Free Skyhammer by Richard Hilton Page B

the motor, the propwash beating back
     over his face. The wheels bouncing through the chuck-holes, and then suddenly the ground falling away, the shadow of the plane
     shrinking, crashing into the trees, the sky going big as they climbed out of the Clearwater Canyon. Jeeps had tried to scare
     him, rolling the plane over and looping it and bringing it down low again, skimming the unripened wheat. Then soaring up again,
     like a diver off a diving board, the green-gold fields receding, until the motor had reached the limit of its strength and
     the plane was suspended there for an instant, before it slipped backwards and fell off to one side, nosing straight for the
     ground.
    It didn’t scare him. He soloed two months later, and earned his commercial license within the year. Two years after that the
     Marines took him.
    But Jeeps Henry was long dead now. Pate had quit missing him years ago, didn’t want to think about him. Or any of it. All
     of those early days seemed like someone else’s. And he’d finally gotten nowhere, ended up with nothing.
    He tried to let himself sink into the nothingness, take shelter in it. He didn’t have to think at all for a while.
    But into his mind came a shadow, watching him. and at first he did not know what it was. Then it was Boyd, falling forward,
     and then backward, groaning while he grinned at Pate, and Pate’s heart raced again.
    My God, he thought, how
was
it possible he had done it?
    With a start, he opened his eyes. A half-inch of ash fell from the end of his burned-down cigarette.
    The smell of raw meat was in the air. The smell of blood. Holding his breath, turning, Pate looked at the dead man in the
     seat beside him. Sunlight was pouring through the cockpit’s left side window onto Boyd’s shirt. The shoulders of the shirt
     were still white, but the front and even the sleeves were the color of wet liver, the burgundy of blood congealing. It had
     soaked into Boyd’s seat, even dripped down onto the floor of the cockpit.
    Boyd’s head had fallen toward him. Pate stared at the face, stricken again with the odd, shuddering hope that Boyd was only
     pretending. But the bright sunlight was slicing between the half-open lids of the left eye, showing the vacant, dead blue
     of the iris.
    Three days ago he’d felt like killing Boyd. In the pawnshop on Lorain Avenue where he’d bought the silencer for his pistol,
     he had conceived his plan as if it would be some sort of repair job—this first, then that, step one, step two—simple, necessary.
     He had let a furious need for revenge make him think it necessary. But now it seemed crazy, like plunging off a cliff to take
     a shortcut.
    Except that was exactly why he had done it. Because memories were like lifelines his mind would toss down to him. He would
     think of Katherine and Melissa and Carrie, of Jeeps and Deke, of better times, because he wouldn’t be able to keep himself
     from reaching out, taking hold, changing his mind ... but none of it would make any difference now because he had already
     fallen too far. Now, if he thought of Mariella Ponti, or John Sanford, or all the rest of the passengers—if he forgot for
     a moment that they would be casualties of war ...
    But he would not think about them. As if turning his head, pate willed his mind forward again.
    He
was
sorry about Boyd, though. He looked at the blue eye again—as lifeless as the eye of a doll. No, it wasn’t Boyd’s fault after
     all—now that the cockiness was gone out of him, all Boyd’s arrogance, everything Pate had hated about him. But he couldn’t
     undo it. That was the whole point. Why it was necessary.
    For another minute Pate stared straight ahead at the brilliant haze on the horizon. Then he unbuckled his lap belt and pulled
     out of the well beside his seat the blanket he’d gotten from the first class overhead. He worked quickly to cover the body,
     tucking the edges in carefully, meticulously.
    Then he eased into his seat,