Gideon's Corpse

by Douglas Preston

  “Now what are you doing?” Gideon asked.

  “Checking the fuel for water.” Fordyce continued peering at the light blue liquid. Then he grunted, replaced the fuel.

  “You’re done, right?”

  “Hardly. There’s a tank in each wing, five fuel points per wing.”

  Gideon sat down despairingly on the grass.

  When—eventually—Fordyce motioned for him to get into the passenger seat and put on his headset, Gideon felt vastly relieved. But then followed even more exhaustive checks: engine start checklist, taxi checklist, before-takeoff checklist. Fordyce rattled off everything with gusto, and Gideon feigned interest. It was a full half hour before the engines were on and they had moved into takeoff position. Sitting there, in the tiny compartment, Gideon felt a sense of claustrophobia begin to build.

  “Jesus,” he said. “We could have walked to Santa Cruz by now.”

  “Don’t forget—this was your idea.” Fordyce peered out at the windsock, determining the wind direction. Then, goosing the engines, he slowly turned the plane.

  “What if—” Gideon began.

  “Shut up for a minute,” Fordyce interrupted, his voice thin and tinny over the plane’s intercom. “We’re doing a short-field takeoff and I have a lot to do if we’re going to clear those.” He pointed to a row of cottonwoods a thousand feet ahead.

  Gideon shut up.

  Fordyce spoke into his headset. “West Santa Fe traffic, Cessna one four niner six niner, taxiing onto active runway three four for takeoff.”

  He adjusted his headset, did a final check of his seat belt harness and door lock, then released the parking brake and throttled forward. “West Santa Fe traffic, Cessna one four niner six niner, taking off runway three four, northwest departure.”

  They flounced along the dirt, slowly gaining speed, Gideon holding on for dear life.

  “We’re rotating at Vr, one twenty-five KIAS,” Fordyce informed him. “So far, so good.”

  Gideon gritted his teeth. The bastard’s enjoying this, he thought.

  Suddenly the shuddering and jouncing stopped and they were airborne. The prairie fell away below them and blue sky filled the windows. All at once the plane didn’t seem so cramped. It was agile and light, more like an amusement park ride than a lumbering passenger jet. Gideon felt a small thrill of exhilaration despite himself.

  “Climbout at Vx,” Fordyce said. “One seven five knots.”

  “What’s Vx?” Gideon asked.

  “I’m talking to the flight recorder, not you. Stay shut up.”

  They climbed steadily, both engines working hard. When they reached four thousand feet, Fordyce took out the flaps and throttled back to cruising speed. The little plane started to level off.

  “Okay,” he said. “The captain has turned off the ‘no talking’ light.”

  Takeoff safely past, the engines dialed back to a drone, Gideon almost believed he could enjoy himself a little. “Are we going to be flying over anything interesting?”

  The plane suddenly gave a lurch and a rattle, and Gideon gripped his armrests in terror. They were crashing. Another lurch, and another, and he could see the landscape sawing back and forth below them.

  “Touch of turbulence at this altitude,” said Fordyce easily. “Think I’ll take her up another thousand.” He glanced over at him. “You okay?”

  “Fine,” said Gideon, with a forced smile, trying to relax his steel fingers. “Just fine.”

  “To answer your question, we’ll be flying over the Petrified Forest, Grand Canyon, Death Valley. We’ll refuel at Bakersfield, just to be safe.”

  “Should’ve brought my box Brownie.”

  The plane leveled out at the higher altitude, which seemed to be free of turbulence, smooth as silk. Gideon felt a growing relief.

  Fordyce pulled a set of aviation maps from his briefcase, placed them on his knees. He looked at Gideon. “Got any ideas about what we should look for on this little trip?”

  “Chalker wanted to be a writer. The fact he went to this writer’s conference after getting religion showed it was one of his few interests that persisted post-conversion. Maybe he wanted to write about the conversion itself: remember, the conference was about autobiographical writing. If he gave a copy of a manuscript to someone at the conference to critique—or if someone remembered what he read aloud at a seminar—that might be interesting.”

  “Interesting? It’d be dynamite. But if it exists there’s probably a copy on his laptop, which means there are a thousand people in Washington reading it already.”

