Flight into Darkness (Flight Trilogy, Book 2) (2 page)

The copilot marked his place in the book with a two-dollar bill, and then he closed it, and admired the cover. “So inspiring. You must read this.”

Ryan strained, hoping the book’s title might provide a clue to why his subconscious had propelled him into such a crazy dream. The copilot’s hand blocked all but one word of the title:
Freedom
.

The book had something to do with freedom. It meant nothing to Ryan.

The copilot locked eyes with Ryan. In an out of character tone, the novel-reading pilot stated boldly in a voice much deeper than he had previously used, “Freedom is found in hope. You must not forget that. Everyone is depending on you. If you don’t find the answers, we will all die. It’s up to you. Everything is up to you. You must find freedom! Time is running out!”

In the blink of an eye, the copilot was no longer dressed casually nor was he reading his novel. He had returned to piloting the jet.

Ryan watched as the two pilots seated beneath him conducted their routine duties.

Then, the captain turned, looked up at him and smiled.

You’ve
got
to
be
kidding
—
Rex
?

“How’s it going, Dude?” Rex said.

Why
is
Rex
in
my
dream
?
He
trip
traded
with
me
and
is
flying
my
LAX
to
JFK
red
-
eye
.
He
is
probably
half
-
way
to
New
York
by
now
.
Sure
.
That’s
why
he
is
in
my
dream
.

Ryan played along, knowing he was not actually talking to Rex. “Thanks for flying my trip tonight. See you when you get home.”

I
think
I’ll
leave
now
and
float
away
to
something
more
interesting
.

Before he willed his dream to another setting, Rex said, “Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?”

Silence.

“Rex! Ready for what?”

My
voice
is
still
muted
.

Rex turned back to his piloting duties. Ryan urged his subconscious to find another fantasy—a different location—but, lucid or not, he was unable to will his dream in another direction. He was trapped in a familiar recurring nightmare, unable to escape the horror he knew was imminent—paralyzed on the wrong side of Death’s door.

Oh
no
!
Not
again
.
I’m
so
sick
of
this
.

Fear returned. His heart pumped wildly in his chest.

His recurring nightmare was, no doubt, the result of months of reflection on the brutal execution of the innocent pilots—just like himself—during the tragedy of 9/11. Until now, the pilots in his dream had been nameless. This time the dream was different. Rex was his friend.

He called out to warn Rex of what Ryan knew was coming, but, again, his attempt was muted by the dreammaker. Rex sat calmly at the controls.

Ryan turned to the copilot. He was no longer in his white pilot shirt, but, instead, now dressed in a monk’s hooded cowl. The hooded man looked up at him. The shadowed face of an albino man stared back, his blue eyeballs twitching back and forth like two pendulums on a metronome rocking at 300 beats per minute.

This
is
too
weird
.
Remember
,
it’s
all
a
dream
.
It’s
not
real
.
I’ll
wake
up
and
it
will
all
be
over
.
Get
ready
!
Here
it
comes
!

BAM! BAM! BAM!

The cockpit door burst open and slammed against the wall. In a blur of bodies and flailing arms, two screaming men charged through the opened door. In one swift motion, the first man yanked Rex’s head to the side and sliced a sharp blade across his exposed neck. The razor-sharp weapon quickly parted the protective layers of skin and muscles, ripping open his carotid artery and jugular. Life-giving blood spewed throughout the cockpit. Rex’s body fell limp in his blood-soaked seat.

NO
!

He attempted to reach for the attacker, but the fury that raged within his muscles was met with an unyielding resistance.

Please
!
Stop
!

It was too late. Rex’s head was severed to the fifth and sixth vertebra of his spine. The side cockpit window was opaque with bright, red blood.

The jet continued its climb into the tranquil sky undisturbed under the precise control of the autopilot.

The first man, his eyes dilated and crazed, turned and met Ryan’s panicked stare. In his right hand, the killer clinched a blood-soaked black, ceramic knife. His hands and arms were red up to his elbows. Dream or no dream, it felt real…it looked real.

