opened he ordered, "All right, you two."

  Knowing, somehow, what she would see, Sarah walked into the cabin. Al Malcolm followed her, staggeringly. At a gun-gesture from the man called Smith they sat in the seats he and the elder Mr. Rand, the one now holding a gun to the back of Paul's neck, had occupied. The younger Mr. Rand was at the rear of the cabin, standing now, a gun in his hand.

  Oh, God, Sarah thought. Mrs. Stevanic.

  "Mrs. Stevanic?" she said without moving.

  "I'm all right."

  There had been no hesitation, but she sounded frightened.

  "Shut up," Smith ordered.

  "Smith—"

  The man's voice from the pilots' compartment sounded sepulchral, disembodied, as if it didn't belong in the plane at all but off yonder in the rain that was beginning to resolve in swirling gray mists. Smith, the shifty-eyed one, seemed a wraith—he moved like one, backing soundlessly, sinuously, almost without moving a muscle or a joint, into the pilot's compartment.

  When he reappeared Paul was walking in front of him, hands in the air, his face a lean, square-jawed chunk of granite.

  Sarah closed her eyes. Oh, God. That man was flying the plane.

  Behind her there was a rustle of movement. Paul sitting down? Or Mrs. Emlyn—

  "Sit still, Granny."

  "If I had been your grandmother, young man, I'd have larruped some self-respect into you!"

  The weak jaw set; the man braced himself as the plane banked sharply to the right. He knew that was going to happen, Sarah thought. And why to the right? Could he be heading back to Killmoose? Or perhaps to Fairbanks?

  She strained to see something besides rain-grayness beyond the window beside her and couldn't. She didn't even know how far they had been from Tanacross. Or even from Killmoose. But they had been flying at nine thousand, and as long as they stayed there—how long could they stay there?

  How long could they stay in the air at all? If Paul had planned to gas up at Tanacross— Determinedly she put down the rising tide of panic.

  Beside her Al Malcolm shook his head groggily, with ginger fingers explored his head wound.

  "Some hero," he muttered.

  "Shut up."

  The gun remained as rock-steady as the hypodermic syringe used to in Ralph's hand and for some almost frightening irrelevant reason Sarah was back in the office, standing serenely by while Ralph gave a shot to a simpering, fawning female, looking wand-slim and elegant in her white nylon uniform and knowing why Ralph liked having her around. "I can get all the work-nurses I want, sweetheart," he had told her once, "and I've got them. You're 'office-dressing'—I like having you around—" Remembering, Sarah bit her lip. She had liked being "around" too. For a while. But being Ralph's office nurse, being ornamental but certainly not useful, had palled and when Jenny's letter had come—on a morning when Angie Ferdinand had pulled her act and Ralph had let her get away with it…

  She never had liked Mrs. Ferdinand, and, Sarah knew, neither did Ralph. But when Angie had divorced Hugh Ferdinand she had taken him for a cool three hundred thousand, taxes paid, plus alimony, and she had shown herself more than willing to pay plenty of it in fees to Dr. R. Caldwell Porter. She was in love, with him, of course. Half the women who consulted him were, Sarah had told herself more than once, but most of them were merely titillating their emotional selves behind the secure facade of husbands and successful marriages. Even Ralph admitted that. "Stop worrying, sweetheart. It's all part of the game." But it wasn't part of the game with Angie Ferdinand and that morning two weeks ago, when she'd shown up with a new symptom—

  "Good morning, Mrs. Ferdinand," Sarah greeted her with a smile at the door of the examining room.

  "Darling, you're going to simply hate me!"

  Sarah parried, "I am?"

  She was used to this repartee. It was Angie Ferdinand who hated her, of course, and not "simply." After all, she was the one Ralph was going to marry… not that Ralph's being married would stop Angie, she thought.

  "But of course, darling. You nurses are so possessive."

  "Are we?" coolly.

  "See? You're angry already and I haven't even told you I must talk to Ralph… alone."

