Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 (78 page)

It would work out to about seven minutes off their deficit, Jerry thought, as he shouldered his way through the crowd to collect Miss Rostov. Consolidated and Comanche had both gotten small bonuses, but overall they’d made up more time. If he had the numbers right, they were less than an hour behind.

And he never could have done that, not in a million years. He wasn’t even sure he could have made it to the end of the course without falling. Miss Rostov turned away from the judges, her winner’s bouquet tucked in one arm — very like the winner at Santa Anita, Jerry thought. She gave the photographers a final wave, and Jerry tipped his hat.

“Thank you,” he said, and she gave him a startled glance.

“You’re welcome, darling.” She tucked her hand into his arm, and they started back toward the hangar.

T
heir hotel room in Pensacola was a suite — two bedrooms with a small sitting room in between, beautifully appointed with white French Country furniture and pale blue walls, a glorious view of the Gulf of Mexico through the windows. Alma twitched the curtains aside and looked out. It was a gorgeous evening, seventy nine degrees, wind out of the south southwest at five miles per hour, perfect flying weather. Tomorrow was supposed to be warmer with a chance of thundershowers. If they weren't starting tomorrow in dead last place…

Alma leaned her forehead against the window. They'd come so close. But not even the best flying in the world was going to make up an hour of time. They might finish fifth or even fourth rather than dead last. Third place would get them $5,000, a ten-fold return on the entrance fee, not leave them flat broke, but that would require some kind of minor miracle. Maybe a complete breakdown from one of the leaders. That was possible. But three or four breakdowns? No, they had lost. She couldn't see any way out. Not this time. The late start from New Orleans had doomed them.

At least Mitch was making sense now. He hadn't been, and that disturbed her more than she could say. She was protective of him, she admitted to herself, as if he were the younger brother she sometimes felt he was. Maybe that was guilt. Gil had said so, once. "Al, nobody could have done anything. You did your best." She had, first aid on the field, but there were things that were beyond her. No reason to feel guilty for not making a miracle.

Which brought it back to that again. She couldn't make miracles. Magic didn't let her pull rabbits out of her hat to repair everything.

Lewis came and leaned against the window beside her, arm companionably about her waist. He looked out at the sea, steady and solid as always. "I wish we hadn't taken out the auxiliary tank in Little Rock," he said.

Alma nodded. "If we could skip the refueling stop in Lake City we'd still have a chance." She blew out a long breath. But wishes weren't horses. They'd left the tank, and Henry didn't even have a shop in Pensacola, nor anywhere near enough to get it by morning. His nearest shop was in Miami, and if they were in Miami they would have already won. She looked out over the sunlit sea.

And then it came to her in a moment, something so risky… It might work. It might just work. It would depend on the tiniest of margins, just a hair.

"Lewis," she said, turning away from the window, "Do you have that almanac of airfields handy?"

"It's in my bag," Lewis said and went to get it. He knew better than to ask.

Sheets of hotel stationary, a pencil… It might work. It just might work. It would depend on the fields. The map was right in front of her in memory. "What kind of field is there in St. Petersburg? Or Sarasota?"

Lewis paged through wildly. "Um, Alfred Whitted in St. Petersburg is under construction. That doesn't help. Fuller Airport in Jungle? Doesn't have full field service. How about Sky Harbor Airport on Weedon Island? It says there's regular passenger service from Eastern Air Transport and National, so it should be a full service field."

"Weedon Island," Alma said. "Where's that?"

Lewis frowned. "In Tampa Bay," he said. "It's a little further." He looked up at her. "Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?"

"Yes," Alma said. Her eyes met his, daring and willing to try whatever the plan was. "You know I am."

"Will it work?"

"I need the exact mileage," Alma said. "You've got to get me an almanac. I need the exact mileage to Lake City and to Weedon Island."

Lewis jumped up. "I'm sure there's a Florida map downstairs at the desk."