Rex’s voice yelled out, “Act, don’t think!”

How
is
that
possible
?
Rex
is
dead
.

With his head still attached to his body, Rex peered from behind the lunatic; there was no sight of blood anywhere. “Ryan, don’t be blinded by your fear, act! Act now!”

“What do you mean?”

“Everything you need is here. You’ll find answers in ‘the here.’”

“What, find answers in ‘the here?’ That makes no sense! Answers to what?”

“Don’t let your fear blind you, get busy!”

Rex opened a small, compartment door in the ceiling of the cockpit and pulled out a rope that uncoiled onto the floor. One end of the rope remained attached to an anchor point in the ceiling. It was the emergency rope used by pilots to egress from the cockpit in the event normal exits are blocked. The rope had sufficient length to allow the pilot to repel down the exterior of the fuselage to the ground, but the rope was useless in flight.

Rex gathered the rope, crouched in the captain’s seat, and then dove through the cockpit’s thick, multi-layered, side window, as though it did not exist. He was gone, swept away into the dark of night.

Ryan’s attention returned to the crazed killer only seconds before the man jabbed the ceramic knife deep into Ryan’s chest. Ryan’s body lurched. His eyes fluttered open in a frightened panic. Soaked in sweat, he jerked up on his elbow.

Where
am
I
?

Tangible realities streamed into his mind: home, bed, my dream—a nightmare. His heart slowed to a normal rhythm. His muscles relaxed. He checked the clock on the nightstand—1:46 a.m.

He glanced over at Keri. She was sound asleep.

He remembered. He and Keri
had
gone to dinner. Rex
was
flying his trip. No one had died. Hoping to purge his mind of the horrid nightmare, he lay back in bed and took a deep, cleansing breath and exhaled.

When
will
the
pain
stop
?

His weekly flights to the East Coast, especially to New York and Boston, reinforced the visual images of horror. Choreographed by his evil dreammaker, these images torment him for the past ten months.

On Ryan’s descents for arrival at New York’s Kennedy or La Guardia airports, he would often gaze out the cockpit window at the location where the Twin Towers had once pierced the Manhattan skyline. At the mercy of demon-possessed men on a mission of death, thoughts of the panicked passengers and crewmembers aboard United Flight 175 riveted to his core.

On Ryan’s morning departures from Boston’s Logan International Airport headed for LAX, he retraced the steps of the doomed pilots on American Airlines Flight 11.

Nothing would ever be the same. The tragedy of 9/11 changed everything, acting as the catalyst that ignited much deeper struggles in Ryan’s life. His life-long love for flying had ebbed years earlier, replaced by a much greater passion—his family. The massive amounts of time he spent away from home weighed heavy on his heart. His children were growing up fast and he didn’t want to miss it—he’d already missed too much.

Perhaps the upheavals in the struggling airline industry were simply a divine sign that it was time for a change. The onslaught of cost cuts, layoffs, and bankruptcies had put many pilots on the street; others saw their pay slashed by as much as half.

Every passenger was the next terrorist. Every flight was the next target of some lunatic on a personal mission of death. Afraid she might worry more than she already did, Ryan had been unable to tell Keri how he
really
felt about his job.

He wanted to quit flying, find a normal job, and stay home with his family. Moving back to Georgia to raise their children in the same, safe surroundings he and Keri had known, brought a sweet relief.

He closed his eyes.

Please
God
,
help
me
find
a
way
out
.

CHAPTER 2

Ryan opened his eyes and checked the time as he’d done at 1:46…2:20…3:15…3:50…and 4:10 a.m., hoping it would be near enough to daylight that he could terminate his nightly dance with Mr. Sandman. The clock on the nightstand glowed—4:59.

Good
enough
.

