Not long, probably. Mike didn’t have time to deal with that. He reached over and shut off the transponder – that way they couldn’t track him down.
If he wanted to fly completely undetected, though, he’d need to stay low. Radar wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between him and the trees at five hundred feet. He’d run the risk of crashing, sure, but the last thing he needed was some bored helicopter crew chasing him down.
There was no time for that. Vinnie’s words kept looping in his head. He pushed the plane as fast as it could go.
He got a response from Hank about twenty minutes into the flight. It simply said, “On it.”
At least he could count on Hank. Joe would probably be tied up.
He focused on flying.
As Mike got closer to the mountains, the challenges piled up. Visibility was poor, as fog was thick and dense in the valley. It was like flying through a marshmallow, and it clouded his mind with visions of crashing into the obscured mountainside.
It had been years since he’d flown through fog this thick and took all of his focus to get through it. Once into the mountains, he thought he was in the clear, but then he flew right into a rocky storm.
Normally he’d avoid flying in this kind of weather, but today he had no choice. The winds tossed the plane around like a toy, dropping the Piper a hundred feet at a time.
Mike had no choice but to pull above five hundred feet a few times to avoid an untimely death.
He was ten, maybe fifteen minutes away from the little mountain airport when the fuel gauge went off.
Dang it. He should’ve filled up before he left, but he wasn’t thinking. Why didn’t the kid tell him the plane needed fuel?
Whatever – it didn’t matter. He would glide into the runway on fumes if he had to.
Mike said a prayer. He would need it.
