Doomsday Match (The Dresden Codex), page 2
“B-Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”
Another pitch. Rain lashed the window so fast, it blurred everything except the darkness. Estrada could see the maw of the jungle out the smeared windows. It was rising to bite them.
“Pull up! Pull up!” Estrada screamed.
Miguel continued to fight the yoke. It was going right, left, up, and down as the plane was pummeled by wind. Thunder boomed through the cockpit and lightning blinded them both. It wasn’t rain now. It was hail.
Hail? In a jungle?
“Holy Mary, Mother of God!” Miguel wailed.
The plane pitched violently to the left. Estrada felt his chest straining against the belt. Another lurch and he struck his face against the side of the cockpit. Stinging pain flared on his cheekbone.
“Pray for us sinners . . . !”
Estrada was a passive Catholic, but the words came to him as he waited, any moment, for the plane to crash through the canopy. Their voices joined, quavering in fear.
“. . . now and at the hour of our death. Amen!”
In that moment, Estrada wasn’t thinking about the value of the equipment strapped behind his seat, rattling and shaking along with the groans of the fuselage. He wasn’t thinking about the lease on the plane or the immense server lab at UC San Diego.
He was thinking about dying. His body would be devoured by the jungle, his bones picked clean until they too moldered into paste. He’d seen enough skeletons in his life to know that his remains wouldn’t be preserved like the Maya kings, entombed in stone.
He heard slapping noises against the hull of the plane.
The trees.
He shut his eyes, babbling in fear, propping his boot up against the cockpit dashboard to brace for impact.
And then the plane began to lift, to soar. The throttle revved, and the noise of the engines drowned out their muffled sobs.
Estrada blinked in surprise. Tears had joined the sweat on his cheeks. They were rising over the jungle, higher and higher, heading south. The yoke was calm once more.
Miguel gripped one of the yoke handles with one hand and scrubbed his cheeks with his other hand, dislodging his sunglasses. He was pale with terror.
“We . . . we almost died!”
The altimeter showed they were at three thousand feet, then four thousand, then five, rising rapidly.
A distant boom of thunder behind them was louder than the props. Estrada wished he could see out the back to look at the storm that had come from nothing and nearly hurtled them out of the sky. His pulse was still running wild.
“Th-The airport,” he stammered.
“Okay, boss.” Miguel glanced back at Estrada. “I’m never crossing into the Calakmul biosphere again. Ever.”
Estrada nodded in agreement. They’d spent hours crisscrossing the jungles of Guatemala for this project. Already they’d found tens of thousands of structures abandoned by the Maya. There was more work than he could do in a lifetime in Guatemala.
He had no idea whom they’d seen in the heart of the jungle. Something told him it would be better if they never knew.
CHAPTER TWO
UNITED FLIGHT 1119
BOZEMAN, MONTANA TO CANCÚN, MEXICO
December 23
“Dad, why is the plane shaking so much?” There was a tremor in Lucas’s voice. Worry.
“Turbulence. Pilots often call it ‘rough air,’ but it’s really just sky farts.” Roth noticed the way his son was clenching the armrests, squeezing them until his knuckles blanched, as the cabin jostled. He was grateful only ice was left in his cup, and he watched as the cylindrical tubes bumped around. The turbulence was bad enough to spill a drink. He hated turbulence himself—it terrified him—but calming his son’s fear helped him cope with his own.
Roth’s wife, Sarina, patted Lucas’s hand comfortingly. The tray table in front of her was down, with her copy of the New York Times’s easy crossword puzzles open in front of her, the pencil wedged in the crease.
The seat in front of Roth lowered back sharply, and his daughter Suki’s dyed bangs appeared in the gap, her teal-rimmed glasses partway down her nose. She gave him her typical deadpan expression. “Did you seriously just say turbulence is ‘sky farts,’ Dad?”
“I’m just trying to help Lucas understand there’s nothing to worry about,” he said, giving his daughter a meaningful look so that she wouldn’t aggravate the situation. Being the eldest, she was usually helpful in these situations. But sometimes she liked to provoke the twins.