His doctor called it “sleep performance anxiety” or the difficulty in returning to sleep after awakening. He’d said, “Simply put, when you wake during the night, you’re trying too hard to go back to sleep. You need to relax.”

Ryan was cursed with an overactive mind. When asleep, much like the power-saving feature of a computer, his mind compromised a complete shutdown by entering standby, suspend, idle, or sleep mode. If awakened, his neurotransmitters immediately commenced firing data files across the hundreds of trillions of synaptic clefts to waiting neuroreceptors. The endless files of sleep-stopping thoughts whirled through his cerebral analyzer at “thought speed” (six to seven times faster than real time) much like a dead, tree branch might whistle through a wood chipper.

It might be the thought of tasks he needed to do, had done, or had promised to help someone else do. Perhaps a schedule change he needed to submit to flight planning in the morning; or ways to silence the neighbor’s annoying, barking dog without doing something he might regret; or the details of a project his fifteen-year-old son, David, needed help with. Each thought led to a new thought, then another, until he tired. Many nights, as a hopeless insomniac, he wandered the house hoping things might be different when he returned to the battleground beneath his sheets.. They never were. Scorned by the sandman and cursed by Morpheus (the Greek god of dreams), sleep was not his friend.

The many years of irregular flight schedules and relentless disruptions of his circadian rhythm sentenced him to a life of fatigue. He’d slept so little in the past ten months that his fatigue now kept him awake. Sunrises and sunsets were met with the same cold indifference; the horizon merely the thin line dividing fatigue from insomnia.

Beside him, Keri breathed softly, oblivious to the demons of the night. Sleep always found her within a minute of putting her head on the pillow and closing her eyes. She seldom stirred during the night; after eight hours, she woke in the same position in which she had gone to sleep—rested and invigorated. Ryan attributed such perfect sleep to her ability to live in the moment and her peace that was the result of great faith. To her, the far future was next week, and she trusted God completely to take her there whether or not she planned the journey.

Ryan’s strong mainspring was wound tight. He dwelled as much in the future as in the present, envisioning where he wished to go, relentlessly mapping the path that ought to lead him to his high goals. Although he, too, trusted in God’s divine guidance, he struggled with control issues.

Considering their contrasting natures, they shared a love that seemed unlikely. Yet love was the cord that bound them together, the sinewy fiber that gave them strength to weather disappointment, trials, and even tragedy.

Weary from brooding over another night of broken sleep, he lifted his tired body from the bed, careful not to wake Keri. Pausing, he stared out the open window into the black of morning. A familiar, low, mellow call of a morning dove broke the silence, “coo-ah, coo-coo-coo.” It was a mournful, yet pleasing sound that reminded him of the warm country evenings as a young boy growing up in Georgia.

A cool breeze brushed across his face. He drew in a breath then moved quietly around the end of the bed and into his dressing room, pulling the door closed before flipping on the light.

The walk-in closet was large enough to accommodate a “his” and “hers” side. On the “his” side, collared shirts hung on racks, evenly spaced, fronts facing to the right, and systematically ordered: work shirts to the left and casual shirts to the right. On a lower rack, pants hung evenly spaced and ordered. Pull-over shirts were stacked and perfectly folded on shelves. His watch, ID tags, wallet, and keys all in their dedicated place and orientation. His bills were folded and arranged; twenties in the back, ones in the front. Coins were neatly stacked; quarters always on the bottom, then nickels, then pennies, then dimes.

He’d always approached his professional life head-on with a plan; always in control; always expecting to succeed. Every event was handled the same way: understand the situation; develop a plan; execute the plan. His disciplined approach to life had yielded him many trophies. He’d graduated top in his class, both in high school and at the U.S. Naval Academy. He finished first in his pilot training class. He landed an airline job with his top pick of companies.

However, his personal life had not been so perfect. He was blindsided in his first marriage when his California bride, Emily Anderson, abandoned him after two tumultuous years. But the bittersweet circumstances surrounding her departure birthed the miracle that brought him back to Keri, his first love.