Chapter 14
The police cruiser screeched to a halt fifty yards short of the active runway, the emergency lights casting sweeping red and blue reflections across the corrugated metal walls of the hangar bay. Detective Miller flung his door open before the vehicle had even fully stopped, drawing his service weapon as he sprinted toward the edge of the tarmac.
Marcus and Elena tumbled out of the back seat right behind him, the roaring whine of the Cessna's twin engines vibrating through the concrete beneath their boots as the aircraft gathered speed down the runway.
"He's not going to make airborne altitude," Marcus shouted over the deafening noise, shielding his eyes from the swirling dust kicked up by the propellers. "The fuel mixture is set for a cold start! The engine will stall out before he clears the treeline!"
Detective Miller lowered his weapon for a fraction of a second, watching in horror as the small plane lifted its nose off the asphalt, hovered awkwardly at a dangerous thirty-degree angle for three agonizing seconds, and then began a sickening, uncontrolled wobble to the left.
"Julian!" Elena screamed into the roaring wind, her hands cupped around her mouth as if her voice could somehow reach through the glass cockpit.
From inside the cockpit, the plane's landing lights flashed twice in a frantic Morse code—an old signal Julian and Marcus used to use as children when playing games in the backyard. Then, the port engine sputtered, coughing a thick plume of black smoke into the twilight sky as the aircraft's nose dipped sharply toward the dense pine woods beyond the perimeter fence.
"Get down!" Detective Miller roared, tackling Elena and Marcus backward toward the safety of the cruiser just as the Cessna clipped the top branches of the outermost pines with a terrifying screech of tearing metal.
The impact wasn't a massive explosion, but rather a sickening, crunching thud that echoed across the airfield, followed by an eerie, heavy silence as the engine died completely.
For five endless seconds, nobody moved. The red and blue emergency lights continued to flash silently against the darkening pine trees in the distance.
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Elena pushed herself up from the gravel, ignoring the scraped palms of her hands and the dust covering her patterned blouse. Without waiting for the detective, she broke into a ragged, desperate run toward the broken perimeter fence where wisps of white smoke were beginning to curl upward from the dark tree line.
Marcus was right beside her, leaping over the downed chain-link barrier with athletic ease and clearing a path through the briars so his stepmother could reach the wreckage first.
