Brady chuckled. “Make that two beers.”

On his windshield, beads of moisture turned into wiggly streams. Beyond them, he could see nothing except fog. If conditions were as Brady described, Rye probably wouldn’t see the landing strip lights until he was right on top of them and ready to set down. Which made him glad he’d elected to fly the smaller plane and didn’t have to worry about overshooting the end of the runway and trying to stop that Beechcraft before plowing up ground at the far end. Also, he had near-empty fuel tanks, so he was landing light.

No, he wasn’t nervous. He trusted the instruments and was confident he could make a safe landing. As bad as conditions were, he’d flown in worse.

All the same, he was ready to get there and hoped that Dr. Lambert would show up soon. He looked forward to having the doctor sign off on the delivery so he could raid the vending machine—assuming Brady’s outfit had one—then crawl into the back of the plane to sleep.

Dash had removed the two extra seats to allow more cargo space. To save him the expense of a motel room for overnighters, he’d provided a sleeping bag. It stank of sweat and men. No telling how many pilots had farted in it, but tonight Rye wouldn’t mind it.

The nap he’d taken at Dash-It-All was wearing off. Sleeping wasn’t his favorite pastime, but he needed a few hours before heading back tomorrow morning.

He reminded himself to make sure Brady didn’t lock him out of the building when he left for home. Otherwise Rye wouldn’t have access to the toilet. Assuming there was a toilet. He’d flown into places where—

He saw the runway lights flicker through the fog. “Okay, Brady. I’ve got a visual on your lights. Is that beer good and cold?”

No reply.

“Brady, did you nod off?”

In the next instant, a laser beam was shone into the windshield and speared Rye right between the eyes.

“Bloody hell!”

Instinctually he raised his left hand to shield his eyes. Several seconds later, the piercing light went out. But the damage had been done. He’d been blinded at the most critical point of his landing.

He processed all this within a single heartbeat.

The ground would be coming up fast. Crashing was almost a given, and so was dying.

His last thought: About fucking time.

Chapter 2

1:46 a.m.

Pilot training, reflex, and survival instinct kicked in. Despite his blasé acceptance of almost certain death, Rye automatically and unemotionally began to think through options and react in a way that would better his chances to live and tell about this.

And he had milliseconds in which to do it.

Instinctively he eased back on the yoke to tilt the craft’s nose up and pulled back the throttle to reduce his airspeed, but not so much that he would stall.

If he could achieve a touch-and-go on the airstrip and stay airborne long enough for his vision to clear, he could possibly do a go-around and make another approach.

He would like to manage it just so he could kill Brady White.

But below him wasn’t wide-open spaces. If he overshot the runway without enough altitude, he would clip treetops. If he gained enough altitude to clear the trees, he would still have to get above the foothills, and he no longer trusted his ability to gauge their distance. With the fog, and purple and yellow spots exploding in his eyeballs, he was flying by feel.

Likely case: He didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell. He couldn’t see his instruments for the frenzied dancing dots in front of his eyes. Without the instruments, his spatial orientation was shot. He could be flying the plane straight into the bosom of Mother Earth.

And then ahead and slightly to his left, he spotted a lighter patch of fog that intensified into a brighter glow that soon separated into two beams of light spaced closely together. Looked like headlights. A parking lot? No, the road. The road he’d noted in the aerial picture of the airfield. In any case, the lights gave him some indication of how close he was to the ground.

No time to ponder it. He went into an ever so slight left bank and aimed the craft toward the lights.

Nose up enough to clear the headlights.

Easy easy easy, don’t stall.

The plane sailed over the lights, stayed airborne for maybe another forty or fifty yards, and then hit the ground hard. The plane bounced back into the air a few feet. When it came down again, it did so on the left and front wheels only. Then the right gear collapsed. The plane slewed to the right, the right wing dipped, and, catching the ground, whipped the craft into an even sharper right turn, which Rye was powerless to correct.

His instantaneous reaction was to stand on the brakes, but if the wheels had been torn off or even badly damaged, the hydraulic line would’ve been cut, so brakes were useless.

The plane skidded off the road and into the woods. A tree branch caught the windshield. The Plexiglas remained intact, but the cracks created a web that obscured his vision all the more.

Then impact.

The Cessna hit an obstacle with such momentum behind it that the nose crumpled, and the tail left the ground before dropping back down with a jolt that made Rye bite his tongue when his teeth clamped.

He was rattled, but cognizant enough to realize that, impossibly, he was on terra firma. The plane wasn’t engulfed in flames. He was alive. Even as that registered, he fumbled for and found the master switch to kill the electrical power and reached down to the floor between the seats to shut off the fuel selector valve.

Then he allowed himself time to catch his breath, slow his heart rate, and run through a mental checklist for likely injuries. The purple and yellow dots were dissipating. He could see well enough. He wasn’t hurting anywhere, only feeling pressure against his torso from the yoke, which the cockpit panel had jammed against his chest.

The plane was so old it didn’t have a shoulder restraint, only a lap belt. He labored to get it unbuckled, but was finally free of it. The door on his left appeared undamaged. He unlatched it and shoved it open. Cold, damp air rushed in. He sucked in a lungful and expelled it through his mouth.

It took several tries and teeth-gnashing effort, but he squeezed himself from beneath the yoke, out of the seat, and through the opening. His flight bag was on the floor in front of the copilot seat, crammed underneath the panel. It was a strain to reach it, but he snagged the leather strap and wrangled the bag free. He pulled it out of the cockpit and tossed it to the ground.

That left only the black box.

In a crash situation, the pilot was allowed by the FAA to take only his flight bag from the plane. Everything else was to be left as it was until an accident report was filed with the FAA and it was determined whether or not an on-site investigation was necessary.

But, remembering the urgency behind this cargo, he released the seat belt, picked up the box, and cradled it in his right elbow. As he backed out, he shut the door of the plane, then hopped to the ground like he’d done roughly ten thousand times over the course of his career.

Only this time his knees gave way. He went to the dirt and was very glad that nobody was there to see his impersonation of a rag doll. Apparently he was more shaken than he’d realized.

He sat up, bowed his head low between his raised knees, and concentrated on taking deep, even breaths. He stayed like that long enough for the dampness of the ground to seep into the seat of his jeans.

Eventually he raised his head and opened his eyes. He was wrapped in fog and total darkness, but his vision was clear. No more dancing spots. He could distinguish the two fingers he held up.

He didn’t realize until then that he’d been thrust forward on impact and had banged his head. Tentatively exploring, he discovered a goose egg at his hairline, but it couldn’t be too bad. His vision wasn’t blurred, he didn’t need to puke, and he hadn’t blacked out, so he ruled out a concussion. He was just coming down from an adrenaline surge, that’s all.

He rested the back of his head against the fuselage and swiped his forehead with the back of his hand. It came away wet with sweat, while inside his bomber jacket he was shivering.

He wasn’t too bothered by it, though. His shakes weren’t anything a good belt of bourbon wouldn’t cure.

Having reached that conclusion, he dragged his flight bag toward him and unzipped it. Fishing inside it, he found his flashlight and switched it on. With the black box still in the crook of his arm, and the strap of his bag on his opposite shoulder, he braced himself against the fuselage and stood up to test his equilibrium.

He wasn’t in top form, but he was okay. He ducked beneath the wing and moved toward the plane’s nose. The freakin’ tree he’d crashed into had to be the biggest one in Georgia. It was massive. With only the flashlight for illumination, he surveyed the damage to the aircraft.