K. Weiland - Storming

FLYING A BIPLANE, especially one as rickety as a war-surplus CurtissJN-4D, meant being ready for anything. But in Hitchs thirteen years ofexperience, this was the first time anything had meant bodies fallingout of the night sky smack in front of his plane.

True enough that flying and falling just kind of went together. Not in agood sort of way, but in a way you couldnt escape. Airplanes fell outof the clouds, and pilots fell out of their airplanes. Not on purpose,of course, but it did happen sometimes, like when some dumb palookaforgot to buckle his safety belt, then decided to try flying upsidedown.

Flying and falling, freedom and dependence, air and earth. That was justthe way it was. But whatever was falling always had to be falling fromsome place. No such thing as just falling out of the sky, causenothing was up there to fall out of.

Which didnt at all explain the blur of plummeting shadows just a couplehundred yards in front of his propeller.

He reacted reflexively, pulling the Jenny up and to the right. The newHisso engine Earl had just installed whined and whirred in protest.Hitch thrust the stick forward to push the nose back down and flattenher out. This was what he got for coming out here in the middle of thenight to test the planes new modifications. But time was short and thestakes were high with Col. Livingstones flying circus arriving in towntomorrow for the big competition.

Hitch and his team were only going to have this one shot to win the showand impress Livingstone. Otherwise, theyd be headed straight from broketo flat broke. And hed be hollering adios to all those big dreams ofrunning a real barnstorming circus. If he and his parachutist RickHolmes were going to pull off that new stunt theyd been working on, hisJenny first had to prove she was up to new demands. A little extrapractice never hurt anyoneeven himbut falling bodies sure as gravywasnt what hed had in mind for his first night back in the oldhometown.

In the front cockpit, Taos turned around, forepaws on the back of theseat, brown ears blowing in the wind, barking his head off.

Hitch anchored the stick with both hands and twisted a look over hisright shoulder, then his left, just in time to see the big shadowseparate itself into two smaller patches of dark. A flower of whitebloomed from first one shadow, then the otherand everything sloweddown.

Parachutes. Some crazy jumpers were parachuting out here at night? Hecraned a look overhead, but there was nothing up there but a whole lotof moon and a whole lot more sky.

Then the night exploded in a gout of fire.

He jerked his head back around to see over his shoulder, past theJennys tail.

The arc of a flare sputtered through the darkness, showering light allover the jumper nearest to him. Beneath the expanse of the white silkparachute hung a dark mass, shiny and rippling, like fabric blowing inthe wind.

What in tarnation? Parachutists didnt wear anything but practicaljumpsuits or trousers. Anything else risked fouling the lines. Andeverybody knew better than to hazard a flares spark lighting the chuteon fire.

He circled the Jenny around to pass the jumper, giving a wide berth tokeep the turbulence from interfering. Below him stretched the longmetallic sheen of a brand spanking new lakepresumably from irrigationrunoffthat had somehow appeared during the nine years since hed lefthome. He was only fifty or so feet above the water, and the air currentswere already playing heck with the Jenny. She juddered again, up anddown, as if a playful giant was poking at her.

Another flare spurted into the night. Thanks to it and the light of thefull moon, he could see quite well enough to tell that what was hangingfrom that chute was a womanin a gigantic ball gown.

When you flew all over the country, you saw a lot of strange stuff. Butthis one bought the beets.

This time, the flare didnt fall harmlessly away. This time, it struckthe womans skirt.

His heart did a quick stutter.

He was almost parallel with her now. In that second when the Jennyscreamed by, the womans wide eyes found his, her mouth open in hergrease-streaked face.

Oh, brother, lady. The wind ripped his words away.

He couldnt leave her back there, but he sure as Moses couldnt do muchfrom inside the Jenny.

He careened past the white mushroom that marked the second jumper. Alarge bird circled above the canopy. This jumper seemed to be a mannobig skirt anyway. He should be fine landing in the lake, if he couldkeep from getting tangled in his lines. But judging his capacity forbrains from that blunder with the flare, even that might be too much forhim to handle. Unless, of course, hed shot at the woman deliberately.

Hitch circled wide around the man and chased back after the ball offire.

This time when he passed the woman, he shouted, Cut loose!

She was only twenty feet up now. Itd be a hard fall into the water, buteven thatd be a whole lot better than going down in a fireballaflamerino as pilots called it.

He zipped past and looked back at her.

She couldnt hear him through the wind, but if shed seen his lipsmoving and his arms waving, shed know he was talking to her. And,really, what else was he going to be saying right now?

In the front seat, Taos leaned over the turtleback between the cockpits.His whole body quivered with his frantic barking, but the sound wasripped away in the rush of the wind and the howl of the engine.

The woman had both hands at her chest, yanking at the harness buckles.And then, with one last jerk, they came free. She plummeted, a whoosh offire in the darkness. She broke the glossy water below. The flameswinked out. She disappeared.

A third flare blinked through the corner of his vision, too late forHitch to react. It smacked into the Jennys exhaust stack and erupted ina short burst of flame.

Even the dog froze.

If the flame touched the wing, varnished as it was in butyrate dope, thewhole thing would go off like gunpowder. But the flame sputtered out.The stack started coughing black smoke.

This was bad. Not as bad as it could be maybe. But bad.

Smoke and the stench of burning castor oil chugged from the right sideof the engine. When Earl saw it, hed lie down and have a fit. Here wasthe brand new Hisso, all set for the big contest with Col. Livingstonesair circus, already choking.

No engine, no plane, no competition. That was simple barnstormingmathematics.

Not to mention the fact that the show hadnt even started and Hitch wasalready leaving bodies in his slipstreamalthough that, of course, washardly his fault.

He swung the plane around and pushed her into a dive. She stuttered andbalked but did it anyway, like the good cranky girl she was. He took alow pass over the lake, then another and another. The fall hadnt beenfar, only twenty feet or so. Provided the jumpers hadnt hit at a badangle, it wasnt a horrible place to bail out.

Of course, there was also the little fact of the woman having been onfire. But with all that material shed been wearing, the flames probablywouldnt have had enough time to reach skin, much less do anyconsiderable damage.

Out of the nights list of featured ways to die, that left drowning. Ifshe couldnt swim, she was out of luck.

Beneath the Jenny, the white expanse of the mans parachute spread overthe surface of the lake. The man himself wasnt to be seen.

Hitch dipped low for another flyby and leaned out of the cockpit as faras he could manage, searching for the other parachute. Cmon, cmon.

Taos squirmed around to stare at something ahead of them.