  Sarah said quietly, "Then perhaps you would rather wait?"

  "Darling!" It was a disgusting little squeal, Sarah thought. "Whatever for? I have no secrets from Ralph."

  Sarah managed to snatch back the retort that sprang to her lips but as she helped Mrs. Ferdinand out of her clothes and onto the examining table, while she draped the magnolia-skinned, voluptuous body, she couldn't escape the feeling that Angie Ferdinand had won a victory. Even though Ralph would straighten Angie out but quick, she felt that.

  The trouble was, Ralph didn't. He'd listened with that odd slight smile and said, "Wait outside, please, Sarah," and Sarah had gone into the office, inwardly seething.

  The mail was waiting… and Jenny Fergis's letter:

  Sarah dear—

  Wouldn't you know it would happen to me! I love flying, I love having a baby—so why can't I have both? I had planned to, you know—I wrote you that, I think, along with the good news that, at long last, my insides are creating. It was going to be wonderful, to fly with Paul until a month or so before Baby is due—so what happens? Sarah, I am nauseated at the very thought of an airplane! I feel as if my body were a physiological traitor, or something.

  There's more to it than me, natch. A lot of women fly Alaska Passenger and Freight Airways, frequently alone—and it is different from flying back home. You're apt to get weathered in any time, anywhere. Anyhow, when Paul started passenger service he promised a stewardess, so why don't you get away from that plush set-up of Ralph's for a few months and fly as APF's lone stewardess? You can call it a last fling before becoming Mrs. Ralph Caldwell Porter and resigning yourself to the country club circuit…

  Neither Angie Ferdinand nor Jenny's letter was either the beginning or the deciding factor, Sarah thought afterward. But when Angie had gone she told Ralph about Jenny's letter, saying, "I might do it, Ralph. It sounds like fun."

  "Not to me it doesn't."

  "I suppose Angie Ferdinand does."

  "Oh, so that's it! Don't let Angie worry you, sweetheart." He moved to take her into his arms. "She's developing an extremely interesting syndrome that's going to pay for our honeymoon. Nassau, maybe. Would you like Nassau in May, sweetheart?"

  So here she was in Alaska, somewhere in Alaska, she thought. Only God knew where—or even if.

  The sudden thought disturbed her. The plane had circled again, slipping into a downdraft that had jolted them all and only Paul's voice had seemed sane. "Fasten your seat belts!"

  That had been—oh, God! How long ago? An eon, it seemed, although actually it had been only a bit over an hour, a glance at her watch told her.

  "Where are we now?"

  Jan-Doreen Stevanic's voice was low but in the silence broken only by the steady strong thrummmm of the plan
e's motors it sounded loud.

  "We're overdue at Tanacross, aren't we?" she asked when no one answered.

  "Shut up, ma'am," the steady-as-Gibraltar Mr. Smith told her.

  "That's something to think about, mister," George Jefferson said. "We're overdue at Tanacross. They're going to start searching."

  "Shut up."

  The two words seemed to dominate his vocabulary. The young Mr. Rand hadn't spoken and although Sarah hadn't seen the other one since she and Al Malcolm had been escorted at gunpoint from the pilots' compartment she sensed his menacing presence. He was the dangerous one, she thought. Those eyes, absolutely without warmth or depth, as if they were a facade for something even more terrible… it was no wonder poor Mr. Elder was reduced to a mouth-quivering nervous wreck.

  They had flown out of the storm some time ago but the clouds still gave the appearance of pressing down upon them, as if attempting to force the plane onto one of the jagged gray rock- and snow-draped peaks. Once Sarah thought she glimpsed a tiny cluster of buildings off the left wingtip but they dropped quickly behind a mountain, if they had been there at all. She couldn't even be sure that they had been. She wanted so desperately to see some sign of human habitation, something, anything, besides rough-tumbled rocks and here and there a dark clump or a sometimes thickening serpentine ribbon that might be pine or spruce. We must be flying a lot lower, she thought.