"That will do," Alma said. The exact miles. She thought it was about the same, though Weedon Island was much further south. Their fueling stop was supposed to be Lake City, a long flight across the Florida panhandle, and then turn south for Miami. But if they could refuel in Tampa instead…

Straight across the Gulf of Mexico, a flight on the edge of their fuel over open ocean, with no margin for error… It would make up time. It might save an hour, maybe a little more. But if they miscalculated, even by a tiny amount, there would be no second chances. They'd have to ditch in the Gulf of Mexico miles from land, and nobody would even know where to look for them. For a moment, she wished she could grab the long distance operator, call Henry and tell him the new plan, but he would be on the train to Miami already, unreachable. A cable, maybe, sent to the hotel to wait for him, just as insurance. But if they told anyone what they were going to try to do, even the Western Union operator, a reporter would get hold of it. Then one of the lead planes would try it too and they'd still be behind. Their only chance was if nobody else was desperate and crazy enough to try it. It
was
crazy. But it just might work. It might work if the numbers added up.

J
erry listened to the sound of water running in the adjoining bathroom — Mitch taking a bath and getting cleaned up after last night's romp through a graveyard and drinking binge — which was all to the good. Mitch would be busy for a few minutes while Jerry figured out what to do with the necklace. Like it or not, they were stuck with it for another 24 hours. Short of just leaving it in the hotel, which would be incredibly irresponsible as it would mean the necklace would fall into the hands of some random innocent person, they needed to hang onto it until they could give it back to Henry.

Of course if the bogus Countess hadn't stolen it in the first place it would still be secure in Henry's nice, warded safe! This was absolutely all her fault. If she hadn't stolen the damn thing none of this would have happened, including whatever had broken Mitch up so much in New Orleans. They'd still be in first place, and Mitch wouldn't have that haunted look on his face. He'd been kind of a mess when he'd first come to Colorado at Gil's invitation. Of course Jerry'd had problems of his own at that point, still learning to walk on the wooden leg, still trying to figure out what his life might look like. But once he’d wrestled his own life into something like order, and seen what Mitch was going through, he'd figured he was better off than Mitch.

He'd said as much to Gil, curled up in the four poster downstairs in the drawing room they'd turned into Jerry's room so he wouldn't have to climb stairs, the rain beating down on the tin roof of the porch outside. Gil had grinned, his hand straying over Jerry's chest. "You'd rather lose your leg than this?"

"Any day," Jerry had said fervently, and he meant it. His leg wasn't essential to who he was. It wasn't the thing he'd feared, a head wound that would take his mind away, leave him grasping for simple sums, all stories erased, all knowledge forgotten. It wasn't the end of intimacy, the end of this. Gil loved him as he always had. He could see the day — not today, not soon, but someday not infinitely far away — when this might feel normal.

Jerry shook his head. Not normal, not quite. Not ever. But not terrible either, even without Gil. And losing Gil had been worse than losing his leg.

Mitch had been on thin ice then, but Jerry'd thought it was better. It had been years since Mitch seemed out of it, years that he'd seemed cheerful and laid back, but Jerry supposed it had all been lurking just under the surface, kept at bay with friendship and flying. Mitch had a lot of friends. He had the kind of easy comraderie in the American Legion that Jerry had never been able to manage — too much of an egghead to talk football and motors. Mitch moved back and forth between worlds seemingly without effort, following Jerry's excitement about some new inscriptions deciphered from an ancient temple and talking sports at the Legion. It was easy to miss that nothing seemed very deep, nothing cut to the heart of it. You could talk to Mitch all day and not realize you were the one doing all the talking, come away from it thinking he was a great guy and not adding it up that you didn't know one single thought of his deeper than an eggshell. Whatever was going on in his own private world, it stayed private.

This thing had just been waiting to happen, Jerry thought. Yes, the necklace started it, but it just built on the pain that was there. That's what it did. That's what it was designed to do. It could only plow a fertile field.

Well then, Jerry said to himself grimly. Time to get busy. Time to figure out how to contain this thing for another 24 hours.

Ideally he'd have some kind of prepared container to keep it in, a silver or lead box properly warded to neutralize its power. However, as usual, things weren't ideal. Hotels in Pensacola didn't generally have lead boxes lying around. His best bet was wood, and that at least he could get.

Jerry rang for the bellboy, meeting him at the suite door and pressing a dollar bill into his hand. At least he still had some cash. "Can you get me a box of Havana cigars? And keep the change."

