Damnation Street

27.

The gun was a K9. It was compact and built to sit low in the hand, just the slender matte blue barrel peeking out above the fingers. Bishop kept it in a shoe box in his bedroom closet, tucked in there beside a lightweight shoulder holster. It had been a long time since he'd gone armed. But he shrugged the holster on now, anchored it to his belt. Slipped the pistol in. He checked himself in the closet mirror to make sure the leather jacket covered the outfit. Then, by way of insurance, he brought a knife out of the shoe box as well. It was a tactical Strider folding knife with a fat four-inch blade. He had sewn a leather loop in his boot to hold it. He hadn't used the loop in a long time either. He used it now.

He gathered a few other odds and ends: a lock pick, a sap, a change of clothes. He dumped them into a gym bag and was on his way again.

As for the plane, he got hold of a Centurion, a Cessna Turbo 210. One of the FBOs at Oakland Airport had one on hand. They knew Bishop. He called ahead and the plane was gassed up and waiting for him on the tarmac when he arrived half an hour later.

Another fifteen minutes and he was airborne, westbound. As he drew the 210 up off runway 27R, the windshield was filled with the glittering water and the peaks and jagged falls of the city skyline, its buildings golden and rose in the late morning sun. He banked the plane right over the bay, then right and right again until he was slanting southeast along the freeway in a distant parallel to the state border. As he climbed, he caught sight of the Sierras, golden and green. He followed the misty line of them all the way to Bakersfield. There he landed, refueled, and took off again, heading easterly now, the foothills to his left.

He set his course for Arizona.

The plane was fast for a single engine. He had it cranked up to 235 knots as he skirted the Mojave. He climbed to 9,005. Watched as the brown desert before him slowly became a dozen shades of red. Bulges, arches, cylinders of living rock aspired toward him, almost close, then passed beneath his wing. Long plateaus went under leisurely, so level they seemed shorn flat. Sudden mountains stabbed up at him out of the sage. All-every formation and the long empty earth as far as he could see-was crimson, scarlet, cinnabar, a dozen shades, each color growing more and more vivid as the sun westered and the contrasting sky became a richer blue.

He was close now. But above the escarpments of Maricopa, he saw the cumulus clouds building. He glanced at his Stormscope. There were red cells swirling to the north. These were the last of the thunderstorms Weiss had driven through the night before.

Soon ATC came on the radio, warning him southward. He drifted that way, confident he could outrun the front. But the clouds followed him. He eyed them through his window. Great cottony masses, they boiled up out of themselves like white volcanoes in a doper's dream. Their froth spilled higher and higher. More of them appeared and more.

Then suddenly-it was incredibly sudden-the storm stomped down on him. Bishop's stomach lifted, then did a nauseating dive. In less than ten seconds, the Centurion was driven five hundred feet toward the earth. The plane rocked side to side, one wing dipping drastically then swinging up as the other dropped down. The windshield was swallowed in a sickly green-black. The green-black was laced with skeleton fingers of white light. The wind swept up from under him and hurled the machine skyward as many feet as it had fallen. The rain washed over the windshield in a blinding rush. The darkness flickered behind the rain.

Now the air trafficker was screaming vectors, but his voice was reduced to static by thunder like an explosion. Bishop pulled the throttle fast, dropping the speed to VA, hoping to keep his wings on. But even as he did, he heard a crash against the fuselage-he felt it like a blow in his own side-and he knew that he'd been struck by hail.

Bishop laughed wildly, his pale eyes bright. He didn't have much of an imagination, but the way the stick was jumping in his hand made him feel as if he were arm wrestling the storm for his life. And now vertigo got him. The taste of vomit was in his mouth, and he couldn't tell if he was right side up or overturned and plummeting. He swept his gaze across the instrument panel again and again, trying to get a sense of his position. The digital altimeter had gone blank. Altitude, airspeed, vertical speed indicators-they were all windblown, dancing, unreadable.

Again, the green blackness was lanced by lightning. Another blast of thunder engulfed him. More hail hammered at the wings. More rain gushed over the windshield. There was nothing on the headset anymore but a dim desperate calling, very far away. Bishop gripped the shivering stick. He felt his stomach come into his throat as the plane was driven down and down and down by another crush of air.

The altimeter blinked on. He was at three thousand feet above the earth, then two. The hard ground was coming up fast. The plane would pancake in another minute, a silver stain in the red dust.

He fell ten more seconds-a hundred feet. Ten more-a hundred more. Then, still in the clouds, the plane steadied. The yoke grew sure and solid in his fingers. He glanced at the Stormscope. He was through the red cell. It was blowing south and west of him. There was a break before the next yellow mass moved in. He looked up. The mist shredded and fell away from the windshield on either side…

And there, smack in front of him, was the red terrain. He was piloting straight for a hill of rock. A strange, cold thrill went through him. An image came into his mind: he saw the Centurion buried in the mountainside, nothing left but rudder and blood.

He gave the plane gas, drew the nose upward. He laughed again, shaking his head, as the plane flew over the hill, nosing into thin clouds. He banked to the right and broke through into brilliant blue sky.

As suddenly as the storm had hit, the view was clear, so clear he could make out the gleam of Sky Harbor Airport twenty miles in the distance.

Still laughing, he prepared for his landing in Phoenix.