  Or else the mountains are higher… they were higher in Yukon, weren't they? She thought she remembered Paul or Jenny, or maybe it was Al Malcolm, saying that yesterday or last night, when they'd had dinner at Paul's and Jenny's little cabin outside Fairbanks.

  Last night? It seemed forever ago.

  So did the take-off from Killmoose and that godforsaken-looking radio shack that would look like the portal to Heaven itself right how.

  But they were overdue at Tanacross… if it mattered. How could it, in all this wasteland?

  Ralph was right—Alaska was the endgate of civilization—

  The pressure of Al Malcolm's thigh against hers warned her. They were going down—in too steep a glide? Her heart leaped into her throat and lay quivering, but despite her fear her face was at the small square window, beyond which all of Alaska seemed to be rushing at her. Mountains, dark-green trees-spruce, some oddly detached segment of consciousness told her they must be—a narrow, turbulent river—

  The landing was jolting, but at least the plane stayed on relatively even keel. Realizing that, and that her knees were trembling almost as much as Mr. Elder's chin, Sarah tried to stand.

  She couldn't.

  "Take it easy, girlie."

  The big man was standing in the door leading to the pilots' compartment. "Everybody take it easy and nobody gets hurt." Hard, hot eyes raked the cabin.

  "I'm going outside. I'll be waiting when you get off, Smith and Rand will be right behind you." He paused, then said, "It's just a reminder."

  He stalked along the aisle, the calculating eyes measuring and then discarding each of them in turn, it seemed, and threw open the cabin door. Cold, damp air rushed in.

  Rand jumped.

  Almost at once his voice reached back into the plane, its harshness diluted, somehow, by the out-of-doors, "Start them out, Smith."

  "You," Smith gestured at Al Malcolm with his gun, and the co-pilot rose. At another gesture, Sarah followed Al along the aisle.

  At the Stevanics' seats she stopped. "Mrs. Stevanic can't jump."

  "Go on," the cold-eyed, emotionless-voiced younger Rand, who all the time hadn't moved from his watchful station at the back of the cabin, ordered. "We don't have all day."

  "This girl is due to have her baby in a few days. You'd have her jump?" She turned her back on the compassionless face. "Mr. Smith—"

  From outside the other Rand bawled, "Get those people out here! Smith!"

  Whatever it was that had flickered momentarily in Smith's shifty eyes was gone. He nudged Mr. Elder with the gun. "Get moving. All you men. And don't forget, one wrong move and the women won't be with you. You too," when Andrew Stevanic didn't move.

  "My wife—"

  "Andy, please." The girl's voice was steady, as her heart could not be. "I love you, Andy."

  "Touching," the younger Rand said emptily and Sarah felt a cold sick fear uncoil in the pit of her stomach.

  "Shut up!" Smith snarled at him, and followed Herman Thornton Elder toward the door, a time or two helping him along with a nudge of his gun. "Rand," he said, standing in the doorway, "this little lady—uh —she can't jump. You reckon with the luggage piled up—John could keep a gun on a couple guys while they throw it out."

  "All right, all right. But hurry it up. We got to get out of here. These clouds—"

  Without instruction the younger Rand jumped from the plane, and Sarah said to Smith, "Thank you."

  He didn't answer. He didn't look at her either.

  "I—wonder if I might get my First Aid things?"

  The strangely elusive eyes snapped toward her. "Hell, n— For her?"

  "Yes."

  He considered for a moment. Then, "Get them. But no tricks, you hear?"

  In the tiny compartment that Paul had rigged as galley and stewardess's lounge, Sarah swept everything in sight into the well-equipped First Aid kit and then took towels—Jenny's good linen napkins that she recognized as from the shower the nurses had given for her nearly three years ago—the galley's butcher and paring knives from their drawers. The knives she tucked into the already bulging medical satchel, as out of sight as she could get them.

  If they were being abandoned—

  "All right, Smith," Rand called. "Get the women out here!"

  Impatience, the need to hurry, was beginning to sharpen his tone, Sarah thought. Gathering up her armload, she returned to the cabin.

