Free Heart Strike by M. L. Buchman Page B

for a nighttime flight over the brilliantly lit landscape of the central Florida panhandle. He took the right-hand copilot’s seat and Melissa sat as pilot. She looked cute even in the big headphone and boom-mic rig of the intercom and radio.
    And he needed his head examined.
    They were in a Beech Baron. It felt familiar; it was essentially the twin-engine version of his dad’s Bonanza. There were more controls and instruments for the second engine, but the rest of it was familiar. It was a six-seater, including the pilot, and as comfortable as most Beechcraft planes were. He’d always found the Cessnas and Pipers to be less cozy and more noisy.
    Close behind them sat an instructor who hadn’t identified his rank or his branch of the military. He was just Vito Corrello.
    â€œPriest,” Melissa had tagged him immediately, showing that she was less out of it than he’d thought. Father Vito Cornelius had been the priest and wise man in The Fifth Element— well, the wisest of a not very swift lot.
    Vito the pilot hadn’t reacted when they’d called him that, which told Richie plenty. Their trainer had to be from the U.S. Army’s Aviation Center of Excellence at Fort Rucker. If he was Coast Guard or Air Force, he’d probably have been much friendlier. But because he was Army and they were Army, he would feel honor bound to be a complete hard-ass. And being from Fort Rucker’s ACE, he would be doubly so.
    He was.
    They were barely out of the pattern and clear of the airport when Vito told them to cut the left engine’s throttle to simulate a failure.
    Richie reached out, taking a moment for a quick look at Melissa in the soft red light cast by the flight instruments setup for nighttime flying. She offered an infinitesimal shrug, so he pulled back the power.
    Neither of them had been at the controls of a multi-engine airplane before so they didn’t know what to expect.
    The Beech Baron stumbled. As if it had caught its left wing in the weeds though they were two thousand feet up. It twisted to the left and then headed into a leftward roll—which would be fatal at their low elevation.
    â€œCopilot!” Vito snapped out loud enough to make Richie jump in his seat. “Feather the prop.”
    Richie had to think for a moment to remember that meant him. He reached out and yanked on the appropriate lever.
    â€œPilot! Right bank. Right rudder. Retrim.”
    He could feel Melissa’s instant response through their shared control yokes.
    â€œYou, copilot. Get that engine checked out and restarted.”
    Richie went through the standard protocol for if it had been a single-engine plane while Melissa fought the plane back into normal flight. Fuel—the tanks had plenty. He checked that the “Fuel Boost” switch was on because that sounded promising.
    Switch the magnetos —unlike a car, small airplane engines had two sets of electrics for firing the sparkplugs, just in case one failed. No change.
    He checked engine temperatures, which thankfully had a green range on the dial and the needle was in it. He found a de-icing switch and toggled it on—shouldn’t be a problem at low altitude in the Florida summer, but you never knew. He went through every step he could think of before answering: “Loss of engine appears to be solely due to shutdown of throttle.”
    â€œYou missed something,” Vito The Priest snapped. “What is it?”
    Richie had already done everything he’d ever been trained to do on a single-engine plane. When he reached for the manual that was lying across his lap from the startup and takeoff, The Priest shouted at him to use his brain instead. What was different about a two-engine plane that he didn’t get?
    Seeing nothing in the cockpit, he tried looking out into the darkness at the plane’s engines for a clue.
    â€œAbout time,” Vito snarled.
    Richie looked at Melissa. What had he done? He