Wingspan

WINGSPAN

by: Diane Ryan

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2016 Diane Ryan

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781370840830

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

About The Author

Author Website

Author Facebook Page

Acknowledgements

Credits (Images, etc.)

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Twenty Minute Ride

Easy on the yoke, adjust by degrees, and she levels off--she's a tight little plane, and I'm glad the boss put her in service. I'm the first to take her up with passengers, and I glance around to make sure they're all happy. Three faces beam back at me, a mother and two half-grown kids, a girl and a boy. I give them a thumbs up, and they each give it right back.

It was a kickass takeoff. All business, wheels on the ground one second, air under our wings the next. If one of us had been tipping back some coffee at that moment, we wouldn't be wearing a drop of it now. I circle and head toward the horizon, out where ocean meets the earth in varying shades of blue and green. It's a beautiful day and I'm glad we're up here to see it. Fifty miles of severe clear and wind barely topping six knots. This is what it's all about, folks. This is flying.

I don't know these people, this family in the plane with me. They paid more than a hundred bucks for a twenty-minute ride--have to make sure they get their money's worth. I'll take them down the beach, let them see their hotel from the air, swing around to open water and hopefully catch a tailwind home.

Their chatter fills the headset and I chuckle. Heard it all before. Here on vacation, of course. Last day before heading back, of course. Had a blast, of course. Saw the Blue Angels fly yesterday. Great show. Well, I'm no Blue Angel, but I can sure give them a good birds-eye view. I ask their names, tell them mine, tell them why I'm qualified to be up here, piloting this little six-seater with their lives in my hands.

They're friendly, this family. Kids well-behaved. The youngest, the boy, sits next to me and watches everything I do with wide eyes. Mom is a pretty forty-something with a blinding smile. No, I'm not in the market. And she's a little old for me. But she's worth looking at, so I do. The boy's sister sits with her in the rear seats behind me. Combined, this trio probably doesn't add four hundred pounds to the payload. We are anything but heavy, and this Cessna can handle it.

I stretch the plane's legs once we're clear of all other traffic. At the moment there are two helicopters in the air and one crop duster towing a banner that says, Bob's Crab Bonanza: All You Can Eat For $9.99. None of them are close enough to be a concern. Below us, tourists pack the white beaches, splash around in the green shallows where waves hit the sand. A few float calmly atop the second patch of green farther from shore, beyond the strip of dark blue that marks a narrow band of much deeper water. I look for shadows prowling about in the quiet chop over the sandbar and I find them. But I don't point them out to my passengers. Once upon a time I might have, but apparently the notion of real sharks swimming in a real ocean could be off-putting to tourists. I've been told to not mention it again.

We make it almost to Wynnehaven Beach before I turn around. I show them the sound side as I set a course west. Houses and more houses, laid out like a grid, businesses on the Parkway lined up end to end. We can still see the beach, but we can see the people centers of the community, too, and the kids marvel at the number of swimming pools that glitter up at us from backyards in every neighborhood. I cross the sound at an angle, giving them a low altitude view of the causeway before we head back toward the Gulf.

The deadness in our headsets doesn't register at first, but one by one, everyone on board starts fiddling with their ear cups. I glance at the instruments. The ammeter shows discharge, hard to the left. What the hell? I flip the field switch off and back on. Nothing. In the negative and staying there. Where's my idiot light? It should have caught my attention, but today, apparently, I'm the idiot. Or did it flash on at all? By now, there's no way to tell. The whole panel is dark, and all indicators other than direct-reading gauges are useless.

Mother and daughter are concerned. I hear them shouting in each others' ears, and the mom is making pantomime motions at me. She can't hear anything! Yes, I know. Neither can I. I give calming signals with my hands and start troubleshooting. Radio check--push-to-talk doesn't work. The transmit light won't even give a flicker. Avionics--nada. Master switch--toggle off, on again. Are the breakers hot? Shit. I'm not getting anywhere with this. I glance around the cockpit for smoke and see none. Smell nothing burning. At least there's that. This is bad, but it could always be worse.

