Then at an altitude of eleven hundred feet, when we were over water at a hundred knots, the fuselage got hit. Both of us felt the kicks right behind us, as close as the left rear passenger door.

“I’m turning right now,” Lucy said to me. “Can you keep us straight at this altitude?”

I was terrified. We were going to die.

“I’ll try,” I said, taking the controls.

We were heading straight toward the Schweizer. It couldn’t have been more than fifty feet from us, and maybe a hundred feet below when Lucy pulled back the bolt, chambering a round.

“Shove the cyclic down! Now!” she yelled at me as she pushed the barrel of the rifle out her open door.

We were going down a thousand feet per minute, and I was certain we would fly right into the Schweizer. I tried to veer out of its path, but Lucy would have none of it.

“Straight at it!” she yelled.

I could not hear the gunfire as we flew directly over the Schweizer, so close I thought we would be devoured by its blades. She fired more, and I saw flashes, and then Lucy had the cyclic and was ramming it into a hard left, cutting it away from the Schweizer as it exploded into a ball of flames that rolled us almost over on our side. Lucy had the controls as I went into a crash position.

Then as suddenly as the violent shock waves had hit, they were gone, and I caught a glimpse of flaming debris showering into the Atlantic Ocean. We were steady and making a wide turn. I stared at my niece in stunned disbelief.

“Fuck you,” she coldly said as fire and broken fuselage rained into sparkling water.

She got on the air, as calm as I had ever seen her.

“Tower,” she said. “Fugitive aircraft has exploded. Debris two miles off Wrightsville Beach. Negative survivors seen. Circling for signs of life.”

“Roger. Do you need assistance?” came the rattled response.

“A little late. But negative. Am returning to your location for immediate refuel.”

“Uh. Roger.” The omnipotent tower was stuttering. “Proceed direct. Local authorities will meet you at ISO.”

But Lucy circled twice more, down to fifty feet as fire engines and police cars sped toward the beach with emergency lights flashing. Panicked swimmers were running out of the water, kicking and falling and fighting waves, arms flying, as if a great white shark were in pursuit. Floating debris rocked with the surge. Bright orange life jackets bobbed, but no one was in them.

ONE WEEK LATER
HILTON HEAD ISLAND

THE MORNING WAS overcast, the sky the same gray as the sea, when the few of us who had loved Benton Wesley assembled on an empty, undeveloped point on the plantation of Sea Pines.