The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [81]
Make one circle, the ATC told her.
It was in him, Jack claimed, to pull off the big con. He could sell Mary’s milk, Buddha’s earrings, and Cleopatra’s suicide note. “Your daddy,” Jack would say grinning to Annie, tossing her in air, “your daddy understands. You sell people dreams they want to believe in. Remember that, darlin’. Tell people that life is what they dream.”
But Annie had developed a different take on life. Life was what you did, not what you dreamed. For years she had made up dreams about the mother she’d never met, dreams that were variations on the romances her father had told her. Her mother a sad princess, a dying star, a lonely heiress, a scientist who could save others but not herself. Always in these romances her mother’s life was incomplete until Annie walked into it. But her dreams weren’t true; deep down she always knew it and by Annapolis she’d given them up. You couldn’t dream a hundred push-ups in a field of frozen mud at Annapolis. You couldn’t dream a plane off the rolling deck of an aircraft carrier. You had to fly it.
You couldn’t dream a safe landing after your engine stopped firing, you had to keep your speed up; you couldn’t let your plane slip into a stall.
The gas gauge of the King of the Sky plunged to empty. Annie hit its glass cover but it didn’t move. She listened to the ATC’s instructions for her shortened clearance.
Suddenly a gust almost flipped the plane. She was close to a snap spin and knew she was in real danger. The engine was practically dead. Annie hadn’t flown the King in a long time. She sped back in time until she could hear D. K.’s voice beside her, talking her through the crisis. “Get the nose down. Listen to me. Not up, down, not up.” With the runway lights of the airport closing in, she fought against instinct, forcing the nose of the Piper lower and banking the plane into a glide less than a thousand feet above the concrete of Lambert–St. Louis International Airport.
Chapter 25
Dark Blue World
The air traffic controller was enthusiastically describing an amazing landing to a young VIP executive who’d asked to see him in the Control Tower. “We’re a nuthouse here at ATCT, it’s Fourth of July, whole corridor’s socked in. So in comes some Navy bimbo in a, get this, 1975 Piper single-engine! She blows in, tail of a tornado, circles, her engine’s conking out, I mean whacked. We gotta give her emergency clearance. Then this shitass 505 from DFW screws up, swings out on her runway, whap in the Piper’s nose. Jesus, this kid, I swear she lifts that damn Piper over the 505 on fumes and still puts it down like a dragonfly on a fuckin’ lily. Another sixty feet, she would have rammed the 202 to London. I’m on the floor popping digitalis like M&Ms. I should retire tomorrow. But how often you gonna see something like that? Welcome to St. Louis.”
The formerly dyspeptic air traffic controller shook hands with a tall young man with rich black hair and a trim black mustache, in an expensive black suit. The man tapped him on the chest. “Excuse me, sir. She wouldn’t like you calling her a bimbo.” He spoke in a Georgia drawl.
“Calling who?”
“The flyer, the naval officer in the Piper Warrior.”
“Jesus, you know her?”
“My wife. And I don’t think you want to be using that kind of language with a lady.”
“Your wife?”
“Lt. Annie Goode. She never used the Hopper.” The young man added wistfully, “Not even when she was on Connie Chung.”
The controller shook him by the arm. “What are you talking about? Was she on the news? Did she hijack that plane or something?”
“Annie, ha! Annie is totally by the book.” The young man introduced himself as Lt. Brad Hopper, U.S. Navy Reserve and president of Hopper Jets, Inc.
“Oh, you’re Hopper. Hopper Jets; yeah, we got your call you were okay with her coming in at your gate. But the message got screwed up. Anyhow we hauled her Piper over to Terminal E already, because—”
Brad shut him off smoothly. “I wanted to come on in and personally thank you for your cooperation.