Fatal Movement

They were more than an hour from the coastline of Africa and the country of Liberia.He stared at the white foam wave tops. Ditching in the ocean was still a possibility.

He grabbed a red and white tin of Altoids wedged between the trim wheel and the fire detection panel.

Lucy held up the first two polished fingernails of her left hand.

“And that means…what? You want two?”

She nodded. “Please, master.”

“You’re not getting two. Christ, Lu, we’re almost out.”In the space of four hours they had consumed most of the contents of the tin. He thumbed into the crinkly waxed paper.“You’re only getting one.”

“Paleeze.”

“Lucy, you don’t need—”

“Don’t say it Daniel. I’ll cry.”She pouted. It was bullshit.

He shook his head and jiggled two of the five remaining peppermint tablets into her hand.The last three he popped into his mouth with a flick of his palm.The icy blast on his tongue tricked his senses, gave him a triple hit of peppermint, and for a moment he forgot about the steady trickle of sweat running down the small of his back.

Again he reached above his head for the switch that controlled the bleed-air valve from the engine. The shut-off was stuck somewhere along the line choking the flow to the air conditioning system. He clicked the small lever back and forth with firm pressure but received no indication that it was working.The valve would not open,thus resulting in a steadily increasing cockpit temperature.

“Daniel, for God’s sake, let me give it a good slap with the heel of my shoe,” Lucy said.

O’Brien crunched the peppermint into tiny bits and looked at her. Given her size and strength he suspected there was a good chance she’d knock the entire row of switches off the panel if she took a swat. Nevertheless, something had to be done.          

“Youstaring at me, Daniel?”

“Yeah.” Her damp cheeks were flushed with millions of cells pushing into thousands of dilated capillaries, all rushing to exhaust the heat from her body. A goo of eyeliner smudged her brows. Their simple pilot uniforms—white shirts, dark pants—were stained with sweat. Looking at her made him feel like an overheated coal stoker trapped in front of a blast furnace.

“You think I’m too large, don’t you?”

He shook his head. “I think you’re strong, Lucy. But if you’ll be gentle, and I mean gentle, then you can give it a try.”They were over two hundred miles from land, above the open Atlantic Ocean in an airplane that was coming apart. What could it hurt? The way things were going, ditching was beginning to have some appeal. At least the ocean water would be cool and refreshing.

            Lucy reached forward and attempted to slide what had to be a size nine shoe off her foot.She’d come down the pike from Middle-American Swedish stock and never had a chance. Her father briefly played pro football for the Green Bay Packers.That much he knew.Her mother might have been a pro wrestler.That much he guessed.For all of that, he considered her a striking woman and at times attractive. Her face was composed of solid, straight lines with high cheekbones and full lips, a blond California look with a twist of Midwestern beef.

            He compared his own build to Lucy’s.At six feet, two inches, he did not have a small frame, yet she might have as much muscle as he did for her size.