We're cruising over open water at about five hundred feet, traveling an easy hundred and twenty-five knots. Time to regain at least a thousand feet and truck it back to the landing strip. Once we have some altitude beneath us, I'll use my cell to call the guys on the ground and give a situation report. Visual conditions are perfect. I don't need avionics to land, so I don't worry. But I do kick myself for paying so much attention to mom's pretty smile and not watching the gauges. While my head was stuck firmly up my ass, we've lost electrical. Looks like the alternator, and probably since just after takeoff. Lovely. I should have noticed it fifteen minutes ago. Strobes, Aircom communications--all the headset chatter--we've drained the battery. Doesn't take long if it's carrying the full load.

With no warning, the engine surges and the whole plane jolts. Squeals erupt from the seats behind me, and we go bucking through the sky as our prop overspeeds, then bogs the laboring engine until it nearly stalls. I back the power down, only to have the whole cycle start over again. A sudden drop in altitude leaves me hollow in the pit of my stomach. What's this shit? The prop governor, taking air? I glance down at the oil pressure gauge, the same direct-reading gauge that registered normal pressure only minutes before. Yep, it's taking air, all right, because we're pegged hard on zero and the needle is dead. Not even a flutter.

Before I've even looked up from the gauge, the engine starts banging inside the cowling, its convulsions shaking the whole plane. Three...two...one...yep. There goes the prop, shuddering to a full stop. And now we glide in silence, leveling off, until everybody starts talking at once. What's wrong? Are we falling? Are we going to crash? The boy next to me removes his headset and pukes between his feet. Seriously? I've scared him that badly? Well, let's see if I can fix this. Because if I don't, I'll surely hear about it when the boss gets back.

There's no recovering this engine--the oil is gone and she's locked up good. But we're still in the air, and I still have controls. It's possible we could make it all the way back to the landing strip and be home in time for dinner. Then I notice our position relative to the horizon. We won't make it to the landing strip. Not even sure we can make it back to open water, where there's a chance I could splash down and keep us all in one piece. We were so low when we lost the engine that now I have no altitude to play with. And we must have dropped three hundred feet during our little aerobatic rodeo. We don't have enough altitude to circle back for the sound. But I have to get this bitch over the water right now, or we're going to land on somebody's roof.

The plane waggles when I tell her to--ailerons are good. But the rudder is stiff. What the hell? What's going on with that? Elevators? Check. I can nose down, nose up. But something's up with the controls. They aren't dependent on the electrical or the engine, yet I've lost the rudder. And my spidey senses tell me that even though I'm still getting responses to the yoke, I won't get them for long. The failures in this fixed-wing--they don't happen. Not like this. Not one right after the other, totally unrelated malfunctions. I'm at a loss for explanations, and it's starting to make me itch.

I've put aircraft down hard before. More than once. In Iraq, and then in Alaska where I went to forget Iraq. But I've never had three civilians on board expecting me to keep them alive, nor have I contemplated how to find a soft place to land among hundreds of people who don't even realize the sky is about to fall. What's worse--without our engine, we are silent. We're dropping through the air with no noise except the sound of wind rushing over the cockpit and whistling against the trim.

In front of us, a long pier stretches from the beach into the gulf. People line its railings and find shade underneath, but none of them are aware of us yet. We've come from the northeast, over land, with no engine noise that would cause anyone to look up. Right now we're on a trajectory that puts us almost directly into the pier. That will never do. I start banking for open water, but Christ--we're too fucking low, too damn slow to make that turn. She'll drop out from under me. I immediately level the wings for all the lift we can get.

Shit, shit, shit. I kill the master, shut off the fuel valve. Engine temp is molten at this point--loss of oil means loss of cooling ability and a pot full of friction. Throw a few splashes of avgas on that and we'll have us a barbecue. And both tanks are absolutely packed. Then there's the matter of that pier...holy Mother of God. It's filled to the brim with people.

