The Quest: A Novel

“Or we will die trying.”
    “No!”
    Vivian turned in her seat. “Yes!”
    Vivian and Henry looked at each other for several seconds, and Purcell could imagine Vivian’s green eyes staring into Henry’s soul.
    He heard Henry say, “Yes… all right.” He added, “We have come a long way to find the Grail, and we are too close to turn back.”
    Vivian reached out and touched Henry’s face, then turned in her seat and stared out the windshield as the Navion picked up a southwesterly heading toward Shoan and began descending.
    She turned her head toward Purcell and looked at him until he looked at her. She said softly, “I love you.”
    “You love anyone who gives you your way.”
    She smiled. “What is best for me, is best for us.”
    He didn’t reply.
    They continued their rapid descent and Purcell said, “Shoan, about ten minutes.” He added, “I will
attempt
a landing.”
    Vivian said, “That’s all I ask of you.” She let him know, “You can do it.”
    “We are about to find out.”
    He cut his power and began a gradual descent toward the village, which was now visible in the distance.
    If he let his imagination go, and if he excluded the surrounding jungle, the fields of Shoan could be upstate New York where he firstlearned to fly as a young man. His mother had said flying was dangerous and urged him to pursue something safer, like writing.
    “I am glad to see you smiling.”
    “I used to write for my high school newspaper and the hometown weekly. I majored in journalism in college. My mother wanted me to have a safe job.”
    She smiled and said, “I’ve read only one article that you wrote. Are you any good?”
    “My mother thinks so.”
    “I lost my parents when I was twelve. A plane crash.”
    “Sorry.”
    “Maybe I should have picked a better moment to say that.”
    Purcell didn’t know how many moments they actually had left, but he said, “We have a lot to tell each other in Rome.”
    She unpinned the Saint Christopher medal from the fabric over the windshield and stuck it on his shirt. “Christopher saved a child from a river, and though he was a big and strong man, the surprising weight of the small child almost made him stumble and fall into the raging water, but he would not let go of the child—and when they reached safety, the child revealed to him that he was Jesus who carried the weight of the world.”
    “I know the feeling.”
    He eased the throttle back and continued their descent.

Chapter 44
    P urcell looked for an open pasture among the hundreds of acres of orchards and planted fields. He thought he needed about a thousand feet of unobstructed, mostly level terrain, but stone and wooden fences separated many of the fields, and trees grew in most of the pastures.
    Purcell wanted to do a wheels-down landing, but if the ground was too wet, rocky, or potholed, he might have to do a belly landing, though he had the rocket pod to contend with.
    Most importantly, he had too much fuel on board—about half a tank—and he couldn’t risk staying in the air to burn it off. He instructed Vivian and Henry to clear the aircraft quickly after it came to a stop.
    He circled around the periphery of the fields, and he could see a few people near the village looking up at him. Hopefully, Gann was one of them.
    Vivian asked, “Do you see a place to land?”
    “Only one. That pasture ahead.”
    Mercado asked, “Is that long enough?”
    “I’ll make it long enough.”
    The pasture was slightly sloped, and he decided to land upslope so that the land came up to meet the Navion, and the aircraft would slow sooner uphill and hopefully come to a stop before he ran out of pasture.
    He lined up the aircraft with the pasture, which looked to be about a thousand feet long. He now noticed there was a stone fence at the end of the rise, but no trees or water holes.
    He had no idea what the winds were doing, but it didn’t matter; this was the landing strip, and upslope was the direction.
    Purcell lowered his landing gear and flaps and pulled back on thethrottle. His airspeed was barely sixty miles per hour, and he estimated his altitude at five hundred feet, then four, three… He looked out at the approaching pasture of short brown grass. The goats had scattered, but now he could see rocks and sinkholes. “Hold on.”
    He cut the power back to idle, pulled the nose up, and the Navion touched down hard and bounced high, then down again and up again across the rocky pasture. He shut