counter-rotating. The design was supposed to neutralize torque and make the ship easier to handle. Actually, it was designed merely to fascinate armchair pilots in procurement departments in Houston.
The Mixmaster, which is what the real pilots called it, flew like a spooked horse in a field full of gopher holes. And those blades meshing right over my head, with maybe the clutch on one of those trannies drifting out of sync by a half-rev or so ... I had a lot to think about while going over the console.
The copilot was a Saudi-subsidized trainee, Prince Abd el Faisal Something, a grinning, slick-skinned kid who could care less about driving a helicopter. He had papers, but I did not trust them, being written in Arabic. It was obvious from the linen and gold that he made three times the take-home I did and was sitting in the cockpit only because the Royal Family currently thought some of the poor-relation princes should be fully employed. He was holding a Louis L’Amour paperback and looking out the window. No help there.
Our passenger was late. We were expecting an executive type, listed as an associate in the Law Department, Houston office. “Granville J. Corbin” sounded silver-haired, about sixty, fighting a paunch with Saturday and Sunday tennis sets. He would be wearing a deep tan that extended to the vee at his neck and mid-thigh, where the tennis whites started. He would probably talk like a New Englander with a corncob up his nose. He would be out to inspect the oil fields because, after forty years in the business, one must—just once—see where the stuff comes out of the ground.
So when the Citation IV taxied over toward the pad and popped the hatch on a baby lawyer with more elbows than stomach, I was set up for my first surprise. He was not a bad-looking kid. Hair red-blond and curly, a strong nose, for a white man, twinkling eyes that missed very little, a grim-smiling mouth that turned up at the corners like a recurve bow. It was hard to read anything from that mouth except an honorary good will that might not go deeper than his teeth.
“Hi, are you Petramin?” he asked above the whine of the Counter’s turbine. He rested his overnighter on the lip of the port-sice passenger door.
“Right here. You Corbin?”
“Call me Jay.” He slung the bag through, climbed in, and put a hand forward between my seat and the copilot’s, above my left shoulder. It was an awkward grip to take with my right hand, being strapped in by my shoulder harness with the cyclic live between my knees, so I reached up and shook backhanded with my left. And offside handshake like that is supposed to be bad luck. I guess it was, on that trip.
He plopped into the bucket behind Faisal then, pulled the door shut, and fumbled with the lap and shoulder belts. While I was adjusting for takeoff, a woman came running from the Citation, or possibly just from that side of the runway—I did not see, being too busy staring at gauges right then. But when I looked up, staring at her was more rewarding.
She was the reason the Saudis veil their women. A heavy fall of black-black hair bounced around her shoulders. Her eyes were arched and outlined like something out of an Egyptian tomb. She had painted her mouth the bold red that goes so well with olive coloring—not the peach and pink that washes out on an Eastern woman. Very un-Saudi, she was wearing high heels that made her calves stand out and a gray wool mini-suit that made everything else stand out.
Our copilot, Faisal, seemed to share my assessment of this bobbling houri. Before I could move, he was out of the left-hand seat and opening the door. That was lousy protocol, as I was technically captain of the ship and we were airworthy if not actually in the air at the time. I turned toward him and was about to raise my voice to object when he put a gun barrel in my left ear.
In the second before he ordered my eyes front I caught, through the side-plex of the cockpit, a last glimpse
The Mixmaster, which is what the real pilots called it, flew like a spooked horse in a field full of gopher holes. And those blades meshing right over my head, with maybe the clutch on one of those trannies drifting out of sync by a half-rev or so ... I had a lot to think about while going over the console.
The copilot was a Saudi-subsidized trainee, Prince Abd el Faisal Something, a grinning, slick-skinned kid who could care less about driving a helicopter. He had papers, but I did not trust them, being written in Arabic. It was obvious from the linen and gold that he made three times the take-home I did and was sitting in the cockpit only because the Royal Family currently thought some of the poor-relation princes should be fully employed. He was holding a Louis L’Amour paperback and looking out the window. No help there.
Our passenger was late. We were expecting an executive type, listed as an associate in the Law Department, Houston office. “Granville J. Corbin” sounded silver-haired, about sixty, fighting a paunch with Saturday and Sunday tennis sets. He would be wearing a deep tan that extended to the vee at his neck and mid-thigh, where the tennis whites started. He would probably talk like a New Englander with a corncob up his nose. He would be out to inspect the oil fields because, after forty years in the business, one must—just once—see where the stuff comes out of the ground.
So when the Citation IV taxied over toward the pad and popped the hatch on a baby lawyer with more elbows than stomach, I was set up for my first surprise. He was not a bad-looking kid. Hair red-blond and curly, a strong nose, for a white man, twinkling eyes that missed very little, a grim-smiling mouth that turned up at the corners like a recurve bow. It was hard to read anything from that mouth except an honorary good will that might not go deeper than his teeth.
“Hi, are you Petramin?” he asked above the whine of the Counter’s turbine. He rested his overnighter on the lip of the port-sice passenger door.
“Right here. You Corbin?”
“Call me Jay.” He slung the bag through, climbed in, and put a hand forward between my seat and the copilot’s, above my left shoulder. It was an awkward grip to take with my right hand, being strapped in by my shoulder harness with the cyclic live between my knees, so I reached up and shook backhanded with my left. And offside handshake like that is supposed to be bad luck. I guess it was, on that trip.
He plopped into the bucket behind Faisal then, pulled the door shut, and fumbled with the lap and shoulder belts. While I was adjusting for takeoff, a woman came running from the Citation, or possibly just from that side of the runway—I did not see, being too busy staring at gauges right then. But when I looked up, staring at her was more rewarding.
She was the reason the Saudis veil their women. A heavy fall of black-black hair bounced around her shoulders. Her eyes were arched and outlined like something out of an Egyptian tomb. She had painted her mouth the bold red that goes so well with olive coloring—not the peach and pink that washes out on an Eastern woman. Very un-Saudi, she was wearing high heels that made her calves stand out and a gray wool mini-suit that made everything else stand out.
Our copilot, Faisal, seemed to share my assessment of this bobbling houri. Before I could move, he was out of the left-hand seat and opening the door. That was lousy protocol, as I was technically captain of the ship and we were airworthy if not actually in the air at the time. I turned toward him and was about to raise my voice to object when he put a gun barrel in my left ear.
In the second before he ordered my eyes front I caught, through the side-plex of the cockpit, a last glimpse
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