The Coffin Dancer

her pet. It was her child. And on the too-many nights Ed was gone just the thought of the aircraft would take the sting out of the loneliness. A sweet stick, the aircraft could cruise at forty-five thousand feet at speeds of 460 knots—over 500 miles per hour. She personally knew it could fly higher and faster, though that was a secret kept from Morgan Air Leasing, La Jolla Holding, Transport Solutions, and the FAA.
    Talbot finally said, “Getting her outfitted—it’s going to be trickier than I thought.”
    “Go on.”
    “All right,” he said finally. “Stu quit.” Stu Marquard, their chief mechanic.
    “What?”
    “The son of a bitch quit. Well, he hasn’t yet,” Talbot continued. “He called in sick but it sounded funny, so I made some calls. He’s going over to Sikorsky. Already took the job.”
    Percey was stunned.
    This was a major problem. Lear 35As came equipped as eight-seat passenger jets. To make the aircraft ready for the U.S. Medical run, most of the seats had to be stripped out; shock-absorbed, refrigerated bays had to be installed, and extra power outlets had to be run from the engine’s generators. This meant major electrical and airframe work.
    There were no mechanics better than Stu Marquard and he’d outfitted Ed’s Lear in record time. But without him Percey didn’t know how they could finish in time for tomorrow’s flight.
    “What is it, Perce?” Hale asked, seeing her grimacing face.
    “Stu quit,” she whispered.
    He shook his head, not understanding. “Quit what?”
    “He left,” she muttered. “Quit his job. Going to work on fucking choppers.”
    Hale gazed at her in shock. “Today?”
    She nodded.
    Talbot continued. “He’s scared, Perce. They know it was a bomb. The cops aren’t saying anything but everybody knows what happened. They’re nervous. I was talking to John Ringle—”
    “Johnny?” A young pilot they’d hired last year. “He’s not leaving too?”
    “He was just asking if we’re closing down for a while. Until this all blows over.”
    “No, we’re not closing down,” she said firmly. “We’re not canceling a single goddamn job. It’s business as usual. And if anybody else calls in sick, fire them.”
    “Percey . . . ”
    Talbot was dour but everybody knew he was the company’s soft touch.
    “All right,” she snapped, “I’ll fire them.”
    “Look, about Foxtrot Bravo , I can do most of the work myself,” said Talbot, a certified airframe mechanic himself.
    “Do what you can. But see if you can find another mechanic,” she told him. “We’ll talk later.”
    She hung up.
    “I can’t believe it,” Hale said. “He quit.” The pilot was bewildered.
    Percey was furious. People were bailing out—the worst sin there was. The Company was dying. Yet she didn’t have a clue how to save it.
    Percey Clay had no monkey skills for running a business.
    Monkey skills . . .
    A phrase she’d heard when she was a fighter pilot. Coined by a navy flier, an admiral, it meant the esoteric, unteachable talents of a natural-born pilot.
    Well, sure, Percey had monkey skills when it came to flying. Any type of aircraft, whether she’d flown it previously or not, under any weather conditions, VFR or IFR, day or night. She could drive the plane flawlessly and set it down on that magic spot pilots aimed for—exactly “a thousand past the numbers”—a thousand feet down the landing strip past the white runway designation. Sailplanes, biplanes, Hercs, seven three sevens, MiGs—she was at home in any cockpit.
    But that was about as far as Percey Rachael Clay’s monkey skills extended.
    She had none at family relations, that was for sure. Her tobacco society father had refused to speak to her for years—had actually disinherited her—when she’d dropped out of his alma mater, UVA, to attend aviation school at Virginia Tech. (Even though she told him that the departure from Charlottesville wasinevitable—six weeks into the first semester Percey’d KO’d a sorority president after the lanky blonde commented in an overloud whisper that the troll girl might want to pledge at the ag school and not on Greek Row.)
    Certainly no monkey skills at navy politics. Her awe-inspiring flight performance in the big Tomcats didn’t quite tip the balance against her unfortunate habit of speaking her mind when everyone else was keeping mum about certain events.
    And no skills at running the very charter company she was president of. It was