Elly's Ghost (4 page)

The engine of
the floatplane groaned and started with a puff of smoke. She ran to it as fast
as she could.

The passenger
door opened and a young man shouted, “Get in!”

In that instant
all that registered for Elly was that the man didn’t have a hood and, though he
had a rifle, he wasn’t pointing it at her. She jumped in and closed the door.
She heard the ping of a bullet hitting the floatplane and then another. Elly folded
over, making herself as small as possible. The young man leaned over to cover
her as bullet after bullet hit the floatplane.

* * *

Jay slammed the throttle
wide open, and the plane increased speed. Just before they ran out of taxiway,
he pulled back on the yoke, and the plane lifted off the ground.

“They shot him.
Oh, God, they shot Kevin!” She put her face to the window.

Jay maintained a
steady climb as the young woman moaned while trying to control her breathing.
She glanced around the airplane in a daze, holding her head.

A stream of
white smoke billowed past her window. She pointed at it. “What is that?” Elly
closed her window.

“It’s a coolant
leak,” Jay said.

“Are we going to
crash?”

Jay did not
answer. He glanced at her and saw the blood on her white T-shirt. “Are you all
right? Is that your blood? Are you hit?”

Elly looked down.
“No. It’s not my blood.”

Jay focused on
the gauges. The engine sounded okay, and the oil pressure read normal. The
engine temperature was rising, but the gauge still showed that the engine was
cold.

He banked the
plane hard to the north and raised the nose to gain altitude. After a few
minutes, the white smoke slowly thinned, but the engine temperature continued
to rise. Jay backed off the throttle.

“What are we
going to do?” she asked.

“We’re going to
look for someplace to land.”

“Where?” she
asked, looking out the window. “There’s nothing but hills and trees out here.”

“There’s a small
lake about fifteen miles ahead. We can make it.”

A popping sound
made them both jump. The engine groaned, and blue smoke poured out on Jay’s
side. A clanking sound filled the cockpit as the engine seemed to tear itself
apart. A spray of engine oil hit the windshield and streaked off to the side.

“What was that?”
she shouted over the noise of the engine.

“We lost a
cylinder. Put on your seatbelt!”

Jay pushed the
throttle forward to make up for the lost power as the young woman fumbled with
her handcuffs to connect her seatbelt. His gauges told him the oil pressure was
good, but he could see the needle on his engine temperature gauge moving toward
the red.

The young woman covered
her ears as the clanking noise grew louder.

“Hey!” Jay pointed
out the window at a small blue dot on the horizon. “We’re going to make it.”

A burst of
orange flame shot out of the engine at the front of the plane. A thick cloud of
black smoke streamed past the passenger-side window.

“We’re on fire!”
the woman screamed.

Smoke from the burning
oil filled the cockpit, and Jay cracked open his window and told her to do the
same. The blue dot on the horizon was growing in size. “We’ll make it,” he said
again, with more determination.

The needle on
the temperature gauge was now past the red and out of the gauge’s working
range. The oil pressure had dropped to nothing. The flames on the right side of
the engine were still burning strong, which meant the plane was also leaking
fuel. The engine sputtered along for another ten seconds and then abruptly lost
power as the pistons melted and seized in their cylinder bores. The propeller
came to an abrupt halt.

The cockpit went
silent for one long second.

“Oh, my God!” the
young woman cried.

Jay pushed
forward on the yoke, allowing the plane to maintain its airspeed as they slowly
glided back to earth. He saw the approaching ground and thought of all the
bullets that had been fired at him in the past few years but had missed. After
all that, Jay decided there was no way he was going out in a plane crash. He reached
down and flipped the switch on the emergency locator transmitter mounted on the
dash. Next, he put on his headset and made a distress call. He swore when no one
replied. He flipped to another frequency to do it again but heard no response.

Jay saw the
terror in the young woman’s face. “We’ll make the lake,” he said. The truth was
he didn’t know if they’d make it. He decided this wasn’t a good time to tell
the young woman his pilot’s license had expired.

