We Will Be Crashing Shortly by Hollis Gillespie

Author:Hollis Gillespie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: F+W Media

CHAPTER 14

I may have discarded numbers five and six of Otis’s rules for hand-to-hand combat, but not number four, the element of surprise. While Hackman had been headed back for Otis, I’d run onto the bus and found the gun he’d used previously. It must have been lost earlier in their battle, and had to be resting under one of the seats along the driver’s side, I knew, owing to the side wheelie Otis had popped on the way inside the hangar. Anything loose on the floor would have accumulated along the left side of the bus.

A look of surprise overtook the sneer on Hackman’s face as the bullet entered his forehead. A small red dot appeared over his right eye, then grew larger and seemed to bubble up and pour out down his face. He dropped where he stood, grazing Flo’s shoulder as he hit the ground. She kicked at him angrily.

I stumbled over and sat down next to her. “Give me that,” she said, and I handed her the gun. Sirens blared in the distance as she continued to stroke Otis’s forehead. I marveled at how relaxed his face seemed. The sound of sirens grew closer.

“Go,” Flo instructed me. I couldn’t just yet. “April, you just killed someone. You have to get.” I knew she was right. If I stuck around until the police arrived it could be days before I’d be free to find Malcolm, and that’s if the police believed a word I said, which they tended to be reluctant to do. There was also the problem that the only exit was through the front of the hangar, with nothing to hide behind for acres in each direction.

“Can’t you come with me?” I pleaded.

“Someone’s gotta serve as a witness and it can’t be you. You’re already wanted for one murder and here you are with another dead body.” Not to mention the pyramid of corpses on the other side of that airplane.

She was right again, and urged me again to go, so I did. I ran toward the scaffolding, grabbed one of the lunch boxes on the way, climbed into the L-1011, and hid there, peeking out the galley window as the flashing lights and sirens got closer. When they arrived I saw an ambulance, a fire truck, and two company security vehicles. Where are the police? They must have been close behind. I heard the EMTs pronounce Otis dead, then load his body into the back of the ambulance. One of the security vehicles drove under the plane over to its starboard side. The galley didn’t have a porthole on that side so I could only imagine their faces when they discovered the pile of desecrated caskets.

The other security officers tried to get Flo to go with them peacefully, but she kicked and cursed and hollered that the “real police” could find her at the hospital if they wanted to talk to her. I wasn’t surprised, considering that her opinion of security guards was three notches below her opinion of police officers.

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