I have to alter this course, and I have to do it now. Somehow. Stall speed or not. We'll never make the water, not with that pier in the way. So we need a different plan. We need a miracle. Too low, too slow to go over. Can't make a turn that steep. The only way to go is down.

Down. What if...?

The mother and daughter behind me scream. I can't break my concentration to comfort them. Nothing I could say would help anyway. The boy beside me is pressed against the back of his seat with his eyes closed. His mouth is moving but no sound comes out. No doubt he is praying. And I'm grateful. Because this probably won't end well. The four of us are about to make the six o'clock news--I'm just not sure yet what kind of story it's going to be.

So. The pier it is, then. Looks like we're going to plow through the railings at a forty-five-degree horizontal angle. Unless...what if I put us in a shallow dive? Put us under the pier? Could we make it? There's no way I can guess how far the pilings are spaced. But I do know this aircraft has a 36' wingspan, and if I roll it just right I might be able to squeeze us through.

Come on, people--look up!

And finally someone does. Through the windscreen I watch understanding take hold, and dozens of beachgoers scramble with no escape route in mind. We're almost on the ground now, directly over the beach, following the shoreline and slowed to about sixty knots. Come on, plane, don't let us down now. Come on, God--listen to this kid, whatever he's asking. I have to adjust our course one way, and roll the other. And we're down to seconds. Just seconds. Faithful to the end, she gives me a few inches to the right, and then a slow roll counterclockwise. Our heading is true now, straight for the pier. There'll be nothing oblique about this hit.

We glide with one wingtip nearly dragging the surf. From the corner of my eye I see white sand nicking past just outside the window. Our shadow tracks along the ground ahead of us, reaching the pier a nanosecond before the plane does. We're under--and for just that moment I think we've made it, that I'll be reversing the roll and aiming for the shallows away from all the people on the beach. My hand twitches on the yoke, ready.

But the impact--dear God, the impact...our left wing catches the dogleg support that juts inward between the two main pilings. The rupture of sheet metal and groaning of rivets drown out guttural screams, and we're flung from our tenuous inches of flight straight into the ground. I can't tell if the pier is coming down on top of us or if our crash is just that violent. My seat is ripped from its anchor, flung backward--I collide with a body and tumble against the fractured interior of the plane. I can't see--everything is black. I can't breathe because of the smoke. The heat. The fire. And we're still rolling. Haven't stopped. I sense air above me, then below me, and suddenly I freefall. Straight down. Part of the seat falls with me, but I'm no longer strapped in. Maybe I land on it, maybe it lands on me. But I tumble with it, and somehow end up face first in the sand.

I hear the fire before I see it. It roars over the sound of the surf, over the sound of people screaming. It crackles and pops and rages, insatiable. I'm upright now, staring at the carnage. The only way to even know it was a plane is a piece of the tail section, poking out from the black roil of smoke and listing at a precarious angle.

Hey, buddy. Can you hear me?

I nod, but can't tear my eyes off the wreckage. One wing is ripped off, lying half in and half out of the water. The other wing is nowhere to be seen.

Can you open your eyes?

They're open, you dumb fuck. I'm standing here looking at this mess just like you are.

Where is the beautiful, smiling mother? Where are the two kids? Somewhere inside that fireball?

You the pilot?

And then I actually do open my eyes. I'm not standing. I'm sprawled on the sand, on my back now, looking up at a man I don't recognize, whose round face is ashen and hovering inches above mine. Pain--everywhere--sears me from the inside out, and reflexively I try to curl onto into a ball but can't move.

Yes, I say, but the voice doesn't seem like mine. I hear it from outside my head, and nothing is right about the way it sounds.

Hey! Hey! The man says. Stay with me.