The boy grinned, gap teeth showing. "No problem, mister. You want Hermosillos? Or I can send out for something different."

"Hermosillos will be fine," Jerry said. They came in a nice wooden box. "You have them at the desk?"

"Sure thing," the bellboy said. "And twelve kinds of cigarettes. I'll be back before you count to ten!"

"That's fine," Jerry said, and he waited by the door, wondering if anybody had a supper plan or if that was one of those things that had slipped everyone's mind. Alma and Lewis were in their room, and the countess was nowhere to be seen. Maybe she'd taken herself off to greener pastures. It could happen.

Once the boy returned, Jerry took the box into the room he shared with Mitch. The sounds of splashing from the bath told him Mitch was still busy for a few more minutes. He tipped the cigars out into his suitcase and methodically stripped the labels off the box. This would do for now. Instead of a lead lining he'd have to use his silk handkerchief, but silk was a perfectly reasonable material for this.

Jerry stood, turning off the lamp so that only the evening light came in through the window, thin undercurtains drawn though they stirred a little in the sea breeze. He closed his eyes, composing himself and reaching for the center of calm, for that cool certainty that stood in the stillness, the point where the universe stood poised. "Ateh malkuth ve-gevurah ve-gedulah le-olahm." The motions were second nature, the Kabbalistic Cross painted across his body with his movements, calling upon the powers of the Archangels and of the Most High to protect him, to clear the space of all malevolent energies. In a way, for all its trappings of high ritual, what he did was quite simple. Instead of casting a circle and asking its mighty guardians to temporarily ward the space of a room, he called them instead to a circle much smaller, collapsed to the size of the cigar box. Instead of knife in hand to delineate the wide spaces of the circle, he had a fountain pen instead. The pen is mightier than the sword, Jerry thought with an inward smile. This was one instance where that was quite literally true.

Instead of setting each quarter at a cardinal point around the room, east and west, south and north, he marked each in ink on a face of the box. "On my right hand, Raphael," Jerry said, drawing the symbol on the right end of the box. "On my left, Gabriel." Michael went to the south, as though the box itself were a map or a compass face, Uriel to the north side with its box flap. Ink was not much to seal such a binding, not even consecrated ink, but just indigo from the hotel bottle on the writing desk, but it would hold for 24 hours. Quick and dirty.

Do we ever do it any other way? Jerry thought. For all that he sometimes disagreed with Henry, he missed the beauty of the large rituals, of the meticulous planning and grace that comes from having all the right things, not just making do.

And that was distraction, which he should avoid. Perhaps it was the necklace, pushing in the only way it could, trying to find a seed of dissatisfaction to grow.

No, Jerry said silently, and put the necklace still knotted in the silk handkerchief inside the box. He closed the lid, hand flat against the smooth surface. "Amen," he said, and bent his head a moment, eyes closed in service. "Amen." When he opened them the room seemed lighter, though it had actually grown darker, sunset over and night falling. The sounds in the bathroom had stopped. Presumably Mitch had gone out into the sitting room. Yes, he heard his voice and the voices of the two women. Which meant the countess was still here.

Jerry put the box in the bottom of his suitcase and closed it up tight. That was the best he could do for now, and it was enough. It would hold long enough for them to get to Miami, and that was all it needed to do.

He opened the door to the sitting room, and Alma looked up, warmth in her face. "Room service is on its way up. I thought that might be the best thing tonight since we're all tired." And tired of dealing with the press, Jerry thought, though of course Al didn’t add that.

"Absolutely," Jerry said. "I'm ravenous."

S
tasi turned over on the rather narrow couch in the main room of the hotel suite, pulling the spare blanket around her. The windows were open to catch the breeze off the sea, drawing in voices of the last diners finishing their drinks on the terrace below. One bedroom was for the Seguras and the other for Mitch and Jerry. It had been a fairly wordless agreement that if anyone was taking the couch, and the room with the outside door with no one else in the room, it wasn't going to be Mitch. Which meant either Jerry shared the other room with Mitch or she did, and it would hardly be decent for her to. So she got the couch.