Chapter Nine Has Arrived

Sunday, June Twelfth, Six o’clock A.M.

The night before, Alex and Bruch had driven back to the airport to see what had happened to the plane, and if things were at all salvageable.  Also, Alex had been concerned about the status of statue that had still been in the plane.

Bruce and Alex were both silent when they’d gotten on to the tarmac and saw (what was left of) the plane. 

Bruce was the first one to speak.

“Ho – lee shit,” he said.

The Mooney was indeed rolled over on to its roof.  Both wings had been bent into shapes that weren’t especially conducive to flying.  It looked as though the windows had all shattered, although none of them had broken out and left the cockpit exposed to the elements.  The propeller was bent into an L shape.  It looked to Alex like the door was still closed, at least.

Bruce had continued swearing and starting sentences which just trailed off into more swearing.

“Wow, this is just beyond… god damn,” Bruce said.

Eventually, some of the crew from the airport made their way over, and arrangements were made to get the plane flipped back over and moved into one of the hangars for (extensive) repairs.

“I’m going to have to get it disassembled and shipped to the Mooney specialists,” Bruce said.  “Damn it.”

“Sorry, that sounds like a mess,” Alex said.

“You have no idea,” Bruce said.

They’d spent the rest of the night hanging out at the airport, waiting for the recovery crew to bring a crane and flip the plane back over.  There was a lot of other damage, and Bruce’s plane wasn’t particularly high priority for the airport.

Just a few minutes before six o’clock a.m., one of the FBO employees showed up with a box of donuts and a tray with cups of coffee.

Alex and Bruce had each taken a donut and a cup of coffee.

Alex was going about nuts.  He’d been dying to talk to someone all night, but no one at the airport had time to talk, and Bruce was just sitting in a sullen silence.  Alex had tried to get a conversation going with Bruce, but Bruce answered all of his questions with single syllables before going back to being silent.

So, the two of them sat inside the FBO, looking out a window with their coffee, waiting.

The crane arrived at about six fifteen in the morning.  Bruce, and then Alex, leapt up from the sofa they’d been sitting on and ran out to where Bruce’s plane, what was left of it, was sitting.

One of the crane crew came over to talk with Bruce.  He looked to be about thirty five, and had clearly been awake all night as well.  The name Zack was embroidered on the chest of his work shirt.

“Wow, that storm made a heck of a mess out of your plane,” he said.

“No shit,” Bruce said.

“Sorry bud, I’m not trying to upset you, no need to get testy,” Zack said.  “Anyway, what are we doing here?  Doesn’t look like this plane is going to be flying any time soon.”

“Let’s just get it upright, and bring it over to the A&P.  I’m going to have to have them take the wings off and truck the whole thing to Florida,” Bruce said.

“Ouch,” Zack said.  “Well, we can do that, no problem.  We’ll get to work on it.  It’d be great if you guys would stick close, in case we have any questions.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Bruce said.

Alex was surprised at how quickly they were able to get the plane flipped back over.  He’d kind of expected it to be a multi-hour project.  It seemed to Alex that it didn’t take them too much longer that it would have taken to get a car hooked up to a tow truck.

He briefly wondered how many times they’d been called out to flip planes back over in order to become so proficient at it.

Alex had been briefly aware that Bruce had been on the phone while the crane crew were working on the plane, but he’d been so fascinated watching what was happening with the airplane that he hadn’t caught any of Bruce’s conversation. 

And it’s not like Bruce’s conversation was any of Alex’s business anyway.  Secrets.

After Bruce had gotten off the phone, he said to Alex, “I’ve got another plane arranged for us, it’ll be waiting in San Diego and ready to go.  We’re going to have to fly commercial in order to get there, though, which means we’re going to have to hop on the next outbound flight from here to Dallas.  From there, we’ll be able to get on another flight with Sun Country to San Diego.”

“Wow.  OK, sounds good to me,” Alex said.  “What time do we leave here?”

“The flight to Dallas leaves at about 10:45. We should just have time to get our stuff out of the Mooney and get ourselves over to the commercial terminal for our ride to Dallas,” Bruce said.

“How are we going to get the statue there?” Alex said.

