Mistress

Chapter 15

I wake up with a nasty hangover in a mediocre hotel room. I need more sleep, but the gong banging in my head won’t allow it, and anyway, I need to get back to DC. I need to learn more about Jonathan Liu.

The two attendants at the desk at Wisconsin Aviation give me a friendly glance and a wave on my way through to the tarmac. They don’t ask for any kind of identification, even though I’ve never flown from here before this trip. The rules for general aviation just aren’t the same as those for commercial flight. No metal detectors here. As long as I have the pilot “look,” nobody asks any questions. And I’m not even wearing my aviators.

I know what you’re thinking-a Leo DiCaprio mind-scroll, right? Sorry, too tired.

I rush through the preflight check, eager to be rid of Madison, of Diana’s family, of the lady in black, of Diana’s diminutive drunk of a little brother, with his furtive reference to the most powerful Chinese lobbyist on the Hill.

Chocks up, preflight checklist complete, tower cleared for takeoff. I never go to the big airports. Nearly all airports are public, and they can’t refuse to let small aircraft land or take off, but they can leave a tiny plane like mine on the tarmac until I’m roasted or rusted through. Dane County Regional gets me off the ground in an hour.

Flaps up and trim set for takeoff, I release the brakes and open the throttle to full. About fifteen hundred feet down the runway, I hit sixty-five miles per hour and the wheels are bouncing before we’re airborne, climbing at full power.

The ground falls away beneath me. Funny how the fire escape at Diana’s makes me shake with fear, but throttling up to eighty knots and hurtling through space, supported by faith in the invisible power of lift, is no problem.

I reach altitude and check the GPS, banking east and settling into the flight plan, which will take me to Mansfield, Ohio, for a quick refueling stop before the last leg home.

The engine suddenly brings my mind back to the moment. It sputters. Coughs. I change the fuel mixture to rich, adding more fuel to the mix of fuel and air, and turn on the carburetor heat. The temperature at the airport was ninety degrees when I took off. There can’t be ice in the carburetor. Can there?

The engine roars for a moment. Then there is a horrible clatter, like the time we were sitting in the café on G Street, Diana, and a city bus making a right turn tore the side mirrors off two parked cars, and you laughed at the crowd that gathered.

And then, more horrifying than any noise, there is silence. I hear the wind rushing past and nothing more.

“The Sound of Silence” is a nice song, and a nice thought, too, in moments of contemplation or serenity. But it’s not a nice sound when you’re nine thousand feet off the ground in a single-engine Cessna.

Easy, Ben. You know what to do.

Airspeed at eighty miles per hour. Switch fuel tanks. Mixture to full rich. Carb heat on-check. Primer in and locked. Ignition to left, then right, then…start.

I said, Start.

Nothing. Not even a click.

That engine is not going to start.

I try again, just to be sure.

My heartbeat kicks into my throat. There are no atheists in Skyhawks that lack engine power. She’s a sturdy aircraft, but she’s no glider. Watertown is too far. There’s no way I can coast all the way there.

This plane is going down.