Excerpts

CHAPTER ONE continued

“ What is the matter with this plane?” the man demanded.
      “ It’s not the plane!” Ray shouted as he righted the craft momentarily.
      “ It’s all that, out there! Can’t you see what we’re in?”
      “ And your airplane—it cannot take it?”
      “ I don’t know,” Ray hollered. His voice was frantic. “I’ve never seen it this bad. There’s only so much these wings can take before they break.” He tried to slam his door shut but the twisted frame wouldn’t allow it. He left it erratically slamming at his side, figuring it was only a question of time before it blew off into the storm.
      The passenger’s name was Heinz Bodecker. He claimed to be a German war dodger. Ray wasn’t convinced. He had seen others, and knew not every German was a devoted Nazi eager to die for the Fatherland, but Bodecker did not fit the bill. Ray put it out of his mind. There were a growing number of German colonies throughout South America, so such men easily blended in.
      Bodecker looked irritated. “Do you even know where we are?” he shouted over the wind.
Ray could feel Bodecker’s piercing stare. He had enough to contend with already and didn’t need to be badgered. He wished the kraut would just shut up. “We have to make that saddle,” he answered, motioning with his head toward a distant notch in the mountain range now back in view. The deeply cut semicircle was sandwiched between the clouds and the canyon rim as if a giant had taken a bite out of the mountaintop. It was higher than they were, in these conditions, impossibly higher. The situation seemed obvious enough but apparently not for the German.
      Ray didn’t like Bodecker. He was arrogant and overbearing, but that’s what Ray thought of all Germans. Well, he wasn’t paid to like the passengers. Just to get them to their destination, and to get him and the plane back in one piece.
      Ray Dobbs did not fit the image of a veteran pilot. A brown leather patch covered the socket, which his right eye once occupied. Beneath it a grotesque jagged scar extended to his right ear, a disfigurement that he hid underneath a baseball cap. The damaged tissue pulled taut the skin of his cheek and gave his mouth a habitual asymmetrical strained appearance. Despite his handicap he was still a good pilot. His depth perception had been affected, but his skill and years of experience more than compensated to keep him in the air.
      He was normally a friendly and gregarious sort who loved to talk. His head was constantly cocked and turning with a quick twitch much like a caged bird’s head. His movements were more exaggerated than those of others as he fit the same field of vision into his one good eye that most managed with two. This manic tendency kept him in perpetual motion and easily tired those around him.
      Ray’s reflection in the mirror was a constant reminder of his accident, a fluke incident caused by debris flying into the spinning prop of a nearby aircraft. Severed splinters rocketed into the side of his head fifty yards away. It was a chance occurrence with a most unlikely outcome. But being at the wrong place, at the wrong time, seemed to be the story of Ray’s life. And it was looking increasingly to him as if another, and final, chapter was about to be added.
      Storms here were temperamental, something Ray had hoped would work eventually to his advantage, but this tempest would not let up. Instead, it continued with incessant indifference and volatile fury. The little plane bobbed like a cork on an angry raging sea. Between them and the approaching saddle, the sky was black. The boiling ceiling billowed downward like inverted mushroom clouds, concealing the highest summits around them.
      Suddenly, the sky opened with a renewed deluge. “Shit! What next?” Ray shouted. The huge drops quickly turned to hail, which pelted the windshield. The clatter overtook the roaring engine and banging door. The wind and water sprayed through the doorway and visibility was now all but gone. Without warning the plane plunged downward in a powerful current.
      “ More power!” Bodecker screamed. “We’re still a thousand feet below the ridge!”
      “There’s nothing left!” Ray shouted over the racket. He shoved at the throttle with his hand to prove it would move no further. He was drawing all the power there was.

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