Crash Landing by Lori Wilde Read Free Book Online Page B

handsome face.
    She ignored his innuendo, ignored the spark of sexual awareness zipping through her. “Cumulus clouds. Although at this elevation they’re called alto cumulus. A small street of them might be just bumpy, but they can be dangerous for small planes to fly through because they are formed in unstable air that is always trying to rise higher.”
    “So there is a chance for updrafts.”
    “Yes, and if the cumulus clouds gain moisture at higher altitudes, they turn into cumulonimbus clouds.”
    “Sounds like sex on a bus,” he teased.
    “It’s not funny,” she said. As happy-go-lucky and adventuresome as Sophia might be, when it came to flying, she did not make jokes or take weather lightly.
    “What does this mean?”
    “It means I’m not laughing about the cumulus clouds.”
    “Not that,” he said. “Can we fly through them?”
    “We could, but it could be much more than just a bumpy ride. Look how wide and thick they are. I wouldn’t know the extent of how far they ranged until we were in the middle of them. And it might take as long as an hour to do it and I simply can’t risk that.”
    “Don’t you have some kind of radar or sonar or something to tell you this stuff?”
    “Who do you think I am? The weatherman? You see anything on this 1971 control panel that looks like it could track a storm?”
    “No.”
    “This plane isn’t built for long-haul flying. I tried to tell you that.”
    “So what do we do?”
    “We fly around the clouds.”
    “How long will that take?”
    “It’s weather. I don’t have a crystal ball.”
    “Can you call a tower and ask?”
    “There are no manned towers out here. I could call UNICOM, but they’d just tell me to fly around it.”
    Gibb drummed his fingers against the door. “Dammit.”
    “You said earlier that privacy is more important than speed. I’ll get you there in plenty of time to break up your friend’s wedding, even with the delay.”
    “I thought the tropical storm was two days away.”
    “This isn’t part of the storm. If it were, the air traffic controllers in Nicaragua would have advised me to land. We’re okay on that score.”
    Gibb chuffed out his breath, stabbed his fingers through his hair.
    “You don’t take detours in stride, do you?” she asked.
    “Why should I?”
    “Can’t control Mother Nature.”
    The cumulus clouds were getting closer, stretching out across the corridor of their immediate path. The only part of the sky clear of cumulus clouds was due south. The opposite direction of where they needed to go.
    Having little alternative, Sophia headed south. She wouldn’t admit it to Gibb, but she was nervous. She’d never flown over the Caribbean and the army of cumulus clouds was not making life any easier. Still, there was no reason for any real alarm.
    Everything was looking good, until she directed the plane eastward, hoping to skirt the cumulus clouds, and got caught up in a ferocious headwind. It pushed back against El Diablo with a speed of more than a hundred and sixty knots per hour.
    Sophia battled against the wind, trying to hold the plane steady. The nose kept dipping and she struggled to keep it up. They rolled like a body surfer trying to navigate the waves off Oahu’s North Shore. Her hands tensed on the yoke, tightening muscles all the way up to her shoulders.
    “What’s going on?” Gibb demanded.
    “Hush!” Sophia snapped.
    To her surprise, he did.
    She took the plane lower, hoping the maneuver would lessen the push of the headwind, dropping down to four thousand feet. The Caribbean sparkled impossibly blue below them.
    They were making no headway. Salmon swimming upstream had a better chance of getting where they were going. Initially, she’d hoped the headwind would slack off, but it only seemed to grow stronger. Her gaze focused on the gas gauge, less than half a tank remaining.
    “We have to go back,” she told Gibb.
    “Why?”
    “We’re running low on fuel.”
    “We’re running