“Carry on,”  Bruce said.

“Seriously?  I wouldn’t think they’d allow it,” Alex said.

“Well, it’ll have its own seat.  You’re going to have to sit next to it,” Bruce said.

“We can do that?” Alex said.

“Of course.  Just try not to imply in any way that the statue is dangerous when we get to security.  I don’t think I need to tell you that those guys have no sense of humor,” Bruce said.

“Nope, I was already aware of that,” Alex said.

“It’s pretty much the reason I started flying my own plane,” Bruce said.

“Really?” Alex said.

“Well, that, and flying is just cool,” Bruce said.  “Anyway, let’s follow them over to the A & P, and get the statue out of the plane.”

“What’s the A & P, by the way?” Alex said.

“Airframe & Powerplant.  Airplane mechanics, in other words,” Bruce said.

“Ah.  Got it,” Alex said.

Alex had never really noticed just how big airports are when you have to walk from one place to another.  The trip over to the A&P hangar ended up being quite a hike from where they were.

It occurred to Alex that he was going to have to carry the statue from the A & P’s hangar to where ever the commercial terminal was.  That is, assuming that the statue was, in fact, still in the airplane at all.

Once they’d reached the A & P, Bruce told Alex they were getting a little low on time, and suggested that Alex go and get the statue out of the plane while he dealt with the technical stuff for the airplane.

Alex got to the plane, clambered up onto the now extra oddly angled wing, and fumbled with the latch for the door for a few minutes.  He knew opening the door shouldn’t be too tough, however, it was quite stubborn and refused to open with gentle persuasion.  It didn’t help that every move Alex made caused the airplane to groan and move in an unsettling way. 

He tried peeking in through the windows to see if the statue was still there, but he wasn’t able to see anything inside the cockpit clearly. 

On the one hand, Alex didn’t want to risk doing even more damage to Bruce’s plane.  On the other hand, he was worried about the statue and what kind of a state it was currently in. 

Alex got a firm grip on the door and yanked with as much force as he could muster.  The door opened with a horrendous screeching noise.  Out of the corner of his eye, Alex saw Bruce glance over to see what he was doing.

Alex stepped into the plane, and crouched down to see if the statue was still there, and unbroken.  He’d just knelt down on the right hand seat and was leaning back when he heard another groan coming from the plane, followed by an awful, drawn out screeching metal noise.  Then the cockpit rocked a bit and at almost the same instant there was a terrific crashing THUD.  Alex sat back up again, and saw, to his disbelief, that the wing he’d just been standing on had just fallen off of the plane.

“Oh shit,” Alex said.

He couldn’t see Bruce, because of the spider-webbed glass.  If that hadn’t been the case, Alex would have seen Bruce covering his eyes with one hand, and turning away.

After Alex had come to the conclusion that he was, for the time being, still OK, he got back to the task at hand, and climbed over the seat back to find out how the statue was doing.

To Alex’s immense relief, the statue was still wrapped up in a blanket and in the back of the plane.  It was wedged into the space behind the back of the seats.  It took a fair amount of wrestling to get it free (the seat adjustment levers no longer worked), but eventually it came loose.  Alex unwrapped the blanket on the left-side front seat, and saw that the statue was, apparently, completely unharmed.

“Woo hoo!” Alex shouted, before he caught himself and piped down again.

He wrapped the statue back up in the blanket, and tried to figure out how he was going to get out of the plane now.  He picked up the statue, and started trying to figure out if he’d be able to stand up on the seat and then jump out of the plane and on to the floor of the garage without breaking the statue or himself.

He’d just stood up on the seat when he heard a sickening groan come from underneath the plane.

“What was that?” is what Alex was going to say, except that the front landing gear had picked that moment to collapse.  The plane rocked forward and down very quickly, slamming to the floor of the hangar with another loud bang.

Alex was completely baffled as to how he’d managed to remain standing, and keep his grip on the statue.  However, the ground was now close enough that he just had to make a giant step out of the plane, and then he had both feet firmly on the floor, no jumping required.

“Well,” Alex said to Bruce.  “I guess that went about as well as possible.  Should we go catch our plane to Dallas?”