Heart Strike by M. L. Buchman

hated looking stupid in front of her, but again, she shrugged.
    â€œOkay,” he admitted. “What did I just do that I was missing?”
    Instead of some sharp reply, the trainer spoke calmly over the intercom. “In a single-engine aircraft, you’re used to the engine being directly in front of you, mounted in the nose of the airplane. You would automatically see any bad fire or heavy smoke. In a multi-engine plane, with the engines mounted on the wings, you need to turn and look at the engines. A simple visual inspection.”
    Simple, once you knew about it. And now drilled in deep by the instructor’s initial harangue.
    â€œRestore the engine. Here.” Vito The Priest handed Richie a pad of Post-it notes after he did so. “Place these over…” and he began listing off instrument dials. It was an easy way to simulate the failure of an instrument—cover it so that the pilot can’t read it, then they have to fly on what systems remain visible.
    Except Vito kept listing them until most of the panel was Post-its.
    â€œNow take us out over the Gulf.” Using the compass—the only directional aid still uncovered—they turned west for the Gulf of Mexico.
    Richie worked to add the habit of occasionally looking left and right to keep an eye on the engines. As Melissa turned the plane, he caught a bright flare off the right wingtip.
    Reds, blues, greens.
    The colors burst in the night sky as if their wingtip was exploding!
    â€œWhat the—”
    â€œDisney World,” The Priest said drily.
    Then the perspective shifted. Not inches, but rather miles off their wingtip, Disney World was having their nightly fireworks show.
    * * *
    Melissa had never flown a plane as powerful as the Beech Baron, and it was a total thrill ride. It was near midnight and she was flying at two hundred feet, practicing engine-matching technique—when the two engines ran at slightly different speeds, it set up strange harmonics in the airframe.
    The Gulf’s night air was so clear that she could see forever. The lights of coastal cities danced all along the horizon. Small fishing boats were plying the waters, leaving wide phosphorescent wakes.
    If she nudged one of the throttles even the tiniest bit out of sync, an irritating thrum was set up that soon pounded against her eardrums as if—
    â€œCrap!”
    All of a sudden, one of the distant cities had jumped closer.
    Way closer!
    She slammed the throttles in her right hand hard against full power, synchronization be damned. Left wheel, left pedal, and pray.
    The plane was agile and twisted hard, clearing the massive oil derrick with plenty of room to spare, as long as you were measuring it in feet and inches rather than yards or plane wingspans. Once well clear, she leveled the plane, eased back the engines, and circled back for a closer look.
    The Christmas-tree-bright drilling platform had multiple hundred-and-fifty-foot cranes, a helicopter platform, and a massive central derrick. She couldn’t do more than gawk as she flew a couple laps around it. Her heart rate was still higher than the derrick.
    â€œWondered when you’d notice,” was all The Priest said to her and went back to instructing them on engine adjustments.
    She gave it one last look and turned back to the lesson. Now that she’d seen one of the big rigs, she spotted dozens and dozens of the thirty-story-tall structures planted broadly across the Gulf like the sparse bushes a chintzy landscaper would put out in front of new tract home.
    Then she’d discovered container ships, less well lit, lower to the water, but far longer.
    The one cruise ship had been easy to pick out—lit up like a twenty-story-high amusement park.
    Her hands had shaken for an hour afterward, making her landing less than clean.
    Once they were landed and out of the plane, The Priest then led them along the line of U.S. Coast Guard C-130s. They were massive,