“Agreed,” the man answered.

He circled around the little cockpit of the helicopter and climbed in.

“You come on here,” the other man said as he opened the Plexiglas door to the co-pilot’s seat. “Best ride up front, the back is stuffed to the roof.”

I threw my bags in and climbed up gingerly. He closed the door behind me and turned the handle to lock it—I hoped to lock it. The pilot was going through the controls, hitting switches and pushing buttons. I realized I didn’t even know his name.

“I’m Beth,” I said.

“I’m Steve. Pleased to meet you.” He reached over-top of me and I squirmed in my seat.

“Seat belt,” he said kindly. “You need your seat belt.”

“Oh…yeah…of course.” I felt embarrassed.

It ran around my waist and over both shoulders. He snapped it into place and then went back to fiddling with the controls. Little lights on the dashboard came to life and the rotors overhead slowly started to spin. He put on his headset and spoke to the control tower. I could hear only his side of the conversation, and he was using some sort of shorthand aviation code. That, combined with his thick accent and the growing roar of the rotors as they spun faster and faster meant that I really couldn’t hear much at all, and what I could hear I didn’t understand.

Steve the pilot gave a thumbs-up to the man standing beside the chopper and he returned the sign. The noise got louder again and we lifted off the ground. It was slow. It felt like riding in an elevator—a glass-sided elevator. We kept going up until we were high enough off the ground for me to see around and past the other helicopters. The whole tarmac was a beehive of activity. People and planes, helicopters, forklifts, and what seemed like thousands of skids of supplies.

“Ever been in a helicopter before?” Steve yelled above the roar of the engine.

“No, never,” I yelled back.

“Greatest ride on earth. You had anything to eat lately?”

“Not for three or four hours.”

“Good. No food on the stomach means less chance of you upchucking and me having to clean out my chopper. Do you know how hard it is to get rid of the smell? Stays with you for flight after flight.”

“I don’t get airsick.”

“Even better. Hang on to your hat…or, I guess, my hat.”

Before I could reply or react, we dipped to the side and sped off. I grabbed onto the seat with both hands. We skipped just over the top of the trees on the outskirts of the airport.

“We’re pretty low,” I said.

“What?”

“We’re low!” I said loudly, trying to be heard above the rotors.

“Gotta fly low until we get away from the airport. Don’t wanna get into the flight paths of any of the big birds. Could be hazardous to our health.”

We passed over some houses. We were so low that I could see people walking on the streets. They looked up and waved, but we were moving so fast that before I could wave back they were gone.