  "Towels and linens," she explained. "I may need them."

  Smith swallowed but didn't say anything, and moments later they were clambering down the pile of luggage into waiting, helping hands of the rest of the passengers.

  All but Mr. Elder's, that is. He stood helpless, hopeless, shaking… but not from cold.

  The thought sprinted into Sarah's mind. Herman Thornton Elder was terrified, even more frightened than the rest of them were.

  "All right, Elder." The elder Rand answered the question that was beginning to form in her mind. "Back aboard."

  "No!"

  It was a croak that was all but lost in Paul Fergis's "Now wait a minute!"

  Rand ignored him. "Elder!"

  Like a marionette whose strings are being manipulated by an inexperienced operator, Herman Thornton Elder started half crawling half climbing the stairs improvised by the eight or ten bags like a man in a trance. He was halfway up when Al Malcolm lunged at Rand—and sprawled flat on his face as George Jefferson's foot shot out.

  "This is not the time to tilt at windmills, Malcolm," he addressed the prone figure. "Specially when the windmills are leveling guns at your navel."

  When Sarah looked again, little Mr. Elder had disappeared into the gaping maw of the plane's cabin door. But the younger Rand was still visible there, gun trained on them, as the twin motors roared and the plane began to move.

  Chapter 3

  The plane was airborne too soon, and climbing too steeply. Even in her inexperience Sarah realized that even before, beside her, Al Malcolm swore only half under his breath. They'd never make it, they'd crash into that wall of mountain that rose like the crumpled, torn end of a shoebox to completely hem in the small valley, they were going to—

  As Sarah watched, holding her breath, her eyes pinioned by sheer fascination and horror to the silver and crimson plane, it rose as if lifted by some unseen hand which at once dropped it from sight behind the saber-toothed ridge.

  "Ohhhhhhh!"

  Mrs. Stevanic's gasp snapped her out of it. She turned quickly. "Are you all right?"

  "Y-yes. That is, I—I think so." But the piquant young face was pale, the dark eyes frightened and too b
ig for it. "They'll kill that poor man, w-won't they?"

  Nobody spoke until John Norstead said, "Why Elder?"

  "That's easy," George Jefferson answered him. "He knew them. The big one, anyhow."

  He had, Sarah thought. That was why he had been so dreadfully frightened after Killmoose.

  But why? Who were those men? What had they done, or were going to do, that they needed a plane so desperately?

  Before she could speak Mrs. Stevanic whispered in horror, "Then they will kill him! Oh, Andy!" as if she'd just now realized how narrow their own escape had been.

  Mrs. Emlyn gave the girl's shoulder a comforting pat. "Go ahead and have your cry, child. The rest of us"—one thin, blue-veined hand removed the tiny red velvet and net hat before the wind did—"had better get busy. I'm like that—that creature. There's more weather in those clouds, and it'll come before long or I miss my guess."

  "There's a cabin—"

  Paul Fergis's tone was as grim as his face, as why shouldn't both be? Sarah thought. He had lost his plane—except for a tiny two-seater, Alaska Passenger and Freight Airways' only one—and a passenger, and here they were, only God knew where—

  She ground a firm mental heel on the stir of panic. She mustn't. As both nurse and stewardess she mustn't let her passengers know how afraid she was, or how suddenly helpless she felt…

  The cabins—for there were more than one, they could see now through the close-growing spruce that spanned one end of the tiny valley—appeared abandoned, desolate, falling in. But they would be shelter of a sort, and already damp chill was stabbing at Sarah's marrow. If they could have a fire—spruce branches, perhaps some dead limbs— As they started walking toward the tiny cluster of log buildings she fixed her mind determinedly on what they must do.

  A fire—surely there must be at least the remnant of a fireplace, perhaps even a stove.

  Another fire outside, as a signal to searching planes —when they didn't arrive at Tanacross a search would be started, probably already had been—

  "Paul"—as she caught up with him—"do you have any idea where we are?"