The Icy Fire of Deception
short stories
Mike Trial
© 2015 Mike Trial
ISBN: 978-1-9421-6823-2 E-book
ISBN: 978-1-942168-22-5 Trade Paperback
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Introduction
Ever since Poe invented it, de Maupassant perfected it, Arthur Conan Doyle immortalized it, and Alfred Hitchcock televised it, the suspense / mystery short story has become one of the most popular forms of literature.
Whether we love the characters or hate them, we remember them. Which is more than can be said for the introverted protagonists of far too many mainstream short stories. The suspense / mystery story pulls us quickly along with its narrative drive, sharp motivation, and colorful characters. In the following eight stories you’ll meet heroes of varying shades of white, villains not always in black, and characters with consciences every color in between.
Cold Cargo
A 747 is a big airplane, but it’s far too small a space for a pilot and copilot who hate each other. Especially when one decides to eliminate the other.
Bill, the chief pilot, muttered something.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“Is the door locked?” he repeated, never taking his eyes off the blood red line of Arctic dawn just becoming visible over the dashboard of the 747.
I reached behind me and felt the latch, “Yes, Bill,” I said with mocking sarcasm. “All those imaginary Chinese stowaways back in cargo can’t get in.”
There are only two people, pilot and co-pilot, on the 747s that fly freight from China to the United States. “Nobody can get in—not even your ex-wife,” I added, suppressing a grin.
I hoped he’d shut up for a while, but he didn’t. “Susan’s gone, she took everything—the house, my retirement, everything, “ he moaned. “I’ll be flying forever to pay her.” He touched the top of the 747’s dashboard.
I fished my key ring out of my pants pocket and started clipping a fingernail.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he said tightly. I forced my temper down, tossed my key ring on top of my flight bag, and climbed out of my seat, “I’m going back to check cargo and stretch my legs.” It didn’t need checking, but I couldn’t stand any more of Bill’s whining. Another hour and we’d be within range of the radio relay station at Barrow and back in touch with the world. It’s the isolation of these over-the-pole flights that gets Bill going—for two hours you’re out of contact with all radio stations, even the satellites. And for some reason, that isolation works on Bill.
As I left the cockpit, Bill slipped on his oxygen mask. FAA regulations require it. This is to prevent anoxia if there’s a slow leak in the pressurized hull of the plane and only one man in the cockpit.
It was cold in the cargo hold, which on a freighter is the entire space behind the cockpit. There are no rows of seats, just aluminum shipping containers full of electronic toys from Shanghai. I stood there in the gloom, thinking.
Two years ago, Bill had been one of the most cheerful guys in the company, nearing retirement, a mentor to me. But all that had changed the day he’d come back from a flight to find a note on the kitchen table from his wife, Susan, saying she had left him.
This is not uncommon. Pilots are away from home four days out of seven which will put a strain on any relationship. Soon after Susan left him, Bill developed a heart condition. I was ready to move up to the captain’s position. I could almost feel it. Then He whined to the company president that he needed to stay on, needed the money. The company doctor took pity on him and signed a waiver keeping him on flight status so that he’d have a steady paycheck while he got through the divorce.
I’m working for a real compassionate company, I thought bitterly. They’d promised me the captain’s position a year ago. But now with Bill staying on, probably for years, I was stuck in the copilot position with half the pay, and no chance of promotion for the foreseeable future.
They promised me that job, dammit! I jammed my fists into my pockets. So what if Bill needed the money, we all need money. Bill’s now-ex-wife Susan was a sharp realtor who’d made good money in the Seattle housing market, bought their house at auction for cash when the market was down, then fixed it up. And kept the title in her name. The house was on the market at $900,000, but Bill won’t see any of that windfall. Susan got around the community property laws by deeding the house to their daughter Melissa just ahead of the divorce.
Now I’m stuck in the cockpit with him for fourteen hours at a stretch, listening to his monologue about how life has screwed him, Susan is a devious bitch, all the standard recent divorcée stuff. It goes on endlessly. With occasional interludes about how angelic their daughter Melissa is.
Melissa’s twenty four, a bright young commodities trader, living in Chicago, with a brilliant sense of timing and no compassion, which is what successful market traders need.
“Stupid bastard,” I muttered. “He thinks his daughter loves him, but she hates him. He’s just too dumb to realize it.”
I know she hates him—she told me so one rainy afternoon three months ago, after we’d drunk a bottle of champagne and made love in a suite at the Drake hotel. She also told me about the Seattle house being on the market and that she expected to see the cash real soon. It’s Melissa’s self-centered, unsentimental clarity I like. That, and her athletic young body.
“And when my dad dies,” she told me that afternoon, “I’ll split the life insurance with my mother, which should get me over the two million dollar mark. With that, I can buy a partnership in a serious firm.”
On my flight back to Anchorage from Chicago, I sat in first class sipping a Bushmill’s and thinking. Bill’s life insurance was a company perk, like mine. If Bill died, Melissa and her mother would get would get five million dollars.
Five million dollars.
I thought about five million dollars, about the years rolling by while I sat in the cockpit seat, with bovine Bill slumped in the captain’s seat. I needed a promotion, I needed to live life more fully, I needed a change. And I’d been thinking about how to do this ever since Bill had turned unlikeable.
I made my way down the narrow space beside the pallets until I located the pallet I’d chalk-marked. I opened the inspection panel and pulled out a little grey compressed gas cylinder. Corruption is widespread at Chinese airports, so getting a guy to fill an oxygen cylinder with carbon monoxide and a ramp worker to slip the cylinder into a box of electronics had only cost me a total of $150.
I took the cylinder out, went back to the on-board oxygen system, unscrewed a reserve bottle, screwed in the gray cylinder and manually switched it over. The flow meter showed normal