Night Moves (Doc Ford) - By RandyWayne White Page 0,10

eerie floating sensation in my head, as if dreaming, when I asked, “What in the hell just happened?”

Futch said, “I need a big shot of vodka. I’d drink one, too, if I wasn’t flying.” He pulled off his headphones and looked at me. “It makes no sense! Losing pitch control—doesn’t make a goddamn bit of sense! A week ago, we did the hundred-hour inspection. Went through the entire tail cluster. And triple-checked the elevator bell crank!”

I replied, “Bell crank,” as if I remembered the mechanical significance, although I didn’t.

“Exactly! I’m crazy anal when it comes to bell cranks. Maybe a cable broke, but . . . but it couldn’t have broken. Not in that piddly little bit of turbulence!”

Tomlinson was still laughing, telling himself, “Never get off the damn boat. Goddamn right! Why can’t I remember one simple little rule?” while Futch continued, “Always wondered if I could land with just the throttle and a trim wheel. Now we know. But, my god, I don’t want to ever have to prove it again.” He tilted his head back and took another long breath. “Geezzz-us, that was close!”

I said, “Incredible job,” and meant it. My door was still open. I poked my head out and looked down. The plane’s floats were aground in six inches of water, sawgrass almost as high as our wings as far as the eye could see.

Futch was still talking, dealing with the adrenaline crunch in his own way. “I’ll get out and take a look. But I need to sit here a minute, okay?” Then he repeated what he’d said about the recent hundred-hour inspection, adding that he had landed on wet grass lots of times because the FAA required his plane be hoisted off the ground to check the pontoons.

“There’s an industrial crane in Arcadia, but it’s miles from the water. So I always leave Boca Grande before sunrise and get there while the dew’s still heavy. See what I’m getting at?”

No, but I guessed it had something to do with me trying to direct him toward the sinkhole.

It did.

“When we went into that dive, boys, I thought we’d bought the f-ing farm. First thing pops into my mind was, Keep adding throttle ’till we stabilize, and stay the hell away from water. If I’d tried to land us in water at a hundred knots, the suction would’ve grabbed the floats and sent us ass-over-end. Which is why I didn’t make for that little pond. Right now, we’d either be upside down and sinking or we’d’ve of skipped into the trees at the other side. Probably on fire, too . . . the tank’s still almost full.”

My sense of reality was slowly rebooting, details were assuming form as, behind me, Tomlinson also began to recover. “From this moment on,” he said, “every second of every day is icing. Seriously. It’s like gambling with free money. Balls to the wall . . . savor every beautiful moment. My new motto is Live like there’s a lighted fuse in your butt. Because you never know when the big boom’s gonna come.” Then he tapped the back of my seat, demanding, “Let me out, let me out, I need some breathing room!” so I did. But I didn’t take my eyes off Dan Futch.

There was a reason. He had been palming the VHF microphone since the plane had stopped but had yet to make a call. Now he appeared undecided. Or . . . maybe there was something else on his mind. So I tried to help him along, saying, “You think traffic control will hear us from ground level? We’ll need some help getting out of here.”

While we were in the air, Futch had been too busy at the controls to shout a Mayday, but now he seemed to be postponing the inevitable call to air traffic control, and probably to the FAA. I don’t stay current on flight protocol, but we’d damn near died. The feds would want to know every detail.

Yes, buying time . . . that’s exactly what the man was doing. No doubt about it when he abruptly secured the microphone, then unclipped his harness. “Let’s find out what happened first,” he said. “You can sit here while I take a look . . . or get out and stretch your legs if you want. If there’s no serious damage, it won’t take long.” Then, nodding at a gauze bandage on my left forearm—a recent injury—he added, “You definitely don’t want to get