  “Probably. Maybe. But not all writers use computers for their work, and if there was incriminating stuff in there he could very well have erased it. Anyway, even if it’s on his computer, do you think we’ll ever see it?”

  Fordyce grunted and nodded. “Good point.”

  Gideon settled back in his seat, distractedly glancing at the brown-and-green landscape drifting away beneath them. After a slow start, their investigation was finally picking up—the wife, the mosque, Blaine, and now this. He had a tingling feeling that somewhere, somehow, one of those leads would bring them to a pot of gold.

  29

  HE WAS ON a magic carpet, floating gently through white-cotton clouds on gossamer threads. Warm breezes, too low and soft to make any noise, caressed his face and teased his hair. The carpet was so smooth, its movements so soothing, it seemed he was not moving—and yet, far below, he could see the landscape passing beneath him. It was an exotic landscape of glittering domes and spires, wide lush jungles, purple fields sighing their vapors to the sky. Far above, the distant sun threw benevolent rays over the tranquil scene.

  And then the carpet gave a sudden, violent lurch.

  Blearily, Gideon opened his eyes. For a moment, still in thrall to the dream, he reached out as if to grasp and steady the fringes of the carpet. Instead, his fingers encountered metal, knobs, the smooth face of a glass dial.

  “Don’t touch that!” Fordyce barked.

  Gideon sat up suddenly, only to be restrained by the seat harness. Immediately, he remembered where he was: in a small plane, heading for Santa Cruz. He smiled, remembering. “More turbulence?”

  No answer. They were flying through some bad weather, it seemed—or was it? He suddenly realized that what he thought were clouds were actually gouts of thick black smoke billowing out of the left engine, obscuring the view outside.

  “What’s happened?” he cried.

  Fordyce was so busy he didn’t answer for ten seconds. “Lost left engine,” he replied tersely.

  “Is it on fire?” The last clinging remnants of sleep vanished, replaced by sheer panic.

  “No flames.” Fordyce slammed a lever down, worked some switches and dials. “Shutting off fuel to the engine. Leaving electrical system on—no sign it’s electrical, can’t afford to lose avionics and gyroscope.”

  Gideon tried to say something, found he had lost his voice.

  “Don’t worry,” said Fordyce, “we still have one engine. It’s just a question of stabilizing the plane with asymmetrical thrust.” He worked the rudder, then glanced quickly over the controls. “Monkeys find pussy in the rain,” he muttered slowly, then repeated it, like a mantra.

  Gideon stared straight ahead, hardly able to breathe.

  Fordyce paid no attention to him. “Primer locked,” he said. “Transponder at emergency squawk.” Then he pressed a button on his headset. “Mayday, mayday, this is Cessna one four niner six niner on emergency channel, one engine out, twenty-five miles west of Inyokern.”

  A moment later there came a crackling over Gideon’s intercom. “Cessna one four niner six niner, this is Los Angeles Center, please restate your emergency and your position.”

  “One four niner six niner,” Fordyce said, “one engine out, twenty-five miles west of Inyokern.”

  A brief pause. “One four niner six niner, Los Angeles Center, closest airport on your current heading is Bakersfield, runway sixteen and thirty-four. Airport
thirty-five miles out at ten o’clock.”

  “One four niner six niner,” said Fordyce, “heading ten o’clock for Bakersfield.”

  “Squawk seven seven hundred, and ident,” came the voice from Los Angeles Center.

  Fordyce pressed a button on the console.

  “This is Los Angeles Center. Contact at thirty-four miles out from Bakersfield.”

  The thick smoke had diminished somewhat, and Gideon could see that the sky had clouded over. The land below was foggy and indistinguishable, just the occasional patch of green revealed amid tufts of gauzy gray.

  He took a look at the altimeter: the needle was slowly sliding downward. “Are we descending?” he croaked.

  “Law of gravity. Once we get to the single-engine service ceiling, we should be fine. We’re only some thirty-odd miles from Bakersfield. Let me try the left ignition one more time.” He flicked a switch, flicked it again. “Shit. Dead.”

