“Yeah, but it’s only temporary. For bringing in cargo that’s too delicate to hump over the road, and for the VIPs to fly in and out. When construction finishes up, it’ll be converted to a tennis court.”
“I want to see the helipad.” Something in her voice must have been different, because Ray and Waxman looked at each other. Ray shrugged.
“Okay,” Waxman said. “The helipad it is.”
Chapter Fourteen
“We have to backtrack to the central complex and get on the other road there,” Waxman said.
The road leading back to the main site had been a pleasant walk but was a terrible ride. They lurched through the trees into the blinding sunlight of the construction area, then bounced along a beaten dirt track running along the uppermost terrace and plunged back into the forest. The Jeep jumped and jolted, until Clare thought she would suffer permanent kidney damage. The sample bottles in Waxman’s backpack clinked together violently.
“You okay back there?” Waxman shouted.
“Just great!” she said, grabbing the seat to avoid her head smashing into the roof.
“We’re going to pave all this over before they start rolling out those golf carts,” Ray explained loudly.
“That’s g—ouch!”
“Sorry,” Waxman shouted. “Rock. Here we are.” The tree-shrouded road opened into more brilliant July sunshine. Waxman stopped the Jeep. Ray hopped out, flipping his seat forward and extending a hand to Clare.
She staggered out of the backseat, feeling a sudden kinship with airsick passengers she had seen over the years. Her gratitude at touching the ground must have been the same as theirs. She took a deep breath.
The air was heavy with the smell of pine, warm asphalt, and oil. “Oh my,” she said. “I was expecting a little touch-down space. This is…professional.” The clearing was the size of a house lot, squared off and leveled. It had been fitted out with four pole-mounted lights in each corner for night landings, with a remote refueling tank parked next to a prefab shed, which she guessed held tools, compressors, and other maintenance requirements. Smack in the middle of the clearing was a tennis court–size asphalt square painted with directional markings that glowed whitely in the sun. Taking pride of place was—
“There it is,” Ray said. “It’s a helicopter. You seen one, you seen ’em all, if you ask me.”
“It’s a Bell Four Twenty-seven.” She prowled around the edges of the pad, taking it in from all angles. “A real classic. You can configure it in a half dozen ways. Very versatile. Like here, they’ve opted for a cargo door and boom.” The cargo door was shut, but the boom, a pair of struts holding a cigar-shaped winch pod, was still rigged with a net, which puddled on the tarmac like abandoned rigging from a long-ago sailing ship. Just the sight of it made her long to be up and away.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Waxman and Ray exchange glances. Waxman tugged his baseball cap farther down over his eyes. “Are you a big, um, helicopter buff?”
“I was a pilot in the army,” she said. “And my folks have a small aviation company.” She ducked under the tail boom and peeked into the cabin window. There were two comfortable seats backed against the partial bulkhead separating the cockpit from the cabin, with a curtain of wide webbing to protect traveling VIPs from shifting cargo in the rear. She moved up a step to look into the cockpit and rested her hand on the handle of the pilot’s door. It turned in her grip. It was unlocked! She hissed in excitement and twisted the door open.
“Oh, hey, Reverend!” Ray protested, but she had already hiked herself over the lip into the cockpit.
“Hello there,” she said. She dropped into the seat. The controls were neat and streamlined, much simpler than the bulky instrument displays she had been used to. Must be the new digital systems. She hadn’t ever flown a 427, but she had logged a lot of hours in its military version, the Kiowa.
“Reverend! You shouldn’t be in there!” Ray’s voice came from behind her, through the open cargo door.
“I just want a peek at the cockpit,” she said. “Then I’ll get right out, I promise.”
“Reverend!”
The windscreen was huge, much larger than the ones she had seen in the army. The view from the air would be fantastic. She tapped at the key snug in the ignition, then looked at the fuel gauge. It was reading half-full.
The old ache to fly rose in her chest. She knew exactly what it would feel like to bring these panels to life and begin the preflight check, each movement as much of a ritual as those she used when consecrating the Host during the Eucharist. She could imagine the moment when the rumble and whine grew muffled, her headset connecting her to a world that turned and centered on the machine. The fierce vibrations through metal and bone, her eyes and hands moving over the instruments, and then, at that moment when she lifted away from earth, frustrated gravity pressing her into her seat as she broke its grip and soared into the sky.
