Miracles are often wasted on their beneficiaries.
As it was, Smithy only opened his eyes when the ejector seat was a few feet away from landing. Once it touched down, with a considerable bump but nothing more, Smithy repeated the swear words several more times while his trembling hands fumbled with the straps that secured him into the life-saving device.
In Smithy’s defence, he was a nervous flyer. If nothing else, the experience clarified that it wasn’t being in an airplane that he hated. It turned out that flying without one was way worse.
When he finally extricated himself, he stood there with his hands on his knees, trying to rediscover how breathing was supposed to work.
YOU ARE WELCOME.
“Shut up. That wasn’t you.”
OH, WASN’T IT?
Smithy watched as the skeleton of a station wagon tore across the sand towards him.
“Stop trying to take credit, unless you were responsible for a foreign diplomat banging some model in that seat.”
YOU ARE WELCOME.
“And don’t take credit for an escape that’s barely half over.”
Smithy shielded his eyes as the station wagon screeched to a halt beside him.
Wilkins sat in the driver’s seat. “You were supposed to land over there!”
“Really?” said Smithy, waving a hand in front of his face to clear the cloud of dust. “I pull that off, and you’re criticising the landing?”
“We have to go. We’ve already lost valuable time because your colleague was attempting to convince an orangutan to get into the car.”
“He also saved us,” said Diller from the back seat.
“Just shut up and get in,” urged Muroe, who was also in the back seat.
Smithy did as he was told, and was barely in his seat before Wilkins floored it.
“You couldn’t get the orangutan so you got Zero instead?”
“Please, call me Keith,” said Keith, from the passenger seat. “And I’m glad you made it out alive.”
“Thank you!” said Smithy, who was feeling as if the incredible feat he’d just pulled off wasn’t getting the credit it deserved.
He looked behind them, and then spoke to Muroe. “Can I ask why there are several flight cases in the back of this station wagon?”
Muroe shook her head. “Oh, believe me, we’ve had that discussion.”
Diller leaned forward and shouted to be heard over the engine. “How did we do?”
“What?”
“In the thing.”
“Oh. We came second.”
Diller looked genuinely disappointed. “That’s not bad, I suppose.”
Smithy felt himself grow slightly defensive. “Well, sixth place through to fourth place died so, y’know, personally I was pretty happy about it.”
From the front, Wilkins shouted. “That’s the trouble with your generation – far too comfortable with failure.”
“Yeah,” said Smithy. “By the way, Master Breddenback was wearing the Lewinsky dress.”
The car swerved so alarmingly that Smithy nearly fell out.
Muroe grabbed him and held him in.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“He’s joking,” shouted Muroe.
Diller pointed out into the distance. “Look. There. There’s some kind of building. Is that the airstrip?”
“Let’s assume it is,” said Muroe.
The car veered as Wilkins altered their course.
Muroe checked Wilkins wasn’t looking and punched Smithy’s leg.
“Ouch. What?”
“Only you could come through an automotive death match, escape using a half-century-old ejector seat and then get thrown out of the back seat of a car for annoying the driver.”
SHE HAS A POINT.
“Shut up.”
Muroe raised an eyebrow pointedly.
“Sorry. Wasn’t talking to you.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
As moments went, the one when the station wagon’s journey towards the building in the distance changed from being on a dirt road to concrete was quite something.
“This is a runway,” said Keith excitedly. “This is a runway!”
Which meant they hadn’t escaped to an empty tool shed in the desert.
Wilkins brought the skeletal station wagon to a screeching halt and they all piled out. The front of the hangar was closed with a large, sturdy metal door. Smithy raced around to the side and found the access door, which was padlocked.
“OK. I can pick this. I just need to find—”
He was interrupted by Keith shoulder-charging his way through it.
“Or, we could do that.”
They all moved inside quickly and Diller found the light switch on the wall. The fluorescent lights buzzed into flickering life above them. The group stood in silence for a moment.
“It’s small,” observed Diller.
It was. They were looking at a single-engine Cessna airplane that could seat four uncomfortably.
“I … I won’t be able to fit all of the collection in that,” said Wilkins.
“You won’t be able to fit any of the damned collection in that,” corrected Muroe.
“OK,” said Smithy, “we need to move fast. Zero – I mean, Keith – I don’t suppose you can fly a plane?”
“Ehm – no,” said the big man.
“I thought you said you could?” Muroe asked Smithy.
“No,” shouted Smithy over his shoulder. “I said I’d once looked into it when I’d auditioned for a part in a reboot of the sitcom Wings.”
“Well,” said Wilkins, pointing at Keith, “if he is of no further use … I mean, the collection was part of this escape before he was.”
Smithy left Muroe to deal with Wilkins and jumped up into the Cessna. He’d never been inside the cockpit of an aircraft before, but he’d reasoned that if they got this far, figuring out the basics of flying wouldn’t be that hard – relative to the other parts of the plan. That had been the theory, at least. Besides, he’d have to figure out how to steal the thing first. Smithy knew about hotwiring cars and he was working on the assumption that planes more or less worked on the same principle.
He looked under the steering console to figure out how to get to the wiring. There, almost winking at him, were the keys taped against the worn plastic.
YOU ARE WELCOME.
“I’ll give you that one.”
Smithy put the key into the ignition just as Diller hit the button to raise the hangar doors. As they slowly started to rise, sunlight began to flood the space. Smithy turned the key and started to survey the array of dials and controls in front of him. In his head, this had seemed simpler. He started flipping switches and pulling or suppressing things, working on the admittedly weak logic that for the thing to fly, everything had to be in the opposite position to what it was in when it wasn’t flying.
Diller was trying to ignore the argument occurring behind him.
“Absolutely not,” Muroe was saying.
“But you said yourself, Zero isn’t going to fit into the airplane.”
“We’re still taking him, and he is called Keith now.”
“But we could leave him and perhaps draw lots so that the collection could take up one seat? It is of significant cultural importance.”