“Did you know they have categories of turbulence?” he asked Lucas, attempting to distract him from the ongoing bumps. “Like they do for hurricanes or tornados.” Another sharp drop made his stomach flutter. He hated flying sometimes, especially when the plane was descending, as theirs was, toward the airport in Cancún. Out the window, he could see the Hotel Zone with the gleaming paradisiacal resorts nestled along the creamy beaches inside the reef.
“And what would this one be?” Suki asked with a twinkle in her eyes. “An F1?”
“I shouldn’t have drunk the whole cup of soda,” Lucas said. “I need to pee really bad.”
“You’ll have to wait for the airport. Just . . . hold it,” Roth said. His voice quavered as another jolt of turbulence happened midspeech. Lucas grabbed his hand and squeezed really hard. It was slightly mortifying that a man of his size, girth, and with a formidable beard, should be gibbering in terror on the inside while his sixteen-year-old looked as calm as milk, and the other twin—Bryant, whom they’d nicknamed Brillante, pronounced “bree-ant-ay” in Spanish—was so distracted by his Nintendo Switch he hadn’t even noticed the turbulence.
“This is just Lucas’s anxiety showing itself,” Sarina said. She patted their son’s other arm. “We’re about to land. It’ll be over soon.”
We’re approaching a concrete runway at five hundred miles an hour, wobbling uncontrollably. What could possibly go wrong? Roth thought. But indulging his own fear wouldn’t help the situation. What he needed to do was distract his son.
Sarina picked up her pencil, rubbing the eraser against her bottom lip. Her ancestors were from the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, which was one of the reasons they’d jumped at the chance to spend Christmas in Cozumel. Sarina’s ancestors were from a more rural area, which was much more dangerous to visit because of the extensive influence of the drug cartels. A touristy place like Cozumel should be perfectly safe. As an additional incentive, they only had to pay for airfare and any food or souvenirs they bought outside the resort. The resort they were staying at was free. Another perk of being a New York Times bestselling author and having wealthy neighbors in Bozeman.
The shaking of the 737 felt a little like the earthquakes Roth and Sarina had grown up with in the San Francisco Bay Area in California, although not as bad as the ’89 Loma Prieta quake. Lucas squeezed his hand even harder.
A story. He needed to think of a story to tell his son. It would have the added benefit of distracting Roth himself from the landing. To him, landing was the most terrifying part of flying. The only way he could bring himself to get on a plane was to sit next to the window so he could watch everything. Well, almost everything. He hated being in a seat over the wings because whenever the wings trembled, he imagined they might suddenly fall off.
He could see the jungles of Mexico outside the city limits of Cancún, just a smear of brown trees below, such a different scene from the snowy roads and mountains surrounding Bozeman that they’d left very early that morning. The layover in Denver had been snowy too.
The thought heartened him a little—Mexico was just what they needed, a little escape from the winter tundra they were living in now. He hadn’t realized how much the weather affected him until they’d moved from Fremont, California, to Bozeman two years ago.
“You’re looking a little green, Dad,” Suki observed worriedly. “They have those little bags in the backs of the seats.”
“Is Dad going to barf again?” Brillante suddenly piped in, interested. His face crowded against Suki’s in the gap between the seats. She wrinkled her nose and gave him a little shove. She was off the charts on the introverted scale and didn’t like anyone intruding on her personal space.
Roth frowned at his other son. It was a reference to a recent vacation to Disney World. Roth had lost his lunch after going on the Avatar ride.
“I’m fine,” Roth said stoically. He loosened his grip, glancing out the window again. The Cancún airport could be seen in the distance, to the south of the city, along with the beautiful blue coastline. The ocean had different colors to it, based on the coral reef. It was an amazing sight. They weren’t going to the nearby Hotel Zone since the resort they were staying at was on the island of Cozumel.
