Wind Shear (eBook)

Chapter One

“Bart, how would you like to start up an airline with me?”

The background noise in the restaurant wasn’t ear shattering but I still thought I must have misheard Jack. A Senior VP of one of the largest airlines in the world doesn’t leave his job to start up an airline.

“Say what?”

“You heard me, I want to start up an airline and I’d like you to do it with me. I know I’ll need someone with your abilities.”

Fortunately for me, our server came by to take away our dinner plates and ask about desert. Jack waved her off and reached for the bottle of Cabernet on our table and refilled our wine glasses. That wasn’t enough time for me to think, so I temporized. “This is why you asked me to dinner, right? You take me to one of the best steakhouses in town, ply me with cocktails and wine, and then you want me to go off with you?”

Jack laughed, “Yea, that’s about right.” He reached into his jacket pocket for a pen and looked for something to write on. All he could come up with was the white cotton table napkin, so he spread it out and drew circles identified as Love Field in Dallas, Hobby airport in Houston, Fort Lauderdale and Fort Myers in Florida and started linking them to cities in Mexico and the Caribbean.

“I want to call it GoldCoast Airlines.”

As stunning as the offer was, I knew it would be very hard for me to say no to Jack.

Five Years Earlier

I’d been standing on the side of the interstate on ramp with my large-lettered sign stating Houston or bust for over an hour. I was somewhere an hour or so outside of Memphis. The light rain falling was just additional proof that my luck hadn’t changed. That was not a surprise as my run of bad luck was now over a year long. The irony was that until things started going bad, my life had been going well. It hadn’t been a life where someone would have expected to find me hitchhiking across country, broke and jobless.

My hitchhiking had started two days ago in Washington D.C. when following another argument with my live-in girlfriend I decided I had had enough—enough of job hunting, enough of encouraging, supportive friends, enough of living off of my girlfriend, enough of part-time minimum wage work like literally on one job rolling pennies in a bank and on another moving furniture in an office. Now, I was brought up to honor work of all types but given that I had not only a law degree from Georgetown but also a Masters in International Law, also from Georgetown for which I had a full Fellowship, I was definitely underperforming.

A white Ford F150 pulled over a hundred yards past me and the driver waved at me to come. He even opened the side door. I grabbed my backpack and trotted to him. My quick read said not an ax murderer, so I threw my sign in the back of his truck and got in the passenger front seat.

“Thanks!”

“I can take you as far as Dallas.”

“That would be great! My name’s Bart.”

“Dave.”

We had driven through Memphis in silence when he asked, “So what’s your story? I drive a lot for my work, so when I get bored I pick up a hitchhiker and hope for the best.”

I considered just giving a throw-away answer. But he was doing me a favor… maybe he’d get a laugh out of what had been happening to me — not that it was particularly funny. I answered, “Then you’re out of luck this time — my story isn’t very interesting. I can’t seem to get anything going. That’s my story — or lack thereof.”

“How so?”

“In the last year, anything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Job offers that I should have got went to somebody’s cousin, or the law firm lost a big client, or some secretary forgot to mail out the offer letter. Also, my identity was stolen and that caused all sorts of on-line problems. Then my mom died. Trust me, sometimes it feels like my life is now an old slapstick comedy and I’m the one slipping on the banana peel.”

“Sounds like it, I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault. Probably it’s mine, I just don’t know why.”

“Sometimes you just have to ride things out,” Dave offered.

“I guess so, but I just wore out on it. I needed to start fresh somewhere. What I was doing wasn’t working.”

“So you just took off with your backpack?”

“Pretty much.”

“My youngest son did that. We get a postcard from him every so often. Always a different place. He says once he started going he couldn’t stop.”

A few moments passed by. “Why Houston?”

“Why not?”

When we reached Dallas, I had him drop me off near the Interstate exit where there was a supermarket. It was late afternoon, but I still had hopes of getting to Houston — about four hours driving away. A supermarket is a great place to pick up stuff for a road trip that you had forgotten to put in your backpack — like a razor, or sun block for when you’re standing by the road for hours.

I was walking through the parking lot carrying my Houston sign when I saw thirty feet away from me a young man knocking a woman to the ground as he grabbed her purse. It was on a shoulder strap and he yanked at it hard and started to run off with it. I realized he was going to run past me as he headed to wherever he was escaping. My Houston sign had a solid wooden stake taped to its middle so I could stick it in the ground when I was standing by the side of the road. Without really thinking, as he ran past me, I swung the sign at his face. He went down like he’d been clotheslined. The sign shattered and fell to the ground.

He still managed to scramble back to his feet, but he had dropped the woman’s purse. As he stood, he stared menacingly at me as he seemed to consider reaching for the purse which was a few feet away from him. His eyes moved back to the purse then back at me. I was going to hit him if he went for the purse. I didn’t have hold of the sign anymore but my years of playing Lacrosse and hours spent doing mixed martial arts gave me confidence I could hurt him. Also, I was a fair amount bigger.

Then he just turned and ran off. I considered running after him, but I figured I should just return her purse. My civic duty didn’t require more than that. Besides, if I chased after him, someone else might come and take her purse — I saw it was a Chanel and she was still on the ground thirty feet away.

I picked up the purse and walked over to her as she was struggling to get up. I took her arm and helped her get to her feet.

“My hero,” she said and smiled a little as she started to dust herself off and straighten her clothes. I handed her purse back to her.

As she took it from me, she looked it over, then she slung it back over her shoulder, “You know I saw that guy looking at my purse when I was in the store — I hadn’t thought it made me a target. The funny thing is that there isn’t anything in the purse of value.”

“Maybe, but he could sell your purse on eBay for several thousand.”

“I guess so…I saw what you did with your sign. I’m sorry but I think you’ll need a new one.” She pointed at my sign lying where I had hit the guy. It had snapped in half. “I had seen you earlier with it. Are you hitchhiking to Houston?”

“Yea but no worries…I’ll be fine.”

She started looking around on the ground. “Do you see my eyeglasses anywhere?”

I looked around too and then I saw them a few feet away in the direction where I had been. It looked like they had been smashed underfoot by her accoster as he ran off. I held them up to her, “I hope you have another pair.”

“Not with me and I need them to drive.” She pointed at her car which was a silver four door Maserati.

“Is there someone you can call?”

“I’m sure there is. Don’t you worry about it. You’ve already done so much… where are my manners…I’m Katherine Orren.” She held out her hand to shake.

We shook hands as I said, “Bart Eriksen.”

Really for the first time, I looked her over. I guessed mid-fifties, tall and trim and stylishly dressed: Gucci sneakers, designer jeans with an Hermes belt and a tee shirt with a shaggy dog’s head and the words “who’s doing the rescuing?” Blondish—brownish short hair. A beautiful woman.

She was looking me over at the same time. For the record, I’m 27 years old, 6’2”, with reddish-brownish hair that tends to curl too much and fall over towards my right eye. I work out enough to have stayed reasonably fit. I’d like to say I’m the ruggedly handsome type but boy next door would be more accurate. I was wearing jeans and a Polo golf shirt, probably a little over-dressed for a down on his luck hitchhiker.

“So you’re hitchhiking to Houston?”

“Yea…in fact I need to start moving…it’s getting late.”

“Isn’t it too late already? You could get stuck somewhere in between.” She gave me a...