The burning
plane hung on the wind as they steadily descended in an eerie silence. Through
the haze of smoke in the cockpit they could see tall trees on the edge of the approaching
lake. They were huge, and Jay knew they wouldn’t yield at all if the small
plane flew into them.

He pulled back
ever so gently on the yoke. The plane slowed but climbed slightly, the trees
now dangerously close.

“Put your hands
on the dash and brace yourself,” Jay said.

She did as he
said.

The plane
leveled and held altitude for a few more seconds. Its pontoons creaked as they
scraped the top branches. Jay groaned as he pushed the yoke forward to keep the
plane from stalling. The young woman screamed as the plane dove toward the
water. Jay pulled back quickly on the yoke to level the plane. They hit the
water with a loud slap, both pontoons hitting water at the same time. The plane
swayed side to side but stayed upright.

* * *

Elly felt like
she’d been bucked off a horse and had the wind knocked out of her. It took a
moment for her breathing to return to normal.

“Are you okay?”
the young man asked.

Elly nodded as
she coughed and fought to get air into her lungs.

They came to a
stop thirty feet from shore. The flames coming out of the engine grew larger.

The young man quickly
grabbed his camping gear, backpack, and rifle from the rear seat.

“We need to get
out now.” He made sure Elly found the door handle and then opened his door and slid
out of his seat onto the pontoon, then jumped into the shallow water, holding
his gear above his head.

Elly fought with
her door latch but finally slid from her seat and stepped out onto the pontoon.
She struggled to keep her balance while fighting her handcuffs and the heat
from the fire. She took one step on the wet pontoon and slipped, falling away
from the floatplane. She hit the water screaming. The cold water sent a jolt of
pain through her arms and legs. Gaining her balance on the rocky bottom, Elly
stood, coughing up lake water and pulling at her soaked T-shirt. She trudged through
waist-deep water to dry land, where she collapsed on the shore and watched the fire
consume the floatplane.

Elly didn’t even
feel the sharp bits of gravel and stone that dug into her scalp and arms. She
shivered and turned onto her side, chilled as much from the cool pine breeze as
from the vivid image of Kevin lying on the tarmac.
This isn’t happening
,
she said to herself again and again.

* * *

Jay stared at
the black plume of smoke rising high into the air above the floatplane. He
thought about how much his father had loved that floatplane and how excited Jay
had been any time his dad took him flying.

He broke his
stare. The burning smell made Jay think of a supply truck in Afghanistan that was still smoldering when his unit arrived. He instinctively panned the shoreline,
looking for enemy snipers. Then he dug through his backpack, reloaded his rifle,
and dropped extra shells into his pocket. He clipped a large knife to his belt,
then powered up his handheld GPS navigation unit and marked their location. He scanned
the sky in the direction from which they’d come and saw it was clear.

Jay watched the
young woman struggle frantically with her handcuffs to pull out a small plastic
bottle from her pocket, pour two pills into her hand, and quickly swallow them.
After that, she curled into a ball and started shaking. She was breathing so
fast Jay thought she was going to hyperventilate. She covered her head with her
arms. At first she was only whimpering, but soon she burst into tears. Jay knew
she was likely in shock from both what happened at the airport and the
realization of how close they’d just come to crashing. He watched from a
distance and let her have a moment.

She was wearing
thin canvas sneakers, and he wondered how far she could walk before her feet
would get sore. He reached into his bag and pulled out two rolls of athletic
wrap bandages and medical tape.

* * *

“Hey, are you
okay?” the young man finally asked.

Elly wiped her
tears as he approached. She sat up to see what he had in his hands and was
forced to ask herself if he was a kidnapper just like the others. Maybe he had
double-crossed them and was going to take her all for himself. Goosebumps
formed on her arms and legs. Elly doubted she could outrun him.

He crouched down
next to her. “What’s your name?” he asked.

Elly was confused
by the question. Someone trying to kidnap her would already know her name. She realized
that it had been over a year since someone had asked her that. It had been an elderly
employee at the DMV back home in Baltimore, when she got her driver’s license
renewed, not that she drove anymore. That was the last time she hadn’t been recognized.