They were descending rapidly, the turbulence easing a little, when a story came to him. “Once I flew to Colorado for a grad-school interview.” That was a long time ago. Twenty years ago. Although he’d gotten accepted, he’d decided to stay in California and teach at Hayward State. One of the reasons for that decision was because he’d met Sarina there. While he’d spent eight years getting his undergrad degree because he loved learning everything and kept changing his major, she was more sensible and had gotten her nursing degree and been promoted to charge nurse in the ER in the same amount of time.
“We took a 747 to Denver, and the turbulence was so bad. I mean, really bad. One of the engines fell off.”
“Seriously?” Suki asked, pushing her glasses higher up her nose. She had short-cropped hair, dyed brown to disguise its natural black. The boys didn’t care that they looked like their mom. Suki did. She preferred people to think she was half-Japanese, not Hispanic. She’d seen how Hispanic students in her school in Fremont were treated, particularly the ones with ethnic last names, and the same prejudice existed in Bozeman. It disgusted Roth. His wife had dealt with similar prejudice in her childhood, and they’d both hoped attitudes would be different by the time their children started school.
“I thought I was going to have a heart attack,” Roth said, “but the guy next to me said not to worry. ‘It’s a 747; they have four engines. They can fly just fine with three.’ Sure enough, the pilot came on and said our arrival to Denver would be delayed a half hour, but we were good.”
Sarina knew the story. She smiled and said nothing, looking down at her crossword puzzle. Lucas was staring at him in surprise.
“Ma’am, tray tables need to come up,” said a flight attendant, who then took their used cups with her blue-gloved hands. Sarina handed over her empty cup and clicked up first her tray table and then Roth’s, while he continued the story.
“A little later, the turbulence shook us so bad another engine broke loose. Crashed on a house somewhere in Vail. A mansion, I think. No one was hurt, thankfully. Two engines gone. I was really starting to freak out. But the guy next to me said, ‘Don’t worry . . . it’s a 747. It can fly fine on two engines.’”
Lucas’s eyebrows lifted even higher. The mop of curly hair on his head shook a little from another slight bout of turbulence. “Dude!”
This was why Roth loved telling stories. He loved getting people interested and then throwing them curves. History was unpredictable, and so were Roth’s books.
“The pilot came on again. You could hear the worry in his voice. He apologized for the mechanical troubles. This was a long time ago. Planes weren’t as safe back then. He said that we’d be okay, but the delay was now an hour to Denver. We were flying over the Rocky Mountains, right? Imagine crashing there. We would have turned into cannibals before they’d found any survivors.”
“Cringey, Dad,” Suki said, wrinkling her nose. “Utter cringe.”
Sarina shook her head and went back to her crossword puzzle, which was now on her lap.
“Dude!” Lucas repeated, shaking his head.
Brillante had gone back to the Switch. It was probably the soccer video game he loved to play. FIFA something. Sarina and Roth liked to call him their absent-minded professor because of how absorbed he got in whatever he was doing. When he was in the zone, playing a video game or watching TV, not even pizza could yank him out. Roth dreaded the day his son would get his first smartphone.
“Outside the window, I could see the snow-capped peaks. I thought . . . man, this is bad! We’re going to crash in the mountains. Like . . . this is real. I’m going to die strapped in this seat.” He looked at his kids solemnly. “Then the third engine failed. It didn’t fall off. The engine failed. Quit.”
The guy sitting on the aisle seat, across from Sarina, was leaning forward, looking at him too. An older guy with silver hair. Retired probably, heading to Cancún for some downtime.
“What happened?” Lucas whispered.
Roth sighed. “Three engines down. Only one left. The pilot came on again. He was terrified. You could hear it in his voice. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have one engine left. I’ve increased the speed of our landing to compensate, but it’s going to be tight. Denver is still the closest airport. There’s no turning back. Crew, prepare for a crash landing if that last engine fails. We’re two hours out now over rugged terrain. But if that engine holds, we’ll make it there by five o’clock.”
Roth changed the tone and speed of his voice as he told the story, techniques that drew a person in. He paused, looking from face to face. The old guy looked as if he were going to have a heart attack.
Time for the twist.
