Standoff

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The glossy red Learjet was parked on the ramp beside a Winjeel, an old orange and white single-engine flight trainer with faded Royal Australian Air Force markings on the wings and fuselage. Bobbie Macey, the Lear’s pilot, patted the old timer’s dusty skin with the flat of her hand. “You’re a long way from home, babe.”

A cab pulled up. Macey’s co-pilot, Rick Gartner, got out and wandered over. “That ol’ girl’s had a hard life,” he said with way too much cheer for the hour. “Bit like you.”

“Watch it, sonny,” said Macey.

“Sleep okay?”

“Fine. You?”

Gartner slipped her a sly grin.

Macey sighed. “Local girl?”

“Not saying.”

“Struck out, huh?”

Gartner kept up the grin but the edge had come off it.

“Thought so,” said Macey.

The two pilots had an easy relationship, all business in the cockpit and all banter out of it — most of it good-natured. At forty-four, Macey was the captain and Gartner, in his early thirties, her co-pilot. Over the past few years they’d flown quite a few charters together and knew the routine like it was scripted. If there was occasional friction between them it stemmed from Gartner’s habit of chasing skirt even though he was married with a kid. A gigolo had written the guy’s moral code, Macey had decided, and it rubbed her the wrong way. But he was easy to get along with otherwise, once the ground rules had been set out during a two-day layover in Panama. That night, after putting away a skinful, he’d cupped her breast as she passed him on the way to the john. She’d stopped, looked down at his hand like it was a food stain on her shirt and said, “You want a bottle broken over your frikken’ head?” Later that night, she’d said, “Pull that shit again I’ll have you fired. I’m your boss, get it?” After that, no further trouble.

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