Free Skyhammer by Richard Hilton Page A

chest.
    Pate’s mouth had clamped tight. The air was shooting in and out through his nose. He let go his breath in a sharp cough and
     fell back against the outer wall of the cockpit.
    Boyd didn’t move. Pate watched him, waiting to see his chest rise, take another breath. A terrible gout of dread hit him.
     Was Boyd actually dead? Had he done this? He felt his heart hammering in his chest and temples, the sweat pouring down the
     insides of his arms. The gun dropped into his lap. His hands shook uncontrollably as he tore into his kit and found the carton
     of cigarettes. He ripped the cardboard open. He could hardly get a pack open and light the cigarette.
    But it was over. Right or wrong, it was done. Keeping his eyes closed, he put his head back and took another deep drag on
     the cigarette. He had no choice now, except to follow through.

F IVE
    Flight Deck
    New World Flight 555
    17:17 GMT/12:17 EST
    A month ago he had seen Katherine. He’d been living in Cleveland three weeks by then, thinking still that his life would—like
     a film run backward—somehow fall together again. Thinking it, but knowing differently. He’d spent nights sitting in darkness,
     treating his pain with silence, booze, and cigarettes, knowing they weren’t cures for the way he was feeling.
    Katherine had called him. They had to settle things, she said. Pate could still remember the flatness of her voice. That strength
     of hers working her through the pain that was eating him up. He’d flown into Albuquerque the next afternoon, arriving at sundown.
     She had rented a house on the west side, a shabby box, located ironically, almost directly under the approach to the airport.
    His stepdaughters met him at the door, Carrie leaping to hug him, Melissa cautious, not knowing if it was okay to show she
     was glad to see him. When he hugged her, though, she whispered in his ear, “I still love you.” Melissa had always been his
     best pal. He’d taught her fly fishing. They’d spent whole days together up along the trout streams east of Albuquerque.
    He and Katherine did not even touch. They said next to nothing while they sat in the front room and the girls told him of
     all the things they’d been doing. But later, when they were alone in the kitchen, she told him she’d found a job.
    “Keeping books, helping manage a motel.” She stood at the sink, her back to him.
    “I’m glad,” Pate said. He felt washed by sadness, though, realizing that she was back where she’d been after her first marriage
     had failed. He saw her reflection in the dark window above the sink, saw that she was crying, trying hard to hold it in. And
     then he knew she was thinking the same thing he was thinking: It was over, finished.
    He slept on the sofa, too broke to get a motel room. The next morning, he did not even try to feel different about the whole
     rotten deal. He simply left without looking back, feeling completely emptied of all desire to do anything more than get out
     of her life before he screwed it up anymore.
    Even that wasn’t the end of everything. You never stopped hoping, Pate thought now. Not until it was too late.
    The cockpit cooling fans hummed softly. The air passing over the windscreen hissed like a gas flame. He could hear the engines,
     too, whispering a higher moan. With his eyes closed he was disconnected, floating through space, the whine of the slipstream
     as steady as the wind coming down off the Camas Prairie. He thought of the loose, crazy freedom of that time, when he was
     16 when he’d learned to fly. A man named Jeeps Henry had taught him. A cropduster, a rough-edged old flyer from Texas who’d
     jockeyed fighter jets in Korea. One day Pate had watched him dusting, and the next day asked him for a job.
    After two months of cleaning tanks and sprayer heads, he’d gotten Jeeps to take him up in his restored Stearman biplane. Such
     a long time ago, but Pate could still remember the day clearly: The stuttering roar of