‘We’ve got to go back over the water!’ Lucy said. ‘Can’t shoot at them here. Kick your door open. Get it off the hinges and dump it!’
I somehow managed, the door ripping away as rushing air blasted me and the ground suddenly seemed closer. Lucy made another turn, and the Schweizer turned, too, as the needle on the fuel gauge slipped lower. This went on for what seemed forever, the Schweizer chasing us out to sea, and our trying to return to land so we could get down. It could not shoot up without hitting the rotor blades.
Then at an altitude of eleven hundred feet, when we were over water at a hundred knots, the fuselage got hit. Both of us felt the kicks right behind us, as close as the left rear passenger door.
‘I’m turning right now,’ Lucy said to me. ‘Can you keep us straight at this altitude?’
I was terrified. We were going to die.
‘I’ll try,’ I said, taking the controls.
We were heading straight toward the Schweizer. It couldn’t have been more than fifty feet from us, and maybe a hundred feet below when Lucy pulled back the bolt, chambering a round.
‘Shove the cyclic down! Now!’ she yelled as me as she pushed the barrel of the rifle out her open door.
We were going down a thousand feet per minute, and I was certain we would fly right into the Schweizer. I tried to veer out of its path, but Lucy would have none of it.
‘Straight at it!’ she yelled.
I could not hear the gunfire as we flew directly over the Schweizer, so close I thought we would be devoured by its blades. She fired more, and I saw flashes, and then Lucy had the cyclic and was ramming it into a hard left, cutting it away from the Schweizer as it exploded into a ball of flames that rolled us almost over on our side. Lucy had the controls as I went into a crash position.
Then as suddenly as the violent shock waves had hit, they were gone, and I caught a glimpse of flaming debris showering into the Atlantic Ocean. We were steady and making a wide turn. I stared at my niece in stunned disbelief.
‘Fuck you,’ she said coldly as fire and broken fuselage rained into sparkling water.
She got on the air, as calm as I had ever seen her.
‘Tower,’ she said. ‘Fugitive aircraft has exploded. Debris two miles off Wrightsville Beach. Negative survivors seen. Circling for signs of life.’
‘Roger. Do you need assistance?’ came the rattled response.
‘A little late. But negative. Am returning to your location for immediate refuel.’
‘Uh. Roger.’ The omnipotent tower was stuttering. ‘Proceed direct. Local authorities will meet you at ISO.’
But Lucy circled twice more, down to fifty feet as fire engines and police cars sped toward the beach with emergency lights flashing. Panicked swimmers were running out of the water, kicking and falling and fighting waves, arms flying, as if a great white shark were in pursuit. Floating debris rocked with the surge. Bright orange life jackets bobbed, but no one was in them.
ONE WEEK LATER, HILTON HEAD ISLAND
THE MORNING WAS overcast, the sky the same gray as the sea, when the few of us who had loved Benton Wesley assembled on an empty, undeveloped point on the plantation of Sea Pines.
We parked near condominiums and followed a path that led to a dune. From there we made our way through sand spurs and sea oats. The beach was more narrow here, the sand less firm, and driftwood marked the memory of many storms.
Marino was in a pinstripe suit he was sweating through, and a white shirt and dark tie, and I thought it might have been the first time I had ever seen him so properly dressed. Lucy was in black, but I knew I would not see her until later, for she had something very important to do.
McGovern had come and so had Kenneth Sparkes, not because they had known him, but because their presence was their gift to me. Connie, Benton’s former wife, and their three grown daughters were a knot near the water, and it was odd looking at them now and feeling nothing but sorrow. We had no resentment, no animosity or fear left in us. Death had spent it all as completely as life had brought it about.