This is for the winter fic exchange and is version two of the prompt 'Henry has to rescue Elizabeth from a bad situation by flying a plane.' Thanks to everyone on Tumblr who offered plane-related help and advice, you are all amazing and wonderfully knowledgeable and saved me from heading down the rabbit hole of the internet. I owe you.
I'm not yet entirely sure how this fic is going to go (you may need to suspend your disbelief ever so slightly as the plot heads ever further off-kilter haha) but I hope you enjoy this first little chapter :)
Chapter One
86 hours in
Sweat. He was very conscious of the sweat.
It soaked into his clothes and dripped from his hairline and made his hands slippery as he worked to adjust the controls in front of him. He had forgotten about the sweat in the years since his retirement from the Marines. It got into his eyes, making them sting and water.
Henry McCord blinked rapidly to clear his vision. This was a situation he could not afford to mess up. It had to go perfectly; there was so much riding on this one flight.
A crackle came over his headphones, followed by a disembodied voice. "Still there, buddy?"
He lifted one hand to adjust the microphone attached to his helmet. "Still here."
"I've had them on the phone again," said the guy on the other end of the communication, the crackling on the line not entirely hiding the discomfort in his tone.
"What are they gonna do? Scramble a jet to stop me?" The only reason he was in the sky to begin with was that they wouldn't officially send up a plane. The only option had been to take matters into his own hands.
There was a pause on the other end. And then, "Are you sure this is –"
"Stop." Henry cut off whatever it was the other man had been planning to say. He could guess. No doubt Joe Clegg was having second thoughts about helping him out. No doubt he'd been getting pressure from people very high up in the chain of command to bring Henry quite literally back down to earth. The pressure would be coming from the Pentagon and the Office of the White House Chief of Staff. And Conrad Dalton would no doubt be pissed as hell so maybe there was even pressure from the Office of the President.
Not the State Department.
Henry turned off the sound to the voice in his ear and turned his attention back to the view through the window.
Flight conditions were not too good, making the ride choppier than he would have liked. The sky was mostly clear, giving him a good view of the flight path ahead, but there was a hefty wind that buffeted the plane and made him work to keep on track. A particularly nasty pocket of turbulence sent the plane bumping along for several seconds and Henry felt his stomach flip, hands clutched firmly around the controls as he drew closer to his destination.
When the wind lessened again, Henry looked down at the ground below, the trees of the small pocket of rainforest gradually thinning out to be replaced by buildings and open spaces and empty roads, many of which no longer went to any destination, just ran into the trees and stopped abruptly somewhere in the undergrowth.
One working road in, one road out. That was it. That much he knew.
He deliberately overshot the far end of the little coastal town at the edge of the rainforest to fly out over the ocean so he could circle back around, scoping the area. Before he had got in the plane he had already identified his preferred landing spot from satellite photos, but he wanted to get a better lay of the land before descending. Once he landed, he figured he would not have much time to do what he needed to do before getting out again.
His life depended on it – and not just his life.
A bead of sweat rolled down his face and pooled in the groove above his top lip. His stomach rolled as he banked the plane once more, bringing it round in a wide loop preparatory to making his landing.
The sweat and the queasiness, while a mainstay of flying and something he had experienced plenty of times during his career in the Marines, could only partly be blamed on the conditions of the flight. The rest of the blame lay with the fact that his wife was in trouble, and Henry was terrified that he was arriving too late to help her. Terrified at the unknown of what he might find when he landed.
What if the White House and the Pentagon were right, and this was a trap, something set to bait them?
Henry didn't care. If it turned out to be a trap at least he would be with Elizabeth, where he might be able to help her, and could at least make sure that she was protected and not alone. The threat of trouble upon landing only worked to strengthen his resolve, focusing his anger and his terror and the sheer blind worrying panic that had taken up residence inside him three days ago when he was told she was in trouble and that had failed to shift ever since. He didn't care what was thrown at him. He was going to find Elizabeth and get her out. Get them both out and back home safely.
With the plane settled on its path to Henry's chosen makeshift landing strip, he started to bring the aircraft down to the once-abandoned logging town of Puerto Verde.