  Gideon felt pain in the tips of his fingers and he realized he was gripping the seat with all his might. He slowly loosed his hold, willed himself to relax. It’s cool. Fordyce has it under control. Fordyce was an able and experienced pilot. The man knew what to do. So why did he feel so panicked?

  “Stabilizing at one thousand nine hundred AGL,” Fordyce said. “We’ll be on the Bakersfield runway in ten minutes. Now you’ll have a story you can take home to—”

  Suddenly there was a violent explosion to their right, a rattle that ran through the entire fuselage. Gideon jumped, instinctively shielding his face with his arm. “What the hell was that?”

  Fordyce looked white. “Right engine detonating.”

  “Detonating?” Clouds of oily dark smoke were now pouring from the other engine. It made an ugly, half-coughing, half-grinding noise, then died, the propeller feathering to a stop.

  Once again Gideon found himself without words. This was the end—that much was clear.

  “We can still glide,” Fordyce said. “I’ll do a dead-stick landing.”

  Gideon licked his lips. “Dead-stick landing?” he repeated. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It isn’t. Help me pick out a place to land.”

  “Help you—?”

  “Look out the window, for fuck’s sake, and find me some flat open ground!”

  A most peculiar sense of disbelief gripped Gideon. This had to be a movie, this couldn’t be happening. Because if this was real life, he’d be too petrified to move. Instead, he found himself scanning the horizon for a landing site. The ground-level fog had cleared somewhat, and now he could see that a bare ridge lay ahead of them. Beyond the ridge, the land fell away into a narrow valley still thick with fog, surrounded by steep forested hills.

  “Can’t see the ground—fog. How much time do we have?”

  “Moment.” Fordyce was working the controls yet again, nosing the U-shaped control yoke forward and dialing in the trim tabs. Despite the extremity of the emergency, his voice sounded calm.

  “Trimmed for eighty,” he finally said. “That gives us a few miles. What about that damn landing site?”

  “It’s still socked in ahead.” Gideon blinked, wiped sweat from his forehead. “How the hell can you lose both engines?”

  Instead of answering, Fordyce set his lips in a grim line.

  Gideon stared out through the cockpit glass until his eyes hurt. They were descending toward the ridge. Beyond, the cloud cover was slowly breaking up. And then he saw it: through a gap in the clouds a tiny but unmistakable ribbon of asphalt running up the valley.

  “There’s a road up there!” he said excitedly.

  Fordyce took a quick look at his map. “Highway 178.” He got on the radio again. “Mayday, mayday, this is Cessna one four niner two niner on channel 121.5. Second engine out, repeat, second engine out. Am attempting emergency landing on Highway 178 west-southwest of Miracle Hot Springs.”

  Silence over the headset.

  “Why isn’t anybody responding?” Gideon asked.

  “Too low,” Fordyce said.

  They were down to fourteen hundred feet above ground level, and the ridge was coming up fast. In fact, it looked like they weren’t going to clear it.

  “Hold on,” Fordyce said. “We should just shave past that.”

  Eerily silent, they glided over the barren ridgetop, wind whistling past the dead propellers, fragments of mist trailing away beneath. Gideon realized he’d been holding his breath and now he let it stream out of his lungs. “Sink me,” he muttered.

  “Two miles, I’d guess,” Fordyce said. “One thousand one hundred AGL. Steady on glideslope.”

  “Landing gear?”

  “Not yet. That would increase our drag—oh, fucking hell!”

  They had cleared the ridge and were gliding into the valley beyond. And now the landscape came into view through the parting mists: another low ridge, covered with a towering grove of sequoias, tall and majestic, standing between them and the highway beyond.

  “Fucking hell,” Fordyce whispered again to himself.

  Gideon had never heard Fordyce lose it and that scared him more than anything. He looked down at his own hands, flexed them, as if to experience physical movement just once more. He realized, with a little flare of surprise, that he wasn’t afraid of dying—that maybe this was better than what was coming…in eleven months. Maybe.

  Fordyce’s face had gone dead white, and sweat had beaded heavily on his forehead. “Sequoia National Forest,” he said huskily. “I’m going for that gap, there. Hold on.”

  The plane was heading toward the uneven ridge, obscured by massive trees with tiny pointed tops. Moving the control yoke again, Fordyce angled the plane toward an enfilade between several of the giant trees. At the last possible moment, he veered the plane sharply to the right.