But I'm not with him. Not at all. I'm staring at the wreckage again, and I don't hurt. Anywhere. Amid a column of sparks, the tail section breaks loose and tips onto its side. The wind shifts and for a moment I can see the outline of the cabin, or where the cabin used to be. Everything in it is charred, utterly black. One human form, arm raised, fingers outstretched, hangs over the edge of the fuselage, burned stiff in mid-motion. Then the wind shifts again and all I can see is smoke and boiling flames.

Come on, buddy. Hang in there. We got help coming.

I hear him like he's standing next to me, yet I see him by a clump of sea oats, kneeling beside someone on the ground. I look closer. I recognize those cargo shorts. Those sneakers. Smoke drifts up from them and I see red, peeling skin on legs I should feel but don't. One of my arms has flopped to the ground, the one with my Torgoen. Its band is black, and I can't distinguish it from the charred skin of my wrist. Nope, no way in hell I'm hanging in there. I just can't go back to that.

Still, I can't watch. It's too much. I can't bear to think about a family I'll never see again, a girlfriend I'll never touch again, a dog who'll never understand why her owner didn't come home today. So I avert my gaze, seeking the horizon across miles of blue-green water.

Instantly I wish I hadn't. Between the gulf and where I stand lies the beach. It's littered with upended beach-brellas and shredded plastic chairs, debris from the plane. And bodies, blood flowing out of them and pooling in the sand. People are screaming. Crawling on all fours. Some of the injuries I can see from where I stand are too gruesome to contemplate. And some of them are children.

I sit down hard. But no jolt runs through me from impact with the ground. My teeth aren't jarred. I'm pretty sure I get it. I think I understand what's happened to me. It's what's happened to everybody else that I can't accept. I see no way around this being my fault. Every bit of it. I made every single decision that put us here. A whole family wiped out, vacations and lives ruined along a thousand-foot stretch of beach. It's incomprehensible. But it's real. What have I done?

What in God's name have I done?

* * *

CHAPTER ONE

March

When a perfectly rational doctor said her son's skin was peeling apart, Tania's first thought was that her baby had turned into a zombie after all.

Until the doctor kept talking, and Tania understood that the real problem was far worse.

Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, the urgent care pediatrician said. Is an emergency. I'm not prepared to officially diagnose, but he needs critical care. Mrs. Porter, I've contacted Egleston about air transfer and we're waiting on a callback. If it really is SJS, I can't express the degree to which time is of the essence.

If he had sucker-punched her in the gut, the doctor couldn't have taken Tania's breath more effectively. She squeezed the little hand that was clutched in hers, Danny--so tiny. So helpless. On a helicopter?

Medflight? she whispered, because it was the only sound she could make.

Egleston has its own flight team, the doctor said. I know it's less than an hour's drive, but I'm not willing to gamble on traffic. This child needs highly specialized care and he needs it right now. There's a mortality rate associated with SJS, and even the survivable cases sometimes require skin grafts.

Tania turned back to her son, a smaller version of his father with a tangled mess of brown hair and eyes so dark they seemed black. He'd been crying for hours. For days, really, but it ramped up that morning until Tania knew she had to get help. Her husband wouldn't answer his phone. She'd dialed and dialed. Luke always turned his cell off during class, but class should have ended forty five minutes ago. Today he had taken his bike, and he didn't answer when he was driving. Riding. What the hell ever one did with a goddamned motorcycle. She sent him a detailed text message and told him where they were.

Poor Danny. He looked so scared. So small. He cast nervous glances at the people tending to him, but saved his most pitiful face for Tania, little bow mouth trembling. Half a dozen nurses and techs surrounded his gurney. They dwarfed him, busy wrapping moist gauze around his chest and neck.

The rash had spread. First it looked like hives, large blotchy raised patches a bright shade of pink on his belly and shoulders. Now it was dark red and angry, all the way around his torso, botches merging as they grew in size. He whimpered, made a face. Tania knew the pain must be intense.

Her phone beeped. A message from Luke, saying he was on his way.