“I’m Elly,” she
said in a hoarse voice.

“My name is Jay.
Do you know who those men were?”

Elly shook her
head.

“I’m sorry about
the man who was shot. Who is he?”

“His name is
Kevin. He’s my bodyguard. And my friend.” Elly choked as she fought back a
sudden swell of emotion.

“What about the
pilot. Did you know him?”

“No.”

“What did they
say to you?”

Elly wiped her
eyes again. “Nothing, really. They put handcuffs on both of us and … I can’t … I
can’t believe they shot him.” Elly stared at the ground and covered her head
with her hands. Her head pounded as the pills had yet to kick in. She thought
about taking more and looked away, embarrassed. “Do you have a cell phone?”

“No, I don’t.
Even if I did, there wouldn’t be any reception.”

“What do we do
now?”

“We hike out of
here.”

Elly’s eyes met
Jay’s to see if he was serious. Walking handcuffed into woods that stretched to
the horizon with a strange man wasn’t the plan she wanted to hear.

“Elly, earning
trust takes time, and we don’t have time. If we’re going to get out of here
alive, I need you to trust me right now.” Jay held up the bandages. “Take off
your socks and shoes. I need to wrap your feet with these for protection. We’ve
got a long walk ahead of us, and you’re going to need it.”

Elly was about
to protest, but she remembered the way he’d thrown himself on top of her when
the bullets ripped into the floatplane. She removed her socks and shoes, and Jay
wrapped her right foot, unwinding the bandage from the top of the foot to the
bottom and then behind the ankle, forming a figure eight. He secured it into
place and then did the other foot. Elly fought with her handcuffs as she put
her wet socks and shoes back on.

“Next to your
brain, your feet are the most important parts of your body right now,” Jay
said. “Watch where you walk and keep your eyes focused on the path.”

Elly nodded.

“Now, let me see
your wrists,” Jay said.

Elly slowly held
out her cuffed wrists, half expecting to be wrenched to her feet. Instead, Jay gently
rotated her wrists as he inspected the handcuffs. His hands were rough, and she
noticed his skin was well tanned. She guessed he worked outside and wondered if
he worked in construction.

“We need to tape
your wrists or these are going rub your skin raw,” Jay said.

Before Elly
could respond, Jay ripped off a strip of tape from his roll.

“Hold this up,”
Jay said, motioning to her handcuff.

Elly used her
opposite hand to grab the handcuff Jay had slid up her left arm. He carefully
wrapped the tape around her wrist.

“Is that too
tight?” he asked.

“No.”

Jay was almost
done wrapping the other wrist when they heard a distant buzz. Elly noticed a
thin outline of an approaching plane.

Jay finished
taping her wrist as the plane got louder. “That’s your plane. They followed us
here. We need to go.” He stood and extended his hand to help her up. Elly let
him.

Nothing made any
sense at all. She was dizzy and shivering as she glanced once more at the
approaching plane. He was right. It was her plane. She thought of Kevin and her
family. The pills she’d taken were starting to work, and her headache began to
fade. She felt like her brain was going on autopilot as she turned and followed
Jay into the forest.

* * *

Michael Belgrade
circled once over the small lake. The burning floatplane was easy to spot. He
radioed back to the remaining men on the ground and gave the coordinates of its
location. Belgrade pointed his plane west and gained altitude.

Belgrade cursed his partners, the morons who’d let the girl get away. He was furious and
had to fight the urge to pound his fist on the panel of gauges in front of him.
He had let them all know their lives depended on finding her quickly, and the
clock was ticking.

Belgrade set his altitude to 12,000 feet. Twenty minutes later, he zipped into a jumpsuit
and strapped on his parachute and goggles. He looped a thick wire over the door-release
mechanism and yanked on it. At first it wouldn’t move, but then with a violent
motion the handle slammed into the open position and the door whipped open. In
a fraction of a second, what little metal remained of the hinges snapped, and
the door disappeared, scraping the fuselage as it fell.