Roth leaned forward, licked his lips, and stroked his beard. Glancing outside, he could see they were about to land themselves. The turbulence had stopped. “The engine . . . held. We made it to Denver. Hours late. But we made it. When we landed, I turned to the guy next to me. ‘That was the closest I’ve ever come to dying,’ I said. ‘Just think if that last engine had failed. Whew.’” Roth couldn’t stop the grin. “The guy next to me was so relieved too. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘We would have been stuck up there forever!’”
Ba-da-boom!
Suki frowned, folded her arms, and turned away. “That was so funny, Dad.”
Lucas looked confused. “What? You would have crash-landed! Oh!” Now he got the joke. Each engine failure had caused a delay. So naturally, the final failure would have stranded them in the sky. Counterintuitive. The kind of punchline that Roth loved.
“Was Dad in a plane crash?” Brillante asked, his game over, his eyebrows wrinkled in confusion.
“It was just one of his stories,” Sarina said. Roth liked the twinkle in her eyes.
The old guy sitting across from her was shaking his head. “I . . . I really believed you!” he said.
“My husband’s an author,” Sarina said to him. “He likes telling stories.”
The captain made the final announcement before landing. Sarina stuffed her crossword-puzzle book into her bag. He caught a glimpse of her insulin equipment there—the extra cartridges and tubing for the pump, some bagged needles, rubbing alcohol packets, and so forth. The accoutrements of type 1 diabetes. She kept the pump in her pocket, the tube hidden beneath her shirt, and it gave her the exact dosage she needed to control her blood sugar level.
The technology to help diabetics was a lot more user friendly these days. Especially if you could afford it.
“You drank a soda,” he told her. “When do you need to replace the cartridge?”
“When we get to the resort,” she said. “I changed it two days ago, so I have another day before I need to refill it.” She was careful about her sugar, but they were on vacation now. It was time to relax and enjoy life. Strawberry daiquiris from a hammock, that kind of thing. They were supposed to go snorkeling off Cozumel on Christmas Eve and eat fresh ceviche and chips while standing in the water. And what he was looking forward to most: they’d be visiting some of the ancient Maya ruins—now tourist locations—San Gervasio, Tulum, and Chichén Itzá . . . unless the plane broke into a bajillion flaming pieces of twisted metal on the runway at five hundred miles an hour.
He turned his face to the window, watching as the airport in Cancún loomed ever larger.
He watched the little flaps on the wing go up and down. At the back of the wing, a section detached and started to slide down with a mechanical groan. He could see the strange-looking houses and yards between the gaps, all cramped and odd-shaped—each one unique, not carbon-copy groupings of houses like the suburban neighborhoods he’d grown up in. Definitely different from the part of Bozeman where they lived, where the houses were spread far apart, nestled in the hills beneath the mountains, separated by trees and land rather than fences. They’d visited during a trip to Yellowstone for a family reunion a few years previously and had fallen in love with the raw beauty of Montana and the way it coexisted with nicely developed cities like Bozeman. The area was referred to by the locals as Sourdough, after the canyon and creek that provides water for a large portion of its inhabitants. They hadn’t learned about the nickname until they’d moved in. As they were from the San Francisco area, “sourdough” had a totally different meaning for them and referred to bread, not a land feature.
Unable to look away from the view of Cancún, he stared, watching the traffic rush by. So many minibuses. Then he saw the runway. His heart was beating fast. Sweat trickled down his brow to be lost in his majestic beard.
Yes, this moment was the worst part of flying—the anticipation of the huge rubber tires meeting the unforgiving concrete.
Once, he’d flown out of San Jose International to attend Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, his first, and they’d hit some ducks on takeoff. There’d been a noticeable thump, and then the smell of cooked fowl had filled the cabin. Because it had happened at takeoff, the pilot had no choice but to go in a circle and land so that the engines could be inspected. Roth had needed to switch planes, and he’d barely made it to the Washington State Convention Center in time for his panel and book signing. Even though it was his first, there had been quite a crowd waiting for him. That part of the memory brought a smile.