  Gideon felt the world tilt and the nose of the plane drop heavily. “Christ,” he murmured. Whether it was an epithet, or a prayer, or both, he wasn’t sure. A moment of sheer terror as the huge, reddish trunks flashed past them just feet away, turbulence buffeting the plane—and then the sky was abruptly clear. The ribbon of Highway 178 curved gently ahead, a few cars crawling along it.

  “Five hundred feet AGL,” Fordyce said.

  “Can we make it?” Gideon’s heart was pounding. Now that they’d passed the trees and a chance for survival existed, he felt a sudden urge to live.

  “Don’t know. We lost a lot of altitude in that maneuver. And I still have one final turn to make—have to land with traffic, not against, if we stand any chance of walking away from this.”

  They began a slow turn toward the highway. Gideon watched as Fordyce lowered the landing gear.

  “More trees ahead,” Gideon said.

  “I see them.”

  Another wrenching movement and Gideon heard the sudden thwap thwap! of branches on the underside of the plane, and then they were turning to align with the road, a bare thirty feet above the surface.

  A truck was lumbering just ahead of them, grinding up a rise, and they descended toward it, seemingly on a collision course. Gideon closed his eyes. There was a rubumbump! as one of the plane’s wheels bounced off the top of the truck’s cab. As the truck’s horn blared, the plane was shoved into a tilt; Fordyce pulled it straight, then settled the craft down onto the road ahead, holding the nose up high as the truck behind them fought to slow down, air brakes razzing.

  They hit the tarmac with a lurch, came up, then back down with another jarring thump—and then they were skidding along the ground, finally coming to a stop in the middle of the highway. Gideon turned and saw the truck screeching to a stop behind them, jackknifing, spewing and spitting rubber from shredding tires. It slid to a stop barely twenty feet from them. Ahead, in the opposite lane, a car approaching from the other direction also slammed on the brakes.

  And then all was silent.

  For a moment, Fordyce sat like a marble statue, as the metal ticked and hissed around him. Then he prized his fingers from the control yoke, flicked off the master
switch, pulled off his headset, and undid his safety harness.

  “After you,” he said.

  Gideon climbed out of the plane on rubbery, nerveless legs.

  They sat down, robotically, on the shoulder of the highway. Gideon’s heart was going so fast he could barely breathe.

  The trucker and the driver of the oncoming car came running up. “Damn!” cried the trucker. “What happened? You guys all right?”

  They were all right. Other cars began stopping, people getting out.

  Gideon didn’t even notice. “How often does an engine just die like that?” he asked Fordyce.

  “Not often.”

  “What about both engines? In exactly the same way?”

  “Never, Gideon. Never.”

  30

  A DAY AND A half later, Gideon Crew parked the Suburban—its windshield replaced—in the field beside his log-and-adobe cabin, killed the engine, and got out. He glanced around, breathing deeply, taking in for a moment the vast sweep of early-evening scenery laid out before him: the Piedra Lumbre basin; the Jemez Mountains surrounding him, fringed with ponderosa pines. The air, the view, were like a tonic. It was the first time he’d been back to the cabin since the business on Hart Island, and it felt good. Up here, the dark feeling that was almost always with him seemed to abate. Up here, he could almost forget everything else: the frantic investigation, his medical diagnosis. And the other, deeper things, as well: his blighted childhood; the colossal, lonely mess he’d made of his life.

  After a long moment, he scooped up the shopping bags from the passenger seat, pushed open the door to the cabin, and walked into the kitchen alcove. The smell of wood smoke, old leather, and Indian rugs enveloped him. With the country in an uproar, cities evacuating, and the voices of the crazies and conspiracy freaks filling the talk shows and radio, here at least was a place that remained the same. Whistling the melody to “Straight, No Chaser,” he began removing items from the shopping bags and arranging them on the counter. He took a moment to circumambulate the cabin, opening shutters and raising windowpanes, checking the solar inverter, turning on the well pump. Then he returned to the kitchen, looked over the array of ingredients, still whistling, and began pulling out pots, knives, and other equipment from various drawers.