She took that moment to type Stevens-Johnson Syndrome into the Google app on her phone. And almost immediately wished she hadn't. The photo hits it returned were horrific. The people looked like burn victims. Or living corpses--at least the version of zombie that people expected to see.

Okay, the doctor said, returning to the room. Tania hadn't even noticed he was gone. They're in the air. ETA fifteen minutes. Let's get him packaged and ready to roll.

Packaged? Like he was a shipment from UPS?

But in the moments that followed, Tania understood. They didn't want to touch him any more than necessary. They secured him on a gurney in a way they could transfer him easily, with sheets underneath him like a sling. They could simply lift him up and over to the Egleston crew, causing less trauma to his already compromised skin and a whole lot less pain.

The entire time, Danny remained stoic. So brave. His lashes were wet, spiky, and his bottom lip hadn't stopped quivering. He kept his eyes fixed on her, two bottomless pools of otherworldly understanding, an old soul just like his father. He reached for her once, whimpered, and it was everything she could do to stay anchored in place, not shove nurses aside like bowling pins and scoop him into her arms.

The next few minutes passed in a blur. Tania tried texting Luke again but like before, got no immediate response. She heard the helicopter making its approach, a dull chop chop chop that grew loud enough to rattle the windows in the clinic. Overheard conversation told her the pilot would set down in the grassy area behind the building, away from power lines and people, in a previously designated landing zone. They'd done this before. Her baby wasn't the first to arrive as a routine patient and leave in the care of a flight team. How many other families--parents--had trotted down this same hallway behind a yellow stretcher, fearing the worst but hoping for the best, panicked and heartbroken and unable to do a damn thing but keep repeating over and over that everything was going to be okay?

The blast of wind that hit her when they opened the double doors took Tania's breath. The blades were still turning, whirling a blur atop a large chopper painted in bright primary colors. The smell of exhaust hung heavy in the air, a combination of spent aviation fuel and heat. Crew from the aircraft were already on the ground, waiting to receive their patient. Dear lord she hadn't even told him goodbye. Yet Danny was whisked away from her, faster than she could process what happened. Over the noise of helicopter engine she heard the piercing wail of her son, his composure finally gone. Without thinking, she bolted toward him.

And didn't make it a step before two leather-clad arms snaked around her, hard as steel, lifting her clean off the ground as Luke spun her in a semi-circle.

No, he said in her ear. No. Tania, you can't go over there.

Where had he come from? Tania glanced up at his face, relief washing over her like he'd dumped a bucketful of it over her head. So familiar, so precious the sight of him--she clung to his arms and pressed her back against the solid wall of his body. The double doors were still open, and his helmet lay just outside them. He hadn't taken time to stow his gear. Tania wondered if he had even bothered to park the bike in a real spot, or if he just drove it into a flowerbed and left it.

Oh God, Luke, she cried. He's so scared.

I know, he said. But they've got this. Let them do their jobs.

The sea of blue jumpsuits and green scrubs parted, and the yellow stretcher came back empty. Sheets flapping, sailing white ribbons into the air, straps hanging loose as clinic employees wheeled it away from the aircraft. She couldn't see Danny at all. He was somewhere inside that beast, alone, terrified and hurting, and all she could do was stand there clinging to Luke. He held her with arms like a vise, no doubt sensing she'd bolt given the slightest opportunity.

Then, one of the flight medics turned to her and beckoned. Called with a waving hand, come with us. Luke's grip melted and Tania ran, not looking back, not feeling the ground under her feet. They pulled her into the helicopter beside her son, who sat lost in a sea of equipment and medics and gauze, face blotchy and eyes full of tears. He cried harder when he saw her, reached his pudgy hands as far toward her as he could. She took them and kissed his tiny fingertips, held on as the pitch of the engine noise changed and the earth fell away. Up, up they went, so fast it made her head spin. Below them Luke watched, feet braced apart at shoulder width. Standing exactly how he'd stood the first time she saw him in the viewfinder of her best friend's video recorder. Except this time he wore leather, not wool. And he was so